How to Get Published

by John Bowers

During my first year in college (which was also my last year in college) I took a creative writing course; only three of those enrolled were regular day students - the rest were older people with families and jobs. It was an informal class in which we talked a lot about writing and everyone shared stories and chapters, which were read aloud. I expected my writing to be a big hit, but I had a surprise in store.

“I’m amazed at your dialog!” one man told me. “It sounds so natural.”

“What’s your secret?” another lady asked.

Secret? I didn’t know there was a secret. I was telling a story, the characters spoke, and I wrote it down. I was more amazed than they were, that anyone would have trouble writing dialog.

But apparently some people do. So what’s the “secret”? (more…)

Award-winning novelist Ricahard Bausch spoke to Operation Homecoming workshop participants at Fort Drum, New York, offering his “Ten Commandments” for developing good writing.

Courtesy of the National Endowment for the arts.

by Evan Marshall

When you’re learning how to write a good novel, it’s critical that you understand how very important it is to come up with a really great initial idea. You want to make sure your idea intrigues and inspires you and you want it to hook your readers from the first page to the last. The best way to come up with a good novel idea that accomplishes both of these things is to begin your story with a major crisis. If you choose the crisis using the guidelines I give below, I think you’ll find the resulting story idea will crackle with tension and excitement and will help you write a page-turner that readers and publishers will love. A good crisis will compel your main character to make a decision to solve the problem caused by the crisis and will give him a powerful motivation to succeed. It needs to be a big enough crisis that your main character will need the rest of the novel to overcome it.

Make Sure Your Crisis Fits These Three Criteria (more…)

by Al Kalar

A new writer needs a first chapter hook to sell the book.

Well established writers can slog through the chronological background and then on to the “good stuff” only because they have developed a following that trusts them to deliver a good yarn — eventually. Disaster movies get away with slow starts because the studio spends millions on advertising trailers showing the explosions that come later in the film. (more…)