Love this writing advice from James Patterson: People want to be glued to the page. They want suspense, and suspense to me is always about questions that you must have answered. I try to pretend that theres somebody across from me and Im telling them a story and I dont want them to get up until Im finished. John Grisham always plants a really powerful hook early, that question that makes you want to know what the hell is gonna happen to this guy or this woman. But part of it is, who are you talking to? What have you got for them? It’s useful that if you tell somebody in a paragraph what the story is and they go, “Ooh ooh, I can’t wait, tell me more,” as opposed to they were just kind of nodding politely. Well, then that just puts so much stress on the writing. That means that the style has to overcome the fact that you don’t have much of a story. fastcocreate/3029052/worlds-best-selling-author-james-patterson-on-how-to-write-an-unputdownable-story
Posted on: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 14:47:46 +0000