Category Archives: robert gregory browne

Novel Writing Words of Wisdom

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Writing a novel is a big undertaking, especially at first. It took me years before I discovery-drafted my first novel. Three more novels followed, all written by the seat-of-my-pants.

However, it wasn’t until I began studying the craft of novel writing and getting feedback on my novels, as I had done earlier for short fiction, that I began to make actual progress. Learning how to write a novel took time, as did learning how to write a fantasy novel which worked, and later still, how to write a mystery novel that spun a convincing mystery.

Today’s Words of Wisdom looks at three diverse aspects of writing novels. First, James Scott Bell gives us the three rules of writing a novel. Then, Elaine Viets shares succinct advice on how-to-write a mystery, given by a fictional detective. Finally, Robert Gregory Browne looks at the idea of knowing how to write a best-selling novel.

RULE # 1 – DON’T BORE THE READER

Can anyone disagree with that?  Doesn’t it make sense that this should be emblazoned across the writer’s creative consciousness as the most foundational of all rules?

If you bore the reader, you don’t sell the book. Or, at least, if the reader does manage to make it to the end, you don’t sell your next book.

It’s a rule. In fact, it’s a law, just like gravity.

Which leads to:

RULE #2 – PUT CHARACTERS IN CRISIS

Novels that sell are about people in some kind of trouble. Conflict is the engine of story. You can create “interesting” or “quirky” characters all day long, but unless they are tested by trial they wear out quickly (here I will issue a confession: I’ve never been able to get past the first 50 or 60 pages of A Confederacy of Dunces, and I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve tried).

Now, trouble can be generated in many ways. The narrator of Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine is simply trying to get from the lobby of his office building to the next level via an escalator. That’s the whole story, and the trouble is inside his head.

At the other end of the spectrum are the commandos in The Guns of Navarone. 

The point is, every novel must have some fire, not just a layout of kindling and logs. That’s a rule.

RULE #3 – WRITE WITH HEART

I admit this rule is somewhat difficult to define. It’s a bit like what a Supreme Court justice once said about obscenity: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”

The novels that not only sell, but endure, have something of the author’s beating heart in them. We could run off a list of such novels, from To Kill A Mockingbirdby Harper Lee to the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly.

In my seminars, when we work on voice and style, I mention two novels that were publishing in 1957. They were as different from each other as Arbuckle and Keaton, and challenges for the publishers. Yet they both became bestsellers and, more to the point, continue to sell thousands and thousands of copies today.

They are Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and On the Road by Jack Kerouac. No matter how you ultimately come out on the merits of either book, what can’t be denied is that every page pulsates with the author’s voice and vision.

So put your heart in every scene of your novel. It’s a good rule.

Now, when a writer says, “There are no rules,” I suspect what he’s really saying is there is no one way to do the things we’ve been talking about here. And that is mostly correct.

I say mostly because, over time, it has been demonstrated that there are fiction techniques that generally work better than others. A good teacher (or editor) is able to help students learn the things that tend to work and avoid the things that tend not to.

And then it’s up to the writer to make choices. If a writer decides not to follow a tried and true method, at least she should know why.

For example, we talk a lot about starting a novel off with a hook (or, as I like to put it, a “disturbance.”) But what if you want to start your historical with ten pages of setting and description? Well, you’re certainly allowed to. And maybe you’ll manage to make those ten pages so interesting that readers will wish they’d go on and on.

But the odds are you’ll bore them, as they keep on asking Who is this story supposed to be about? Why should I care about any of this?

You might then decide it’s better to use the technique of starting with a disturbance and dropping in details within the action. A technique you can learn and practice.

James Scott Bell—September 23, 2012

How do you write a mystery?

    There are whole books on this subject.

    But the best short advice is in Grafton’s new Kinsey Millhone novel, “W Is for Wasted.”

    Private eye Kinsey Millhone talks about how she started investigating two mysterious deaths. One victim was a sleazy PI and the other was a homeless man.

     Kinsey was drawn into the mystery by a call from the coroner’s office. The coroner was “asking if I could ID a John Doe who had my name and phone number on a slip of paper in his pocket,” Grafton wrote. “How could I resist?”

    That had me hooked. But then Kinsey explained how to write a mystery:

    “Every good mystery takes place on three planes – what really happened; what appears to have happened; and how the sleuth, amateur or professional (yours truly in this case) figures out which is which.”

    There it is. The art of mystery writing in one succinct sentence. We writers are supposed to set up the story for the readers, help them find out what really happened, and tell it, giving enough clues to play fair but not give away the ending.

    Grafton gives us another dollop of advice in Kinsey’s next sentence:

    “I suppose I could put everything in perspective if I explained how it all turned out and then doubled back to that phone call,” she wrote, “but it’s better if you experience it just as I did, one strange step at a time.”

    New writers and experienced ones need to remember Kinsey’s advice: Tell the story, one strange step at a time.

    Many newbies try to be too clever. They don’t have the skills to deliver a twisted tale. They get lost in the maze they created.

    Experienced writers get bored with the format after writing book after book. We try to start in the middle, or start at the end, or switch narrators, often to amuse ourselves. Too often, it simply confuses our readers.

    Following the straight path, in Grafton’s footsteps, can be far more difficult.  But she kept me interested for 496 pages.  She also made me care about two people society considers worthless: a crooked PI and a homeless man who doesn’t even have a name.

Elaine Viets—January 16, 2014

But here’s the thing…

EVERYONE WANTS TO WRITE A BESTSELLER,

BUT MOST AUTHORS NEVER WILL

Because it’s completely out of your control.

If you sit down to write a “bestseller,” you are taking a wrong-headed approach to writing. Writing great fiction has nothing to do with writing bestsellers. Bestsellers are, by and large, flukes. Right place, right time. And not all bestsellers are created equal.

I can name a dozen of my friends who do everything right and should be on the bestseller lists, and authors who are and don’t belong there.

When I wrote Trial Junkies, I just wanted to write a great book. I had no idea it would go on to be an indie bestseller. Sure, it was something I hoped for, but I certainly wasn’t rubbing my hands together in anticipation of mega-sales. I just wrote the book I wanted to read and decided to let fate take care of the rest.

So don’t put all your energy into trying to write a bestseller. You should simply write the best book you can possibly write. A book you’re so excited about that you don’t care if you ever make a dime off of it.

I spent many years writing stuff that I knew would never sell. In fact, I didn’t even try to sell it, because I knew it wasn’t good enough. But I kept at it for several years. I wrote story fragments and screenplays and teleplays and partial novels and while I knew what I was producing was not quite there yet, I also knew, with great certainty, that it would be one day.

Sure, I had dreams of being Stephen King or Dean Koontz. We all do. But the reality is that most writers never make it to the lists, yet they still manage to have wonderful careers.

Should you forget about your dreams?

No. Sometimes they’re all you have.

But any thoughts of bestsellerdom should be relegated to the back part of the brain. You have a story to write. And that’s all you should be thinking about.

If you publish it and it manages to reach one of the bestseller lists, that’s just gravy.

So there is no How to write a bestseller.

Robert Gregory Browne—May 4, 2016

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There you have it, three pieces of advice on different aspects writing novels. Now we’d like to hear from you.

  1. Do you have any “rules” to share for writing a novel?
  2. What do you think about Kinsey Mallone’s advice for writing a mystery? What advice would you add?
  3. Do you have dreams of bestsellerdom? What keeps you writing your novel?
  4. What is the most challenging part of writing a novel, for you? What is the most enjoyable?

Upping Your Word Count

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Increasing our word counts is something many writers desire to do. Certainly that’s my aim, along with being a bit more consistent on a weekly basis when I’m drafting and when I’m revising. This week I just bought a Mac Mini, my first desk top computer in seven years, to be my offline writing playground, since the Internet is a big source of distraction for me. Writing programs and a music app are all that is installed on that computer. It will normally be unplugged from the Internet. Of course, avoiding distractions is just one factor in upping your word count.

Today’s Words of Wisdom is here to help. First, Robert Gregory Browne discusses how outlining helped him, followed by PJ Parris with some excellent tips (including staying off the Internet), and finally, James Scott Bell lays out how to set and track word count goals.

The full posts are date linked from their respective excerpts and are worth reading in full.

Ever since I started writing, I’ve been a pantser. I come up with an idea, kinda sorta figure out who the main character is, then sit down and start writing. I had tried outlining many, many times (just like all the writing books say we should) and I just couldn’t stand to do them. My eyes would glaze over after three paragraphs.

Isn’t writing supposed to be fun?

But for the Harlequin Intrigue audition I had no choice but to write that outline and three sample chapters. It was full proposal or don’t bother auditioning. They weren’t going to hire me simply because they liked my Facebook page. (Or maybe in was MySpace in those days.)

When it came time to actually write the book, however, I discovered something quite wonderful. Because I had worked everything out in that outline, all I really had to do was, as they say, “word it in,” and I managed to bang that thing out in record time.

From there on out, I was a convert. At least when it came to Harlequin romances. I still wrote (and continue to write) my Robert Gregory Browne books by the seat of my pants (except for one exception I won’t get into here), but the Intrigues were all outlined first. Even after my editor said all she needed was a paragraph from me. I would write a ten to twenty page outline for myself, because I had to write those suckers fast.

I think the fastest I ever went from outline to finished book was about two and a half weeks. I’m no John Creasey, but I think 50K words in that amount of time is pretty damn fast.

So if you’re concerned about your snail’s pace as a writer, just know that as much as you might hate them, outlines can certainly be your friend.

Robert Gregory Browne—April 20, 2016

 

Are there truly any “secrets” to productivity? I don’t think so. If you ask successful people how they do what they do, their answers tend to repeat and are duh-fully common-sense.

  1. Turn off the internet. It’s a time-sucking Circe. If you, like me, turn to it to get a fix when the writing is going badly, well, Bunky, it’s time to cut the cord. Don’t check your email. Don’t answer that text alert. And don’t call up Google in the name of research when you’re really afraid to face chapter 6. The trick that works for me is to take my laptop to a place with no internet. Amazing how interesting your novel gets when all you have to look at is the wall. Maybe you don’t have the luxury of two computers like Lee, but you can disable your browser during work time.  There are even programs that do it for you: StayFocused, Anti-Social, SelfControl and my favorite — Write or Die.
  2. Figure out your peak writing hours.In my salad days, I was a night owl. I wrote my first novel between 9 p.m. and midnight while I was working full-time. Somewhere around age 55, I started getting up at dawn, so now I am an annoying morning person. I read the paper, have my coffee, walk the dogs, then get to work around 11 a.m. My batteries conk out about  3 p.m. so I usually quit. Now if you have a job, you have to carve out time — one to two hours a day with maybe Sunday off is enough to finish a book if you’re consistent.  You have to make your family understand this.
  3. Show up.Yeah, sounds pretty basic, but this one is the hardest for me. I am not a daily writer. There, I said it.  I am trying very very hard to change this. Woody Allen says that 80 percent of success is showing up. He’s right. If you hit 80 percent, you’re doing good. And you have to show up on the bad days, even if you don’t feel like writing, especially when you don’t feel like writing. Another one of Fastcompany.com’s contributors is P.K. Subban, who plays for the Nashville Predator’s hockey team. “Sometimes you get out there and your body is feeling great, and you don’t have to push it,” he says. “Sometimes you get out there and your legs feel like they’re 80 pounds apiece, and you gotta do a little extra.”
  4. Quit trying to be so damn perfect. This is my other downfall, the quest for the pretty page. Maybe Hemingway really did sit down every day and sweat out one true sentence. The rest of us don’t have that luxury. Just turn on the faucet and let it flow. You can weed out the roughage later. Jodi Piccoult sticks a pin in the need for perfection: “You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”

PJ Parrish—December 4, 2018

 

A word count quota produces pages. A page a day is a book a year. (A page is approximately 250 words. A Ficus tree can write 250 words a day. Don’t be shown up by a Ficus tree.)

Over the years I’ve been asked about my quota and system for keeping track, so here it is.

My quota, as it has been for most of my career, is 6,000 words a week—312,000 words a year. I try to write six days a week and take Sundays off to rest the noggin. Having a weekly quota helps because if I miss a day for some reason, I can make up the words on another day.

This works for me, though it’s nothing compared to what some of the great old pulp writers used to do. A few of them pounded out one million words or more per year, and on manual typewriters, too!

Sheesh. They must have driven their neighbors crazy.

Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason, was one of the million-plus boys. Sometimes his fingers would bleed. He’d tape them up and keep typing.

Then he discovered the Ditcaphone. At the peak of his productive years Gardner was dictating his books and had a team of secretaries transcribing them. These days there are several options for speaking your words. Google Docs has a pretty fair dictation mode. So does Mac OS. I’ve done some dictating via my phone (into Google Docs) and on the computer, but it never feels quite right to me. With the editing that’s involved after I dictate, I wonder if the actual word count + time equation isn’t just about the same.

Anyway … I wrote 313,508 words in 2018.

I keep track of my words in two ways. When I compose in Scrivener, which I do most of the time, it has a handy-dandy word count tracker for both the overall project and the current session. If I’m writing in Word, I first jot down the word count of the document. I type, and when I finish I simply subtract the old word count from the new.

I tally these words on a spreadsheet, and have been doing so for twenty years. On my spreadsheet I have four categories: novels, non-fiction, short fiction, and writing. That last category is specific to my craft teaching. So I can look at my sheet and see how many words I’ve written in each category per day. I have a daily tally, and a weekly tally. I have a cell next to the weekly tally that keeps track of my cumulative output.

Next to that latter cell I put in a number. The number is a sequential sum of 6000. So at the seven-day mark, I put 6000. At the fourteen-day mark, 12,000. And so on, right up to 312,000. That way I can see if I’m falling too far behind.

James Scott Bell—January 6, 2019

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Now it’s your turn to share your tips on upping word count.

  1. Do you find outlining helps? If you are panster, what helps you increase you word count?
  2. What is your own “common sense” tip or tips for getting down more words?
  3. Do you set and track your word counts? Any advice?

KICKING AND SCREAMING

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by Robert Gregory Browne

Today on TKZ we’re thrilled to host Robert Gregory Browne, whose latest novel TRIAL JUNKIES is an Amazon #1 Hot New Release.

I practically had to be pulled kicking and screaming into self-publishing.

I came into the book world through the traditional route and was conditioned to believe that the only way into the industry was to write a book, look for an agent, have that agent submit the manuscript and pray that a publisher accepted it.

Once I managed to get past that particular obstacle, I thought the only way to stay in the industry was to write the books my publisher wanted me to write and regularly meet my deadlines.

So when I heard that a few authors had decided to take advantage of the so-called Kindle revolution and start self-publishing ebooks, I thought they had completely lost their minds. Did they really think they could make a living selling books for three or four bucks on Amazon?

Surely they had to be nuts.

But an odd thing started to happen. Several of my friends who had decided to take the leap were actually starting to see their incomes rise. Not dramatically, but this was certainly proof that it was possible to, at least, supplement your income with self-publishing sales.

Yet, I remained on the fence. Not fully convinced that self-publishing was the way to go.

I’m not a particularly greedy guy, but I have to say that there was one piece of news I received from a friend that made me reconsider my position. She sent me an email saying, “I made thirty thousand dollars last month in ebook sales.”

Now, to a midlist writer—even one who has managed to do this job full-time and eke out a fairly good living—that was a number that couldn’t be ignored.

Thirty thousand dollars? Surely she was either fudging the truth or I hadn’t read the email correctly. And if she was making that kind of money, she had to be an anomaly.

Or did she?

I soon started to get reports from other self-publishing friends that they were making ten, twenty, thirty, even forty thousand dollars a month selling ebooks on Amazon.

How could this be possible? I wondered. If I were to self-publish a book would I ever manage to earn that kind of loot? Because, let’s face it, few people go into the authoring business to make money. We midlisters are used to modest advances and modest sales. And most are forced to do the job part-time because their royalties just aren’t high enough.

I went to my financial advisor and I said, “Can you believe that some of my friends are making thirty or forty thousand dollars a month through self-publishing?”

He immediately nodded his head and said, “Sure. What you’re seeing is the cut the publisher usually takes.”

Well, folks, greedy or not, I didn’t need much more convincing. I was already in the midst of writing a new book and decided somewhere around the third act that I needed to forego shopping it around and self-publish the sucker. That book was called TRIAL JUNKIES and I launched it about three weeks ago by offering it for free and giving away 46,000 copies.

And I’m happy to report that a few days after the giveaway, TRIAL JUNKIES hit the Top 100 in Kindle Books and became the #1 bestselling legal thriller on Amazon. As of this writing, it’s still there and I’m keeping my fingers (and toes and eyes) crossed that it sticks around for a while.

Over a period of a few months, I’ve gone from skeptic to firm believer. Not merely because of financial potential, but because I’ve never felt so in control of my own destiny.  I wrote the book that I wanted to write, on my own terms, and handled every aspect of its release from formatting to cover design. That’s the kind of control that no author gets in the traditional publishing world.

Will everyone who self-publishes be as lucky as I’ve been? Probably not. But the odds in the traditional publishing world are no better.

These are new, scary times we’re living in and I can’t yet say that I’m a success at self-publishing—only time will tell that.

But at this point I’m loving every second of it…


Robert Gregory Browne began his career by selling a two-part mystery story, NOTHING BUT THE COLD WIND, to EasyRiders magazine. After more than a decade as a screenwriter, Browne shifted his focus to his first love, novels, and wrote KISS HER GOODBYE, which recently served as the basis for a CBS Television series pilot, starring Dylan Walsh and Terry Kinney.


Rob’s subsequent books are the thrillers TRIAL JUNKIES, WHISPER IN THE DARK, KILL HER AGAIN, DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN and THE PARADISE PROPHECY (as Robert Browne).

Author Affirmations with Stuart Smalley

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by Jordan Dane

“Because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggoneit, people like me.”
Stuart Smalley, Saturday Night Live (Al Franken)


I’ll be on a panel at the Romance Writers of America annual conference in Anaheim in July – “The Care and Feeding of the Writer’s Soul.” Ever since I committed to doing it, I’ve been pondering my contribution and examining my own practices when it comes to nurturing my writer’s spirit.

But I wanted to open the topic up for discussion here to get your input. If you could create a box of affirmations for the writer, what would be your personal contribution?

On my computer I have been collecting sayings that have meant something to me over the years. These have come from author speaking engagements, emails, or things I’ve found online that inspired me enough to post it where I could see them every day. Affirmations can be reminders of author craft you want to repeat or they can be a way to keep a positive attitude or make progress in your career.

Here are a few sayings on my computer that mostly deal with author craft:

“Stick with the action.” Romance author Dana Taylor
When I muddled an intro action scene with back story, Dana wrote these words in an email after she critiqued the scene.

“Be there.” James Patterson
Patterson was a speaker at am RWA conference in 2004. He filled a ballroom, standing room only. By these two words he meant to put your reader into the scene using all their senses. He also said that he puts as much care into the first sentence of each chapter as he does the first line in any book. (I wonder if all the James Patterson(s) do this?)

“Trust the talent.” Robert Crais
I heard Crais present this on a video he sent via email in one of his newsletters. He talked at length about how he writes in constant fear, but that he trusts the talent that has brought him his success. It reminded me that all people have doubts. That’s human nature, but when you have a natural storyteller inside you, you should trust it.

“Get in, make your point, then get the hell out.” Robert Gregory Browne
Rob spelled this out when he explained ELLE on a blog post. Enter Late, Leave Early. The method is best explained by the TV show “Law & Order” where the scenes are sharp, concise, and don’t over-explain to slow pacing. The barest essentials of the scenes are captured to move the story along and a viewer’s mind fills in the gaps in action. The same works for books.

Here are a few that would be my contribution to keep a positive mental attitude:

“The next pair of eyeballs to see this proposal will be the ones to say, Yes!”

“I strive to be better with every book. My best story is always my next one.”

“I touch new readers with every story.”

“My books are unique because they are filtered through me and my personal experiences. I’m not in competition with anyone, except me, to be the best author I can be.”

Here are a few silly ones:

“I never get my page numbers wrong. I must be good at math.”

“When I kill people on paper, they stay dead. Booya!”

As for practices to keep me positive, I have a shredding ritual for any rejection to expel the negativity from my house. Try it. It’s liberating. When I complete any project, I also treat myself with something that isn’t food—time off, vacation, fun evening with friends or family, attend a book signing, buy a new outfit. I used to think that each positive step in my quest to become a published author was only a small part of a longer future—that celebrating too much is a distraction that can swell your head. But now I celebrate everything. Life’s too short not to cherish even the smallest of pleasures.

Please share your thoughts. What would you write and contribute to an author’s affirmation box? What practices do you have to keep your mind positive and your writer’s soul nourished?