Write Compelling Fiction

By L. J. Martin

L. J. Martin is the acclaimed author of 50 works from Bantam, Avon, Pinnacle, and his own Wolfpack Productions. WRITE COMPELLING FICTON is a how-to book for writers who want to be published or to improve their writing. It's a compilation of writing tricks, tactics and examples to get the reader involved, and to create a can't-put-it-down work, a compelling work. A posted review: Brilliant, is all I can say. This is a must read for all writers no matter what genre you delve into. This isn’t a typical, “how to guide.” It is a conversation from the author for providing excellent tips, insights and references for both new and old writers. I thoroughly enjoyed the many examples Mr. Martin provides on how to make a dull sentence gripping and exciting. I will be referring back to the examples as I sharpen my skills. Mr. Martin, thank you for wading through all the long-hair books on writing and kicking out a no nonsense view on the craft. Perhaps the title should be, “Even a Six Year Old Can Do It.” This is not a knock, but a compliment to the ease of understanding a very complex issue,

• Language: English
• Publisher: L. J. Martin
• Release date: Dec 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452450476

L. J. Martin

L. J. Martin is the author of four dozen published works. He lives in Montana with his wife, NYT best-selling romantic suspense and historical romance author Kat Martin. They enjoy travel, cooking, hunting, fishing, photography, and wintering in California. Learn more about L. J. at www.ljmartin.com, www.wolfpackranch.com, and more about Kat at www.katmartin.com. Or search facebook and other social media sites for L. J. Martin and Kat Martin.

Book preview

Write

Compelling

Fiction

(or any other type of writing)

by

L. J. Martin

ISBN: 978-1-885339-07-2

Smachwords Edition

© Copyright 2018 LJ Martin (as revised)

Original Copyright 2008

Wolfpack Productions

48 Rock Creek Road

Clinton, Montana 59825

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

Table of Contents

Introduction

From Broker to Books

Can You Do It?

Self Publishing...Anybody Can!

What is Genre?

What's a Western? What's a Historical?

Time Frame

Western…Historical?

Setting

Story

Sex

The Ending

Writing From History

The Process

Conflict

Plotting

Suspense

Point of View

Description

Description Thru POV

Pacing

Character Names

Let's Write

Back to Plotting

Hook

Theme

Back to the Beginning

Creativity

Time and Place

Senses

Rewriting

Characterization

Internalization

POV to POV

Transitions

Action

Brevity

Sentence Variety

Emphasis

Dialogue

Dialogue Tags

Lazy Words

Active or Passive

Author Intrusion

Motivation

Driving Line

Style

Make 'em Laugh

Make 'em Cry

Word Count

The Middle

The Ending

Research

Dictionaries

Magazines

How to Write

Newspaper Sources

The Library

Other Resources

Postal History

Online Services

Miscellaneous

Dealers

Blogs and News Letters

Selling – All New Material on Selling On The Web

Rejection

Agents

Self Submissions

A Sample – Trouble is a Hunter

A Sample – The K Factor

Books by L. J. Martin

Note: As it has several times during the thirty five years my wife and I have been involved in the publishing business, once again the business itself has made a radical change. And, as always, when things change in a momentous way, those involved have mixed emotions. The evolution of e-books and reading on phones, iPods, iPads, computers and other e-book readers, and the ease of publishing those e-books, is not only an evolution but a revolution. Now anyone can be published and what I wrote in this book a few years ago, as far as getting published, is a totally different subject and has been rewritten so the aspiring writer can find him- or herself with a published book in hand, either in paper or on an e-book reader, with relative ease. However, success, if judged by actual book sales, is another matter altogether, and selling will be addressed herein.

What hasn't changed is how to write a compelling novel. That's a constant.

And this dedication remains the same, with the addition of the last paragraph:

This book is dedicated to all those thousands, or maybe millions, who’ve submitted a novel and had it rejected, then placed it on a garage or closet shelf, where it languished forever—and it was perhaps the best novel of the year. Or could have been, with very little additional work.

And to the thick-skinned who kept submitting, submitting, submitting!

And to those who decided to self publish via that fantastic new resource, the Web. Amazon, Smashwords, Nook and many other bookselling Websites have opened a whole new world to those not only willing to write, but to work at selling their writing. And to those who've tied up with e-book publishers, such as our own Wolfpack Publishing LLC, which is cutting a wide swath in e-book marketing.

Now, onto the meat of things.

Never underestimate the power of fiction.

Prolific author Sir Walter Scott singlehandedly ruined the opal market. Opals were as valuable as diamonds or rubies—until Scott wrote about an enchanted opal that caused the death of a fictional heroine. The price of opals dropped by half!

See more on L. J. Martin and his wife, Kat Martin, NYT bestselling romantic suspense author, on the Websites below:

www.ljmartin.com

www.katbooks.com

INTRODUCTION

This book is written for those who, like me, are neither English majors nor grammarians—although even those of you who are may glean some good common sense and novelists’ tricks from it. The devil of the craft of writing fiction is that being an English major has little to do with it.

Grammar is important, but I couldn’t put it down is a compliment not gleaned because of perfect grammar. Grammar is only one of the reasons fiction is compelling—only one of the many reasons why that most cherished of compliments comes to you as a fiction writer. Still, you don’t want to put off a reader with bad grammar—you don’t want to break the reader’s trance.

I'm a guy who loves to hunt, fish, or carry my cameras outdoors for almost any reason. Like most of you, I've worked hard all my life. I love the West and its history and I'd have done just fine had I lived a hundred and fifty years ago. As the song says, a country boy will survive. But it would be hard to survive without a good book in hand—a book that elicits the writer’s favorite compliment: I couldn’t put it down.

I do love a good novel, or a beautifully crafted work of nonfiction.

But to be published (conventionally with legacy publishers) you need more than a love of reading. Be it driving an eighteen wheeler, driving a nail, or doing nails, there are skills to be learned in any profession. For a writer, there are skills to be learned, and there are also tricks that make writing a novel easier to accomplish and much easier to sell. If you self publish, and if you become successful, you need to have a compelling work that will cause readers to tell others about your book, or will drive readers to buy your next or other e-books.

There are also pitfalls. Fortunately, most of them easily avoided.

Many years ago, I wanted to write and sell a novel. I learned how the hard way. By studying other's mistakes (and your own) you can learn the easy way. Even today, after selling over forty book-length works and having dozens of articles published, I fight obvious mistakes, poor grammar, clumsy sentence structure, and worse—much worse—boring narrative. I can't begin to teach you all there is to know about writing novels or even writing a good letter (more likely an e-mail today) to your mother. But I can tell you where and how to learn a good deal of it.

I'm still studying, but if I can make it a little easier for you, then I've accomplished my purpose in writing this book.

I got published and then published, time and time again, by those New York legacy houses. So can you. I mean legitimately published by a company that makes its money selling books and doesn’t charge you for publishing your novel. Rather, they give you an advance against royalties. Legitimately published, not self published on the plethora of sites out there who allow you to do so on the Internet. In the alternative, you can format and upload a book to one or more of the Web publishers and set out on your own to try and penetrate what's a huge market but with even more books than ever before. Therein is a whole new market and a whole new problem. Uploading a book is now easy. Selling it in a market with buyers having literally millions of options, including hundreds of thousands of free books is not easy.

Today, getting published is easy. A dozen POD (publish on demand) companies are willing to take your money, and many are willing to publish your work for free. Furthermore, you may format and upload a book to one of a dozen or more sites which have little or no quality requirements. But there’s a long rough road between that kind of publishing and having a company offer you money for the right to publish your novel. And it’s becoming harder and harder to find success from self publishing, particularly if your work is not compelling.

Most of the rules for writing novels are valid for writing in general. A few are specific to novels, and a few are specific to genre. If you don't know the definition of genre, then you're exactly the person for whom this book is written. But even those of you who do know what it means will find some gems in here—most of them openly filched from other much better writers than me. No, I’m not above learning from others. That’s what this book is all about.

A great deal of what I have to say refers to thrillers (or suspense), westerns, historicals, or romance, because these, and screenplays, are what my wife and I write and how we make our living.

Good luck with your fiction writing—your compelling fiction—your fiction the reader can’t put down.

"The next thing that happens in the story, is the next thing of interest

that happens to the characters."

David Lean, Director

FROM BROKER TO BOOKS?

Most of my early life was spent as a real estate broker, selling farms and ranches, subdivision land and lots. I was very, very successful at that task, but I had the urge to write. I tried a novel at the ripe old age of twenty-four and, after four chapters, found I had little to say. Later in life, unmarried and living on a boat with time on my hands, I decided if I were ever going to fulfill this smoldering ambition, now was the time.

After completing a 500-page historical novel, I submitted it a few times and got a few form rejections. It dawned on me that I had (as I have a tendency to do) plunged in where angels fear to tread. Only then did I decide to study the craft. I was lucky enough to marry a lady who approached things a little differently. She's a great study, formerly a great student, and had the background — good grounding in English in college. And she’s a voracious reader. She, too, had the urge to write. Together, we went to writer conferences and, separately, we wrote (although we did write one novel, TIN ANGEL, together).

Paying our dues with many conferences and many, many more hours in front of the word processor began to pay off.

One of my novels, Rush to Destiny, was nominated as a finalist as the best biographical novel of 1992 by a group of New York reviewers and the magazine Romantic Times /Rave Reviews. Another, The Benicia Belle, was a runner-up for the Western Writers of America Spur Award for best original western paperback of 1992. It was one of over forty novels submitted that year.

Kat, my wife, (www.katmartin.com) has seen her later books repeatedly on the bestseller lists (her AGAINST series has hit the New York Times nine times as of this writing) and she has won many awards. She’s a New York Times bestseller, and is internationally published in over a dozen languages and in over two dozen countries. She’s earning more than she ever did in the real estate business—and she did very well in real estate!

Throughout this book I've used the masculine gender, but I have a great respect for all the wonderful, talented women who write novels—even westerns or thrillers, commonly considered men's fiction—or want to write them, and for the women who read them.

No matter who you are or what your age, if you can read and understand this book, you can write a novel. Some of you may take a long time to do so; some of you may whip out a masterpiece in a few months.

Like most professionals, writers have their organizations. Professional organizations can make your education happen more quickly and can make your endeavors more enjoyable. It's hard to be alone in any venture, and it helps to know you have peers with the same concerns and problems you have, and with whom you can share your successes.

Western Writers of America, Inc. sponsors an annual meeting that supports western and historical writers of both fiction and nonfiction, gives awards annually to those they judge superior in their field, and publishes a bi-monthly magazine called The Roundup. There are some requirements to join.

Romance Writers of America (RWA) does the same for that genre, has many