Stop trying to write sentences and start trying to write stories.
If you want to write for yourself, get a diary. If you want to write for your friends, get a blog. If you want to write for others...become an author.
If it's commercial fiction that you want to write, it's story, story, story. You've got to get a story where if you tell it to somebody in a paragraph, they'll go, "Tell me more." And then when you start to write it, they continue to want to read more. And if you don't, it won't work.
When I write I pretend I'm telling a story to someone in the room and I don't want them to get up until I'm finished.
In my office in Florida I have, I think, 30 manuscript piles around the room. Some are screenplays or comic books or graphic novels. Some are almost done. Some I'm rewriting. If I'm working with a co-writer, they'll usually write the first draft. And then I write subsequent drafts.
The writing in Mission to Paris, sentence after sentence, page after page, is dazzling. If you are a John le Carr fan, this is definitely a novel for you.
I think sometimes we give people a lot of credit just because they're writing nice sentences even if it isn't adding up to much.
I guess I write four or five hours a day, but I do it seven days a week. It's very disciplined, yes, but it's joy for me.
I write larger than life. It's what I do.
If I'm writing and a chapter isn't coming, I just move ahead.
I never read detective novels. I started out in graduate school writing a more serious book. Right around that time I read 'The Day of the Jackal' and 'The Exorcist'. I hadn't read a lot of commercial fiction, and I liked them.
I'm big on having a blistering pace. That's one of the hallmarks of what I do, and that's not easy. I never blow up cars and things like that, so it's something else that keeps the suspense flowing. I try not to write a chapter that isn't going to turn on the movie projector in your head.
A lot of times you get people writing wonderful sentences and paragraphs, and they fall in love with their prose style, but the stories really aren't that terrific.
I did know that the book would end with a mind-boggling trial, but I didn't know exactly how it would turn out. I like a little suspense when I am writing, too.
I have a number of writers I work with regularly. I write an outline for a book. The outlines are very specific about what each scene is supposed to accomplish.
Hey. Not sure what’s going on-gonna go find out. Be careful and don’t do anything stupid. Don’t come after me-your better on your own. See you. F I sat on the edge of the bed, holding the note. Okay, so Fang had looked up vague in the dictionary and this was what it had said to write.
