Writing Genre Fiction: A Guide to the
Craft
ISBN #1581129181
Several years ago,
after many years of writing nonfiction, I decided to write a novel—a
medical thriller in the mold of Robin Cook, Michael Crichton, and
Michael Palmer. The problem was that, although I knew how to write
and had received a number of awards for nonfiction works, I didn’t
know how to write fiction. So, before putting fingers to keyboard I
did a thorough search of the literature, which included reading
numerous books and hundreds of website articles. What I discovered
was that there simply wasn’t one good source from which to learn the
craft of writing fiction. My research culminated in the publishing
of my first novel, Caduceus Awry, which was a finalist in the Eudora
Welty Film and Fiction Festival novel writing contest.
Writing Genre
Fiction: A Guide to the Craft is the book I was looking for when I
set out on my quest to learn how to write genre fiction. It is an
attempt to share what I learned from my research. It covers the six
key elements of genre fiction; the various genres and subgenres; a
large number of genre-fiction writing techniques; plot, subplots,
and parallel plots; structure; scene and sequel; characterization;
dialogue; emotions; and body language. It also covers additional
information about copyrighting and plagiarism, where to get ideas,
manuscript formatting and revising, and query letters and synopses,
In addition, an appendix covers a large number of grammar tips.
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