How To Write A Killer Story

freedigitalphotos.net

“Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”

~ Kurt Vonnegut

Marketing. Platform. Publishing. Grr. Grr. Triple grr. And that's not just my stomach making noise from the half-tub of Trader Joe's hummus I ate for lunch (seriously... have you had the triple layer?).

These three biggies -- not the hummus -- are important ingredients in a writer's life, but when you put your focus on them, they turn into giant, sucking leeches that drain the joy from putting words on paper.

I hate that.

Sometimes the push to get published is merely a status symbol. . . Oh, I've got fifty-three books under Harper Collins and seventy-two more contracted by Simon & Schuster. What's that? You're self-published? HAHAHA! What a loser!

But really, do most garden-variety readers care what the imprint is on the title page? Not as long as the story is a killer. And that, my friends, is what writers should really focus on. No, really. Not kidding. So, how does one go about that?

3 Tips For Writing A Killer Story

1. Give the reader a character to root for.
Everyone loves an underdog, except for maybe Hitler. Not sure on that one. The thing is that everyone wants to be a winner, even vicariously through fiction. Or maybe especially vicariously through fiction. It's a lot less risky than real life.

2. Never, ever, stop the action.
Every sentence counts. You don't want readers skimming. Each sentence must either reveal a character aspect or advance the action.

3. Life is pain, princess.
No matter how much you or your readers love your characters, bad things must happen to them throughout the story, otherwise it's not much of a story, hmm? Not that the focus must be on doom and gloom, but when awful circumstances arise in the life of a character (or human, for that matter), it's a window to the soul of that person, revealing what's inside of them.