Category: Writing

Writing Tips From John Grisham and Dashiell Hammett. I wish I could say they personally advised me, but no. I read these tips AFTER I had finished my seventh book.

I’ll give them to you anyway, along with free books. Look out below! Keep scrolling down.

8 Writing Tips from John Grisham

For all you people who never click, here are your 8 points:

1.   Do — Write A Page Every Day

That’s about 200 words, or 1,000 words a week. Do that for two years and you’ll have a novel that’s long enough. Nothing will happen until you are producing at least one page per day.

2.   Don’t — Write The First Scene Until You Know The Last

This necessitates the use of a dreaded device commonly called an outline. Virtually all writers hate that word. I have yet to meet one
who admits to using an outline.

Plotting takes careful planning. Writers waste years pursuing stories that eventually don’t work.

3.   Do — Write Your One Page Each Day At The Same Place And Time

Early morning, lunch break, on the train, late at night — it doesn’t matter. Find the extra hour, go to the same place, shut the door. No exceptions, no excuses.

4.   Don’t — Write A Prologue

Prologues are usually gimmicks to hook the reader. Avoid them. Plan your story (see No. 2) and start with Chapter 1.

5.   Do — Use Quotation Marks With Dialogue

Please do this. It’s rather basic.

6.   Don’t — Keep A Thesaurus Within Reaching Distance

I know, I know, there’s one at your fingertips.

There are three types of words: (1) words we know; (2) words we should know; (3) words nobody knows. Forget those in the third category and use restraint with those in the second.

A common mistake by fledgling authors is using jaw-breaking vocabulary. It’s frustrating and phoney.

7.   Do — Read Each Sentence At Least Three Times In Search Of Words To Cut

Most writers use too many words, and why not? We have unlimited space and few constraints.

8.   Don’t — Introduce 20 Characters In The First Chapter

Another rookie mistake. Your readers are eager to get started. Don’t bombard them with a barrage of names from four generations of the same family. Five names are enough to get started.

Take Time Out for Your Free Book Give Away

I give away two books every month to my newsletter subscribers. Also, you will get six free audiobooks, while supplies last. Finally, I also give free samples of my short stories from Oops!, my short story collection.

To get your six free audiobooks, plus a free copy of Zombie Turkeys Kindle edition, click here.

Writing Tips From Dashielle Hammett – Your First 12

The 24 rules follow:

1. There was an automatic revolver, the Webley-Fosbery, made in England some years ago. The ordinary automatic pistol, however, is not a revolver. A pistol, to be a revolver, must have something on it that revolves.
2. The Colt’s .45 automatic pistol has no chambers. The cartridges are put in a magazine.
3. A silencer may be attached to a revolver, but the effect will be altogether negligible. I have never seen a silencer used on an automatic pistol, but am told it would still make quite a bit of noise. “Silencer” is a rather optimistic name for this device which has generally fallen into disuse.
4. When a bullet from a Colt’s .45, or any firearm of approximately the same size and power, hits you, even if not in a fatal spot, it usually knocks you over. It is quite upsetting at any reasonable range.
5. A shot or stab wound is simply felt as a blow or push at first. It is some little time before any burning or other painful sensation begins.
6. When you are knocked unconscious you do not feel the blow that does it.
7. A wound made after death of the wounded is usually recognizable as such.
8. Fingerprints of any value to the police are seldom found on anybody’s skin.
9. The pupils of many drug addicts’ eyes are apparently normal.
10. It is impossible to see anything by the flash of an ordinary gun, though it is easy to imagine you have seen things.
11. Not nearly so much can be seen by moonlight as you imagine. This is especially true of colours.
12. All Federal snoopers are not members of the Secret Service. That branch is chiefly occupied with pursuing counterfeiters and guarding Presidents and prominent visitors to our shores.

12 More Hammett Writing Tips Underneath

13. A sheriff is a county officer who usually has no official connection with city, town or state police.
14. Federal prisoners convicted in Washington, D.C., are usually sent to the Atlanta prison and not to Leavenworth.
15. The California State prison at San Quentin is used for convicts serving first terms. Two-time losers are usually sent to Folsom.
16. Ventriloquists do not actually “throw” their voices and such doubtful illusions as they manage depend on their gestures. Nothing at all could be done by a ventriloquist standing behind his audience.
17. Even detectives who drop their final g’s should not be made to say “anythin’” an oddity that calls for vocal acrobatics.
18. “Youse” is the plural of “you”.
19. A trained detective shadowing a subject does not ordinarily leap from doorway to doorway and does not hide behind trees and poles. He knows no harm is done if the subject sees him now and then.
20. The current practice in most places in the United States is to make the coroner’s inquest an empty formality in which nothing much is brought out except that somebody has died.
21. Fingerprints are fragile affairs. Wrapping a pistol or other small object up in a handkerchief is much more likely to obliterate than to preserve any prints it may have.
22. When an automatic pistol is fired the empty cartridge shell flies out the right-hand side. The empty cartridge case remains in a revolver until ejected by hand.
23. A lawyer cannot impeach his own witness.
24. The length of time a corpse has been a corpse can be approximated by an experienced physician, but only approximated, and the longer it has been a corpse, the less accurate the approximation is likely to be.

Did you know any of these Writing Tips?

Did You Know I Have a Dectective Novel Coming Out?

Oddly, next month I’ll publish my own detective novel, my first. After I wrote it, I read the Hammett suggestions.

You can get YOUR autographed copy by clicking here. I will ship my preorders to everyone with FREE SHIPPING before the book comes out on Amazon.

You can also order the book by simply writing to me. Click here.

This book fits in between my first book Zombie Turkeys and my second, My Undead Mother-in-law.

I keep a timeline of each of my books, so I know exactly how much time is in between Zombie Turkeys and My Undead Mother-in-law. Just enough time to place a whole detective novel.

Zombie Detective runs from January 2016 to February 2016. I pack a lot in there that six weeks time period.

Zombie Turkeys goes from November 2015 to December 31st, 2015.

And My Undead Mother-in-law?

My Undead Mother-in-law runs from February 14th to October 31st, 2017.