Writing the Mystery Novel

Mystery. The word ripples with excitement. We can thank Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle for that. And Murder She Wrote, as well. Mysteries throughout history have been mysterious, of course. But they've also been loaded with action, brimming with possibilities, bristling with drama. That's what makes mysteries so popular.

Everyone enjoys a good who-dunnit. We all like to be kept on the edge of our seats, waiting for the inexplicable suddenly to clear.

But how does a writer go about writing a winning mystery? Ahh, that's easier said than done. Still, with a little forethought, lots of perseverance, and plenty of creativity, even a novice mystery writer can write his own literary ticket to success.

So, let's take a look at what makes a good mystery tick.

First, a mystery is simply a story about the unknown. We don't necessarily care at this point just what that unknown is, so long as it's unfathomable to the reader. A writer creates mystery by actively working to prevent his reader from knowing the truth. Take a look at this example:

A car roars by a fast-food restaurant. A Muslim suicide bomber dressed in a black robe leaps out the car's back door and goes tumbling through the crowd. Dazed and barely conscious, he comes to rest in a pool of blood in the courtyard, where several people cluster around, anxious to help. Suddenly a bomb hidden beneath his coat explodes, sending tables and chairs, shards of glass and human flesh flying.

Mystery? Hardly. The writer has explained it all--except, of course, why it happened. But once you know what happened, the "why," except in psychological thrillers, is rarely more than an also-ran. What spoils the plot for this mini-mystery? Well, for starters, we know that the man in the car is Muslim. We know that he leaped from the car, that he's a suicide bomber, and we instinctively know what suicide bombers do. We know that a bomb explodes from beneath his coat, and we know the horrific results.

Now check out this version of the same story:

A car roars around the corner. It slows briefly before a fast-food restaurant and the back door flies open. Perched halfway out of the car is a man wearing a long coat, despite the grueling mid-August heat. As the driver hits the accelerator, the man flies out of the car, tumbling through the crowd until his body slams up against the brick facade of the building, where he lay for several minutes in a swelling pool of blood. A crowd gathers. A woman undoes his coat. Stepping back in horror, she screams.

Now, all of a sudden, we have a ton of mystery. Who are the people in the car? Why did the driver slow down? What made the car door open? Why was the man perched at the edge of the door? Why was he wearing a long coat in the middle of summer? Why did the driver suddenly hit the accelerator? What sent the man flying from the car--did he leap, or was he shoved? Who is the man? Is he dead or alive? What did the woman see that made her scream? And, most importantly of all, what's going to happen next?

Mystery. So much mystery. And all because the writer of the second passage chose to hold back some very pertinent information from his reader, to prevent his reader from learning more.

Holding back information from the reader is the lifeline of all mystery. Doing so accomplishes two things.

First, it keeps the reader in the dark and, presumably, makes him want to know more. He doesn't know what happened or why, so he's forced to guess (everyone wants to know if his "hunch" is right). That creates tension and intrigue within the reader and keeps him turning the pages, coming back for more.

Second, holding back information creates multiple avenues of action for the writer to explore. As a writer unfolds a mystery, even one that has been impeccably outlined, he slowly, deliberately doles out new possibilities, new wrinkles, new clues. Changing an outline on-the-fly to incorporate new concepts is often one of the most enjoyable things about writing a mystery. Not only has the writer figured the mystery out in advance of starting the book, but also he gets numerous opportunities to alter the mystery's course along the way to its completion. Talk about fun!

But what--I know you're getting ready to ask--makes a run-of-the-mill mystery a great mystery? After all, mystery is mystery, isn't it? Withholding information is withholding information, no matter how it's done.

Well, that's true, but only to a point. A well-done, stylistic mystery, as I define it, is an unmistakable uniqueness to a character or a situation. Here's an example of mystery with very little "style" in its opening graf:

John watched as the young woman got onto the bus and slipped into a seat across the aisle. As she opened her purse to reach for a tissue, he saw the unmistakable glint of hardened medal--blued metal--the kind of metal you find nowhere else but on the barrel of a gun. "Now what the hell would she be doing with a gun?" he wondered.

That's an example of what I call a generic mystery scene. It works. It creates suspense; but it carries little, if any, style. Now, listen to this version of the same scene:

John settled into his seat, his knees pressing hard against the metal frame before him. His eyes, twin slits in an otherwise placid face, scanned the bobbing heads of the passengers--"I hate buses," he thought--finally settling on the sylvan shape of a young lady picking her way slowly down the aisle. She stumbled awkwardly to one side as the bus veered left before continuing its way through late-night traffic.

Grabbing the polished metal frame of the seat just across the aisle and in front of John, she slid down into the time-worn vinyl. She shifted her hat and tilted her head. John ran his slits down the side of her body, the red chintz of her dress, her heels--black backless with no straps--and then back up again in time to see her open her purse and reach inside for a tissue. The slits suddenly widened. Peeking out at him from the corner of the bag was the gaping muzzle of a snub-nosed revolver--its time-dulled steel-grey complexion in marked contrast to the honey-blonde hair dancing only inches above it.

Notice how the second passage relays the same sense of mystery as the first one: the reader knows that John saw a gun in the woman's purse and that he wondered what it was doing there.

But the second passage goes on to spread a thin layer of jam across the bun. Its sweet, sticky tastiness draws the reader in more deeply, gives him a sense of what the characters are all about ... and maybe what the tone of the story is about, too--something the first passage fails to do.

It accomplishes all of this, of course, through description. Not just general descriptive banter, but description that adds to the sense of mystery, of the hush-hushedness, of something going on that the reader can't quite fathom.

In the second passage, the woman suddenly becomes a lady. John's eyes are narrow slits. Her form is sylvan. She wears a hat and tilts her head forward. Her dress is red chintz; her heels, black strapless. The gun is a deadly snub-nosed revolver. Its coloring is time-dulled steel grey; while her hair is honey blonde.

All of these descriptive references feed into the reader's sense of heightened mystery. By the time these paragraphs are history, the reader is absolutely convinced that something wonderful, something awful, something sinister and unpredictable is going to take place here. And, chances are, the reader is right. The author has succeeded.

So, you want mystery? Plan in advance. Work carefully. Give the reader enough information to make sense but not enough to make too much sense. Never, ever give him enough to allow him to figure out who did what and why until you're ready to tell all.

You want mystery with style? Give the reader exactly the same thing and then some through careful use of description ... but still leave him wondering--and wanting--more.

Writing Leads That Sell ... and Sell and Sell

What you say right up front is likely to determine whether or not you sell the work you're writing and for how much

I was thinking the other day (something that comes dangerously close to an oxymoron) about how editors function. I mean, what pulls an editor toward one piece and pushes him away from another? And how many editors actually read--from start to finish--every word of every manuscript placed before them?

I know the answer, of course. But before I break the bad news to you, let me share a little bit about the way one particular editor works.

Sam (not his real name) edits a monthly magazine called Family Journal (not its real name). The publication has been around long enough so that, even though it has space to run only five or six freelance articles a month (the rest of the publication is staff-written), it receives 30 - 40 submissions a day.

Still, Sam is a lucky editor. He has an assistant, Chester. One of the first duties Sam gave to Chester when he hired him was to peruse the "slush pile"--the stash of unsolicited manuscripts that comes in "over the transom." The reason Sam gave this assignment to his assistant isn't that he doesn't want to be the one to pick and choose what articles the magazine runs. On the contrary. Sam has Chester weed out the articles that are obviously not suited for publication in the Journal. This includes all fiction, poems, and personal reminiscences ("When I was a bombardier in WW-II ..."). It includes all off-color stuff or pieces of an overtly sexual nature (the publication is family-oriented, remember). It also includes pieces that are too long for the magazine (which lists a maximum word length of 3,000 in its market report but actually prefers shorter pieces). Finally, the magazine excludes departmental pieces, short fillers, jokes, and other things that the staff can assemble themselves or pull from the wire services free of charge.

By the time Chester is finished culling the obvious misfits from the slush pile, he has reduced the day's work load to ten articles.

Now, the second thing Sam trained Chester to do was to recognize bad writing when he sees it. Conversely, it might be reasonably argued, Chester can then be relied upon to recognize good writing when he sees it. Another five articles drop out of the running.

Finally, when Chester has culled the five good articles from the day's submissions, he asks Sam if he has time to review the survivors. Naturally, Sam--being busy laying out the book or coordinating the editorial content with the advertising department or working with the art director on cover and interior-article illustrations or finding appropriate illustrative photographs to go along with next month's articles--hasn't. But, not wanting to discourage Chester from doing his job, Sam humors him by asking for a brief oral run-down of the five articles. It goes something like this:

Chester: "This one is about growing squash in containers on the patio or deck. It's pretty cute and could be useful to our readers."

Sam: "Does the writer have any gardening qualifications?"

Chester (scanning the writer's cover letter): "Ummm, he doesn't say."

Sam shakes his head.

Chester: "Well, here's one that's a comparison of the quality of automobiles today versus fifty years ago. It's really well written. The author used to work for General Motors."

Sam: "What's his conclusion?"

Chester: "He says they can't hold a candle to the cars made even two decades ago, let alone in the Fifties or Sixties."

Sam (shaking his head): "Nope. Can't do that. Advertising is running a special automotive spread this month. Ford would shit green apples."

Chester (sighing): "Here's one I really like. It's about how parents need to spend more time with their kids, do more positive things with them. The writer is a child psychologist and a former fifth-grade teacher. It makes a lot of sense."

Sam: "Does he say how parents are supposed to find the time when both of them are out working so they can afford to buy a car that's inferior to the last car they bought?"

Chester (setting the article off to one side): "This one you're going to love."

Sam: "I love 'em all."

Chester: "It's a piece about how the White House has failed to protect our borders from illegal aliens. It makes some good points in light of 9-11. I think it's terrific. A good investigative journalism piece. Scarier than hell, but it really cuts to the chase."

Sam: "I agree. I read a similar piece in Reader's Digest last month. Anything else?"

Chester (shaking his head): "This is the last one."

Sam: "What is it?"

Chester: "It's a little weak, but you might like it. It's the story of the PT-109 and how Jack Kennedy saved his crew's lives during World War Two."

Sam: "Any photos?"

Chester: "A couple of old Navy black-and-whites, one of the ship and the crew, including Kennedy, and another of Kennedy in the hospital after they were rescued."

Sam: "Bingo!"

The lead's the thing

Sam is not that unusual an editor. And if you think book editors are any different than magazine editors, you're right--they're worse. Imagine some poor working stiff with 40 book-length novels to plow through before the editorial meeting on Thursday morning. Do you think he'll read every word of every book? And, if not, what will he read?

Nearly all editors read the first sentence of a manuscript. If it's a book, they read the first sentence of the synopsis. If that catches their attention, they'll likely go on to read the first paragraph. If that "sings," they'll probably read the first page. If the work is still in the running (and by now, most aren't), the editor will likely set the manuscript aside for more careful review later. If, after a week or two, he goes back to the piece and still likes it, he may read the entire article or the first few chapters.

With that done, the editor now has a solid enough understanding of the project to take it in to his publisher or editorial board for review. If they come back with a thumb's up, he'll likely read the entire thing and then contact the writer with the good news: they're going to publish his work.

What this means for you (and if you're reading between the lines like a good writer should, you already know) is that you need to re-think your approach to writing. Your work has to fly from the very first line. It has to have a dynamite opening paragraph. If it's a book, the first chapter has to sing like a soprano on steroids.

Check out these two leads to the same short story:

Lead One: It was a cold and dreary night. The rain pelted the windshield. Inside the car, Jack Trembleau, a fisherman on his way back from a day on the lake, struggled to see the road that stretched out ahead of him. It wasn't easy. It was harder, in fact, than it had been the last time he'd gotten caught in a Nor'easter--a torrential storm that blew havoc in toward shore from somewhere out in the Atlantic. And that storm had been so bad, he seriously doubted that he'd ever see Annabelle Lee again. Now, it seemed even less likely.



Lead Two: Jack would not survive the night. Everything that he knew, all that he loved, gone. Poof. In a split second. He wondered what it would feel like ... the end. He wondered if it would be horrible, filled with terror and wrenching pain, like in the movies. Or if perhaps it would simply slip over him--death--like a comfortable old sweater. He could pull over. Hold up until the storm settled in. But if he did that, she'd be gone. And that would be even worse than death. No, it was better this way. No matter what.

In Lead One, the writer started out with a cliche, which he promptly followed with another cliche. Then he wasted more valuable time and space by specifying that Jack Trembleau (who needs to know his last name, anyway?) was inside a car--something even less astute readers might have figured out themselves from the previous reference to a windshield. He wasted more time in catching the reader's imagination by defining what a Nor'easter is, even though it doesn't matter. Finally, he bogged the lead down even further with the awkward introduction of the name of some woman who means absolutely nothing to the reader.

Hook 'em, book 'em, and cook 'em

Get the point? When you lay out your leads, keep them short and punchy. Make them gripping. Ask yourself, will this catch the reader's attention and hold it through the next sentence. If the honest answer is "no," (or even if you're not sure), re-think your lead. Revise and rewrite and keep rewriting until you come up with something grippy, grabby, and tense, as in Lead Two. Then--and only then--will you be sure that the editor's eye you're trying to grab isn't going to wander from your manuscript to someone else's after the first few words.

Don't worry about not providing all the details in the first paragraph. Writers who do that are literally a dime a dozen--and their writing is worth even less.

Remember, if you think your lead sounds trite, weak, and uninspired, you'd better believe that some jaded editor on the business end of a desk will think the very same thing, in spades. Your job as a successful, marketable writer isn't to show the editor that you have all the facts right from the start. Your job is to convince the editor that he hasn't ... and then make him want to read on to learn more.

What's that old phrase about men and women and their eternal quest for love --He chased her until she caught him? Well, it may be something of a stretch, but when the words you put into your lead chase an editor until he catches them, you've done your job. And you can start planning to get published ... soon ... and often.

Selling the Self- Help/Inspirational Article

We all love to give free advice; so why not get paid while we're doing it?

We're all self-help gurus to one degree or another. You give advice to someone about relationships. That person gives advice to someone else about car care. That person gives advice to someone else, still, about growing bigger tomatoes.

Statisticians estimate that we give advice at least half a dozen times a day. You may not have noticed yourself on the giving end of the Dear Abby Syndrome, but that's only because giving advice is about as spontaneous as breathing. It's only when we stop that we notice.

Admittedly, not all the advice we share is earth-shattering or mind-boggling. Some guy advises his wife to lose the red sweater and put on the brown one. Before she walks out the door, she tells him to be sure to mail the mortgage check on his way to work.

So the exchange of advice is everywhere. Most of the time, it's free. (Some of the time, it's not even wanted--but that rarely stops us from rendering it!) But nearly as often, someone somewhere is making money off of it.

Your doctor advises you to give up smoking, then bills you $35 for the privilege. Your broker tells you to dump the blue chip stocks and pick up some high-tech loads. Your lawyer warns you to get a new lease from your landlord with a non-cancellation clause in it. Whenever a professional gives advice, the cash register rings. In fact, we're betting you pay hundreds of dollars a month on advice that you could just as easily be getting free...if you knew where to look. In fact, you could be getting paid for looking. Check this out:

American Fitness, 15250 Ventura Blvd., Suite 200, Sherman Oaks, CA 91403, 818-905-0040, Web site: http://www.afaa.com/. Contact: Dr. Meg Jordan, editor. "We need timely, in-depth, informative articles on health, fitness, aerobic exercise, sports nutrition, age-specific fitness, and outdoor activity." Absolutely no first-person accounts ...."

Now, you may think this is a market listing for American Fitness magazine. Wrong! In reality, it's a desperate cry for help. Some editor named Meg Jordan is asking for your advice. She wants you to offer something that will make her readers take notice. Furthermore, she's willing to pay up to $200 for it. See what we mean?

But what do you write about? Which area is most likely to net you an assignment? How can you turn your willingness to offer advice into dollars? That's where the fun begins.

Where free advice usually involves narrowly defined areas of expertise ("Oh, I wish I knew which shoes looked better on me, the brown or the black!"), paid advice in the form of a self-help article is wide open. To hell with brown or black shoes, go for the juggler. Think out of the box. Get creative!

We noticed in the market listing above the phrase, age-specific fitness, and we wondered what that meant. Exercises for teens? For infants? Or, perhaps, for octogenarians? So, pulling up our trusty meta-search engine, we plugged in the terms, "octogenarian" and "exercise."

With very little searching, we found an item on an energetic octogenarian who still teaches yoga at the age of 80. Here's the query we drafted:

Offbeat Octogenarian Workouts

When Mary Cavanaugh demonstrates a Yoga position to her students these days, it's no big thing. Until, that is, you realize she's over 80!

After more than 35 years of teaching yoga, Cavanaugh still approaches her daily workouts with the blind enthusiasm of youth. As limber as a teenager and twice as energetic, she is anything but blaze about her work.

"It still blows me away when I see the improvement in people," she says. "I say 'Wow, this really works.' Every time I see it happen, it surprises me."

It shouldn't. Cavanaugh's own spiritual mentor and yoga adviser, Indra Mataji Devi, is still teaching at 103! "She's an inspiration to me," says Cavanaugh. "To all of us. I only hope I can move as well when I'm over a hundred."

A hundred? Does she really expect to live past the century mark? "And that's just for starters," she chuckles.

So what gives with all these "old people" and yoga? Have they found the long-elusive Fountain of Youth? Are they onto something the rest of us can only hope for?

Do you see what we mean? Inside of half an hour of reading that market listing, a light bulb went on, a search was initiated, and a query was written. Another half hour later, and it could have been winging its way to sunny California.

So get in the habit of thinking of yourself--the writer you--as a professional advice-giver. Whenever you peruse a magazine or book market listing, think in terms of what might make for interesting, unusual, or entertaining words of wisdom that--with just a little bit of research--you can pass along to your readers. That's what self-help and inspirational writing is all about, after all, isn't it?

Hey, would we steer you wrong? Take our advice.

Historical Novel: Is It History, or More... Much More?

There's a truism in selling non-fiction history to a book publisher. If it's history, it has to be accurate! Yet, every editor who has ever worked in the field of non-fiction history has come across at least one writer who has played loose and free with the historical facts. The results: not only did that writer not get published, but also he'll never even get another read at that publishing house.

That's how important accuracy in research and writing is to history. How much easier it would be to sell history with a twist--quasi-history, sort-of-history, a book that's based on history and is historically accurate, but only to a degree. Well, that's where selling the historical novel comes in.

Author James Michner once said in an interview that, when he wrote historical fiction (and he wrote a lot!), he never particularly cared whether or not the steam engine in his book about life in 1820 Nebraska didn't actually arrive in Nebraska until 1830! And neither, it seems, did his readers.

At first glance, the scenario of being able to take history and manipulate it without regard for historical accuracy looks like a writer's dream. And, in many ways, it is. If writing accurately about historical situations is the difficult part in writing and selling history, how much easier it would be not to have to worry about such trivialities as facts in the first place!

But that begs the question: what do historical fiction editors look for, and, even more importantly, what do they shy away from when selecting a historical novel to publish?

One sure answer is character assassination. Remember the recent Ronald Regan fiasco that CBS commissioned and planned on airing until word got out that it was downright "mean-spirited" and "vindictive"? That's something few editors want to be associated with. So, when peddling historical fiction, it's important to be sure that--if you make a controversial or denigrating statement about a historical person--you can back it up.

Another thing editors look for is reasonability. It's one thing to try to sell a book about JFK in which you present him as having had an affair with Marilyn Monroe. That's absolutely believable. It's something else entirely if you present him as having had an affair with Rock Hudson. See the difference?

"If a writer wants me to believe that something actually took place in a historical novel, it at least has to be plausible," according to Don Bacue, International Features Syndicate executive editor, "otherwise it will turn the reader, not to mention the editor, off--long before the book makes it to market. And that's sure death for any writer trying to sell a book."

Most importantly of all, a writer trying to sell a historical novel must show some faculty for the subject. If someone writes historical fiction about Louis Pasteur and has no knowledge whatsoever of bio-chemistry, he's doomed to failure from the start.

That doesn't mean that a writer must be a bio-chemist to write such a book. Michner wasn't a minister or a native of the islands when he wrote Hawaii. But he did do his homework. He studied about the time period, the islands, the missionaries of the era, sailing ships, etc. By the time he set about actually writing and then selling the book, he knew as much about his subject as any historian alive. Well, nearly.

So, how do you impress upon an editor your proficiency with a particular historical topic or time period? Spell it out in your query letter:

Dear Editor Person:

John Wilkes Booth has long been one of the most hated men in American history. But I have a different take on the man whom people knew and loved before he leaped from the balcony where the president had just been shot. In my historical novel, Pirates from Hell, I speculate upon how this man who had been a healing physician for years might have turned out if abolitionists hadn't poisoned his outlook on the War--and then how they went on to change a saint into a sinner in a single night.

Briefly, I'm a full-time freelance writer with previous publishing credits. I'm also a serious student of Lincoln, from his birth to his death. Booth has been a fascinating micro-study for me. Not only was the man brilliant and compassionate, but also he was an ardent Republican who actually voted for Lincoln in 1860!

If you'd like to see more, I can send you an outline, synopsis, and sample chapters by return mail or e-mail, as you wish.

Sincerely yours,

Fred Writer Guy

The letter is quick, snappy, pointed, and informative--the perfect query for what sounds like an eminently publishable (i.e., marketable) book. We think you get the message, and we're pretty sure an editor would, too.

There's an old adage in writing. A writer must know the rules of grammar before he may break the rules of grammar. The same could be said of historical fiction. A writer must know his history before he sets out to rewrite it.

Any way you look at it, the historical novel is a strong and powerful genre that many publishers feel comfortable in tackling. But before doing so, they want to be absolutely certain that you--the writer--have done your homework.

The Excellent Writer Within

The art of good writing comes from the artist within. All humans have the ability to become great authors, poets, artists and musicians, etc., so why do most folks find it such a difficult task? Why do many people say I could never be a writer or I could never aspire to write poetry? And why do folks who do write get discouraged when their work is rejected?

We are what we think, so if we believe we cannot succeed in our daily actions, then for sure we will never get away from our perception of who we think we are. This self defeating attitude was not of our making. As we were growing up and maturing into adulthood, we were indoctrinated with thousands of negative thoughts. This gave us a belief that we are only a housewife or only a truck driver. This limited vision of our role in life-gives us a limited life. People the world over have great creativity. Once we start to understand who we are and the reasons we exist, we start to cultivate eloquent works
of creativity.

Just writing worthy, meaningful, literature will not get the success it deserves unless we possess the resolve to carry on writing in spite of the critics. There will always be those who criticize a writer, no matter how good the composition. Rejection is an everyday
experience for most writers. This is a joy we must accept and grow from. Just because someone does not like our essay, does not mean it has no value. It means it was not acceptable to the editor or book reviewer that was reading the essay.

We can do two things when we are constantly being rejected. We can give up and say it was not meant to be. Alternatively, we can say; "How do I become a better writer and have my work accepted by more of the "establishment." Once a small section of the general public start to take an interest in our writing, the sheep mentality of the "establishment" will no doubt follow. It always has. It always will. Success breeds success.

Until we can find the inner core of creativity and start to write from the soul, we will never become a great writer. We may achieve a modicum of success by writing a few columns for a newspaper or magazine but that could keep us in a vacuum. We can scrape a living, but may not amass a fortune, for we are trying to write and trying will never cut the mustard.

The secret to excellent writing is to enjoy with ecstatic abandonment each letter and syllable we put down on paper. The pure joy of writing makes us a success, nothing else will. Those who tell us we have to struggle and sweat have not grasped true meaning in their lives. We need no approval of any human to be a success.

Stop trying to become a success. We are a success already. We were born.

We are a success of life. The sperm hit the egg and here we are.

Hello world!!

Everything else we do and achieve is just a bonus.

Life is to be enjoyed not endured. Joy brings true meaning to life.

Now the next question to ask is what is Joy? What does Joy mean and how do we achieve it? Look within - take time to silence the mind and feel the texture of nothingness. Smell the perfume of celestial splendor. Discover the sound of cosmic waves flowing though our subconscious mind. Palpate infinity. Breath eternity. Conceive the splendor of maturating into the essence of a successful writer. Be the word, become the poem, live the adventure. Everything we do is inscribed in our book of life. We just need to learn how to read the instructions written within every cell and molecule of our being. Each tissue and sinew bleeds muscular power of infinite, majestic might. Fly on the wings of limitless mastery. Escape the shrouded cocoon and become the enchanting butterfly. The dreams of authentic reality are about to manifest a rainbow of magical delights.

Writing the Western Novel

Thanks to the wonders of television--and now of re-issued DVDs, ad nauseum--is there any doubt that every human being walking the face of the earth is intimately familiar with the modern Western genre? Even before Hollywood began gobbling up western fare and spitting out true-to-celluloid reality, most Americans knew the genre well.

Either they grew up cutting their literary teeth on the likes of Zane Grey and Brett Hart, or they thumbed through the slough of western fare in the form of pulp magazines and, later, comic books, novels, and Cliff's Notes. In a way, nearly everyone is an expert on westerns...or everyone was, at least, until Larry McMurtry came along.

McMurtry rejuvenated and revitalized the steadily declining art of western writing by de-glamorizing the American West. Unlike most of his predecessors, he didn't paint his characters or their surroundings with a broad brush swathed in black and white. He created a canvas of what the Old West was really like, the real West, drawing on a palette of a thousand different hues.

The good guys no longer wore white hats and rode stealthy Paints. The bad guys no longer dressed in black and lumbered along on Chestnut geldings. Suddenly, everyone was more complex. You won't find a single John Wayne or Lee Marvin character among the hundreds McMurtry has created over the past half century. With McMurtry's new brand of western writing, suddenly the Old West became more alive, more vibrant, more real, less predictable. People of the West are a combination of good and bad. Indians are trustworthy and dependable as often as they are savage and bloodthirsty. Entire towns are built of sticks and old rotting boards and sod roofs that look as if they are about to blow away at any second.

That's the kind of western most editors are looking for today. And the next Larry McMurtry is the kind of western writer they hope to discover.

So, what's a writer to do? For starters, try research!

If your entire perspective of the American West has come from old films and older cliches, you're not going to make it as a writer of westerns in today's competitive marketplace. If your knowledge of the West comes from painstaking trips to the library, thumbing through old National Geographics, watching History TV about the real characters of western lore, what they did, how they lived, and how they died, well, pardner, you just might have a chance!

Ditto if you've studied McMurtry's realistic western classics, such as his lauded Lonesome Dove mini-series, or read his books. You recognize immediately the amount of research he's done on the Old West, beginning with his earliest writings and extending to the very twilight of his career. You know in a heartbeat that this western writer is eons apart from those who came before him.

You can also research the Old West on some of the many educational Web sites on the Internet. We think so highly of one PBS-associated site that we have it listed under our "Storyline Resources" page at the American Society of Authors and Writers Web site. It's called New Perspectives on the American West, and it's worth a look even if you never plan on writing a western novel.

Once you've done enough research to give you the confidence you need to start that very first Western, the rest should come easy. Just remember to tell the story from your characters' own perspectives--the way you imagine they felt, acted, talked, and lived, warts and all. Make your "good guy" characters likeable (or at least tolerable), make your "bad guy" characters multi-faceted (even bad guys do good things every now and then), and place them in relationships that would be similar to people living today--tempered, of course, by the restraints of the era. After all, people are people, no matter where or when they lived.

Once you've completed your book, go back and read it out loud. Edit it two or three times, read it aloud again, and sit back and smile. Then go ahead and round up the usual suspects...a list of editors currently hot after realistic western novels. (See our "Book Markets" page for editors currently buying western fiction.) Finally, start cranking out those queries!

And remember, if your book doesn't sell at first, try, try again. There is an editor for every marketable property ever conceived. It's only a matter of time until you find the one who's right for you.

Now's the time for you to write for businesses

When you say the term 'freelance writer' most people - including writers - automatically think you're writing for newspapers and magazines. But there's an enormous, untapped market out there that is primed for enterprising writers - the corporate market.

This is the field I have been involved in for most of my 20 plus years as a writer.

If nothing else, I've learned that the major advantage of writing for businesses is the income. Businesses, by and large, pay far more handsomely than magazines.

Secondly, once you have written for a business, generally speaking, you become their principal writer. You have the ability to write a wide variety of communications for the one business. This could include customer sales letters, speeches and video scripts as well as internal and external newsletters, brochures, ads and more. That's the potential with just one business client. You can see how lucrative this line of work can be with just a handful of clients.

Now, using that same criteria, if you have one magazine as your client - that publication will work with a string of writers, including staff and freelancers. Whether you write an occasional article or a series of articles, it's unlikely you will gain the volume of work and income from one magazine as you would from one business.

Depending on the way a writer operates, freelancers approach magazines generally with story ideas or sometimes pitch completed articles. Either way, there's no guarantee the magazine will accept and pay you for your effort.

However, once you have written for a business, the chances are far greater that you will continue to work with them and you will increase the number of writing jobs over time. I have handled one-off writing projects for businesses, but in most cases, a one-off job has led to a long-term relationship.

With some clients, I manage several projects a year. With others, I work for them on a regular basis, and there's a few who I speak with virtually on a daily basis. That's one of the great things about being an enterprising writer - the work is consistent, but it's also interesting because it's varied.

As you can see, writing for businesses versus writing for magazines, can be a far more profitable and stable exercise. And, once you have a number of clients, the amount of effort required to gain new assignments is far less because existing clients will call you, rather than you calling them for work.

Another advantage to writing for businesses is the amount of time and energy required to produce your work. If you're writing for magazines, in most cases it is up to the writer to identify stories and gather their own leads. When writing for businesses, in most cases, the client will have a ready supply of writing activities for you. The business, for example, may be releasing a new suite of products which require press releases, ads, direct mail letters and brochures. Depending on how well you're briefed, the client will provide base information and contact names for you to gather more information. Essentially, much of the ground work is already done for you.

Conversely, some writers may argue that one of the advantages writing for magazines is that it's more interesting, because you can choose your own topics and write them any way you wish.

Certainly it's true that when you write for business - whether you?re writing a press releases or an ad - the copy must have a certain corporate spin and it must be approved by the client. When you write for companies, you do not have the journalistic integrity you have when writing for magazines.

Secondly, in some ways, you also lose that 'thrill of the chase' that you can have tracking down a newspaper or magazine story.

Some may say it's more glamorous to write for magazines than businesses. I think that's a personal opinion. For me, I have enjoyed working in both fields, but I find writing for businesses far more profitable and sustainable. For those magazine writers who are considering writing for businesses, but don't wish to give up journalism - I would suggest that do both, as I did for many years.

Writing for a couple of companies can pay the bills and give you the security to continue writing for magazines. In this business, you can enjoy the best of both worlds.