Saturday, February 12, 2011

Author writing style

This is a special added blog post

At nearly all Author Readings, writers are asked the obligatory question, “How do you approach writing your novels?” or “What is your method to writing a novel?” It is the most common question asked of an author right after “What do you read?”

Best selling author Susan Vreeland’s response is worth sharing.

She claims to write the first chapter. Then she writes the second chapter and decides what is needed in the first chapter based on what was put in chapter two.

Now follow this. After reading the first two chapters Ms. Vreeland writes her next chapter and THEN goes back for a review edit of the previous written work adding and subtracting what is needed.

She does this for every single chapter until the book is finished and here is the wild part… wait for it… wait for it…

At the end of the book she considers this a FIRST DRAFT. She put her latest book “Clara and Mr. Tiffany” through that same process for 13 drafts until it was complete, writing and editing all day until in her words “Oh ten, eleven o’clock at night.”

That is what it takes to get on the New York Times Best Seller List and have your books turned into movies.

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