<span class="vcard">Written Well</span>
Written Well

Thriller Blueprint

Back to Thriller Guide Please note that there are a number of thrillers that don’t follow this blueprint exactly, and most don’t follow it perfectly. If your book will still be thrilling and interest readers without one of these pieces, or with some of them done differently or in a different order, feel free to do your own thing. This blueprint is just so that you can understand the basic format that your readers will expect from the genre.  ACT 1 – The People And The Problems The Hook The hook can be anywhere from 200 to 2,000 words, and...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here

Should I Write Thrillers?

Back to Thriller Guide Do you love a brilliant hero trying to save the world before he’s blown to bits by the time bomb in his shorts? Then you should be writing thrillers. If you read a lot of them, you already know the tropes to use, the cliches to avoid, and the basic structures they follow. If you haven’t read many thrillers, and just think they might be a good way to make money, you should go read a bunch of them and then come back. You must be very familiar with, and even love, thrillers if you are...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here

A Guide to Keyboards

The first rule of keyboards is that you like what you like. Some professional writers like the cheapest keyboards they can find, mushy things with keys that feel like lopsided marshmallows. Others (that’s me), love a nice clicky mechanical keyboard. The feedback, the crisp actuation, and the myriad of choices insure that you can get exactly what you like.  So if everyone just likes what they like, why am I writing about it?  Because most people have no idea what their options are, so they don’t even know what they like. You may think you like your keyboard and its...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here

Grammar and Critique

Before putting pen to paper or fingertip to keyboard, there are some basic writing fundamentals we have to discuss. I will try to get through them as swiftly as possible, but they can’t be ignored. Grammar is important ​Before you can write, you have to make sure you can write. If you can’t construct a decent sentence, it doesn’t matter how great your story is, it’s going to be hard to get it across. Though you don’t have to follow the rules of grammar—most writers break them with wild abandon—you have to know them. And more importantly, you have to know...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here

Point of View and Tense

Point of view (POV) and tense work together in a way to create different levels of story scope and reader engagement, often by sacrificing one for the other. Choosing which to use can be more art than science and you may feel that personal preference and ease of use trumps either of those. However, as you learn more about these two essential properties of writing and how they interact with each other, you’ll see how picking the right ones can help take your writing to the next level. POV One of the most important decisions you make when writing is...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here

Erotica Guide

Let's start with what erotica is. Erotica is fiction where the primary focus is on graphic sex and the lead up to it. Where a thriller is about a ticking clock and action, a western is about gunfights, and a romance is about overcoming barriers to forming relationships, the primary goal of characters in erotic writing is to have sex and the climax (lol) is actual sex described in no uncertain terms.

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here

Storyist

Storyist does everything for an aspiring novelist or screenwriter, and unlike many other one-size-fits-all solutions, it does them all pretty well. Unfortunately, it’s only for Mac users, but if that’s you, it’s worth checking out the free trial to see if Storyist feels like a good fit.  The software includes an iOS version for iPads and iPhones so you can access your files and work on them from anywhere. And when we say that Storyist does everything, we mean everything. Here are just a few of the high points. Full Featured and flexible text editor Outlining software Plot planner with...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here

Dynalist.io

Dynalist is free outlining software that lives in the cloud so you can log in from any device to see your outlines and work on them. We love the simplicity and ease of us, coupled with the ability to handle complicated outlines.  Spending a few minutes with the tutorial in Dynalist will teach you how to create simple outlines very quickly, with child and parent items indented appropriately and displayed based on your preferences. You can create as many unique outlines as you like, and customize them in all kinds of ways with checklists, colors, images, and H1, H2, and...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here

Horror Guide

No matter the subgenre, all horror shares an overarching theme: fear. Whether it’s splatterpunk, serial killer, supernatural, or anything else, every book in this genre is a spine-tingler. You can never go wrong in ramping up the fear factor, and the good guys don’t always have to win. And where there’s not fear, there’s tension. Every horror reader wants tension. They want to be concerned for the safety — and often sanity — of the characters. You need to make those characters relatable and then put them on a path to destruction. Like every thriller has a ticking clock, every...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here