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

Medical Thriller Guide

Medical thrillers are based around hospitals, doctors, nurses, EMTs, paramedics — any and all medical professionals. These thrillers can be quite a bit quieter than other thrillers, tending more toward mystery or suspense pacing at times as the doctors try to figure out the pathogen that will destroy the world or the murderer who is stalking their patients, but

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Should I Write Literary Fiction?

Do you tire of the silly tricks and the same old plots in genre fiction? Does it all just feel like a cheesy action movie to you when you would rather be watching an art film? Then literary fiction might work for you. If you read a lot of literary fiction, then you already know that it is all different, and there aren't a lot of standard tropes and cliches. If you haven't read much literary fiction, but...

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Literary Fiction Guide

There is some argument over what literary fiction really is, but you know it when you see it. It’s high brow stuff. Driven by rich characters and settings rather than a page turning plot line. It tends to deal more often with the mundane, but presenting that mundane life in ways that are unique. It is anything that we might call “literature” rather than genre fiction.  Literary fiction is harder to describe than other genres because it’s subject matter, settings, themes, and voice, can be nearly anything. As long as it is finely crafted, polished until it gleams, and doesn’t...

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Legal Thriller Guide

Like medical, legal thrillers used to be a part of the larger crime genre, but moved over with thriller, though in the legal thrillers, there's usually less action than in other thriller genres. In the old days, John Grisham used to hit the top of the bestseller list with his legal thrillers, proving that it was possible to make law interesting.

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Historical Mystery Guide

Firstly, and possibly most importantly, the entire canon of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is now in the public domain. That means that you can write any Holmes story you want. (Since Winnie-the-Pooh and Cthulhu are also now public domain characters, I have seen some really weird mashups.) There have been anthology collections of Holmes stories published in the last few years.

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Mystery Story Builder

For this exercise, you should have a document open where you can write. Now copy the text in the box below and paste it into that document. This will be the blueprint  for your story. You'll fill it in as you go through the exercise and end up with a basic outline for your mystery novel. You may want to post your story outline in the forums to get some ideas from other forum members.

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Heist/Caper Guide

Originally, our meta-genre was called crime, with mystery and thriller being two sub-genres underneath it. Very recently (2020+), thriller has been pulled off and become its own top-level BISAC code. Mystery remains, but caper (the Heist category on Amazon) falls into a strange corner case that you need to be aware of.

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Mystery Blueprint

Please note that there are a number of famous mystery novels that don't follow this blueprint exactly, and most don't follow it perfectly. If your book still keeps readers guessing with a few pieces missing or added, 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 readers expect from a mystery novel.

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Novel Writing — Revising

The thing you need to know about revising is not to fear it. Yes, it’s a lot of work, but it’s necessary work and, when done right, can be both enjoyable and rewarding. The first trick I learned is to think about the etymology of the word revision: re – vision. You had a vision when you started the book and now you have a chance to envision it again. This is a time of polishing, of perfecting, of insuring your original vision is as pure and beautiful as it can be before sending it off to be read. Don’t...

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Novel Writing — The First Draft

Much of this section is from my book How to Write Fantasy Novels, Volume II: The First Draft, but I have edited it to ensure it is applicable to all genres of fiction. You’ve got an idea and you’ve begun to write. Now what? Now you write until the book is done. Would that it were so easy. But in a way, the best way to get the book done is to do whatever you can to just write. Don’t plan. Don’t think. Just write. In fact, a lot of the advice in this Essential will be centered around pushing...

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