Janet Evanovich: HOW I WRITE
Janet Evanovich tells Secrets of a Bestselling Author in HOW I WRITE
The bestselling creator of the Stephanie Plum series, and author of 12 romance novels, Janet Evanovich reveals her secrets for would-be writers in HOW I WRITE
In publishing HOW I WRITE, Janet Evanovich has joined the elite list of bestselling authors prepared to pass on their writing secrets to aspiring creators of fiction.
The best books that really teach you something about writing are usually written by professional authors. When I'm browsing the bookshelves and find a book that professes to tell me the secrets of how to write a bestselling novel, a hit screenplay or a TV comedy show, I always check the author's own credentials. Has he or she ever written any bestselling novels, hit screenplays or TV comedy shows? More often than not, the answer is no.
The best books I've read, that have both inspired me to create and taught me something about the creative process, have been written by successful writers such as Lawrence Block (the Matthew Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbaar series) and David Morrell (author of FIRST BLOOD, which was filmed as RAMBO). To that select list can now be added the name of Janet Evanovich.
Evanovich is best known as the creator of the wonderful Stephanie Plum, the New Jersey bail bond collector whose hilarious adventures began in ONE FOR THE MONEY and TWO FOR THE DOUGH and just kept on coming... and selling and selling and selling. But prior to that, Evanovich was an experienced writer of romance novels, and later created the Alexandra Barnaby novels.
In HOW I WRITE, Janet Evanovich's advice is as down to earth (and in places as funny) as Stephanie Plum herself. The book draws heavily on writing advice given on Evanovich's website, where aspiring authors have been writing in with their questions for the last few years. It's therefore based on what people want to know, and in answering the questions Evanovich strips the mystery out of writing mysteries and other types of fiction.
HOW I WRITE is broken down into chapters dealing with the usual suspects – Structure, Editing, Creating Great Characters, Getting Published and other essential information. Mostly it relies on the Question and Answer format, but is generously sprinkled with examples from Evanovich's own writing, to illustrate her point. She includes a couple of her own manuscript pages, to show you how to lay them out, as well as proposals to publishers, for fiction and non-fiction books.
Evanovich explains how she storyboards her novels, and includes the storyboard from Stephanie Plum's TWELVE SHARP adventure. I've now bought the book to see how the few hundred words of storyboard expand into a bestselling novel. I've read the first few Stephanie Plum novels and loved them, so fast forwarding to number 12 will be no hardship.
Reading HOW I WRITE was no hardship either, and I'll be re-reading it as I work on my own first faltering steps at fiction, having devoted much of my working life to travel writing so far. How can you not enjoy a book that not only inspires you to write and teaches you some of the secrets, but makes you laugh out loud too.
I'll close by quoting Janet Evanovich's first rule for Successful Writing:
Don't fall into the trap of rewriting chapter one until it's perfect. And don't discard everything you write halfway through because you're sure it sucks. Writing stuff that sucks is part of the learning process!
HOW I WRITE by Janet Evanovich, with Ina Yalof, is published by St Martin's Griffin at $13.95/$17.95 Can
For further advice visit the Janet Evanovich website by clicking here.
And Read this Janet Evanovich author profile.
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