James Patterson - How He Writes

Hello Fellow Writers!

Yesterday I didn't get any work done on "Snowed in With a Millionaire" because we are renovating our upstairs bathroom and the day pretty much revolved around that. Today is Sunday and we have a lot of work to do again - DH and I are doing almost the whole thing ourselves. I did, however, make a couple of tiny changes to "The Movie Star's Very Personal Assistant" per my writing teacher, Vinnie Dacquino.

He made a suggestion that I add a whole scene to better explain a plot point, so if I do have time today then that is what I will be doing. There are several aspects to the bathroom renovation that my husband can do without me (I have no idea how to install a sink, for example, while he does, thanks to YouTube.) So if I get really lucky then maybe I can get some plotting done on "Snowed in With a Millionaire" as well.

I want to share with you a fascinating interview with bestseller James Patterson, author of the Alex Cross detective series, among many others.

He writes like eight books a year, thanks to help from a variety of co-authors. He makes so much money because he has mastered the art of creating a page turner. You can't put his books down. Part of it is that each chapter is literally two pages long or less, so you keep reading - it's like popcorn, you can't have just one. Each chapter ends with a cliffhanger. It's amazing to me how he can even think of so many cliffhangers!



The main thing that I have learned from Patterson is to end my chapters in such a way that the reader has to keep reading, even though romance novels tend to have long chapters. You don't want your reader to put your book down at a chapter ending and forget to ever pick it up again!

Today I will hopefully get that scene written for "The Movie Star's Very Personal Assistant".

Wish me luck, and good luck to you too!

Yours Truly,
Shoshanna Evers