If you and I want to be taken seriously as writers, it goes without saying that we have to study the craft. However we do it (read Aristotle, enroll in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, study McKee and Coyne and Stephen King), we must learn the timeless principles of storytelling with the same thoroughness that a brain surgeon applies (we hope) before he starts drilling into our skulls. That’s the craft. But there’s another, even more important element to this enterprise. Our craft. What I mean by “our craft” are those stylistic and storytelling instincts that are unique to you and…

One of the hardest things for a writer to do is to take criticism. Notes. That dreaded memo from your editor that says, “Back to Square One, baby.” So I must give major, major plaudits to Harper Lee for what she did (according to the stories we’re all reading in the Times and elsewhere) after turning in Go Set A Watchman to her editor Tay Hohoff at Lippincott in 1957. The sensational aspect of the current Mockingbird/Watchman kerfuffle centers on Harper Lee’s radically different characterizations of Atticus Finch in the two books, specifically the less-than-knightly portrait in Go Set A…

I once did a rewrite on a porn flick. The producer wanted to impart a couple of guidelines before I began. We met for breakfast at a coffee shop in Santa Monica. What he told me has proved incredibly useful over the years—in all kinds of writing, including the most literary. “Every skin flick makes the same mistake,” said the producer (who was a thoroughly nice guy, like a suburban soccer dad). “When the movie gets to a sex scene, the story stops dead in its tracks. That’s my first marching order to you, kid: keep the story going through…

The artist’s world is mental. The sculptor may manipulate clay, the software writer may work with code, but, like the filmmaker and the mystic, their real tools are Shadows and Light. The sphere of the artist is the mind. Her currency is imagination. She asks (how can she not?), “Where do ideas come from?” Did Rhapsody in Blue come to Gershwin in the shower? Was J.K. Rowling baking a pie when she first imagined Hogwarts? Or was he at the piano and she at the typewriter keyboard? Like the Zen monk or the meditator, the artist enters a mental space.…

My friend Roda is on the cusp of finishing her second novel. We were having breakfast the other day and she was telling me she was absolutely overwhelmed by Resistance. “I know the dragon gets stronger the closer you are to the finish line … but wow, this is really more than I can handle. I’m stuck. The dark side is winning.” Here’s what I told Roda: “If you’re feeling that much Resistance, think of it as a compliment. Resistance is paying you a compliment.” Remember: the level of Resistance we feel at any point is directly related to the…

I did some posts a few weeks ago about the five files I keep on my screen while I’m writing. I posted four but somehow spaced out doing the fifth. My apologies (and thanks to Peter Brockwell for reminding me). Here it is now: I call this fifth file CULLS. Have you ever seen an inspection station for tomatoes or potatoes? A conveyor belt shuttles the fresh-from-the-field produce past a line of human checkers (usually farm kids being paid eight bucks an hour.) The good taters and peaches sail past and get boxed up for market. The bad ones get…

Almost any story, if it’s gonna have real power in the climax, needs a blockbuster bang or invention—something that nobody’s seen before or, if they have seen it, something they’ve never seen done in this unique way. Often this bang is contrived and pushes the bounds of believability. Can a sperm whale really ram and sink a whaling ship? Can Vin Diesel really leap a car out of one skyscraper, soar across 100 feet of empty space, and land safely inside another skyscraper? (And, by the way, is his name really Vin Diesel?)

[We and Penguin Books will be giving away 200 free copies of The Lion’s Gate paperback, ahead of a Google Hangout with me and August Cole, co-author of Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War and director of the Atlantic Council’s Art of Future Warfare project. On June 25 at 3pm ET we will discuss how creativity is literally a lifesaver when resources and time are short and the odds are stacked against you. Which, for writers, is most of the time. Enter your address using this sign-up link and we’ll send a copy your way. More details…

Paperbacks and hardbacks: this is an area, I confess, that I’ve been absolutely clueless about. You write a book. It gets published. The hardcover comes out. Then a year later comes the paperback. The paperback always has a different cover. If the hardback had a classy cover, the paperback usually has a slightly-less-classy cover. But maybe (you hope) it’s a more commercial cover. Sometimes your book appears in its second life as a “trade paperback,” meaning a quality piece of workmanship, on good paper, weighty, only slightly smaller than the hardback. Other times it shows up as a “mass-market paperback,”…

Writers are always obsessing about “narrative drive.” We know what it means. It’s the propulsive, page-turning momentum that we all hope to generate in our readers. But how do we create narrative drive? A priest, a rabbi, and an alligator walk into a bar … That’s narrative drive. There’s no way you and I are not gonna stick around to hear the rest of that joke. Why? Because a question has been planted in our minds, an open-ended question that has hooked us and makes us want to know the answer. (By the way, I just invented that set-up; if…