Para o Josef B

Leah Ruth Robinson's 10 Tips for Unpublished Authors

Now. A little advice for unpublished authors. Some famous author once said,
"There are three rules for writing a book. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." However, as a kind of sideline, or possibly because we get asked so often what the rules are, most published authors put together a little list of rules. Here's what I think you should keep in mind:

1. You do not need an agent until after you finish writing the book. In fact, you cannot get an agent until you finish writing a book. For people who insist on obsessing about this anyway, see the bibliography page.

2. You must write to genre. Do you want to write a police procedural? A hard-boiled detective novel? A medical thriller? Decide now. You have to sell the book to an agent. Your agent has to sell the book to the editor in the publishing house. The editor has to sell it to her acquisitions committee, and explain why your book is better than the one the other editor wants to buy instead. The acquisitions committee has to sell the book to marketing. They won't like it if they can't figure out how to position it. The sales person has to sell it to the bookstore. And the bookstore has to sell it to the reading public.
Once you pick your genre, you have to then read the body of work of the five top best-selling authors in it. You have to analyze and distill what is representative of the genre from these books, put together a to-do list for yourself, and keep these goals in mind as you write. Nobody can really explain to you how to do this; you have to have some feel for it, some intuitive and analytical capacity for looking at another author's work and figuring out what he or she did and what you can learn from it.

3. You must do research. If your character works in a hospital in New York, you have to have access to people who can describe the inside of a hospital in New York and how it works. Preferably you yourself should get in there and see it with your own eyes. You want to avoid the situation where a person who actually works in a hospital in New York reads your book and says, "This author does not know her censored from a hole in the ground!"

4. There are no stupid police. Your sleuth can not be smarter than the local cops. She may have more time to investigate. She may be willing to break the law in ways the cops won't. But she cannot be smarter. Also, you must talk to police in the city where you say your story is set. Police practice is unique to place. You need to understand basic things about jurisdiction, so you know what police agency will be responding to your crime. You need to own and frequently consult a textbook on homicide investigation. (See bibliography.) A way to meet police is to call your local precinct and see if they have a citizens' ride-along program.

5. The weather should be a character in your book.

6. The city should be a character in your book.

7. You need at least six or seven red herrings.

8. You should get a couple of good inspirational books to read when you lose faith or focus. I like Anne Lamott's book Bird by Bird. I've listed a few more on my bibliography here.

9. Apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Ernest Hemingway.

10. Write more. It'll do something for all those moods you've been having. Ray Bradbury.