# Secrets of the World's Bestselling Writer



## DaniO (Oct 22, 2012)

Secrets of the World's Bestselling Writer: The Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner. I stumbled across the kindle version of this this morning. Erle Stanley Gardner wrote the Perry Mason books and he was incredibly prolific.

Secrets of the World's Bestselling Writer: The Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner

I love reading about other author's writing processes and I have wanted to get hold of this book for sometime. It's been out of print for years and used copies sell for over $100 

Does anyone else share my addiction of reading about the processes of other writers? I think I am so fascinated by it because I am constantly looking for an easier method. Of course, I never find it! I manage 1000 wph and it doesn't seem to vary whatever process I try.

Erle Stanley Gardner used to dictate some of his books too. I've tried that, but I still have to go back and edit. Now I just need to find the kindle version of the Michael Moorcock book about his method and I'll be happy.


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## RachelMeyers (Apr 17, 2014)

Is the book good? I've just added it to my wishlist.

I love reading about other authors processes too.  I always come away inspired, even if I work in a completely different way.  And yeah, I'm always hopeful for THE way that will stop me procrastinating and wasting time and turn me into a productive writing machine.  Hasn't happened yet... *sidesteps away from the internet and back to writing*


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## David Wisehart (Mar 2, 2010)

I read the hardback last year. I think I spent about $100 for it.

Definitely worth it, if you write mysteries.

Ten bucks on Kindle is a steal.


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## DaniO (Oct 22, 2012)

I have only read a few pages so far. I had to force myself to put down my Kindle and get on with some work so I think it's going to be worth the ten bucks (£6 something as I am in the UK). Like David said, it was $100 for the hardback or paperback and the kindle version wasn't available until this month. I was seriously contemplating paying for a used hardback version, so I was really glad to find the ebook. I think it's great that so many out of print titles are being converted to digital. I think this particular book was out of print for thirty years.

Reading about other writer's habits is my ideal method of procrastination.


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## David Wisehart (Mar 2, 2010)

The stuff about his life and career was interesting, but the really valuable material for a writer is in the appendices:

"Erle Stanley Gardner's 'Formula for Writing a Mystery'"
"The Fluid or Unstatic Theory of Plots"
"Page of Actors and Victims"
"Character Components"
"The Foundation of Character Background"
"Chart of Romantic Conflict"
"Conflicts of Mother Love"
"Departures from Normal Theory of Story Situation"
"The Plot Tide or Thrust"
"The Mystery Aftermath Method"
"The Last Plotting Notebook"

Great stuff.

As you might have gathered, Gardner is very analytical and systematic in his approach to plot. He had to be, to churn out as many successful mystery stories, novels, and TV scripts as he did.

He was also an early champion of _Plotto_ by William Wallace Cook, which is strange and difficult, but worth exploring.


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## anotherpage (Apr 4, 2012)

Carrie_Cox said:


> Secrets of the World's Bestselling Writer: The Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner. I stumbled across the kindle version of this this morning. Erle Stanley Gardner wrote the Perry Mason books and he was incredibly prolific.
> 
> Secrets of the World's Bestselling Writer: The Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner
> 
> ...


Hey I thought that was H.M Ward that girl has the midas touch!. I would love her bank account 

I would love to us dictation but those things are a nightmare to train. I end up with pages of nonsense so its faster for me to type.


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## DanaG (Feb 13, 2011)

Thanks for the recommendation! Carrie, here is what works for me - I can do about 2000 to 2500 words an hour when I'm really cooking.

I make sure that I have worked out all the major components of my story first - the hero, the heroine, their careers and backgrounds, what their conflict is, why they think they can't be together. I work out who my villain is, what he or she is doing, and why he or she is doing it.  I decide what my "all is lost" moment will be and how the hero/heroine overcomes it.

I set a timer and write for 30 minutes, then write down my word count. I take a brief break.

Also, I give myself permission to write a cruddy first draft. My goal is to push forward and get the skeleton of the story on paper.  If I were to try to make every word perfect the first time around, it would paralyze me and take me forever.  That's what revisions are for.


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## DaniO (Oct 22, 2012)

Thanks, Dana. I would love to hit 2000 words an hour. I will definitely give your tips a try. I do tend to outline, but for some reason I never manage to work out the ending in enough detail before I start writing. I will try making sure my "all is lost moment" is nailed down before I write any further.

Timed sessions sound like a really good idea too.


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## DanaG (Feb 13, 2011)

Timed sessions are the number one reason I write a book every three to four weeks.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

I made copies of his plot wheels for fun.


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## Guest (Oct 29, 2014)

David Wisehart pointed out the diamonds in the book.

Gardner was noted for his plotting, methods that he developed over the years.

My copy of the hardback has seen heavy use over the years.


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## Peter Spenser (Jan 26, 2012)

kalel said:


> I would love to [use] dictation but those things are a nightmare to train.


I use Dragon Dictate for Mac. It took all of 5 minutes to train it to my voice and I LOVE it! It truly does (as their ads say) type at least three times faster than I can on my best day. One thing though: all dictation software expects you to speak well and clearly. I took public speaking in college, did the news and weather on the radio, and have done movie narration, so I have no trouble maintaining a good relationship with my software. (We're on speaking terms, you might say.  ) You can't be sloppy and speak to it the same way that you mumble to your friends while watching the game on TV and expect good results.


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## Christa Wick (Nov 1, 2012)

Thank you Carrie and David for the resource tips


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## thomaskcarpenter (May 17, 2011)

Perfect.  I was looking for another craft book to read.  Bought it on my kindle.  Look forward to reading it.  Thanks for the info!


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

DanaG said:


> Thanks for the recommendation! Carrie, here is what works for me - I can do about 2000 to 2500 words an hour when I'm really cooking.
> 
> I make sure that I have worked out all the major components of my story first - the hero, the heroine, their careers and backgrounds, what their conflict is, why they think they can't be together. I work out who my villain is, what he or she is doing, and why he or she is doing it. I decide what my "all is lost" moment will be and how the hero/heroine overcomes it.
> 
> ...


I'm really glad you wrote this. I've been flailing hard trying to get anything done lately and I think this kind of structure could really help me get moving again. At this point I'd kill to get 2000 - 2500 words done a day, much less an hour. Thank you!


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## Peter Spenser (Jan 26, 2012)

Carrie_Cox said:


> I am constantly looking for an easier method. [&#8230;] I manage 1000 [words per hour] and it doesn't seem to vary whatever process I try.


Carrie, don't fall into the trap of conflating how easy (or difficult) it is to compose your story, with the speed at which you can make it appear. That can drive you nuts and you will end up needlessly beating yourself up over it.

Gardner figured out a way that worked for him to, ahead of time, fit the pieces of his story together from beginning to end so that they made good narrative sense as a road map for the book. Then he was an experienced enough wordsmith (and I use that term advisedly) to be able to follow that map with well-crafted text that resulted in a book that people wanted to finish reading after looking at the first few pages, or even after just seeing the title: _The Case of the Velvet Claws_ (which was his first book), _The Case of the Lucky Legs_ (which started with only that intriguing title that he decided he just *had* to write a book to fit), _The Case of the Sun Bather's Diary_ (a title that would certainly make me check out the book  ), and on and on.

As far as I know, all of his book-length manuscripts were completely dictated. He got to the point where he would take a dictation machine out to his hideaway ranch, dictate the book in a few days, then turn over everything to his secretaries to transcribe the manuscript to send to his publisher.

One thing that you did not mention that may be unclear to readers here. Gardner did not write the _Secrets&#8230;_ book. For people who want to look it up, it was written by a man-and-wife team named "Fugate."


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## Gina Black (Mar 15, 2011)

Thanks. I'd heard about this and dismissed it as being out of my price range.


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## 31842 (Jan 11, 2011)

Thank you for the heads up!  Just grabbed a copy and looking forward to reading it!


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## DanaG (Feb 13, 2011)

I hope it helps you, Kelli!

Another thing that I usually do is - after I figure out the basic skeleton of my story's plot, I write out a chapter by chapter outline, with a few paragraphs per chapter, basically saying what happens.

It's easy for me, because it's pretty logical. I just put myself in the mind of the character and ask what they would do in a given situation. 

Let's say the hero is a sexy district attorney, the heroine is a local business owner, and her widowed father was remarried to a gold-digger. The gold digger is found dead, after she'd gone to consult a divorce attorney.

The heroine is talking to her father when the police pull up and arrest him for murder.

What would she do next? She'd storm over to the handsome d.a.'s office and interrupt his meeting and demand why he would do that. The d.a. would tell her that they found evidence that her father killed his new wife.

So what would the heroine do next? She'd go start investigating, even after the d.a. told her not to. She'd probably start with the divorce attorney.  Etc. etc.

So, I just basically put my characters through their paces and that's how I build my chapter outline.

With that outline done, it is ridiculously easy to write the story.


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## dalya (Jul 26, 2011)

Bought it! Thanks for the recommendation.

As a funny coincidence, I was reading a James Scott Bell craft book today today and he referenced Erle Stanley Gardner in a passage.


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## Guest (Oct 30, 2014)

Gardner began dictating his books on advice from a pulp writer.
Trying to break away from the office routine of being an attorney, Gardner realized he could talk faster than he could type.
He would take a dictating machine on weekends at a cabin, and then turn over the dictation to his office secretary who was using to transcribing tapes.
Production grew.
He had a lot of rejection in early writing attempts because he did not know how to plot. He had to learn. Then he developed his own methods and always carried them with him.
Secrets of a Bestselling Writer was not written by Gardner.
But the book illustrates his methods and traces his career of becoming the world's top author by starting from scratch.
"Secrets" is chock full of material not found anywhere else.


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## David Alastair Hayden (Mar 19, 2011)

Thank you for posting this! I love books like this.

Have you seen William Wallace Cook's Plotto? Talk about old school and thorough!

http://www.amazon.com/Plotto-The-Master-Book-Plots/dp/1935639188


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## David Alastair Hayden (Mar 19, 2011)

I started using Dragon Naturally Speaking, the Windows version, and love it. I can enter my handwritten drafts faster. Believe it or not, but the combo of fountain pen + DNS is the fastest method for me to get down a clean story. I can type a draft up faster but I end up doing more work on it. That's why we all have to explore to find what works best for us.


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## DaniO (Oct 22, 2012)

Yes, you are right. I should have mentioned that the book wasn't written by Gardner. It does reference his notebooks and diaries though and gives a fascinating glimpse into the way he worked.

I'd heard that he dictated most of the Perry Mason books and I had an image in my head of him sitting down with his dictaphone and recording the story in one go, but he actually spent a great deal of time working through plot problems before he started (a bit like your plotting process Dana   )

I have tried Dragon Dictate. It's surprisingly accurate, but I find it really distracting when I need to edit or correct a typo and I lose the flow of the story. I actually prefer to handwrite, but the idea of typing it all up at the end puts me off that method!

I haven't read Plotto yet, David. Thanks, I will have to check that out.


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## Nikki Pink (Jan 23, 2013)

David Alastair Hayden said:


> I started using Dragon Naturally Speaking, the Windows version, and love it. I can enter my handwritten drafts faster. Believe it or not, but the combo of fountain pen + DNS is the fastest method for me to get down a clean story. I can type a draft up faster but I end up doing more work on it. That's why we all have to explore to find what works best for us.


Is your handwritten draft a full draft, or more like a very detailed outline?


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## David Alastair Hayden (Mar 19, 2011)

Nikki Pink said:


> Is your handwritten draft a full draft, or more like a very detailed outline?


This was the first time I've done a handwritten draft. I did a full draft by hand. Typing it up was so tedious that I finally decided to try dictation, and I loved that process.

On the next novel I'm going to try something in between a super detailed outline and a full draft.

Probably, I will alternate between full prose and listing off details, depending on what I've got in my head at the moment. I'll do basic dialogue tags, use initials for the main characters names, and that sort of thing. I did a typewritten draft that way once and liked it.

I love the handwriting process, and dictation, and fast drafting, so I'm going to experiment until I find the perfect mix.


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## David Alastair Hayden (Mar 19, 2011)

Carrie_Cox said:


> Now I just need to find the kindle version of the Michael Moorcock book about his method and I'll be happy.


I've read the Moorcock book. I'm a huge Michael Moorcock fan. He's the reason I write fantasy novels. That said, unless you're a huge fan, I'm not sure how much benefit you'd find in the book. There are excerpts of the best part online, where he talks about his writing method for getting a book written in three days. Good stuff! I Would love an ebook version though.


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## Chris Lord (Feb 22, 2014)

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## Chris Lord (Feb 22, 2014)

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## Chris Lord (Feb 22, 2014)

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## DaniO (Oct 22, 2012)

Chris Vaughn said:


> I should take my thanks back, since I've done nothing since buying it.. ;-)


  I'm going on holiday tomorrow and was supposed to save the book until then. That plan didn't work out so well...


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

Carrie_Cox said:


> Secrets of the World's Bestselling Writer: The Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner. I stumbled across the kindle version of this this morning. Erle Stanley Gardner wrote the Perry Mason books and he was incredibly prolific.
> 
> Secrets of the World's Bestselling Writer: The Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner
> 
> ...


Bought, and thanks.


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## DanaG (Feb 13, 2011)

Drew, I should have mentioned that earlier! That book is the reason I write as fast as I do these days. I took the methods that worked for me, adapted them a little, and vastly upped my regular word count.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Peter Spenser said:


> I use Dragon Dictate for Mac. It took all of 5 minutes to train it to my voice and I LOVE it! It truly does (as their ads say) type at least three times faster than I can on my best day. One thing though: all dictation software expects you to speak well and clearly. I took public speaking in college, did the news and weather on the radio, and have done movie narration, so I have no trouble maintaining a good relationship with my software. (We're on speaking terms, you might say.  ) You can't be sloppy and speak to it the same way that you mumble to your friends while watching the game on TV and expect good results.


Do you dictate the punctuation, too, or add it in later? Punctuation trips me up when I try to dictate my stories. I don't speak that way, even though I obviously type with punctuation.


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## anotherpage (Apr 4, 2012)

Drew Gideon said:


> Carrie, you mentioned upping your word count.
> Have you checked out "2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love"?
> It's another great little craft book.


That book could have been summed up in 3 words

OUTLINE BEFORE WRITING

heck even one word.

OUTLINE

Other than that i found 2k to 10k not helpful.


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## anotherpage (Apr 4, 2012)

Cherise Kelley said:


> Do you dictate the punctuation, too, or add it in later? Punctuation trips me up when I try to dictate my stories. I don't speak that way, even though I obviously type with punctuation.


Curious how you find this software? Last time i tried it barely understood what i was saying and it ended up slower than typing.


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## David Alastair Hayden (Mar 19, 2011)

Cherise Kelley said:


> Do you dictate the punctuation, too, or add it in later? Punctuation trips me up when I try to dictate my stories. I don't speak that way, even though I obviously type with punctuation.





Cherise Kelley said:


> Do you dictate the punctuation, too, or add it in later? Punctuation trips me up when I try to dictate my stories. I don't speak that way, even though I obviously type with punctuation.


I dictate punctuation. It was awkward for about 10k words and then it was no big deal. It becomes natural after a while because in a way your brain is speaking it when you type, even if you don't mentally recite it or hear it. Of course, I'm rewriting a first draft by hand, so I'm rarely composing more than a sentence or two at a time that's completely new while dictating.

The only oddity I hit was after a long session one day, my wife asked me to read her something, and I kept reading off all the punctuation as I went.


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## David Alastair Hayden (Mar 19, 2011)

kalel said:


> Curious how you find this software? Last time i tried it barely understood what i was saying and it ended up slower than typing.


The software works great for me. It has no trouble with made up fantasy names. In fact, it recognized most without needing to be trained on how they sounded. I'm very impressed with it. I just bought a better mic than what ships with it. I'm even doing my revisions using a combo of mouse plus DNS.


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

kalel said:


> That book could have been summed up in 3 words
> 
> OUTLINE BEFORE WRITING


I got a bit more advice than that out of the "2K - 10K" book. Rachel Aaron talks about tracking your writing sessions to see when/where you have your optimal writing time and using that info to carve out the most efficient time of day and length for sessions. Taking a few minutes before each session to visualize what you're about to write (that's been the biggest help to me). It does suggest writing a mini-summery of the scene at the start of each session, but I usually just mentally walk through it. There's suggestions for when you're feeling uninspired, teasing out the elements you're most excited to write so that you go into the scene super motivated to get to those candy bar moments. Sure, it could all be distilled into a couple pages of bullet points, but most books could be. Of course, not everyone will get 10K out of it (I don't), but its good for a handful of tips and to get yourself revved up to write.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Drew Gideon said:


> Carrie, you mentioned upping your word count.
> Have you checked out "2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love"?
> It's another great little craft book.


I was just going to mention this book, for all the newer folks who might not have seen it. Very good analysis of how she upped her word count. The last time I looked, it was still .99, though she has a couple of blog posts that give the basic details.

I found it very helpful, even though I was already outlining, to get more focused on the things that worked for me.


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## DanaG (Feb 13, 2011)

kalel said:


> That book could have been summed up in 3 words
> 
> OUTLINE BEFORE WRITING
> 
> ...


The book cost 99 cents, and in terms of upping my word count and monthly output, the book has been the most helpful writing book I've ever purchased. There were numerous very specific suggestions in there, and I used those which I found helpful.


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## MichaelGK (Sep 21, 2012)

Gardner was helped in his early years by very close friend H Bedford Jones, a pulp writer who had a forty year career, and was one the top magazine writers in the first half of the twentieth century. Bedford Jones had a work ethic that involved writing 30,000 words a week, EVERY WEEK for 40 years. He considered anything less than 6,000 words a day as unacceptable laziness. For him, 5 hours of writing a day was sufficient to produce fiction, all of which sold. Also, in terms of a lineage, Bedford Jones was helped in HIS early days by William Wallace Cook, an extremely prolific writer of the late 19th and early 20th century. Ignore Plotto and read "The Fiction Factory" to see how a late Victorian writer approached his craft. As Bedford Jones said of his own work ethic "year in and out, an average of 30,000 words per week, or roughly a million and a quarter a year was his, young and old."


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## Jim Johnson (Jan 4, 2011)

Carrie_Cox said:


> Secrets of the World's Bestselling Writer: The Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner. I stumbled across the kindle version of this this morning. Erle Stanley Gardner wrote the Perry Mason books and he was incredibly prolific.
> 
> Secrets of the World's Bestselling Writer: The Storytelling Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner


Thanks for the recommendation! I bought it and started reading last week. So far it's a well worthwhile purchase. Note to prospective buyers--the formatting in some sections of the book, at least as displayed on my Kindle Touch, is lousy, particularly with tables and lists. I've seen the issue on less than 5% of the book so far, so that might be okay for you depending on your tolerance level.


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## David Alastair Hayden (Mar 19, 2011)

MichaelGK said:


> Gardner was helped in his early years by very close friend H Bedford Jones, a pulp writer who had a forty year career, and was one the top magazine writers in the first half of the twentieth century. Bedford Jones had a work ethic that involved writing 30,000 words a week, EVERY WEEK for 40 years. He considered anything less than 6,000 words a day as unacceptable laziness. For him, 5 hours of writing a day was sufficient to produce fiction, all of which sold. Also, in terms of a lineage, Bedford Jones was helped in HIS early days by William Wallace Cook, an extremely prolific writer of the late 19th and early 20th century. Ignore Plotto and read "The Fiction Factory" to see how a late Victorian writer approached his craft. As Bedford Jones said of his own work ethic "year in and out, an average of 30,000 words per week, or roughly a million and a quarter a year was his, young and old."


I may have misunderstood you, but William Wallace Cook wrote both Plotto and under a pseudonym The Fiction Factory.


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## MichaelGK (Sep 21, 2012)

David Alastair Hayden said:


> I may have misunderstood you, but William Wallace Cook wrote both Plotto and under a pseudonym The Fiction Factory.


Correct. I believe Cook wrote Plotto toward the end of his career.

As an aside, if we're talking about the most prolific writer of romance fiction, EVER, then the queen of that has to be Spanish novelist Corin Tellado who, between 1948 and 2008 wrote at some estimates around 4,000 to 5,000 novels. Work it out. Most of the novels were around 25,000 to 30,000 words long. Nobel prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa described Corin as a "sociocultural phenomenon". Corin wrote from 5am to 3pm every day for decades. Anyone who lived in Spain during that time thought she was actually a publishing house, and not an actual author, so pervasive was her presence on the bookstands.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Just an FYI: Francis Fugate, who wrote _Secrets of the World's Bestselling Writer_, also wrote a book titled _Viewpoint: Key to Fiction Writing_, which was an early and extremely useful how-to on solving writing problems through proper use of point-of-view characters. Worth reading if you can find a copy, perhaps on Bookfinder.com.


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## David Wisehart (Mar 2, 2010)

I found _Fiction Factory_ very inspiring. Those pulp writers had an amazing work ethic.

You can get the book for free here:

Fiction Factory


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## Fast Typist (May 9, 2013)

Thank you so much for recommending this book.  I bought it and have found it fascinating and useful.


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## DaniO (Oct 22, 2012)

Drew Gideon said:


> Carrie, you mentioned upping your word count.
> Have you checked out "2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love"?
> It's another great little craft book.


 Thanks, Drew. I have got a copy and I did find it useful. Thinking through a scene and handwriting a few lines before I start typing has been very helpful. I think my major problem is laziness


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## DaniO (Oct 22, 2012)

Jim Johnson said:


> Thanks for the recommendation! I bought it and started reading last week. So far it's a well worthwhile purchase. Note to prospective buyers--the formatting in some sections of the book, at least as displayed on my Kindle Touch, is lousy, particularly with tables and lists. I've seen the issue on less than 5% of the book so far, so that might be okay for you depending on your tolerance level.


The tables were a mess on my paperwhite too until I reduced the font to a very small size and all the columns fit on the page. Not ideal.


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## DaniO (Oct 22, 2012)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> Just an FYI: Francis Fugate, who wrote _Secrets of the World's Bestselling Writer_, also wrote a book titled _Viewpoint: Key to Fiction Writing_, which was an early and extremely useful how-to on solving writing problems through proper use of point-of-view characters. Worth reading if you can find a copy, perhaps on Bookfinder.com.


Thanks, Robert. I will try and find a copy.


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## DaniO (Oct 22, 2012)

Cherise Kelley said:


> Do you dictate the punctuation, too, or add it in later? Punctuation trips me up when I try to dictate my stories. I don't speak that way, even though I obviously type with punctuation.


Dictating punctuation slows me way down too. If I am dictating, I use transcription. I use a Phillips Voice Tracer dictaphone and the only punctuation I speak is full stop (period) and new line. Then I used Dragon Dictate 4 to transcribe, which is far more accurate than the previous version, and add in the punctuation as I edit.
I need to say "new line" for each paragraph otherwise I will end up with a huge block of text, but I find it much easier to add in the rest of the punctuation later when I do my first round of editing.



David Wisehart said:


> I found _Fiction Factory_ very inspiring. Those pulp writers had an amazing work ethic.
> 
> You can get the book for free here:
> 
> Fiction Factory


 Thanks, this is next on my TBR list.


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## SophieStrand (Nov 26, 2015)

I found this book thanks to you!! Also, I know this is a kindle board but I saw the paperback version of Secrets of the World's Best Selling Writer is now out and I'm delighted since I had a really old copy I wanted to replace. Might be my favorite writing reference book of all time, glad to see there are other fans!

http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Worlds-Best-Selling-Writer-Storytelling/dp/1631680307/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1448495585&sr=8-1


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## devalong (Aug 28, 2014)

Carrie_Cox said:


> Now I just need to find the kindle version of the Michael Moorcock book about his method and I'll be happy.


Elric!

I have no other point to add here .


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## mojomikey (Apr 9, 2014)

Amazon's listing paperback copies of this from 14.44, if anyone prefers a hardcopy and doesn't want to fork over $95 for the hardback. Looks like it's a POD - plenty of new copies available


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## Guest (Nov 26, 2015)

I just grabbed a paperback version and used Amazon's 30% off voucher


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## SugarBear57 (Aug 28, 2014)

I'm excited by this. I have a vague memory of seeing this on a bookshelf and then sadly passing it by as too expensive. But $10 is reasonable.

If I really like it, I may pick up a paper copy to mark up. Notes and highlights on my Kindle are no substitutes for the real thing. That HOLIDAY30 code is awesome...I've been thinking of picking up a print book with it. Last time that they had it, I pre-ordered Terry Pratchett's illustrated children's book, something about a crumbling castle.


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## Steve Vernon (Feb 18, 2011)

I remember reading a library copy of this book about twenty years ago. I read it right through. Definitely a worthwhile read - especially at that price.


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## SophieStrand (Nov 26, 2015)

Ahh I know...I do use the notes feature on kindle but what is it about those yellow sticky notes on all my favorite book pages just so useful and accessible! Hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving!!


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