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During a ThrillerFest panel moderated by author Nancy Bilyeau (Joanna Stafford series), authors Brenda Novak (Whiskey Creek series), Chelsea Cain (Gretchen Lowell series), Ben Lieberman (Odd Jobs) and Michael Sears (Mortal Bonds) discussed book and series endings, and how they hope readers feel after reading them. Here are some highlights.

This column by Adrienne Crezo, managing editor of Writer’s Digest
magazine. You can find her on Twitter as @a_crezo.

Brenda Novak: “I’m not a plotter, so oftentimes I’ll find out at the end who the villain is right along with the reader. … [At the end], I really feel as if I want my readers to have a sense of denouement, a sense of fulfillment. But I don’t want to tie it all up too neatly.”

Chelsea Cain: “Sometimes you make a reader unhappy, and that’s ok. Think of Romeo & Juliet, Where the Red Fern Grows. It’s sad, and we want it to be less sad. That tension of unfulfilled desire is a tempting one [to resolve], but that’s a mistake. …

And I’m not obsessive in terms of editing. I won’t spend a poet’s time on each word … but I’ll spend hours on that last sentence. Sometimes 80 hours, just on that one piece, because it’s so important.”

Ben Lieberman: “I would say [I want readers to feel] exhausted. I think the feeling of being exhausted, like they’ve been through a journey, is important [to the ending].”

Michael Sears: “As a child, I always wanted Shane [of the 1953 film, Shane] to come back. As an adult, I understand that it was the perfect ending. I think a lot of people appreciate ambiguity and making their own decisions about what happens [at the end].”

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On Friday, a ThrillerFest panel moderated by WD contributing editor and author Steven James (Jevin Banks series) discussed whether or not literary themes and symbols interfere with a story. Here are the highlights from the panel, which included A.X. Ahmad (the Ranjit Singh trilogy), Linwood Barclay (A Tap on the Window), Carla Buckley (The Deepest Secret), Chevy Stevens (That Night), Mike Pace (Dead Light) and Jamie Freveletti (Dead Asleep).

This column by Adrienne Crezo, managing editor of Writer’s Digest
magazine. You can find her on Twitter as @a_crezo.

James: What is the difference between a theme and a symbol?

Buckley: “For me, the difference is that a theme is a running occurrence, whereas a symbol is a clue you give the reader to the themes you’re using.”

Barclay: “I am probably not an intellectual or artsy enough writer to use symbolism in my books, but themes drive the action. Mental illness and the economic downturn are running themes for me, but they drive the action and they cause the characters to do things they wouldn’t normally do.”

Freveletti: “I’ve been writing the fifth [book] in my series, [which is] placed in Africa. And the theme is slavery, which still exists in Africa. One problem I did notice is that to write about a theme that’s that powerful, it’s easy to slip into preachiness. That’s the only drawback I’ve run into so far to using a strong emotional theme.”

Stevens: “I never consciously think when I start a book, What’s the theme I’m going to use? But one theme that recurs is survival. How do you overcome these things that are happening to you? In symbolism, I don’t think its conscious, but I tend to use animals as symbols for themes for my characters. In one, a woman associates a duck with the idea of freedom, and in another, a cat reminds a woman of her daughter.

Ahmad: “My [book] was told from the point of view of an immigrant, and that was a conscious decision because I am an immigrant. I think we’re all drawn to symbolically charged material, but I think our jobs as writers is to make the characters as specific and real as possible. We take the abstract and make it concrete.”

Pace: “I wonder which came first, symbolism or the English major. You’re probably familiar with the story of [To Kill Mockingbird author] Harper Lee, who was at a Harvard lecture where students kept asking her about a particular symbol in her book, which she insisted wasn’t there. … And eventually, this professor stands up and says, ‘Excuse me, madam, but you are wrong!’ I think that most of us here, to some extent there are symbols in our writing, but they come organically. If you go in and try to insert them it’s going to go badly.”

James: “I believe that you should never write from a theme and avoid as much symbolism as possible.”

Buckley: “I am strongly of the opinion that the reason [my books are published] is that … I figured out that if I start with a theme, then it helps my work … become very clean and focused.”

Barclay: “I think [obvious symbolism] is about how artful the author is. It’s like they’re walking around with a sign … saying Here’s the theme! Here’s the symbol!”

Stevens: “Themes for me are personal, still. I think it’s a theme that runs through my life. I’m fascinated by family dysfunction, powerlessness and survival. I’m not consciously doing it, but they … run through my life.”

Ahmad: “Writers are very weird people. If you choose to sit in a room by yourself making stuff up day in and day out as an adult, you are weird. What we’re calling themes—politely, euphemistically—are obsessions. And writing those themes is working out those obsessions.”

Freveletti: “If you’re writing a book and you have a theme that’s [so] obvious [that a reader stops engaging], then you’re doing it really wrong. That’s a problem you get in every genre.”

James: “[Flannery O’Connor said], ‘When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one.’ Do you all agree?”

Pace: “I guess I agree. It’s the same thing we were talking about earlier … Trying to jam in a particular theme or a particular symbol, it’s not natural. If you can turn a cliché symbol on its head it can be interesting.”

Barclay: “I think [that the key to] that quote from Flannery O’Connor is to boil it down. ‘Don’t overthink it.’ If you’re trying to make your work sound more important than it is, your reader is going to see through it.”

Ahmad: “I want to make a distinction between plot and theme. Your plot can be boiled down to a very clear plotline that someone can grasp, is very clear to the reader, and can still have very rich themes.”

James: “Do you want readers to identify your themes and symbols?”

Buckley: “Absolutely not.”

James: “Then what’s the purpose?”

Buckley: “It’s to bring the reader to me and into my world. I don’t want my reader to say ‘Oh, that’s about a mother,’ … but I do want them to say ‘That relates to me and my life.’”

Barclay: “Themes in particular are just texture, an extra layer. I don’t read [a book and] think Wow, I love the family dysfunction theme. The theme just [makes] books richer.”

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On Friday, author Sandra Brannan (Liv Bergen Mystery series) moderated a ThrillerFest panel including authors Linwood Barclay (A Tap on the Window), Laura Benedict (Bliss House), Linda Fairstein (Alex Cooper crime series) and Reavis Wortham (Red River Mystery series). Here are the stories of how their book ideas began.

This column by Adrienne Crezo, managing editor of Writer’s Digest
magazine. You can find her on Twitter as @a_crezo.

Laura Benedict

On Bliss House: “Haunted houses aren’t born, they’re made. Rainey Bliss Adams [my main character] talks about how people imprint themselves on houses. And families live in houses, and give a place so much energy. And there’s just nothing more twisted than families. I don’t know where this came from; I had a perfectly normal childhood, but I understand other people’s families are twisted.”

On Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts: “I really hated being a teenager, and I didn’t really have a lot of close girlfriends, but I had a friend named Roxanne. She had a sister who was a witch before there was Wicca, and witches just did … spells and things. Roxanne worshiped her sister and she would go out and steal cemetery stones and hide them under her bed. And I was raised Roman Catholic, so with Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts … these girls build this man they call a lover but he’s really a priest, and then a demon gets involved.”

Linda Fairstein

On Death Angel: “When Central Park was built in the 1860s, they realized that if they didn’t make a park there that it would be just concrete. There were 60 houses, an African-American community, that were razed to the ground. I was trying to find a way to use the fact that there are houses and cemeteries and schools under the park. So I used the character to unlayer parts of the city in a historical way. … When I found out about Seneca Village, it just staggered me that you could dig a hole in the ground and come up with a teacup that was used by a person who used to live where the park is. “

Reavis Wortham

On his Red River Mystery Series: “I dream them. I got to sleep and I dream things that are so real to me, it’s like living. There are houses in my dreams that I can literally draw the blueprints, and it would go on for miles. There are doors I’ve never opened. I wake up and take notes. … The first chapter on Burrows started out as a short story based on a challenge from Stephen King many years ago, to take a short story and turn it on its head. It just kept bubbling in my head and I couldn’t put it down.”

Linwood Barclay

In general: “Because I write about regular people, the weapons of choice are often very mundane. And because I myself am a person of caution, I look at everyday things as dangerous weapons. Those steak knives in the dishwasher are a real hazard.”

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On Saturday, ThrillerFest ThrillerMasters Sandra Brown (Unspeakable), R.L. Stine (Goosebumps) and David Morrell (First Blood) got together for a chat on the craft hosted by Peter James. As James said, these are giants of the genre—and “each of them would make E.L. James turn 50 shades of green.”

Here are their writing processes and where they get their ideas.

SANDRA BROWN

WRITING PROCESS

Brown started writing when her children were young, so she would take them to preschool and then write in the small timeframe when they were gone. That process informed the rest of her career.

“I think I’ve always kind of patterned my day after basic banker’s hours,” she said. “It’s generally 9-5 for that reason, because they were in school. Nowadays I go to an office, and I typically deal with correspondence and things like that for a couple of hours, and then I start writing.”

Brown also has ritual escapes.

“Several times a year I go completely away,” she said. While gone, she has no appointments, and she turns off her social life. “Those are my favorite times. That’s when I just totally immerse myself in the book. My favorite day is the day when I have maybe like 8 hours of nothing, except just make believe.”

WHERE SHE GETS HER IDEAS

“When I finish a book, I start looking around and thinking what I’ll write about next. I’m always totally convinced I’ll never have another idea. Sometimes it takes a while, and sometimes it comes very rapidly. Not all ideas want to be books.”

“In terms of where I get the ideas, sometimes I can tell you very specifically, ‘I read this in the newspaper,’ or, ‘I heard this in conversation’ or ‘I saw this on a television program’ … and then other times I have absolutely no idea.”

R.L. STINE

WRITING PROCESS

“Kids think you just sit down and start writing. I always tell them you never do that.” Instead, Stine plans and outlines extensively. “If you do enough planning before you start to write, there’s no way you can have writer’s block. I do a complete chapter by chapter outline.” Stine said his readers hate to hear that—“And I hate it, too. But I can’t work without it.” Once he has his outline, Stine can then sit at his desk and know how he’s going to get to The End. “I know it all. And the writing is just fun because I’ve done the hard part.” Stine works about six days a week, and generates 10 pages a day—typing with only one “magic finger.” “I used to do it faster, but that was before email and Twitter, which is a horrible distraction. And I’m too stupid to turn it off.”

WHERE HE GETS HIS IDEAS

Stine has one of the most unconventional processes out there—he gets his ideas from titles. For instance, he was once walking his dog, and he thought, “Little Shop of Hamsters.” That’s a great title. Coming up with a title sets him to pondering, and then he creates a fictional universe and plot around it. “It leads me to the story, and I do that all the time.”

For much, much more about Stine’s writing process, read our full profile of the bestseller here:
More & More & More Tales To Give You Goosebumps (Yeah, We’re Talking About R.L. Stine)

In her insightful panel “Life or Work? Balancing Life’s Demands With Writing,” moderator Joan Johnston (Shattered, Hawk’s Way) quizzed a group of established publishing pros about how, exactly, you can quiet daily demands so that you can get those voices in your head down on the page and into the hands of readers.

David Bell (Cemetery Girl)

Bell said he excels at compartmentalizing. “I just think you have to be able to do that,” he said. And, “You have to be able to communicate with people in your life.” Simply explain to them that you have to do this work—it’s important to you, and it must be done.

Bell later added that you should not delay the pursuit of your dream. “Be patient, but don’t wait. … Start today, because the sooner you start the sooner you’re on the road to doing it. I always say you have to write bad stuff before you write good stuff.”

Literary Agent Josh Getzler

Getzler has three young kids at home, and he described his house as a whirlwind when he gets off work. So, he wakes up at 5 a.m. and works for a couple hours before all the chaos starts up. Like Bell, he also believes in the power of communication. Sometimes, he’ll simply tell his family that they can’t go out that week until he has done the necessary writing. “It’s always very much a challenge, and it’s never easy,” he said.

Later, when you have a manuscript ready to go and you’ve submitted it, Getzler said patience is key. “Luck is important, and patience is vital.”

Melodie Johnson Howe (Shooting Hollywood)

It’s an epidemic you may be familiar with—“When you say ‘I’m writing,’ people don’t always take that seriously,” Howe said. But writers have to find time to write. To keep her prose life productive, Howe said she has conditioned herself so that when her kids and husband interrupt her, she can still keep her train of thought going. “They get what they want, I get what I need,” she said.

Ultimately, “You put your ass in that chair, and you sit down and write. You just have to commit to it.”

Vladimir Lange (Fatal Memories)

To make the most of his writing time, when he goes to bed Lange visualizes the problem he’s trying to solve in his manuscript. When he wakes up the next morning, he goes straight to his work-in-progress, because if he permits any distractions to interfere, he can’t easily slip back into the creative mode.

Overall, Lange’s advice to those who want to be writers is to first focus on mastering the basics at courses, seminars, etc.—you don’t want to spend three years writing a book, only to find out you’ve broken some big no-nos that will doom the book.

Nancy Naigle (Sweet Tea And Secrets)

With a background in the banking industry, Naigle identified herself as a lister and a planner. She writes her goals out, knows her timelines, and comes up with solutions for what will help her achieve those goals. “The biggest thing you can do is just remember we do make time for the things we want to do and we love. I think you have to remember to put your own things first. … ”

In a scene from one of author Ted Dekker’s novels, a man gets a chicken out of the freezer—and then beats someone to death with it. It’s a wild image, and a strange, captivating scene.

But when it comes down to it, how do scenes like this actually thrill, and how do they keep readers hooked? Is it because it’s action? Is it because of the violence?

No. And this is something that kept coming up in various panels and sessions at ThrillerFest: When it boils down to it, it’s all about the character, and the emotion.

In the case of the chicken incident: Who is this guy? Why did he do it?

If characters aren’t brought to life through solid development and the other key ingredients that span all forms of writing, the action will mean nothing—even in thrillers, a genre that often features a surplus of action.

“Action bores me, so I search for the deeper meaning behind the action,” Dekker said in Jon Land’s panel “How Do You Amp Up the Action Without Losing All Credibility?” “I want to be moved.”

It’s key to consider the why. Why is someone running for their life? Why does this spy care so much about saving this one person? Dekker said the reader has to identify with a challenge they find in themselves.

Author Lisa Jackson said imbuing each character with a motivation for their actions is the most difficult part of her writing. After all, she said, anyone can write about someone doing something wild. It’s the emotional resonance that brings everything to life.

Like his famous protagonist, Jack Reacher, Lee Child is a bit of a rogue badass—especially when it comes to his thoughts on writing, and debunking popular writing rules.

In his ThrillerFest session “Tell, Don’t Show: Why Writing Rules are Mostly Wrong,” Child battled a few of the biggest writing myths out there, and explained what really keeps a reader reading until The End.

Show, Don’t Tell

Picture this: In a novel, a character wakes up and looks at himself in the mirror, noting his scars and other physical traits for the reader.

“It is completely and utterly divorced from real life,” Child said.

So why do writers do this? Child said it’s because they’ve been beaten down by the rule of Show, Don’t Tell. “They manufacture this entirely artificial thing.”

“We’re not story showers,” Child said. “We’re story tellers.”

Child said there’s nothing wrong with simply saying the character was 6 feet tall, with scars.

After all, he added—do your kids ever ask you to show them a story? They ask you to tell them a story. Do you show a joke? No, you tell it.

“There is nothing wrong with just telling the story,” Child said. “So liberate yourself from that rule.”

Child believes the average reader doesn’t care at all about telling, showing, etc. He or she just wants something to latch onto, something to carry them through the book. By following too many “rules,” you can lose your readers.

Don’t Start With the Weather

“If the weather is what’s on your mind, start with it,” Child said.

Simply put, all-time great Alistair MacLean did it all the time. Enough said.

Suspense is Created by X, Y, or Z

For instance: Suspense is created by having sympathetic characters. More and more, Child said, this rule doesn’t add up. Case in point: In The Runaway Jury by John Grisham, Child said there isn’t a sympathetic character in the entire book—there are bad guys, and worse guys. Instead of sympathetic characters, the book is driven by what the verdict of the trial at the heart of the story will be.

“And that’s how you create suspense,” he said—it all boils down to asking a question and making people wait for the answer.

Child added that one thing he has learned throughout his career as a television writer and novelist is that humans are hard-wired to want the answer to a question. When the remote control was invented, it threw the TV business through a loop. How would you keep people around during a commercial? So TV producers started posing a question at the start of the commercial break, and answering it when the program returned. (Think sports—Who has the most career grand slams?) Even if you don’t care about the answer, Child said, you stick around because you’re intrigued.

Ultimately, he said writing rules make the craft more complicated than it really is—when it comes down to it, it’s a simple thing.

“The way to write a thriller is to ask a question a the beginning, and answer it at the end,” he said.

When he’s crafting his books, Child doesn’t know the answer to his question, and he writes scene by scene—he’s just trying to answer the question as he goes through, and he keeps throwing different complications in that he’ll figure out later. And that very well may be the key to his sharp, bestselling prose.

“For me the end of a book is just as exciting as it is for a reader,” he said.

Bestseller Ann Rule had a heck of a journey to becoming a writer—something she never really wanted to be in the first place. “All I ever wanted to be was a police officer,” she told the crowd in her ThrillerFest session “How to Stalk a Serial Killer and Tell the Gruesome Tale: All You Need to Know to Write Great True Crime.” “The one thing I knew I didn’t want to be was a writer.” Rule thought it was all too hard—heck, you’d have to rewrite what you already wrote.

As a kid, she would visit her grandpa, who was a sheriff, but to see him she’d have to go to the jail. There, she was given the job of bringing prisoners their meals. From an early age, she was fascinated by crime—not the how, but the why.

“I think that we come to our genre naturally,” she said.

Following her passions over the years, she took any ridealong with law enforcement she could get. Attended classes. Got an associate’s degree in criminal science.

And along the way, she began writing, collected innumerable rejections, and penned pieces for true detective magazines, which she realized could pay the bills.

“You have to write about what you know about,” she said.

Back then, not even her children slowed her down. “Unless the kids were actually fighting on top of the typewriter, I could keep writing.”

And then there’s the famous story that led her to her first book, her breakout The Stranger Beside Me.

Her brother had committed suicide, so she decided to volunteer at the crisis clinic in Seattle. The clinic paired volunteers with work-study students. At night, they’d be locked up in the building all alone together. Her partner was a psychology student getting paid $2 per hour.

His name was Ted Bundy.

After his crimes became apparent, Rule attended Bundy’s trial, and the rest of the story is history, amazingly documented in The Stranger Beside Me.

Her writing passion went on to encompass documenting the suspects and victims involved in crimes, and describing their lives before their paths crossed—along the lines of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

In her presentation, Rule pointed out that pros are always saying that you only have a 1/10 of 1 percent shot at becoming a professional writer. But she decided that she was going to be in that 1/10 of 1 percent.

“You can’t let the naysayers make think you can’t make it, because you can,” she said.

If you want to be a true crime writer, Rule said the best thing you can be is immensely curious. And, you should go to trials—something anyone can do. From a life spent in courtrooms, here are Rule’s tips and etiquette for doing just that.

1. You can usually get a press pass, but there’s often a deluge of writers trying to obtain one. Rule calls the prosecutor’s assistant.
2. Study the witnesses, watch the jury, and soak up the entire experience.
3. Try to obtain the court documents from the court reporter or the prosecutor, or purchase them.
4. Observe the other reporters in the room, and analyze what they’re doing.
5. If you’re sitting out in the hall with potential witnesses, don’t ask them about anything. You can comment on the weather or the courtroom benches being hard, but “Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth pretty shut.”
6. Don’t take newspapers into the courtroom.
7. Know what you’re getting yourself into. “You don’t want to start a nonfiction unless you’re really in love with it, and usually you want a go-ahead from an editor.”
8. Absorb detail. “When I’m writing a true-crime book I want the reader to walk along with me.” Rule describes the temperature, how the air feels—“I think it’s very important to set the scene.” As far as the writing, you can novelize, but keep all of your facts straight.
9. Don’t use the real name of a rape or sexual crime victim in your writing. (Though
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Author and marketing guru (and former WD columnist) MJ Rose capped the day of ThrillerFest sessions off with “Buzz Your Book: And the New Reality.”

… So what’s the new reality?

According to Rose:

1. No book ever really dies—they can all live on the internet forever.
2. An old book is a new book to anyone who hasn’t read it before.
3. No one really cares if a book is new. The key is that it’s good.

So what does all that mean? Rose said that essentially you can promote your book for as long as you want. There will always be new readers out there, and it’s just a matter of reaching them.

With that in mind, here are some marketing essentials from Rose and her co-presenter, publicity expert Meryl Moss. As Rose said, “There’s no one thing you can do to have success, but if you have a plan and you keep doing things, you’ll eventually build to a success.”

A website: But, you just want a simple static page. After all, Rose said, nobody is going to wake up and go on a hunt for an author they don’t know about yet. So save some money on your site so you can spend the rest on other things.

Giveaways: Rose noted that word of mouth is the holy grail of selling books. But, people need to know about your book to spread the word about it. So early on, do some giveaways. Handpick key people who would be good to spread your word to the right readers.

A newsletter list: This is vital. Rose pointed out that people tend to regard collecting email addresses as an antiquated strategy, but they’re wrong. For instance: She collected oodles of MySpace friends, but then MySpace faded into obscurity. Which wouldn’t have happened with email. So collect those addresses, and spread the word when your book is about to debut—after all, she said, presales count toward your first week sales, which publishers have their eye on.

A YouTube channel: Also key nowadays. And, in fact, Rose said there’s talk among marketing circles that YouTube channels will be the next Facebook.

Blogs: Blogs are a simple way to engage with your audience, and anyone can blog. Joint blogs—blogging alongside other authors to expand your collective reach and narrow the workload, also is a great strategy. But, content is key: Rose said you don’t want to have five writers blogging together about “our first novel”—readers don’t want to read about writers writing. Instead, blog on a topical hook that readers care about.

Newsfeeds: Establish yourself as a go-to source on your topic. Rose said to set up a Google Alert (google.com/alerts) so that every time your topic is mentioned, Google will send you an email notification. Then, provide those on your blog. Sooner or later, people will come to you for the info, and moreover, will be led to your book.

Flexing your expertise: Moss said to pitch articles on different topics related to your novel. For instance, if your thriller is about China and you’re well-versed on the subject, pitch a nonfiction article on something that hasn’t been written about before—and, of course, at the end of the piece, include your byline with your name and book. Rose added that for example you could do pieces on how Americans order food in China, or even log into Twitter and do a Chinese Custom of the Day tweet.

Pinterest: Pinterest is a social network based on visuals. People basically post images that they like, and then others repost them on their pages, disseminating the image. But authors can take it a step further (as we covered in the September 2012 issue of WD [LINK]): Rose said she has a Pinterest board for one of her characters, one about roses (given her last name), one illustrating the first chapter of one of her books. “It’s really a fabulous thing to explore, and everybody should be looking into it,” she said. At the end of the day, when

Want to write a thriller, but stuck on the beginning? Novelist Daniel Palmer uses his own experience and that of his father (bestseller Michael Palmer) and lays out the essentials to get you on your way.

1. Choose your rhino.

Michael Palmer once was asked to describe writing a book. His answer? Writing a book is like following a recipe for rhinoceros stew. The first step of which is to find the rhino—which isn’t your plot, character or hook. It’s that huge idea that defines the book, such as a deadly virus. Daniel’s latest rhino was identity theft.

2. Formulate the What-If question.

Daniel said to think of this essentially as your elevator pitch—that pithy, snappy description of your book you should have at the ready should you be stuck in an elevator with an agent or editor. Cap it at two sentences, 25 words. It needs to be as tight as possible, and it shouldn’t delve into things like characters or plot twists. “I spend days doing those two sentences, and I would urge you to do the same with yours,” Daniel said.

One What-If example from Michael’s work: What if everybody involved in a surgery six years ago is being murdered one by one?

3. Answer the What-If question.

The answer to this pivotal question is what’s known as the MacGuffin: the reason people think they’re reading the book. (MacGuffins can be a confusing subject, but they’re key.) Ultimately, Daniel said the answer is that it doesn’t matter—people read to the end of a book for the characters. But you need something to keep them flipping pages. The MacGuffin is simply that tool that gets them to stay with the characters.

Daniel said when you have the answer to your What-If, you should file it away and forget about it for a while. If you focus solely on the MacGuffin, your book will be plot-heavy and bogged down by it, and you’ll have lost your readers.

4. Figure out who you’re going to write about.

“You’re looking for your character who’s got the absolute most at stake, and that’s the person who you want your story to be about.” Daniel said to develop your arc as they go along, chasing the MacGuffin, and they’ll change and grow.

5. Write on.

Daniel likes to think of plot as a “cannibal’s stew”—a simmering cauldron into which you drop your character in. Once he’s inside, it boils. But you don’t have your character simply jump out—you slam a lid on the cauldron and nail it shut so your character has to figure out how to survive the plot.

In her session at ThrillerFest, Catherine Coulter—who has had a stunning 62 New York Times bestsellers—shared her wisdoms on how to “Kill ‘Em Clean: Writing Sharp, Fast and Deadly.” These are the basics, Coulter said, you must master before you worry about finding an agent, or dive too deeply into your book.

“Always kill with lean writing,” she said. “Sloppy writing is not acceptable. … You don’t want to end up being a murder victim in your own book.”

1. Nix the adjectives.

“Treat adverbs like cloves of garlic,” Coulter said. “A few go a long way.” Moreover, listen to the way your prose sounds—“If you wouldn’t say something aloud, then don’t write it. All you’ve got to do is read it aloud, and therein lies the truth.” Coulter added that nothing any of us write is set in stone—you’re allowed to tear up the bad stuff, and start anew.

2. Avoid other words for “said,” and avoid redundancies.

Cut “She joked.” “He quipped.” “Damn you to hell, he yelled furiously.” As Coulter said, it’s like writing, “I’m sorry, he apologized.” You don’t need all the excess word fat. You want to be as straightforward as possible. Coulter said every time you use a substitute for “said,” the reader blinks—and you’ve pulled him out of the scene. Instead, you want constant forward motion. “Never let him escape with weak writing. … You’ve got to trust yourself that what the characters say will indicate clearly what they’re thinking and feeling.”

3. Excise the exclamation marks.

In Coulter’s opinion, you’re allowed three per book. Ditch the rest. Good prose shouldn’t require them, except in rare cases. “Three is all you get, so use them wisely.”

4. Forget the euphemisms.

Blue orbs for eyes? Nope. Coulter said to make your prose nuanced—you want the perfect word to convey your exact meaning, and you don’t want your readers to get stalled out for even a millisecond.

5. Don’t fall into stereotypes.

“Make your characters unique and true to themselves”—especially bad guys. “Make them real.” And concerning physical appearance, make your characters stunning knockouts only if that’s a key factor in how fellow characters see them. Coulter once gave a character a broken nose to prevent him from being too handsome. “Have a very good reason for whatever you do.” And give characters some sort of “tag,” some quirk that will make them real.

6. Use caution in sex scenes.

They’re difficult to pull off. Coulter’s advice: “Do not, on pain of death, do nitty gritty body parts.” “And do not overwrite.” “Don’t use dialogue that would make the reader barf.” Make the scenes funny and fun.

7. Avoid endless introspection.

Pacing is key, Coulter said. And too much introspection kills pacing. Furthermore, she said that if a character can say something aloud instead of think it, then by all means say it aloud.

8. Skip over-the-top violence and language.

Have an intense violent scene that doesn’t actually do anything for the plot of the story? Cut it. “If you’re doing it for shock value, it’s gratuitous and you don’t need it.”

9. “And above all, don’t take yourself too seriously.”

I’m going to go ahead and toss the illusion of journalistic objectivity out the window for a second, and put this on the table: I love ThrillerFest.

We sponsor it every year, and in 2011 I attended for the first time. I was blown away. There are craft sessions taught by bestselling writers. Lively panels. A pitch slam. Some of the most fun cocktail parties in publishing (I was reduced to a giggling teenager when I saw Margaret Atwood wandering around).

Perhaps the best part: Everyone is approachable, from the debut authors to the heavy hitters.

This year, ThrillerFest is July 11-14 in New York. Of the dozens and dozens of authors on hand, Jack Higgins, R.L. Stine, Lee Child, Catherine Coulter, John Sandford, Ann Rule, Richard North Patterson and Karin Slaughter will be there.

And here’s the scoop on how you can be part of it. Executive director Kimberley Howe is giving one WD reader a Day Pass for Friday, July 13—one of the best days of the conference. The pass includes full access to all ThrillerFest programming for the day, as well as a ticket to the Love is Murder cocktail party that celebrates the release of the International Thriller Writers’ third anthology.

Event programming runs from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and includes spotlight interviews with Lee Child and Catherine Coulter. Former FBI and counterterrorism expert David Major will also share his tales from his days at the White House.

… So how do you win the pass? Easy enough.

In the comments section below, just tell us who your favorite thriller writer is by 2 p.m. next Friday. We’ll put all the names of the commenters into a hat and randomly draw one winner. We’ll announce the winner Monday, July 19.

Good luck! Hope to see you there.

For more on ThrillerFest, visit thrillerfest.com.

Now, back to being objective and such.

Zachary Petit is an award-winning journalist, the managing editor of Writer’s Digest magazine, and the co-author of A Year of Writing Prompts: 366 Story Ideas for Honing Your Craft and Eliminating Writer’s Block.

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Wish you had gone to Thrillerfest and heard all the authors talk about how they write their books?

Now you can read tips and tricks from over a dozen authors in one post.

How do you create a villain? We’ve rounded up some handy tips from around the literary world.

1. During her talk at CraftFest, suspense author Gayle Lynds said that “without a great villain, your hero has no one to play against.” She felt that all characters should be fully-developed human beings; heroes have to have flaws and “villains aren’t necessarily total monsters.”

2. Writer Kari Allen tweeted with this bit of advice on writing villains: “I heard Katherine Patterson speak recently and she said if you can’t find yourself in your villains, rewrite.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

At Thrillerfest, Michael Palmer shared three tips for writing a thriller:
1. Formulate a what-if question
2. Develop a MacGuffin.
3. Answer the question, Whose book is this?

Read more details here.

A ThrillerFest panel last week tackled this question: “Can a thriller be both exciting and smart?” Participants included authors Linwood Barclay, Joseph Finder, Kathleen George, Andrew Gross, Andrew Pyper and Matt Richtel. David Liss moderated the panel.

During the discussion, the participants picked Dennis LeHane‘s Shutter Island, Joseph Conrad‘s Heart of Darkness, and William Landay‘s upcoming Defending Jacob as their favorite smart thrillers.

Below, we’ve included five tips for writing smart thrillers from the discussion.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

At CraftFest, the writing school component of ThrillerFest in New York City, novelist Gayle Lynds shared “The Seven Steps to Suspense” in fiction.

For one step, Lynds (pictured, via) focused on mood and description in a novel. She advised authors to always be aware of a story’s mood, warning that “writers sometimes ruin a book by adding a lighthearted mood at the wrong moment.”

Lynds also offered two pieces of advice for mastering the thriller mood. First, read and study 50 suspense novels. Then grab another twenty books from different genres (i.e. romance, historical, literary, etc.) and pay special attention to the opening scenes. You will soon recognize the specific mood of each genre.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.