Tips from a New York Times best-selling novelist

  Boston-based best-selling author of "The Art Forger", B.A. Shapiro, failed to find overnight writing success. As a novelist, she wrote five books but sales were dismal, causing her to give up fulltime writing and seek work in business and academia. But eventually she returned, determined to follow a blueprint laid out in a how-to book on "how to write blockbuster novels". Three more failures followed before she decided to dump the rules and write about something that interested her.
 The result was her New York Times best-seller, "The Art Forger."
Shapiro offers good advice to aspiring novelists:

• Avoid “eye bumps,” or things that disrupt the reader. These can be unusual words, unnecessary digressions or even too much information.
• Don’t let your research show. An author may have to read countless books and build a database of information in order to be knowledgeable enough on the topic of a novel in the works, but that doesn’t mean the reader needs to have any clue about this. While Shapiro was fascinated by art forgery, she said she only “sprinkled in” information about the practice in about five places throughout “The Art Forger.” In other words, only include the necessary information, no matter how many notecards, sticky notes and spreadsheets of research has been compiled.
• Work from a plot. Shapiro says she needs to know the beginning, middle and end of the story she is about to embark on, despite the fact these will change, sometimes radically.
• Join a writer's group where the members critique each other’s work. This allowed her to make the necessary tweaks and cuts that made “The Art Forger” such a hit with readers.
• Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, pick a topic you love. This is a must, when you consider an author must spend several years with these characters and subjects.

Visit B.A. Shapiro's website 

You can read my short stories free online at www.hiltonhamann.com