10 Mystical Maxims for the Modern Writer

Offered for your perusal - questions are welcome:

1. Any type of reader will have made a decision of some sort regarding your work in the first fifteen seconds, probably less. What can you do to capture attention in less than 15 seconds?

2. Creative activity is constant, but not always conscious.

3. The task of a writer is to break down the barriers between writing and thinking.

3. All readers love, and are secretly looking for, a rhythm which will ease them into a piece of writing, fiction or non-fiction. Reading is a pleasure based on rhythm.

4. A book or story or essay is an attention-manipulating device: first it draws in attention, then it directs and re-directs it, then it focuses it.

5. The main theme of your work should be apparent on its first page, even if heavily disguised.

6. Successful fiction acts like a funnel - it draws attention in broad swathes, then focuses it with laser precision on an outcome.

7. Readers like to see gaps. Gaps, holes, missing things, are the essence of rhythm.

8. To win with fiction, capture first, guide second and focus third.

9. Fiction is built around a hole - that’s what makes it interesting.

10. Obviousness is the brake; mystery or lack of known outcome is the accelerator.