Please join me in welcome New York Times Bestselling Romantic Suspense Author Kat Martin. She returns with the Brodies (love them) in the first BOSS, Inc. Novel, Into the Fury. Today Kat joins us with a terrific post for writers, and as a bonus, the author is giving away a copy of the book. Stay tuned for my review of this great read in February.
The Book
"I love her books!"
—Linda Lael Miller
"Martin is superb."
—RT Book Reviews
A bodyguard, a bounty hunter, a P.I.—the men of Brodie Operations Security Service, Inc. are down for the job. . .
Sinners,
whores, and sluts beware—your time is at hand: a faceless menace is
threatening lingerie models on a cross country tour, and Ethan Brodie is
there to defend and protect.
Ethan's learned the hard way that
beauty is no substitute for character. So even though Valentine Hart is
one of the most breathtaking women he's ever seen, he's keeping his
hands off and his eyes open. Or that's what he tells himself.
Then
one of the models is murdered, and the closer Ethan gets to the
answers, the closer he finds himself to Valentine—and the hotter the
pressure feels. There's more to Val—more to the other girls—than he
could have guessed. But one is keeping a secret that could kill them
all.
FIVE TIPS TO
SHARPEN YOUR WRITING
By Kat Martin
I never give writing tips. I figure everyone has his own personal
style. Plus some people are just
naturally good. But I do think there are
a few things authors can do to sharpen their work. Here are some of the things I think about when
I am writing a novel.
1. Start with a hook.
Make your first sentence or at least your first paragraph
compelling. Make the reader want to read
the book! In INTO THE FURY, my newest
Romantic Suspense, the first sentence reads,
SINNERS, SLUTS, and WHORES—BEWARE.
Your TIME is at HAND. Standing
next to the long mahogany table in the conference room, Ethan Brodie re-read
the note he’d just been handed.
Everyone who sees this paragraph recognizes
the threat in that note.
Someone--probably a woman--could be in grave peril.
With any luck, this opening will intrigue
the reader enough to keep reading.
2. Enter late and leave early. In the above example, we’re starting in the
middle of the scene. We’re not in the
conference room waiting for Ethan to show up.
We aren’t there until after he receives the note. From there we start charging forward, finding
out what’s going to happen next. Just remember
the reader isn’t interested in “Hi, how
are you?” “I’m fine, and you?”
3. Make sure there’s conflict in every scene. This doesn’t necessarily mean violent
conflict. It can be man against nature,
man against man, man against himself, anything that makes the reader interested
in continuing.
In my example, the conflict in the opening
scene of INTO THE FURY is mostly Ethan’s battle with himself. He doesn’t want to take a job bodyguarding
what he thinks will be a bunch of air-headed models. He’s had too much woman trouble lately, but
it’s a good job that pays well. They
need his skills and so he decides to take it.
4. Stay in the active voice whenever possible. Try
not to use the word was too many
times. Here’s an example. A
rumble of thunder in the sullen gray sky blotted the reverend’s next words. I could have written, The sound of thunder could be heard in the distance. The sky was a
sullen gray. That’s passive
voice. It’s important to stay active.
Personally, I have to work at this. I often go back and change from passive to
active after I write the first draft.
5. Write characters that grow and change. Writing a character arc, it’s called. It means your characters learn something or
do something that changes them. During
the time Ethan is working with the La Belle lingerie models, he learns how
difficult their job is. He comes to
admire their work ethic and their brains.
It changes some of his thinking about the
female sex and helps him realize the kind of woman he really wants in his life.
There are lots of great tips to
writing. The five above I learned from studying
very successful authors. Dean Koontz has
a wonderful book called Learning To Write, but its out of print and hard to find.
All the authors I’ve studied, all the books
by other authors that I’ve enjoyed through the years, have helped me
immeasurably. I hope these tips will
help you, too.
Best of luck with your writing and all good
wishes for a terrific 2016.
Warmest, Kat
The Author
Currently living near Missoula, Montana, Kat Martin is the bestselling
author of over fifty-five Historical and Contemporary Romance novels,
currently an NYT bestselling author of the romantic suspense AGAINST
series. Before she started writing in 1985, Kat was a real estate
broker. During that time, she met her husband, L. J. Martin, also an
author with over 33 book length works. Kat is a graduate of the
University of California at Santa Barbara, where she majored in
Anthropology and also studied History. "I love anything old," Kat says.
"I love to travel and especially like to visit the places where my
books are set. My husband and I often stay in out-of-the-way inns and
houses built in times past. It's fun and it gives a wonderful sense of a
by-gone era."
To date, Kat has over fifteen million copies of
her books in print. She is published more than two dozen foreign
countries, including Germany, Norway, Sweden, China, Korea, Bulgaria,
Russia, England, South Africa, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Japan and
Greece.
