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    Tools for Mystery Writers: Writing Suspense Using Hidden Personality Traits
    Tools for Mystery Writers: Writing Suspense Using Hidden Personality Traits
    Tools for Mystery Writers: Writing Suspense Using Hidden Personality Traits
    Ebook577 pages6 hours

    Tools for Mystery Writers: Writing Suspense Using Hidden Personality Traits

    By Anne Hart

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    About this ebook

    Tools for Mystery Writers emphasizes the rules that work well to create best-selling fiction. Also included is how to write from personality preference research and how to write from the upward gush of your character's infancy. A book of handy rules and research for all fiction writers of mystery, suspense, historical novels, stories, and scripts or plays.

    Also included is how to write about relationship issues in mystery and suspense fiction. How do mystery writers use personality research to develop and drive their characters and plots in novels and stories?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateMar 11, 2002
    ISBN9781532000522
    Tools for Mystery Writers: Writing Suspense Using Hidden Personality Traits
    Author

    Anne Hart

    Popular author, writing educator, creativity enhancement specialist, and journalist, Anne Hart has written 82 published books (22 of them novels) including short stories, plays, and lyrics. She holds a graduate degree and is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and Mensa.

    Read more from Anne Hart

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      Book preview

      Tools for Mystery Writers - Anne Hart

      All Rights Reserved © 2002 by Anne Hart

      No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

      Mystery and Suspense Press

      an imprint of iUniverse, Inc.

      For information address:

      iUniverse, Inc.

      5220 S. 16th St., Suite 200

      Lincoln, NE 68512

      www.iuniverse.com

      ISBN: 0-595-21747-8

      ISBN: 978-1-5320-0052-2

      Contents

      Preface

      Introduction

      Part 1 Using Hidden Personality Research to Write Mystery Fiction

      Chapter 1 Writing The Upward Gush Of Your Own Infancy In Your Mystery And Suspense Fiction.

      Chapter 2 How to Write Mystery Fiction About the Most Powerful Source You and Your Characters Have

      Chapter 3 How Do You Create A Powerful Media Hook in Mystery Fiction?

      Chapter 4 What Do Media Professionals Expect To See From Personality-Based Mystery Fiction Authors?

      Chapter 5 Winning Strategies and Guerilla Tactics To Promote, Publish, and Sell Your Mystery Writing Fast:

      Chapter 6 Writing, Publishing, and Selling Your Own Mini Mystery Fiction: Small Novels, Booklets or Pamphlets

      Chapter 7 Winning Strategies or Guerilla Tactics for Sweet Mystery Stories or Novels:

      Chapter 8 How to Format Your Mystery Book or Booklet Manuscript

      Part 2

      Chapter 9 Personality Rules for Mystery Writers

      Chapter 10 Write Mystery Fiction On Who Gets Labeled A Loser

      Chapter 11 Writing Mystery Novels About When Domestic Violence Spills Over Into The Workplace

      Chapter 12 What Mystery Writers Need To Know About Warning Signals?

      Chapter 13 Who Is Most Likely To Bring Domestic Violence Into The Workplace To Assault An Employee Or Supervisor?

      Chapter 14 What Mystery Authors Need to Know About Portraying Perfectionists:

      Chapter 15 How the Need to Control Drives Your Characters in Mystery Fiction

      Chapter 16 Open Doors to Intimacy in Mystery Fiction

      Chapter 17 Beware Of Trying To Change Your Mate

      Chapter 18 What Measures Your Personality?

      Chapter 19 Will Your Mystery Novel Characters Marry At The Level Of Yesteryear’s Self-Esteem?

      Chapter 20 Mystery Writing is an Act and a Behavior

      Chapter 21 The Marrying Table Rules for Mystery Writers

      Chapter 22 In Mystery Novels: Who Gets on Whose Nerves?

      Chapter 23 How Do You Find The Right Type For Your Mystery Fiction Characters?

      Chapter 24 How Do You Advertise For A Soul Mate Of A Selected Type for Your Fictional Characters?

      Chapter 25 Log On the Information Superhighway to Find Your Mystery Novel Character’s Right Mate

      Chapter 26 Advertising For Your Character’s Soul Mate By Personality Style And Type

      Chapter 27 The Smoothest Marriages in Mystery Novels

      Chapter 28 How To Be Your Mystery Novel Character’s Marriage Broker

      Chapter 29 The Undeveloped Flip Side in Mystery Novel/Story Writing

      Chapter 30 Will You Marry A Bully?

      Chapter 31 Does Your Character’s Partners Have A Conscience? Writing About Socio-Paths, and Other Anti-Social or Even Asocial Characters in Mystery Fiction.

      Chapter 32 Regardless of Personality Preference, Check Out Your Character’s Compassion in Mystery and Suspense Novels

      Chapter 33

      Chapter 34 Is Wife Battering in Mystery, Suspense, and True-Crime Books Related To Violence In The Victim’s Childhood?

      Chapter 35

      Chapter 36 Once You Know Your Character’s Preferences

      Epilogue

      About the Author

      Appendix A Type-Related Publications

      Appendix B Type-Related Associations

      Notes

      Bibliography

      Dedicated to All Writers of Fiction

      Who Like Mystery

      Giving Your Mystery Fiction Buzz Appeal: Publicizing Your Mystery Fiction

      Would you like to write for a traditional publishing house or a print-on-demand publisher? Do you want a career in writing for the electronic media, including broadcast and Internet casting, or print the media? Are you a pen and paper, computer keyboard, or e-writer? Why are most print press kits discarded before they are read? The answer is time limitations. Try an electronic press kit first to arrange an interview. Then hand the hard copy press kit to the interviewer when you know you’re being interviewed, written about, or on the air.

      For distant locations, use an electronic press kit to set up a phone interview, then send, fax, or email the rest of the material you want to bring to the attention of the media so that it arrives just before the interview. The press kit goes to the media’s editors and producers, both electronic and print. Another use for the press kit is that it contains a condensed version of the main points or highlights of the autobiography you’ll want to expand in a script or book. Instead of a paperless office, paper is being used more today than before computers began being used by writers. Yet most books are submitted to print-on-demand publishers through a template and via the Internet email route. Traditional books still are submitted to acquisitions editors in hard paper copy with the manuscript on a floppy disk. However, once they are accepted and edited, many times the proofread book is submitted by email attachment during the editing process as well as by pen-corrected galley proof paper copy and by disk. Writing is becoming more flexible in the way you submit your work to the media and to publishers.

      The hook in the press kit is for the media. It will also serve as the hook in the opening scene of your autobiographical script. Use the same hook in any brochures you print to advertise your script to producers or book to publishers or buyers. This hook will repeat at the beginning, middle and end of your press kit and your script or book length autobiography. The same goes for a stage play.

      What Are The Best Kind Of Question Hooks To Use To Attract The Media’s Attention, Which In Turn May Attract A Producer’s Or Agent’s Attention To Ask For Your Script Synopsis?

      Use a question hook in your research and development stage. The question hook will make the reader stop and think. Make your question personal and universal. For example, you can put on the cover of your press kit and the opening scene of your autobiography the question, What’s the most powerful resource you have?

      As you write your autobiography, define what you are by asking yourself the following questions: What are you really good at? How can you build upon it? What are your values, and how can you design applications of your values and market them successfully and commercially to a film or T.V. producer or to a book publisher for a book/screenplay package deal?

      If you know you’re timely, the chances of marketing your autobiography are immensely improved. Research and development in writing an autobiography means listing your strategic competence. Are you a jack of all trades seeking breadth of interests? Or are you a master of one skill seeking depth and expertise without which you’d feel incompetent?

      Procedure: How Do You Become A Media Strategist To Sell Your Autobiography To The Film And T.V. Industry?

      Continue writing your press kit using the main principles and highlights that will go into your autobiography. Inside your press kit, start off with a one page typed, doubled spaced press release that reads, How many times have you sold out on your real dreams and settled for something less? Use a personal question hook on the cover of your press kit as well as in the first sentence on your inside press release. A press release is like a synopsis of your screenplay.

      It’s designed to get the media’s attention. It goes to newspaper and magazine editors and to television and film producers and literary agents. Your autobiography script can start out with the same question and elaborate on it, whereas the press release can only ask the question to hook the editor’s attention. Writing an autobiography also gives you the opportunity to become a professional media strategist.

      The second question you should ask of yourself in your autobiography script as well as in your press release (directed to the media editors) is: If you could perform one act of mercy, virtue, righteousness, kindness, change, growth, or power in this decade that could change your life forever, what would it be?

      The purpose of creating a question hook in both your autobiography and press kit is to capture the attention of the largest audience possible in the shortest period of time. A professionally prepared press kit prepared in a manner acceptable to the press will both publicize your autobiography as well as pre sell it to producers or agents in the event that the script is still in the first draft stage.

      What’s The Purpose Of A Press Kit To Pre Sell An Autobiography?

      The kit may also lead to your being asked to give interviews, seminars, or talks, or simply to answer inquires from potential buyers of the information you’re giving. You write your mystery novel or historical action suspense work based on someone’s life story in the past, your autobiography, true crime, another type of real story, or your imagination and research to enable other people to make decisions based on your experiences.

      An autobiography is designed to give people universal values through personal information on which they will base their decisions.

      One person’s life story is another person’s mentor or guide to avoid or seek out similar experiences from your unique ones. Just as you get to the universal through the concrete, you get to the universal through the unique experience of one person that could happen to anyone and to no one else in that individual way. Whatever is ‘timely’ also is ‘hot.’ List examples of your life experiences that people can tune into. Your life story is a front-loading ancillary, like a newsletter of significant events and turning points as you pass through each stage we all pass through.

      Why Should You Use Fear To Hook A Producer’s Attention?

      Fear hooks an audience’s attention. Begin a sentence in your press release, synopsis, and script with the following: Everybody has fears in life. The number of fears you list becomes the hook. The purpose of a fear hook is to rope in the widest number of people in a short time. After you have a fear hook in your press kit, premise, synopsis, and opening scene of your autobiographical script, use the story hook.

      Who’s The Story Hook For, Audience Or Producer?

      You have to sell to the producer before you can sell to the audience. Before you reach the producer, your script must get past the reader. Investors don’t read scripts by the stack and readers don’t invest in funding films. Therefore, the story must be commercial to get past all three barriers to your goal. To slip past reader, producer, film-funder, and media to the audience, concentrate on the story hook. Make your autobiography as well as a feature in your press kit tell a story of interest to the readers who will be your prospective clients as filtered through the eyes of the media. Unless the media accepts your story first, it may not get past the reader to the producer, and won’t be printed for the public and business community to see.

      A press kit gives your autobiography script credibility. Few people believe a paid ad as much as they believe a feature article about your life printed in a credible daily newspaper or popular national magazine. As a personal example, I did the following.

      First I called a daily newspaper reporter (San Diego Union and San Diego Tribune before it closed down) and asked him to interview me for an interesting article about what fulltime freelance writers must go through to succeed. Two reporters from morning and afternoon daily newspapers did articles on the story of my life. Then I called the editor of the Currents or Life and Living section of the daily newspaper who asked me to write a freelance article myself for a fee. I sent an 800 word article of my own to the opinion editorial editor of a daily newspaper.

      I also spoke to news reporters and received more articles written about me and a warmer response than when I talked to the editor of the newspaper section. The best results came when individual columnists and reporters visited my home with a photographer from the newspaper and wrote articles about what I do and my personal life experiences leading up to a day in the life of a freelance writer. A lot of personal past issues were included. I have had so many articles written about me by reporters during the past two decades that I have a thick scrapbook. Each of the articles included something about my work and my life experiences over the years as a fulltime independent writer of books and scripts.

      Once the articles were printed, they were picked up by national news syndicates who printed them nation wide in many newspapers. One time I received a call from a Hollywood literary agent asking to see several of my screenplays. Another time I received a call from across the nation from someone inquiring about a situation similar to mine.

      My purpose in having reporters write an article about me was to attract the attention of agents, producers, and publishers so that someone would either offer to publish or produce what I’ve written, or offer me a part time job in the writing or staff training field.

      Special Packaging: How Do You Use A Statistical Hook?

      Every autobiography should come with special packaging. Use an exclamatory hook or use startling statistics for the media in your press kit and for your producer, film-funder, literary manager, or publisher in your autobiography and one page synopsis. Nothing brings you into a newspaper or magazine or on television faster than the use of statistics that shocks the media to attention. You want to go to any acceptable extreme to get attention. That’s why you’re writing the autobiography to get a certain type of quiet center of attention rapport with people.

      Writing The Upward Gush Of Your Character’s Infancy In Your Mystery And Suspense Fiction.

      Tailor your mystery novel and story messages for specific media and particular publics. Analyze trends before you write. Predict the consequences of trends in your writing. Serve your readers’ interests.

      In print media, multicasting on the Web, and with personal broadcasting networks online, as in publishing, books are sold on buzz. You don’t sell your manuscript by sending it randomly over the Internet or into a slush pile at a publishing house. You develop buzz appeal. You find publicity for your unpublished scripts or book manuscript on disk by putting your writing into a newsletter, electronic or print, and sending both versions to a newspaper reporter of a national newspaper. Also try a magazine, but try the newspaper first. To select a reporter, find out who is writing a story similar to your manuscript or who has recently written a similar angle or story.

      If your writing is honest and dramatic, it will appeal to the newspaper reporter who is writing on a subject similar to yours. If that reporter from a national newspaper or other national publication with a very wide circulation writes about your story or interviews you and incorporates passages into the reporter’s piece, quoting your story—fiction or biography—you have a great chance of publishers and agents contacting you. Usually, it will be an agent who is willing to bid your story to publishers.

      As an example, in August of 1985, San Diego Tribune reporter, Bob Kaiser ran a story about me from an interview. He quoted some of my writing and even photographed a poem I’d written that hangs on the wall of my home-based office. The several paragraphs he mentioned of my fiction writing and poem, plus the photo of the entire poem, added buzz appeal as he wrote a two-page biography of me as a writer, focusing on personal experiences and incorporating quotes from my writing.

      The article appeared in a large daily newspaper and soon was picked up on the wire services. I received calls from all over, including one from a Hollywood agent interested in the screenplay I was writing, that Mr. Kaiser touched upon in his article about me. Within a few days, I was invited up to Hollywood to see the agent (screenplay and novel in hand) and signed a two-year contract.

      At least my work was considered. This would not have happened if I had sent my book over a transom to a publisher. The slush pile contains thousands of manuscripts that don’t get the same royal carpet treatment or credibility and visibility that the buzz appeal of having a reporter write about you lends to your work. Your writing gets sold based on its buzz in national newspapers. That’s what appeals to agents and publishers who bid up your manuscript in an auction.

      Here’s a famous example. Jessie Lee Foveau, at the age of 98, sold her memoir for a million dollars, and she had never published before. She sold her book and movie rights. Was it luck or buzz appeal? The Life of Jessie Lee Brown from Birth up to 80 years had been written in longhand for an adult education class in writing for senior citizens writing their life stories.

      A manuscript has value only when it is judged simple and earthy—in the news and print media. You have to be yourself in your drama. Publishers can spot phoniness in a minute. The buzz appeal here was that the author is a real person in her writing. Why is it worth a million? It’s about morals, God, and values...another best-selling book of Virtues, and that’s what having buzz is all about in the fiction media. Whether you write romance or memoirs, write about real people who have values, morals, and a faith in something greater than themselves, such as God or something equally valuable to readers.

      Publishers who buy a book on its buzz value are buying simplicity. It is simplicity that sells and nothing else but simplicity. This is true for computer books or fiction. It’s good storytelling to say it simply. If you write mystery novels, put it simply. That’s why it’s useful to study the shadow side of personality differences and how each personality reacts under extreme stress while in contact with a differing personality. Studies are showing personality traits are biologically based and determined by genes and/or blood flow rates in the brain as well as environment.

      Simplicity means the book gives you all the answers you were looking for in your life in exotic places, but found it close by. What’s the great proverb that her book is telling the world? It’s to stand on your own two feet and put bread on your own table like she did for her family. That’s the moral point, to pull your own weight, and pulling your own weight is a buzz word that sells books that teach and reach through simplicity. That’s the backbone of the new media. Buzz means the Internet can have a future through becoming simple to operate for the majority. And buzz means you can sell your story or book, script or narrative by focusing on the values of simplicity, morals, faith, and universal values that hold true for everyone. Doing the best to take care of your family sells and is buzz appeal, hot stuff in the publishing market of today.

      This is true, regardless of genre. Publishers go through fads every two years—angel books, managing techniques books, computer home-based business books, novels about ancient historical characters or tribes, science fiction, children’s programming.... The genres shift emphasis, but values are consistent in the bestselling books. In the new media, simplicity is buzz along with values. What are you going to do to create buzz appeal for your writing? What kind of press can you create that will bring national attention for your simplicity, values, morals, and commitment? You’ll probably have to write about trends or about life in the lane of your choice.

      Even if you write about the Internet, focus on its highway to simplicity. Target its values. Emphasize its commitment. Buzz is universal, but you need national press to get publishers bidding. National press gives you credibility in the eyes of major publishers. The world is impressed by front page coverage in The Wall Street Journal because of what it symbolizes—stability, dependability, security, centeredness.

      Find a newspaper article that relates to your writing and write to the reporter covering the feature. Query to see whether there is an interest in your story or feature. It’s not every day that someone 98 years old writes a memoir, but it’s news when a centenarian writes a first book and it has those universal values, morals, simplicity, and commitment and spans real history in a way that reads well. Quality in writing is the most important trait, but visibility and credibility to attract a publisher depends on buzz appeal.

      Sell your story on buzz, and you’ll have a commercial script people will want to read. Now that you have a great story told, it’s time to press it, to buzz it, to sell it as print, electronic, film, video, audio, docudrama, virtual theater, and Internet formats.

      ♦ ♦ ♦

      Remember, books sell according to their buzz appeal.

      B better books

      U universal values and simple plots, characters, lifestyles

      Z zesty characters

      Z zany conflicts and problems to solve

      Preface

      The Upward Gush is the Shadow Side of Your Character’s Personality. It’s the least developed part of your character’s personality. Use it to drive the plot and show how your character acts under extreme stress. Use the upward gush to show tactics used by your characters who think they’re using strategies to show clues.

      Bring out the inferior function as Jung would say, the least developed portion of your character’s personality when you want to emphasize the flip side of your character’s personality in a mystery novel or story. For mystery writers, the awareness level needs to be brought to attention regarding the importance of how domestic violence spills over into the workplace and the need to be concerned about it, especially in regard to preventive and security measures. Domestic violence does indeed follow partners to work and endangers the safety of all workers as well as the persons involved.

      Since 1963 I have specialized in writing mystery novels, either historical, action suspense, or about domestic violence issues and its prevention, especially in the workplace as well as at home. I teach writing courses online for a university Also: there are some underground railroads for battered partners/spouses mentioned on the Internet/Web. There needs to be many more.

      Mystery writers often write about how family violence is dealt with by a web of connections and safe-houses to help battered partners escape and help themselves or seek counseling through Internet resources and phone numbers and safe houses worldwide? In cases of a

      man not able to care for a wife married to a wife not able to care for herself, the scene is set for a mystery novel surrounding conjugal, dating, or intimate violence.

      Introduction

      Tools Question Rules:

      Here’s how to start creating visibility and credibility for your mystery and suspense fiction:

      1.  Launch Your Mystery Writing in the Media Before It’s Published

      2.  Use Self-Promotion of Your Writing Before, During, and After Publication

      Create visibility by plugging mystery-writing-related products you would like to be packaged with your books, pamphlets, tapes, or other writing. If your book is accepted, your expenses will soar. You have to promote your own books online. You’ll need to make public appearances also and chat online. Your Web site is your best marketing tool. Editors are never created equal. One person’s opinion will always be different from another’s about your work.

      Keep mailing lists for self-promotion. Ask your publisher to sponsor your mailing, but you supply the addresses. They don’t have time or money to gather addresses beyond a few newspapers. Hang onto fan email and save on disk. Print out, and send to editors in a collection when asked to do so and only then, after you send a query letter asking when they want the fan mail.

      Keep all online reviews pertaining to your book. Most fiction nowadays is bought when writers are discovered after having published in major magazines publishing short stories. Editors then ask them to write novels and expand their stories or come up with new material. Manuscripts are bought through contests, from the winners. Your personal contact with editors can do more for your book than an agent because the publisher is really looking at the published short stories in magazines to recruit a new crop of novelists.

      You get in touch with an editor and find out what conferences the editor will attend so you can meet in person and discuss your writing. More books are sold face to face than most other ways. If you have a day job, don’t quit because writers earning twice their salary or more from books are still holding onto their own day jobs. If you’ve made the best-seller list many times, you still can’t quit because your book will be out of print in two years, most likely. The more successful you are, the more publishers will insist that your sales are higher than they were with your first best-selling books.

      Readers will write to your editor or publisher demanding that you write faster, and the publisher will write back to you to give the editors faster turn-around time. You will be expected to make each book better than the one before it. You won’t be allowed to only write. Instead, your time will be taken with editing books that need revising and sending proposals and outlines. Your deadlines will grow shorter the more books you write. I had 3 months to finish each book when I had a contract to write five books for Simon & Schuster in 1985. Each book came in within 2 and a half months. I had to work at this full time, and luckily had no day job (and no income) while all this was going on.

      It will take many years before your royalties come in. I get $700 in royalties every six months for a book I wrote in 1994 that’s now in its second edition, and it’s not even a novel. So plan on taking many years out before you see royalties coming in or advances on which you can live. My advances ranged from $1,600 to $10,000, with the agent taking a chunk for my five-book contract back in 1985. Nowadays, you can negotiate your own contract and ask for what you want. With an agent, that power is taken away from you and put in the agent’s hands. Can you do a better job on your own book? Do your research first. Contact the National Writers Union to find out what your rights are before you go with an agent.

      You can ask for more free copies if you need them and publicity, because unless you’re famous, you won’t get much publicity beyond a press release from the average publisher. Think about publishing your own book and creating your own publicity campaign. Make sure your contract doesn’t keep you from writing for another publisher. If it does, find out whether you can write under pen names to increase your income by writing for more than one publisher, especially when books go out of print quickly. Ask how much time you will be given to write the book and do you have a choice. What’s your deadline? Then after the book is sent in, how long will it take, that’s the turn-around time, until publication?

      Four months before publication you need to start your public relations campaign with the editors and publishers magazines, and with the newspapers, when the book is available. Every need changes in the way of genre, each year. You need to be flexible about what you need to write.

      The publisher will tell you what time period to write about, not what you want to write about, unless your books are selling very well in the time period you choose. Most publishers of fiction want different time periods all from one author, not a stereotype, if you write history and fiction. Fiction writers need to write about what works for the publisher.

      The plots and settings for sales are predictable. The publisher will tell you what time periods the best sellers are. If you write a series of books, know that they usually sell pretty well. Books on similar themes sell wonderfully if they are not copycats of best-sellers. Keep a book as short as the publisher will allow. That way, the reader will buy more of your books. Publishers know this and usually turn down thick manuscripts, unless you’re already famous for a certain series or line. If you write love stories, find out what works with the publisher before you even start writing. What ages does the publisher want? What time periods? Countries? In some books of the seventies, a hero couldn’t have red hair because it’s considered romantic only in a woman. That’s a clue to find out what sells first and what they expect from you in plotting and formulas used or despised by certain houses.

      After you write a book, there won’t be much rest. If accepted, you’ll have a lot of revising to do, perhaps re-writing almost every line of a book that is scheduled to be published by a certain date. Then you’ll need to revise the page proofs. As you promote your books just being published, the publisher will require you in your contract for a series to start writing more books and show what you’ve done.

      Even best-selling writers have had second or third novels rejected and felt a tremendous let down when the second book in a series was rejected. No one wants to be called a midlist or middle list writer. Middle list writers who don’t sell enough books are kept from getting more books to write. Even a new publisher will ask how many of your old books have sold before giving you a new contract for another book.

      This is true when the books related or unrelated to the first book’s topic. And it works for nonfiction and fiction writers. If all this seems frightening, keep your day job, get that other graduate degree, keep on writing, and think thrice about publishing and marketing your own books, just in case, so you won’t be out of print when you need your book most. You have an unpublished book or booklet, article, play or script and need media publicity before you launch your material or publish your book, before you find an agent or representative for your book, or before you find a publisher. It’s easy as using your unpublished book to plug the products you like on a well-trodden Web site. Just become the spokesperson for a Web site that has wide appeal or start one. For example, www.generationa.com is a site for people over 50. If you sign on as a spokesperson for any new Web site or create your own and make yourself the spokesperson for it, you’ll get visibility in those magazine inserts that come with large daily newspapers around the nation.

      Perhaps you have a movie script. Don’t let it sit on the shelf, if it has been rejected along with the other 50,000 movie scripts floating around Los Angeles each week, make it into an immersive movie or get a group together to raise funds in order for the group to make an immersive movie. Let the audience control the viewing angle. Watch the immersive movie about a mystery taking place in a nursing home called The New Arrival at http://atomfilms.ie/.

      There’s also a market for children’s immersive movies on the Web. You need to bring together people with similar interests to form a group that makes immersive movies for the Web or raises funds to do so.

      Have you sent your script yet to a firm that makes immersive movies? They’re on the Web if you can research them. Anyway, at least go to the site www.atomfilms.ie/ and watch their immersive movie. Could you envision your script made into an immersive movie? Are you moving, yet? If no action is happening, make your own immersive movie or get graduate students at film schools to help you. Try schools of new media studies that spring out of journalism and film departments.

      You don’t have to be a celebrity to sign on as the spokesperson for a Web site, all you do is ask the person who created the Web site whether it’s okay for you to be spokesperson, or start your own site about a topic in which a lot of people would be interested. In the case of Generation A, it’s for people over age 50. You can choose something of wide interest that fits your writing style or content areas.

      Selling an unpublished book will reach a larger audience if you target television, films, and video, but it’s slower. Reaching the Web first as a stepping stone to reaching TV, works twice as fast to get you from the Web to daily newspapers and then to TV, radio, video, and finally film. Another doorway opens if you have your own camera and film, even on a small documentary filler type basis.

      Contact emerging stars and starlets who want publicity. They can help you use your unpublished books or scripts to plug the products they like, too. Find a medium that reaches the audience you want, the young, the older, the hip, the well-educated, or any other group you need to reach.

      Get in touch with directors who produce animation for Web sites. For example, Tim Burton is a producer working on animation for www.shockwave.com. You might find out if your script or book has a market or could use the medium of shockwave. In other words, turn your writing into a desktop movie using the software of shockwave or related products such as Director. Get in touch with producers and send them your press kit or at least ask whether their might be any interest to link your subject matter interest with what they might be interested in doing in the future or present. It never hurts to ask for an informational interview, even by email or a good cover letter.

      Direct-to-Web releases are growing in popularity. For example, enjoy the film, Quantum Project. It’s available on SightSound.com. What’s important is that the film is a direct-to-Web release. Instead of being direct-to-video first and then to Web, it completely passes over the direct-to-video phase and goes right into direct-to-Web. You might try to make your unpublished scripts go direct-to-Web too, or let producers know you have material available. It doesn’t hurt to send your resume to the many companies such as SightSound.com or similar ones that produce direct-to-Web films.

      Part 1

      Using Hidden Personality Research to Write Mystery Fiction

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      Rules for Mystery Writers: Using the Shadow Sides of Personality Traits Under Stress to Write Mystery and Suspense Fiction. Writing About Conjugal Combat, Conflict, and Personalities Under Stress. Here’s how to use research in personality styles, traits, preferences, and differences to write mystery and suspense fiction.

      1

      Writing The Upward Gush Of Your Own Infancy In Your Mystery And Suspense Fiction.

      The First Rule of Mystery Writing: The Launch of Personality-Based Mysteries.

      The first rule of the mystery writer is to get the press to launch and pre-sell your book before you find a publisher or agent. Here’s how to start the process using hidden personality research.

      Create a senior citizen, parenting, or teen hub. Look at any teen hub, such as Goosehead. There’s still room for other shows like Goose-head, and one could feature your unpublished writing. Or you could create a similar venture yourself online. You could create content for shows such as Goosehead. The teen hub came about when a 14-year old girl named Ashley Power with her personal Web site caught the attention of Richard Dreyfuss. He made a deal to create content for Goosehead.

      How did such publicity come to a 14-year old’s personal Web site? Thousands of girls from 11 to 15 daily have personal Web sites and need content. One day actor Richard Dreyfuss’s niece appeared in a Goosehead video series. It’s quite a leap and rare that the niece of an actor appears in a video series that springs out of a 14-year old girl’s Web site. Such rarity is what makes for fame. Destiny? Well, Dreyfuss got in touch with Power and made a deal to create at least two interactive episodes to Goosehead.

      Look at the site yourself, and decide what about it made it ripe for moving from a 14-year old girl’s personal Web site into a video series that caught the eye of a star who writes content for interactive Web. The episodes, by the way, are called Webisodes. Actually, the technical term is multicasting content as opposed to multimedia that’s not always online. Before you test the waters, look at the following sites that use stars to plug products they like. Then think of ways how you can plug your unpublished writing by plugging a product you like and that a star also likes. Look at www.babystyle.com, www.voxxy.com, www.sightsound.com, www.shockwave.com, www.generationa.com.

      Is there anything similar you can do with your sites to produce content or plug a product you like? Use your unpublished writing to move your content, be your content, plug your content, or plug someone else’s product you use and enjoy. That’s one other way to launch your unpublished books, booklets, scripts, plays, stories, poems, lyrics, content, or learning material.

      Scripts, books, and stories that are unpublished can still find a market on the Web if they are customized to the tastes of those who produce such works. If you have ambition and drive, you could aim to producing your own unpublished direct-to-Web material, called entertainment content. It doesn’t have to be fiction. It could be learning materials or documentaries. If you don’t want to compete with the entertainment industry, there are audiences who want how-to films or videos that were never videos in the first place, but produced direct-to-Web with good multimedia authoring software such as Director and others.

      So keep in mind that you can let your unpublished writing plug any product you like or a star likes and do it online and on TV. If you’re into performing arts, start a Web site for teenagers or any other age group. You can make yourself or anyone else, even a star, spokesperson. The trick is to produce and star in 12-26 half-hour shows aimed at a specific audience, such as teenagers, where you can use your unpublished book to plug the products advertised on the teen magazine Web and/or cable TV show.

      You get visibility, publicity, and market your work all at once. If you go for the teen market, produce shows for a Web site, where you’ll get to talk honestly with teens about issues they’re interested in. Shows can focus in on niche audiences that need Web sites or cable TV teen magazine shows only for them, such as girls from 11-17. There’s one site www.voxxy.com that does just that in new ways. So the point is that if you have a lot of unpublished writing, you want to sell it by getting the chance to have all the input you want at Web sites that draw in the stars of TV looking for shows to produce or be spokesperson for. You want the stars to endorse your writing as they endorse products they enjoy.

      The idea of plugging products you like by using your unpublished books and scripts is a form of packaging your books or booklets with products going to be bought. Before the Internet, you’d approach a warehouse or manufacturer and ask that your book be packaged with the products being shipped as a way to give customers a free instructional manual on a product or a sideline, like a cookbook on how to cook with wines or sauces being shipped with packaged wines or sauces.

      Now, you do similarly on a Web site, called a Web venture. If you write about baby care, target a Web site for this subject. Try sites such as www.babystyle.com if you’re writing books or booklets about baby wear, decor, and care. It’s all about style and babies. Or start your own site focusing on baby style, elder style, teen style, or any other group from men to teenage girls. Women are increasingly on the Web, so you might want a new angle on women’s interests, such as genetic counseling, nutrition, customizing diets according to your DNA analysis, romantic fiction, suspense, or cat characters in novels. Before you get too narrow, pick the audience for the widest possible number of visits to your site. You need to research your markets to find out what people in different targeted groups really want to spend their valuable time visiting.

      Find a way to endorse a product or get an important person to endorse a product that will include your unpublished book along with the product being endorsed as a gift or giveaway or additional benefit and advantage to the buyer. Use your writing to plug someone else’s products. If you have an unpublished romance novel, personalize it with the name of the happy couple and package it along with the wedding gifts ordered. Or leave a personalized novel in guest rooms of hotels with the name of the guests, if they order it. Honeymooners might, or it might be of interest to those planning bridal or baby showers, anniversary cruises, or office parties.

      The quickest way to launch your book is to stage an around the world online launch party (when most media people are available) inviting the specialty and general press, publishers, agents, entertainment attorneys, producers, directors, book talent managers, book packagers, famous writers, newspaper reporters and columnists from TV as well as print media, small press publishers, book sellers, event planners for booksellers events overseas and nationally, and those who come to book sales parties in people’s homes as well as software, book and video distributors to meet you for a conference online where you’ll have a chat and put up a presentation with sound, text, and video clips or visuals all about your unpublished book or script.

      Did you see the pre release publicity the Harry Potter books received, even coverage on the cover of Newsweek? What can you do for your unpublished book to create spin that will add to your credibility as well as visibility in the media all over the world? It all starts with a story board and a press kit that reveals your main character’s measured change, transformation, or growth, or if your book’s nonfiction, how much

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