Writing A Novel Lessons To Make Your Blog More Interesting

Developing the Next Generation of Rainmakers Writing a Novel: Lessons to Make Your Blog More Interesting If you are a regular reader, you know that I started a Novel Writing Class on January 27. See the blog I posted that day: If I want to write a novel about a law firm…I need your ideas.   Our instructor, Patricia Burroughs, a novelist and screenwriter has been awesome. I have learned a great deal from her and from the young students in the class with me. Last night was the last class. Next week I start a new Patricia Burroughs class: Blueprinting Your Novel.  To show you I am “all-in” to learn, I also signed up for the 2014 DFW Writers Conference, which will be held the first week in May. I know I will never be another Ernest Hemingway, or even a John Grisham or Scott Turow, but I am learning a great deal and I think some of it might help you. First, I am using the creative right side of my brain. As lawyers, we exercise the left side of our brain every day. I contend that the lawyers who become most successful also use their creative side. So, that is one reason to consider taking a creative writing class. Second, think about this question: Why do we read (and write) novels?    I like this quote from that article: First, writers have to recruit or seduce or beguile us into their world â€" only then do we trust them to take us on this journey…Then there is the journey, and that’s where the power is most obvious. You have to recruit or seduce or beguile clients, potential clients and referral sources to read your blog. How can you do it? I have learned that the first page of a novel, indeed the first sentence of a novel, must capture the reader’s attention. As you will see here:  Novel Writing â€" Grabbing the Reader’s Attention with the First Sentence, Novelists must: Prior to my first class, I planned to write my first novel on the rise and fall of a law firm. I may still do that, but my current idea is to take Gina, my main character from my book: Rising Star  and get her into all kinds of difficulty. If you read the book you know that I borrowed the opening scene from the book and movie: Double Indemnity. In my book, Gina goes back to her office after the firm holiday party to resign because she has attracted only one client and that matter is over. She calls herself a  â€œone hit wonder.”  In my novel, Gina will use “one hit wonder” reason to resign as a guise for the real reason. She is scheduled to meet with the US Attorney for the Southern District of Texas on January 2. When the press gets wind of the meeting, they will blow the lid off of her work and private life involving her one client. I am having great fun.   I practiced law for 37 years developing a national construction law practice representing some of the top highway and transportation construction contractors in the US.