Homage and interview Mike Wells

I inaugurate this section with a tribute to American best-selling author, Mike Wells, who has given me the honor of answering a few questions that I share with you with the intention that you may know him better and encourage you also know his works.

Mike Wells is an American bestselling author of over 20 "unputdownable" thriller and suspense novels, including Lust, Money & Murder and Passion, Power & Sin. He is also known for his young adult books, such as The Mysterious Disappearance of Kurt Kramer, The Wrong Side of the Tracks, and Wild Child, which are used by English teachers in high schools and colleges worldwide. Formerly a screenwriter, Wells has a fast-paced, cinematic writing style. His work is often compared to that of the late Sidney Sheldon, with strong and inspiring female heroes, tightly-written scenes, engaging action/dialogue, and numerous plot twists. He currently lives in Europe and has taught in the Creative Writing program at the University of Oxford. 

Here the interview with Mike Wells:

—When did you start to write and why?

— Although I didn't actually start writing any full-length stories until I was a teenager, I was inspired to write as early as age nine or ten. I distinctly remember being absorbed in the Hardy Boys series books and feeling inspired to create a whole world like that, filled with interesting people and situations, a world that seems as real as the world in these books seemed to me. It's a heady thing, being able to do that, if you can pull it off. For most people, it's a learning curve and takes a lot of work.

—What advice would you give to people who want to pursue writing?

— I would advise those who want to write fiction seriously, i.e., for money, to do two things. First, take the time to learn the rules of "good" fiction writing--the craft part--and then learn to break those rules if you see fit. Read books on the craft of writing, how to write effective dialogue, how to plot well-rounded stories, the rules of the genres you want to write in (the reader expectations) and so on. This is important to get you going, and also to give you confidence, to make you feel like you know what you're doing. Then, after you've written some stories and you start to feel even more confidence, have the courage to start breaking the rules that don't feel right to you. This is the process of developing your own unique voice and style. Ultimately, fiction is art, and there are no rules. If you want to be successful, you need to develop a writing style and perhaps even a genre or sub-genre that is just as unique as you are. The second thing I would advise novice writers to do is get your work out there to test it against real readers, to see if it engages them, as soon as possible. Soliciting the opinions of professionals, I think, is largely a waste of time--we will just tell you to write the way we do, and you don't want that. Again, you want to develop your own style. At the end of the day, all that matters are readers. The sure-fire way to find out if you're writing is "good" is to start sending it out to literary agents or publishers, or posting it online and seeing if people are engaged by it. What I recommend is posting only the beginning of your story and ending it at a place where there is a cliffhanger, and then see if people ask for the rest of it. If they don't ask you for more, then you need to find out why. Where exactly are readers stopping? They may not even be getting past the first paragraph. Are the characters doing/saying unbelievable things? Are they giving speeches to each other instead of having short, back-and-forth exchanges that mimic real life? Are there too many grammatical errors and typos? Are you introducing too many characters too fast? Are you starting the story too early, before the plot gets interesting? Are you bombarding the reader too much unnecessary backstory information? There are lots of reasons that your writing may not be engaging readers, and that's the case, you need to find out exactly why and correct it. This is an iterative process and make take you quite a few cycles. At times you may realize that you have to dump a particular story and start over again from scratch, that the entire thing just does not work for some reason. But this is the process of learning to be a good writer. So, that's my advice. Learn the rules and then learn to break them, and then get your work out there and fine-tune it until readers are engaged from the first sentence all the way to the last page, until they reach the words THE END.

You can buy his books at: https://www.amazon.com/Mike-Wells/e/B004MCEC1U and other platforms that you can find in his blog.

If you want to know more about Mike Wells, I advise you to enter in his Blog:

 http://mikewellsblog.blogspot.com.es/