How to Write Action Adventure Novels

by Michael Newton

  Let’s play the flip side now. Successful writing means control, self-discipline, and concentration. If you know a manuscript is due next Tuesday, you may have to skip that family barbecue or skiing trip and stick to business. Practice gets you started in the writing game, but perseverance keeps you going. Every writer must eventually find a system that facilitates the work at hand, permitting growth, encouraging experiments, while meeting deadlines all the same. In case you miss the point, I’ll spell it out: No finished manuscripts, no paychecks, and you’re back behind the register at Safeway, putting on a plastic grin for all those shoppers.

  It’s easy for imagination to explode, and would-be writers are especially prone to Walter Mittyitis. I’ve seen people quit their steady jobs because they sold a single story and decided they were bound for Easy Street. A writer of my personal acquaintance once invested $16,000 in a new computer on the promise of impressive royalties somewhere down the line. (The promisor was canned by his superiors within the year; the royalties are still at large.) Before you start to get all starry-eyed and jettison your life for something new and flashy, make damned sure you know precisely what you’re doing. It can be a long walk back, with all your bridges burned.

  So much for doom and gloom. The good news is that writers with intelligence, imagination, basic skills, and the determination to succeed are perfect candidates for breaking in through action and adventure markets. Whether you intend to use the genre for a launching pad (like Follett, Smith, and others) or make action writing your career, you’re in the right place, at the right time.

  The rest is up to you. Go on and give ‘em hell.

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  About the Author

  Mike Newton has had an active life. Author of more than 80 books written over an eleven-year period, he has taught junior high school and worked as a security guard for the family of country-western singer Merle Haggard. Newton’s work includes nonfiction (primarily “true crime”), westerns, and over four dozen action/adventure novels. His wife, Judy, is also an author with three books completed and three more in the works. The frighteningly prolific Newton family lives in Nashville, Indiana.

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