A good thriller is like a layer cake—stack upon stack of delicious goodness that infuses social meaning apart from the plot. I learned to write my debut thriller, MULTO, like a layer cake the hard way.

Writing short stories offers many advantages to the budding novelist. It can help build your credentials as a fiction writer and establish a readership. For me, there was an unexpected benefit – experimentation that led to publication.

Most writing teachers advise newcomers to stick to one genre. That’s a great rule to follow if your book is a hit. I discovered that if you don’t make it in one genre, trying another is the wiser choice. 

Feeling envious of the academic writer? What’s not to like about a tenure? Don’t even mention the summer breaks and the cozy office in a beautiful campus with ivy-covered brick buildings and sprawling lawns.

Have you thought of making the supporting characters in your novel the stars of their own lives? It’s the key to developing more interesting secondary characters, according to a Penguin Random House editor.

I’ve always wanted to read Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22” and Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” for their popularity and critical acclaim. When I finally caught up with my to-be-read list, I read them both at the same time. They taught me three important lessons in writing.

I met Bret Lott, the best-selling author of Jewel, during my first ever fiction-writing workshop. I chose his class because I loved Jewel. Guess who else loved it? Oprah. Lott is the first best-selling author I’ve interacted with.

Dashiell Hammett’s seminal detective novel, “The Maltese Falcon,” opens with the mysterious Miss Wonderly hiring private eye Sam Spade and his partner, Miles Archer, to follow a man who eloped with her sister. It’s a classic red herring. Readers of mysteries, crime fiction, and suspense novels love red herrings, but where did the term originate?

Most fiction writers have probably written a MacGuffin without knowing it. The term, popularized by the filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock, refers to something that drives the plot of a story.

The third-person omniscient point of view (POV) is common in 19th century novels, British mysteries, and European fiction, but many American book editors and writing teachers dislike it. There are literary agents who will flat out reject manuscripts with an omni POV. This literary tool leaves no gray area. People either love it or hate it. Here are 10 books that have used it effectively.