Write Good or Die by Scott Nicholson Read Free Book Online

and filled my head with promises of fame and
riches while I fought a losing battle trying to match him martini
for martini.
    Life was good.
    When I came back home, I considered quitting
my job. After all, the sale would come quick, and the money would
roll in.
    A week passes. A month. Three months.
    I call my superstar agent and get an
assistant, who explains that sometimes it takes a while to sell a
book.
    That hadn’t been what Mr. Bigshot told me
over Grey Goose, but I still trusted the guy.
    Six months pass. A year. By this time, I’ve
written a sequel to the first book, and I send it to Mr.
Bigshot.
    A few weeks pass, and I call him to see if
he’s read the new book.
    His assistant explains that he’s really
busy.
    Another six months go by. Finally, I call up
Mr. Bigshot and insist on speaking to him personally. The assistant
won’t allow it. So I insist on getting a list of all the publishing
houses that have rejected my book.
    The assistant sends me a list. A list of two
houses.
    In nineteen months, he’d shown my book to two
editors.
    Even though I was ignorant about NY
publishing, I knew this was bad. There were dozens of publishing
houses who bought mysteries. Only going to two of them proved this
guy wasn’t doing a thing for me.
    I fired him, deciding to
look for a new agent. After all, he was easy to get. All I had to
do was buy the latest Writer’s
Market , pick out a few more agents, and
wait for them to call.
    No one called. I tried every agent in NY, and
couldn’t get anyone interested in my series.
    This lead to a bout of depression. My
girlfriend (who later became my wife) offered to cheer my up by
buying me a unique gift. A tattoo.
    "That’s very white-trash of you, honey," I
told her.
    But she explained that she had 100 percent
faith that I’d someday be published, and a tattoo would inspire me
to keep trying.
    Well, we went to Jade Dragon in Chicago, and
I had them put a little frowny face on my right shoulder.
    But now, after six unpublished novels, all
the frowny face did was depress me even more.
    Should I continue pursuing the dream of
becoming a published author? Or should I do the responsible thing
and get a well-paying office job?
    "You aren’t allowed to give up," my
girlfriend (now my wife) told me. "You’re a writer, whether you get
paid for it or not."
    She was right. I’d be miserable doing
anything else.
    So I decided to write a blockbuster.
    My previous approach to writing was very
free-form and unstructured. I’d write when I felt like it, about
whatever I felt like. My growing pile of form letter rejections was
testament to how well this worked for me. I needed to regroup.
    The term “high-concept” is often bandied
around Hollywood, used to describe movies that have strong, central
hooks. Blockbuster novels have hooks as well. "Shark kills swimmers
on New York beach." "Little girl is possessed by the devil."
"Science learns to clone dinosaurs." "FBI trainee interviews a
captured serial killer." I wanted to write something like
that—something that could be described in a brief sentence, but
still perfectly conveyed the story idea.
    Coming up with a catchy hook on which to base
ninety thousand words was easier said than done. I took a break
from writing to brainstorm. How could I put a new spin on an old
concept? What topic could capture the public’s imagination?
    I decided on something with universal appeal.
The hook: Satan is being held and studied in a secret government
laboratory.
    It would be a cross between Jurassic Park and
the Exorcist. A thriller that pits cutting-edge technology against
thousands of years of theology. Plus, it had the biggest monster of
them all—an eight-foot-tall, cloven-hoofed Beelzebub, complete with
bat wings, horns, and a predilection for eating live sheep.
    To do the story justice, I knew I had to
research the hell out of it, so to speak. When I had a confident
grasp of the science and religion involved, I worked on