HOW JAMES PATTERSON LEARNED TO BECOME A BETTER WRITER

No, not by using ghost writers!

That is how he publishes a book a month! 

Prolific is not necessarily progressive although it is profitable!

AUDIO BOOKS

The concept of Story began with the spoken word.

In front of flickering campfires, Tale-Spinners held their audiences enthralled by

the magic of adventures that spoke to their fears and hopes.


 Once James Patterson moved to the country,

he learned the delights of listening to audio books as he drove from home to appointments in the city.

He even began to listen to his own books on audio

and discovered flaws even his eyes and his editor missed in the pacing and prose.

If even James Patterson could grow by listening to audio books, how much more could we?

SO WHY DOES JAMES PATTERSON SAY WE NEED TO LISTEN TO AUDIO BOOKS?




1) MORE THAN WORDS


 There is a cadence to good writing.  You pick that up listening to audiobooks. 


Over time, that extra knowledge will bleed into your own writing.


 For example, it is truly annoying when every line of dialog has a "he said" or "she said" after it. 


It's true these are often 'invisible' in printed form, 

but a chain of them can really bog down rapid-fire dialogue.




2.) WRITERS NEED TO READ


If you are like me, free time to pick up a print book and read is getting harder and harder to find.  


We all drive, do housework, do fitness workouts, or eat lunch.


If I've got a road trip to make, I may manage an entire book.


Listening to audiobooks helps me experience more literature than I would otherwise have time to take in.


 
3.) YOU CANNOT SKIM


  You've trained yourself over the years to skip the "boring bits", 


to the point where you may not even realize you're doing it anymore, or why. 


And, this may be affecting your own writing.


With an audiobook you're forced to hang on every word the author wrote. 


 As a result, you'll gain newfound appreciation for the words themselves. 




4.) YOU WILL LEARN PACING BY HEARING IT DONE WELL and BADLY


To learn about story pacing, you need to read the whole book.  Even those blocks of narrative and that looong stretch of backstory!


Hearing the whole thing will give you a better feel for how other authors pace their work


and how they use language to speed things up and also to slow them down.




5.) YOU WILL HEAR THE WORDS AS YOU WRITE THEM.


 After a time of listening to audiobooks you will hear the words in your head now as you write.  

Jarring bits that might have gotten by you will now stand out for you to edit them on the spot.


6.) YOU WILL HEAR HOW "VOICE" MAKES OR BREAK A BOOK

Every writer needs to develop their own unique voice.  While you don't want to copy the voice of another writer,


it is a great teaching experience to hear how and why that author sounds like one of a kind.



7.) THE MAGIC OF LANGUAGE


The reality of writing is that your prose will benefit when you consider the sounds of the words you use.


The words that we use can be musical

but to hear the "notes" we need to actually hear the language.

Audiobooks allow you to do this.