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Put heart into
everything you write.
A highly successful author once told David Morrell that
he chose his genre by pure market calculation. And it
worked for him. Which is fi ne. In our free enterprise sys-
tem, that’s permissible.
Morrell, after hearing this, refl ected that he is just
not constituted to be that kind of writer. He can write
only when there is something (an “inner ferret,” he calls
it) gnawing at him, something that needs expression
from the deepest part of himself.
I like to see a writer’s heart on the page.
Heart = passion + purpose.
Passion means heat. Strength of feeling.
Purpose means you know what you want the reader
to feel when she gets to the end of your story.
Heart means directing passion so it serves your de-
sired purpose.
Leon Uris once said, “You have to evolve a permanent
set of values to serve as motivation.” His books have sold
more than 150 million copies worldwide and have been
translated into twenty-nine languages.
Why?
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Uris was a Marine in World War II, and his lead
characters are often involved in grand battles for justice.
Battle Cry, Exodus, QB VII, and Trinity reached the top spot
on the New York Times Best-Seller List because Uris’s heart
was evident in the stories.
Consider also two novels published in 1957, both of
which became bestsellers and, to this day, sell tens of
thousands of copies per year.
Yet they couldn’t be more different.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac is a book-length jazz riff
celebrating present-moment experience.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is a monumental door-
stop of a novel that is a philosophical argument for the
life of the mind and “rational self-interest.”
So what accounts for the perennial popularity of
these two divergent novels?
Three things.
First, they were about something. For Kerouac, this jour-
ney on the road was the pursuit of “beatitude” (the word
Kerouac insisted was the real basis for the word “Beat”).
Rand wanted nothing less than to shift the entire
course of Western Civilization. (No pressure.)
Second, the authors believed what they were writing.
You can’t read a single page in these books that does not
contain personal narrative fervor.
Finally, they cared about their craft. They had two
entirely different styles, of course. But both worked hard
to get good at what they did. Rand wrote in the grand
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romantic tradition of Victor Hugo. Kerouac was trying
to develop a whole new approach he called “Be Bop Prose
Rhapsody.” Both succeeded in their unique fashion.
To pinpoint your passion:
1. Start by making a list of all the things you be-
lieve most strongly.
2. Now make a list of your all-time favorite books
and movies, and describe how each one of them
made you feel at the end.
3. When you start looking for that next novel idea,
select one item from each list and brainstorm
on how you might combine them in a story. De-
termine never to write another novel you don’t
have your heart in.
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