John Warner's written a book about writing a sure-fire bestseller - FONDLING YOUR MUSE

Excerpt:

Too many writers are caught up with wanting to be original or groundbreaking. Publishers, on the other hand, are shortsighted and risk-averse because, as we all know, risk is incompatible with a healthy bottom line. I mean, would the Ford Motor Company maintain its stranglehold on the steam-powered buggy market today if old Henry had embraced that tinker's dream, the internal combustion engine? Would Wang computers be one of the most well-known technology brands in the world if, instead of plowing ahead with their centralized mainframe business-computing model, they had replaced those huge terminals with "personal computers"? Absurd! Business is in the business of repetition, and the wise author recognizes this up front.

In today's entertainment world, risk is punished while treading the well-worn path is rewarded again and again and again. The only ground you should think about breaking is in your spacious backyard?for your new pool, paid for by your fat advance, earned by writing a book just like books that have already sold by the bucketful. Fortunately, 99 percent of today's published fiction adheres to very specific, easily replicated formulas that can be broken down to simple recipes. Just choose one of these templates, and you're off and away.

Contemporary Romance Quiche à la Nicholas Sparks
Ingredients
7,000 tons cheese (Velveeta brand preferred)
600 lbs. cardboard
300 lbs. treacle
1 towel, for weeping

Preparation
Thoroughly melt cheese over low, slow heat. Allow cheese to thicken and congeal. Fashion character-like things out of cardboard. Roll characters in cheese and drizzle with treacle. Serve lightly warmed-over with one weeping towel per reader. Tasty with a side of hackneyed potatoes.


John Grisham's Legal Thriller Stew
Ingredients
1 youthful idealist either in or fresh out of law school
1 setting in a decaying southern city
1 corrupt institution
1 pinch ethical dilemma
1 moment of truth
7,000 mixed twists and turns

Preparation
Thoroughly mix all ingredients in large bowl. Over extremely high heat, boil in pot until ingredients bubble over line of believability. Serves at least a couple million per batch, more if served with a movie tie-in.


Ayn Rand Objectivism Cake
Ingredients
1 cartoonishly masculine hero with a name that signifies strength (like Griffin Stone or Granite Johnson)
Equal amounts of:
compassion
emotion
cooperation
sacrifice
reasoning
objective reality
selfishness
laissez-faire capitalism

Preparation
Take compassion, emotion, cooperation, and sacrifice, throw them on the ground, and stomp into a worthless pulp. Discard in trash and don't give even a second thought. Combine remaining ingredients and bake until half-done. Serve to pseudointellectual discontented seventeen-year-old males who can't get dates. Warning: generally repulsive to anyone over twenty years old.


Harlequin Romance Salad
Ingredients
5 bodices
6,000,000 adjectives
1 stallion (horse)
1 stallion (human)
prose (to taste)

Preparation
Thoroughly rip bodices, pound prose until purple, and combine all ingredients in large mixing bowl. Drown with adjective dressing. Serve by the bucketful to the sexually frustrated trapped in passionless marriages.


Chick-Lit Cacciatore
Ingredients
1 unconventionally attractive, romantically frustrated heroine
1 caddish boss (can substitute caddish co-worker, caddish former boyfriend, or caddish jockey)
1 overprotective mother who wishes her daughter would just settle down
half-dozen comically embarrassing situations (use more or less, to taste)
1 perfect ending reminiscent of that last scene in Pretty Woman, where Richard Gere realizes that he really could spend eternity with Julia Roberts, even though she has spent her entire adult life as a prostitute

Preparation
You know the drill. Satisfies many, every single time. I can't explain how, either.


Tom Clancy Techno-Thriller Surprise
Ingredients
oodles of high-tech war-making machinery
1 reluctant, yet capable, hero
1 obstructionist bureaucrat
1 evil empire (can substitute evil paramilitary organization)
8,000,000,000 acronyms
1 snappy title

Preparation
Preparation is usually subcontracted to others. Let them worry about it.


Contemporary American Literary Fiction Flambé
Ingredients
12 lbs. lint from own navel
7 reams self-importance
1 generally unpalatable main character
prose, to taste
propane torch

Preparation
Mix lint with self-importance and infuse into main character. Use propane flame to overheat prose. Served in smaller and smaller quantities as the years go by.

There are other recipes out there, but hopefully these will give you a good foundation. The key is to never, ever, stray from the beaten path. Think of the American book-buying consumer as being something like a baby just beginning to eat solid food. The baby likes certain things (like the yellow mush, and sometimes the off-white mush), but if you try to feed the baby the green mush, the baby will scrunch up its face and pound its little baby fists against its high chair and refuse to eat.

When it comes to writing your best-seller, stick with the yellow (or sometimes off-white) mush.