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I'm taking two courses this summer at Central Piedmont Community College. One is on writing short stories, the other is freelance journalism. I thought both would improve my blogging, my short fiction, and my all around writing skill. In this tight market a writer has to diversify and be on top of his game.

I've been struck by how different the skills are, and how much they have in common. Good writing is good writing, yet the purpose of the writing, and how it is presented and perceived, is vastly different from fiction to non-fiction.

In fiction we hook the reader with teasers and take them step by step into our world. We never give away too much too soon, but string the reader along with us to the very last page. Sometimes we even leave enough loose ends to lure them to our next book.

In journalism the idea is completely different. We are giving the reader, hopefully useful, information. We present our main premise, and meat of the story, right up front – in the first few paragraphs. We need to convey the information as quickly and succinctly as possible. Then we continue to elaborate on the idea, provide more and more supporting information for our reader to consider. It's a top down approach. We lay all our cards on the table, then explain what each card is.

It occurred to me that fiction writers can learn a lot from journalism. Many of us have great difficulty writing an effective query letter and synopsis. That s because they are, at the heart, conveying information – journalism. The first page of our novel, our query, and our synopsis, must – like a good piece of journalism – provide the reader, the agent, or the publisher with the information they need. Then, once they decide to continue, we can lead them into the world of our story-telling.

I am rethinking my art from a more critical, journalistic, perspective. We work so hard to create beautiful literature, but it does nothing unless it is read. We can learn a lot from the newspaper reporter, the magazine feature writer, even the flamboyant sports writer, about how to hook our readers and market our work.

People pick up a magazine and may only read for a couple of minutes before being interrupted by our busy world – yet they return to a good article over and over again until they finish it – a few lines here, a paragraph there. When they pick up our latest book in the bookstore, and read the first few lines, we want to create that same commitment – to buy the book, take it home, and finish reading it. We need to learn the tricks of the trade as it were.
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