How to Think Sideways Lesson 17: How to Hire "Spies," and Why Your Story Needs Them (How To Think Sideways: Career Survival School for Writers)

Holly Lisle

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Simple Question: How, and what, and how much do you research your story?

LESSON DESCRIPTION: Learn to research better, research smarter, and research less—get what you need, quickly and efficiently, and avoid both "research procrastination syndrome" and getting fan mail that starts off, "Dear Idiot…."

Your purchase includes DRM-free PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats, and your link to the downloadable, printable lesson worksheets.

In LESSON 17: How to "Hire" Spies, and Why Your Story Needs Them, you will:

• Learn where to find and how to use free spies, paid spies, and live spies to keep you looking smart and knowledgeable in front of your agent, editor, and readers—because the unnerving truth about writing fiction is you cannot ever hope to know everything you need to know in order to write your story…but you still have to LOOK like you know what you’re talking about.

• Learn which of the five types of spies you’ll need to pick in any situation—from covering basic research to creating a character based on nitty-gritty insider information to dishing the dirt on a profession as background, you can find the RIGHT spies to will spill exactly the goods you need to make your story ring true.

• Discover how to "interrogate" your spies to get only the information you need, and avoid wasting your time, or theirs—because getting the wrong information doesn’t help anyone, and it sure doesn’t help your book.

Each lesson is taught in sequence, and builds on techniques taught in previous lessons. TO AVOID CONFUSION AND FRUSTRATION, DO THE LESSONS IN ORDER.

STUDENTS SAY:

"Fantasy writer and teacher extraordinaire Holly Lisle earns my undying thanks for her online courses on writing and editing, without which this book might still be languishing in revision Hell."

--From the Acknowledgements in THE ALCHEMIST OF SOULS, by Anne Lyle

"My newest novel got contracted by the very best Fantasy-agent in Germany."
-- Katharina Gerlach, Germany

"I've been a journalist for 25 years, and I've written fiction off and on since childhood. Some even have been published! ;-) Taking the course, ...I learned to let a story take on its own life and stop trying to force it to become what I originally imagined it might be. That's incredibly liberating."

-- Kathleen Rice Adams

"It is by far more detailed than I could have ever hoped. It's not just a collection of tips and tricks; it's a complex, complete system for getting that damn book done and done right. It's changed my whole approach to writing but in a way that feels natural, like, 'why didn't I think of doing it this way before?'"
-- K.T. Appleby

Each of the 29 lessons teaches one or more essential sideways-thinking skills that will allow you to write better fiction, find markets for your work, revise intelligently , sell what you write, and make every book you write better than the last. It includes both commercial publishing and self-publishing tracks: I have many years of experience in both.

HOW TO THINK SIDEWAYS: Career Survival School for Writers is "How to write books you love for the rest of your life in ANY genres you wish to pursue, get paid for doing it, hit deadlines, crush writer's block, NEVER run out of ideas, and build a career telling stories you're proud of to people who love what you do.