mystery

Movie or Bestseller?

Posted on by Brenda Poulos

Do you dream of having one of your books made into a Hollywood movie? If so, this is a good bit of research you might want to consider. 

Do you know which writing genre is made into the most movies? 

Here’s what my research turned up, starting with #1:

Sci-fi

Horror

Action

Comedy

Drama 

Fantasy

Thriller

Adventure

War

Mystery

Musical

When I began writing, I tried my hand at screenplays with some success. I wrote four comedies and two dramas before I threw in the towel.

It was a good experience , but the writing process is unlike writing for the reading market.

Take another look at the list. There is one genre missing. It’s the one—if I were guessing—that would have been at the top of the list. 

That’s right. Romance came in fifteenth.

Don’t tell that to Nicholas Sparks. I’ve watched several of his movies over the past five years or so.

Just goes to show you.

Don’t believe everything you read.

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Foreshadowing

Posted on by Brenda Poulos

 

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There are many literary devices.

Writers use a good deal of them—often without knowing it. 

Foreshadowing is one that really packs a punch.

It is a literary device used to give the reader a hint of what is to come later in the story. It often appears at the beginning of a story, or start of a chapter.

To create foreshadowing, a writer may use dialogue, action, even chapter titles. These create an atmosphere of suspense, building reader anticipation as to what might happen next. For this reason, this device is most often used in mystery novels.

Here is just one example in literature, (From Act 2 in Romeo and Juliet by Robert Francis): “Life were better ended by their hate, than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.” 

Here, Juliet is concerned about Romeo’s safety. Romeo says he’d rather have her love (and die sooner) than not have it (and die later).

We all know what happened shortly after…