Unpublished writers are naturally looking for that first break. Even a little crack in the door can be the start of something big.
Rarely, however, are the doors swung open to the throne room from the get go. But in the case of Andrew Gross, that's exactly what happened.
He was struggling away, producing manuscripts, when an editor saw something in his writing and recommended Gross to none other than James Patterson. Patterson was looking for a co-writer at the time, and called Gross up.
That pairing went on to produce six #1 bestsellers.
Nothing like starting at the top.
So what was it that the editor saw in Andrew Gross? It was his strong women characters. I asked Gross how he developed that talent.
"Could it be fifteen years in the women's apparel business?" he joked. "I don't know. Everybody has their own skills. A strong female who rises to provide the heroic aspect of the book has always been very sexy to me. So I respond to it and it comes naturally. I am also the cook and the 'shopper' in our family, and I'm forced to get pedicures (on pain of not being let into bed!), so I guess I have this tiny, elevated feminine side."
During his collaboration with Patterson, Gross learned how to craft long, detailed outlines. The discipline served him well, though now he's able to shorten the process.
"I do always start with a detailed proposal, which I present to my editor and publisher. It's usually a synopsis of the overriding concept, the main characters, the conflict, where I see it going. At least half the book. I probably also include an outline of the first ten scenes or so, pretty fleshed out. It's important to me they buy in. From that point on, I find myself outlining in segments of ten to fifteen chapters, just to stay ahead of myself. Keep me on task. I know where I want to go, but sometimes don't do the heavy lifting and take the shortcut now that I have several books under me and know the process."
So what is central to an Andrew Gross plot? "It has to have a compelling personal conflict or wound at the heart of the main character - which provided the emotional fuel of the story - and a local, seemingly unrelated event that widens into what's really at stake."
Gross typically starts with "something that has attracted me emotionally, a family torn apart, secrets buried, etc. Then I try to wrap that around a crime, maybe picked up on the news. I start with the family crisis, and that creates my characters. In my last few books I've been dealing with crimes like hit-and-run and home invasion murders, that widen into national cover-ups and conspiracies. So the big picture payoffs can be taken from the news. But it's the family aspect that provides courage and redemption, the emotional fuel that is universal.
Gross has a typical writing day. He's a "morning guy" who is at his desk by eight. "I do the Facebook, email thing. A little solitaire maybe, then I loop back to yesterday's pages. Because my books tend to be roughly one hundred 3 - 5 page chapters, I try to crank out a chapter a day. I only come down from my office after I force it out, one chapter, whether it's lunchtime or five p.m."
And what's next for Andrew Gross?
"I just turned in a new thriller set in Greenwich around a conspiracy behind the financial meltdown. I'm going to take a break from Ty Hauck [featured most recently in Don't Look Twice] and do something a bit more personal, a story built around a teenage suicide, which some may know was something we went through with a nephew this year. And back to a first person narrator. Haven't done that since working with Patterson."
Visit Andrew Gross at www.andrewgrossbooks.com.
James Scott Bell is the author of TRY DYING (Center Street) and WRITE GREAT FICTION: PLOT & STRUCTURE (Writers Digest Books). James contributes the monthly Between The Lines features.
