Writing Genre Fiction

Several years ago, after many years of writing nonfiction, i decided to write a novel-a medical thriller in the mold of robin cook, michael crichton, and michael palmer. the problem was that, although i knew how to write and had received a number of awards for nonfiction works, i didn't know the how to write fiction. so, before putting fingers to keyboard i did a thorough search of the literature, which included reading numerous books and hundreds of website articles. what i discovered was that there simply wasn't one good source from which to learn the craft of writing genre fiction. "writing genre fiction: a guide to the craft" is the book i was looking for when i set out on my quest to learn how to write fiction. it is an attempt to share what i learned from my research. it covers the six key elements of genre fiction; the various genres and subgenres; a large number of genre-fiction writing techniques; plot, subplots, and parallel plots; structure; scene and sequel; characterization; dialogue; emotions; and body language. it also covers additional information about copyrighting and plagiarism, where to get ideas, manuscript formatting and revision, and query letters and synopses. in addition, an appendix covers a large number of grammar tips.