Writing popular fiction

is, clearly, a rich field for the new writer.
    This is not to imply that category fiction has a difficult time in clothbound book markets. Indeed, more than half the hardcover fiction published today is category fiction. While most mainstream novels do not break even, hardcover category novels—whether overtly labeled as genre fiction or labeled only by inference in the jacket copy—usually show at least a marginal profit from the first edition.
    In the following chapters, we will examine the major categories of modern fiction. Once a writer has mastered a genre, he should be able to turn his hand to another category with at least some success. Both Gothic and erotic novels have strict frames which are surprisingly alike. Writing a science fiction novel, once you understand the ground rules, is not that much different from writing mystery novels. Adventure-suspense is, in many ways, quite similar to fantasy.
    Every writer has one or two kinds of stories he most
e-n-
joys reading and writing. I prefer suspense and science fiction, the first for its readability and no-nonsense prose, the second for its color and wealth of ideas. But there are times when publishers—especially paperback publishers whose buying trends are influenced by an unusually finicky market—are overstocked in a particular category and are not buying. Maybe Gothics are booming, and editors are buying heavily. But mysteries have currently lost favor with readers, forcing publishers to temporarily cut back on their monthly mystery issues. It happens. All the time. Of course, the Biggest Name Writers continue to sell their books despite an overall slump in their field, but the new or average writer can find himself locked out, with work he cannot sell. This is when you should be able to turn your energies into other fields and still earn enough to keep bread on the table.
    In other words, you should write so well, handle words so easily, that you can genuinely be called a "professional."
    With that goal in mind, let's look, first, at what makes category fiction so different from mainstream. Basically, genre stories require five elements which don't always appear in mainstream work:

ONE: A STRONG PLOT
    In category fiction, there is no substitute for the age-old story formula: the hero (or heroine) has a serious problem; he attempts to solve it but plunges deeper into danger; his stumbling blocks, growing logically from his efforts to find a solution, become increasingly monumental; at last, forced by the harsh circumstances to learn something about himself or the world around him, to learn a Truth of which he was previously unaware, he solves his problem—or loses magnificently.
    One of Donald E. Westlake's early suspense novels,
Killing Time
, while flawed in other ways, is a prime example of the well-used story formula. The story concerns a private detective, Tim Smith, who is the only professional investigator in a small, New York State town, Winston. Smith is in tight with the town's business and government elite, because he has enough "dirt" in his files, on each of them, to make them want to be friends rather than enemies. Because he knows them all so well, he's on the city payroll for services he never renders, and he gets a cut of the backroom pie. Smith justifies this because he feels the present Winston power elite is far more desirable a group than any other that could replace it, that despite all their flaws, these men
do
get things done. When a crusading non-profit organization—Citizens for Clean Government—comes to Winston to scour away its corruption, Smith will not help the crusaders, for he believes they'd only be opening the door to
new
wolves, by getting rid of the old. Still, one of Smith's powerful friends is afraid Smith will spill what he keeps in his files, and an attempt is made on Smith's life. Now, we have the hero, and the hero has his problem: how to find out who panicked, and how to keep that nameless man from killing him. As the book progresses, and as Smith makes several attempts to discover the would-be killer's identity, the attempts on his own life become more violent and more difficult to escape. Smith becomes a man without friends on either side of the issue; his stumbling blocks become more and more monumental. At last, when his apartment is destroyed by a hand grenade and a bomb is placed in his car, he decides to face the truth about himself: he has always cooperated with Winston's power elite because