Writing popular fiction

novels:
Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key
, and
The Thin Man)
. This is, of course, only the barest of lists, and should be supplemented with as many other mystery writers' work as you can find and can find time to read.
CHAPTER FIVE    Gothic-Romance
    In my third year as a freelance writer, the science fiction market temporarily dried up, due to editorial overstocking at several of the houses with the largest monthly science fiction lists. Since I was selling far more science fiction than anything else, I was caught in the pinch. I was learning the suspense form, but had not yet had great success with it, and I was several years away from writing the big, serious novels I'm now concentrating on. I needed new markets, fast. The previous year, I'd dabbled in erotic novels, as a sideline, but I did not feel like returning to that category and, besides, it was not flourishing as it once had. What to do?
    For a year, an editor friend had been urging me to try a Gothic novel since the form is perennially one of the most popular in the paperback field. I declined, principally because I didn't think I could write believably from a woman's viewpoint, but also because I simply did not like Gothic novels. I felt they were so formulized as to be mirror images of one another, and I didn't see how I could write in a field for which I had no respect. When the science fiction market remained tight, however, I finally tried my hand at a Gothic. I finished the book in two weeks, attached a female by-line (half the Gothics published today are written by men, but the by-line must always be female), and mailed it off. The editor read it, made a few suggestions, and bought it for $1,500. That's $750 a week; not a fortune, but a pleasant enough income to make it worth most any genre writer's time.
    Three months later, I wrote my second Gothic, again in two weeks, and received a $1,750 advance. My third Gothic, a few months later, took me one week from first page to last and earned another $1,750 check. Within a single year, taking only five weeks away from my serious work, I made $5,000 from my Gothics, enough to relieve immediate financial problems and let me get on with my more important work.
    Herein lies the great advantage of writing category fiction. Financial worries are the most common causes of writers' blocks. If a writer cannot pay his bills, he usually cannot create. He either has to take a second job or a part-time job (if he is already a full-time freelancer) until his bills are paid and the tension relieved—or he must set aside his serious work and write something that will turn a fast dollar. Since he can probably earn more money, more quickly, by writing a Gothic than by working as a clerk, he is foolish not to take advantage of his talents. I know of writers who say they will not "prostitute" their talent by writing anything just for money. When they get desperate to meet the bills, they take a job for five or six months until they're financially solvent again, then launch into full-time freelancing once more. So far as I can see, they are doing worse than prostituting their talent; they are denying it altogether for unnecessarily long periods of time. In four weeks of Gothic writing, they could earn more money than they do in six months of office work, and be back at their serious creation five months sooner.
    Lest I give you the impression that anyone can sit down and bat out a marketable Gothic novel in two weeks, let me point out that the Gothic form requires the same five basic elements as any other category novel. If you have already familiarized yourself with the basics of other categories, and if you've written and sold a novel or two in them, you will find Gothics relatively easy fare to create. However, if you're starting your writing career as a Gothic novelist, you will find it as taxing and demanding to achieve sales as if you had started in any other genre. Remember, though, that anyone who can write and sell a Gothic can also write and sell in at least one other category. Because it usually contains a crime committed early in the plot and because the villain is not revealed until the climactic scene towards the end, the Gothic resembles the mystery story and is subject to many of the techniques and rules of that form. Because it usually contains some supernatural events—which may or may not be explained away as natural phenomena or tricks of the villain—the Gothic