Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, with more than 30 million books sold, writer Dean Wesley Smith published far more than a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres.

At the moment he produces novels in several major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the Old West, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, a superhero series starring Poker Boy, a mystery series featuring the retired detectives of the Cold Poker Gang, and the Mary Jo Assassin series.

His monthly magazine, Smith's Monthly, which consists of only his own fiction, premiered in October 2013 and offers readers more than 70,000 words per issue, including a new and original novel every month.

During his career, Dean also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds. Writing with his wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch under the name Kathryn Wesley, he wrote the novel for the NBC miniseries The Tenth Kingdom and other books for Hallmark Hall of Fame movies.

He wrote novels under dozens of pen names in the worlds of comic books and movies, including novelizations of almost a dozen films, from The Final Fantasy to Steel to Rundown.

Dean also worked as a fiction editor off and on, starting at Pulphouse Publishing, then at VB Tech Journal, then Pocket Books, and now at WMG Publishing, where he and Kristine Kathryn Rusch serve as series editors for the acclaimed Fiction River anthology series.

For more information about Dean's books and ongoing projects, please visit his website at www.deanwesleysmith.com.

Stages of a Fiction Writer by Dean Wesley Smith

With more than a hundred published novels and more than thirty million copies of his books in print, USA Today bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith knows how to write fiction. And he has traversed every stage of writing along the way.

In this WMG Writer's Guide, Dean takes you step-by-step through the stages most fiction writers go through and how not to lose hope along the way.

Want to enjoy your writing more and let your storytelling evolve in its own time? Then learn from Dean's experience and discover what to expect at each stage of a fiction writer's career.

CURATOR'S NOTE

Dean Wesley Smith has sold over 35 million books in his career, with more selling every day. He has also edited fiction for decades. He has forgotten more about writing than most writers ever learn. He has gone through all of the stages he describes in this little book, and continues to carve his own path forward, as one of the most prolific writers of all time. – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 

REVIEWS

  • "Dean Wesley Smith's blog gives both a slightly different view of the publishing world than I'd seen before and detailed hands-on 'here's how to get from A to B' instruction."

    – Erin M. Hartshorn, Vision: A Resource for Writers
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Stages of a Fiction Writer

Know Where You Stand on the Path to Writing

CHAPTER ONE

There are four basic stages of commercial fiction writing that are pretty clear. For this book, I just number them one through four.

I kind of think of them as places where writers live.

Basically, I'm an early-to-middle stage four writer. So is Kris. And we're working to get better all the time, as we always have.

Writers start in stage one and eventually work up into stage four if they keep learning and don't quit.

These stages will often have traits that carry over from one stage to another.

The lines between the stages are not dark and concrete, but are transitions that often take time to cross.

All of us, without exception, go through the early stages of fiction writing. No way around it.

And often writers can spend decades moving through a stage.

Or get stuck and have their career end in a stage.

So another way to think of this is like a journey.

A journey without an end point.

You never arrive, you never know it all as a fiction writer. Learning continues.

The key is never stop on the road. Keep moving and learning.

A Chess Example

To try to understand some of what I am talking about in coming chapters, keep in mind chess.

Those who have never played chess, or only played a few games, might know the moves of the pieces. But they can watch two chess masters and not have a clue what the masters are doing. The game is played on other levels than the prescribed moves of pieces.

When a beginning writer looks at a long-term bestseller, it is impossible to see what that writer did for book after book to get millions of readers every book. The books are just words, put into sentences. Right?

How hard can that be?

And chess pieces are just game pieces that move.

Just keep that in mind.

I Want to Jump Ahead Some Stages

Well, no. This question always comes up. No matter how much a beginning writer wants to get lucky and hit with some top selling books, which does happen, the skill level doesn't jump ahead.

We all go through the stages.

No matter how much of a hurry the writer might be in. And stage one writers are always in a hurry.

Now, that said, paying the price in the stages, the learning required to move through an early stage, can come from other places.

Often nonfiction professional writers can make a jump to professional fiction quicker. They might not be in the same stage with their fiction writing as they are with their nonfiction writing, but they can move quicker and start higher because they have "paid the price" in learning in nonfiction.

This also applies to those who started off writing plays, those writing for Hollywood, those coming out of advertising writing, and so on.

For those, the early stage or two were learned in other areas.