Leave the reader coming back for more
I have often felt that writing in many ways is akin to cooking. You need the perfect recipe with the right flavors to make your reader go away satisfied enough to come back again for more.
I will now decode what the perfect four-course meal means for a writer and how to get it right every time.
The appetizer course or the title
One of the most important courses of a meal is the first course, i.e., the appetizer. You get this wrong, and you had ruined the whole experience before it really began.
The title of a literary work acts as the appetizer. It needs…
Standing 7 ft 5 in tall, he fought with a 55-pound sword.
A couple of years ago, nearly all of the world waited with bated breath for the final episode of the final season of Game of Thrones.
Arguably one of the biggest and grandest spectacles that television has seen, and a show that had a fan following that was unparalleled. The show cost HBO and its owner AT&T (ATT) a whopping $1.5 billion to make but has more than doubled the returns based on the revenues it has made so far. …
A story of incest, financial fraud, and multiple murders.
It was August 1935, when one evening James and Viola Pemberton were visiting their old friend Robert S. James in his new home and were hoping to meet his latest of many wives who he had married only three months ago.
However, much to their surprise, they were greeted by no one at the house — which was a bit surprising to them.
Mr. James was a barber and he’d met his newest wife, Mary, only earlier that year. She was a 25-year-old manicurist, a pretty young girl, who was charmed by Mr. …
Workplace diversity has to be intentional —and that’s OK.
Let me tell you a story — a story about Adam and Lisa.
Adam was born in the early 1980s in Manhattan in a White family — his mom a lawyer and his dad a finance executive in a Fortune 500 firm.
Lisa was born in Cleveland, Ohio around the same time as Adam — her mom a cashier at a nearby Walmart, and her dad a door-to-door salesman. Both her parents were Black.
Adam went to the best of the schools — his parents ensured they lived in the best of the school districts growing up, while Lisa went…
These will make the Electric Chair seem like a walk in the park.
Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
I don’t know if Hell or Heaven exists — but the general premise typically is that heaven is a place where you go if you do more good deeds than bad, and experience the pleasures of the afterlife.
While hell is the opposite — a place you’d go if your sins outweigh your good deeds in mortal form — and as a result, you’d end up facing atrocities in the afterlife.
However, what if the path to hell was even more difficult than the worst possible atrocities that hell could dish out?
What if death wasn’t a quick dose of…
Donna (formerly Doug) Perry claims sex change helped control violence.
In 1990, the murder of three prostitutes in an eerily similar manner shook Spokane County.
Yolanda Sapp, 26, was found dead on February 22, 1990, in the 4100 block of East Upriver Drive.
Roughly about a month later, on March 25, 1990, 34-year-old Nickie Lowe’s body was discovered underneath the Greene Street Bridge.
38-year-old Kathleen Brisbois would be the third victim and her body was found on May 15, 1990, on the west side of the Spokane River near Trent and Pines in Spokane Valley.
The three bodies had too many similarities — enough for the police to believe they…
And the finders’ legal battle for rights vs. the State of Florida.
Since I’ve been a kid — I’ve always been fascinated by “treasure hunts” of any kind. But the fascination has mostly only been satiated by fictional stories ranging from Uncle Scrooge’s cartoons and a slew of movies.
However, there are a whole host of real-life treasure hunters — especially in the world of seas and oceans. Ships in ancient times, often carrying a lot of valuables, would hit a storm and be lost in the waters forever. …
Pam Shelley’s death initially deemed suicide was indeed a murder.
In January 2001, the small town of Cuero, Texas was shaken by the death of Pam Shelley. The woman was found dead from a gunshot to her head in the house where she lived with her boyfriend Ronnie Hendrick and her two kids — 12-year-old daughter, Kayla, and 9-year-old son, Dustin.
It seemed like a plain case of suicide — both from the testimony of her live-in boyfriend as well as the medical examiner, who ruled the case a suicide, and the case was closed.
However, Carl Bowen who was part of the investigating team, wasn’t convinced that this was…
I was stuck at the $100-something mark for months until April
I am an impatient guy — the kind who submits a story to a publication and goes back to the stories page every 10 minutes to see if it was accepted or rejected by the publication.
In the world of Medium, that doesn’t help you a lot. Especially when the most sought-after publications like The Ascent, The Writing Cooperative, etc. can have painfully long waits that can last for several days.
However, I am also lucky enough to be an editor on the Illumination publications, which means among the duties that come with being an editor, I also have the…
Ed Gein was the man behind Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs.
In a world full of serial killers with deeply intriguing stories and dozens of victim counts to their name, it is quite ironic that some of the biggest Hollywood thrillers happened to be inspired by the life of a man, who was only ever convicted of killing two people.
However, the story of Ed Gein is one that has inspired at least seven movies in varying degrees — three of which are quite popular thrillers — Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs.
The reason for this is that his story is much more than meets the eye…
The Maverick Files
Thinker, finance professional, loving husband, a doting dad, fitness enthusiast! MBA in Finance & Marketing and Comp. Science Engineer. www.themaverickfiles.com
