Dramatic Sales Writing

So fiction was always my first writing love --
and it's still what I plan to go back to once
I'm rich enough to retire and do only what I want
to do :)

But of course, I wrote nonfiction too. I couldn't
get out of writing reports and stuff for school.
I wrote news and editorials for my high school
newspaper.

After I discovered science fiction fandom I wrote
articles and book reviews. I published a short
article on a science fiction writer from Alton,
Thomas Scortia, in Alton's newspaper. And a book
review there too, if I recall properly.

I also spent about 6 months making extra money
by writing news articles for the SIUE ALESTLE,
when I went back to college. I was the only
writer they had who was not majoring in journalism.

But after the editors learned they could depend
on me, they gave me a fair number of assignments,
including re-writing stuff that journalism
majors gave them.

Unfortunately, they only paid me 35 cents a
column inch so it didn't really repay me for
my time and I stopped doing it.

When I got interested in making money online,
I wrote ebooks, several of which I'm still
selling and making money from.

But from those experiences and from constant
reading of writing magazines and books, I
learned a valuable lesson.

The difference between different forms of
nonfiction writing is basically structural.

Everything has a defined format. In journalism,
it's the inverted pyramid and the 5 Ws and H.

For school papers you put a theme paragraph up
front then developed your argument.

Radio scripts (I once had a radio play broadcast)
have a format. Cartoon gags (I once dabbled in that)
have a format etc.

Fiction has a format, though it's much more
flexible. Yet genres have their particular
demands.

I can write anything, as long as I know what the
format is.