I also asked him the same question! (Great Minds Think Alike Right?) He said “For instance, how to write an interesting story. It should be something that you yourself are interested in, studded with characters that appeal to you. The biggest thing is planning. I work very hard on filling out my story before I put down a single word. Planning is everything. You can’t say something properly unless you know exactly what you’re trying to say. And you can’t know that unless you plan.
It’s also VERY important to make your story work. It must be foolproof, otherwise you’ll get a lot of letters pointing out how your plot could never have happened. Or, worse, you editor will return your manuscript and reject it outright.
The basics, being grammar and spelling, and sentence structure. No publisher will read your work if it’s full of grammatical errors, or poor spelling. That’s why one of my biggest rules is that you should have someone close to you, someone you trust to tell you the truth even if it hurts, to read your work and give you a straight-from-the-heart opinion on it. A Mom, an Aunt, a special teacher — your choice. And you have to be prepared for his/her opinion — you might be discouraged, or even insulted! But you need the truth.
And the writing, the actual doing it, is what will tell you if writing is for you. Good luck!
—–Gordon Korman—–” when I asked him!
