There are three things you can do if you want to improve your writing skills: 1). practice your craft, 2). read and 3). take notes from the pros. Tonight I was fortunate enough to experience #3 as we attended a speaking event that Carl Hiaasen gave to a group of environmentally minded kids called the RiverKidz. My two children are part of the RiverKidz, a group of youngsters who are interested in cleaning up the St. Lucie Estuary and Indian River Lagoon. These bodies of water are being impacted in a very negative way by the fresh water run off from Lake Okeechobee in Florida.

Hiaasen is a native Floridian who has been writing fiction novels based in the state of his birth since 1986. The satirist has written over 20 novels, two of which were made into full featured movies including Strip Tease starring Burt Reynolds and Demi Moore.  Hiaasen’s sense of humor is quick and contagious. His mannerisms are very natural and flowing, not calculated or rehearsed. Since the audience was made up of a number of kids, he talked about the three children’s novels he wrote. After his talk he opened up the floor to questions. My son asked the first question. “Do you feel that you had a good childhood?” He seemed a little taken aback by the directness of the question but answered with a resounding “yes” as he was able to spend most of his time outside, riding his bike, fishing, hiking, hunting for snakes and exploring what was wilderness back in the late 50s in western Broward County.

He had some great advice for aspiring writers, both young and old.

1. Read a lot…as much as you can. Aside from being a best selling author, Hiaasen still writes a weekly column for the Miami Herald. To stay current with issues he told us that he reads three newspapers per day.

2. Write a lot too. Pretty obvious sure but he said if you want to write you need to train the writing muscle and the best way to do that is through journaling. He encouraged the kids to write down at a least a few sentences each day about what was on their minds and what they did. He said that after a few months you would be amazed as to how much improvement you will see between what you wrote say a few months ago and what you write today.

3. He then talked about what he seemed to consider his key to success. Never write your ending before you begin. He feels that character development is the most important part of the process. He builds characters in his mind, commits them to paper and then builds upon them, shaping their personalities throughout the book and potentially from book to book. Much to the chagrin of all of the English teachers in the audience, he does not start with an outline. He starts with the characters and lets the story build around them. He doesn’t feel that writing would be very fulfilling if he has the ending figured out before he writes. He lets stories evolve and admitted that he has no idea how a book will end until he ends it. He creates interesting characters and then lets them write the story.