Unlock the secrets of becoming the greatest whistleblower of the literary world!

Follow these simple rules and you’ll have to have two driveways: One for the truckloads of cash, the other for the people you piss off to get the truckloads of cash!

Find a secret that everyone knows. Badly.

It’s not that hard these days what with the internet and Lost. Example: If you’re going to use Area 51, it’s pretty damn easy to get a tour of the place if you say you’re not Dan Brown and you’re not making a search engine clogging epic novel of Area 51 – tell them you’re just curious. Make detailed notes of what you see so that make people think you were actually there. Or sounds like you were. Research using Google for the meat of the story helps as long as you go deep, like say… to the third page and past. Still using the Area 51 example: you could write about how aliens aren’t really kept there but aliens might be running the place! Googling “area 51” comes up with all sorts of cool technology myths that can be used by our characters as they run around looking for interconnecting tidbits. Don’t forget to have them stop in mid flight to discuss these interesting tidbits while government agents are chasing them.

Create a lovable schlep.

Make him super smart but somewhat socially awkward with the opposite sex. Think “elbow pads” on “tweed” jackets. He should be an “everyman” kind of guy, no real physical description to tarnish our self-identification with him, but make him bewildered at natural phenomenon. When something extraordinary happens, he should gape in wonder and question his scientific training. Then snap out of it.

Create a love interest.

Hey if you’re going to sell this puppy to Hollywood, there’s gotta be some tail. You can make the love interest equally as smart as the schlep but not in the same field of interest, or else A is going to know how B decoded the supersecret code of C before B does.

Create a villain that makes your skin crawl.

It’s important you make this guy self-hating in some way. Make him pull out his fingernails in some ancient religious ritual you find on Wikipedia. Or better yet, he hurts kittens. But he makes the kittens claw his back in some way to cleanse himself of earthly bonds. Write this person so over the top the reader is actually twirling mustaches and flourishing black capes in their heads as they read.

Create an ambiguous villain.

This person should smoke. Smoking is bad. Smoking makes people hate them. This person should chase the hero and the love interest because they’re unaware of the power the secret the hero needs to locate. Or maybe they do know and they need to stop the secret from becoming revealed and changing the world forever! Then you can reveal at the end that this person was actually helping all along and smoking was just… a smoke screen!

Supporting Cast

Mix in subordinate characters who give their cellphones bewildered looks as your hero bark orders at them while on the run, like “I need for you to find a good tomato soup recipe – from the Mesopotamian Era!” Click, line goes dead. Don’t forget to have the subordinate find this information but with a chilling end to the chapter. The more peril the better:  “…but the soup recipe called for live scorpions.”

Flashbacks

Super important. Make sure one of the flashbacks happens in a wood panelled Ivy League school lecture room. Or in a musty library. Hollywood loves that shit. If we continue with the Area 51 story: Flashback to 1947, an absent minded professor who is in his library/lab minding his own business when government agents file in with a small body. They order an autopsy. The professor obliges but at the end of the chapter, he mentions the organs are more human than human. Or some such cliff-hangy saying.

Ending

Of course, the last chapter it’s revealed that the “aliens” are actually Mexicans.