Forgotten Bestseller Secrets - Keep 'Em Reading: Foreword

Beginning a new series, tracing forgotten secrets once taught in the famed OU Professional Writing curriculum. These texts are now out of print, but still speed author craft mastery...

In 1938, Oklahoma's first Rhodes scholar started a very unique and successful university course for writers. His name was Walter S. Campbell.

For the next 20 years, his course produced professional writers who started selling their stories before they finished their training. The vast bulk of them became publishing professionals from there on out. In this short period, their thousands of students turned out literally millions in royalties, untold numbers of magazine articles and stories, hundreds of books, and some were even made into movies.

Some of their most notable graduates include Louis L’Amour, Mary Higgins Clark, Fred Grove, Tony Hillerman, Bill Gulick, William R. Scott, Ed Montgomery, Neal Barrett, and Bill Burchardt. Among the best-known movies are “The Hallelujah Trail,” “Onionhead,” “Hondo,” and “Bend of the River.” Even the musical/movie “Oklahoma!” had its roots in a story from one of Campbell’s course graduates.

No other course, past or present, achieved comparable success. Worldwide, this course stood alone.

What made the most effective writing course in known history that successful - and whatever happened to the most effective writing course in known history?

The first clue we have is that 5 of the 6 textbooks they used over their heyday are no longer in print.

What distinguished those books?

1. Campbell and Harris re-introduced concepts that were known throughout literary history as common practices used to create popular stories.

2. They recognized that those practices were common to all types of writing, not just fiction novels.

3. Stories, articles, and all writing types were considered best written to be experienced as a single contiguous flow of creative continuity.

And so, they pushed practices which were ingrained (wired) into readers throughout the culture – and continue to be trained into us and our children today. No plot is original these days. That idea’s been recognized as true for ages. Campbell and Harris took this as a guiding hint. They then adjusted their training into making each writer into a self-taught professional. Their students were taught to study those same successful patterns that perennial-selling classics used – the ones found in the pages of those books, articles, and stories.

Campbell understood that if there were a magic secret to successful writing. He realized the fastest results came from students doing these actions:

• to write continually, regularly,

• to study carefully the specific market where he wanted to write in order to gauge what that market would buy,

• to study the works of the continuing top-selling masters in each market area, learning their techniques but not copying their writing style – and beyond all,

• writing only about subjects which interested him greatly and involved him emotionally.

Through study of classic and modern writers, Campbell isolated several approaches to writing which I’ve found haven’t been emphasized or even mentioned in any modern text on author craft.

He re-introduced the implementation of the playwright’s scene as a unit of writing, along with its sequel, which then interlocked scenes throughout the story. Even Aristotle covered the scene as a dramatic unit. A contemporary writer and instructor, John Gallishaw, gave a thorough pattern for scenes that Campbell incorporated into that first textbook. Campbell noted that a plot will not succeed without scenes. However, a story can be told in scenes without anything resembling a plot.

In his teaching, the text itself was oriented around a classic interplay of both fact and fiction throughout sentences. These then were interlocked through the paragraphs. This integrated even more continuity throughout the text - even in non-fiction. This usage appears frequently, spanning classic and modern works. Campbell was the first in identifying the fact-and-feeling approach as a technical element.

The broad divide between nonfiction and fiction were further diminished, since as fiction devices used to create compelling narratives were found common to both.

The students were required to write a 5,000 word article or story weekly, and have this critiqued by the instructors. Every week, they met an instructor who would review their current creation or their revision they’d worked on. This collaboration lasted through the year-long course. For that duration, they lived completely immersed in the study and practice of writing.

And the earliest materials Campbell’s students were taught is the attitude to approach their craft – it’s point of view was to research and choose their subject, reader, model, effect, style, market, and project before they started to write.

They were taught how to read stories to dissect them for their technical devices as well as their mechanical and emotional patterns.

And most importantly, they were taught to become truly professional in their attitude, such that all of life became an inspiration source for them. They were encouraged to keep small notebooks on them to note down character ideas,, dialog, setting elements, everything that could be used for a story or article. They embraced life as students to bring their stories to life in the minds of readers.

This above merely scratches the surface. In the short course version, I take these up in several short chapters to give you a practical approach to each of these elements.

In the full book, I borrow from the texts of Campbell, Harris, and Swain as the course instructors. I also bring other long-career authors in with guest essays.

This work aims not to summarize their 1200-page work, but to present key forgotten elements.

I wrote this to explore what I learned from Campbell and his two instructor’s textbooks which have been lost to time. My research has always been followed with a bread-crumb trail of write-ups. And were all of Campbell’s and Harris’ works returned to press, I’d be happy to retire this one and it’s short-course.

Meanwhile, you have this review and field guide to their works. So you can improve your own author craft by standing on the shoulders of forgotten giants to see further.

Best of luck to you and yours.

---

Table of Contents

Contains a no-cost digital version of the book for paid members.

And you can always buy me a coffee…

---

---

Now available as 8-lesson course with ebook!

This series reveals the nearly 90-year-old principles of successful writing and selling your stories — based on classic elements of perennial bestsellers known since the Ancient Greeks and Shakespeare, but long forgotten.

Develop your writer certainty on how to approach and produce every story or article you are inspired to write. And gain always-on inspiration…

Available for limited time as pay-what-you-want…

Paid members get instant access to this book as below - and many other texts I’ve included on other posts…