Top Ten Lessons Writers Can Learn from Mad Men

1. Go epic or go home.
2. Ground your story in time and place.
3.  Let the girl who can't find love find it right under her nose. 
4.  When your heroine must choose one thing or another, let her figure out that there's always a third option that may let her live her life on her own terms.
5. Never underestimate the power of a French woman.
6. To paraphrase Chekhov, if there's a (smoking, smoking, smoking) gun on the wall in Act One, someone better die of lung cancer by Act Three.
7. Every story needs a trickster named Roger.
8. Sometimes, in story as in life, the most annoying character gets to fly off into the horizon in a Lear jet.
9. Give your hero his “om”  epiphany.
10. End with theme. It gets them every time.

Copyright Paula Muiner 2015