Back in 1989, disenchanted with the legal profession, John Grisham decided not practice it and instead he opted to become a writer. Becoming a writer isn’t that easy. Many people find out. With more enthusiasm than know-how, or the proper study of the art of writing novels wrote a legal thriller: A Time to Kill.

Like many other aspiring writers, Grisham saw his less than artistic work rejected by many publishers. You can’t blame publishers in this particular case because the book was so badly written that it must have made the editors cringe. In all respects this novel was a crass apprentice’s work.

Instead of sulking and retreating as any ordinary writer might have done, John Grisham decided to learn the trade. Writing -regardless of what critics and pundits say- may be learned. Writing fiction may also be learned. Now, whether the production is literary, artistic, or not, that is a separate issue.

When you read novels by John Grisham published subsequently to A Time to Kill, you’ll appreciate that he learned to write. Although no one can say that his novels are literary –or in the class of say Austen persuasion–, they are quite entertaining. Novels such as The Firm, The Pelican Brief, and The Client, are well written. Now if we go back and compare his first effort, A Time to Kill, to these other novels, we can quickly see the vast improvement in the writer.

Once his subsequent novels were accepted, Wynwood Press printed 5,000 copies of A Time to Kill. And later as the demand for legal thrillers rose, the novel was adapted into a film. Something similar happened to Olivia Goldsmith. When Goldsmith wrote First Wives Club it was rejected by more than 100 publishers. Only after she published other books did Hollywood become interested in her novels, and First Wives Club became a successful film–and a best seller novel regardless of its faults.

For many curious readers the question was: how and in what manner did Grisham’s writing improve? The answer is simple. To write fiction a writer must grasp a few simple lessons: (1) Sentence Openers (2) Sentence variation, and (3) Master the use of the nominative absolute. All of these points are treated in detail in Mary Duffy’s textbook Toolbox for Writers.

If you pay attention to some important scenes in Grisham’s novels, you’ll see an abundance of absolutes. This device -which he mastered- and uses adroitly, adds a forceful narrative drive to his thrillers; in fact, that is what makes them thrillers.