Stopping writing 'the parts that people skim'

'If you think of the story that you tell that's your favourite personal story, or funny story, it doesn't have flashy sentences. It doesn't have too much detail. It just tells the story. That isn't, for whatever reason, the way most people write books, But it seemed to me that there was no reason that it couldn't be the way at least one person writes books. I said "I'm going to stop writing the parts that people skim..."

Stories are somewhat easy to tell. Once you start worrying about the sentences, it gets a lot trickier, or harder, and the result isn't necessarily positive.'

People that really know me consider me to be an incredible underachiever because I was supposed to really write nice, serious books. I got derailed and here I am.'

James Patterson, author of a great many books, in the Sunday Telegraph's Seven