Category: Quotes

Sell the next book

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Much emphasis has rightly been given to hooking the reader in the first chapter. With so many choices, it has been said that you have 30 seconds to get readers emotionally involved with the characters and the story.

However, do not underestimate the importance of the final chapter for, selling the next book is it’s job. How does it accomplish that? By leaving the reader completely satisfied, moved. Think back to a book which, when you read the last page, affected you deeply. I remember wanting to go back and start again. Then going out to see what else the author has written. That is resonance.

How do you create this kind of ending? Take out your favourite books, the one which affected you most deeply. Read the ending again, taking careful note of what you feel. Then read it again, this time taking note of how that feeling was created. What was it about the writing that affected you so much? Practice ways to evoke that same feeling from your readers.

Light an unexpected match

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What sparks your passion? Your readers often have the same passion and setting light to it keeps them satisfied and coming back to buy your books.

Decide what it is you want to evoke from your reader. Then fire your own feelings up, surprise yourself. Make yourself love, sing, dance, laugh, cry, grieve, gasp, shudder and scream. Make your heart race. Give yourself goosebumps. Make yourself so angry you want to punch something. Live your story. Feel every emotion as if you are each one of your characters.

Why? Because the odds are high that if you don’t feel those emotions, your readers won’t either. Find that unexpected match that triggers those emotions in yourself and odds are you will trigger them in your reader too.

Trouble Is My Business

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Raymond Chandler was one of the first of the detective fiction writers. A collection of four LA PI Philip Marlowe books is still available under the name “Trouble Is My Business”. Isn’t that a great description of a writer’s job! Readers love to see their favourite characters get themselves out of trouble. Finding the right trouble to put your particular character into is the trick.

Getting your protagonist into trouble can be done in many ways. Trouble can come in the form of nature, society, aliens, the supernatural, villians, technology, the rest of mankind.

Trouble can happen when another person wants the same thing, what your protagonist has, wants to do your protagonist harm, or wants to murder him or someone he loves and so on.

Trouble can also be internal, in your protagonist’s mind or heart. He or she may have conflicting goals, values, desires, instincts and on it goes.

The worse the trouble you torture your characters with, the more heroic they need to be to overcome it and the more your readers will love them. So, what are you waiting for? Go get someone into deep trouble.

It’s the Journey

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One criticism often levelled at genre fiction is that it is “predictable”. The contract a romance author has with a reader is that the lovers get either their ‘happy ever after’ or ‘happy for now’. The murder mystery reader expects to find out who the murderer is.

So, what is it about genre fiction that draws readers to it in droves? Of course, it’s just as James Hynes’ says, it’s the journey. So, make it a good one. Make it original, make it fresh. Write a cracking story and your readers will love you.

Plot

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Plotting is fun. Play with your characters (and your readers), plotting dastardly things to do to them, have them do and say. I love doing a brainstorming session with writer or reader friends. Don’t discount anything at first. The more outrageous the better. Let them percolate for a while and see what the girls in the basement come up with.

Make a list, as long as possible. Cliches and hackneyed ideas are easy to come up with. The more original and freshest ideas come further down on the list.

Take your time over it. Preferably, plot your next book(s) while you are writing, editing or resting an earlier one.