Writing Tips

10 Things You’ll Find in Every Bestselling Book

November 28, 2016November 28, 2016Uncategorized, Writing Tips

By Sarah Juckes, @sarahannjuckes

What makes a bestselling book? And how can you, as a writer, ensure that your book is the very best it can be?

The answer will differ from genre to genre, but at The Writer’s Workshop, we’ve found there are some things that every good fiction book will include.

1) A killer concept

What? Look at the most notorious books in the last ten years, and you’ll find an irresistible idea at the centre of each of them. Dan Brown’s hunt for the Holy Grail in The Da Vinci Code for example, was the perfect hook for his publishers to sell to the masses, as was McEwan’s Atonement and Smith’s White Teeth.

How? Is your concept going to capture attention? To answer this, you should first know your market inside out. What books are selling and why? Next, try to condense your concept into fifty words or less. Will this spark the interest of readers?

2) Protagonist motivation

What? Most bestselling books are centred around one character – the protagonist. In every story, the protagonist must want something. This could be something simple like the acceptance of the people around you, as in the case of Wonder by R. J. Palacio, or it could literally be the difference between life and death.

How? Understand what your protagonist wants and make it matter to the reader, too. Ensure that it is clear and consistent throughout the book. If it doesn’t matter to the protagonist, then it won’t matter to the reader.Continue reading

Twitterific Writing Links

November 13, 2016November 12, 2016Twitterific, Uncategorized, Writing Tips

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

A weekly roundup of the best writing links from around the web.

Twitterific writing links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 39,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.

How to Write When Life Turns Upside Down: https://t.co/KHkZDDazQW @RuthanneReid

On Making Comic Books For the Blind: https://t.co/EbRqGh9a6L @ingredient_x @lithub

How to Write a Novel in Six Months: https://t.co/Wk2SZ4m2S8 @monicamclark

Tips for tightening up our writing: https://t.co/1aoeOy0AwR @inkylinks

Promoting a Sequel in a Book’s Back Matter: https://t.co/qoPRHywEi4 @DianaUrban @BookBubContinue reading

Balancing Pace with Reader Inclusion

November 7, 2016October 27, 2016Writing Tips

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Sometimes in my stories, I want to pick up the pace, especially to move the mystery along. I’ll quickly move through a scene, summing up something that’s happening–a party, a walk that several friends are taking, a picnic–to get to what I think of as ‘the important part’…whatever that might be at the time.

One of my editors at Penguin would frequently type notes in Track Changes at these spots: “Could you expand on this scene and let the reader see this happening? I think they’d enjoy being part of it.”

The truth is that showing takes time. It takes time to write and read. But my editor was right: there are parts that I shouldn’t rush through as a writer, even when I feel the pace of the narrative needs to pick up.

For a while, I just gave completely in. Let’s say we’ve got a carnival going on as a good set-up for our protagonist to be able to casually speak to another character in the story (this character supplies information of some sort for our protagonist).Continue reading

Weaving Backstory into Mysteries

October 21, 2016October 21, 2016Mystery Writing Tips, Writing Tips

by Patrick Kelly, @pkfiction

For two and a half years I slaved over my first novel, arranged and rearranged the plot, constructed and deconstructed the characters, and polished each sentence twice. Then I gave it to my editor and waited . . . anxiously . . . for three weeks.

Her response came.

She loved the story and my writing but had some “meta-feedback.”

First suggestion: Delete the first five chapters.

OUCH!!!!

My baby.

What about my hero? Readers need to know where he comes from, why he’s here, and all about his relationship to the other characters. They care about these things.

Ah . . . actually . . . they don’t, at least not yet.

I need to SHOW readers the backstory, not TELL them (Heaven forbid I should tell them . . . SHOW don’t TELL).

Ah . . . actually . . . don’t do that, either.

What readers care about up front is THE FORWARD STORY not the backstory. They want to know what the story is about, and they want to be hooked, early.

Get to the forward story fast and weave the backstory in as you go.

To study how one successful author handled backstory, I suggest you read (or reread) the first chapter of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

I counted forty instances of backstory in the first chapter, which seemed like a lot, but Collins integrated it into the forward story so well that millions of readers (repeat-millions of readers) gobbled it up and went on to read the entire series.Continue reading

Managing Crowds of Characters

October 17, 2016October 17, 2016Writing Tips

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I always like studying reader reviews of my recent releases to see what readers are saying about my books.

Okay…correction. :) I always study my reader reviews, I don’t always like this process. But reading reviews is vital for me. I’m writing for my readers and they provide an amazing data center full of compliments and complaints. If enough readers are unhappy about some aspect of a story, I will change my approach moving forward. As I explained in my post last week–this is my day-job and my career. I aim to please.

Occasionally, I’ll read something in a review that’s baffling to me and makes me analyze my manuscript again. I discovered one of those types of reviews last week.

The reader (a regular of mine, apparently), mentioned that the book in question had ‘too many characters.’Continue reading