BUILD A BOOK – Regular Writing Tips from Charlie Bray
BUILD A BOOK
Regular Writing Tips from Charlie Bray
1 – PREPARATION
The very first decision to be made by anyone setting out on the daunting task of writing a novel is to become clear on what type of novel is to be written. This in itself can be bewildering.
Charlie Bray
A look at the choice of genres into which books are categorized illustrates the enormous choice facing the novel writer. You don’t even have to visit a book store to see that choice, just visit Amazon on your computer and it is all laid out for you.
Action Adventures, Children’s Books, Comics & Graphic Novels, Crime, Thrillers and Mystery, Erotica, Family Sagas, Fantasy, General Fiction, Gay & Lesbian, Ghosts, Health, Family & Lifestyle, Historical Fiction, Historical Romance, Horror, Humour, Religion & Spirituality, Romance, Science Fiction, Spies, War, Westerns, Young Adult.
And that’s only for starters. All these categories encompass sub-categories. The Crime, Thrillers and Mystery genre, for instance, can be broken down into Anthologies, British Detectives, Crime Series, Hard-boiled, Legal Thrillers, Mystery, Police Procedurals, Psychological Thrillers, Spy Stories, Technothrillers, Thrillers and Women Sleuths.
So to say the writer of a novel is spoilt for choice is an understatement.
To add to the equation, the type of novel is not entirely governed by genre. Is the style funny or deadly serious? Is it set in contemporary or historic times? Is it based on realism or fantasy? Is it feel-good or heart-breaking?
None of the choices above are likely to give you much indication as to what sort of book you should write. They simply serve the purpose of arming you with the choices.
Your choice is likely to be based on the type of book you enjoy reading, or a book based upon an area in which you have bags of personal experience. Your very own personality can also dictate the genre which your style would fit. If, like me, you adopt a fairly glib approach to life, humour could well suit you as a category to write in. If you enjoy watching weepy movies, you could well excel at romance novels or family sagas. If you devour anything by Stephen King, horror may be your forte. Ask yourself exactly what sort of novel would set the world alike for you. It is essential that you carry a high level of enthusiasm right through the novel that will ignite your readers’ interest.
Never forget that the best writers are invariably the most prolific readers. The more you read, the better equipped you are, sub-consciously, to choose your genre and adopt a style.
Before you even write the first word of your novel, it’s important to understand your target audience. Who are you actually about to write for?
Within your chosen genre, which books are selling well? It’s your target audience that is reading these. It’s never been easier to identify which books are succeeding. Amazon’s sales rankings are all you need to achieve this. Then you can carefully study a selection of successful books within your category.
The quoted Amazon sales ranking gives a strong indication of which books are selling best within a certain category. This figure is listed within the Product Details on each book listed on Amazon.
Using the Amazon search engine, the first thing you should do is search under Kindle Store or Books, depending whether you intend to publish in e-Book or paperback format. In the left hand column of the Amazon page, you’ll be offered a choice of category. Click on a category relevant to the one you intend to write for. Within that category, choose best-sellers and you will be presented with pages of books that are selling particularly well.
Choose a few books that appear to be similar in style to the book you have in mind and analyse each one separately by clicking on the book’s detail page. Study its sales ranking to see how well it fares with others and, using the book description and reviews, try to work out common threads existing within the most successful books.
Create a short list of such books and consider buying them so you can analyse each one carefully, studying the author’s techniques. Study how characterization and dialogue is used, how settings are created, and what ‘hooks’ are used early on to capture interest. Study how each book is constructed and look out for similarities. Study the length, again looking for the ‘normal’ length of a book within your chosen genre.
By doing these exercises, you will work out what type of book within the genre sells well and why?
The next step is to work out who it is selling to. Who is the target audience, because this is going to be your target audience. It is possible to aim your book at the very readers that are buying the top selling books that you have identified. This is something that I will cover in a later post and which is covered in detail in the first of my Build A Book booklets highlighted below.
So, that’s it for this edition. I hope you enjoyed this first issue of a regular series of tips aimed to help and encourage writers of all ability levels. During the series, I’ll explore the many aspects of writing a novel,including Preparation, Plot, Synopsis, Characters, Dialogue, Setting, Viewpoint, Revision, Publishing and Marketing.
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Charlie has started to publish a series of booklets to accompany this series of posts, and to delve deeper into each aspect of building a book.
They will all be available from Amazon.
The first one, Preparation, is available now on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
To view the schedule of publication for the forthcoming booklets, please click here.
I would like to involve as many members as possible in this new series and it would be great if you became a part of it.
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