The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel

by Jodie Archer

with time and dedication almost all genuinely good writers will find their audience.

I find this hard to believe.

the top few titles alone are why some retailers are able to stay in business and keep selling books at all.

Kind of amazing. Could be said of publishing companies too?

You might even want to make the claim that bestsellers in all categories have so many latent things in common that they are practically a specialized genre in themselves.

You could, though only one book fit ALL criteria.

Consider the importance of pronouns to the effect of Charlotte Brontë’s very famous line from Jane Eyre: “Reader, I married him.” The computer notices this “him,” and how often we hear about him, and how close he is in linguistic proximity to the all-important narratorial “I.” It notices when “I” and “him” appear almost side by side in more and more sentences, with less and less description in between. Of course, that is just what the reader is watching too. Isn’t the entire point of so many stories to get that “I” and that “him” closely aligned, separated only by an all-important verb like “married”? So often, this is entirely why we keep turning the pages.

Is it?

we tend to talk about the relationship between writer and reader in terms of an unwritten contract to fulfill, a contract whose details are hazy but that nevertheless point to the aesthetic, emotional, intellectual, and even ethical reasons behind the choice to read. We thought a lot about all these expectations of a writer as we trained our model in detecting theme, plot, style, and character.

but then we know the temptation of reading the first and last page of a book.

My 10th grade English teacher, Mr. Ranta, made us read the first and the last paragraph (or possibly page) before we began reading a book. If I remember correctly he thought we'd better understand it if we were aware of the arc. I still maintain it's the worst advice or direction any teach ever gave me.

This is not a book about algorithms.

Yes it is.

BISAC (Book Industry Standards and Communication) subject codes.

I've often thought Goodreads should use this to understand how publishers view their titles, and it should be in included in the book detail section. It's included in the Amazon feeds, but not Goodreads.

Many writers could take the assignment of a fearful journey and have it lead to their own particular message, which is why all bestsellers feel different, but in some sense we will find that they are quite the same.

for now the point is in the proportion—one-third the same, two-thirds different.

It turns out that successful authors consistently give that sweet spot of 30 percent to just one or two topics, whereas non-bestselling writers try to squeeze in more ideas.

Grisham and Steel each have only one signature theme, not two, that takes up a whole third (on average) of each of their novels. This likely helps with their branding.

Everyday interactions between characters are there in order to vary the pace of the drama and avoid melodrama.

I've always preferred reading conversations between characters than descriptions of a prairie or room.

What the godparents are teaching us about bestselling is that there must be a dominant topic to give the glue to a novel, and that topics in the next highest proportions should suggest a direct conflict that might be quite threatening. It is not good to have randomly different topics that have as much to do with one another as chalk and cheese—a primary theme of sexuality and a secondary one of gardening, for example, does not imply the same potential human drama that may make for a compelling narrative. Bestselling authors pick combinations with guaranteed hooks—how about children and guns, faith and sex, or love and vampires. (Likely all three combinations have hit the lists.)

Grisham has spoken in many interviews about being very careful not to alienate swathes of readers by being too political in his narratives. While he is an open Democrat, he has reflected that The Pelican Brief, for one, was too political, and that he tries if possible to keep his novels inoffensive to people over a wider political spectrum than his own. This likely explains the almost total absence from both his and Steel’s topic profiles of topics such as worship, witches, hard drugs, and graphic sex. Emotional and ethical topics are heavily favored, but inflammatory topics are kept to a minimum.

It is more specifically about human closeness and human connection. Scenes that display this most important indicator of bestselling are all about people communicating in moments of shared intimacy, shared chemistry, and shared bonds.

Characters must have these moments of casual intimacy and closeness, if not explicitly romantic. Be it a shopping date with Mom, a fishing date with Dad, or a cooking date with a new lover, there must be time to date.

Perhaps it is fair to speculate that the portion of the American public that actually reads fiction likes to read more or less about itself. To us, it seems like readers enjoy seeing their own possible realities dramatized.

Interesting, I feel like I read mostly books with characters not like me. I might have to research and see if that is true.

Stick to real people. No dwarfs, no lords, no warriors, no priestesses, no sergeants, no dukes, and no wizards (there will only ever be one Harry).

Top ten novels based on topical mix (excluding John Grisham and Danielle Steel) 1. Jodi Picoult, House Rules 2. Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes 3. Janet Evanovich, Twelve Sharp 4. David Baldacci, The Hit 5. Janet Evanovich, Plum Lovin’ 6. Dave Eggers, The Circle 7. Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care 8. Janet Evanovich, Explosive Eighteen 9. Janet Evanovich, Notorious Nineteen 10. Jodi Picoult, Sing You Home

Does it mean anything that I have not read any of these novels?

“kinky fuckery”

!

Goodreaders

I've said this before, and think I should say it more often, instead of Users. Thoughts?

In the end, hundreds of plotlines showed us that bestsellers can have any of the fundamental three-part plot shapes. A “man in hole” story doesn’t necessarily have more of a chance in the market than a “rags to riches” plot. And though the macroshape doesn’t particularly matter, how the author works the scene-by-scene rhythm into that shape is very important. The million-dollar move is in a good, strong, regular beat.

“Okay, King gets ‘the’ right but have you seen his marketing budget?”—this matter of the right basic words and marks of grammar in the right proportions can also determine whether someone’s first novel has a realistic shot at being number one.

Period points are also more common in winning prose, and both semicolons and colons are significantly less so.

In bestsellers, adjectives and adverbs are less common, particularly adjectives. What this means is that bestsellers are about shorter, cleaner sentences, without unneeded words.

The sentences of the bestseller are not gaudy Christmas trees, carrying the different clashing colors and the weight of lights and baubles and tinsel and angels and stars. Better the plain fir tree brought into simple relief.

If the top three men all won the Pulitzer, what did the top three women share? These three writers were Paula Hawkins, Terry McMillan, and Kathryn Stockett. It turns out that all worked in or received degrees in journalism.

So do King and Patterson “write like women”? No. They write like writers who can write to millions of people. We are glad to observe so many women go from zero to heroine, if you will, with their very first novel. But it’s not about gender, not really. It’s about an understanding of audience. And it’s about a natural feel for language, nurtured by the discipline of their practice.

The problem with finding patterns is that if you want to find them you very often will. And when you find one, you will want it to mean something.

Same thing with synchronicity or 'there are no accidents', just because there is a pattern or things were meant to be, you may never know the reason why.

Characters in bestsellers more often grab and do, think and ask, look and hold. They more often love. These characters have some self-awareness and self-knowledge. They own themselves, even when they don’t necessarily like themselves. They live their lives; they make things happen. The bestselling character, whether male or female, tells, likes, sees, hears, smiles, and reaches. This is someone with energy. This is someone who pulls and pushes, someone who starts, works, knows, and, ultimately, arrives. Those characters who inhabit the NYT bestseller list are typically ones with direction, capacity, and surety. None of these verbs feature as frequently in the novels that did not hit the lists.

On average, bestselling characters “need” and “want” twice as often as non-bestsellers, and bestselling characters “miss” and “love” about 1.5 times more often than non-bestsellers.

On average, non-bestselling characters “wish” 1.3 times more often than characters in bestsellers. Non-bestselling characters do some sort of “supposing” 1.6 times more often than their winning counterparts, and they “dislike” things almost two times more often than bestselling characters.

There is something altogether more attractive about a character whose body makes more simple and controlled gestures. The bestselling character eats, nods, opens, closes, says, sleeps, types, watches, turns, runs, shoots, kisses, and dies. Actually, male and female characters die and survive with equal frequency in the bestseller—though those who are dying and surviving are not necessarily the lead roles. The important thing to note is that in the bestselling novel someone is often doing something as dramatic as surviving or dying, and they are not, as their lesser-selling friends prefer, yawning.

What do these and so many other bestselling characters have in common? None are wishers, supposers, or yawners. They are special. They are courageous and confident. And readers support them.

The model’s favorite manuscript of the past thirty years was The Circle by Dave Eggers.

I guess it's time to read him.

the memoir reached number one on the NYT lists and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. It’s a rare writer who instinctively understands the audience so fully; not only the mass readership involved in charting with a debut, but also the tastes of prestigious prize committees. That kind of instant positioning in the market is in part about a strong sense of style.

Eggers, unlike most of his fellow novelists with journalistic backgrounds, does not write with the dominantly “feminine” style we discussed in chapter 4. His sentences are almost exactly 50/50, meaning he has captured the style most typical to bestsellers and the style most likely to be recognized by prize-giving institutions.

Now she is just about ready to start a computational book club.

What do you suppose that is, and how do we join?

100 novels our computer thinks you should read

I've only read 16 of out the 100. What can I make of that? I do think we, or Macmillan, should make a Listopia of these titles! "100 novels a computer thinks you should read"

He says that “Narrative Science’s computers provide daily market reports for Forbes as well as sports reports for the Big Ten sports network.

The robots are taking over more of my friends jobs.