Reply to How can I learn to love bestsellers?

Forum Index » The DCUM Book Club

Reply to "How can I learn to love bestsellers?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Twilight was a bestseller. It's ok not to like them. [/quote]

It's really not.

Full disclosure: I'm a writer who was recently dropped by her agent because three of my books just didn't sell. In her words, "They're lovely and well-written, but publishers are looking for stories with wider appeal."

For the past year, I've been on a hunt to figure out what makes the stories with wide appeal so successful - but because I don't personally enjoy, it's a struggle. I would like to find out what I'm missing.[/quote]

Oh I see, you should have mentioned that.

Frankly, the majority of people are stupider than you think, and younger generations have a quail's attention span because of social media. Our recent election proves that. So what you want to do is create a powerful hook right off the bat, because everyone is used to a Tik Tok span of attention-grabbing. Something that smacks the reader in the face. Make your stories and characters a little more obvious, with plots that hit more directly at the dopamine: romance, thrills, whatever you're writing about, has to be more easily and rapidly felt by the reader. If you need to dumb down your writing style to do this, go right ahead. If the reader can guess who the villain is, or which beau the heroine will finally choose, before the denouement, they will think "Oh I'm so smart" instead of thinking "this plot was too obvious".

Sorry, but this is how it is.
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics