All Categories

Top 10 Tips Best-Selling Authors Know!

25/11/2023

Having a great idea for a story is one thing, turning that idea into a book that people want to read all the way to the end is something else.

Countless books end up as DNF (did not finish) and attract poor reviews because the author couldn’t keep their readers interested enough in what was happening for them to stay the course and finish the book.

And a book that ends up as DNF means that its reader won’t buy the author’s next book.

Then you have the books that readers did finish but didn't like, which also attract poor reviews.

So, 10 simple tips to make sure your book doesn’t share that DNF fate and attracts good reviews. They aren’t complicated, but they do need to be at the forefront of the author’s mind as they write.

1. Invest time in your character building

People engage with characters, not plots, so the characters are the most important part of writing.

A good protagonist (or MC if you prefer) isn’t what is visible from the outside. It is what is on the inside that counts. We may be attracted to a person by their looks and style, but we fall in love with them because of who they really are, even making allowances for their flaws.

In real life we don't fall in love with shallow people, so why would we do it in books?

Create a pen picture for all your major characters.

Start by giving you character a back story, beginning with their family and home life, through their education, their peer groups and their life experiences. These things shape their values and beliefs and those are the things that direct their behaviour.

Your character has to behave consistently, in accordance with their values and beliefs. They may be forced by circumstances to “act out of character” at times, but that always creates a dilemma for them and is a source of internal conflict (see below).

Above all give them emotions, so that readers feel those emotions and reflect them in their reading experience. If your character is moved to tears, your readers should be moved to tears too. If your character is laughing, your reader should also be laughing.

You may not use a lot of the material that you generate in your pen pictures, but knowing how characters will behave in any particular set of circumstance means they can behave consistently over a lengthy story.

2. Create a meaningful conflict.

Character + conflict = plot.

The conflict that faces your protagonist is what the story is all about. No matter what the conflict is, they have to resolve it by the final page in order to complete the story and fulfil the destiny you create for them.

Conflicts come in many different disguises and will depend very much on the genre in which you write. It can be the character’s internal struggle to overcome their own demons, or it can be an external struggle to overcome actual demons. Every story, even a comedy, is about overcoming conflict.

But whatever the conflict is, it has to be of interest to the reader, so it has to be larger than life and something that readers are unlikely to experience for themselves, which makes it interesting for them

3. Create a meaningful consequence

Failure to resolve the conflict has to have consequences, otherwise it is hard to inject drama into the story. The more severe the conflict, the greater must be the consequences of failure.

In romance, failure may end with a broken heart. In a court room drama failure may end in imprisonment or financial ruin. In action adventure the consequence of failure is almost always death and/or destruction.

Whatever the consequence, it has to match up with the reader’s own fears because that is what will keep the reader turning the page. Even though the reader knows the story will probably have a good outcome for the protagonist, that element of doubt is what keeps them reading, because they have to know how the protagonist avoids the consequences.

4. Motivate your character.

In a story, as in real life, the protagonist has a choice whether or not to get involved with the conflict.

A hero isn’t a hero because they are brave. A hero is a hero because they choose to run towards trouble when other people are running away from it.

This means that the protagonist has to have a reason to get involved and this is where their values and beliefs come in.

On the other hand they can’t get involved because they are compelled to by some outside agency. In other words, it can’t be just about the job they do. There must be an opportunity to walk away early in the story and even later in the story when things get difficult.

Take a typical private investigator story. The PI gets involved initially because they have been hired to do so, but they can also turn the case away if they wish. They don’t know at that stage that their life may be threatened. Later, however, they find that their life is on the line if they continue the investigation, so they can choose to walk away. Why they don’t walk away is because of their motivation, not because they are being paid.

The motivation has to be believable, and it must fit in with the character you described in your pen picture.

5. Invest time in creating your villain

Authors often spend a lot of time building good protagonists, only to let themselves down with their antagonist.

Nobody is born bad, so there must be a reason for them becoming the person they are. It doesn’t matter the genre, your villain has to have his or her own back story which explains their behaviour.

Just as with your protagonist, you may not use all the material you generate in developing your antagonist, but if you understand them it will add depth to your plot and your readers will understand them.

6. Create smaller conflicts to add complexity and drama.

Sub plots are what turns a short story into a full length novel and those sub-plots are created with small conflicts that get in the way of your protagonist dealing with the big conflict.

Imagine our PI, mentioned above, who owes money to a loan shark, who wants his money back. The PI spends time during the story dodging the loan shark, trying to raise the money to pay him back etc then, just as the PI is about to solve the case and confront the villain, they are snatched off the street by the loan shark and are threatened with dire consequences if the money isn’t forthcoming within the hour.

There is several chapters worth of drama available in that short paragraph.

Sub-plots are also a great way to put your minor characters centre stage for a while as they try to help the protagonist deal with the minor conflicts so the protagonist can get on with dealing with the major conflict.

This is what injects "pace" into a story; the peaks and troughs in the action that keep the reader turning the page to find out what happens next.

However, the sub-plots and the main plot must interact with each other. If the sub-plot has no impact on the outcome of the main conflict it is redundant, and the reader ends up saying “what was that all about?”, which is not a good thing.

7. Do your research

This applies to any genre but is particularly important when it comes to specialist settings such as police, medical or legal dramas and historical fiction.

Readers of that sort of fiction know their stuff and they expect their authors to know their stuff as well.

I’ll give you a real life example.

I recently read a book set during World War II. The first third of the book was set against the backdrop of an RAF Lancaster bomber squadron. It became quite clear that the author knew nothing about the RAF. He had researched the Lancaster bomber and knew quite a bit about that (but not as much as he should have known), but he was clueless about the RAF in general. As I’m a former member of the RAF he had me wanting to throw my Kindle at the wall in frustration at the gaffs he committed, and he completely undermined his credibility as an author writing about that period. Needless to say, the book ended up as DNF.

What made it worse was that most of what he needed to know he could have found on the internet and the rest from one of the several standard works about the RAF during WW2.

The golden rule is always “write what you know”. As that is a bit limiting the next best thing is to work out what you don’t know and learn about it. Learn everything about it. Like character development, you may not use everything you learn, but at least you won’t make the sorts of gaffs the above author made, your credibility will be retained and your story will be more authentic.

It’s easy to say “Readers probably won’t know that, so I won’t bother researching it” – but some readers will know it and they are the ones who will write the bad reviews of your book.

8. Don’t show off.

This includes using multi-syllable words when single syllable words will do and using technical, scientific or jargon words that readers won’t understand, or including unnecessary detail just to prove you’ve done your research.

Your readers don’t want to have to read your book while holding a dictionary in one hand and an encyclopaedia in the other. So, use language that the average reader will understand, even if you know all the technical or scientific terms yourself.

There will be times when you need to use those terms, in context, but make sure that you provide your readers with an explanation so that they will understand it too.

You can have the protagonist or another character acting in place of the reader and have the “expert” explain what they mean in simple language, for that character’s (and the reader’s) benefit. This is often done in cop shows where the Forensic Medical Examiner has to explain post-mortem results in terms the lay person (the viewer) will understand.

9. Know the ending before you start.

If you know how your story is going to end, you can construct a “road map” that will take your protagonist to their destination.

One of the biggest problem for “pantsers”, as some authors are called, is that in not having a map to follow, they get side-tracked, which is confusing for the reader and it is hard for the author to get the plot back on track because they have confused themselves.

It is OK to deviate from the map, but if you don’t have a map to start with you won’t know if you are deviating from it.

10. Write for your readers.

Many authors are advised to “Write for yourself first” and that is OK if all you want to do is write.

But if you want to write a best-seller, you have to write for your readers. You have to know what they want and what they expect, and you have to fulfil their wants and expectations.

If you do that your book will get good reviews, which will mean it sells more copies. But if you don’t meet those wants and expectations, you can only expect bad reviews, which will stop sales in their tracks.

What the readers want and expect will vary from genre to genre, so you have to understand your genre inside out, and that means reading books in that genre. Read the best-selling authors in that genre to learn from the best.

Once you have established yourself as a best-selling author, you can then “write for yourself” in the certain knowledge that your name will sell the book. But you have to cross that bridge when you reach it, not when you are just starting your journey.

And Finally

Nobody can guarantee that your book will be a best-seller. But if you follow the advice above, you will stand a better chance than those authors that don’t follow the advice.

But if there is a key to success it is in the first three tips. Character, conflict and consequences. They are what make up the vital elements of the story. At least get those right and you are well on your way to writing a best-selling novel.

Now that you have read this blog, why not take a look at our books to see if our authors have followed the advice that we have offered? Just click on the “Books” tab to see their work.

If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.

Author

Archives

Categories