Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Know Where Your Story Goes BEFORE You Write

A common mistake many authors is to just sit down and write, without having a clear direction. No, this does not deal with the plot of the story (although that is a huge issue). This deals more with the voice of the story, the word count of the story and the idea behind it. Too often, writers produce a "novel" and then try to find a place to put it, only to find there is no market for it.

What we are looking at here is basic market research. Although you might be a great writer, and your story might be fun to read, if there is no one to buy the book, you have now just wasted a lot of your time. Even if you say, "Fine, I'll self-publish it!" if the reading market is not interested in your story, you will be out of luck.

Consider a couple of these examples.

If you are someone with a clear series/category voice, and yet are writing single title length stories, you will not find success. Your story is too long for series and the voice will not have the depth of character and plot development necessary for being a single title.

Maybe you are writing about a topic that no one is really interested in. I brought this one up recently when talking about terrorism stories right after 9/11. The U.S. was just in too much pain to want to relive a story such as this.

Plot elements also can lead you into this situation. Teachers having affairs with students. Killing off babies. Even trying to justify adultery can often lead to projects not being accepted. Again, you might have a great voice, but you have to still ask if the readers would even be interested in the story.

The key is, know your market before you start. Losing that time writing a story that is destined to be a failure is not worth the effort!

I will be doing a more extensive look at this on the IGTV video this week. Make sure to check in there as well

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