At The Write Practice, we publish a new article each day designed to help writers tackle one part of their writing journey, from generating ideas to grammar to writing and publishing your first book. Each article has a short practice exercise at the end to help you immediately put your learning to use.
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A few days ago, as I was in the middle of revising my book, a question occurred to me: “How do you sell 100 million copies of a book? Is there a way to reverse engineer that kind of success?”
In this post, we will dissect what makes the top best-selling books of all time books so popular, and then look at how we can apply those lessons to our own writing.
Often times when writers dream of becoming bestselling authors, they picture worldwide success, with their novels translated into dozens of different languages and adapted into major motion pictures. One of the most important things to keep in mind, though, is that learning how to sell books is a process that starts small and, usually, starts locally.
Let’s be honest: most of the time, we have no clue how our stories will end. Perhaps there’s a general idea or sense of the finale in our minds, yet when we sit down to write the conclusion the words don’t come. We’re stuck. We don’t know how to find our story’s ending.
Despite all the troubles with writing the final moments of your story, it is possible to conquer this particular writing obstacle and learn how to find your story’s ending!
For some of us, engaging on social media is tricky. Writers tend to be introverts by nature, so putting ourselves out there can be intimidating or seem like a useless waste of time. (It’s neither, and you need to be on social media in this industry. It’s just how it works now.)
Then there’s the other side of the coin, those writers that are on social constantly, using it as a procrastination technique to keep from writing. (Don’t do that.)
As a little starter pack, I’m going to give you a few Twitter hints and a list of hashtags that will help you connect with other writers, agents, publishers, and, most importantly, your readers.
So, you’ve got a great idea for a book. You have a clear picture of the opening scenes and the climactic scene, and maybe some scenes in between, so you jump in and start writing.
But once you’ve knocked out the scenes in your head, the well runs dry, or you find yourself galloping down a series of dead-end roads.
If you’ve ever gotten stuck during the writing process, you might feel like you don’t know where to turn. How do you connect the beginning to the end? Is your epic novel idea nothing more than a character sketch, a piece of world-building, or a loosely related set of scenes?
The secret: making a book outline.
In March, we hosted the Spring Writing Contest in partnership with Story Grid and Short Fiction Break literary magazine. Entering this writing contest was a huge accomplishment for all our writers, and we want to celebrate the winners here on The Write Practice.
Every author dreads that inevitable torture of not knowing what to write next. It happens to all of us, some more often than others, but it happens nonetheless. When our minds go blank, and we don’t have ideas, we’re left with one thought: what now?
Whether scuba diving or hiking, experts warn against going out on the water or up the mountain on your own. Why? There’s strength in numbers, and you are more likely to live to tell about your adventure with a swim buddy or hiking partner along. While writing might not carry the physical risks of these outdoor activities, writers can use the same principle to help a writing partner get their writing done.
Ever wondered how to write a book like Stephen King? He’s called the King for a reason, and it’s not just his last name. Stephen King has written in just about every genre imaginable, has sold over 350 million copies of his books, and has had work adapted to movies, miniseries, and comics.
Whether you’ve read him or not, you know who he is and I would be amazed if you haven’t experienced his work in some form or another.
So you want to know how to write a suspense novel. I could tease you with this, play out the line, dangle the carrot tantalizingly in front of you. But I won’t.
I’ll just tell you outright that suspense is my baby, my favorite of all the genres. If you’ve ever experienced those delicious moments as a reader, when your heart is slamming around in your chest, your palms are sweaty, and you can’t turn the pages fast enough, you’ll know what I mean by suspense.
