HOW TO SPOTLIGHT YOUR NOVEL

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If you have come to these pages for laughter,
may you find it.

If you come to be offended, may your ire rise
and your blood boil.

If you seek an adventure, may this story sing you
away to blissful escape.

If you need to test or confirm your beliefs, may
you reach comfortable conclusions.

All books reveal perfection, by what they are or
what they are not.

May you find that which you seek, in these pages
or outside them.

May you find perfection, and know it
by name.

 

- Benediction to LAMB by Christopher Moore

 

"Remember what Aristotle said 2,000 years ago about drama: You have to have a plot, character, meaning and spectacle."
- Anne Rice

 

I. AVOID THE HOUSE OF USHER DOOM

 

     The most beautiful mansion will collapse if

      the foundation is flawed.

 

          Make the conflict unique, pitting the character, not

          only against his enemies,
 

          but against the flaws within him or her.

 

EXAMPLE: 
 

THE GOOD GUY -

A withdrawn, emotionally wounded man is mistaken in a bar for a hitman and given money with the picture of the woman he is being "hired" to kill!

           

 

The "good guy" follows the man to get his license # to give to the police only to find the man who has contracted the death of a young woman is

                                           getting into a police car!

 

Can the "Good Guy" manage to pull himself out of his haunting past enough to save a woman whose life in his hands?

 

 

II. REMEMBER WHY PEOPLE READ

 

     To escape the routine of their lives and find escape.

 

     Giving them cliched heroines is just more of the same:

 

Beautiful girls who think they are Ugly.

 

Brooding, dark strangers who are drawn to them and then reveal that the girl is:

 

a fairy, angel-child, witch, Other ...

 

    who is THE CHOSEN ONE Who Must Save The World as The Prophesy says!

 

PLEASE ... just stop ... STOP.  We all know where this is going.

 

 

EXAMPLE OF TIPPING EXPECTATIONS ON THEIR EARS:

 

 

 LAMB by Christopher Moore

 

A Jewish wanderer who died 2,000 years ago is brought back from the dead to write a new Gospel.

 

His name? Levi.  His nickname: Biff (the sound his head made when his mother whacked it -- which was often).  He is the childhood best friend of Jesus -

 

Think Larry the Cable Guy mangling the young years of the Son of God.

 

Joshua (Greeks translated it as Jesus): "Biff, you keep saying My Father has no sense of humor.  You're wrong.  He gave me you as a best friend." 

III. DARE TO BE DIFFERENT -
 

 

      (Nearly) anything goes when writing novels, even with an aim to publication.

 

      You have to give readers/publishers a reason to pick your book from the thousands being published each month.

      As with the above example, it is all in the execution.  Think of the best joke you heard that was mangled in the telling.

IV. MINUS TEN AND COUNTING -

 

     SUSPENSE -

 

     It begins with characters you give a damn about. 

So AVOID -

    

     Heroines or heroes who are victims (many readers already feel victimized -- if they want to live a victim's life, they just have to put down the book and live their own life.)

 

    Passive (many readers feel powerless, they read to feel empowered not neutered),

 

    Whiners ( they have their mothers or in-laws for that.)

 

     Perfect (they want to be able to relate to their heroines or heroes, to imagine they could possibly become them one day -- perfection only lets them know they are merely reading a book.)

 

      Think: "Wouldn't it be interesting if I were ... "

 

EXAMPLE

A young short order cook whose life is as odd as his first name.

 

He sees ghosts who voicelessly demand justice from him.   A ghost of a murdered girl holds out a seashell to him.

 

She motions for him to hold it up to his ear.  He does.  He nearly drops it in horror: not the surf does he hear but the animal grunting of the man who raped the girl.

 

She points to an oncoming car.  Her rapist she mouths. 

 

It is the young cook's childhood friend.

 

(ODD THOMAS by Dean Koontz)

 

 

V. MAKE THEM LAUGH -

Depression readers can get for free.
 

Humor provided a relief valve for the events in your

book and in the lives of your readers.

 

Ask yourself which would you read right now: 
 

CALVIN AND HOBBES or WAR AND PEACE?

Which book would most people on the street read?

 

 

VI. THINK HARRY POTTER -

Drop "Virtue" and "Flaw" entirely.

   

Instead, use "Admiration Traits and "Access Traits".

 

One is a trait The Reader wishes s/he had.

 

The other is one The Reader already has

and is grounds for empathy with the character.

 

In your story,

 

you will typically want at least

one character who is Admirable

("I wish I were this guy") and

at least one character who is Accessible ("I am this guy").

They are not required to be separate;

Harry Potter has both Access and Admiration traits,

which is why he works as not only

the hero of his enormous franchise,

but its primary narrator.

In fact, it is best for every character to have both traits.

If you've studied any fiction that's come out

of Hollywood any time recently,

however, you'll know that they've missed

this memo—
 

Michael Bay in particular has been unable to

figure out Access traits

for over a decade—

 

                 So let's start with the basics

                 1.) Having at least one character who is

audience-accessible.

Going back to Harry Potter for a moment

 

will also let us notice something very interesting

about Access Traits vs Admiration Traits:

they are subjective.

What are Harry's traits?

He's courageous and quick-thinking under pressure;

as early as the first book, Albus Dumbledore

praises his "sheer outstanding nerve".

He's intensely loyal to his True Companions;

since both his mother and father are dead,

he is understandably protective of the people

he has chosen to be

his surrogate family.

He's kind of a jock—

his scholastic efforts are lackluster,

and his main appeal amongst his classmates

is the fact that he's a leading athlete.

He is quite selfless, insisting on putting himself

in the line of fire

lest someone else get hurt.

And he is the possessor of some form of Plot Armor:

when Voldemort,

the Big Bad of the series, used a magic spell on him

that kills anyone it's used on, period, end of story...

it didn't kill him.

He became The Boy Who Lived.

Which of these make Harry Accessible, and which of them make him Admirable?

And think about that answer, because for every single person on the planet,

the answer will be different.

And this is why it's important you put a variety of traits on your characters:

because one Reader's virtue is another's flaw.
 

Every Reader will bond with every character

in a different way,

for different reasons,

So providing as many reasons as possible—
 

both Admiration points and Access points—
 

makes those characters more likely to win an audience.

What do you think makes novels and their characters stand

out?

What do you do to make your novels stand out?