Pageturner Novel Writing Tips: How Bestselling Writers Create Fiction that Sells
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Pageturner NOVEL Writing Tips
description
How bestselling authors create pageturner novels, including the three elements of a pageturner (great concept, great characters, & great story), & how to construct compelling scenes. Tips are presented by Jessica Hatchigan, the author of How to Write a Pageturner Novel. She has spoken & presented workshops at bookstores, libraries, universities, and writers conferences across the U.S., & her articles have been published in Writer’s Digest, The Writer & Writer’s Market.
Transcript of Pageturner Novel Writing Tips: How Bestselling Writers Create Fiction that Sells
Pageturner NOVEL
Writing Tips
Because people love to talk
about books they ‘can’t put
down’ (pageturners) . . .
& books like that often become
bestsellers.
Why aim for a pageturner?
& the top 10 bestselling
authors in the U.S. earn an
average of $27 million a year.
That is a big WOW!
Writing a
pageturner
is not easy.
But, of course there’s a catch.
& Quality does not guarantee success.
Moby Dick – now a classic –
never sold out its modest
first print run (3,000 copies)
in author Herman Melville’s
lifetime
Melville’s total U.S. earnings
from Moby Dick (in his
lifetime)? $556.37
for
exam
ple
Melville is
famous now.
"Whatever you can do or dream you can,
begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and
magic in it. Begin it now.“ - Goethe
“Nothing on earth is more powerful than
talent coupled with a dream.” - Jessica
Hatchigan
On the other hand:
Amanda Hocking was a 20-
something assisted living worker
until 2010.
She wrote 17 novels in her spare
time.
In April 2010, she began self-
publishing e-books.
By March 2011, she’d sold one
million copies of 9 books, & earned
herself a $2 million publishing
contract for 4 books with St.
Martin’s Press.
An example:
But enough about other writers . . .
Let’s talk about you. & about what you need to know to write a pageturner novel.
great concept great characters
great story
Here’s what it takes to write a pageturner:
It begins with a great idea . . .
great concept great characters
great story
First you need a great idea for a book . . .
Hmmm. Now what?
It was a
dark &
stormy
night... … …
…
Hmmm. Now what?
gre
at c
on
cep
t
great concept
great characters
great story
You also need great characters
BOLD people with serious challenges
bold hero+serious challenge=suspense
& suspense glues readers to the page
What makes for great characters?
Complex, compelling, unique, and
passionate.
Put them in conflicts with others.
Have them make things happen.
Characters also need to be real: So make your characters . . .
Image Danilo Rizzuti & bk images/Freedigitalphotos.net
& make your hero . . .
HERO
Resourceful! Readers
LOVE
surprises
Along with a great concept and great characters , you need . . .
great concept great characters
great story
A great story is the 3rd key ingredient
& your great story needs a solid
structure.
How do you structure a novel-length
story?
Think scenes.
An average novel is 60,000 words
long.
That’s about 60 scenes.
(Long chapters can have up to 5 or
more scenes; shorter chapters may
have only one.)
There are two kinds of scenes . . .
Action scenes
&
Reaction scenes.
Here’s the structure of an Action
scene:
Goal (hero attempts something)
Conflict (hero struggles)
Disaster (hero is frustrated)
Here’s the structure of a Reaction
scene:
Reaction (hero “feels the pain”)
Dilemma (hero struggles)
Decision (hero has a new plan)
goal conflict disaster
reaction dilemma decision
The cycle . . .
. . . keeps repeating
Can you ‘intertwine’ two or more
scenes? Yes.
But the action / reaction dynamic is
what keep a reader turning pages.
But you also have to remember . . .
To up the stakes as you go along.
The next slide shows you how.
SECTION 2 SECTION 1 SECTION 4
Framework of a Pageturner Plot
SECTION 3
Have you found these tips helpful? If so,
you’ll find many more in Jessica
Hatchigan’s How to Write a Pageturner
Novel . . .
How to Write a Pageturner Novel (eBook)
. . . & in her ‘How Bestselling Authors
Create Pageturners’ video tutorial
(Amazon.com)
How Bestselling Authors Create Pageturners (video tutorial; 29 mins.)
Jessica Hatchigan, the author of How to Write a Pageturner Novel, has spoken and presented workshops at bookstores, libraries, universities, and writers conferences across the U.S., including the Indiana University School of Journalism, The Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, the J.J. Hill Business Library in Minneapolis, and the SCBWI Annual Writers Conference in L.A. Her articles have been published in Writer’s Digest, The Writer and Writer’s Market.
IMAGE CREDITS
Wikimedia Commons: Herman Melville stamp, U.S. Embassy The Hague; Herman
Melville sign, Diane Griffiths
Freedigitalphotos.net: Cats, BK Images; Goldfish & balloon, Danilo Rizzuti Flickr Creative Commons *: Amanda Hocking Poster, Joanna Penn *http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
All other images are purchased stock photos. Presentation prepared for Nostina publishing by Greenbriar Services, LLC.
