10 Tips to Write a Novel

This first piece of advice will certainly be controversial and it will be interesting to see other authors’ opinion and arguments, but here are mine.

The ground rule when you intend to sell something is to study customer needs: what do they want? What do they like? You then “only” have to supply it.

In the field of literature, we analyze what works (novel style, language level, structure of the story, personality of the main characters…), we change the background and that’s it! (More or less since this method cannot guarantee commercial success every time, but it has proved its worth.)

The cost of such a method? On the individual scale, there’s a risk of a lack of interest from the writer in the book. And do we truly want to spend hours of our life on something we’re not passionate about? Also on a global scale, we witness the standardization of the whole industry: the scenarios are utterly predictable, the characters are archetypal and each creation lacks personality.

In short, the result of such a method will seldom leave the reader with lasting memories, on top of flooding the market and thus making it more difficult to discover truly original work. And this comment is valid for any creative field by the way: cinema, video games, animation, music… But how could it be otherwise from the moment we create something based on customer needs and on studying what is expected?

The alternative? Creating what we want to create (and reuniting with the artistic side of it all). We take a risk of course, because commercial success is much less certain, especially since the audience will probably be a niche. And in terms of communication, standardized creations usually also have the biggest budgets (reach more people = higher revenues = huge budgets = need to decrease risk and so standardization) and tend to obscure the rest.

On the other hand, we get involved in something that “grabs us by the guts” and will help keeping the motivation up throughout the process, on top of providing an experience rich in teachings.

Moreover we propose a work that will durably impact the targeted audience (even if it is a limited one) via its personality, and potentially the whole industry and cultural landscape if we’re lucky enough to reach commercial success (Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings…).

No need to add then that the “Chronicles of Galadria” are the story I wanted to write, without any attention given to the market’s expectations.

So, for your own well-being (especially for a first novel) as well as the artistic field’s, write the story you want to tell, regardless of the market (and try your best to sell it afterwards)!