How To Write A Bestseller Essay, Research Paper

How to write a bestsellerBestsellers and bestseller lists exercise a strange, and slightly shameful, fascination. I am often surprised at Observer readers who confess with mild embarrassment to an addiction to their monitoring of the lists.And all this is long before we get to the people who speculate in an idle way about somehow writing a bestseller themselves, hitting the jackpot and, er, living happily ever after in Philip Larkin’s ’shuttered château’.Of course it can’t be done. You might as well stand in a field during a thunderstorm and hope to be struck by lightning. Bestsellers defy analysis. But if you did want to prospect for this fool’s gold, here are four guidelines.First, make sure you attempt fiction rather than non-fiction. Fiction is just one genre, non-fiction runs the gamut. The public’s appetite for novels of all sorts is far broader and potentially more commercial than the market for, say, history or popular science.Yes, megasellers such as Antony Beevor’s Berlin: The Downfall or Dava Sobel’s Longitude can be adduced in refutation of this rule, but for every Longitude (a freakish and brilliant one-off) there will be a dozen Pratchetts, Coopers or Hornbys.Second, having chosen fiction, don’t forget to tell a good story. Grab the reader by the throat on page one, get your narrative fingers round his or her collar in the first chapter and don’t let go until everyone’s living happily ever after, burying the dead in a wintry twilight or driving off into a better and a finer future.And don’t be too original. Shakespeare himself did not disdain well-tried tales. There are various theories about the number of basic plots in the world. Some people say three, some seven, some ten. There’s no harm in having your fiction conform to a fictional archetype.But don’t – my third law – become too calculating. If one thing characterises the writers of bestselling books, it is that, to a person, they believe in their star. Every line they write is scratched in letters of fire. Next to the bestselling writer, Napoleon had an inferiority complex.And, finally, if you decide to put sex into your work: beware. This is the most difficult kind of writing, and almost always makes the writer look ridiculous. In fact, to avoid embarrassment in the bedroom department, you would be well advised to make a careful study of American novelist Elizabeth Benedict’s excellent handbook, The Joy of Writing Sex (Souvenir Press) which, despite its come-hither title, is actually a wise and down-to-earth guide to the mechanics of fiction, from soup to nuts.So much for principles. The sad truth is that while aspects of these guiding notions can be detected in every bestseller, you could follow my suggestions to the letter and still strike seams of utter dross.As it happens, there’s a paperback in this week’s list that proves exactly how difficult it is to second-guess the reading public in the matter of book sales and how wonderfully mysterious are the workings of national literary taste.The Road to Nab End by William Woodruff was first published (as Billy Boy) in 1993 by a small local press, Ryburn Publishing Ltd. It caught the eye of my friend John Hatt, the then publisher of Eland Books, which reissued it in paperback in 2000, for an advance of less than £1,000.Not much happened to the Eland edition, despite excellent reviews: Eric Hobsbawm acclaimed the book as ‘absolutely fascinating as social as well as family history’ and the TLS said: ‘It is impossible to put this book down.’ When the irrepressible Mr Hatt sold his company a couple of years ago, the ownership of Woodruff’s memoir (’an extraordinary Northern childhood’) changed hands yet again.The new proprietors, eager to squeeze profit from their new assets, eventually leased the rights to Nab End to Abacus, the paperback arm of the publishing company formerly known as Little, Brown, for £20,000.This time the gods were smiling. The BBC serialised the book on the radio, word of mouth kicked in and already this year Abacus has reprinted The Road to Nab End four times.Woodruff’s autobiography is not fiction, but it does conform to the rules set out above. It’s a terrific story (a young man’s triumph over adversity) with an archetypal rags-to-riches dimension. It is nostalgic, vivid and charming. For once the blurbs’ claims (’brimming with anecdote’) are fulfilled.Woodruff is a natural writer who, I am quite sure, also believed in every line he wrote. Naturally, this goose has been asked to lay another golden egg. Beyond Nab End will come out next year.Woodruff now lives in Florida and has a website.

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