This list is 21 key traits of best-selling fiction excerpted from The Writer’s Little Helperby James V. Smith, Jr. If you find them interesting, or helpful the author has several more great tips in his book.
- Utility (writing about things that people will use in their lives)
- Information (facts people must have to place your writing in context)
- Substance (the relative value or weight in any piece of writing)
- Focus (the power to bring an issue into clear view)
- Logic (a coherent system for making your points)
- A sense of connection (the stupid power of personal involvement)
- A compelling style (writing in a way that engages)
- A sense of humor (wit or at least irony)
- Simplicity (clarity and focus on a single idea)
- Entertainment (the power to get people to enjoy what you write)
- A fast pace (the ability to make your writing feel like a quick read)
- Imagery (the power to create pictures with words)
- Creativity (the ability to invent)
- Excitement (writing with energy that infects a reader with your own enthusiasm)
- Comfort (writing that imparts a sense of well-being)
- Happiness (writing that gives joy)
- Truth (or at least fairness)
- Writing that provokes (writing to make people think or act)
- Active, memorable writing (the poetry in your prose)
- A sense of Wow! (the wonder your writing imparts on a reader)
- Transcendence (writing that elevates with its heroism, justice, beauty, honor)
To sell your fiction, you must pay attention to the Key Traits of Best-Selling Fiction. FYI, the twenty-one traits are arranged in a kind of rough order.
- Appeals to the intellect. The first five: utility to logic. To you, the writer, they refer to how you research, organize, and structure your story. These are the large-scale mechanics of a novel.
- Appeals to the emotions. From a sense of connection to excitement. These are the ways you engage a reader to create buzz. Do these things right, and people will talk about your novel, selling it to others.
- Appeals to the soul. Comfort through transcendence. With these traits you examine whether your writing matters, whether it lasts, whether it elevates you to the next level as a novelist.
Where do the 21 key traits come from?
They come from the most prolific, most complete, most accessible, most reliable survey of book readers in the world. They come from my study of the thousands of reader reviews on Amazon.com.
Reliable? Yes. Why? Because most reviewers visit a page to write reviews based on their emotional reactions to books. They either love a book or hate it. They were either swept away by the characters and story and language. Or they felt cheated by the author. Either way, they have to speak out.
You can duplicate my research. I analyzed reviews of bestsellers, the good reviews, the bad, and the ugly. I found patterns in the way people responded and sorted reader remarks into categories.
Go ahead. Find the best-selling book in the area where you want to write fiction. Find your own patterns in the first two hundred reviews. I’d be astonished if they were far from my list. These are readers telling writers what they want—or in the instance of a bad review, what they don’t want. You can learn a ton from this kind of market survey. Give it a go.
Then get to writing to satisfy your readers.
Buy The Writer’s Little Helper for more checklists, advice, and instruction on writing!
