From TV to Books

COMMERCIAL BOOK WRITING SECRETS

I know. It’s backwards, right? It should be books to TV or books to film. But when you’re learning to be a superstar, you learn from what’s happening in pop culture and apply it.

The film industry should be thanking authors for its multi-billion dollar life. This is not a post about books to film, but my goodness. We know how many of those there are, and even the bad ones deserve a shout out for the inspiration.

But let’s stay focused. If we as writers and authors aren’t looking to film and TV for ways to improve our writing, we’re missing out.

I remember visiting my nieces in Seattle a couple of summers ago. Every morning at 6:00 a.m., the younger niece would creep downstairs to the basement where I was sleeping and wake me up. We’d go upstairs to the living room, still under blankets, and binge watch episodes of Just Add Magic till everyone woke up.

Just Add Magic is a TV show for kids. And as I’m watching these episodes back to back, I find myself getting hooked. I’m rooting for the protagonists to find the right recipe, I’m screaming at the screen when they don’t see trouble coming — all of this for a show my six year old niece says was her favourite.

I’ve thought about those episodes a lot, and what was attracting me to them. My mind went into analytical mode and I started breaking down scenes, then the dialogue, then how they strung together each episode. I saw some patterns that I knew I could apply to my writing to make it more commercial.

When I say commercial, I mean more appealing to a general audience. And trust me when I tell you that there’s nothing more commercial than a kids show with magic in the title. But here’s what I learned, and here are some things you can take away from the analysis I did that week.

Stakes

In almost every scene of each episode, there are some kind of stakes. These stakes build tension so that as a viewer, you’re always anxious and emotionally committed to every scene because the outcome of that single scene has broader implications. This is something authors can totally apply to their writing to make it more commercial. When revising your first draft, consider the stakes of each scene. How many of those scenes are fillers, meaning they’re explaining or describing rather than building on the stakes to create more tension. How many pages does a reader need to flip through before they get to a scene where the stakes matter? I’m not going to get overly prescriptive and say that there’s an exact number, but when you’re trying to make your writing more commercial, these scenes should be closer together.

Subplots

How do you get to a point where the stakes matter in almost every scene? Subplots; that’s how. If you’re crafting your book for commercial appeal, it can’t just be your main character facing challenges. And even if your plot is squarely focused on your main character, you need to build in several storylines with outcomes that will have consequences depending on the decisions that the main character makes. Subplots add to the tension, and tension is the main ingredient for commercial writing.

Destination

I deleted and rewrote about 80% of my most recent novel, Boys and Girls Screaming, after the first few drafts. A number of things were off, but the most significant change I made was to develop a clear destination for the main character. When I say clear destination, I mean that a reader knows precisely what the protagonist is running towards or running away from. Once that was established, I was able to navigate the storyline so that any obstacle I introduced prevented the main character from reaching that destination. Even the subplots, in some way, were connected to the disturbance of reaching this destination and it created the tension I needed to make my story as compelling and addictive as a TV show for six year old’s.

Those are three simple techniques you can apply to your writing today to make your books more commercial. And I’ll say this just because I know how writers think: more commercial does not equal less creative. I can already hear the gasps from “pure” authors who wouldn’t dare taint their writing by trying to appeal to the masses. That’s fine, but we’re talking about writing that does appeal to the masses, and that type of writing does not need to be less creative, it needs to be more focused.

When I was rewriting Boys and Girls Screaming, never once did I feel like I sacrificed creativity. In fact, it’s the book where I used my imagination the most and it’s certainly not an accident that it became my first published title. My point is that you shouldn’t get so into yourself that you miss out on opportunities. Writing commercial fiction is an opportunity. If it appeals to you, try it, but don’t criticize the format because you believe it somehow tarnishes “true” writing.