6 Steps To Write A Book
Let me know where to send it...
Let me know where to send it...
Everyone I’ve ever worked with says they want to write something ‘original’. Every time I hear that, I cringe.
No reader really wants ‘original’.
As human beings, we are drawn to novelty but aren’t willing to invest in it. And yes, your book is an investment; not of money, but of time. The reader isn’t sure they want to make an investment that large in something so unfamiliar.
A good investment for your reader is either
Your book needs to promise and deliver on one of those. And if it’s too original, then the reader simply isn’t convinced it will do that.
Harry Potter is the most famous example of this. It’s held up as being so ‘original’. It’s not. The idea of private magical boarding schools have been done before.
The plot it chose was ‘The Chosen One vs The Dark Lord’. It’s the same plot the Star Wars original used. It’s the same plot fairy tales used. The Chosen One vs The Dark Lord’ is one of the oldest plots in existence.
Then, there are the creatures. Sure, a few were original. Dementors, for instance. But over 95% of them were based on mythologies she mixed, matched and renamed.
The ‘original’ part was in how she combined all these random parts in a way that hadn’t been done before.
That’s what made this hodgepodge of story part TRULY original.
And when people read it, they felt ‘safe’ in this world, after all, they’d seen it before.
That allowed her readers to get completely lost in the world she created.
So in order to have a book that’s considered ‘original’, you need to have a book that’s mostly the same, but also has a slight difference.
That difference is known as your ‘hook’. But that is a topic for another article.
