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How to Write About the Pandemic (or Not)

Many, if not all, are trying to cope with their thoughts and emotions surrounding the pandemic and authors are no exception. Our own Harrison Demchick offers insightful tips on how to write about the pandemic without directly writing about masks and shutdowns on Helping Writers Become Authors. With the experience of his first novel The Listeners, a pandemic-fueled dystopia novel published in 2015, Harrison shares his thoughts on how to write about the pandemic and writing in the post-pandemic era.

Harrison details how our individual experiences with the pandemic uniquely shape our views, while also experiencing similar shared emotions that can and will resonate with many.

Head over to Helping Writers Become Authors to read the full post, and don’t forget to leave a comment if you enjoy the article on how to write about the pandemic (or not)!

Get Your Brain On Straight: Cultivating A Success Mindset – SelfPubHub, May 8, 2022

Our own Chief Ally, Ally Machate, spoke recently to the awesome people at SelfPub Hub about having the right author mindset and how it can make or break the success of your book. As with many things in life our thought process and our outlook can impact our results in a positive or negative way.

Drawing on her experience as a seasoned editor and book publishing entrepreneur, Ally shared how having a positive author mindset can make a significant difference in how your book performs on the market. She also spoke about some of the most common misconceptions authors have about what it takes to write and publish an awesome book, and highlighted ways authors can develop a success mindset shifting into gear to achieve all their dreams and goals.

You can listen to all the great points she presented in the recording here!

Writing To Market: How to Write Smarter and Sell More Books Easily

The Writer’s Ally is pleased to feature this valuable post explaining what writing to market really means, from USA Today Bestselling mystery and thriller author Tom Fowler. Read on to learn more about his tried and proven strategies.

Whenever an author suggests writing to market in an open forum, you’ll often find some version of “You’re selling out” in the replies. In reality, writing to market is simply considering your audience before you write. This will enable you to release a book to fans and readers who want to pick it up versus launching and hoping for the best.

As a writer, you are free to write the story of your heart. I hope you do, and I further hope it’s a great experience for you. If you want strangers to buy your books, however, you need to present them with something that appeals to them, not just to you.

The core of writing to market is finding the intersection of what you enjoy and what’s selling well. We’ll get more into specifics later, but my thrillers (written to market) have far outsold my mysteries (which were not). If people want to call this “selling out,” well . . . haters gonna hate.

(Note: most discussions of writing to market center around fiction. It’s certainly possible to adapt these principles for nonfiction, as well. If you’re a nonfiction author, I think you’ll see a lot you can use as you read this.)

Let’s take a closer look at how to go about this.

Step 1: Identify genres you enjoy.

You need to enjoy creating the story. If you don’t, why are you writing it? If you’re in it for a quick buck, this will show in your prose. You won’t have the tropes quite right. You might skip over some story beats which are essential to the niche. Your tone might be a little off. Frequent readers of the genre will know, and you’ll never get them to buy another book.

Even if you haven’t written it yet, you can also approach this part by considering what kind of stories you like to read. Note that I specified “to read.” It might be very easy to watch a James Bond marathon and decide you like thrillers. If you want readers to come from Russia with love, however, you’ll need to read a bunch. Movies are different animals.

Step 2: Read. A lot.

I would cast a wide net here. You want to be versed in the classics, but you also need to know what contemporary writers are putting out for the modern reader in your chosen genres. If you want to write cozy mysteries, for instance, and you’ve never read Agatha Christie, now is the time to start. The top writers of cozies today know their Miss Marple from their Poirot . . . and so do their readers.

Step 3: Assess the market.

You might really want to pen a yeti shifter romance, but if there are no books in the niche or none that are performing well, it’s not a good call. The market just isn’t there.

The “artiste” may say their creative genius will establish a market by writing something new and interesting. It’s possible. So is watching just one episode of Ozark. But the probability is low.

What you’re looking for is a genre that’s popular but not oversaturated. There need to be enough readers to buy what you write, but maybe not enough books to satisfy everybody who goes looking for one.

To find these spaces, you’ll need to explore the Kindle store. We’ll use the US Amazon Kindle store here. It features well over eight million books, and while you can certainly sell on other storefronts, Amazon is by far the largest ebook seller in the American market.

Search the niches you enjoy writing or reading. You can do this by entering a subgenre in the search bar (“mafia romance”) or by clicking through the category tree down the left side. Now, look at the category’s #1 book. What’s its Amazon bestseller ranking (ABSR)? This is a measure of how successful it is overall, and like golf, a lower score is better. Thus, the #10 book in the Kindle Store sells better than 11, 12, etc.

The #100 title in the entire Kindle Store (not just in your category) will sell about 1000 copies a day. The #200 book will move about 500. Not bad, right? Even the #5000 book overall sells over 30 copies a day, #10,000 does about 15, and #30,000 about ten.

You’re looking at the top (ranked 1) entry in your chosen niche, right? Ideally, it will be in the top 100 storewide. This gives you a high ceiling. It means the genre contains at least one book with a lot of visibility overall. Now, scroll down to the 20th title in your chosen niche. You want it to have an ABSR of #30,000 or lower storewide. This gives you a reasonably high but attainable floor.

Don’t you want both the 1st and 20th ranked books in your category to have really low ABSRs? No. This would mean the genre is super competitive, and you’re going to have a tough time gaining visibility. At the very least, the bottom end of the top 100 in your chosen niche should have rankings better (i.e. lower) than #40,000 in the overall Kindle Store.

Let’s do an example using Publisher Rocket—and no, I’m not an affiliate. I just use and believe in the tool. It makes this process far simpler. [Note: The Writer’s Ally is an affiliate, and you can check out this awesome tool here.]

Maybe you’re a voracious romance reader across many subgenres, and you’re thinking you want to write your own stories. What’s the best romance niche for you? Let’s see what Publisher Rocket says:

The categories are sorted by the overall Kindle Store ABSR of their top books. (Remember, each book has its own ABSR storewide plus its position in each category, and lower is better for both.)

We can see that the general “Romance” category is super competitive—the 10th book in the category ranks #22 storewide. Yikes! The top seller in New Adult and College Romance ranks #5 overall, but its 10th top seller comes in at #125 storewide. Still popular, but we’re getting more attainable.

If you like a little magic with your kisses, Paranormal Ghost Romance’s bestselling book holds an ABSR of #13, but its 10th title is positioned at a much more manageable #660. This would be a good category to target.

Genre: Identified. Now what?

Readers expect certain things from books, and they can be very unhappy when those things are absent. If you’re going to write a romance, for instance, you need a happily ever after (HEA) or at least a happy for now (HFN). Why? These are popular romance tropes. Long gone are the days of Love Story where the author could kill the woman at the end and still have people fawn over the book.

Here are a few popular tropes from my genres (mystery and thriller):

  • The grizzled ex-cop now working as a PI.
  • A retired (or soon to retire) operative must complete one more mission.
  • The police arrest the PI’s client.
  • A character returns to their hometown and must solve a crime that connects to their past in some way.

There are many, many more, but you get the point. Think about what you like reading and make a list of your own.

Writing to market means you’re taking your audience’s desires into account as you shape your story. You’re putting this book out with the hopes they’ll gobble it up, right? Shouldn’t you know who they are?

I misjudged my audience at first. I expected my mystery readers to be virile men who liked drinking, cursing, and punching evildoers in the face. I was a bit surprised to learn about two-thirds were women, they skewed older, and they weren’t too keen on committing violence. How did I find out? I (belatedly) did some research on people who read PI and hard-boiled mysteries, and I surveyed the readers on my mailing list.

Writing for the wrong reader is going to cost you sales—you’re making it harder for the right ones to find you. Don’t walk the same path I did here.

There are other factors that go into putting out a good book, of course, but if you get the two things above right, you’re well on your way. The Writer’s Ally can help you with the rest!

Writing to Market: What I learned with my books.

I have two ongoing series: A PI mystery and a military action thriller.

The first was not written to market. I didn’t know of the term yet—Chris Fox’s book was out, but I hadn’t heard of it. Still, I managed to hit some tropes while completely bypassing others in the name of being a Very Clever Writer. What did I whiff on? Compare this to the list of popular tropes I listed earlier:

  • My PI protagonist doesn’t have a law enforcement background.
  • He’s young (28 as the series begins).
  • His family has money, so he doesn’t need to struggle.

Readers who stick with the books love the main character and supporting cast. And I still love writing this series after 12 books. But I know my choices have put some readers off (it’s in the reviews!) and that’s cost me sales.

When I launched my thriller series in the fall of 2020, I applied the lessons of writing to market in the hopes of kicking things off well. I researched and understood my main genre and subgenre. I wrote to hit the classic action thriller tropes. A few readers described my protagonist as a cross between Jack Reacher and Harry Bosch, which was very gratifying—and exactly what I’d aimed for.

My thrillers have comfortably outsold my mysteries. The most visible sign of my success in writing to market, though, was Amazon recommending my first thriller, The Mechanic, repeatedly. I did very little to push the book, but it kept selling and selling in a way none of my crime fiction titles ever had. I was moving 50-70 copies a day and even got an audiobook publisher to buy the rights for the first two entries in the series.

I know this happened because I put the time in up front. And because I did, I enjoyed some good organic sales out of the gate, which in turn jumpstarted the Amazon recommendation engine that pushed my book for me for a couple of months. For almost sixty days, it barely spent any time worse than #5000 in the overall Kindle Store.

Could I make my mysteries sell better? Sure. But for my mysteries to attain this rank, I would need to market them much harder with ads, newsletter promos, and money. They just don’t sell themselves in the same way that my thrillers do.

This is what writing to market really means. It’s not selling out. It’s just smarter selling.

Tom Fowler is a USA Today bestselling mystery and thriller writer. He was born and raised in Baltimore and now lives in the DC suburbs of Maryland with his family. He writes the C.T. Ferguson mysteries and the John Tyler thrillers, both set in his home city. Tom’s stories feature flawed heroes, action, and plenty of snark. You can visit his website at www.tomfowlerwrites.com, where you’ll be able to get two series prequel novellas for free.

Tom’s books are available on all retailers. You can view the C.T. Ferguson crime novels at https://books2read.com/rl/ctferguson and the John Tyler thrillers at https://books2read.com/rl/johntylerthrillers.

Plotting Literary Fiction

In his guest article for Jane Friedman’s blog, our very own Harrison Demchick explains that so many resources you’ll find on writing plot focus on genre fiction and thrillers, which can be confusing if you’re writing a quieter story like with literary fiction. Causation is fundamental in character-driven literary fiction too, but it doesn’t look the same. It’s subtler. It’s quieter. So how do the mechanics of plot relate to plotting literary fiction? Harrison discusses the principle of causation and how it may just be the key to crafting a great character-driven story in the article, which you can read here.

Most well-written thrillers are going to have a character arc. Understanding that is important in understanding as well how causation drives the character. In most commercial fiction, happenstance is the opposite of causation, reflecting plot beats that occur not due to preceding events but by the whim of the author. Harrison discusses how you can establish the principles of causation and narrative structure in a story in which events are revealed to the reader out of order.

Many thanks to Jane Friedman for hosting Harrison’s guest post. Jane has a special interest in how the digital age is transforming writing careers, publishing, and storytelling. She believes that rather than taking a dark view of how the Internet era has affected writers’ livelihoods, she is more interested in how revolutionary change can inspire new business models, and how authorship will ultimately evolve. Check out her website for lots of useful content.

The Best Way to Start Your Story Type

It’s an oversimplification, but also very much a truism, to suggest that starting a story is difficult. That’s why we’ve devoted an entire four-part series to the challenge of how best to do it. In the last three installments (click here to read Part 1), we’ve discussed establishing momentum and avoiding exposition in the opening pages, and what to do and what to avoid in crafting the opening sentence. These tools are fundamental in capturing the reader from the beginning.

But you’re not just beginning a story. You’re beginning your story.

What does that mean? What’s the difference?

What I mean is that just because the opening chapter of a manuscript captures a reader doesn’t necessarily mean it sets up effectively the story to come. Just because a first-sentence hook is razor-sharp doesn’t mean it establishes the right tone. It’s entirely possible for an opening chapter to be simultaneously excellent and entirely wrong for the novel you’re writing. As a book editor, I’ve seen it happen many times.

So in this final installment in our series on the opening pages, we’re going to look at some of the pitfalls that can make even a well-written beginning an ineffective introduction to your manuscript.

[Missed the previous posts in this series? Start here.]

Setting Readers’ Expectations

The Hunger Games is well-regarded as a great contemporary work of young adult dystopian fiction. But suppose author Suzanne Collins had pitched it to publishers instead as a math textbook.

It’s an exciting and imaginative YA novel, sure. But it teaches you very little about long division. As a math textbook, it would be a near-instant rejection.

That’s a silly example, but it speaks to the point that if you sell readers one thing and deliver another, you’re likely to receive some negative reactions regardless of the actual quality of your writing. Recently, I edited a novel that presented a straightforward Victorian-era drama not only through the first chapter but in fact through the first several chapters. Readers invested in the grounded real-world drama were likely to find it jarring when the arrival of a supernatural being revealed a fantasy novel set primarily in a fantasy world. Yet readers anticipating a fantasy could well be turned away by a story that took an inordinate amount of time even to hint at its genre.

It’s not only about genre. A solemn opening chapter may not represent effectively a consistently lighthearted novel and vice versa. One of the goals of your opening pages is to set up the story to come. If your opening pages seem to set up an altogether different story, whether in genre, subject, style, or tone, then even if you hook your reader from the start, you may also be setting them up for disappointment down the line. They may even feel deceived—a turnoff for many readers, regardless of the quality of the writing.

Narrative Relevance

Sometimes genre and tone may be spot on, but the specific scene with which you open the manuscript proves unimportant to the story to come. Another manuscript I edited recently opened with a scene from the protagonist’s childhood about a treasure she found. The rest of the story was set during the protagonist’s present day, and the treasure never actually became relevant to the narrative or the character. Still another recent project highlighted a character who would never appear or be mentioned again.

It’s not even true only of fiction. I worked on a memoir that opened with a chess tournament. Chess was deeply relevant to the narrative, but this particular match and this particular tournament were not. In time the scene proved unnecessary.

The notion of this happening in time is important. Opening pages without narrative relevance can be difficult to spot in the moment for authors and readers. For readers, it’s impossible to determine whether a scene is important when you don’t yet know the nature of the story. For authors, the story changes so much during the writing process that what seemed important early in the process turns out not to be later on. A well-written scene is still going to capture readers, but a well-written scene also raises questions specific to that scene. The more time that passes without addressing those questions, the more dissatisfied readers will become. So an opening scene without narrative relevance creates significant problems down the road.

Point of View

Another novel I edited years ago had a different problem. While the vast majority of the novel was written primarily from a single point of view, the first six chapters presented six different points of view. The writing through all six early chapters was perfectly good, but by the end of them readers would have been thoroughly confused trying to determine what story, and whose story, they were actually reading.

In a novel or memoir—any story, really—point of view is a tool of focus. So a manuscript that begins with too many points of view—whether in multiple chapters or in a single chapter—is out of focus. That makes it more difficult to invest in a specific character, or even to know who the protagonist is meant to be. Readers are then left confused rather than compelled to explore the narrative to come.

So how do you ensure you set readers’ expectations, keep things relevant, and maintain a focused start to your novel? Here are some tips:

  • When you reach the end of the draft, go back and reread the beginning. Does it still fit the story you wound up writing?
  • Seek out a beta reader to read the first chapter alone. What impressions are they left with? An outsider’s perspective can help nail down what you’re communicating and how it differs from your intentions.
  • Does the first chapter reveal too much? Consider if any future plot points might be in any way spoiled by the content of the opening pages.

The more you know about your own manuscript, the better able you are to catch the ways in which your opening pages are or are not effective in introducing readers to the story you mean to tell. So go back, take your time, and ensure that the opening pages are not only compelling and well-written but also the right start for your work.

What’s the biggest change you’ve ever made to your opening pages after completing a draft? Let us know in the comments below!

Harrison Demchick came up in the world of small press publishing, working along the way on more than two dozen published novels and memoirs, several of which have been optioned for film. He is an award-winning, twice-optioned screenwriter, and the author of literary horror novel The Listeners. He’s part of The Writer’s Ally team as a developmental editor of fiction and memoir, for which he’s currently accepting new clients.

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