You Can Write a Bestseller

Everyone wants to write a bestseller. I know I do. I'm sure you'd like to,
as well.

Maybe you think it's only for the likes of the lucky few. I think you stand a chance of joining those few, though. And I want to help you do so.

But how do you breach the walls keeping you out of bestseller status?

By keeping faith, using your imagination, getting emotional and finding
your passion.


Faith and Imagination

The first writing technique I'm going to advise you use if you want to write a bestseller is to have faith in yourself and your ability to write that well. I think this is more important than any other technique you might use.

This doesn't mean a passive "I can do it" mentality. This means you imagine it, live it in your head.

What does it feel like to be on the bestseller lists? How do you celebrate? Who do you tell?

Imagine all this as if it's already happened. I know it sounds weird or downright crazy, but the power of positive thinking and the law of attraction will both come through if you use them. And believe in them.

You've probably read other pages on this site that told you to take a scene you see and describe it in vivid detail. Now I want you to do the same with the "I'm a besteseling author" scene you're creating.

Describe what you do when your novel hits number one. Write down every emotion going through you. Write down what clothes you wear when you go on talk shows because of the popularity of your book. Describe the hotel rooms you stay in on your book tour.

Anything that you think goes with bestseller status. Then reread it every day, and believe.


Catharsis

In a similar vein, you can use "catharsis" to write a bestseller: writing from the midst of extreme emotion.

I wrote a scene a few years ago where one of my characters died. It wasn't a character I wanted to kill off, but the story line demanded it.

Because I had grown "close" to this character, and to the ones around him, when I was writing the scene, putting myself into the scene, it made me cry. I got to the place of extreme emotion that made the words pour from me.

To find that kind of emotion within yourself, you have to imagine what
it's like to lose a child. Or to be kidnapped. Or raped. Or threatened
with murder.

If you've ever acted in a play or movie, you have practice in this. If not, and if you can't seem to put yourself into your character's place deeply enough, you could try taking an acting class. Or reading a book you know moves you deeply. Or watching a tear-jerker movie.

Find something that tugs at your heartstrings, then use that kind of emotion to get your words down on paper (or computer). Pretend you're the character(s) you're writing about. "Be the character."

Only when you find those depths within yourself can you provoke such depth of feeling in your readers. And that's what makes bestseller material.


Passionate Experience

The final technique I'm going to outline to boost your quest to write a bestseller is one that combines the emotion of technique number two I described and learning through experience. The best writing comes
from knowing what it's like to go through what your characters are
going through.

I have to forewarn you, there are plenty of situations you can't recreate like this to really understand what it's like, but for the ones you can experience, there is no substitute.

Some of the best writing comes from writing with passion about what you know. I know what it's like to have to keep walking when my joints are crying and my feet are blistered, when I'm half-parched with thirst. Why? Because I've taken walks that got me lost or were far longer than I prepared for.

I know how it feels to have an icy rain and hail storm half-drown me and leave me shuddering with cold while I walk on quivering knees back to my house to get warm and dry. (That one was a deliberate experience.)

But I can't know what it's like to be kidnapped because I've never
been kidnapped. Nor what it's like to be drowning since I haven't experienced that.

I don't plan to go out and try either of those scenarios, but I can do as one author did and let my husband tied me up and toss me in a car trunk, then drive me around on bumpy roads for half-hour, helpless in the dark. That would certainly give me good fodder to write a kidnapping scene. (Not that my husband would go along with it.)

But I probably wouldn't attempt to "experience" near-drowning. It's too dangerous. I've been in plenty of lakes and pools, though, and even in the ocean a time or two. Not being a strong swimmer, the ocean scared me. I could imagine how easily I could drown in the ocean, and that helps me write such fiction.

The main point here is to have experience (if it's safe to do so), then relate that experience with passion.

Only with passion can you write a bestseller. If you don't have passion about your novel and the scenes in your novel, you won't write something the reader will feel passionate about.

If you write with emotion, faith and imaginative experience, you too can write a bestseller.


For more fiction writing techniques, read these pages:

Writing Fiction
Writing a Novel
Creative Fiction Writing