Recently on the Twitter/X site, I saw mentions of writers talking about how some books out there seem to be written to tropes (In short, a trope is a plot structure, theme, storyline, character trait, motif, or plot device that is commonly used in storytelling. – from kindlepreneur.com) with just beats but no real flow or anything resembling a real story. It is an attempt to cash in on market trends, which can change from week to week sometimes, not to mention from month to month or year to year. Some of these ‘writers’ will make money but sooner or later, the money will dry up because it seems readers are catching on to this. They’re finding books that aren’t with tropes and beats, or marketing trends. They’re finding books written by writers who write the story of their heart, with plot twists and turns, and characters who feel so real, and a story that can take you totally out of your world and into the world the writer creates. These are books that make readers laugh, gasp, sigh, and cry.
So how do you write like that? I mean, what about marketing and getting your book out there and all that?
First, write the book you want to read.
Second, don’t think about marketing or tropes or anything like that at all during the writing process. Marketing and promotion come into play after a book is written and edited to within an inch of its’ life.
Now, I’m a dinosaur to any young writer reading this in that I started writing when it was all traditional publishing, big publishing houses in New York City putting out actual paper books in bookstores and other places. On average back then, once a book was finished, turned in, edited and everything, it would reach shelves in eighteen to twenty-four months (give or take).
Yes, you just read eighteen to twenty-four months. So back then, when you read a book it had probably been written over two years prior to when you bought it. And this is still the case even today with traditionally published books.
Now electronic, or self-publishing if you will, has dramatically shortened that timeline. In the self-publishing world, once a writer is ready to release their book, they just upload it and press the ‘Publish’ button and that book is out there. Paper copies follow soon after on order. So the self-published book you read in all likelihood was written not very long before it was published (unless a writer sat on the manuscript or the book had a difficult gestation period before publication). So months and years have now become weeks. And this in turn has given rise to the fast buck poorly-written book, and the rise of tropes and beats.
So back in the Stone Age before the rise of Amazon, marketing trends were determined by what was hitting the shelves. Pipelines were slow, and sadly by the time some books hit the shelves, readers wanted a different type of book. In the romance genre where I’ve spent most of my writing time, this happened quite often. One year historical romance was all the rage, next year it was contemporary, next year it was vampires. Now in the electronic age, a market trend can change in months, or maybe even weeks. So this is why this old dinosaur here is telling you not to write to trends, tropes, or think about what’s ‘hot’ and selling.
No one knows what will sell or why it will sell. Therefore writing is a ginormous crap-shoot and there’s nothing you can do about it. Oh, maybe you can just churn out something and make a quick buck and if that’s what you want to do, go ahead but trust me, you’ll bust out sooner or later because readers will eventually see through that and go looking for something else. Instead, learn how to write a real story, with plot and characters, not just a trope and a series of beats that play to that trope and nothing else.
Writing is hard if you dig in on it. Writing a really engaging, creative, innovative, heart-pounding story is not easy. I write because I want to tell stories. I’m a storyteller and I do it right now with no guarantee I’ll earn money off it. But I won’t know if I’ll ever earn money off it until I put my best work out there.
So no, I don’t write to tropes and beats. And I sure as hell don’t write to market trends or what’s selling right at this moment.
I write my stories as they come to me, and I take pride in my craft. And if anyone doesn’t like that, whatever. I don’t write to naysaying hacks or hucksters, or for people who haven’t put in the time to write and rewrite for over thirty years like I have. I’ve seen things come and go, and I’m sure I’ll see more before I’m finished.
Yet I’m still writing.
For more about me, you can visit my website at https://michelesayre.com/
Writers Unite! 