How to Write a Novel that Will Sell Well and Satisfy Your Inner Artist by Harry Bingham

Picture a Venn diagram with two overlapping circles. One circle is what I like to write. The other is what readers want to read. The area of overlap is the sweet spot. A writer who is always writing in that zone will have commercial success (to some degree) and will be able to sustain a long career without burning out.

HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL THAT WILL SELL WELL AND SATISFY YOUR INNER ARTIST is meant to help writers find that sweet spot and stay there. Bingham is the author of popular thrillers. He’s also the founder of Jericho Writers, a company that offers editing services and author mentoring. In that capacity, he’s seen tons of manuscripts and met plenty of writers, and he’s formed strong opinions about what makes a marketable novel and how writers can best write one.

To that end, Bingham offers a comprehensive guide meant to take authors from pre-planning through finished manuscript. He starts with the concept. Bingham gives some tough love here, explaining why weak ideas won’t become strong novels. He encourages clear-sighted honesty, intense market study, and a love of contemporary fiction. Too many authors rely on books twenty or more years old as role models, forgetting that their competition is writing for today’s market. Bingham spends a lot of time on this, because it’s the foundation of everything that comes after.

The rest of the book takes the author through the steps to create a complete novel, covering character, plot, prose style, and theme. At every stage, Bingham encourages authors to be meticulous, making deliberate choices about everything on the page. This approach will work well for plotters, although it might strike discovery writers as too rigid.

Bingham reminds authors that they are competing in a tough market, and “good enough” is never good enough. He wants authors to strive for excellence in every aspect of their craft. He quotes passages from contemporary fiction, both literary and genre, and explains why these passages work so well. These breakdowns are great for those of us who learn best from examples, rather than theory, and the passages perfectly illustrate his points.

Bingham has an energetic style and considerable wit, although he name-drops his author services company way too often. There were times that I felt like I was reading an infomercial for Jericho Writers instead of a how-to book. But I was willing to overlook the salesmanship because the rest of the book was so good. HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL THAT WILL SELL WELL AND SATISFY YOUR INNER ARTIST is an excellent guide for those who want to level up their craft and sell more books without selling out.

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HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL THAT WILL SELL WELL AND SATISFY YOUR INNER ARTIST can be found here

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Rating: 4 stars

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This book is best for: intermediate writers

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I recommend this book

Free Your Inner Nonfiction Writer by Johanna Rothman

FREE YOUR INNER NONFICTION WRITER is for people who are subject experts but aren’t experienced writers. Many people have valuable knowledge but have no idea how to get that knowledge onto the page. They don’t know where to begin, or how long a piece will take to write, or how to organize their work. Rothman takes these brand-new writers by the hand with a guide full of wisdom, empathy, and truth.

It starts with unlearning much of what we learned in school. We were all taught to research first, then outline, write, and finally revise. We were never supposed to go back to a previous step, stop and think, or spend time exploring a subject. But that’s not how real writing happens. Often, it’s by the act of writing itself that we figure out the best way to approach our topic. Rothman encourages writers to “cycle,” or to write a bit, figure out what they want to say, write some more, and repeat, gaining clarity with each cycle. This is the way most people naturally write, but too many of us still cling to the myth that writing must be done in linear steps, scared that writing any other way is wrong.

Rothman then takes writers through the steps to a finished article, blog post, or book chapter, including the idea phase, the writing itself, and the editing. She emphasizes that editing is not meant to make a piece “perfect.” It’s only meant to make it more accessible to your ideal reader. The most important thing is that the reader understands what you wrote. Keeping that gold standard in mind makes editing a much more straightforward task. FREE YOUR INNER NONFICTION WRITER ends with advice on getting feedback, publishing, and maintaining good work habits so the writer can do it all again.

Too many people say they will write “someday.” They push it off because it seems too complicated. Or worse, they’ve had it scared out of them, and they’re afraid to try writing, either because of impostor syndrome or fear of being judged. FREE YOUR INNER NONFICTION WRITER is a wonderful, gentle guide, that will hopefully bring “someday” one day closer for anyone who wants to write.

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FREE YOUR INNER NONFICTION WRITER can be found here

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Rating: 4 stars

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This book is best for: beginning writers

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I recommend this book

Shut Up and Write the Book by Jenna Moreci

SHUT UP AND WRITE THE BOOK is aimed at brand-new fiction writers who are overwhelmed by the process and are wishing for a mentor to show them what to do, how to do it, and most importantly, where to start. Writing a novel is extremely complex, but Moreci simplifies the process as much as possible by breaking it down into its smallest possible steps. And more importantly, she puts those steps into the correct order.

In twenty-six chapters, Moreci covers brainstorming, outlining, structuring a novel, writing the first draft, self-edits, and finally, getting a professional edit (or four). SHUT UP AND WRITE THE BOOK gives a wide overview of the novel-crafting process, but it doesn’t go very deep. Many of Moreci’s short chapters could be expanded into entire books. But this is a feature, not a bug. Moreci isn’t here to complicate things. She’s covering the topics “…in matter-of-fact detail and without all the drinking and crying.” This is a starting place for writers, a jumping off point, and Moreci doesn’t take a deep dive into any one topic because her entire aim is to keep writers moving forward.

Moreci writes with the same no-nonsense style that made her YouTube channel famous. Mainly, she wants to writers to know two things. First, writing a novel takes a lot of time and a lot of work. Second, there are no shortcuts. But Moreci tempers her tough love with a hefty dose of compassion. She’s been where you are, she remembers how it felt, and she’s going to do whatever it takes to get you to the next step.

My favorite chapters were the one on choosing a tense for your novel and the chapters on self-editing. Moreci breaks down all the pros and cons of choosing a tense, and then drops this truth-bomb. “Present tense is easier to write, and past tense is easier to read.” That sums up my experience with past and present tense in the most succinct way possible. I also loved this priceless quote from her chapter on self-editing. “The primary reason people hate editing isn’t because it’s difficult or time-consuming. It’s because it’s humiliating.” I mean, ouch. But also, it’s so true.

On YouTube, Moreci doles out weekly writing wisdom with humor, heart, and a whole lot of swear words. Now, lucky for us, that same wisdom can be found in book form, and I hope SHUT UP AND WRITE THE BOOK finds its place on every new writer’s shelves.

SHUT UP AND WRITE THE BOOK can be found here

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Rating: 5 stars

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This book is best for: beginning writers

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I recommend this book

How to Write Black Characters by the editors at Salt & Sage Books

The editors at Salt & Sage books work as sensitivity readers, and in the course of their work, they kept seeing the same problems over and over. Rather than repeating themselves to individual authors, they wrote HOW TO WRITE BLACK CHARACTERS as an introduction to the topic. It’s meant as a broad overview, to help catch the most common errors, helping readers eliminate negative stereotypes and harmful tropes.

The chapters cover stereotypes, hair, language, (including an introduction to AAVE and code-switching), family, anti-Blackness, and religion. There are also chapters on Blackness in Britain and Africa, although the bulk of the book is addressing North American writers.

In the case of stereotypes, the authors explain where a stereotype came from, why it’s so harmful, examples they’ve seen, and—crucially—how to do better. Sometimes, erasing one stereotype can make an author fall into another. One example that the authors use is when you don’t want to write an “angry black woman” character, so you make her too passive and eager to please those around her, as if her emotional labor isn’t important or she’s not worthy of emotions of her own. The key is to make your character well-rounded. To help readers understand her anger and her other emotions, and why she’s worthy of having them.

I’m not Black, but some of my characters are. We live in a beautifully multicultural society, and it’s important that fiction reflect that. I learned a ton from this book, and I loved the way it went beyond the basics to the more subtle nuances. I’m grateful to the editors at Salt & Sage, who put a lot of their own lived experience on the page so that others could learn.

HOW TO WRITE BLACK CHARACTERS is a short book, but it includes a lot of resources for further reading. It underscores the theme: the author must do the work. This book is an invitation, the beginning of a conversation that should continue through other sources and by talking to members of the community you want to write about.

HOW TO WRITE BLACK CHARACTERS is not meant to substitute for a good sensitivity reader. There isn’t a checklist that a non-Black author can go by, and even if there were, checking the “not offensive” box isn’t enough when writing real characters. The authors warn readers right up front that this is an incomplete guide, blackness is not a monolith, and this guide should never be the sum of an author’s research.

But it’s an excellent place to start.

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HOW TO WRITE BLACK CHARACTERS can be found here

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Rating: 4 stars

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This book is best for: all writers

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I recommend this book

The Anatomy of a Best Seller by Sacha Black

We all became writers because we love books. Stories feed our minds and hearts, and that’s why we write. But being a great reader does not make someone a great writer. There is a huge gap between reading for pleasure and reading like a writer. THE ANATOMY OF A BEST SELLER fills that gap, to help writers bridge the chasm between someone who loves to read and someone who understands how books are made.

There are three things a writer must do: read, deconstruct, and implement. Reading seems like the easy part. We all love to read, right? But Black teaches us how to read like writers, which is a completely different skillset. A writer must first read widely, to understand the genre, and then read deeply, to understand the techniques a writer has used.

After that comes deconstruction. This is all about reverse-engineering to figure out what an author is doing and why it works. Deconstruction means using an author’s tools, not her words. Black doesn’t advocate plagiarism. She’s showing authors how to take a deep dive into books in order to internalize those techniques, so we can make them our own. This is a very personal experience that relies on emotion rather than logic. Whatever part of the book moved you? That’s the part to pay attention to. Only then does analysis come into play. Black gives lots of useful examples here, to show this kind of deconstruction in action.

The third, and most difficult part, is implementation. Here is where most how-to books fall down, because it’s a lot easier to tell writers what to do than explain how to do it. But Black fearlessly wades into the trenches, not only explaining how to use the tools that a writer discovered in parts one and two, but how to use them for a particular audience.

The phrase “write to market” has been said so often, by so many, that it’s become an almost meaningless phrase. But Black prefers to think of it as “write to reader.” Because the truth is, writers don’t intuitively know how to please readers. Too often, we’re writing for other writers. We attend critique groups where writers pick apart our sentences, or we get beta reader feedback from fellow writers and change our books according to their sensibilities, or we take classes and write what the instructor wants. But Black wants to turn that completely around by showing us how to first read like a writer, then write for a reader.

When I finished reading THE ANATOMY OF A BEST SELLER, I went immediately to page one and started reading it a second time. It’s that good. I have been deconstructing bestselling and midlist books for years, and my mind was still blown by Black’s insights. Even better, Black delivers all of her instruction with a wicked sense of humor and a healthy measure of f-bombs, which are two of my favorite things.

THE ANATOMY OF A BEST SELLER is not a “get rich quick” kind of book. Black’s methods take time, patience, and lot of trial and error. But the result will be an author who truly understands novels, and can deliver fresh stories to exactly the right audience.

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THE ANATOMY OF A BEST SELLER can be found here

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Rating: 5 stars

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This book is best for: intermediate writers

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I recommend this book.

The Relaxed Author by Joanna Penn and Mark Leslie Lefebvre

There are two truths that self-published authors have taken as holy writ: there is no better marketing than writing a new book, and books are only “new” for thirty days. In the first month of a book’s life, Amazon and the other retailers will help out quite a bit with behind-the-scenes marketing. After that, you’re on your own.

If both of those things are true, then it stands to reason that the best way to succeed in self publishing is to write a new book every single month. Lots of indie authors tried it, either on their own or as a conglomerate of four to six authors publishing under a single pen name. And to no one’s surprise, many of these authors have burned out.

Even if an author isn’t writing a book a month, trying to wear both the writer hat and publisher hat can be exhausting if the writer is trying to get maximum results from both jobs. Something’s got to give. But what should that something be?

THE RELAXED AUTHOR is part manifesto, part wise guide, and part evaluation tool. Writers don’t have to do it all, and Penn and Lefebvre are here to help sort out what’s truly useful for indie authors and what’s mere hype.

THE RELAXED AUTHOR is divided into four sections: writing, publishing, marketing, and running your author business. Each step of the way, the authors ask the right questions to help writers decide how to spend their time and effort. Being a “relaxed author” doesn’t mean doing things half-assed. It doesn’t mean you should stop caring about things. Being relaxed means going at the speed that’s right for you, and making good decisions that will provide a solid foundation for your writing life.

Penn and Lefebvre take turns writing the chapters, giving two perspectives on every problem. All of the advice is solid, and where Penn and Lefebvre have differing opinions, the reasons behind those opinions is also instructive. For example, Penn uses virtual assistants while Lefebvre finds them more trouble than they’re worth. Neither one is right or wrong. They are simply doing what’s best for them. That’s the final key. To be a relaxed author is to be self-aware, and THE RELAXED AUTHOR helps writers think through every aspect of their writing and publishing life.

Stressed out writers don’t write well. Staying relaxed can, ironically, help an author stay more creative and productive for the long haul—both as an author and as a self-publisher.

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THE RELAXED AUTHOR can be found here. 

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Rating: 4 stars

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This book is best for: intermediate writers

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I recommend this book

Take Off Your Pants by Libbie Hawker

There are two kinds of writers in the world: those who like to outline before they begin writing and those who “fly by the seat of their pants.” TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS is aimed at the latter group. Hawker promises that even the most hard-core pantsers can learn to outline. She insists that outlining novels is the only way to a full-time author career, while pantsers are doomed to keep their day jobs. Hawker then doubles down to say that outlining the “right” way (her way) is the only path to a successful literary career. None of this is true, but I suspect this book sells more for the provocative title than for any of its contents.

Hawker hasn’t done any research into the plotter/pantser divide beyond her own experience. She wrote her first book without an outline and it took her a long time. She wrote all her later books with outlines and they were written faster. Therefore, she has concluded that outlines are best for everyone. She belabors this point (and all of her points) with tons of strawman arguments and as much self-praise as she can manage.

Hawker learned her personal outlining method by following John Truby’s Anatomy of Story. She states over and over again that TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS is simply a streamlined version of Truby’s book. To be fair, Truby’s book is overly complex and borderline unreadable, so perhaps Hawker thinks she’s doing writers a favor by distilling it for them. But here’s the thing: nobody needs a dumbed-down version of a bad book.

Hawker’s actual outline template is just The Hero’s Journey with different names attached to the plot points. However, changing the name of a well-known concept doesn’t make it a new concept. Calling the all-is-lost moment the “changed goal,” or calling the climax scene “the battle,” doesn’t make them different things. It’s very unfair to the reader to take a well-known story map, rename all the parts, and then pretend you invented it.

For her examples, Hawker gives a nod to the first Harry Potter book and to Charlotte’s Web, but the majority of her examples are from two sources: Lolita, and her own book called Tidewater. Her novel is the story of Pocahontas, told from Pocahontas’ point of view. Pocahontas’ fatal flaw, according to Hawker, is that she was “too ambitious.” (Too ambitious for what? For a woman? For a Native American?) Four different times, Hawker states that the theme of Tidewater is “how people handle a cultural clash.” To her, the colonization of North America was merely a clash of cultures. The whitewashing of history aside, taking examples from a book that few people have read is unhelpful, and using the author’s own novel is just bad form.

I’m someone who loves to outline her novels and I’m always thrilled when I find a new outlining method. But TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS is derivative, self-indulgent, and offensive. Pantsers won’t want this book, plotters won’t like it, and nobody needs it.

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Rating: 2 stars

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I recommend Creating Character Arcs by K.M. Weiland or Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell instead of this book.

5 Editors Tackle the 12 Fatal Flaws of Fiction Writing by C.S. Lakin and others

Lakin has teamed up with four other professional editors to explain the problems that they see over and over in manuscripts. But they’re not here to complain. These editors are sharp-eyed at spotting flaws in manuscripts and they’re eager to help writers do better. They offer in-depth explanations of the flaw, show why it’s a problem, and teach writers how to fix it.

Some of the flaws are on the macro level, the kind of thing an author would rewrite in the second draft. These are things like too much backstory, lack of tension, overwriting, telling instead of showing, flawed dialogue, and flat description. Others are things that could be considered copyediting errors, such as weak sentence construction, improper mechanics, or using too many adverbs.

The authors take turns writing the chapters, so this is more a compilation than a true collaboration. But even though many voices are represented in this book, none of the chapters contradict one another and it never felt repetitive. Had I not known it was written by five people, I could have mistaken this book for the advice of one single author. That’s because the advice within 5 EDITORS TACKLE THE 12 FATAL FLAWS OF FICTION WRITING is so accurate, well-presented, and well-taught. This is one of those great books that teaches by example. The authors are not here to bash anyone for doing it wrong. They only want to help authors get it right.

The example passages are written by the authors themselves, and they give a before and after example for every single point they make. This book is very hands on, nitty-gritty, do-this-not-that. At the end of every chapter, the authors give a sample passage and invite readers to rewrite it. The authors offer up two to three pages of prose, deliberately making one of the deadly mistakes, so readers can practice what they’ve learned. The ideal is always that we’ll apply these lessons to our own manuscripts, but it’s so much easier to spot the flaws when it’s not your own work. By going through the rewrites on a sample passage, writers can internalize the principles without any emotional resistance.

5 EDITORS TACKLE THE 12 FATAL FLAWS OF FICTION WRITING isn’t an “easy” book. The lessons are deep, the examples are detailed, and the process is complicated. It will take time to go through each chapter, absorb the lesson, and apply it to your own work. But the lessons are so thorough and so well-taught that any writer who spends time with this book will come out the other side a stronger writer.

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5 EDITORS TACKLE THE 12 FATAL FLAWS OF FICTION WRITING is available here

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Rating: 5 stars

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This book is best for: intermediate writers

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I recommend this book

The Write Balance by Bonni Goldberg

THE WRITE BALANCE isn’t a book about how to write. What I mean by that is, it’s not a book about craft issues like plot, character, description, pacing, or dialogue. But it is a book about the writing process. Goldberg ignores the most obvious part of the process—the first draft. There are hundreds of books out there that will teach writers how to write a first draft faster, cleaner, in thirty days, or ninety days, or a year, with or without an outline. Goldberg leaves that to other books.

Instead, she shines a bright light into other, darker corners of the writing process—those that aren’t taught much and often not even mentioned in books and classes. THE WRITE BALANCE is divided into three parts. The first is about percolation, that pre-writing period where ideas are generated. The second is about revision, including on your own and with a critique group. The final part is about going public, which can mean publication, but doesn’t necessarily have to.

Too many writers focus on daily word count, as if that’s the only metric that matters. However, Goldberg devotes fully a third of THE WRITE BALANCE to what she calls percolation. She recognizes that writers are humans, not machines, and that we need quiet thinking time as much as we need butt-in-chair time. However, she doesn’t advocate for mindless woolgathering. Goldberg offers exercises to do and a reasonable timeframe in which to do them.

The middle part of the book is about revision—another thing that gets scant attention in most how-to books. Goldberg discusses the ins and outs of critique groups and beta readers, while constantly reminding writers that their intuition will guide them well if they listen to it.

Finally, Goldberg discusses going public, although her focus is not on rushing immediately to publication. Instead, she talks about taking your time, finding the right publication path, and finding other ways to share stories, whether that is through public readings, open mics, or blogging. Publication can (and should) be in that mix, but there are lots of ways to share what we write.

Throughout, Goldberg shares lessons steeped in empathy. Everything is seen through the lens of how it will nurture or hurt writers. But this isn’t a touchy-feely book full of woo. It’s an extremely practical guide to the areas of a writer’s life that are so often overlooked. Some of us don’t even have words for what we’re doing when we’re percolating. Instead, we call ourselves “lazy” or “procrastinators,” instead of honoring the idea phase of writing.

THE WRITE BALANCE was so insightful, I sometimes felt like Goldberg was sitting in my home office with me. More than once, I whispered to my kindle, “How does she know?” But Goldberg doesn’t see through walls. She’s simply tapped into the universal struggles that all writers share, and she shows us how to make it through all the phases of writing, from first idea to publication.

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THE WRITE BALANCE can be found here

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Rating: 4 stars

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This book is best for: intermediate writers

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I recommend this book

Alex Kourvo’s Second Book

Big News! My second how-to book for writers, No Hero Wants to Save the World: How to Raise the Stakes in Your Fiction will be published two weeks from today.

Last year, I published The Big-Picture Revision Checklist, which included a chapter on story stakes for those who were revising their novels. However, No Hero Wants to Save the World goes deeper, for a comprehensive look at story stakes on every level. This book will help you when planning, outlining, writing, and revising your novel, to make sure your stakes are as high as they can be, and that readers won’t be able to put your novel down!

Story stakes come in three kinds: inner stakes, outer stakes, and personal stakes. The key to raising the stakes is first knowing the difference between the three kinds, and then knowing when to apply each one. And most important of all, knowing that heroes and heroines don’t want the stakes raised. They are resisting danger at every turn, and unless there is something personal in the story pushing them to act, they will not cooperate with the excellent plot you’ve laid out for them.

No Hero Wants to Save the World is the guide you need to raise the stakes in an effective way. You’ll find what’s most important to your characters, how to get them personally involved, and how to crank up the tension on every page. You’ll discover the ideal time to reveal the true stakes of your story and how to add in plot twists that work. 

No Hero Wants to Save the World will be published on January 22^nd. Pre-orders are available at all retailers for both ebooks and paperbacks, so you can reserve your copy right away.

Happy reading!
Alex K.