Cracking the Bestseller Code: Who Cares?

For today’s post, I set out to write a review of The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel, by Jodie Archer and Matthew L. Jockers. But I’m abbreviating that review because as both a writer and reader I don’t care much about bestseller lists.

Abbreviated Review

Writers are bombarded by countless forces that influence what goes on the page–dreams, real-life experiences, snatches of conversations, cousin Fred–and it was merely a matter of time before it came to this: an algorithm purporting to tell us how books hit the top of the charts. Believing that books don’t just randomly make the New York Times  bestseller lists, the authors set computers on a quest for patterns to explain how it happens. They (the computers) explored this frontier with a tool called text mining.

Topic, plot, characterization, style–the authors coded for all of these qualities and interpreted the findings. For example, in terms of topic, the top two authors were John Grisham and Danielle Steele. If putting those two authors in the same bucket seems odd, the book offers an explanation. Among the shared characteristics found in books by Grisham and Steele, the most striking is what the computer model found to be overwhelmingly present in bestselling books: human closeness and connection. “Scenes that display this most important indicator of bestselling are all about people communicating in moments of shared intimacy, shared chemistry, and shared bonds.”

I found The Bestseller Code to be of interest to writers and readers in terms of not just what qualities bestsellers share, but also in terms of the authors’ analysis. That said, bestseller lists don’t drive the choices of many of the writers and readers I know.

Who Cares?

I wouldn’t object to seeing Compromise With Sin land on a bestseller list.  But I’m happy that some people are reading and talking about it. If asked what audience I intended when I was writing it, I have to say, “I wrote a book I’d want to read.” Similarly, the books I choose to read are usually recommended to me by friends.

Many of the indie authors I know write books that appeal to a niche audience, a fact that almost guarantees they won’t have mass popularity. While the best of these writers strive to learn craft and meet professional standards, they don’t have to twist themselves and their work into virtual pretzels to satisfy agents and publishers.

And that’s the joy of going indie.

Your thoughts? Leave a comment.



–E.L. Doctorow










Mirror Neurons: Connecting Writer and Reader

Janet wondered how many of the students in her Monday morning culinary class were as hung over as she. Not to worry. She could get through this. As the skin of a perfect red bell pepper yielded to her knife blade, she asked, “How much Vitamin C–” Shrieks, her own mingled with those of students, accompanied the blade slicing into  her finger and coming to rest on the bone. . . .

Did you flinch? I hope so. Surprising, isn’t it, how words can affect us as readers. Language has the power to evoke empathy. We feel it not just in the physical sense, as in the above example, but also emotionally if we identify with a character or situation. So, if a character we’ve come to like and root for finds his wife in bed with his best friend, we feel his pain.

A somewhat controversial neuroscientific theory has it that our ability to empathize is rooted in specialized mirror neurons . The areas of our brain responsible for producing certain actions are the same areas involved in understanding others’ actions. In animal studies, specialized neurons fire whether a monkey reaches for a peanut or observes another monkey reaching for a peanut. Presumably the mirror neuron system works similarly in us humans, and we go monkeys one better: we can experience empathy simply by reading.

The next time you find yourself laughing, flinching, or crying  as you read, think about how the words and your imagination interacted to work such magic.

Your thoughts? Leave a comment.



–Gustave Flaubert












Domesticating the Paragraph

I have a confession to make. In writing my novels, I tend to take an intuitive approach to paragraphing, except there are two rules I follow religiously: 1) a shift in speakers, time, or place  requires a new paragraph, and 2) the end of the paragraph is the power position and to add anything beyond dilutes the power.


What’s Wrong With This Paragraphb

Monica entered the man cave where Dan was playing an online game of Texas Hold’em. “Your parents will be here in thirty minutes. Have you cleaned the guest bathroom?” “I’m on it,” Dan said. Monica stormed into the kitchen where she began to make queso. She cut up chunks of Velveeta with such a vengeance she almost sliced a finger. Dan wouldn’t budge until he finished his game.  Finally she grabbed a rag and a bottle of Clorox Bathroom Cleaner and went to the guest bathroom. She switched on the light and screamed. “There’s a body in the bathtub.” That got Dan’s attention. Peering through the bathroom door, he said, “Your timing sucks, Monica. Couldn’t this have waited five minutes? I was winning.”  “Whatever. But that bathroom had  better be clean when your parents arrive.”

I don’t think I can count the number of problems with that paragraph.  Now read this version:


“I’m on it,” Dan said.


(location shift) She switched on the light and screamed. “There’s a body in the bathtub.”


(speaker shift) “Whatever. But that bathroom had  better be clean when your parents arrive.”

To add clout to the topic of paragraphs, I consulted my friend and fellow writer Gaylon Greer. I asked him specifically about handling stimulation and response, and he provided insight on how paragraphs control a novel’s pacing, and, hence, influence the reader’s experience. Here’s what he said:

Short, snappy paragraphs generally pick up the story pace; long, winding paragraphs slow things down. For that reason, action scenes rely heavily on short paragraphs, with stimulus and response boxed separately. Whether the action scene is dialogue or physical action, the short paragraphs give it snap and momentum. When you want to create a more relaxed mood, to give your readers a breather, perhaps, you will want to use longer paragraphs, perhaps combining stimulus and response in the same paragraph. Consider this example:

“Stop it,” Carla screamed.

 Beatrice, too terrified to hear her, clung to Carla’s back, her arms clasped tightly around her neck.

Carla fought to free herself, but Beatrice’s panicked grip was too strong to break. It was as though unbreakable tentacles were pulling her deeper and deeper.


If the writer wanted less tension or a slower pace, she might write:

Carla screamed for her to stop, but Beatrice was too terrified to hear. She pasted herself against Carla’s back, her arms clasping tightly around her neck. Carla fought to free herself, but it was as though unbreakable tentacles were pulling her deeper and deeper.

Both snippets communicate the same facts, but the first does so, it seems to me, in a manner that is more fraught with tension. The rationale is that the initial stimulus creates tension because the reader wanders what the other character will do in response. The paragraph breaks in the action version of the scene serves two purposes:

  1. It emphasizes what has gone before by isolating it. In the first example, Carla’s scream is stark—it stands out. In the second example, the scream is buried, made secondary to Beatrice’s action.
  2. The end of a paragraph is a signal for the reader to pause briefly. In this case the pause permits her to savor the escalating tension. Using separate paragraphs keeps the tension building.


For another example, consider a tennis game. One player hits the ball; that is a stimulus for the other player, who must react. The reaction becomes a stimulus for the first player, and so on. If the stimulus and reaction are in separate paragraphs, each described in enough detail for the reader to picture the action, it becomes more dramatic. If the back-and-forth action is presented in a single paragraph, the tension is dissipated.


The issue is the same as for dialogue. There is no grammatical reason for two characters’ dialogue strings to be in separate paragraphs; the purpose is to emphasize each character’s comments.


In an article for the Gotham Writer’s Workshop (Writing Fiction, New York, Bloomsbury, 2003) Hardy Griffin makes the point by contrasting a work by Joyce Carol Oates (“The Fine Mist of Winter”) with one by Arundhati Roy (“The God of Small Things”). Throughout her story, Oates employs long, winding paragraphs that combine stimulus and response in the same paragraph. But Roy achieves fast-paced drama by employing short paragraphs that separate stimulus and response.

Your thoughts? Leave a comment.



–Jodi Picoult




Hollywood Bidding War for Compromise With Sin

Rumors floating for weeks have just been confirmed: Compromise With Sin, the debut historical novel by Leanna Englert, is at the center of a fierce Hollywood bidding war. Said to be vying for the rights are Reese Witherspoon, Oprah, Steven Spielberg, Sheldon Shackleford, III, Roseanne Barr, and Norman Grabowski.

The novel, set in the early 1900s, tells the story of one woman’s betrayal and search for redemption after her loved ones are tragically ensnared in her web of deceit. The story is set amid a fictional account of the controversial campaign to prevent blindness in newborn babies, and presents Helen Keller as a confidante of protagonist Louise Morrissey.

“I was recently asked what my wildest hope was for this novel,” Englert said. “I truly hope it will bring about world peace. Barring that, I’d want people to say, ‘The book was better than the movie.'”

Happy April Fool’s, y’all.




The Sounds of Onomatopoeia

Do you remember where and when you learned about onomatopeoia? The word itself sort of knocks you down on first hearing, and then you get exposed to a very cool concept, the idea of words that sound like what they represent.

I  went web-surfing to find examples. The obvious words were sounds animals make, like meow, woof, and oink.

In the post “Onomatopoeia Examples” at EReading Worksheets, you’ll find some onomatopoeic words used in sentences:

  • The lunch lady plopped a scoop of something on Kristen’s tray.
  • The paintball splattered against the windshield.
  • The lawyer chased after the wail of the siren.
  • Did you forget to flush the toilet? (my personal favorite)

In “Onomatopoeia” on the site Literary Devices, there are examples from literature and song lyrics:

From the poem “Come Down, O Maid,” by Alfred Lord Tennyson: “The moan of doves in immemorial elms, and murmuring of innumerable bees . . .”

From the song “The Marvelous Toy,” by Tom Paxton: “It went zip when it moved and bop when it stopped, and whirr when it stood still.”

And not to be overlooked on the same site is “A Huge List of Onomatopoeia Examples:” There you’ll find words like raspy, sizzle, belch, and swish, and citations from literature, such as this one from The Tempest, by William Shakespeare: “Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices.”

Fair warning: the sites I mentioned are seductive.  I could lose an afternoon on the Literary Devices’ pages, where there must be a hundred such devices listed, ranging from ad hominem to didacticism to nemesis to verisimilitude. Each  provides a definition and good examples.

Not to leave this post without a nod to the headline, if you didn’t know the definition of onomatopoeia, what would that word sound like?

Your thoughts? Leave a comment.


“Meow” means “woof” in cat.

–George Carlin





Stories Unfold in a Season, not a Vacuum

Photo credit: Shannon Richards, Unsplash






Your thoughts? Leave a comment.

A Request




–Mae West


Crooked Path to Strong Dialogue

Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash

Too often, dialogue follows a straight, predictable path when it should veer off into the unexpected. In real life conversations, people often talk past one another. Putting this fact to work in your dialogue can enhance credibility and/or tension.

Imagine a writer creating dialogue between a therapist and a patient who’d tried to kill his own mother:


The therapist says, “Your mother was cited seventeen times for neglect and abuse. Do you hate her?”

The patient balls one hand into a fist. “My mother might not be perfect, but she’s a goddamn saint. Don’t you forget that.”

Instead of answering the therapist’s question directly, the patient reacts not to the question itself, but to what he perceives as the therapist impugning his mother’s integrity.

Another way one character responding to another rings true is when there’s apparent misunderstanding, which may or may not be deliberate. In this example, a couple has just finished setting up the crib and other furniture for the baby they’re expecting:

Eve imagines what it will be like to watch their baby sleeping on his back, his little chest rising and falling with each breath.  She takes Adam’s hand. “It seems almost too good to be true.”

He gives her hand a squeeze. “I know.  To think we got all this for under two hundred dollars.”

Here’s another example, this one from an oft-cited scene in Anne Tyler’s novel The Accidental Tourist. Sarah and Macon are grieving parents whose relationship disintegrates as they drive in the rain:



“Maybe you should put on your glasses.”

“Putting on my glasses would help you to see?”


Your thoughts? Examples of dialogue? Leave a comment.


A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That is why there are so few good conversations; due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.

–Truman Capote





“The Embezzler’s Curse”






“The Embezzler’s Curse,” by Leanna Englert














I sure do miss Bob.



–Beverly Cleary


Break up Dialogue With Beats

Why does dialogue, especially in long conversations, need beats? Two reasons: 1) To anchor the reader in the scene so it doesn’t read like a ping-pong volley between talking heads, and 2) To add subtext, and 3) To add tension (I never was good at numbers.)

What are beats? They’re little actions or sometimes internal thoughts accompanying dialogue.

Anchor the Reader in the Scene

A couple working in a garden:

“Your mother called last night.” She took the tulip bulb from his extended hand.

Add Subtext

A boss meeting an employee at a busy restaurant arrives fifteen minutes late:

“You did put our name in, didn’t you?”

She resisted glancing at her watch. “Yes.”

Add Tension

Action scenes in which characters talk depend heavily on beats. A patrolman stops a speeding motorist:

“Get out of the car.”

“Yes, sir.” Slamming the car into reverse, the driver backed up, stopped, and aimed the vehicle at the officer.

Internal thought can be a good way to add tension to dialogue. Here’s a teen leaving the house to go drinking with friends:

“‘Bye, Mom. I’m meeting Carol to study at Starbucks.”

“Take your key if you’ll be out late.”

“OK.” She’s such a pushover.

The tricky part about beats is to know when, where, and how often to use them. Renni Browne and Dave King cover the subject well in Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.



–Somerset Maugham

A Word’s Disturbing Origin

File written by Adobe Photoshop¨ 4.0

I had planned a different post for today, but it got highjacked by a thought that grabbed my mind and held it hostage. So bear with me, please.

Have you ever felt like exercising on a treadmill was torture? I know I have. But that was before I learned the disturbing origin of the word treadmill and came face to face with my own ignorance of a shameful piece of our history.

In the early 19th century, the treadmill, which only vaguely resembles its namesake, was invented in England with a dual purpose: to punish convicts and grind grain. Presumably if the punishment was sufficiently brutal, it would discourage the miscreant from further criminal activity.

The treadmill spread to the colonies and America where it caught on in prisons and workhouses. There’s an unforgettable scene in Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Invention of Wings. It’s set in the workhouse on Magazine Street in Charleston, South Carolina, where slaves sent by their masters worked the treadmill grinding corn. To punish the slave girl, Hettie, her owner sends her there. Hettie describes the treadmill as “a spinning drum, twice as tall as a man, with steps on it. Twelve scrambling people were climbing it fast as they could go, making the wheel turn.” Read the book.

Prior to its appearance in gyms and homes, the treadmmill was a device used by doctors to perform cardio stress tests. Who named it? Could the person who coined that word have been ignorant of its pedigree? Or knew it and didn’t care?

Your thoughts? Leave a comment.



–Elmore Leonard