The bestseller lists have always been dominated by tellers of good stories. From Dickens and Poe to Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling nothing sells better than a book with a brilliant story.
Truly great stories endure for thousands of years. The fairy tales of Cinderella, Aladin and Red Riding Hood have their roots in the spoken word of ancient cultures, going back to times before people could even read or write.
Look at television. The most watched programmes on TV tend to be the ones with the best, most original stories: ‘Heroes’, ‘Lost’, the soaps. People love to be taken out of their drab, everyday lives and propelled into worlds beyond their experience. The same goes for movies.
It doesn’t matter what the setting is – whether it’s Hollywood, Hawaii or the next street to where you live – the most important factor is the story.
And for a successful story, you need structure. You have to have a beginning, a middle and an end. You have to have a protagonist who experiences conflict when he strives to achieve his (or her) goal.
For more about story structure and plotting, check out:
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Wow. Did this piece bring back memories. Forty years ago I sold ‘soap from the blind’, encyclopaedias and vacuum cleaners. The metre of the sales pitches we were given matched that of the promotional piece for “Million Dollar Story”. I went on to write advertising copy until getting sense and have now written novels. If folks invest their hard earned money in your book and it encourages them to write – great!