Elaine
Ash is a highly-regarded editor and author, though you won’t know her as an
author because she writes under a pseudonym. (I know what it is and could tell
you, but then Elaine would kill us both, hopefully before her alter ego really
fucked us up. I’ve read some of her stuff and she don’t play.)
Her
newest work was written with her editor’s hat on, an exploration of not how to
write a bestseller, but of what bestsellers have in common, regardless of
genre. I could explain it to you, as the book is a quick and easy to understand
read; it’s the exercises that will take time. That said, why should I? She’s
here and can do it better than I could hope to.
One
Bite at a Time: There are few things I hate more than someone asking me to
come up with elevator pitches, but let’s start with your hundred-word
description of Bestseller
Metrics.
Elaine
Ash: Bestseller
Metrics shows how to structure a novel like a bestseller. Wobbly structure
holds back the majority of unpublished manuscripts that I see as an editor. For
those writing a first novel of 100,000 words or less, this book shows
step-by-step how to structure all genres--mystery, chicklit, horror, fantasy,
thrillers, science fiction and more. There are diagrams and drawings to make it
clear and visual. A series of simple-to-do tests reveal what your writers'
group can't or won't tell you. If you can count to ten you know all the math
necessary to understand it.
OBAAT: Ninety-six words. Well
done.
There
are a million books on how to write, the vast majority of them written by
people one has never heard of, which leads me to wonder why they aren’t famous,
they know so much about writing. You took a different approach, breaking down
successful books to look for the common elements. What gave you the idea to do
this kind of analysis?
EA: I have my writer clients
to thank. Doctors show patients x-rays. Mechanics present diagnostic tests. I
do it with metrics. If you want to write a bestseller, why not look at other
bestsellers to figure out how it was done? There's an order to telling a story
in a novel, and it's rarely discussed, let alone taught. In order to convince
my clients of the changes needed to sell their stories, I looked into the
metrics of books by million-selling authors past and present. Agents and
publishers responded enthusiastically
to the results.
OBAAT: You hooked me in Chapter
One with your concept of Imaginary Memory (IM). It’s the kind of idea I
sometimes say relates to genius, as it’s something that’s lying right out there
in the open for anyone to see, yet as soon as someone points it out it’s so
obvious your eyes hurt. (At least mine did.) Where did you get this insight?
EA: Ha! I like the way you
said that. When I kept seeing manuscripts with the same problems from
hardworking writers who were taking classes, attending writers groups and
revising over and over without seeing a different result from the buying
market, I knew there had to be a blind spot. I finally figured it was like
this: A writer uses all of his/her imagination while crafting a novel, and when
it comes time to read over the draft, imagination doesn’t quit. It fills in
pictures and details, weaving memories into a seamless and satisfying read for
the writer. By the end, the writer feels like he’s just watched a good
movie—unaware that IM has edited the movie all the way through—smoothing over
missing descriptions, fleshing out skimpy plot points and more. The complete
story he thought he read isn’t necessarily the one on the page. Then I asked the
question, “What would turn IM off? What kind of test could point to what’s
missing?
OBAAT: What I might like best
about the book is how you never tell the reader what to do as a writer. I’ve
read several books that propose to tell how to write the breakout novel, and
all I ever thought of while reading them was this guy wanted to teach me how to
write a book I wouldn’t read myself. There was a subtle formula there. What I
see in your work is not “Here’s what to do?” but “Here’s what to look for in
what you’ve done.” You need the author to have written at least a draft first before
you get to work. To me, this helps the author in keeping her own vision of
the book and looks for weaknesses and rough edges instead of trying to shoehorn
it into someone else’s idea of what will sell. And let’s face it, no one really
knows what will sell.
Have
I inferred something you didn’t intend, or do I have that about right?
EA: I think you’re spot on.
My system details the best way to present your story so another person’s brain
can grasp it. I don’t care what your story is—there’s an order and a structure
that will get it across more clearly and dramatically than any other way. You’re
correct—I don’t interfere with a writer’s vision, I ask them to look within the
story and see if certain elements are there. If they are, there’s a good chance
that story is ready to market. At least you know what doesn’t need to be
revised. There is power in knowing what shouldn’t be changed or touched. One
thing that’s always driven me crazy is when a writers’ group clearly tells a
writer that a ms needs work—which is a good thing— but nobody can pinpoint
exactly what it is. This is the point where an editor should be called in. But
often that's not feasible. So the writer tinkers around the edges, rewriting
and revising aspects may be great already. A lot of that goes on: fixing what
doesn't need to be fixed, when the basic problem is structure. I’d also like to
say that you don’t need to have a finished manuscript to learn from Bestseller
Metrics. Just reading the book will impart a lot.
OBAAT: The first thing I
thought as I got into the book was, “Hot damn. Bill James* for writers.” I’m a
seamhead, so I’m wired that way. Have you received any pushback from others who
might dismiss—or even resent—trying to quantify an artistic endeavor?
EA: Not so far, knock on
wood. And that "Bill James for writers" analogy really gave me hope
when I was wandering the wilderness, not really sure if I was on a crazy train.
Keep in mind that although the book has less than 50,000 words of text, I wrote
at least 120,000 words and drew dozens of sketches and compiled tables that got
thrown out. At one point, the second half of the book got thrown out (reserved,
actually) because it was deemed too advanced by readers I trust.
Literary
critics are used to looking at books in a certain way. Everybody thinks in
terms of beginning, middle, end. But start slicing a novel into percentages and
new patterns emerge. As you said earlier, everything has been sitting out in
plain sight for ages. I’m just the one who decided to look at the parts
mathematically. As an editor, I also knew what the numbers were revealing, and
how to interpret them. (Hopefully, I'm not making myself sound like an oracle
picking through chicken entrails...)
In
2016, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of a Bestseller was published. Jody
Archer and Matthew L. Jockers looked at algorithms and did a “big picture”
analysis of 20,000 novels. I had a number of people contact me immediately,
worried there might be a conflict or overlap. After my heart stopped thumping
in time to Flight of the Bumblebee, I realized that the authors didn’t
go into how numbers could benefit “small picture” applications. Here's a wacky
and imperfect analogy: They looked at the whole elephant. I look at the bones
giving the elephant its shape.
Finally,
in my circle of several hundred people in the writing and publishing world, I’m
already known as the person who invented the serial-killing-monkey genre—and
it’s been successful. So once you’ve done something off the wall that’s worked,
people are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. They’re willing to
wait and see before they dismiss you out of hand. Getting thoughtful and
favorable reviews from people such as yourself also adds a layer of Teflon.
OBAAT: The two books you broke
down the most are The Big Sleep and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s
Stone, which shows how your evidence transcends mere genre. You also looked
at books as diverse as Bridget Jones’s Diary, The Hunger Games, The Shining,
Confederacy of Dunces and probably a dozen more. Aside from the fact all
sold like banana splits at the beach, what made you select the books you did?
EA: I wanted to deconstruct
worthy books that had huge and different readerships. Because my information
transcends genre, I wanted to reach writers in every corner of the fiction
universe with titles they knew and loved hard. Nothing connects the list titles
except zillions of sales and most being made into movies. I felt these
books were worth poring over to find out what makes them tick.
OBAAT: That’s an excellent
point. The IM section alone reminded me that I have to keep that in mind,
especially since I write a series, which make it important for me not only not
to assume the reader knows what I’m talking about, but not to assume she’s read
any of the previous books.
It
occurs to me this may seem to readers all well and good in a New Agey yet
analytical sort of way, sort of a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance meets
Neil DeGrasse Tyson, but there’s no hook for them. Can you show us a digested
example of what you’re talking about? Maybe a piece of one of the charts with a
brief explanation?
EA: Sure! Let’s look at
Table 2, which is the first comprehensive table in the book.
What
you’re looking at here, from left to right, is the title of the book, then the
author, and that middle column shows the total number of characters appearing
in the first quarter of the book. As you can see, the numbers range from 25 for
Kill Shot by Vice Flynn to 53 for Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. That’s a
pretty narrow range when you consider that those numbers seem to have nothing
to do with the age, genre, or total word count of the book! Interview with the Vampire (1976) by
Anne Rice is about 130,000 words long but has only 30 characters in the first
quarter. Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996)
by Helen Fielding is 64,000 words long with 41 characters in the first quarter.
How can these first-quarter character counts squeeze into such a narrow range?
Answer: Our brains process stories, particularly the beginnings of stories, the
same way they did in Aristotle’s time. When you start to look at these types of
similarities among mega-successful books, a shiny new lightbulb goes on in
terms of novel writing.
There
is a caveat, however. Epics and sagas such as George R.R. Martin’s
280,000-word-plus A Game of Thrones
novels, have their own rules of structure. Massive word count changes
structure. Therefore, one has to be careful about applying the metrics shown
here to the “literary leviathans.” My promise to the aspiring author is that if
you are writing an average-sized novel of 100,000 words or less, my guidelines
will help you craft a story with sound structure. Since structure is the number
one challenge to most unsold manuscripts, this is good news.
OBAAT: How has Bestseller
Metrics been received so far?
EA: Enthusiastically and respectfully. I did have
a few old-timers laugh out loud when I first mentioned finding mathematical
patterns in novels, but they weren’t being mean. They laughed because it was so
foreign to anything they’d heard before. Once people get a look at the system,
it seems like they’re not only ready, but eager to dig in, they’ve been looking
for something like this a long time. I have so many offers to speak and teach
that it's a struggle to keep up. I’m concentrating on following users—the
writers actually testing their manuscripts and taking note of what they have to
say as they go along. It has to be user-friendly and it has to work. I’m sure there are improvements
and adjustments I can make for the next release.
OBAAT: With this episode of
heavy lifting behind you, what’s next? More fiction, or looking into what
you’ve done here in more detail?
EA: Workshops, an online
course, developing materials for teachers to use in classrooms, and software
development. I’m in the process of sourcing textbook distributors, and
nonfiction distributors. It’s a long list and I’m just one person, so it’s a
long workday, everyday. I need help, so if anybody has any bright ideas and
wants in on the ground floor, I’d love to hear from you.