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A “high concept” is an idea that’s evocative and that’s unusual enough to sell a novel or screenplay based on a blurb.

Fist-time novelist Patricia Wood scores with her novel Lottery, because it has a high concept. We’ve all wondered how our lives would change if we suddenly came into some money.

In “First-time novelist Patricia Woods feels like she’s hit the jackpot with ‘Lottery” she says:

“…Either you’re a writer or you’re not. Lots of people want to be authors, but they don’t necessarily want to be writers. They want to have written a book, rather than wanting to actually write.”

Great point. Writing is all about writing. If you’re writing a novel, it’s a high-risk endeavor for a freelance writer. Many (most) first novels are never published. However, if you can develop a high concept, your odds of being published increase. And if the concept is truly clever, you’re headed for bestseller-dom.

Technorati Tags: freelance writing, novels, bestseller, book

Many freelance writers are closet novelists. To make their daily bread, they write copy for businesses, articles for magazines, or technical manuals.

Secretly, they’re working on a novel.

The challenge with turning a novel into cash is that it takes time. Let’s say you complete your novel in January 2007. The novel does the rounds of agents and publishers throughout 2007. You get a publishing contract ( oh happy day!) and half of the (tiny) advance in March of 2008. You work on editorial revisions through the rest of 2008. Your novel is slated for publication in late 2009, at which time you get the rest of the advance. (Publishers being who they are, you actually get the rest of the advance mid-way through 2010.)

So, the saga of getting PAID for a novel is a long one. We won’t even discuss royalties - most novelists should be so lucky.

The above scenario is the BEST result you can hope for with a novel, believe it or not. The usual result is that your novel’s partial (three chapters and an outline) does the rounds of agents and publishers for three years, finally languishing for 15 months at one publishing house, before the editor who expressed interest leaves. The new editor can’t find the manuscript…

Begin your novel with a BLAST
Go over to your bookshelves and pick up five bestsellers. Read the first page of each.

You’ll find that you’re pulled into the story immediately. SOMETHING happens. Even if there’s no overt conflict - no one gets killed - there’s a suggestion of conflict. Conflict is the key to a novel which sells, and the conflict has to be built into the novel from the very first page.

Focus on CONFLICT in your novel, and you increase your chances of selling it.

Technorati Tags: freelance writing, novelist, writing a novel, how to write a novel

Novelist Tess Gerritsen has a great post “Writers and desperation”. Words of wisdom:

So why do they think that they can write a publishable novel their first time out, without bothering to first learn the craft?

Chances are your first novel won’t be publishable. Perhaps your next few novels won’t be publishable either. However, every word you write helps you as a writer, and if you continue to write, and to learn, you will be published. Believe me, it’s inevitable. If you will write, and learn, you WILL be published.

It takes commitment
I was 30 when I decided that I’d better get moving if I wanted to publish a novel, so I gave myself until age 40 to do it. It took a year before I sold not just one novel, but a series.

I spent that year writing a novel proposal (three chapters and an outline) a month. I was on proposal number ten when an editor passed one of my proposals to another editor, and she asked me to write a proposal for a contemporary novel. (I was submitting historical novel proposals). That proposal was accepted.

Before I started my novel-proposal campaign I’d written a couple of complete novels that I didn’t bother sending anywhere. They were disjointed junk, BUT they taught me about writing a novel.

So here’s what it took to write ten proposals - around 20,000 words a month. In total, around 200,000 words, or a couple of books. None of those proposals sold, when we moved house, I recycled them all.

No one can force you to write, but if your attitude is “whatever it takes,” you’ll achieve your goals.

Technorati Tags: freelance writer, novels writing novels, publishing