How to write a bestseller

It is will, not greed, that makes you write a bestseller

15 December 2007

Your heart must be in it

It’s not that the unknown writer doesn’t need the money — they always need the money. But it has to be about more than that; it has to be an act of will from somewhere real, or I guarantee you will fail.

In the 1960s an Italian–American journalist with mounting debts remembered a phrase used by Joe Valachi at the 1963 Congressional Hearing on Organized Crime — The Godfather. Mario Puzo wrote his novel and, like Love Story, it sold 21 million copies — which seems to be the sales figure you get when everyone who buys books buys your book. Puzo gave every impression of wanting to repeat that success but he was too cynical about it. None of his subsequent books — with names like Omertà and The Sicilian — came close to matching the success of The Godfather, because Puzo forgot the golden rule of the bestseller list. Never for money, always for love.

That doesn’t mean you can’t study the competition. Many a bestselling author starts out with a stack of the currently hot titles on his desk. Frederick Forsyth did it before he wrote The Day of The Jackal, possibly the greatest thriller of all time and yet a book which defies the fundamental rule of the genre — because you know how it ends. You know that no hit man assassinated General De Gaulle, but it did not matter. Forsyth studied the rulebook, and then he tore it up. Every bestselling author must do the same. If you spot a bandwagon, then it is already too late to clamber aboard. You need your own set of wheels. If your book does not grip you by the throat, then it will not do the same to anyone else. This is why so many bestsellers are a kind of secret life story that incorporates fears, hopes and all the darkest places, a dream world more potent than the real world could ever be.

James Bond shared much with his creator — both gamblers, both snobs, both fussy as old maids about food and drink. Bond and Ian Fleming smoked the same number of cigarettes a day, they wore the same clothes, they both had a bachelorhood that extended into middle age and a sweet tooth for the wives of other men. But Bond was a man of action in a way that the desk-bound Fleming never was, even during the war when as an intelligence officer he sent other men off on their missions. The heroic 007 of the books is far closer to Captain Valentine Fleming, the father killed in France in 1917. Despite all the similarities, John Pearson calls James Bond Fleming’s ‘dream-self ...an uncomplicated character who compensated his creator for his own tortuous temperament’.

Ian Fleming graphically demonstrates what you have to do to get on the bestseller list. You just have to open up a vein.

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Patoba Ipririm

December 12th, 2007 5:40pm Report this comment

I must confess, I decided to read this article for a laugh. I assumed Mr Parsons would produce some self-righteous rant to justify his chosen literary path. Turns out it's actually one of the best articles about writing I've ever come across. I copied the third from end para into a file for future inspiration. Bravo Tony! I might even read one of your novels now.

Ray

December 19th, 2007 8:54am Report this comment

Sadly, so many first time authors are being frozen out of the literary world by agents and publishers who prefer to either milk the existing big names, or to hype up ghost-written tosh penned by barely-literate 'celebrities'. It's nigh on impossible to get anyone to even look at your work nowadays unless your name is Beckham, Goody or Madonna.

Jonathan E

January 9th, 2008 1:21pm Report this comment

For my money Forsyth did actually observe the rules of the airport novel formula. The characters play for very high stakes, the hero is sexually successful, there is a story point on every single page to keep you turning them. And the ending was a mystery, because although you know de Gaulle didn't die, you cannot see how Forsyth's assassin can possibly fail, so fearsomely efficient is he. It is that, I think, that drives you on to his ending. It's not that you don't know what will happen - you do; it's that you don't see how it possibly can happen, and you have to finish the book to find out.

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