The Art of Writing: How to Write Bestselling Novels

Introduction

(NOTE: I do not take reading requests since running a business and having a family take most of my time.)  

If you're reading this book, there's a good chance you're a writer on Wattpad and you'd like to increase your reads and get better at your craft.

Well, stick around and check each week to see what new chapters have been posted. Every chapter teaches useful skills for drawing in your readers and keeping them hooked like the bestsellers do.

If you don't find a chapter that can help you with a skill you've been wanting to learn or a skill you'd like to brush up on, you're welcome to make a request for a new chapter about that skill. I'll do my best to move that chapter closer to the top of my new chapter queue.

Now, let's get on with what you're really here for.

How many times have you started reading books that are in a genre you like, especially here on Wattpad, only to make it through the first few sentences or the first paragraph and think I can't take any more of this?

Those stories just aren't grabbing me right from the beginning, most likely, because the writer hasn't studied the psychology behind grabbing people's attention and the skills needed to do so.

Understanding where to start your story and how to craft that story so that people are immediately hooked by it is one of the most valuable skills a writer can learn, because without it, people put your book down before they get to any of the good parts. Unless you can capture your readers' attention and keep it, you're not doing your job as a writer. And I'm sad to say that most Wattpadders fall into that category. Not that there's anything wrong with that--most writers start out there. It's perfectly normal.

But we must develop our craft if we are to truly live our passion as writers and share it with others.

Your writing should always embody your passion and skill and properly convey them to your reader because let's be honest--stories are all about sharing emotional experiences. That's one of the biggest reasons people read stories, especially fiction, whether they realize it or not.

They're wanting an emotional experience they can't get in their normal life. They want to escape that restrictive life momentarily by losing their self in a character through whom they can live vicariously for a while. So it is our job as writers to provide that for them.

Emotion is the most powerful thing on the planet. It starts wars, ends lives, and saves lives. It is behind the most amazing parts of life and the most destructive parts of it. In our society today, we aren't encouraged to express our emotions fully, but rather to repress them and fit in.

With writing, we offer the reader a chance to let go of their self and walk in someone else's  shoes for a while. They can enter a world where anything goes, depending on the extent of the author's imagination. We can take them to a place where they can let their emotions run free for a while and forget about their worries. But to do that well, we must get them engaged in our stories and keep them there until the end of the book.

And there's a lot that goes into that.

There's your character design, your worldbuilding, your plot, and a host of other things that engage the reader or turn them off. Characters are the most important aspect of a story because they give it its motivation, its drive. Some say plot drives the story  and others say characters drive a story, but the truth is, characters are the only ones who can possibly drive a story. Without characters, you have no story. Characters create the plot in the first place. If a reader doesn't like the characters, they'll rarely, if ever, keep reading just for the plot. But the character-driven plot has to be great, and oddly enough, that will be more discussed in this book than character development because plotting is more complex than character development, even though they're intimately interwoven. You can't write a truly great story without interweaving the character's life and motivations with the plot.

In this book, we'll explore all the different techniques you can start utilizing right away with a new story or your existing stories that will draw your readers in and have them truly rooting for your characters.

This book doesn't need to be read in any particular order. Each chapter is written as a standalone chapter, so as you read the table of contents, find a skill you'd like to improve or develop and flip right to that chapter. Also, don't simply assume you already know certain skills and just skip over those chapters. Read them to see if you can find new techniques you weren't aware of to add to your skill set or to further develop your skill sets.

Whether it's plotting storylines or developing your flow, you'll eventually find instruction on a skill you want to learn or further develop in this book. If the chapter you need hasn't been posted yet, just add this book to your library and follow my account so you can see updates--a chapter you're wanting will eventually be posted.

And as I said before, you're welcome to message me and request a chapter be written on a skill you want to learn. My goal is to keep the chapters short and simple so as not to bog readers down with too much information at once. Hopefully, I'll be able to hold to that standard.

One last piece of advice before you begin: don't read everything in this book at once. Don't even read all of each chapter at once, necessarily. Instead, read each section of a chapter individually and then go to your story and start implementing that new skill right away while it's fresh in your mind. Then, when you've gotten used to that skill, come back and read the next section of the chapter and implement that into your story, as well.

As you use these skills that way, repeating them throughout your entire book, one at a time, you'll naturally start to utilize them while you write. After you read a section, don't wait to implement the new skill--go to your story and immediately start implementing it and don't come back until you've done it throughout your entire story. The repetition immediately after learning the skill is vital to creating new pathways in your brain. That's how you change your writing skills forever in the shortest amount of time according to the best research studies on learning new skills.

So, without further ado...

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