Tips from Fantasy author Jayne Hawk
Want to write to market?
Know your subject matter before tackling your first draft
A lot of people say write to market, but a lot of authors don’t seem to know what exactly that means. So here is my personal tick-list or framework for what I look at when I’m studying my chosen sub-genres. You’ll likely develop your own framework, but perhaps this can help you get started.
Keep in mind, do not copy someone’s plot, characters or world. This is not a recommendation for that.
But it is a recommendation to read and examine books in the sub-genre you’re targeting — because that’s where your readers will be, and you need to understand what they’re expecting when they read a book in that sub-genre.
Remember that the more granular you get, the more these sub-genres bleed into one another. For example, I placed my fantasy novel Shadow Magic into these categories on Amazon:
-
Werewolf & Shifter Thrillers
-
Occult Suspense
-
Witch & Wizard Thrillers
And it could easily fit a dozen others. But you’ll want to pick a single sub-genre and study it closely.
Steps to get familiar with a sub-genre
Here are the steps I recommend to authors starting out fresh in a sub-genre.
Step one: pick your genre
Pick your genre. Fantasy, science fiction, romance, thriller, mystery, young adult?
Step two: narrow down your sub-genres
Figure out the sub-genres, and sub-sub-genres.
I recommend picking one or two sub-sub-genres that you can read and think you can enjoy writing. For example, Urban Fantasy can be split into:
Female-led
Male-led
Female-led can be split into:
Witch
Shifter
Human dragged into the supernatural world
And so on and so forth.
Step three: read widely in the sub-genre
Next, I recommend reading an absolute minimum of 40 books from no fewer than 10 different successful authors in that sub-sub-genre. (What’s successful? Check Goodreads Listopia and the bestseller lists.)
You want a good broad view of your sub-sub-genre to make sure you don’t get too close and copy someone by accident.
Ideally, I suggest you try to read 100 books from a minimum of 30 authors, but we all have time and energy constraints.
Step four: study the story structure
Now we get down to the nitty-gritty. Once I’ve picked my sub-sub-genre/s I look at overall story structure. Think about the following:
-
Does your sub-sub-genre tend to build and build until the big fight scene at the climax?
-
Is it more a series of gradually bigger hills before the final kaboom?
-
Is it more ebbs and flows?
Kurt Vonnegut did a famous riff about story shapes and the emotional arcs of storytelling. You may be surprised that most stories fit into one of these buckets, or archetypes.
Step five: understand the characters
Know the characters. What kind of protagonists do you find yourself rooting for in the books you’re now studying? What do they have in common?
I look at the following for a protagonist. Again, you want to compile a general view from a heap of books. You’re looking at general trends and averages.
So if 30 out of your 40 books have female protagonists in their 20s, I’d aim for that. Look at:
-
Age
-
Gender
-
Defining personality traits
-
Tropes
-
Names
Meyers Briggs can be handy for personality types. Personally, I think Urban Fantasy heroines tend to be ENTJ’s, but I’m an ENTJ and I adore Urban Fantasy so I could be biased.😁
Also look at the love interest and the side characters.
Lots to consider here. For example:
-
Do the sidekicks start the story with the protagonist or join later?
-
Are they rivals who add tension and conflict?
-
Are they allies who help build a found-family dynamic?
Military Science Fiction has its own set of rules and reader expectations.
Military Science Fiction has its own set of rules and reader expectations.
Step six: analyze the subplots
Tease out the subplots — particularly romance subplots. (Not all books in a sub-sub-genre contain a story-line about a love interest, but many do.)
Ask questions like:
-
Is it insta-love or a slow burn across multiple books?
-
Does the series end once the couple gets together?
-
How does the relationship interact with the main plot?
Look at the balance between:
-
Plot
-
Description
-
Emotion
-
Romance
-
Action
Emotion often appears in quieter introspective scenes that give readers breathing room from the main plot.
Also examine how authors handle description. Is it:
-
Florid and poetic?
-
Short and efficient?
For example, military sci-fi tends to focus heavily on armor, weapons, tactics and battlefield logistics.
Step seven: examine the world-building
Look at the world-building.
How much world-building appears on the page? Is it minimal and focused on the immediate plot, or does it go wider and deeper?
Also examine action scenes.
For example:
-
In paranormal romance, fights tend to emphasize emotion and feeling, with shorter and broader descriptions.
-
In military sci-fi, action scenes are longer, highly tactical, and extremely detailed.
Step eight: understand the narrative arc
A final item to pay special attention to is the narrative arc. This is often the interior storyline that reflects a character’s emotional growth.
How do the characters approach the emotional roller coaster of the book’s arc?
What kind of ride do these stories take the reader on?
For example, the typical romance arc often builds hope and tension, tears the couple apart, and then rebuilds the relationship before ending on a high.
Other stories might build steadily toward a big climax followed by a quiet denouement.
Final thoughts on writing to market
Once you have this list down, you can wrap your characters, plot and world around it so that you give readers of that sub-sub-genre what they’ve demonstrated with their hard-earned pennies that they love.
Thus giving you a better chance of them giving you some pennies for your books.
Don’t go chasing flash-in-the-pan trends in a particular category. Don’t read one bestseller in your sub-sub-genre, apply this, and run with it.
You need to cast your net wide and really get a feel for as much of that sub-sub-genre as possible.
Go forth, read — and write. I hope this helps!
