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- New!!
- Level
- Mixed
- Basic and Premium Members Prices
- Subscriber Member Pricing: $35.00
- Basic Member Pricing: $40.00
- Category
- Characters
- Description/Setting
- Editing
- Dialogue
- Structure
- Genre
- GMC
- Plotting
- POV
- Voice
- Worldbuilding
- Writer's Life
- Class Length
- 4 Weeks
According to the Gitnux report of September 8th, 2023 (https://blog.gitnux.com/book-sales-by-genre-statistics/), the most popular fiction genre books, based on sales, land in the mystery, thriller and crime niches. Grouped together, they account for 32% of all fiction sales, followed closely by romance with a 30% share of our marketplace. Considering romance alone annually generates over $1 billion in sales, the mystery related titles likely top that. Possibly more since James Patterson personally rakes in $90 million, nearly 70% more than his nearest competitor. But science fiction and fantasy clock in with $590 million, so neither are doing badly either.
The math seems to indicate that there really is only one bestselling genre category out there: action- adventure with niches that include mystery where it isn’t merely a crime to be solved but someone to be found and/or protected, treasure hunts for possibly mystical items or at least long lost ones, ticking clocks, political situations, main characters requiring near super (or at least special forces) one-on-one (or four or five) fighting techniques, then maybe salt with a sprinkle of romance or broken family life.
Yeah, it’s a long list of ingredients. And it can get even longer!
Which is why breaking things down into the elements you write best then ensuring that the story baked up fits in the cake pan is important.
Join me for a month of deconstructing and evaluating those “ingredients” to sort out what type of action-adventure story might have been on simmer in your muse’s kitchen.
Things we’ll look at are:
The math seems to indicate that there really is only one bestselling genre category out there: action- adventure with niches that include mystery where it isn’t merely a crime to be solved but someone to be found and/or protected, treasure hunts for possibly mystical items or at least long lost ones, ticking clocks, political situations, main characters requiring near super (or at least special forces) one-on-one (or four or five) fighting techniques, then maybe salt with a sprinkle of romance or broken family life.
Yeah, it’s a long list of ingredients. And it can get even longer!
Which is why breaking things down into the elements you write best then ensuring that the story baked up fits in the cake pan is important.
Join me for a month of deconstructing and evaluating those “ingredients” to sort out what type of action-adventure story might have been on simmer in your muse’s kitchen.
Things we’ll look at are:
- what recipes the writers landing on the bestseller lists (and using metaphorical armored trucks to deliver mega royalties to their bank accounts) use when spinning their stories
- what percentages of mystery, treasure hunt, political, and pacing rates high on the list
- how ticking clocks, historical artifacts, and possibly magical realms or practices are worked in
- and, of course, possibly a bit of romance.
- Class Format
- Savvy Authors' workshops are held on a forum: a bulletin board based system. You will receive a reminder notice one day prior to the start of the workshop that includes instructions on how to access the workshop forum. If you have not received instructions by the day the workshop begins, please check your spam filter.
The forum will be available the morning (EST) of the day the workshop starts and will remain accessible to all participants thereafter. You will also be given simple instructions on how to create a PDF of all your discussions along with our privacy and data retention policy.
Please note that you do NOT need to be online at a specific time to access the lectures. This is NOT a live video based class.
