I ran across these videos of Robin Rice talking about How To Write a Blockbuster Novel. And in this series of videos, she quotes from Al Zuckerman. Al Zuckerman's book is called Writing The Blockbuster Novel. The points made are pretty powerful.
The following videos emphasize 2-5. Here are the steps in their entirety.
1) Story must have High Stakes... for person, city, country, world
2) Characters must be larger than life... doing something extraordinary
3) There must be a dramatic question... an overreaching question that affects the entire world the characters inhabit
4) Must be high concept... characters do some really out of the ordinary things
5) Multiple points of view... must be able to experience the dilemma on multiple levels
So what do you think? What makes a blockbuster novel? Do you agree with the points above? Do you have anything to add?
Good post,
ReplyDeleteI agree with most of them, but the multiple character POV is a hard one for me. I have three projects with mulitple POV, (1 is 3rd person and two are 1st person) but am writing my NaNo from single character POV.
I think you get a good effect with both but don't see multiple increasing the experiance (at least as a writer). I also read both types of books and feel like i get the same experiance from both.
I feel like the Mulitple POV is a new trend we are seeing in literature but not a must have to be successful.
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j
Thanks Jodi. I think I have to agree with you on the multiple pov aspect. I don't think it's completely necessary to have a wildly successful book. in fact I think sometimes multiple pov's can possibly distract from each individual character's perspective... meanijng that they are not fleshed out enough. The other thing is that sometimes multiple pov's can spoil surprises.
ReplyDeleteThanks again for the award and I will check out your blogfest.
Cheers