When you begin publishing your books, another element enters your world-- one beyond the story. It's even beyond the marketing as such. It's about why some books sell and some do not. It's what are you doing that worked or did not for readers.
There are a lot of places to find answers to that question. One, which I have been reading other writers discussing, is using a computer to help organize your book. So basically there are certain known formulas that work. You pick one of them and then insert your own dialogue, actions and characters. The end result supposedly will be a computer-generated, with human help bestseller.
The very idea of approaching writing that way turns me off even if it worked. It would mean following a program instead of the story that had come to me. Approaching writing that way would take all the enjoyment from it-- best seller or not. It would deny the flow of my own work. I would have to force mine into what the computer had decided worked.
It might explain though why so many books today disappoint me. They do feel like they follow a formula whether the formula was learned from a class or a computer dictating it. To me, they are boring.
But maybe some could say the same thing about mine since I also have a certain amount of consistency in what I enjoy writing, certain elements that will be in any book of mine, but they are there because they are the stories that come to me and are emotionally satisfying-- not because a computer dictated them.
I began doing something a few weeks ago that more firmly convinced me I don't want that kind of computer help with plots or structure.
As I was fooling around with extended trailers, I began to think that there are a lot of images in my head that are part of how each of my books have come together. I don't particularly think of it at the time; but when I do, I recognize it for what it is.
My books haven't come out of some perfect structure. I haven't published non-fiction, but the fiction comes from experience which expands into imagination. It comes out of dreams. It comes out of visualizing these characters, and then coming across a face that fits them perfectly even though I had never seen that face before.
Below is one example of what I mean with the images that led to one of my books-- From Here to There.
The images don't all come from Montana where the story was set. They come from my own photos in various western states over a period of years, and they come from those I found online buying the license to use.
These images are not the plot. They are the essence. No computer can give them to me; and if I forced them into a computer generated formula, I think it'd suck out their energy. Maybe this is why I didn't end up trying to fit them into the boxes desired by traditional publishing. The books belong to the energy, not the formula. If a particular book proves to be unsuccessful with readers, well at least it remained true to itself.
