The Goblin Market

I know how a novel will end before I begin to write it - and before I write it these days, I sell it. I realize that sounds backwards, but it's true. I make a summary, and my New York literary agent shows it around, and if a publisher offers a contract for it, then I go ahead and write the novel. I have any number of summaries that no editor wanted, so those novels have never been written.

- Piers Anthony

Until you have your following established, you have to meet the expectations of the market, which judges suitability based on how you categorize your book, on how it matches the conventions.

- Annie Wong

Life is full of little coincidences, and that's what provides most of the impetus for the creation of these postings. As a case in point, it turns out that one of my co-workers is planning to write a fantasy novel for the middle school age market, and her approach provides an interesting look at the creative process versus the practical aspects of actually being published.

Annie, who performs a variety of esoteric duties in area of shipping and receiving, has already completed the manuscript for a mainstream novel, but to her disappointment she has been unable to sell it, at least to date. Undaunted, she has found the inspiration for a fantasy series in a short story that she wrote as a gift for her 9-year old niece Emily, and now she is doing research before she starts work on it, or, as she says, "I have the clay, just wanting to have a better look at the mold before I throw the clay on the spinning table, that's all."

My initial assumption was that she was doing research in the same fashion that someone would do research for any project. For example, if you were going to write a novel about gunrunners in 60's Africa, logically you would want to make sure that your knowledge of Lewis guns and Sierra Leone was accurate, but that's not why Annie has lined up a year's worth of fantasy reading.

Her actual reasoning is much more pragmatic than any desire to bring herself up to speed on orcs, dragons, jabberwockies and marshwiggles. Annie feels that her first novel didn't succeed because she failed to write it for a specific market. She is obviously proud of that first effort, but equally obviously doesn't want to tear her creation apart in order to make it more marketable.

My concern would be that after a 12-month regimen of reading fantasy, mixed in with middle grade classics such as Tom Sawyer and Black Beauty, it would be difficult to avoid being influenced, but Annie isn't worried about that. She feels that "it is easier to write your own story than someone else's," and hopefully this will prove to be the case. What she is looking for from her research are the conventions that define any subgenre of literature: darker versus lighter plot elements, the inclusion of romance versus actual sex, and so on.*

I have to admit that my first thought was that Annie's approach would take all the fun out of writing a novel, but I suspect that her previous experience with the system makes her a much better judge of things. After all, Annie has already written a novel for "fun" - which is to say without concern as to a marketplace or an audience - and her current plan does not in any way restrict her creativity, only the mold, as she calls it, into which she needs to pour that creativity.

However, I will be curious to see how her plan to use a fantasy novel as a stepping stone to the successful release of her erotic chick-lit novel works out. If J. K. Rowling released the British version of Sex in the City, would her fame successfully transfer to a new audience?

- Sid

* I haven't read all the Harry Potter books, but my impression is that as the series progresses, the plot elements become progressively darker and more mature. Given the ten year gap between the publication of the first and the last books in the series, this approach would nicely address the changes in a maturing audience. (Of course, this approach fails to address future generations of readers who, with access to the entire series at once, may not be content to read one book every 17.14 months of their young lives...)