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I’m going to encourage you to learn to do your own audience analysis. Why? Because if you do, you might well begin to see things that others have missed.
Here is a list of the 20 bestselling novels of all time. The information comes from Wikipedia, is dated just a bit, and the list is obviously wrong. It shows Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows high on the list but doesn't show the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone anywhere at all. Since the first books in a series will always outpace the last books in sales (because there is always some falloff), it is obvious that we've got a problem.
Furthermore, sales of the Harry Potter books hit over 400 million for the series as a whole a couple of years ago in July. With seven books in the series, that means we have average sales of near 60 million copies, not the 44 million that was listed as the top sales figure here. In short, all seven books in the series should be on this list, not just the last book, and the numbers should range higher. But I’m not going to correct this list, because the truth is that I want to talk about more than just Harry Potter. Oh, and Twilight should be on here, too.
Title Author
A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens
The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien
And Then There Were None Agatha Christie
The Hobbit J.R.R. Tolkien
She H. Rider Haggard
The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
The Alchemist Paulo Coelho
The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown
The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco
Harry Potter / Deathly Hallows J.K. Rowling
Jonathon Livingston Seagull Richard Bach
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
Valley of the Dolls Jacqueline Susann
Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell
One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez
The Godfather Mario Puzo
Jaws Peter Benchley
Shōgun James Clavell
The Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett
Perfume Patrick Süskind
The Horse Whisperer Nicholas Evans
Now, given this list, I look for patterns in order to determine the elements that make a bestseller.
Settings
Let's start with the settings. How many of the books distance the reader from current time and space?
You'll notice that the first book on our list takes place six decades before the readers of the 1860s were around. Most of the readers wouldn't have been alive. It would be like me writing about JFK. Also, the book is set in two countries – England and France. In other words, no matter where you were living, the book offered some escape from the contemporary setting.
As you scroll through the list, you'll notice that about 35% of the novels are set in complete fantasy worlds. Most of the rest had historical ties. In each case where the novel doesn't distance the reader from the modern world, most of the novels take you someplace that you would like to go – a seaside resort, an island retreat, and so on.
So offering your reader escape seems to be something that most bestsellers have in common both in books and in movies. In Writing the Blockbuster Novel, Zuckerman says you should look to set your tale in places where the reader might want to go – exotic destinations like New York, Bombay, and London abound.
But what if you don't want to set your book in one of those places? That's all right, too. You can still entice your reader into your setting. For example, if I were setting a novel in Rigby, Idaho I might consider talking about the things that make Rigby one of the great destinations in the world – clear sunny skies, neighbors with high values, wild elk bedding down on the banks of the Snake River, and so on.
This is a key even in my genre of fantasy. Tolkien sold a lot of books, but one of the real reasons why is that Middle Earth is a great place to be. The Shire with its gentle Hobbits, its bounteous gardens and its innocence is a great place to go if you want to get away from real-world stress.
Beyond just the initial setting though, there are other questions to study. For example, does the setting move about? Or does the novel span dozens or even thousands of years? It's an easy thing for an author to talk about how glacial ice sculpted a present-day valley, or to throw in a story told by a grandmother to help set a scene. All of these techniques can expand the world that you're creating.
Characters
Well, given this list, take a look at the characters. What is the age and sex of each protagonist? Ninety percent of these novels seem to be aimed primarily at men. Why is that? Don’t women read? Of course not. (I’ll have a long section on why this historical bias exists later.)
Does the book have more than one major protagonist (usually defined by viewpoint character)?
Does the age of the protagonist change throughout the book? For example, in Harry Potter we first meet young Harry shortly after birth, but most of the book takes place later in life.
Beyond age and sex, you might study the characters closely. What is their social status? What about their physical appearances? What kinds of personality traits do they have in common?
Conflicts
After you study the characters, move on to conflicts. I like to take each major character in turn and study each of his or her conflicts. I label them as primary, secondary, tertiary, and so on.
So the next question is a bit tougher. How important to the reader will that conflict be? For example, when A Tale of Two Cities was written, the entire world was still reeling from the after-effects of the French Revolution. British nobility – indeed leaders around the entire world – were afraid of losing their heads, so they began to vie to for the title of "most virtuous leader alive today." Nobles began giving money to charity and making sure the press was present to see them do it, and so on. The reform movement swept across the oceans to America, where in the 1830s - 1850s tens of thousands of Christian Communes rose up. (I'll bet that you thought communes were a modern thing, something that happened just during the 1970s, but they go back thousands of years, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them rise up again in the coming year or two.) So the global reform movement swept throughout Europe and Russia, and thus we can see that for a reader in the mid-1800s, this kind of novel struck the reader deeply. In short, it carried information vital to the reader's survival.
We can see that trend throughout the list. Is Lord of the Rings really just escapism? I don't think so. As a teenager I clearly believed that the ring of power was a metaphor for the nuclear bomb. Tolkien denies it, but the bulk of the novel was written in the post-war era after WWII. If nothing else, I found myself identifying strongly with the inconsequential hobbits who were trying to rid the world of an item that could destroy the planet.
How important is it to you to know how the mob works today? When The Godfather came out, most people were totally ignorant at how powerful organized crime was. Today we're better educated, but I think that most people would be shocked at just how corrupt politics has become.
So study the conflicts.
One screenwriting doctor claims that in every great story, there is a question about the character's identity at its heart. Who am I? Who do others think that I am? This might seem like a tertiary conflict in many of these stories, but I think you'll find that it is a common thread.
In short, pay attention to even the smallest conflicts in the tale.
Very often, a powerful novel doesn't just challenge the protagonist's identity, it challenges the reader's identity, too.
Read the rest here.
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