Million Dollar Outlines, page 5
Maybe the thing that hits him is his drunken father who insists that it’s time for the boy to grow up and “start makin’ yer own way!”
In either case, this opening scenario is what is called the “inciting incident” to the story. A child has lost his home, and must try to find happiness out in a cruel and uncaring world.
Perhaps as an author, you don’t think about how he might try finding happiness in life too much. The first thing that he might go looking for is food or shelter. Maybe he needs to ascertain whether his family is alive.
Depending upon what type of character you create, his actions may differ wildly. So he responds to the incident.
Of course as he responds, other things are bound to happen. Maybe he just decides to curl up under a wind-fallen tree for the night. What happens when he does? In the morning he wakes, cold and hungry.
So he goes looking for food, responding to his hunger, and sneaks into a town where he tries to steal a loaf of bread. All of the sudden, a woman catches him and shouts, “Thief!”
Suddenly we have a new incident, a new stimulus for our character, and he will have to respond to that stimulus.
Using the incident/reaction model for writing is often an easy way to generate a story, and some classics—like Gulliver’s Travels—probably came about this way.
At the same time, ultimately such a story will tend to get bogged down as trivial incidents arise in the writer’s mind and find their way onto paper.
Still, if you as a writer find yourself stuck for a bit—if you’re writing a story and can’t quite make out what should happen in the long run, it doesn’t hurt to revert to this method for a scene or two as you let your subconscious work out the answer to your problems.
Defining a Million-Dollar Property
A Million Dollar Property is one that can and should make you a million dollars.
Years ago, I was driving through Scotland when I came up with the idea for the magic systems in my Runelords novels. The magic system was complex and unique, and it struck me all at once.
Immediately, I had the thought, “This could be worth a million dollars!” But after a moment’s thought, I realized, “No, this is worth a lot more than that!”
That was 15 years ago. The property has indeed brought in more than a million dollars. It has brought in more than two. I’m working hard to make my third million from it. I expect to make much more.
That’s the way most of us authors make our million. We sell a book in the U.S., begin selling foreign rights, make a movie deal or two, and our fortunes grow by accretion. Most successful authors build their career around one or two major intellectual properties.
But it doesn’t have to work that way. Sometimes you can write a story that will make you a million dollars right out the gate. Indeed, if you look at Stephenie Meyer or J.K. Rowling, you’ll see authors who have created first properties that made hundreds of millions of dollars.
My friend Kevin J. Anderson used some of the techniques that we’re discussing here, and he was able to write a novel called Ignition that got picked up by a major publisher and movie company for a million dollars in cold, hard cash. Now, the movie never got made, and when the book came out it didn’t get much promotion. So the author had to console himself with his fortune.
That’s the caveat here. You can do your part, but when your book comes out, there are a lot of things that will be beyond your control—things like how the cover looks, what it is sold for, how much promotion the publisher puts into it, where it appears on the publisher’s sales list, who you’re facing as competition that month, and so on. In fact, of all the factors that make a successful book, you may only be able to control one—the quality of your story.
So you can, quite literally, create a property that is worth millions of dollars and have your publishers and movie studios blow it.
If that happens, then you can use this guide to help you create another million-dollar intellectual property.
That’s the beauty of it. We’re writers. We’re creators. If we need to, we can dust ourselves off and start over again.
Why Do Research for Becoming a Bestseller?
Many times when a writer starts to write his or her first book, it is because the seed of an idea takes root in his or her head and the author feels that it must come out. This is the author’s primary motivation to write.
That’s not a bad way to write, but unfortunately in many cases the new author will pen something that feels terribly important and profound to him or her while the rest of the world might not respond at all. That’s because so many new authors write as a type of therapy. We write about conflicts and situations that resonate with us personally instead of the world at large. (See my book, Drawing on the Power of Resonance in Writing.)
The new author, after two or three sales, will often find him or herself sliding back down on the sales charts, and only then will begin to wonder what it is that the rest of the world would like to see in a story. Hence, many authors fail in their careers after only a couple of books.
The answer to that question—What does the reader want?—of course changes from reader to reader. But if you’re looking to sell big, you need to begin doing some research.
My research process requires me to look not just at book sales, but also at popular movies and television shows, even videogames and comics—to try to get a snapshot of our culture as a whole.
The reason for this is quite simple. If I write a book, there are a limited number of readers for it. For example, it has been estimated that in my own field, fantasy, there are only about two or three million regular readers out there. I can catch some of those people as they wander past my books, but if I want to go really big—say Harry Potter big—I need to do better than that. I need to create a sensation. I need to get enough publicity on morning television and radio shows so that it drives readers into the bookstore—the way that Rowling, Paolini, and Meyer recently have done.
In order to appeal to that wider audience, I look at several mediums and try to take some clues from them.
Audience Analysis: Film
For many years, in the United States a hit movie has been defined as one that grosses $100 million in the domestic box office. In order for a movie to gross $100 million at the box office, it has to draw a viewership of about 16 million people—which is much larger than the number of hardcover sales made by almost any novel.
So, what can you learn by studying viewer’s movie tastes? A few years ago I read a book on screenwriting. In it, the instructor listed the top 50 bestselling movies of all time and asked that you look for similarities. When I reached the end of the list, the author announced that there were no similarities. But I had found three things that they all had in common. The list has changed in the past ten years, but my points will still hold true. In fact, I’ve even found a few more similarities.
Here is the list of top box office movies in the US (as of 2012):
Top Grossing Movies Worldwide (in thousands)
1—Avatar (2009)
$2,782.3
2—Titanic (1997)
$2,185.4
3—The Avengers (2012)
$1,511.8
4—Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011)
$1,328.1
5—Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)
$1,123.7
6—The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003)
$1,119.9
7—The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
$1,081.0
8—Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
(2006)
$1,066.2
9—Toy Story 3 (2010)
$1,063.2
10—Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
(2011)
$1,043.9
11—Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999)
$1,027.0
12—Alice in Wonderland (2010)
$1,024.3
13—Skyfall (2012)
$1,023.7
14—The Dark Knight (2008)
$1,004.6
15—Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)
$974.8
16—Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007)
$963.4
17—Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010)
$956.4
18—The Lion King (1994)
$951.6
19—Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
$939.9
20—Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
$934.4
21—Lord of the Ring: The Two Towers (2002)
$926.0
22—Finding Nemo (2003)
$921.7
23—Shrek 2 (2004)
$919.8
24—Jurassic Park (1993)
$914.7
25—Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
$896.9
26—Spider-Man 3 (2007)
$890.9
27—Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
$886.7
28—Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)
$879.0
29—Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012)
$875.2
30—The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
$871.5
31—Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith (2005)
$848.8
32—Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
$836.3
33—The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
$829.5
34—Inception (2010)
$825.5
35—The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (2012)
$821.8
36—Spider-Man (2002)
$821.7
37—Independence Day (1996)
$817.4
38—Shrek the Third (2007)
$799.0
39—Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
$796.7
40—E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982)
$792.9
41—Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
$786.6
42—Spider-Man 2 (2004)
$783.8
43—Star Wars (1977)
$775.4
44—2012 (2009)
$769.7
45—The Da Vinci Code (2006)
$758.2
46—Shrek Forever After (2010)
$752.6
47—The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
$752.2
48—The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005)
$745.0
49—The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
$742.1
50—Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (2012)
$742.1
The list above has not been corrected for inflation, so the sales are skewed a little more toward recent movies than they should be, but they’re accurate enough. Also, the rankings will shift as new big movies come out. So what do these films have in common?
Here are a few things:
—Movies Set in Another Time and/or Another Place: 94%.
This tells us that movies that take us away from the real world and transport us into an alternate reality are far more popular than those set within a contemporary setting.
—Movies with Wide Audience Potential (Male/female): 98%.
Most of these movies have strong protagonists of both sexes and of various ages. Thus they draw in a much wider audience than, say, a teen chick flick that only attracts young women. However, the main story focus is almost always on a relatively young male—anywhere from a child to a man in his early twenties. I hate that statistic (because it suggests that only young men can draw huge audiences, and logically I know that that is a fallacy), but I can’t ignore it.
—Movies with High Emotional Richter-Scale Values: 100%.
A movie that scores high on the “emotional Richter scale” is often among the best of its kind. If it’s supposed to be scary, it’s terrifying. If it’s supposed to funny, you laugh so hard that you can’t breathe. If it’s an adventure, it’s heart-pounding. This is important. If you want to really please an audience, you need to know how your work stacks up in the marketplace.
The movies here tend to tug on the heartstrings. Very often they achieve this by placing an entire “world” in jeopardy. But sometimes, as in Home Alone or Forrest Gump, the movie focuses on one very likable protagonist—then puts him or her through hell.
Movies with Heroic Main Plot: 98%.
Almost every movie on the list focuses on someone who is trying to save others.
Fantasy or Science Fiction: 90%.
Since I write fantasy I’d like to point out that fantasy movies have been topping the bestseller lists for decades. It’s time that the studios take notice!
Alternate World: 80%.
Most of these movies that have done well have been set in an alternate world, not in our world.
So, as a writer, what can you learn from these points? Well, if you’re trying to write a bestseller, this information might be something of a treasure map, pointing you in some likely directions.
How Accurate is the Above Research?
In the research above, I made some comments that caused at least one reader to say, “Whoa, are you sure about that?” In particular I pointed out that in the top 50 movies, although we often see the story told from multiple points of view, all of these movies tend to put most of their focus on the male characters’ journey.
Does that mean that you have to focus on men? Really? More than half the people on this planet are women―about 51 percent of them.
So my reader pointed out that the data may be biased, and I agreed that she is absolutely right. In fact, while writing the article, I almost wanted to stop and give you a caveat but I decided against it. You see as someone who was trained as a scientist I think that there is value in saying, “This is what I observe,” regardless of whether I believe the observation will lead to valid conclusions.
At the same time, I want you to understand that I strongly believe that the data does tend to be biased. Here are a couple of reasons why: first, if you look at the list of the top 50 movies of all time, you’ll note that they are predominantly special-effects heavy movies. The budgets on such movies are huge―$100 to 200 million.
Let’s take the one of bestselling movies of all time from this list: Titanic. The movie went way over budget and cost more than $200 million to make. The special-effects budget was huge. My good friend Grant Boucher created the digital ship used in the sinking scene and won an Oscar for it, so I know some of the effort that he put into that effect. Cameron had tried a couple of different ways to get the picture he wanted―creating a large model ship and then using a real ship. Neither delivered the image that he had hoped for, so Grant spent six months secretly building a 3-D model of the ship, and then slipped some footage with it into the mix. Add in a $6 million program to create digital water and―voila!―you’re winning Oscars.
But in order to earn back the huge amounts of money spent on such a movie, the studio had to advertise heavily. In fact, the movie was released simultaneously in Europe, Asia, and England all on the same weekend in order to begin retrieving the profits.
On a normal movie that goes out for theatrical distribution the advertising often runs about $8 million. But that money can easily go up to $20 million, and of course if you’ve got $200 million into the film, you can easily spend $100 million on advertising.
So movies with huge budgets get heavy advertising―which then makes them into hits.
When you see a Star Wars Episode VI on the list of top-selling films of all time, or a Pirates of the Caribbean 3, what it really means is that the studios went on an all-out blitz on advertising in order to garner viewers.
Movies were filmed, but maybe books were written in conjunction with the film―as many as 27 different books to help hype Star Wars Episode 1. These books then act as free advertisements for the film. Video games also get made, advertised, and unleashed on the public. Thus when the last Matrix film was made, a record $55 million was spent on the game tie in. On top of those forms of advertising, entire magazines maybe started in order to hype the coming films (an old friend of mine founded the company that initiated this form of advertising years ago by creating the first Star Wars magazine). T-shirts and toy lines are created so that you will see movie ads in clothing and toy stores―not to mention the other merchandise, such as key chains, hats, wallpaper, underwear, and so on. Then there are the cross-promotions―the free Star Wars toys at McDonalds, the Shrek ads displayed on Pepsi cans, the new cereal lines, and so on.
Given the hundreds of millions of dollars in advertisement, it’s no wonder that the movie does well.
Of course, all of these ads and cross promotions are easily justifiable. If a movie has enough multimedia appeal it can pull in billions of dollars. The Star Wars movies, for example, might make the filmmakers a few hundred million, but the Star Wars merchandise tie-ins make Lucas $3 to 5 billion per film.
But what about films that don’t have game tie-ins? If they had huge advertising budgets, would they make a lot of money? I suspect so. For example, lots of kids watched High School Musical over and over again. If Disney were to take High School Musical 4, release it in theaters, and give it the same promotional budget that they gave to Pirates of the Caribbean 3, the box office sales would likely go through the roof.
So the “bestseller” list is skewed toward big-budget films.
Other factors also lead to skewed information. For example, in most cases these movies are made by men for men. The producers, the studio execs, the directors―all of them are men. There might be a female director somewhere in the top 50 but I don’t recall any. So men tend to create the kinds of movies that will appeal to other men. That’s why, I believe, that even though the main plot line in each of the top 50 movies is slanted toward a hero-journey story, I strongly suspect that it doesn’t have to be.
As evidence of that, look on the bestseller list for books recently. At the time that I’m writing this, USA Today has Stephanie Meyer at four of the ten top spots, and her books are definitely not slanted toward the male audience.
