What do you think is the “next big thing” in books? To recap, we’ve gone through so much fantasy, I think that is pretty much dead. Ditto for paranormal romance, amateur sleuth novels, and thrillers surrounding conspiracy theories. I heard from some site I visited that agents are begging us not to send them anything with mermaids, vampires, or otherworldly creatures in it no matter WHAT they are doing in a book.

One of my beta readers said that the best thing to come out of the end of fingers in today’s world is real life stories. Something that is ripped quite literally from a writer’s own memoir. A story that no one else can tell but us.

I sort of cotton to that idea myself. Why not? I mean we are the masters of our own universe in this world of indie publishing, marketing, etc. Why not tell OUR own story? I have a LOT of world view. I have a great story to tell and even I am enjoying the unveiling of it.

Personal accounts that have been reasonably fictionalized captivates people and gives them enough stuff to stay engaged because this will be new and fresh content that they haven’t seen rehashed seven ways to Sunday.

How do you do this? How to turn a real story into a not so real story?

Wellllll….first, create the setting, give a little background, and keep that seriously condensed. Then jump right into the characters of the story and what is happening to them to make us want to read more.

I started mine as my beta reader suggested… “She was my first real friend. My first real BEST friend.”

Mrs Magic / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

I really like that opening. My beta is one smart cookie.