![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Buy my Plot (Social Experiment)
So, today I came up with an idea for a novel. The idea itself isn't important or relevant; I come up with an idea everyday for a book, including one notable departure from fiction for a tabletop picture-heavy hardcover about potato chip culture in America. However, what I did with the idea (the one from today, not the potato chip book) is what's interesting.
I did nothing with it. I'm not going to write it.
But it occurred to me that it's a good idea, and maybe someone would want to buy it from me.
But how would I sell it?
So, this is my experiment with selling an idea. I don't really expect anyone to want to buy it, but I was curious if the model I came up for the salesmanship would work. I invite you to pretend that you're an interested buyer, and tell me whether my pitch works, or if there's more information you would want to know before you make a decision and/or offer.
I'm not going to be sharing the idea for the novel itself, as that would be giving away my product for free, but I'm going to use it for this experiment so that we have a solid foundation. Ideally, we'll develop a model we can all use to sell ideas online, maybe even create an Idea Industry, and then we can all sit around on our computers all day touting our mystery "pleasure food" idea and then reveal "pizza wrapped in ham" after we've been paid by some dumb patsy. (Naturally, we'd have to worry about inflation and brand devaluation.) It's not that I dislike my day job, otherwise I might actually try writing this novel, but trading a real job for a not-real job without loss of income is the Great American Dream. (And all foreigners love American stuff, so I'm sure everyone else digs it, too.)
The Pitch
Characters: Main characters are one man and one woman. Both will be reusable at the end of the novel. An extended supporting cast can fit into the story easily, including rivals for both the man the woman, although the final adversary must arrive from outside the main setting. As many of the supporting characters as desired can be reused, and they all have spin-off potential.
Setting(s): Single location, of an age-old type that can work in any genre or world. It can be fitted to various cultures and geographic locations, and can scale to accommodate casts of widely varying sizes. It should be reusable at the end of the novel, and can serve as the common element in a series of otherwise unrelated novels.
Genre(s): A mix of Romance, Social Examination, and Western. Depending on the preference of the writer, each of these can be maximized or minimized to suit any taste. I, for example, would play up the Western aspect, but plenty of great stories could be told without it.
Length: This story can be told in one novel, but is too long for a short story. It could be broken up into a series of short stories, but is mainly designed for a single narrative. Sequels are a possibility for the main characters and world, but not in the same setting. Alternatively, a sequel could be told in the same setting with a new cast.
Themes: Prejudices, racial and/or cultural; Fish out of water; Learning to love; Strength from friendship; Overcoming social and/or economic adversity; Surviving being an outcast; Uniting to form a community; Sexual maturity/exploration (optional);
Audience (generalities based on market studies): Given the characters and general storyline, I can see this appealing heavily to female romantic fans who like exploring new cultures with a bit of action at the plot's climax. Depending how much of the Western aspect is incorporated, there's a strong possibility to hook in a heavy male audience, but in that case the Sexual theme would have to be downplayed, as erotic fiction does not sell well with men. Even without the Sexual theme, I do not see this working well for teen audiences, due to certain necessities of the setting; while teenagers are curious about sex, moral guardians would probably clamp down just based on the premise.
And so, my "customers," are you ready to bid, or do you need more info? Play along, now, no real money required.
I did nothing with it. I'm not going to write it.
But it occurred to me that it's a good idea, and maybe someone would want to buy it from me.
But how would I sell it?
So, this is my experiment with selling an idea. I don't really expect anyone to want to buy it, but I was curious if the model I came up for the salesmanship would work. I invite you to pretend that you're an interested buyer, and tell me whether my pitch works, or if there's more information you would want to know before you make a decision and/or offer.
I'm not going to be sharing the idea for the novel itself, as that would be giving away my product for free, but I'm going to use it for this experiment so that we have a solid foundation. Ideally, we'll develop a model we can all use to sell ideas online, maybe even create an Idea Industry, and then we can all sit around on our computers all day touting our mystery "pleasure food" idea and then reveal "pizza wrapped in ham" after we've been paid by some dumb patsy. (Naturally, we'd have to worry about inflation and brand devaluation.) It's not that I dislike my day job, otherwise I might actually try writing this novel, but trading a real job for a not-real job without loss of income is the Great American Dream. (And all foreigners love American stuff, so I'm sure everyone else digs it, too.)
The Pitch
Characters: Main characters are one man and one woman. Both will be reusable at the end of the novel. An extended supporting cast can fit into the story easily, including rivals for both the man the woman, although the final adversary must arrive from outside the main setting. As many of the supporting characters as desired can be reused, and they all have spin-off potential.
Setting(s): Single location, of an age-old type that can work in any genre or world. It can be fitted to various cultures and geographic locations, and can scale to accommodate casts of widely varying sizes. It should be reusable at the end of the novel, and can serve as the common element in a series of otherwise unrelated novels.
Genre(s): A mix of Romance, Social Examination, and Western. Depending on the preference of the writer, each of these can be maximized or minimized to suit any taste. I, for example, would play up the Western aspect, but plenty of great stories could be told without it.
Length: This story can be told in one novel, but is too long for a short story. It could be broken up into a series of short stories, but is mainly designed for a single narrative. Sequels are a possibility for the main characters and world, but not in the same setting. Alternatively, a sequel could be told in the same setting with a new cast.
Themes: Prejudices, racial and/or cultural; Fish out of water; Learning to love; Strength from friendship; Overcoming social and/or economic adversity; Surviving being an outcast; Uniting to form a community; Sexual maturity/exploration (optional);
Audience (generalities based on market studies): Given the characters and general storyline, I can see this appealing heavily to female romantic fans who like exploring new cultures with a bit of action at the plot's climax. Depending how much of the Western aspect is incorporated, there's a strong possibility to hook in a heavy male audience, but in that case the Sexual theme would have to be downplayed, as erotic fiction does not sell well with men. Even without the Sexual theme, I do not see this working well for teen audiences, due to certain necessities of the setting; while teenagers are curious about sex, moral guardians would probably clamp down just based on the premise.
And so, my "customers," are you ready to bid, or do you need more info? Play along, now, no real money required.
no subject
Interesting idea, let me try to parse my thoughts on this by writing it out.
One real-life situation where you regularly see one person's plot being used by another is ghostwriting for franchises, as in this confession (http://www.kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2013-winter/selections/amy-boesky-656342/) of a Sweet Valley High ghostwriter who is now a professor of literature. (I think I read some of the books by her back in high school. I always suspected something like this was going on, given how the credit was "created by" Francine Pascal.) She describes how Pascal, the creator, gave the writers outlines and style guides which the writers wrote into final products, kind of like frames and parts being assembled into cars. In this context the plot is a factor of production, a means of creating products and not a final product in itself.
Of course, if you expand on the car parts metaphor you can come up with a market for plot as a component of story, along the line of parts being traded between hobbyists or businesses. It would be a product that's interesting for people who already have the skill to put it into a finished product, and so the market will be smaller market than the one for finished books, but that doesn't mean it can't exist.
Plot, however, is much more contingent than car parts. If you stick a sound engine into a car and hook it up right the car will run (or so I'm led to believe--I don't know a thing about cars), but turning a plot into a good story requires more than doing everything right by a technical manual. Even a small change in characters or setting could make an otherwise workable plot fly apart, which results in more work for the writer fixing what's broken. Even rigidly defined characters and setting aren't a complete antidote because really subtle details of writing could similarly result in the product going off spec.It would be as though adjusting a valve in the engine turned the car door purple or something, and what's more you could not predict this until it happened. The process is just too fluid and unpredictable.
Fundamentally the writer herself goes into the writing in a way that I don't see happening with, say, putting together cars. Obviously a dedicated car hobbyist or artisan is going to leave their mark on the cars they put together, but their style isn't going to be disruptive to the manufacture. Unlike in writing, the tiny details of a car hobbyist's personality and craft won't blow up the engine unless there was some defect or mistake.
This's why I can see plot changing hands mostly in a franchise setting where the individual quirks of the writers are suppressed in the interest of having a homogeneous product. There the outline acts more like a car engine because those disruptive influences are controlled. In the hobbyist or professional market for writing, on the other hand, individuality neither can nor should be suppressed because it's the whole point.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
I believe there is a difference between a good story and a story I should write. All stories that I should write are good, or else I shouldn't write them, but there are stories that I should just leave to others who will write them better and put more of themselves in. This is because there is more to a story than the things you describe offering to sell. There are often deep themes exploring important aspects of the world or the human condition. I don't want to buy your themes; I know my own, or will discover them. I don't know whether it's possible to make my themes work with your plot. I don't know whether I would like to write the themes you would put in. I do know that I could come up with as much of an idea as you describe on my own, and that coming up with the idea would be less than one percent of the work on a novel of average length. It might be some single-digit percentage of the work on a short story. Only in the very shortest lengths, such as drabbles, are ideas so much of the work that I can imagine anyone paying for one.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)