Telling Stories: Does This Mean Writing A Book and Making Money?

This is something that many writers have faced, myself included.  You tell some one you are a writer and then they will either say “do you have a job?” (or something to that effect) or they will begin to tell you about “my life… well, it’s really neat… I’ve heard..” (I’ll let you fill in the blanks.)

As writers we are adapt at telling stories, for lack of a better term) we want to share our writing and usually if we are writing non-fiction we need to make it interesting for our reader.  What we don’t want is the “Well that was a good book… unfortunately I didn’t get much out of it.”  We want someone to rave about it.  The problem is that this take time, and if you are self-publishing, some money.

The power of the story is alive and well today, the problem is that some people do not understand what a good story is.   facts and number s are important, but the key to writing is to make your readers care.  Most people need to care, if it enrages them, make them laugh, makes them want to go and read more, you’ve done your work.

What about the peope who come up and say my staory needs to be written and it will be a big money maker?

Listen of course.

Often, however, if the person is in it for teh money, they really do not have a story, rather they have something to share.  Telling sotries does not mean it can be made into a book, which will make money.  I have seen this in terms of self-published books.  There is something there, but it is hidden since they do not realize that, what they are telling is (as Damaria put it) boring.

A good example was given to me a few nights ago one of my writing friends is trying to write the life story of his grandfather it wen something like this “I was ten when I went to school.  That was the year my father and two brothers died.  The schoolhouse was red brick with two or three rooms.  it was in the country and I had to walk about two fields to get there.  I would never cross the farms.  It wasn’t done”

Okay, as we figured out, and so have you, this HAS the potential for being a good story, but not the way in which it is described, why?  I want to know about the one sentence he dismisses.  That to me would be a good story, and would eventually make money as a book.

If you can have a writer write a good story of your life, you can write a book, and you can make money, but do not make it boring.