Writing and selling the monumental lie.

When someone once asked the writer Barbara Taylor Bradford what a novel is she replied:  'It's a monumental lie that has to have the absolute ring of truth if it is to succeed.'  The year was 1988 and she had already written eight bestselling novels so knew what she was talking about.

It was an interesting definition of fiction. So many would-be  writers eagerly say of the book they have written, 'It's all true, it all really happened just as I wrote it,' as though that in itself is some kind of guarantee of success. True, some life experiences translate into stirring stuff on the page and yet the depiction of characters created by writers Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte have stood the test of time for such authors observed and portrayed their chosen characters, who were often dull and prosaic and living ordinary lives,  in a manner that was quite out of the ordinary. Therein lies their genius.

So maybe it can be said it is not the subject that has to be riveting so much as the manner in which you as a writer treat it that will give it the vital ring of truth necessary to grip hold of your readers and succeed in winning them over, the same ring of truth Bradford Taylor wrote of in her feature article aimed at writers ambitious to hit the jackpot, aptly titled, 'So You Want to Write a Bestseller?'  This came from one of the world's top writers of fiction, who herself had successfully repeated, over and over, that  'monumental' lie she had spoken of.earlier.