Never Tell An Author What To Write

I get it, you have the best of intentions, your idea is just AMAZING! You're just trying to help and you have a book in mind you would love to read, you want to tell an author about it so they can write it up and you can enjoy it!

What's wrong with that?

A LOT!

First, writing a book is HARD. Unless you've written one, you have no idea how hard. Even writing a bad book is hard.

Okay, so you want to point to people like J.K. Rowling who wrote the first Harry Potter book in a flurry of inspiration. Do you realize how many books and stories she wrote before that to get that good, let alone efficient? Harry Potter was somewhere around her thousandth story.

And she is an exception, NOT the rule!

After all, there's only one Barbara Cartland!

The normal author struggles daily to get their word count in. They spend years on a single book. Ender's Game took Orson Scott Card twelve YEARS to write!

You're thinking "Well yeah, but that's why I want to help!"

Here's the thing that kind of work takes passion, love, and a vivid feel for the characters, the world, the story. Unless you can plop your idea and all the feelings that go with it directly into the author's brain you're pretty much just piling on to an already full plate.

Author's have ideas for books, the hard part is finding and sticking with just one. The harder part is putting in all the work behind all the complex worlds and characters living complex lives inside their heads.

Keeping track of plotlines, relationships, minute details like the color of a dog is an overload for their brains.

Principles like Chekov's Gun make writing novels an Olympic event in memorization and creativity. (Chekov's gun is where if something is mentioned in chapter two it must come into play later in the book like in chapter twelve.)

Sometimes when writing a series, stuff mentioned in book one comes back up in book five and that's a ton of schlakking stuff to keep track of!

Books are dreams made flesh. You can't give someone dreams. You can't give someone passion or imaginary friends so real you can smell their breath.

Writing books is marriage. It's meeting an idea, getting to know it, falling in love and making a huge commitment. So unless you feel like you are the world's best matchmaker of plot and author I wouldn't suggest trying to set up an author and a plot.

If you want to discuss ideas for a book you want to write, any author would be thrilled to bounce ideas and who knows, you may inspire them to build a whole new world, but don't expect your brilliant idea to insta-romance love at first synopsis any author.

It's like trying to get someone's clothes off when you've just met and you're both still in Walmart on Black Friday.

It comes off as disrespectful of the ENORMOUS amount of work and effort it takes to make a book.

Like raising any baby it isn't the inception that's the problem, it's the making of a decent human being or book that takes blood sweat and tears.

And plot is an author's baby. Do just go up and hand them yours to take care of. Their hands are full with ten screaming for attention already!

If you really want to inspire books and writing, start by turning that great idea into a book! How many Star Wars fanfics are there now? COUNTLESS!

It's the whole principle of, "If you build it, they will come." If you really love your plot and have a feel for it you are the only person in the world to write that book or script!

Own your greatness! Develop your world! Seduce your characters onto the page! Get WRITING!