I think it comes up because people wonder why the market doesn't reward them for having more schooling and thinking deeper thoughts.
This is something that I find hard to navigate because on the one hand I don't care for the elitist tone that people take when they talk about literature versus what Dan Brown writes.
Now if we think about it Dan Brown and the a writer of literary fiction both have to sit down and write their book. They have to draw from their brains whatever kind of ideas they can, they then have to translate that into words on a page in order to convey some meaning to the reader.
The first difference between them is that Dan Brown sells millions of copies and the literary fiction writer is lucky to sell a few thousand. Now why does he sell millions of copies? Because people like his books and buy them and they tell their friends who also go and buy them.
There are many reasons why this happens and Dan Brown can afford steak dinners and the writer of literary fiction has to survive on foodstamps. One is that Mr. Brown makes it very easy to read his books, he guides the reader through the story in a very direct manner. He then has exciting events happen and he writes in a fairly simple manner so that the average person doesn't have to struggle to understand what is going on.
So the meat of it is that his books sell because they are easy to read and have exciting plots. Does it matter that he writes in a laughable manner much of the time? No not at all because it makes some semblance of sense and even if it is all spectacular hogwash it makes the reader feel smart.
Rewarding the reader is one of the important things that we as writers can glean from video games, because you see in well made video games the player is constantly rewarded for playing. From Super mario Bros. where you got that coin sound for collecting coins, or you felt clever for having discovered a secret passage or warp pipe all the way to now where you have call of duty or World of Warcraft that are constantly rewarding the player with points and numbers that help to progress their character. Those well designed programs of rewards are the reason that millions of people have sunk hundreds of hours into those games.
That translates to books because on a pure behavioral level if there are no rewards for continued reading then your reader will stop reading and not recommend your book to friends and then you won't be able to afford that nice house on the Riviera.
I want to think of a good example, and what comes to mind is Harry Potter. Mrs. Rowling starts off immediately by making the reader feel like they are a much more interesting friendly and open-minded person than Mr. Dursley. Then we have the interesting question of what is so objectionable about the Potters that Mr Dursley would be so reluctant in bringing up the topic with his wife. That payoff comes pretty quickly, but then there are other questions and some people feel smart because they figured out that the Dursleys world had magical people, of which the Dursleys strongly disapprove.
Anyhow, my point is not to analyse Harry Potter here, but to talk about a few ways one can make your work more appealing and more likely to sell. Needless to say, a literary fiction which makes the average person feel confused stupid and ignorant is not going to appeal to as wide of an audience. It can still appeal to enough people to sell a fair number of copies, as we see with writers like Thomas Pynchon. His work also functions on the same principles. His audiences like to feel smart and like to be rewarded, after all even academics are human.
I guess in the end I'm not going to advocate that you write books that are appeal to the lowest common denominator like Dan Brown, But I do say that you ought to write to be read. You ought to make your writing for people to appreciate. Because what good is a clever idea or story if no one ever reads it?
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