Reader-directed Novel

Professional novelists write novels to make a living. In order to make a living from writing, you don’t necessarily write what you love. You write what your readers love. But how do you know what your readers love? How about turning the story writing process into an interactive experience involving the readers?

Traditionally, a writer would receive advance money from a publisher to fund the writing of their book. The publisher would also edit the book and sometimes influence the direction of the book. With the rise of self-publishing in recent years, advances have been shrinking and self-published authors would get no advance at all. Self-published authors also would not receive much direction as to what the readers are looking for.

Perhaps self-published authors can have sponsors donate money to the author to influence the direction of the story. A fan can pay to have a character written into the story, or pay to have certain plot elements go into the story. Several different fans could pay to direct the author in writing the story, and when their characters clash, the one that pays more money can have what they want done. Maybe they can even kill off other characters.

Money doesn’t even have to be involved for a reader-directed novel to work. The author could maintain a blog or community and allow fan comments and poll results to determine the direction of the story.