Here’s My BYOB Topic for 2022
It’s all about finding your story’s cheese…cheese sells.
It’s that time of the year again!
BYOB=Blog Your Own Book. It’s a month-long program hosted by Shaunta Grimes at Ninja Writers and it’s basically NaNoWriMo for bloggers. This is our third year doing it and every year it just gets bigger and bigger.
We anticipate this year will be our biggest year yet!
Blog Your Own Book officially takes place during the month of August. You publish a blog post a day that contributes to one topic so that at the end of the month you can bundle the posts into a short nonfiction book to self-publish.
The last two years Ninja Writers has expanded it to stretch over a four-month period:
In July we plan our topic and blog posts.
In August we write and publish our blog posts.
In September we edit our blog posts into a book.
and In October we publish our BYOB books on Kindle.
Ninja Writers has some fun ideas coming up for this years BYOB — like promotion opportunities, badges, etc.
If you’d like to join us in BYOB this year, you can join this live call on Friday, July 8th at 6pm EST. We’ll help you choose your topic and start planning your blog posts!
My topic for this year is all about understanding story tropes.
I’m teaching a class this month about finding your book comps. It started yesterday and I can already tell it’s just going to be a really fun class. Part of this is because of the topic — we’re talking about books!
The other part is because of how closely your book comps depend on understanding book tropes.
For those who don’t know, book comps are books on the market that are the most similar to your own work in progress. They hold your target reader. They understand your genre. They bring in a good amount of money.
And most importantly, they use the same story tropes.
What are tropes?
Well, I’m hoping you’ll follow my BYOB project to truly learn all about tropes, what they are, how to find them, and how to implement them. But I’ll give you the basic run down.
Tropes are the parts of your story that are the least unique but the biggest selling point. They’re the parts of your story that remind readers of other stories they enjoyed, which in turn pushes them to purchase your book.
This Masterclass article defines tropes as this: “A trope in literary terms is a plot device or character attribute that is used so commonly in the genre that it’s seen as commonplace or conventional. For example, a trope in superhero stories is a villain who wants to take over the world.”
To be honest, tropes are the cheesy parts of storytelling. They’re the ‘meet-cutes’, the ‘best friend’s brother’, the ‘girl next door’.
You’ve seen them in books, movies, tv shows, comics, graphic novels, etc. a million times before. You might roll your eyes at them if they’re not tropes you follow or love. But if they are?
You’ll be absorbing it like hotcakes. You won’t be able to get enough.
There are a million and one tropes for every genre out there and I guarantee that if you enjoy reading, movies, or TV there is at least a good handful of tropes you enjoy yourself.
Why Tropes?
Why not Tropes?
They’re such an integral part of not only storytelling but selling your book successfully as well. If you understand your story’s tropes, you know exactly which books to view as book comps, which means you have detailed examples of exactly what your target reader wants.
Tropes are one of the most valuable tools a writer can have.
They’re also really fun to talk about. I love seeing how every story in the universe is connected in one way or another. This leads me to my next reason for choosing this topic:
Your book is not unique. It’s just not.
I can’t even begin to tell you how many writers have approached me with the argument that their book is soooo unique. There’s just nothing like it. It’s one of a kind. At this point, it’s my teaching pet peeve. So fair warning if you approach me with that argument, I’ll make it my life's mission to prove you wrong — and I always come out the winner with this one.
This is not to say that your book is not unique. It is. It’s your writings. It’s your characters. No matter how alike your book is to another, just the fact that the story is coming from you and not someone else is unique enough — I promise.
Your book is not as unique as you think it is because it has tropes. And tropes sell.
A book without tropes is dead in the water.
My goal with this BYOB project is to help you not only find your tropes but also find your book comps.
I want to create a tool for writers that will do just that.
My goal is to talk about each of the major genres: romance, mystery, horror, humor, SciFi, fantasy, thriller, and drama. I’ll identify a few subgenres for each of those genres and list some of their main tropes.
Along with the tropes, I’ll list some of the best books, tv shows, and movies on the market that utilize that trope. I have a larger plan to update this book every year or two so the books, movies, and tv shows stay up to date. We’ll see how the first one does, though.
As a writer, you’ll be able to use this book to not only identify your genre, subgenre, and trope — you’ll also come away with a few book comps.
Where’s the best place to follow my BYOB journey?
I’ll publish them right here on Medium, so be sure to follow me to receive notifications for new posts.
You’ll also find my daily BYOB posts in August on The Write Brain on Medium.
I’ve also created this substack newsletter dedicated to my project. All the official daily posts in August can be found there, so be sure to subscribe!
If you want to participate in BYOB yourself, click here to join us on Friday, July 8th at 6pm EST for a live zoom call where we’ll talk all about the program and help you choose your topic!
Here’s my favorite exercise for figuring out how to create content that reaches your target audience. It’ll change the way you approach content creation for the better!
Adrienne Grimes is a writer and a reader of all the things. She lives in Pennsylvania with her two overbearing dogs and her doggish cat. Follow her on Instagram @bookaweekproject, over on her Substack (From the Faraway Nearby) and catch her social media and branding classes in the Ninja Writers Guild — a community for every type of writer!