By studying books that have been accredited as best selling authors, you can learn and pick up details for your own story.
When learning, you want a quality experience from those who know their craft. It makes sense to use those who are seen as established and exceptional authors. So, learning from the best and finding out what makes them special.
By this I mean, finding techniques that have worked for authors. For example:
- How they describe their scenes
- What aspects give a reader an immersive experience
- How they built a bond with a character and reader
- How they have developed their character
You’ll know this because you will be the reader. To better understand how you want your audience to react and connect with your book, a great first step is to put yourself in the shoes of the reader. When you become a reader, you are able to pick up on what moves you in a novel, what gets an emotional reaction.
Through having these experiences, you’ll have a better understanding of how to do this as a writer.
Here is a book writing coach that will help you every step of the way with the overwhelming task of writing a book that has worked with best selling authors.
Let’s look at some of the best selling authors, and what can you as a writer learn from their stories.
Table of Contents
What Can You Learn By Reading Best Selling Authors?
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Here Are 8 Addictive Books To Learn The Craft From:
1 After The End By Clare Mackintosh
(Click the picture for a closer look on Amazon)
Max and Pip are the strongest couples you know. They’re best friends, lovers—unshakable. But then their son gets sick and the doctors put the question of his survival into their hands. For the first time, Max and Pip can’t agree. They each want a different future for their son.
What if they could have both?
A gripping and propulsive exploration of love, marriage, parenthood, and the road not taken, After the End brings one unforgettable family from unimaginable loss to a surprising, satisfying, and redemptive ending and the life they are fated to find. With the emotional power of Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper, Mackintosh helps us to see that sometimes the end is just another beginning.
What can you learn to write from this book?
- How to write a thought-provoking book
- Heart-breaking scenes
- Duel chapters
- Deep topic exploration
- The feeling of hope and strength from a book
2 The Missing Letters of Mrs Bright By Beth Miller
(Click the picture for a closer look on Amazon)
Book Blurb
For the past twenty-nine years, Kay Bright’s days have had a familiar rhythm: she works in her husband’s stationery shop hoping to finally sell the legendary gold pen, cooks for her family, tries to remember to practice yoga, and every other month she writes to her best friend, Ursula. Kay could set her calendar by their letters: her heart lifts when the blue airmail envelope, addressed in Ursula’s slanting handwriting, falls gently onto the mat.
But now Ursula has stopped writing and everything is a little bit worse.
Ursula is the only one who knows Kay’s deepest secret, something that happened decades ago that could tear Kay’s life apart today. She has always been the person Kay relies on.
Worried, Kay gets out her shoebox of Ursula’s letters and as she reads, her unease starts to grow. And then at ten o’clock in the morning, Kay walks out of her yellow front door with just a rucksack, leaving her wedding ring on the table…
What can you learn to write from this book?
- How to write an emotional and heart-warming novel
- Convey it is never too late to look for happiness
- Write a feel-good book
- Make your readers laugh out loud and cry the next (invoking emotions)
- Keep your readers up at night, wanting to read more
- Draw the reader in from the first page
3 The Binding By Bridget Collins
(Click the picture for a closer look on Amazon)
Book Blurb
Emmett Farmer is a binder’s apprentice. His job is to hand-craft beautiful books and, within each, to capture something unique and extraordinary: a memory.
If you have something you want to forget, or a secret to hide, he can bind it – and you will never have to remember the pain it caused.
In a vault under his mentor’s workshop, row upon row of books – and secrets – are meticulously stored and recorded.
Then one day Emmett makes an astonishing discovery: one of the volumes has his name on it.
What can you learn to write from this book?
- How to write an immersive book
- Unforgettable storytelling
- With complex moral questions
- Provokes endless discussions with readers and with others
- How to write a historical fiction
4 Behind Closed Doors By B. A. Paris
(Click the picture for a closer look on Amazon)
Book Blurb
Everyone knows a couple like Jack and Grace. He has looks and wealth, she has charm and elegance. You might not want to like them, but you do.
You’d like to get to know Grace better.
But it’s difficult, because you realise Jack and Grace are never apart.
Some might call this true love. Others might ask why Grace never answers the phone. Or how she can never meet for coffee, even though she doesn’t work. How she can cook such elaborate meals but remain so slim. And why there are bars on one of the bedroom windows.
Sometimes, the perfect marriage is the perfect lie.
What can you learn to write from this book?
- Switching from past and present
- Chilling story-telling
- Well developed characters
- Can’t put the book down writing
- How to construct a tension-filled plot
5 Grown Ups By Marian Keyes
(Click the picture for a closer look on Amazon)
Book Blurb
They’re a glamorous family, the Caseys.
Johnny Casey, his two brothers Ed and Liam, their beautiful, talented wives and all their kids spend a lot of time together – birthday parties, anniversary celebrations, weekends away. And they’re a happy family. Johnny’s wife, Jessie – who has the most money – insists on it.
Under the surface, though, conditions are murkier. While some people clash, other people like each other far too much . . .
Everything stays under control until Ed’s wife Cara gets concussion and can’t keep her thoughts to herself. One careless remark at Johnny’s birthday party, with the entire family present, starts Cara spilling out all their secrets.
In the subsequent unravelling, every one of the adults finds themselves wondering if it’s time – finally – to grow up?
Grown Ups is the brand new, sensationally entertaining and laugh out loud novel from Marian Keyes.
What can you learn to write from this book?
- How to write lighthearted amusing books
- Dysfunctional family drama: complex relationship dynamics
- Writing entertaining, powerful, feel-good reading
- With tragic and tear-jerking elements
- Memorable
6 Long Bright River By Liz Moore
(Click the picture for a closer look on Amazon)
Book Blurb
In a Philadelphia neighbourhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vice of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don’t speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.
Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey’s district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit–and her sister–before it’s too late.
Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters’ childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate.
What can you learn to write from this book?
The long Bright River has its readers guided through a gripping suspense story. Through reading this, you’ll come across heart-pounding and heart-wrenching scenes.
By focusing on how Liz Moore:
- Dealt with the weighty subject with tenderness and grace
- Describing inner demons
- Fast-paced book
- Dark and realistic scenes
7 So Lucky By Dawn O’Porter
(Click the picture for a closer look on Amazon)
Book Blurb
IS ANYONE’S LIFE . . .
Beth shows that women really can have it all.
Ruby lives life by her own rules.
And then there’s Lauren, living the dream.
AS PERFECT AS IT LOOKS?
Beth hasn’t had sex in a year.
Ruby feels like she’s failing.
Lauren’s happiness is fake news.
And it just takes one shocking event to make the truth come tumbling out…
Fearless, frank and for everyone who’s ever doubted themselves, So Lucky is the straight-talking new novel from the Sunday Times bestseller.
What can you learn to write from this book?
- Write alternating POV’s
- Conveying a certain portrayal of society
- Empowerment
- Storytelling that grows emotion towards a character which flips 180 degrees
- Realistic and authentic characters
8 King of Ashes(The Firemane Saga, Book 1) By Raymond E. Feist
(Click the picture for a closer look on Amazon)
Book Blurb
The first volume in legendary master and New York Times bestselling author Raymond E. Feist’s epic heroic fantasy series, The Firemane Saga – an electrifying tale of two young men whose choices will determine a world’s destiny.
The world of Garn once boasted five great kingdoms, until the King of Ithrace was defeated and every member of his family executed by Lodavico, the ruthless King of Sandura, a man with ambitions to rule the world.
Ithrace’s ruling family were the legendary Firemanes, and represented a great danger to the other kings. Now four great kingdoms remain, on the brink of war. But rumour has it that the newborn son of the last king of Ithrace survived, carried off during battle and sequestered by the Quelli Nacosti, a secret society whose members are trained to infiltrate and spy upon the rich and powerful throughout Garn. Terrified that this may be true, and that the child will grow to maturity with bloody revenge in his heart, the four kings have placed a huge bounty on the child’s head.
In the small village of Oncon, Declan is apprenticed to a master blacksmith, learning the secrets of producing the mythical king’s steel. Oncon is situated in the Covenant, a neutral region lying between two warring kingdoms. Since the Covenant was declared, the region has existed in peace, until violence explodes as slavers descend upon the village to capture young men to press as soldiers for Sandura.
Declan must escape, to take his priceless knowledge to Baron Daylon Dumarch, ruler of Marquensas, perhaps the only man who can defeat Lodavico of Sandura, who has now allied himself with the fanatical Church of the One, which is marching across the continent, imposing its extreme form of religion upon the population and burning unbelievers as they go.
Meanwhile, on the island of Coaltachin, the secret domain of the Quelli Nacosti, three friends are being schooled in the deadly arts of espionage and assassination: Donte, son of one of the most powerful masters of the order; Hava, a serious girl with fighting abilities that can set any opponent on their back; and Hatu, a strange, conflicted lad in whom fury and calm war constantly, whose hair is a bright and fiery shade of red…
What can you learn to write from this book?
- Worldbuilding
- Rich history
- 5 POV storytelling
- How to create a foundation book (the first book of a series)
- Plot twists
“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.”
— Richard Bach
So, what books have you used as inpiration to write your own story? Let me know in the comments! Until then.