Building a Platform - Day 2

Day #2


What makes you so special? Okay, you have taken inventory of yourself. You know what you want to write, maybe even what you like to read, and you have some special skills that give you credibility and perhaps an audience down the line. So what makes you different from every other author out there?

Say you like mysteries with a food theme: chef/sleuth, caterer/sleuth, food critic/sleuth. There are other books out there with those characters. Jerilynn Farmer (Perfect Sax) writes a mystery series about a caterer who gets caught up in crime. Mysteries are notorious for having food-related themes. Amateur sleuths are constantly eating in their books. (They should all be fifty pounds overweight.) What makes your Ginsu knife-wielding sleuth more interesting than the others?

Knowing the answer to this can be the biggest selling point for your work.

When an agent says, “Yeah, you write well, but there are a hundred chef/sleuths out there.” What are you going to tell him or her that makes your guy or gal sleuth unique? If you are Oprah’s personal chef, boy do you have an in. If you cooked twenty years in the army, you just might have an edge. If your sleuth is a Martian with the best quiche recipe in the Solar System…You get the idea.

So, what makes your sleuth different? Have that answer at your fingertips before you submit your first manuscript. And consider using the same technique screenwriters use to sell a script: the high concept idea. Have a short, pithy term to describe your main character. Maybe you have a blind chef, or a wisecracking Yenta chef, or a bi-polar chef. Make it memorable and you just might have a winner.

My series character, Gin Caulfield, a former private detective who gets back in the business, is a middle-aged woman. Her catch phrase: Still Packing Heat. I have a 12 x 17 in magnetic sign on my car with Gin Caulfield Mysteries/Still Packing Heat in red and black letters with a picture of a pair of red high heels on it. I am a driving bulletin board. People stop me and ask about the sign. It’s (almost) free advertising.