The Best Seller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel by Jodie Archer and Matthew L. Jockers (c 2016)

Fascinating book and not what you might think. I saw it on Book TV I think and was interested because it is not some cheesy How To writers guide, but actually is about CODING: As in computer algorithms and natural language processing.

This book presents the findings of numerous algorithms the authors ran analyzing all aspects of novels: style, character, plot and more. The really amazing and surprising bits were some of the details that made a difference, including the use of “very” (bad) versus “really” (best). Even the use of “the” and “of” can be a definitive difference between bestseller and bust.

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