50 Shades of ....

...interest? Intrigue? Sex? Love? Passion? Desire? Grey?

Ever wished that you had thought of the idea and created these self-published novels that became such a money maker, there isn't many who have not heard of the exploits of Christian Gray. So where do writers get their ideas, how do they create characters that grab the buying market.

Well, nothing that hits the literary fiction world hasn't been seen before. A good story writer draws you in, but these novels had less pull due to the poor grammer, yet there was something, maybe it was because you had read it before.

Oscar Wilde must have been jumping up and down, his only novel taken, disected and re-written in the modern day. The novel itself was criticised for the Twilight connection, but that isn't the root of this trilogy. Christian Grey is Dorian Gray, taken, tidied, and then tamed. The twist of the Gray who was anything but christian, the similarities are crude but outstanding, the control, the beatings from the past, the physical and mental scars. The need for sex that become more violent and then the love to slow his descent into a lonely macarbe world.

So although Ms James is clearly not the greatest novelist of our time in descriptive terms but you do have to admire her creativity, she has certainly made a quick buck and so have all those who have taken her novel, created a film and are waiting at the bank with their hands outstretched.  I wonder which will be next, Cashel Byron reworked? After all Oliver Mellors is too recent for copyright.

The idea of a sexy exciting character is always good, after all sex sells, have you ever picked up a book where the first few lines grab you, a must of course for fiction.  The heroine gasping for air as her finger tips scratch at the silky sheets and she feels the breath on her skin of her secret lover as his lips slowly caress her skin, only to never read one steamy session throughout the book, because before you have settled comfortably in the chair the book has raced on to whatever story it is that the author really wanted to write.

Of course, publishing and writing has always been a difficult arena, and who you know accounts for many piles of print runs in second hand shops, what you know comes in second, but who you can draw in, as 50 shades shows, is crucial when it comes to be recognised and wealthy.

A good author smiles at their book in whatever format, even those scribbled draft pages and piles of post it notes and sees art in what they do. A reader turning the last page and wanting more is the success.