Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book is being touted as the latest, greatest thing by lots of influencers in the indie author socialsphere. Thus, I had high hopes that it would offer something new and useful to genre fiction authors. Taylor's contention is that "universal fantasy" is the secret sauce in best-selling genre fiction. She spends several chapters building the reader's expectations by promoting this premise as if it's a new, revolutionary concept that will turn any author's work into the next chart-topping bestseller. Yet, after reading this book, I can honestly say that I found nothing new or revolutionary within these 167 pages. The author claims that "universal fantasies" aren't tropes, but then she lists trope after trope after trope in an attempt to support her central premise (and I guarantee, every single "universal fantasy" she lists can be found on tvtropes.org). Additionally, her central thesis remains decidedly fuzzy throughout the book, as she never actually presents the reader with a clear definition for the term "universal fantasy." "Universal fantasy is why readers feel things when they read my books" is about as close as she gets to a definition. That's what's known as "emotional connection," and it takes a lot more than a few tropes to engender that in the reader. Emotional connection comes from clever writing, believable dialogue, set ups, oscillating intensity, timing, characterization, and more. To get readers to invest in your characters and stories, you need a heck of a lot more than just "opposites attract" or "friends to lovers" or "poor girl/boy gets swept off her feet by rich girl/boy" to achieve that. And of course, readers identify with tropes because tropes define genre fiction. But tropes only provide familiar touchstones within stories for readers to identify with; they don't create emotional connection in and of themselves. I'm sure that Taylor is a talented fiction author who is more than able to craft compelling fiction that pleases her readers and keeps them coming back for more. However, after finishing "7 Figure Fiction" I'm just not convinced that she actually understands why some of her books hit the top of the Amazon charts (she even admits as much in the first few chapters of the book). Nor am I persuaded that she's able to teach principles of crafting "7 Figure Fiction" to other authors. Unless you're a romance author who isn't aware of or who doesn't understand common tropes in your genre and subgenre, I'd skip this book. Your time would be better spent with books like "The Emotional Craft of Fiction" by Donald Maass, "Romance Tropes and Hooks" by Karen Winter, and "Writing Love" by Alexandra Sokoloff, each of which offer a much more cogent and complete treatment of this topic.