Book topic – Tips for finding a topic for a book
Are you eager to write your own book and want to move and inspire others with your story? Maybe it’s your first big writing project and you’re already itching to get started, but you’re not quite sure what to write about? Don’t put pressure on yourself, everyone starts small!
In this article, you’ll learn how to find an exciting topic for your story and how to do really good research. Enjoy reading! 🌞
Searching for topics inside and outside yourself
Similar to inspiration and ideas, a book topic often comes to you. You can often find good topics for your book inside and outside your life. Internal topics are, for example, topics that touch and move you deeply. These are topics that you have dealt with in your past or present and that you think could be very helpful to others if you write about them and explain them. You may feel a strong emotional connection to internal topics.
External topics are, for example, socially relevant topics that are either current or have played a major role in the past. They could also be topics that do not affect the whole world, but rather a group of people or a specific person in your environment.
Tip: Find the perfect book topic with mindfulness
When searching for a topic, you should not put pressure on yourself, because this will only block you and make it more difficult to find a topic. Instead, it is highly recommended to go through the day with mindfulness. Pay attention to your surroundings, your feelings, different stories and songs that fascinate and accompany you, be creative and simply go out into nature or to places that give you strength. Good conversations with friends or simply letting your thoughts wander can often work wonders when you are looking for ideas for your topic. 🌼
Research to really delve deep into a book topic
Once you have found a book topic that you are convinced you can turn into a great story, the next step is to conduct detailed research and explore the topic in greater depth or specialise in it.
Research also has the advantage of lending credibility to your writing. Depending on the setting and time period in which your story is set, there are terms, objects or sayings that are appropriate and fit the theme, and others that seem ‘old-fashioned’ and out of place.
If your topic is set in the past, for example in the 1990s, research will help you to better understand that era and empathise with what shaped the culture at that time, what people were like, what youth cultures, styles and political movements shaped society, and much more. To record all your findings and ideas, you can simply note them down in a kind of project book for your writing project. This way, you always have everything important at your fingertips.
Tip: Don’t get lost in your research
Research can be very time-consuming because new input constantly leads to further information. This can quickly create a spiral effect, and you can get lost in all the information and end up researching and researching and researching without making any progress on your book project. This tip is about conducting research in a targeted manner. It is best to set aside a period of time that you will use exclusively for your research, or plan small sections during the writing process that you will use for research.
How to captivate readers with your book’s theme
The art of writing lies in guiding readers towards a theme without them directly noticing. When writing, you can make sure to incorporate the theme in such a way that readers have enough space to draw their own conclusions. If the book’s theme takes over the narrative flow and your characters do not develop freely, but rather according to the theme, readers will quickly feel like they are being lectured. Readers want to form their own opinions.
Tip: Put yourself in your readers’ shoes
At this point, it can be very helpful to put yourself in your target audience’s shoes while you are writing. Ask yourself how your readers would or should react to certain plot developments in your stories. What do they think and feel when reading your story? How do they understand the topic?
Clearly, as a beginner writer and author, you write because you want to share something with the world. Your own views and ways of thinking play a major role in this, and you want to realise and identify with your work.
But you also want to reach your target audience in a positive way and make them identify with your story. Keeping your ideal readers in mind also has the great advantage of keeping you motivated and sticking with your writing project, because you are not only writing for yourself, but also for your readers.
Levels of access in literature
A literary theme is often divided into three levels of access, a scheme from which you can also compose your theme in order to work it out in depth.
The first level consists of the two fundamental human themes of love and death (life instinct and death instinct). The life instinct aims to preserve the species and the self, to ensure the survival and reproduction of humans. Cohesion, union and love play a decisive role in this. The goal of the death instinct is to dissolve this cohesion and sever bonds. Perhaps you have noticed this yourself: in almost every story, whether in a book or a film, love or death resonate.
The second level is referred to as a specific manifestation of the two primal themes. This refers to human emotions and dramas such as separation, betrayal, fear, freedom, courage, etc. Above this level is another level, which in turn contains even more specific themes. This level is part of the setting. Themes at this level could be political or social issues such as environmental protection, the Second World War, the hippie movement, digitalisation, etc.
Tip: Create a topic from the access levels
To find a purely structured book theme, you can simply choose from all three levels and create your theme from them. You can, but you don’t have to! Because you have free choice, nothing is right or wrong when it comes to the theme of a story. As long as you package it in an exciting way, guide the readers through a narrative pattern and fill your story with interesting plots and characters, almost any theme can be a success.
Find the heartbeat of your story
If you have found a topic and are immediately fired up to put it into writing, then this is already a small sign that you have developed a passion for this book topic. Your heart beats for this idea! Now you can get started and jot down your initial ideas, which you can later use to write a plot or create your novel characters.
As with so many things in life, listening to your gut feeling and following your interests and passions will benefit you as an author and, above all, your story.
In the genre sector in particular, new trends on certain book topics are constantly emerging. Within a few months, numerous similar books on this topic appear on the market. One example of this is Stephenie Meyer’s ‘Twilight’ series. After her first book was so successful, more and more vampire and werewolf stories emerged.
When the book market is saturated with such a proliferation of trendy stories, authors face both opportunities and risks in presenting their topics. Timing often plays a major role in this. And no matter how good a book you may have written, if the topic does not fit the publisher’s programme, the story will be rejected. Authors have little influence over this. All the more reason not to be discouraged and to simply write your story on your chosen topic!
Questions that will help you
I highly recommend that you answer the following questions for yourself. Feel free to write down the answers so that you can refer to them at any time during the implementation of your book project and remind yourself of important thoughts and ideas. That way, they won’t get lost.
- What would you like to write about?
- Would you like to write about internal or external topics or processes?
- Which periods in your life were special and shaped you? Did any major changes take place during this time?
- Where does the heart of your story lie? Do you have an inner drive?
- Is your chosen topic new, unusual or rather general?
- Are there already stories on this topic?
A topic needs to be well thought out and developed in order to convince and inspire readers with a story! The book’s topic is the cornerstone of a story and runs like a thread through all its pages. Writing a book on a topic you have chosen yourself, one that excites and interests you, is an absolute must! This is because your research and the entire framework of your story are built on it. The more you agree with your topic, the more stable this framework will be and the more enjoyment you will have during the writing process. Let your intuition run free and get started! 🌞
