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They say that everybody has at least one book idea in them. Unfortunately, people also have about a thousand ideas that should be movies, television shows, magazine articles, blogs, short stories, plays and journal entries. One major part of writing a good book is making sure that your idea actually belongs in book form.
Size Matters
For books, size does matter, and while you can have books anywhere from 50 pages to 1,500, you generally want to be somewhere in the 128-256 page range, especially for a first book. It’s not all about how many words you can cram onto sheets of paper or a scrolling computer screen, however–it has to do with scope. For an idea to be a book idea, it has to be complete and self-contained and possess depth. For instance, “How to change a tire on a 2006 Honda Civic” is self-contained, but not necessarily deep enough to be a book. “How to start to change a tire on a car” is probably not complete enough to be a book idea. “Care and maintenance of Honda sedans from model year 2000 to 2008″ very well might make a good book.
Fiction
There are a few things you should be looking for when evaluating a fiction idea as a potential novel. First off, your idea needs to be complex and compelling enough to hold a reader’s attention through a couple hundred pages. This usually means plenty of subplots, twists, turns and surprises. There should also be a strong central character or characters. If your idea is light in any of these areas, a shorter form may be appropriate–perhaps a short story or novella. If your story seems more visual, it might work as a novel, but it might be better as a screenplay. Similarly, if your story relies heavily on dialog, it may work as a novel, but it might play better on the stage,
Non-Fiction
An idea for a non-fiction book or article can be a bit more difficult to evaluate. If you’re really passionate about pencils, the story of how the “No. 2 pencil” came to be numbered two instead of one or four may look like a potential multi-volume bestseller, but to everyone else it’s a two paragraph blog. It helps to be an expert on your subject–someone who is just an an enthusiast or a good researcher can write an article, but they would find it hard to come up with enough to keep people reading page after page. It also helps if your subject either has a lot of sub-topics or tangentially-related subjects that you can branch into for a chapter or two. All of these things help to achieve the depth you need for a book. As a basic rule, if it will really take you 75 pages or more to say all that a reader would reasonably want to know about a subject, you’ve got a book idea.
While there are many types of writing out there, a book is a very special challenge. Only by evaluating their idea carefully and honestly and making sure that they have enough knowledge, information and story to carry a reader through many, many pages can a writer be sure that they’ve really got a potential book on their hands.