Want your novel to succeed? Make it more complex
Members of the computer science department at Stony Brook University in New York say their computer model can determine whether a novel will be successful. Some of their findings were surprising.
Members of the computer science department at Stony Brook University in New York say their computer model can determine whether a novel will be successful. Some of their findings were surprising.
Can researchers predict whether a novel will be successful?
Researchers Vikas Ganjigunt, Ashok Song, and Feng Yejin Choi, all members of Stony Brook University鈥檚 Department of Computer Science in New York, say they have created a computer model that can determine how well a novel will do. The study focused on both critical and financial success, using examples including the 鈥淗arry Potter鈥� series and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel 鈥淭inkers鈥� as models of successful books.
The researchers used the number of times a novel was downloaded on Project Gutenberg as well as awards data and Amazon sales information to help set parameters for "success."
According to the results of this study, the key to writing a successful novel is found in the book's language.
鈥淭hinking verbs,鈥� such as 鈥渃onsider鈥� or 鈥渞emember,鈥� make a book more successful than action verbs like 鈥渞un鈥� and 鈥渂link,鈥� say Ganjigunt, Song, and Choi.
鈥淭here exists distinct linguistic patterns shared among successful literature, at least within the same genre, making it possible to build a model with surprisingly high accuracy (up to 84%) in predicting the success of a novel,鈥� they write.
Interestingly, one conclusion Ganjigunt, Song, and Choi arrived at is that what the researchers defined as 鈥渞eadability鈥� has an inverse effect on the novel鈥檚 success, writing, 鈥淟ess successful novels have higher readability compared to more successful ones.鈥�
Why would that be so?
鈥淲e conjecture that the conceptual complexity of highly successful literary work might require syntactic complexity that goes against readability,鈥� they write.
It would be interesting to seek out exceptions to the model proposed by Ganjigunt, Song, and Choi. For instance, how many complex and unreadable novels are critical and financial failures? Plenty, would be our guess.聽