How to win the Booker Prize

[Hopscotch]

Just in case you missed the inside scoop:

How to win the Booker prize: is there a formula for ‘the finest in fiction’?
The Conversation   Oct 14, 2022

“…the Booker prize aims to spotlight 'the finest in fiction'. What, though, does this actually mean? Using the power of the mean average (and with a little help from Excel), I’ve turned this soundbite into some cold, hard stats. Based upon each winner since the turn of the millennium, here is a snapshot of the average Booker winner.…The average book [is a] 408-page hardback of 581 grams (that’s equivalent to a large sweet potato)...[that] incorporates multiple viewpoints, many of them unexpected: think the recently deceased, or a herd of grazing cattle. It is sparse on punctuation, and heavy on political satire. Colonialism and its after effects are major topics of interest. Oh, and it’s got a nice mid-blue front cover, too.  The average author [is] White, British, male, and aged 51 years and 6 months….They’re also a Gemini – since 2000, those born under the sign of the twins have won twice as often as chance would predict. Must be written in the stars….”

https://theconversation.com/how-to-win-the-booker-prize-is-there-a-formula-for-the-finest-in-fiction-191528

No hope for me, then, I suppose.  You?

[Bill Hiatt]

As with most literary prizes, I think one has to be trad published to be considered, so I never thought I would be in the running. But it doesn't sound as if my work is really on target for that, anyway.

[LBL]

My book's the equivalent of an avocado, and I'm a Pisces... so I guess I'm out. 

[littleauthor]

I could totally knock out a book from the POV of grazing cattle. But I'm not British.

[LilyBLily]

I very much enjoyed Hilary Mantel's first two on Thomas Cromwell, and she won the prize for both Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. (Haven't read the third, and am sorry she is no longer with us to write something else.) She did fit much of the Booker description, though, except for being a female.

I don't entirely believe in a hard separation of genre from literary fiction. Wolf Hall could easily be described as historical fiction, which used to be a major genre--albeit, a mainstream major genre. When a strictly genre writer gets really successful, bookstores take them off the genre shelves and put them with the literary and mainstream fiction. I've seen it happen with all genres.

However, I have zero aspirations to be mainstream or literary. My characters have substantial vocabularies but are otherwise down to earth. I don't let them quote W.H. Auden--or Byron for that matter.