Chicklit? Predictable? Hell, yeah!

How do you like your eggs in the morning?
Fried, scrambled, boiled, poached?
There are so many ways.

How do you like your chicklit?
Predictable.
There is only one way.

Those who devour chicklit like to know what they're going to get - a light, frothy read that takes them on the heroine's journey until she has her man/kiss/ring/epiphany.

It's really very simple.  A chicklit reader will know (sometimes from Chapter One - and I have to say, in some books I've read, Page One) who the main character will end up walking into the sunset with but they want to know how she gets there.  They don't want plague, murders, famine and mass outbreaks of smallpox.  They want humour, trials, tribulations and tittilations until they reach that magic swoon.

Pick up any successful chicklit author's work and there will always be one thing that runs through them like a stick of rock - the happy ending that the reader nailed fairly early on in the read, laced with the thrill of wondering how it will happen.

If we took our reader on so many twists and turns with various men who our heroine might end up with and then threw in a curve ball at the end, we wouldn't be trusted and she'd be called a slut.

If we wrote the final chapter awash with misery and despair we shouldn't be writing chicklit.

People can be as snooty and snobby as they like but women love to cosy up with a read that will deliver - the Mansells and Kinsellas of this world are proof of that.

So to sum up ...

How do I like my eggs?
Poached.

How do I like my chicklit?
Predictable - but with humour and surprises along the way.

Otherwise, I'd opt for Dostoyevsky.  Or a self help book.