I’m writing a book for a company that publishes a line of trivia books under the “Most Wanted” name – Baseball’s Most Wanted, Boxing’s Most Wanted, Country Music’s Most Wanted. The series started out as sports only but has branched out to entertainment (also Rock and Roll, Hollywood, TV), and now locations (Chicago, Ireland, San Fran).
The format of the book is a series of top-ten lists, but not like Letterman. Each entry fits into the category and has a paragraph or two of explanation behind it. Top ten World Series pitching performances. Ten boxers who were also musicians. Ten country music tequila songs. Stuff like that.
The books are 45-60K words, between 40-60 lists in each book. A thousand words for each list on average, maybe a little more. My main concerns are coming up with enough lists that would have ten entries in them, and then filling out those lists
Right now I have 46 potential lists, but haven’t fleshed out all ten entries in each list and there are some that may be questionable if I’ll be able to. I’ve written 17 or so lists, about 23K words already, so I’m on a good pace if I can flesh out most of the rest of the lists with enough entries and come up with more lists as well. At the pace I’m on I won’t need all the below lists, but it’s a lot easier to have LOTS of lists to choose which ones to use from.
I was hoping to get some feedback and even ideas from people here. My first question would be – what lists do you think would work in such a book? I’ve listed the basic lists below, with an asterisk on the ones I’ve written already and a # next to lists I’m struggling to find information on or enough entries for. I’m looking for either more lists where I can get ten entries, or specific entries to help fill out the lists with a #. The series is kind of light-hearted, so weird and offbeat lists are more than welcome. They just have to be things I can write a paragraph or two on each entrie. Let me know what you think! Oh, and yes I’d mention The SDMB in the acknowledgments. lol.
Christmas’s Most Wanted
1 Famous Reindeer*
2 Names for Santa
3 Songs that don’t say “Christmas”
4 Colorful songs
5 Classic cartoons*
6 People Born on Christmas*
7 Not-so-classic Christmas cartoons*
8 A very special Blossom (TV shows with a “special” Christmas episode)
9 Pop Christmas
10 Classic Christmas songs
11 Classic Christmas Movies*
12 Versions of A Christmas Carol *
13 Christmas Comedy movies*
14 Bad Christmas Movies*
15 Christmas traditions in the US
16 Christmas traditions around the world #
17 Wacky Christmas events
18 Christmas bad guys
19 Why Do We … ? (explanations of why we do certain things like we do)*
20 Christmas Tree*
21 Other things to celebrate*
22 Offbeat Classic Cartoon songs
23 Historical events on Christmas*
24 Bad Christmas Songs
25 Christmas Firsts*
26 Christmas museums
27 Christmas humor songs
28 Separating Church and State
29 Geographic Christmas (places named after Christmas)
30 Hello Neighbor! (things you’d see at the North Pole) #
31 Christmas Fads/Hot toys #
32 Other Famous Elves
33 Christmas Albums - Rock
34 Christmas Albums - Country
35 Christmas Albums - weird/unexpected
36 Who Were They?
37 Reindeer Facts*
38 Christmas Food *
39 People who died on Christmas*
40 Christmas Drinks #
41 Sports on Christmas #
42 Christmas in war
43 Memorable SNL holiday skits #
44 Cost/places to buy 12 days of Christmas items
45 Best secondary Christmas cartoon characters*
46 Best secondary Christmas live movie characters (eg, Carol Kane in Scrooged, the bully in A Christmas Story – people who weren’t the stars, but made an impression in the movie) #