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Write A Blockbuster And Get It Published: Teach Yourself

Write A Blockbuster And Get It Published: Teach Yourself

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When an agent or publisher first begins to read a manuscript, they can tell immediately from the opening sentences whether an author is practised at their craft. This sense of writing self-confidence – where a reader quickly feels that they’re in competent hands, and can just relax and enjoy the journey – is a key element to crafting strong commercial fiction, and something that agents and publishers are constantly on the lookout for. While to some extent this assured feel comes with experience, an author’s handling of exposition also has a lot to do with it: what information do you relate to the reader when?

This is a common problem for new authors. There’s often a perception that you need to tell a reader everything in the first chapter, yet nothing could be further from the truth. Readers are intrigued by mysteries; it’s what makes them turn pages. So instead of thinking that you must relate your characters’ back stories or the inner workings of your world immediately, make a game of holding these things back for as long as possible. Just present your world exactly as your characters live it, keeping in mind that they’ll normally have no reason to discuss or contemplate situations well known to them. Your story’s secrets – even minor ones – are precious possessions. Don’t give them up until you have to.

Crafting your work this way will soon come to be a habit – one which will increase both your own sense of control over your material, and the quality of your work. From the reader’s point of view, the result will be to feel that they’re in the hands of a confident writer: someone who not only has great secrets up their sleeve, but also possesses the craftsmanship to reveal them only when the time is right.

Insights

  • When I worked at a literary agency in London, the only time I had to write was 45 minutes on the train each morning (I was usually too tired to manage it on the return journey). That daily 45 minutes with my novel was my favourite time of day. You can get a surprising amount done in short periods if you’re focused.
  • I purposely don’t have an internet connection on my main writing computer, as email and the internet are my two biggest distractions. I try to be very firm about finishing my writing for the day before I’ll check my email.
  • For years I wrote at the dining table on my laptop, which was so bad for my back that I ended up having to see a physiotherapist. Now I have a proper work station, which has made a huge difference to my writer’s aches and pains. I also have a special keyboard to help with the alleviation of RSI.
  • One of the first novels I wrote was a sprawling 100,000 word fantasy with dozens of different characters and storylines. The result was a confused morass; the reader had no idea what to focus on. It remained unpublished, but was a great learning experience.
  • Story structure took me a long time to learn, and my work remained unpublishable until I mastered it. That’s why I’m so keen on teaching it to others now: I know firsthand the enormous difference it can make to your work to be in control of it structurally.
  • New writers normally know exactly how their stories start and finish: it’s that dreadful mid-section that they struggle with. It’s a common issue, and one that I personally didn’t grasp until I realized the importance of cause and effect in a story. Suddenly I saw exactly where I’d been going wrong for years. My beautifully written narratives were all over the place, with no cohesive, linking thread.
  • It was illuminating when an editor once sat me down and showed me where one of my scenes had gone wrong. I’d effectively written a scene within a scene, beginning one idea, jumping away to another, and then returning to the first. Structurally, it was very wonky. The realization that you should focus on the point at hand was a hugely helpful one.
  • In my series fiction for younger readers, it’s important that I know the magical worlds where they take place intimately. I spend a long time thinking about how these worlds work, taking lots of notes and deciding on the magical ‘rules’. Finally, once I’ve built a world with which I feel wholly familiar and comfortable, I begin to write.
  • Be aware that it can be easy to overdo it when you’ve researched a topic and are feeling excited by it. I once wrote a lock-picking scene (my main character was a thief) which lasted for five pages. The reader was forced to endure every twitch of my character’s fingers as he picked the lock and I showed off my new-found knowledge. It was fairly excruciating. A paragraph would have done.
  • I own dozens of notebooks, and find it fascinating to read back through them and see old story ideas. I have a file on the computer where I keep the ideas that really appeal to me, and I update it periodically.
  • For years I was an ‘instinctive’ writer who never planned, simply throwing new story elements into my text as they occurred to me. This might work for some writers; for me it meant that I rarely finished a draft because they became so muddled that I had no idea what to do with them.
  • When planning a story recently, I realized that the climax felt a bit too easy for the main character. ‘I need a rug-pulling moment,’ I thought. So I added one, and the story became much stronger. Doing rewrites after the fact would have been far more time-consuming.
  • I know a screenwriter who plans all of her screenplays on notecards. She can add new scenes or ideas easily just by scribbling on a fresh notecard, and then later deciding where it fits. By the time she comes to write the screenplay, she may have up to 100 cards, and the story has been thought through in intimate detail.
  • Sometimes problems arise that you could never have foreseen in the planning stage. In my series Pocket Cats – about two-inch tall magical cats – it never occurred to me until I started writing that the tiny scale of the cats wouldn’t really come across unless I placed them next to other very small items, since normal-sized cats aren’t terribly large, either. So now I have to constantly rack my brains to think of new small items to place the cats beside, so that readers can ‘see’ them vividly.
  • In my teenage novel Missing Abby, the opening is simply a girl waking up and getting ready for school. It was necessary for the story to begin there, but I was concerned that readers wouldn’t stay with me for the four pages it took until something happened. So I added a ‘Missing Persons’ police report as a prologue, to signal that there was something much more interesting just around the corner.
  • The opening of mine that I’m most fond of is from my teenage novel Kat Got Your Tongue, about a girl who has amnesia. It opens with Kat being hit by a car, though she isn’t immediately aware that this is what’s happened to her. So there’s a bit of a mystery luring the reader forward, which is always nice.
  • One of my favourite openings is from Stephen Lawhead’s historical novel Byzantium: ‘ I saw Byzantium in a dream, and knew that I would die there.’ The simple, poetic power of this line sent chills through me; it would have been impossible for me not to read on. (The rest of the book was good, too!)
  • At this stage in my career, I probably rewrite my openings more than anything else. I tend to either start too early, or not early enough. Either is easily fixed, but sometimes you can’t spot that your opening isn’t right until you actually finish the story. So don’t get too hung up on finding the perfect opening straight away – you can always go back and change it later, once you know more about your story’s characters and themes.
  • When I’m writing I’m always right there with my characters, feeling the emotions as strongly as they do. When they succeed, I punch the air; when things go wrong I can feel my eyes start welling up. Though this may sound mad, it’s essential. If a sorrowful scene doesn’t make me cry, then I can’t expect it to have that effect on a reader.
  • Students are sometimes surprised at the idea that you should think carefully about every single word in your manuscript, but I mean exactly that. I’m often reminded of an image from the children’s classic Harriet the Spy: a character named Harrison Withers, who makes elaborate birdcages, will very carefully move a single wire, sit and gaze thoughtfully at it for a long time, and then just as lovingly move it back again. This is me as I fine-tune my writing, playing with different words and changing them over and over until I’m finally satisfied.
  • It was a revelation to me that you could show a character’s thoughts when writing in third person, rather like Hitchcock’s film technique of moving the camera right through walls. Suddenly a whole new world opened up as I played with stretching the boundaries of third person and using the character’s internal voice.
  • Learning to ‘show, not tell’ was a process that took me years. I had to go through a period of being extremely vigilant about it before I really started to make strides. It paid off: now writing in a ‘showing’ way is second nature to me, so that unless I’m writing very young fiction (which tends to use a mix of telling and showing), I just do it automatically.
  • I was really excited when I first realized that you could use character action as a tag line, and do without ‘he said, she said’ altogether. For a year or so afterwards, I was probably quite a pain in my writers’ group, amending everyone’s manuscripts that I read accordingly. But it was like a shiny new toy, and I was having great fun playing with it.
  • When I was first published I used italics much more frequently than I do now. They’re a bit of a crutch; you have to be confident that your dialogue is strong enough so that readers will supply the needed emphasis themselves, without your sprinkling italics like confetti all across the page. I use far fewer now, and think my writing is stronger for it.
  • As an American living and writing in the UK, I’m constantly aware of the fact that my use of English is different from that of someone brought up in the UK. It’s important to get it right; nothing jars a reader out of a story faster than a word that sounds unnatural to them.
  • I started to really get a handle on when I should trim my characters’ dialogue at about the same time that I began to grasp story structure. The two go hand in hand. When you start thinking structurally about your work it will become much easier to spot where the flab is.
  • Sometimes when I want my characters to say something, they simply refuse. Pay attention to them when this happens; there’s undoubtedly a reason why they’re holding back. Whenever it’s happened to me, I’ve realized later that my characters knew best, and that I was trying to get information out too quickly, or in the wrong way.
  • Sometimes I hear new writers say proudly that they can write 3,000 words an hour, or something similarly amazing. But writing this quickly almost certainly means that you’re only skimming the surface of your characters and events. To put it bluntly, if you find writing easy and effortless, then you’re not doing it right.
  • It can be a challenge to write emotionally difficult scenes, because to do them well you have to feel what your characters are feeling. Don’t shy away from this, as uncomfortable as it may be. It’s what makes gripping fiction.
  • I struggled for years with overwriting. It’s a process: you have to move away from loving every word you write and not being able to cut anything, to viewing your work as an entire entity which can be improved by trimming. Once I started to get a sense of how much better my work was when freed of redundancies and needless information, it became exciting to cut things rather than painful.
  • A scene in one of my early novels had the main character walking from one location to another. It took him seven pages, and nothing happened except that we saw the city around him and heard a lot of angst-ridden internal voice. The realization that I could write in a more filmic way improved my work immensely.
  • Try this - Once you’ve written a few chapters of your blockbuster, read through it and find the point of tension in each of your scenes. Write a sentence noting it, along with the purpose of each scene. Keeping this in mind, look at your scenes again. Is there anything in them that has nothing to do with the scene’s purpose? For instance, is there too much information about the weather, or a passage showing a character waking up and getting dressed, or a few lines of dialogue you could do without? Trim your scenes down as much as possible. Be completely heartless with yourself as you do so. See how late you can enter your scenes and how early you can leave them, while still giving us needed character and story information.
  • I recall taking one particular scene out of an early novel which literally brought tears to my eyes to see it go. But no one reading the novel afterwards noticed the scene was missing, or even remembered it. It had been wholly self-indulgent, and forgettable to everyone but me.
  • In my novel Breakfast at Sadie’s, the main character feels driven to cheat at school because of her mother’s high expectations. When writing the third draft, I decided to cut the scenes leading up to this, and simply began the story with her already cheating. My editor rang me up, horrified: I had killed any sympathy that readers might have for Sadie. She was right, and the early scenes went back in. I had made such a blunder because as the author, I knew Sadie’s situation so intimately that I read the book totally differently from someone who did not.
  • It can be difficult for even experienced authors to listen to criticisms of their work. My husband is often my first reader and can be too honest for his own good, considering he has to live with me. I’ve been known to get very stroppy with him (though of course I’m always professional when dealing with editors!)
  • Sometimes it can be hard to see where the problem area really lies. I recently co-wrote a story with a friend, and there was a particular scene that neither of us was sure about. But it turned out that it was actually the preceding scene that was the problem. Once we tweaked that, the scene in question fit just fine.
  • It took time for me to reach this stage, but now I love editing my work almost more than I love writing it. There’s something intensely satisfying about seeing your manuscript improve with every draft.
  • One particular novel of mine – which had a publishing deal but in the end was never published – went through 16 drafts, over a period of almost four years. One of the main problems was that I was trying to make structural changes while keeping certain darlings intact, which was hopeless. If I’d had the courage to simply throw out the original manuscript and start again fresh, I might have got somewhere with it. Now I would do so without hesitation – and have, several times since.
  • A good agent can progress a writer’s career significantly.
  • A small agency can be just as powerful, with all the necessary contacts, as a larger agency.
  • The key to getting your material on to an agent’s desk is to personalize your submission.
  • I often see synopses that are in fact part blurb. A clear synopsis shouldn’t leave the reader guessing, especially the ending.
  • It’s tempting to rush out your submission but take care, you only have one chance to impress.
  • When you meet an agent you will sense if they’re excited about your work. If they’re lukewarm and sitting on the fence, then they’re probably not the one for you.
  • A common complaint from agents is when an author’s neglected to tell them they’ve been signed up by someone else, especially if the agent’s spent significant time on the manuscript.
  • Your agent should take the stress out of contracts and the publishing process so that you can apply your energies to your writing.
  • When meeting an agent conversation should flow but take some questions with you, along with a notepad so you can jot down ideas.
  • If you’re unhappy with your agent don’t rush into a decision, but if you’re certain that you’ve reached an impasse then it’s probably best to move on.
  • Getting an editor to read your manuscript is just the first step in the commissioning process.
  • With submissions, sometimes a publisher will request revisions to the manuscript before making a decision.
  • Authors don’t always opt for the highest advance. Sometimes it feels more important to really click with an editor, or else you might like the sound of a particular publisher’s marketing ideas. Look at all your options before making a decision.
  • If you’re unsure whether you can incorporate the changes suggested by your editor(s), have the confidence to brainstorm these with them.
  • After all your hard work you deserve to have a launch party! One of my authors, Harriet Goodwin, had two launches in two bookshops. She made record sales and got trade publicity as a result.
  • Alternative publishing is becoming increasingly accessible and popular.
  • Don’t fall for flattery. If the publisher waxes lyrical about your manuscript and then asks for thousands of pounds, treat them with caution.
  • Having settled on a publisher always study your contract, and don’t forget that the Society of Authors can advise you.
  • I often hear authors say that self-publishing is not really ‘being published’ as in traditional publishing, but if it suits your book and makes monetary sense, then why not go down that route?
  • If you’re stuck, try standing up and giving yourself a really good all-over shake – legs, arms, bum, everything! It sounds mad, but I’ve found it’s a great way to un-stick yourself and get the writing energy flowing again.
  • I get twitchy if I realize I don’t have a notebook with me. I’ve been known to scribble down story ideas on beer mats in pubs, the backs of envelopes, even my hand – anything to ensure that they don’t get away from me.
  • I didn’t start to make real progress until I made a conscious decision to stop telling people I was trying to write a novel. It took the pressure off, and let me rediscover the joy of writing for its own sake.
  • It was a real watershed moment for me when I read a writing book that recommended you think about how your characters dress. I had never really thought about it before, which meant that my characters weren’t coming fully to life on the page because I myself wasn’t seeing them clearly.
  • It can be quite an odd experience when characters start doing and saying things you didn’t expect. Just recently, a character in one of my children’s books started strutting about, talking about how he had ‘trod the boards’ in his time and acted with Beerbohm Tree. ‘What?’ I thought. ‘You did not!’ But he was most insistent, and it turned out to be perfect for that character.
  • Story can easily grow from character, and often does. I sometimes run a writing workshop where the students and I invent a main character together, deciding on age, personality, family situation, and so on. Once you know everything about a character’s basic circumstances, conflicts and tensions begin to naturally present themselves. Before you know it, you’ve got a whole story planned.
  • When I’m writing contemporary fiction it almost always tends to be first person, while my fantasy tends to be third. I’m not sure why this is; I just allow the story itself to ‘tell’ me what voice it should be in.
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