Our Articles

Oh my golly and oh my gosh, there are many ways to build a book.

The purpose of our Build Your Book Month hasn’t really been to guide you in The One True Path. Plotting isn’t like that. There are plenty of variant approaches and they all work. That is: they all work for some authors and some types of book. You just need to find the approach that fits you.

For what it’s worth, I don’t believe that any single approach has all the answers:

• The Three Act Structure: I don’t think this even describes screenwriting structures all that reliably. I don’t think that it even describes the films – like Chinatown – that supposedly act as exemplars of how the system works.
• The Hero’s Journey. Works fine for some stories – Star Wars is the obvious one – but it’s plainly a stupid structure for something like a detective novel. I’d say this structure feels niche rather than central.
• The Rise of the Twist. Thrillers these days brand themselves as twisty in the same way as chick list used to cover itself in squirly pastel fonts. But can you write a decent thriller without its being particularly twisty? Yes, of course, you can. Twist if you want to. Don’t if you don’t.
• Snowflakery. This is a good solid approach, where you start with a very brief – 1 sentence summary of your plot – and then expand and expand from there. That’s a tool so loose that it can’t really go wrong … except that the original snowflake method was vastly more prescriptive about just how that process of expansion should take place.

So what do I think really matters? What do I do?

Well, I do think that you need a basic concept that works. I call this an elevator pitch: not some pretty slogan to put on Twitter or the front of a book, but the basic DNA of your story. “Girl + romance + werewolf” – that’ll do.

I’ve talked about this plenty before. The first lesson of our Good To Great course talks about the concept in detail. You already have access if you’re a Premium Member, but if you’re not you can still get the lesson as a free taster session here. If you’re not feeling really solid about that elevator pitch idea and why it’s so central to everything you do thereafter, then you should take 40 minutes to work through that lesson. There are lots of writery things you can skip, but don’t skip that.

After that, I do think that you need to understand your central character(s). What are they about? Who are they?

It’s hard to explain the kind of knowledge that you need there. It’s easy to develop the kind of character-narratives that give you a hero like Mission Impossible’s Ethan Hunt. Yes, there’s backstory. Yes, there are details briskly suggestive of personality. But really? Ethan Hunt feels like a blank into which you can conveniently pop the biggest movie star of his generation.

A good character is not a convenient blank. The best characters never are. One of the reasons why Friends was such a success was that it never, ever, ever, ever deflected from character. Maybe there was a good punchline to be had, a great joke to be made … but if that joke required that Joey was astute, or Monica was relaxed, or Phoebe was a corporate drone, the screenwriters would never take the joke. The character shape was iron. The show worked everything out from there.

And then I think you need a shape.

You need to be able to see a story arc in its broadest terms.

The clearest example I can offer there has to do with the Deepest Grave. I knew I wanted to write about fake antiquities and a hunt (in modern Britain) for Arthurian relics. I had confidence in an elevator pitch which was basically:

Murder story + antiquity fraud + Arthurian relics.

The initiating murder was easy enough: I chose to behead an archaeologist, but any number of routes would have been fine.

The underlying crime was easy enough to construct as well. My baddies needed to create a credible Arthurian relic with enough clues suggesting an authentic provenance so that when they “found” and stole the relic, it would be considered authentic enough to be extremely valuable. Again: plenty of ways to do all that.

But all that felt a big girl-meets-boy in terms of story structure. There was a necessary complication missing. So with girl-meets-boy, we’re waiting for, “And boy is a vampire!”. Or, “And boy is dying!” Or, “But one is a Montagu and the other is a Capulet!”

In effect, that complication takes a standard story structure and throws it in a new and unexpected direction.

What was my complication? I didn’t have it. I couldn’t start writing the book until I did.

And then – bingo. My complication was, “Fiona makes a fake Arthurian relic of her own.” That made perfect plot sense. (She could draw the baddies to her, as they’d have to take her relic off the market before they could sell their own.) But better than that, it added the perfect ingredient thematically: if the novel was about fakery, then faking a fake was perfect. And this is Fiona! She’s not a character who wants to approach things normal police-style ever. So faking a relic was the perfect (utterly unanticipated but totally logical) step to take.

It also gave the whole novel that sense of a fold – a mid-book inversion of everything the reader expected.

Because this is a crime novel, I don’t have to think very long or hard about my denouement. My books open with a crime and they end with a solution … after a pretty serious crisis of some kind, naturally.

And that’s it. That’s all that I need before I start writing. A pitch. A character. A sense of the basic shape of the story, together with some mid-book complication. All that and a (for me, nice and easy) denouement.

If I have those things, I know that the book I’m writing will be basically marketable. That is: if I don’t mess up the execution, I’ll have a novel that people want to read (good pitch) and will satisfy once read (shape, complication, denouement.)

I’m not saying that this is the way YOU have to proceed. Our final Build Your Book Month session was delivered on Wednesday by my colleague (and bestselling author), Becca Day. She gave a really useful range of plotting approaches: a kind of sushi conveyor, where you pick off the tools that work best for you.

But, if you want to know my choices from that sushi belt? Well, it’s loose plotting, in Becca’s scheme. Tight enough to be marketable. Loose enough to be free.

For those of you who stuck with us through Build Your Book Month: I hope you loved it, and I hope your writing flourished as a result. For those who didn’t – well, you can always catch up on the replay.

***

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Present your outline

Post your book outline into this forum on Townhouse – whatever you have and whatever approach you take. (Remember to log in first!)

As always, give feedback on other people’s outlines, thinking especially about:

• Conflict
• Stakes
• Pacing
• Character growth
• Whether you see a clear complication in the story plan.

If you don’t have an outline, share your basic premise and the method you’ll be using (even if that method is pretty much making it up as you go along).

Til soon.

Harry

As you know, this week, as with the past three weeks, we are trit-trotting in step with the FEAST of FABULOUSNESS that is our Build Your Book Month.

And I wanted to pick up on something that my colleague (and fellow author) Laura Starkey said yesterday:

A story isn’t about what happens; it’s about how what happens changes the people in the story.

Now that feels like a worthy truth. Elizabeth Bennett is a quick-witted, high-spirited and confident lass. But she’s also young. She’s a bit naïve. She’s a bit quick to make judgements and over-confident in the judgements she makes. Stuff happens (Darcy! Wickham! Dreadful vicars! Stupid sisters and elopements!) And – she grows up. She matures. She gets her man.

Yes, on the one hand the story has to do with who hitches with whom, but the reason why that particular story did so well is that we felt the characters change – Lizzy changes (and matures), but so does Darcy. So does her dad. Wickham doesn’t change, but that’s his moral failure, the reason why he can’t exit the novel a winner.

And, OK, Jane Austen is widely thought to be Quite A Good Writer, but countless other authors play by the same rules. Bridget Jones’s Diary uses the same basic story … and Bridget matures. So does her version of Darcy. (But not the can’t-change Hugh Grant.)

You can’t really find a decent romance, or even a half-decent one, where Laura’s Rule doesn’t apply.

And it’s not just romances. It’s true of plenty of spy novels (think Spy Who Came In From The Cold). It’s true of literary novels (think Handmaid’s Tale.) It’s true of plenty of kids’ books and fantasy novels and, in fact, most novels you ever pick up.

But …

Well, I think Laura’s Rule isn’t universal, or at least not quite.

In big geo-political thrillers, it seems slightly flippant to care about whether Jack Ryan does or doesn’t change. Surely what’s important is, ‘Does the world get blown to bits, yes or no?’ I mean, it’s likely that Jack Ryan has some feelings about that. He’s generally an ‘ideally, don’t destroy the world’ kind of guy. But his feelings are surely very secondary, even to the reader.

Then there are book series to consider.

Most romances don’t beget sequels. Happy Ever After endings are slightly let down by an ongoing series. (No one wants “Lizzy Bennet: the Divorce” or “Lizzy Bennet and the Raunchy Footman”.)

But crime novels often, often, often have sequels. Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Philip Marlowe, Jack Reacher. These books have a basically stable central character. The stories are about those people doing what is effectively their day job. You don’t expect Holmes or Marple or Reacher to end the novel much changed by what’s happened. On the contrary: you expect them to do the exact same things in the next book and the next and the next.

But Laura’s Rule contains a basic truth and it’s one that can be weirdly overlooked.

Here’s an extract from Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell – a much-praised kids’ book:

The kraken [a sea monster] gave a shriek of rage like a cat on fire. Then it seized the boat, and the entire structure was flung up into the air, cracking and splintering as it landed again on the waves. Ratwin was hurled into the water; Mal and Christopher were thrown sideways, to left and right. He hit the cabin wall, and she struck her head as she landed on the deck, and lay unconscious.

The kraken twisted its great head to look: for one beat, it hung there in the water, blinking its huge grey eyes. And then the kraken reached out, and plucked Mal bodily from the boat. Nighthand lunged after her, knife in hand.

‘No!’ he roared.

‘Mal!’, Christopher yelled.

The kraken laid her on a piece of driftwood, as carefully as a child laying down a doll. And then, before Christopher could understand what had happened, its ten tentacles fired towards them and the whole boat was crushed and pulled beneath the surface. The suction dragged Christopher down into black whirling chaos.

For what felt like minutes he spun, over and over in the churning sea. He fought, his lungs shrieking back to the surface. A piece of wood, part of a table rocked on the waves; he hauled himself on to it. There was sea-foam everywhere, he could see nothing; but there, suddenly, was Mal. As he watched the driftwood bucked and she slipped from it eyes were closed, and she was falling.

So in fewer than 250 words, we have a boat being destroyed, a girl (Mal) being seized by the kraken, an attempted rescue (by Nighthand), some weird thing with Mal being laid down on some floating driftwood, the whole boat and Christopher being pulled down onto the depths, a fight back up to the surface, climbing onto a tabletop – then seeing Mal, but losing her again.

That’s a LOT of action (and, surprisingly, no fewer than three semi-colons. My entire Fiona Griffiths series contains one semi-colon, and that came via a quotation from Wikipedia.)

But is that action more exciting or confusing?

To me, it’s basically confusing.

In part, that’s because so much happens so damn fast. For example, a big burly warrior (Nighthand) charges after the kraken with a knife. Well? What happens? We have no idea. Does Nighthand make contact? Did he inflict any damage? Does the kraken even notice? Is Nighthand dead? Lost underwater? We have no idea. The questions aren’t even addressed.

But also, there’s not a moment’s pause for emotional reaction.

Some little bits we can surmise.

So when Nighthand roars, ‘No!’ and charges around with a knife, we can tell he’s upset at the kraken taking Mal. The same goes for Christopher’s exclamation.

But then the kraken destroys the boat completely. What’s Christopher’s reaction? We don’t know. How does he feel about this? We don’t know.

He’s then sucked down into the abyss. We know his lungs shriek. (Duh, he’s underwater, course they do.) But we don’t know what he’s thinking or feeling. Is he thinking, ‘Oh crap, this is it.’ Or, ‘I must swim upwards and find Mal.’ Or, ‘I wonder what’s for supper?’ We have no idea, except that the last possibility seems improbable given the circs.

And then he gets to the surface (no moment of phew!), and clambers onto something floating (no moment of double-phew!), and then he sees Mal, apparently in one piece (no triple, super-big phew!) – and then she’s gone again.

What does all this tell us? Well, it doesn’t tell us that Katherine R is a bad writer – she isn’t – just that this passage needed a more switched-on editor.

But it does tell us that action is only explicable via emotion. Without the ‘reaction shots’ to guide us, it’s hard to know what we should be feeling when. And even a vast amount of on-page drama can feel flat without constant emotional reflection.

Laura’s Rule, remember, says:

A story is about how what happens changes the people in the story.

And the trouble with this Rundell passage is that the people didn’t seem changed, even as all that chaos was happening around them. We saw and felt no emotional impact, with the result that the scene, which should have been amazing, felt flat.

So in my Fiona books, I don’t expect Fiona to be hugely changed overall by the events of the story. She’s a series character, so she moves from one book to the next largely the same, except for some general growing up, getting more senior, acquiring and losing boyfriends and so on.

But as things happen, she reacts. “A kraken has destroyed my boat: I feel scared.” “I’ve swum to the surface and found a tabletop: oh good, I feel relieved.” That sort of thing, but without the krakens.

All this also means that as you plot the events of your book, you’re effectively plotting an emotional sequence at the same time. The two things need to work in parallel, always.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Action & Reaction

Nice easy one today.

Find a kraken in your story. Have it pull a boat underwater. Show your characters’ reactions.

If you lack a kraken, or your kraken has a crack in, find any other action moment in your story and give us that, 250 words or so please. We’re focusing less on the action itself and more on how it feels to the characters experiencing it. When you're ready post in Townhouse.

Got that? Then get crackin’.

Til soon.

Harry

Hello again. Welcome back to my series of insights into what it’s like to undertake the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme.  

Month seven – ooh, my lucky number – and it’s all about voice and style.  

Oh no. Groan.  

Come on, admit it. You rolled your eyes a little bit too, didn’t you? It can’t just be me. But why the big sigh? Well, because this is nebulous stuff. Knowing what voice and style means when it comes to deciding what goes on the page – being clear enough to actively control it, with deliberate choices, avoiding my foibles and leaning into my strengths – all of that is hard. 

This said, however, we all know a good writing voice when we read it. Pretty much every literary agent will, at some point, talk about the ‘fresh voice’, or wax lyrical about how the voice was ‘so clear, so identifiable, so unique’ it bagged whichever author it belonged to an automatic yes. From what I can see, ‘voice’ is what drives a lot of publishing deals – so I need to get better at understanding what mine is. I daresay a lot of us do. 

But how to identify voice? At first it all seems so diaphanous, like harvesting fog. But it is possible. It is! All things artistic and creative have technique underpinning them. There’s work you can do. Practical ways to get better at producing great voice and style.  

Look, this is how I like to think about it – finding your writing ‘voice’ is just like falling in love. 

When you were younger, did you ever ask a grown-up in your life about love? How would you know when you’d fallen in love? Whether they were the right person? Did you listen to love songs, watch romantic films and wonder – is that love? Did you search for it in books, too? And what answer did that grown-up whose wisdom you sought give you? I bet it was something along the lines of “You’ll just know it when you find it.” 

And then one day you actually do fall in love – and yes, it feels wonderful and vivid and alive, just how all the Hollywood directors painted it. But it also feels messy and difficult and sometimes like really, really, hard work. Which is weird, you know, because does that mean you are doing ‘love’ wrong? Isn’t it all supposed to feel easy and magical?  

Well, writing to my own voice and style feels a lot like that too: a big leap of faith and a lot of graft, most of the time.  

But underneath the “you’ll just know,” is the practical reality that love is created by small practices, daily habits and many, many choices. There’s some research* which shows clear correlation between a couple’s ability to react to requests for attention and the quality and longevity of their relationship. Which means that if my loved-one points out a pretty bird on the fence post and I immediately stop, look and take notice of their delight and join in with them, I’m performing a loving act and therefore creating more love. 

The author’s voice little bird equivalents are ‘vocabulary’, ‘sentence structure’, ‘tone’, ‘point of view’ and ‘syntax’ (to name the main ones). Complicated little birds, sure. But still knowable, still definable. 

My tutor on the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme has been encouraging me to notice these ‘birds’. Not just to nod vaguely when they turn up, but to pay close, close attention to them. The course is encouraging me to become an active loving, soulmate to my writing. Out of this will come a clear, confident authorial voice and style.  

Learning to show up for myself more and more – to write aloud the inner whirrings of my heart, to reproduce them as accurately as I can, without too much social conditioning or negative judgment getting in the way – helps me inhabit myself more fully, so my writing becomes a little more powerfully me each time. 

This has been the hardest blog to write for the simple reason that voice is such a personal thing. My pursuit of developing ‘voice’ takes me deep inside, to personal corners that my ego fears ought not to be mined. But then, why else go to the whole bother of writing a novel? What else is this act of weaving a great arc of story about, if not to put my feelings, perspectives, and questions into it? Whose novel is it if it is not fully rendered in the author’s voice?  

It’s hard writing a novel, any way one looks at it, but I reckon it’s harder if you’re trying to be someone other than who you are whilst doing it. You’re going to need lots of help along the way – maybe even a tutored course or two. In the meantime, I hope these words suffice, little birds that they are. 

Until next time… 

*The "bird test" comes from the Gottman Institute's research on "bids for connection," where one partner makes a small request to connect, and the other partner responds by "turning toward" them. 

The Ultimate Novel Writing Programme (and its little sister, the Novel Writing Course) run twice a year. Our most intensive tutored courses, they offer writers more personalised, one-to-one support than is available through any other online writing course. To find out more about either, or to apply to be part of our next cohort, visit the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme or the Novel Writing Course web page. You can also contact us at any time to chat about your writing journey and explore which, if any, of our courses or services could help you. We love to chat with authors, and we will never sell you a service that we don't think is the best fit for you - so don't be shy!

Rachel Davidson is a long-term Premium Member of Jericho Writers prior to joining our Writer Support Team, Rachel loves helping hopeful writers, such as herself, to solve their problems and take a step or two closer to achieving their writing dreams. Rachel has previously self-published a trilogy, the first of which achieved bestseller status in fourteen Amazon categories in the UK, US, Australia and Canada and is now seeking her traditional publishing debut with her latest manuscript. You can find out more about Rachel via her Instagram @RachelDavidsonAuthor.

This month, as you know, we’re Build-A-Booking: considering everything to do with plot and aiming to get our novel outlines in p-p-perfect shape before November.

And? For a lot of writers, there’s a log that lies across the path to a perfect plot. The name of that log is World Building.

Now yes, a large proportion of you will be thinking, “Ah,hey ho, this email doesn’t apply to me, because my book is perfectly grounded in the Real World. My dragon count is zero. There are no badass fairies having raunchy sex with were-creatures. I also have no star-fleets in battle, no wormholes in space, no complicated explanations about the gaseous mix in my atmosphere.”

But we all have to world build.

Yes, your world may operate according to normal rules of physics and technology, but you may still need to explain to the reader:

• Your character’s world of work: a hospital, a spy agency, a marketing firm, a special forces unit
• Your character’s key relationships: mother, father, brother, sister, kids, best friends
• Important bits of backstory, not just for your main character but for (say) a best friend, who will end up betraying your character in Chapter xx because of the thing that happened when she and your character were both at university.
• The central setting for your book. Even if that’s somewhere as recognisable as Manhattan, there’ll still be a lot to explain if your book involves chases through the subway system, the currency trading system on Wall Street, or how an escort agency operates from the inside.

And all authors have a tendency to think like this:

“Well, gosh, I do need to explain the intricacies of the subway system and Rosa’s betrayal in Chapter xx is going to make no sense unless I reveal the Affair of the Stolen Clock in her university days, so what I’ll do is just set my story down for a moment, while I do my spadework on those important topics. Then, when we get going again, Readers Will Rejoice, because my subway chase is cool and Rosa’s betrayal will be surprising but also kinda logical at the same time.”

So the story gets set down for a page or four. Yet, strange to say, when the author picks it up again, it’s holding many fewer readers than it was before.

That’s the World-Building Paradox, my friend. Readers buy your book because of the cool new world you offer them. They want to know about the rules of that new world (magic, or spaceships, or just subway tunnels & stolen clocks.) But if you spend time doing what the reader has pretty much asked you to do, the reader flounces off, skirts swishing in disapproval.

The solution?

The solution is just what you think it is: you don’t set down your story. But you do create the world the reader wants to inhabit.

So let’s say your character is living on a planet, where the atmosphere has large amounts of methane and can easily kill his poor little humanoid self. Here are two options for addressing that fact:

1. Long essay on origin, chemical structure and medical effects of methane, followed by story.
2. Your character really wants to itch his nose, but can’t do so without removing his helmet.

It’s pretty obvious that the second option is the way to go. You will talk less about methane that way, but you’ll tell the reader what they need and want to know. And if the reader cares about your character, then, weirdly enough, they also care about that itchy nose. The fact that the character has a thwarted want, no matter how tiny, is enough to motivate the reader.

So: lead with character – that’s rule #1. (And by the way, that’s why this email is called ‘Glancing sideways, looking straight’. You focus always on character – that’s the straight ahead bit, the narrow path of story proper. But as you’re ploughing forwards, you can glance to the side now and again. That’s the world-building essential to your task - but you never drop the forward motion.)

Rule #2 chases along right behind the first, and it’s this: do less than you think is necessary. The reader won’t care.”

Sometimes the info-dumping can be brief in the extreme. For example, in one of my books, there was an important sequence involving a south Wales cave. I didn’t want readers to feel that I was just springing something on them unannounced – that feels a bit cheaty. Nor could I just assume that readers just knew enough about the geology of Wales to know there were caves. So, many chapters earlier, I had a secondary character say, ‘Those monks. The ones with a brewing licence. They’re up in the Beacons somewhere. Up the valley from that caving place.’

That’s it. Caving established. World built enough for now.

Do you want one more rule? Or maybe just a teeny-weeny guideline? OK:

Rule #3, that’s maybe more of a Guideline: “Deliver information after the reader cries out for it.”

So take that caving issue again. Fiona (who has already figured things out) locates the entrance to a previously unknown cave system. That cave system probably holds the answer to a missing persons case from years before. Fiona has already clocked that, too. Finally, she shows the cave entrance to her superior officer. They sit on a rock and chat:

[Fiona says,] ‘The main cave there is called Dan-yr-Ogof. You want to guess how far it extends underground?’

Burnett shakes his head. ‘I expect you’re about to tell me.’

‘Seventeen kilometres. Eleven miles. One of the main explorers of that system reckons the whole thing will run ninety miles once it’s fully mapped.’

‘You’re saying this . . .  this . . . tunnel here connects with Dan-yr-Ogof?’

I shake my head. ‘Maybe, I’ve no idea. But this whole area is hollow with caves. Ogof Draenen measures seventy undergound kilometres. Ogof Ffynnon Ddu runs to almost sixty. Agen Allwedd runs to over thirty. And there are dozens more as well, a whole sweep of them. The whole southern edge of the Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains. The chain runs all the way to Abergavenny. Fifty or sixty caves easily and that’s only the ones we know about.’

Burnett joins me on the scree. Says, ‘Fuck.’

Says, ‘Times like this, I’d kill for a cigarette.’

I tell him he doesn’t have to kill anyone. Also—and this is really Murder Planning 1.01—he shouldn’t announce his intentions beforehand, particularly to a detective sergeant whose specialism is in major crime.

All this information is delivered after they’ve found the cave, after Burnett orders Fiona to explore the first few yards of it, after she’s crawled into the tunnel, banged her head and been shocked by the deep darkness of this new world.

The information is also delivered after Fiona has connected the cave’s existence to the missing persons case. So we’ve had some real action, a real (physical, visceral) entrance into this new world, and a sense that this place is strongly connected to a core story thread in the book.

By this point, the reader is totally sold. “Yes, jeepers, caves are important! I want to know more about caves, I can see they’re going to play a huge role in what follows.” So then Fiona tells the reader, in effect, “There are lots of caves in south Wales and some of them are really, really big.”

That settles the reader for now. It gives a sense of the scale of what might lie ahead – and also confirms that the author isn’t tricking. Caves are a perfectly legitimate element in a mystery story set in that particular part of the world.

Notice that there’s still a lot that I haven’t said. What does a cave look like inside? How are they formed? Can you get large bodies of water inside a cave? All that will matter a bit further on into the story, but those bits of information are delivered later, when they’re needed.

And that’s it.

Log cleared.

Lead with character. Do less than you think is necessary. Bring information to the reader only once the reader is thirsting for it.

That’s true for books about Manhattan or Welsh caves or busy hospitals. It’s also true for books about raunchy fairies, star-fleet battles or grumpy dragons.

***

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Info Dumps

OK, I want you to find a place in your book where you have an info dump – much like my material on caving above. My extract above was about 200 words, but only about 150 words had to do with caves, rather than murder planning. So look for an extract of about 200-250 words, but also give us plenty of context that introduces your passage. In that little caving scene, it really mattered that the info came after Fiona had physically been inside the cave (albeit only a very short way.) So give us enough to understand how the information you’re giving us connects to the broader story.

You got that? You got it. Ready – GO. Log in and share your work on Townhouse when you're ready.

Til soon.

Harry

So, you’ve sent your manuscript off to an editor, or your agent, and you’ve received your first set of notes – an exciting, if quite overwhelming, time. This might be the first substantial piece of feedback you have received yet and it’s important to know what exactly to do with the notes you’ve been given. (Please note, I will be getting you to read your manuscript several times…)

Even if you haven’t worked with an editor yet, understanding how to approach feedback will save you time, stress, and rewrites later. Here’s a simple 5-step framework to use to help you get the most out of your editorial feedback:

1. Read the editorial notes thoroughly

This might sound incredibly obvious but read the notes through, in their entirety, a few times. Try not to react to anything specific too quickly and allow the ideas time to percolate. Receiving edits on something you thought you’d nailed, or something that’s very close to you personally, can be quite emotional and your first response might be to jump to your manuscripts defense and scream ‘No! You’re wrong!’ but take a moment to look at everything your editor or agent is suggesting – they are doing so for a reason - and don’t jump into edits straight away. I’d advise reading them through, taking a day or two, and then reading them again.

2. What suggestions do you like? Which ones do you hate?

Now for the next stage, take a look at the suggestions and figure out which ones you think will strengthen your book – hopefully the suggestions you love outnumber anything else. Mark those up (highlight, transfer to your own editorial list etc.) and let the ease of those types of suggestions help with the ones that might be a little more challenging to action. It can really help you get into the swing of the edit if at first you pick out everything that’s doable.

Now for the edits you’re not so sure about…keep in mind that a good editor or agent is there to guide you towards the best version of your book, their suggestions are just that – suggestions. Consider why they’re giving the note they’ve given, is it because what you thought was working isn’t quite there yet? Is it due to something not quite making it to the page enough to translate for the reader? If they’ve highlighted something that isn’t working but you’re not sure their fix is quite right, allow it to spark something else that feels more aligned to your work. This is what an editor or agent is always hoping to provoke.

3. Don’t be afraid to ask questions!

Before diving into making changes, check if there’s anything you need further clarification on. Communicating edits in a letter isn’t always easy – your story is much more nuanced than an editor or agent can express in such a restricted format – so don’t be afraid to ask follow up questions: Is this what you meant here? Can you give me an example where I’ve done that? I think perhaps X would work better here, do you agree?

Getting ahead of any lingering questions before you dive into your edit will be so essential, particularly when you’re sending your manuscript back to your agent – the quicker you get those edits nailed down, the sooner you’ll move to the submission stage (or query stage if you’re working with an editor).

Do I have your attention? Did that click-baity title work?  

I hope so, because (I flatter myself) the tips I’m about to share are really, genuinely important if you want to write a book that resonates with the people who pick it up.  

Best ever advice

The advice that changed my approach to writing – and which I came across at random on the internet – is this:  

A story isn’t about what happens; it’s about how what happens changes the people in the story.  

Apologies to all of you who’ve got thirty-point plot plans full of dragon battles or gruesome serial killings prepared – but those twisty, turny events you’ve dreamt up aren’t as important as you think they are. At least, they won’t be if you don’t make sure they mean something.  

Character arcs – emotional journeys – are the beating heart of every story: the pulse that keeps readers turning the page. If you don’t tie some sort of character development to every dramatic scene you craft, what you’ll be left with is a sequence of ‘and then’ events that no-one really cares about.  

Here, I’m going to offer my top tips for creating characters that will inspire readers to invest in them. I’ll also outline ways you can tie their progress to the external goings-on in your fictional world, ensuring that the big set-pieces you’ve imagined don’t fall flat. 

Characters don't have to be likeable... but we need to understand them

I write commercial women’s fiction: romantic comedies where readers expect to find a protagonist they can root for. This doesn’t mean I have to write fault-free characters, though – and if you’re working in another genre, your scope for crafting someone dark and damaged is even greater. 

However sympathetic (or not) you intend your main character to be, there must be credible reasons why they are the way they are. In other words: what’s their backstory?  

You don’t have to know what they got for their fifth birthday or their favourite flavour of pizza, but you do need to know how they got to where they are at the opening of your novel – both literally and metaphorically.  

Think about Mick Herron’s Jackson Lamb: a deeply unpleasant, uncaring alcoholic, washed up on the scrapheap that is Slough House. Not the deadbeat he at first appears, he remains a skilled agent whose instincts are sharp under pressure – but he’s drowning in cynicism (as well as Scotch) thanks to the deep emotional damage wrought by years of MI5 double-dealing.  

Characters need to have problems

And lots of them! If everything is tickety-boo at the start of your story, there’s nowhere for your protagonist to go.  

You don’t need your characters to be miserable, but you might want to show them discontented, frustrated, stuck in a situation that’s stifling them or in denial about the past. Whatever is troubling them, it should be connected to their backstory. 

Your book’s inciting incident or catalyst is your first opportunity to link your plot (the ‘external conflict’ of your story) – to your character’s issues (the ‘inner conflict’). Make sure that whatever happens here deepens the challenge they’re already facing. In Jane Austen’s Persuasion, the temporary loss of her family home is bad enough for Anne Elliot – but it also sees her thrown back into the orbit of her lost love, Captain Wentworth.  

Consider wants vs. needs

All of this said… your characters don’t need to recognise the pickles they’re in to begin with. In fact, it’s best if what they want – the thing they’re striving for as your book opens – has nothing to do with what they actually need.  

For instance, your protagonist may be working towards a promotion, or to earn their family’s respect. Perhaps they’re desperate to win back an ex-partner or plotting revenge on an enemy. External goals like these, even if they’re achieved, shouldn’t fix the inner conflict characters are ignoring: the trauma rooted in childhood or the pain of their first love deserting them.  

The job of your plot is to guide your character into confronting what’s really going on below the surface. That’s a process of realisation that should take in a variety of highs and lows along the way.  

Marry external events to internal reactions

If you’ve outlined the main events in your book, you’ve probably got a list of key scenes you want to include. These will become true story beats when they’re clearly tied to their effect on your characters. 

How do the events of your novel trouble or challenge your protagonist? How does each incident affect them specifically? Why is something worse for them than it would be for an average person? Personalise everything to raise the stakes for readers and make every plot point matter more. 

This is the difference between a man being involved in a train crash, and him being involved while trying to get home to his dying wife so he can say goodbye to her. A powerful combination of event + emotion is always what you’re aiming for. 

We all know how to write a book, yes?

You start off with some kind of incomplete and dissatisfying status quo. Then something – an inciting incident – comes along to shatter that status quo, and our protagonist is tumbled into motion.

Then – well, stuff happens. Conflict. Turbulence. Ups and downs.

Then we have a good old crisis. Everything is lost. Bond and Lizzie Bennet have lost. Goldfinger is triumphant. Darcy no longer cares for this foolish girl. Then, goodness gracious me, we have a glorious resolution, Bond defuses the bomb, and Lizzie Bennet gets a good old snog from Darcy, Goldfinger is cursing the gods or being carried off in chains, and various cads, bounders and fools all get the fates they entirely deserve.

While we’re busy setting bold styling here, there and everywhere, let’s also note that these excellent plots are powered by Big Questions. Will Lizzie ever find Mr Right? Will Bond manage to save the world?

Fractal geometry says that all these rules apply to scene construction too. That’s something I spoke about yesterday in my Build A Book webinar on scene-building, but I want to pick up on some of that webinar-goodness right now as well.

So it’s sort of obvious when you have a big showdown scene – a No, I Am Your Father type showstopper – you need a properly constructed drama. When you’ve got your protagonist wrestling with the black-cloaked antagonist on a sketchy metal platform above a seemingly bottomless pit, the reader has every right to expect conflict, crisis, resolution – the whole malarkey.

But – you need to deliver the whole malarkey with almost every scene you write.

Here, by way of example, is a short and basically trivial scene from a Fiona book. Fiona has found a mentally ill woman (Shirley) walking the streets and brings her back to psychiatric care. Here’s what happens:

I’ve not been to the Llanrwst Unit before, thank God, so need to be told the way. Shirley accompanies me peacefully enough. Glass doors seal the unit we need access to and we have to be buzzed in by a tough, but friendly looking ward sister, Joan Fredericks. She’s about my age and doesn’t know me.

She summons someone to take Shirley off wherever she needs to be. I say good-bye. She starts to mutter a good-bye, some reflex of politeness buried amidst the scatter of her thoughts.

Then, abruptly, ‘Look after Kath [Shirley’s sister]. You’ll do that, won’t you? Kath. She’s not in the system, you see. But sorry, sorry, I mustn’t . . .’

Her mind tangles up again, lost in its briars. But for that one moment, there was clarity. Blue eyes, unblinking. A steady gaze. Even her hand, I think, lost its micro-tremble.

I say, ‘Yes, Shirley, I’ll do that. I’ll be happy to.’

Off she goes. Thick black shoes on hospital vinyl.

To Fredericks, I say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with her sister is there?’

‘Don’t you worry about nobody. We look after everything.’

That’s not quite an answer, but I don’t pursue it. Just nod at Shirley’s retreating back and ask, ‘What’s the diagnosis?’

Fredericks gives me the kind of stare that’s challenging my right to ask. But I’m a copper and I brought back her patient, so she says, ‘Schizophreniform condition. Formal thought disorders and all this.’ She shrugs. She’s trying to be obstructive, but she’s given me exactly the information I wanted.

‘And she’s in and out, is she? She’s not always cared for here?’

The answer’s yes and no, respectively. Shirley’s on a CTO, a Community Treatment Order, which means she’ll mostly receive care in the community. Sheltered housing. I take a note of her address.

‘Who’s her case officer?’

Fredericks folds her arms across her bosom in a way that only looks right if you’ve got one of those big, black, Jamaican bosoms, which I definitely don’t and she definitely does.

‘Thank you for returning Shirley, but I’m afraid I’m not able to divulge confidential information about patients in our care.’

I like that, actually. Like it a lot. You always worry, as a crazy person, that the people taking care of you are going to neglect your rights and, all too often, you’re right to worry. All the same, I push my warrant card at Fredericks.

‘If you involve the police, the police are involved,’ I say. A statement which gains its logical force from Leibniz’s Law, the identity of indiscernibles.

Fredericks glowers, as if Leibniz is an old enemy of hers. But she unfolds her arms and gives me a name. Mike Wiggins, a psychiatric nurse.

I say, ‘OK, thanks,’ and leave.

We’ve got no sketchy metal platforms, no bottomless pits, no sword fights, no Lords of Evil. The fate of the universe does not rest on the outcome of this encounter.

But there is a Big Question, right? Fiona wants some information. Fredericks is reluctant to give it. So the question is: will Fiona get what she wants?

The status quo (basically tranquil, but somehow dissatisfying) is there too:

Shirley accompanies me peacefully enough … [we are] buzzed in by a tough, but friendly looking ward sister, Joan Fredericks.

That’s a very status-quo-y sort of introduction. It’s peaceful, but there’s a force (the tough Joan Fredericks) which is going to prevent things flowing the way Fiona may want.

That status quo holds for a while, but Shirley’s rambling nudges Fiona to make demands of that immovable object. The nudge is this:

 ‘Look after Kath [Shirley’s sister]. You’ll do that, won’t you? Kath. She’s not in the system, you see. But sorry, sorry, I mustn’t . . .’

Her mind tangles up again, lost in its briars. But for that one moment, there was clarity. Blue eyes, unblinking. A steady gaze. Even her hand, I think, lost its micro-tremble.

I say, ‘Yes, Shirley, I’ll do that. I’ll be happy to.’

That is: Shirley asks Fiona to make her a promise and her muddled mind finds a brief but real clarity in the moment she asks. Fiona says yes and she’s now committed to what follows – this is our inciting incident.

What follows entails conflict and turbulence. This is very low level, of course. This is an early stage of the book. The only drama is a conversation between a police officer (pushy) and a nurse (resistant) where no one is even impolite.

Fiona asks for a diagnosis. Fredericks gives her something, but aims to be as unhelpful as possible. Fiona then asks for a minor follow-up and gets what she wants.

So far, the conflict is exceedingly minor – barely detectable, in fact.

But soon enough, that conflict escalates from resistance to outright refusal, in the form of a ‘big, black Jamaican bosom’ and:

‘Thank you for returning Shirley, but I’m afraid I’m not able to divulge confidential information about patients in our care.’

Woah! In the context of our scene, that’s a crisis. Remember that the Big Question propelling this scene is whether Fiona will get the information she wants, and the answer here seems to be no. That’s the Tiny Scene equivalent of Bond being lasered by Goldfinger, Lizzie being ditched by Darcy.

But – this is a perfect little story, remember, so for every crisis, we have a resolution. Which, in our case, involves the tactical deployment of a seventeenth century mathematician, who got into fights with Newton:

‘If you involve the police, the police are involved,’ I say. A statement which gains its logical force from Leibniz’s Law, the identity of indiscernibles.

Fredericks glowers, as if Leibniz is an old enemy of hers. But she unfolds her arms and gives me a name.

Now, as it happens, the resolution here is a happy one, but it doesn’t have to be. In Tiny Scene land, it doesn’t matter too much if the resolution is or is not happy: your book will have plenty of both outcomes.

There are other differences too.

The inciting incident isn’t fully delivered until 160 words into a 460-word scene: that’s far too slow if you were to stretch things out to novel-length.

Also, the tone here is gently comedic: Jamaican boobs and long-dead Germans. Those things are more or less the opposite of the swordfight-on-the-edge-of-a-precipice type scenes.

But that’s OK too. You can have a tone that’s perfectly Tiny Scene appropriate but which wouldn’t be Whole Novel appropriate. As a matter of fact, if you tell a dark crime story (like this one), then including scenes with a gentle comedy adds a light and diversity that’s probably helpful.

But really, what I want to talk about here is the fractal geometry. How all scenes – not just the Skywalker Meets Darth Vader type ones – follow the basic architecture of story.

If you’re re-reading your book and finding that something doesn’t quite feel right – that the pace feels sludgy, the book seems to be treading water – it’s possible that your Tiny Scene architecture has just collapsed.

What’s always astonishing to me is that readers are fantastically sensitive to these failures. If you have even one scene that fails to deliver on this basic architecture, the reader will feel it. If you have a section of the book that has two or three such failures, you’ll permanently injure the reader’s relationship with the book.

So check your scenes. Do they obey (in miniature) the rules of story? If they do, they’re good to go. If not, then fix them. I honestly doubt if I can find a single coherent scene in one of my Fiona books that doesn’t basically follow the rules I’ve sketched out here. That’s how much it matters.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Your Tiny Scene

OK, same as our Build Your Book Month session yesterday, I want you to find a Tiny Scene in your book – maximum of 6-700 words in total, but the shorter and more inconsequential the better. (It’s fine to choose a longer scene, and to cut it down, just for the purposes of Feedback Friday.) Post it in Townhouse here.

Then explain to us what the Big Question in your scene is.

Then paste the whole of your Tiny Scene, but explain the story architecture by inserting these bold headings into your text:

Status Quo

Inciting Incident

Conflict & Turbulence

Crisis

Resolution

What we want to see is that you have a beautifully intact story in place, even in a scene that’s small and apparently unimportant.

Got that? Of course you have.

Crisis? There’s no crisis. Only the sweet, sweet balm of resolution.

Til soon.

Harry

Marketing expert Anna Caig shares an introduction to the world of author branding.

What is an author brand?

‘Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.’ Oscar Wilde wasn’t talking about author branding when he said this - but he could’ve been!

An author brand is the foundation for effective book marketing. More than anything, it’s how you make potential readers feel - the impression you give of the world they’ll step into if they open your book.

I’ve worked in marketing for over 20 years and I’ve learnt that the key to a successful brand is embracing what makes you different - the unique set of motivations, inspirations and passions that inform your work. George Saunders calls this each writer’s ‘iconic space, the place from which they write stories only they could write.’

We have all sorts of preconceptions about what branding and marketing is supposed to look like - often shiny, polished and imitative. I’d encourage you to throw these ideas out of the window! One of the mantras I share to my clients is ‘If it sounds like marketing, rewrite it.’ You’re a human being connecting with other human beings.

How to develop your author brand

A big marketing mistake I see people make (not just writers, this is true across all sectors) is trying to appeal to too broad an audience. If you try to engage everyone, you’ll make yourself so boring and formulaic, nobody will see a reason to engage and they’ll just keep scrolling.

Ask yourself the following questions, and note down any words or phrases in your answers that feel significant. It can be helpful to speak out loud. Notice your tone of voice as much as the content of what you say.

• What themes do you find yourself returning to again and again in your writing?
• What impact would you like your books to have?
• What part of the creative process do you enjoy the most?
• What aspects of your work do you find yourself thinking about during your down time?
• What inspires you?
• Do you ever feel you’re ‘weird’? In what ways, when and why?
• Why do you write?

Your answers will provide useful raw material from which to craft your public-facing brand.

Your author brand story

A great first step in articulating your brand is to write a brand story. This is a creatively written bio which acts as an engaging invitation into your writing. You’ll use it on your website homepage, email introductions, social media bios, anywhere you have limited space to convey who you are to potential readers.

Look at the notes you made in response to the questions above and select any details you’d like to include. Consider how you’d introduce yourself if you were a character in one of your books - you wouldn’t talk about this person’s CV, you’d use an image or anecdote to make them vivid in the mind of the reader. Apply these same principles to describing yourself. Your storytelling skills are your secret weapon!

But how will I use my author brand? Let’s get practical.

When it comes to content, we know ‘Here’s my book, buy my book’ won’t cut it. We need to find topics, part of our author brand, to talk about consistently.