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We’ve spoken in recent weeks about opening your novel. (Why so obsessed? Because of the Ultimate Start course.)

(And – to put two brackets back to back, which is pretty sinful in almost any context – I should probably mention our Festival of Writing, which is … well, it’s pretty obvious what it is. We’ve already sold a lot of tickets, so I wouldn’t hang around too long on this one.)

But have done with parentheses.

Openings only exist so you can, many thousands of words later, create an ending. In film-lore, those opening and closing images need to resonate with each other. It’s as though the story of the film is all there in those two glimpses.

You can see a compilation of opening & closing shots on Vimeo here (you may need to create a free log in if you don’t already have one.) But one example will maybe suffice.

In the film 1917, the opening shot shows two soldiers resting, in sunlight, against a tree. The field beyond is full of flowers. The two men look peaceful and relaxed.

The closing shot shows one soldier – one of the two from the first frame – resting in sunlight against a tree. The other soldier isn’t there: he’s been killed. And the remaining soldier isn’t peaceful or relaxed: he’s exhausted and haunted by what he’s just been through. And this field, though essentially a similar sunny French pasture, has no flowers in it.

That’s all powerful enough in itself – but the symmetry of the two shots says one further thing to the viewer as well: and now we’re back to the beginning. We go again. This never stops. The meaning of the closing image is immeasurably darker than the first.

And novels?

Well, novels are bigger and more complicated than films. I don’t think that, in general, there needs to be this kind of direct conversation between opening and closing shot. I suspect the rather literal reflection I’ve just mentioned is rare.

That said, however, stories are stories. They need to have a purpose. A sense of something accomplished by the preceding narrative.

So, Pride and Prejudice starts by telling the reader that Mrs Bennett is anxious to see her girls get married – and does so via the famous line about a truth universally acknowledged.

The book ends, of course, by marrying Lizzie off to a gazillionaire. But just as the opening chapter dwelled on Mrs Bennett’s feelings about all this, the closing chapter starts there too: ‘Happy for all her maternal feelings was the day on which Mrs. Bennet got rid of her two most deserving daughters.’

There’s a mirroring here again, as well as a sense of the narrative arc. Opening: not married + underlying anxiety. Closing: Married to Mr Handsome-Rich-and-Honourable + all-round yippee-dee-doo-dah.

Last week, we took a look at an opening chapter of one of the FG books, in which we established:

1. Fiona is nuts (she can’t hold a basic conversation about jeans without comforting herself with memories of serious road accidents)
2. She’s deceitful: she thinks about road accidents, but doesn’t reveal her inner life to her friend.
3. She’s somewhat less than human in all this. Not failed exactly – but someone who is rather less than those others around her: other people could have managed this chat; Fiona’s performance was limping, at best.

Now, my book is not the sort of book that closes with a triumphant chat about jeans or new shoes, in which Fiona shows herself a master of small-talk. But the closing scene does show a kind of before-and-after comparison. It’s not that Fiona has changed – she hasn’t – but we do get to see a side of Fiona that compensates for her other deficits.

By way of context, in the course of the book, Fiona saves the life of a Ukrainian multimillionaire’s daughter. The rich guy offers Fiona some thank-you money and she (rightly and properly) says no. But he doesn’t immediately accept her refusal, saying:

‘The money is in Switzerland. Very safe. Very private. Very, very private.’

I say nothing.

‘Eleven million dollars.’

He looks at my face and the light changes and the cedars still don’t move and he gives a slight shrug and says, ‘I send you the details.’

And only then do I move.

I shake my head and say, ‘Mr Zhamanikov, I cannot take your money and my “no” really does mean no. But there are some criminals behind this whole thing—’ I wave my hand at the big house, the house where Aurelia is a prisoner of nothing more than her own head, her own past. ‘Perhaps we will catch those men in conventional ways. In the ways of police officers. Ordinary regular law enforcement. And I hope that’s what happens. But sometimes . . . sometimes, we fail. Or rather . . .’

I taper off and Zhamanikov murmurs, ‘You might need a little help.’

I echo his phrase. ‘Exactly. We might need a little help.’

Yuri gazes at me with those steady eyes and gives, again, that half-shrug. ‘OK. Then when you are ready, you give me call.’

We leave it there. The whole thing arranged as simply as calling a cab, booking a table.

The woman who carefully protected her inner life from her jeans-discussing friend is preparing to be deceitful here on a massively larger scale. She thinks she might need some cash to bring down the bad guys. Here’s someone offering eleven million bucks. And she’s happy to take it – and to conceal that fact from her colleagues in the police and, in fact, from essentially everyone. She’s not taking the money for herself. But cops aren’t meant to do those things and she blooming well does.

So she’s still deceitful.

She’s also kind of nuts too – or at least, she’s acting here far, far outside the norms of society. She shouldn’t do what she’s just done, but we know she’s not about to change her mind.

But then we need to consider the less than human bit.

Fiona has had cause to consider the seven deadly sins in the course of the book. She acquits herself of most of them, but says:

It’s the two remaining vices that give me pause.

Ira, wrath. Superbia, pride.

The two sins whose names that night filled my mouth with an awful silence.

Am I a proud and wrathful person? Was it my pride that led me down that footpath alone? Was it the boiling heat of my wrath what enabled me to do to Anselm what few people ever do to another in their lifetime?

And it is not the first time. I own it. These things fall in patterns and I deny neither the pattern nor its dark consequences. My preference for working alone. The bloodshed which so often results.

Anger and pride.

Is that less than human, or more than human? Well, naturally that’s for the reader to decide but, in the course of the book, Fiona has single-handedly – and through her own intelligence, resourcefulness and courage – defeated a particularly nasty kidnap ring. She’s happy to give her own self-summary, in very direct terms:

I confess this.

I am a woman of pride and wrath, and my soul is troubled.

I have asked for peace and peace has not come.

I have sworn at an abbot and rubbed caustic lime in the eyes of a man I almost liked.

I have done these things and I am that woman: prideful, wrathful and without truth.

I am that woman. And I repent of nothing.

So there we have an echo between opening and closing image – not in a literal way, but in the way that a reader will nevertheless intuit:

Opening: Fiona is nuts, deceitful and somewhat less human.

Closing: She’s nuts, deceitful and both simply human (flawed) and magnificently more-than-human (a wrathful angel of justice.) She’s also declaring herself satisfied to be the person she is – implicitly including her terrible-jeans-chat in that declaration. The ‘repent of nothing’ statement includes the violence she has just done to others, and includes her hopelessness with Bev a few hundred pages earlier.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that literal mirroring makes much sense in novels. I mean: if that’s the way things happen to fall out, then fine. Just, I don’t think you have to force that outcome.

Also: I never look back at my opening when I write my ending. The ending just comes as it does. It feels right if it honours the entire preceding narrative. I don’t feel that the closing scene has to curtsey backwards to the opening one.

And also: films are visual and external. The landscapes of the novel can be both external (descriptive of the exterior) and internal (describing the human soul). The result is that the echo in a novel doesn’t have to be as literal as man-lying-against-tree. The echo can be much less directly physical.

All that said …

Yes, I think you probably should feel some echoes between opening and closing. The kind of echoes we’ve just highlighted here. Not too crass. Not too obvious. But there nevertheless. A sense of journey done, distance accomplished. To all those of you who have completed Ultimate Start, I bow to you. Well done. We will be on a new topic next week.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / The Final Polish

This is the last of our six weekly Feedback Fridays where we pick up the theme from Ultimate Start. Today Sam Jordison requests – or, to be honest, demands with menaces – that you, “Give your opening 500 words a final polish using everything you’ve learned.”

The link you need to post your work is here. 

Oh yes, and you do remember that the Ultimate Start is Ultimately Pointless unless you Ultimately complete your novel to a very high standard. I think I know a programme that might Ultimately Help with that.

Til soon.

Harry

Last week, I said that I thought that genre-communication and authority were the two essential things to achieve in your opening pages. I thought that you were unlikely to miscommunicate genre, in which case your task now comes down to that communication of authority.

A low key opening

So this week: a worked example. I’ve chosen, for that example, what may be the most boring opening page I’ve ever written. But not bad-boring. Just low-key-boring. Here it is:

‘Well?’

Bev runs her hands down her hips and gives me a wiggle.

‘Well?’

I say, ‘Great. Really nice.’ I’m not sure what to say.

‘My jeans. They’re new.’

‘Oh.’

Now I know where my attention’s meant to be, I know how to focus. The jeans are a kind of washed-out indigo. Skinny-cut. Low-waisted, but not ridiculous. Slim dark leather belt, discreet scarlet buckle. The jeans are close-fitting enough that Bev’s phone makes a hard, flat shape in her back pocket. When I did a spell in Traffic, during my first two years in the police, and I was just a regular uniformed copper like everyone else, I remember an accident victim with very tight jeans, who suffered multiple fractures to both femurs. We had to cut her out of those jeans to get at the wounds. One of the paramedics did it with a scalpel, handling the blade delicately enough that it made only the finest pink graze down the girl’s thighs. Two parallel tracks pricked out in dots of blood.

‘New jeans,’ I say. ‘They look great! Where did you get them?’

‘It’s not about where I got them,’ she chides me mildly. ‘I’ve dropped a whole size. These are a ten.’

She gyrates again, and now I know what to say, I say it with enough enthusiasm and repetition that Bev is satisfied. We finish getting changed and troop through to the chirpily upbeat cafe, where we get fruit smoothies and pasta salads.

Thoughts on the above

So: we have two women, talking about jeans. That’s not interesting to a third-party in any context, but it’s certainly a quiet start to a crime novel.

Does this matter? Well, some authors will think it does. That’s why you end up getting those (yukkety-yuk-yuk-yuk) openings where unnamed Bad Guy slowly tortures someone (usually a woman) to death, with the whole thing related in a horribly voyeuristic way.

And, OK – there are plenty of readers out there and they all want different things. But you certainly don’t have to take that kind of (slightly desperate) route in your fiction.

I said my start was quiet, and it is, but it has a crackle to it all the same.

Here’s the opening dialogue again:

‘Well?’

Bev runs her hands down her hips and gives me a wiggle.

‘Well?’

I say, ‘Great. Really nice.’ I’m not sure what to say.

‘My jeans. They’re new.’

‘Oh.’

Bev clearly wants a response from Fiona, hence the repeated ‘Well?’ – not just a question but, in its second appearance, a slightly annoyed demand.

Fiona is clearly clueless. This is a standard woman-to-woman interaction, and Fiona has no idea what to say. She ends up saying something inoffensive, but almost devoid of meaning.

Bev (who knows Fiona and her general uselessness) then feeds her the prompt that other women might not have needed.

Fiona acknowledges this new information and gets ready to re-analyse. Here’s how that analysis proceeds:

The jeans are a kind of washed-out indigo. Skinny-cut. Low-waisted, but not ridiculous. Slim dark leather belt, discreet scarlet buckle. The jeans are close-fitting enough that Bev’s phone makes a hard, flat shape in her back pocket.

That’s all accurate enough and sensible enough, of course … except that (a) this chunk reads like an unnervingly complete police description of an item and (b) completely misses the element that Bev will want to know about: do these jeans look good on me?

Fiona’s human-radar then goes even further awry:

When I did a spell in Traffic, during my first two years in the police, and I was just a regular uniformed copper like everyone else, I remember an accident victim with very tight jeans, who suffered multiple fractures to both femurs. We had to cut her out of those jeans to get at the wounds. One of the paramedics did it with a scalpel, handling the blade delicately enough that it made only the finest pink graze down the girl’s thighs. Two parallel tracks pricked out in dots of blood.

That tells us two things, I think.

The first is that Fiona is obsessed by all things police-y and, perhaps more accurately, all things corpse-y or at least near corpse-y.

The second is that there’s something about a fashion-related conversation (however unchallenging) which does Fiona’s head in. The mental jump to bloody road accidents is her way of self-soothing.

But the next bit of dialogue doesn’t allude at all to the mental processes we’ve just witnessed. Instead, we get this:

‘New jeans,’ I say. ‘They look great! Where did you get them?’

‘It’s not about where I got them,’ she chides me mildly. ‘I’ve dropped a whole size. These are a ten.’

That is: Fiona is blatantly code-switching. She’s learned to keep the weirdness of her actual thought-processes away from others and she does so here. She doesn’t do it very brilliantly. (Her only fashion comment: “they look great!” That’s hardly Vogue-level analysis.) But she does just enough to stay on Planet Normal.

In practice, her attempt is still not good enough. Fiona has failed to notice the thing that Bev has been desperate for her to notice, so Bev has to offer still more guidance in an attempt to get what she needs.

Fiona then has enough data to do what she should have done from the very first and this episode closes with the pair of them going to the ‘chirpily upbeat café’ in the gym:

She gyrates again, and now I know what to say, I say it with enough enthusiasm and repetition that Bev is satisfied. We finish getting changed and troop through to the chirpily upbeat cafe, where we get fruit smoothies and pasta salads.

Observations

Things to notice in all this:

1. Genre

There’s not a massive allusion to genre here, but there’s enough. That allusion to the road accident victim already puts blood on the first page – and there’s a clear hint here that there’ll be plenty more to come, and not just via a non-crimey road accident. Given that readers already basically know what kind of book they’ll be reading from the title, cover, blurb, etc, the genre indicators here can be really quite low key.

• Elevator Pitch

My books are about a detective with a – uh – complicated mental life. This first page already establishes that just fine. Most women can talk about jeans without thinking about broken femurs and scalpels. Fiona can’t. That fact is established without much fuss. We don’t need fuss. We just need the smell of that core pitch very early. And here it is, neatly tied off in those ‘parallel tracks of blood.’

• Dialogue

The first “authority indicator” comes in that opening bit of dialogue. The whole opening bit only amounts to 30 words, but we already feel the pull (of Bev’s desire for praise) and the push (Fiona’s blank failure to understand what she needs to deliver.)

That push-pull – tiny and inconsequential though the conflict is – tells the reader This author knows what he’s doing when it comes to these trivial things. You can probably bet that he knows what he’s doing when the stakes get bigger.

• Character complexity

Another “authority indicator” comes in the presentation of Fiona. We have here – in only 250 words – at least four different versions of our heroine:

1. Person attempting to engage in girly dialogue, albeit badly
2. Hyper-professional police officer, able to instantly deliver an accurate and complete description of clothing
3. Nutcase, who gets troubled by (a) and whose comfort-place involves rather gruesome traffic accidents.
4. Nutcase who, knowing she’s a nutcase, keeps the loopy thoughts firmly trapped on the inside as she valiantly attempts to re-enter the scary world of Girly Chat.

And that’s it. For me, that opening page is low-key but perfectly sufficient. Any reader reading this will be reassured that this is a crime novel, and will have confidence in my ability to tell the tale.

To be sure there’ll be plenty of crime readers who really don’t want this book. Maybe they want something more immediately violent – or more immediately cosy – or written with less authorial fol-de-rol. And good: you don’t want readers who don’t want you. They won’t finish your book. They won’t give it good reviews. You don’t want to sell to people who aren’t going to be all in for you.

And yes, a low-key opening is OK – really OK – a don’t-worry-about-it OK. But you do need to ramp up before too long.

In the next scene, Bev and Fiona meet two male police officers, one of whom Bev massively fancies. The one who Bev fancies suggests they all go out for a drink, and they do. (‘I’m thinking, ‘No, absolutely, definitely not,’ but Bev is saying, ‘Yes, that would be lovely, wouldn’t it, Fi?’ and throws me her female-solidarity look hard enough that it’s probably sticking out between my shoulder-blades.’)

Then (1800 words into the book, or about 5 paperback pages) one of the officers gets a call that he has to respond to. Fiona’s the only cop there who hasn’t had a drink, so she volunteers to give him a ride. Before too long, they get to a massive hoo-hah near Brecon. (Overturned chemical lorry, with lots of very yukky smoke coming out.) And, better still as far as Fiona’s concerned, a corpse found in a remote village (2500 words into the book) … and, with all the local cops busy with their burning chemicals, it’s Fiona’s job to go and attend the scene.

So the opening page itself is low-key, but:

1. The genre is clear from the off
2. The elevator pitch is also immediately present
3. The authority signals (for “my” sort of readers) are also clear
4. The reader still only has to read 5 pages to get a sense that the story is now properly underway … and maybe 7-8 pages to find out what that story actually is.

That’s it. That’s all you need. Now go away and do the same.

Or, better still, take The Ultimate Start course, and do the same.

FFEDBACK FRIDAY / Conflict, stakes and reader curiosity

This week's Feedback Friday task is from Emma Cooper, one of our tutors on The Ultimate Start. It's this:

Share the scene in which your inciting incident takes place.

When you're ready, post your work to the forum, then read and comment on the thoughts of at least two of your fellow writers. Can you learn anything from their observations? 

Til soon. 

Harry

Why is it that the most commercially successful genre in publishing is also the least culturally respected one?

It’s a conundrum that has haunted romance writers like Cathy haunted Heathcliff; since Darcy met Lizzy. (BTW, I know that Wuthering Heights is not a romance novel. Please don’t write in.)

Romance fiction has, for many decades, been a quietly thriving genre, turning over roughly £20 million a year in sales in the UK alone. This exploded during and after the pandemic and continues to grow exponentially – thanks, in part, to the early democracy of the BookTok community on social media platform TikTok, and the unashamed devotion of a new generation of readers.

Romantasy – love stories set in fantasy worlds that are loaded with magic as well as sexual tension – has swept through fevered imaginations like magical wildfire. Onyx Storm, the third in Rebbeca Yarros’s Empyrean series is the fastest selling adult novel to be published in the last twenty years. Hot and spicy forbidden encounters, like the viral TikTok sensation Twisted Love by Ana Huang, have also thrilled readers around the world.

Elsewhere, high concept romantic comedies starring smart women with brilliant minds, like Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis, have made us laugh, aspire and fall in love with the meet cute all over again. In the UK, authors like Jessica Stanley, (Consider Yourself Kissed) Beth O’Leary (Swept Away) and Saara El-Arifi (Cleopatra) are helping shape this revival, alongside the authors who have been giving us beautifully crafted, quality loves stories for decades: the likes of JoJo Moyes, Jenny Colgan, Katie Fford and Veronica Henry. (Oh, and me!)

Suddenly, what publishing has long considered a bit niche and low prestige has become an engine with many moving parts – and it’s keeping the publishing and bookselling industry going, virtually single handed.

We who love to read and write romance have good reason to be thankful for Gen Z’s unashamed adoration of the genre. But underneath all the bells, whistles and dragons, we know one thing is fundamentally true…

We love to fall in love on the page.

We need to escape reality (which is increasingly unappealing) and explore our own feelings, hopes and desires through the safe harbour of romance fiction.

So why is reading romance so often referred to as a ‘guilty pleasure’? What is there to be embarrassed about? The answer, of course, is NOTHING.

The power of love, including romantic love, is central to the human condition. Since Plato considered the intrinsic need for humans to find their other half, the subject of falling in love has fascinated philosophers, writers and artists. So when did exploring these ideas become something to be looked down on, joked about and sneered at? I could write a long essay on reasons that might have something to do with the patriarchy… Instead, I’m just going to celebrate the many reasons why the perception of romantic fiction is changing, as well as why it matters now more than ever.

Romance is the most inclusive and diverse genre I know. All stories, your love stories, are welcome here. Yes, romance give us swoon-worthy book boyfriends/girlfriends/elves – but it also gives us a space where hope is in action. Where self-discovery is pro-active, and where people of all identities can foster agency and innovation.

Romance fiction is, so often, activism too. It shows the way to break down hate with love – to see the humanity in all people, even people you think you detest (see the ‘enemies to lovers’ trope!) Romance allows us to imagine a world that has a happy ever after. Twenty-first century romance in particular is about empowering readers to make decisive choices that often require great courage and empathy. It’s a genre that fully deserves the increasing levels of respect it is garnering.

In short, reader, I do believe that romance can save the world.

So… If you’ve ever thought about writing romantic fiction, or are in the middle of writing the kind of love stories that you long to read, now is the time to seize the day. Add your story to the wonderfully happy and delightful army of romance novels that are lighting up the globe with love.

Let’s save the world together.

Feeling fired up? Join Rowan on our inaugural Writing Romance Novels course, starting 11 May 2026.

Graham Bartlett talks about the art of tricking your reader... and no, you don’t have to write crime or thriller novels to find it useful. Drawing on his thirty years as a detective and his experience as a crime writer, he shares five practical techniques to up your storytelling game.

Back in the day, I was a detective. For nearly thirty years my job was to investigate crime and catch criminals. I was OK at it, not the best but then again not the worst. After all, they kept me doing it, even promoting me a few times, so I must have had something about me. 

Now I am a crime writer which means I’m also an avid reader, I go to events, I mentor and teach other crime writers; I’m fully immersed. However, once I reveal my previous profession people bestow me with mystical powers. The number of conversations I have which go along the lines of, ‘Well if you didn’t guess the killer I must have hidden them well,’ (possibly, but I never work it out); ‘Can you be on my murder mystery team as we’ll be a shoe in then?’ (I was once on one with a former home secretary, everyone put their faith in us and we were appalling) and ‘You must have plots and twists coming out of your ears,’ (nope. I have to work as hard as everyone.) 

How so, you might ask? Well, it’s a completely different task. When I was catching criminals, I relied on witnesses, forensics, technical evidence and even the odd admission (yes, there were one or two.) The job was knowing where that evidence might lie, finding it then packaging it for interview, charge and eventually court. 

Finding a killer in crime fiction is  far more subjective, so writing it should involve more trickery. Unless you want it all out on a plate you are unlikely to craft a fictional murder with five eye witnesses, four sources of the suspect’s DNA together with damning CCTV, phone location data and the suspect’s vehicle triggering Automatic Number Plate Recognition to and from the scene. Instead you need to seed subtle, seemingly meaningless clues throughout. You should shine a light on pointers which beef up your red herrings while having the real suspect hidden in plain sight. 

S.S. Van Dine’s rules of detective fiction may not survive in the modern age but they do make the point that, as authors, we must play fair with the reader. There is nothing I like more than being surprised by a reveal or plot twist, then to go back and slap my own brow for missing all the breadcrumbs laid out for me which, even being a former detective, I had completely overlooked. 

When I’m writing, I leave worrying about those clues until the second or third draft. I pepper the OMG moments only when I know for sure what’s going to happen and who’s to blame. 

How do you do that then? As ever, read as a writer and see how the experts do it (yes, Agatha Christie, I’m looking at you) then try it for yourself. It takes practice and honest beta readers who will highlight any giveaways, but here are five techniques to trick your reader, but within the rules: 

Bury your clue in mundane detail 

Example: After the murder, your killer runs through a forest tripping over roots and snagging his clothing on branches. That is never mentioned again but a torn jacket gives them away in the final act. Then it dawns on the reader how it was ripped. 

Show your clue from the wrong perspective 

Example: The detective notices a suspect nervously rubbing their hands. She assumes guilt. Later it is revealed that they had a medical tremor so we discount them. But the real clue was that they never once asked who the victim was. 

The "absence" clue. 

Example: Classically, from Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Silver Blaze, this is the famous "curious incident of the dog in the night-time," where a dog's silence reveals the culprit. The dog did not bark because the thief was someone it knew well, proving the theft was an inside job. 

A seemingly innocuous act becomes significant 

Example: The small woman is removed from the crashed car, then the scenes of crime officer moves the seat forward to examine underneath it, indicating that the seat would have been too far back from the pedals for her. Therefore she couldn’t have been driving but was placed in the car after the fact. 

If you’d like more invaluable insights from Graham you can join him on the next intake for Writing Crime and Thriller Novels. Fancy meeting him before you commit to taking the course? You can book a 20-minute Meet Your Tutor session for just £20, which is fully refundable against the cost of the course if you go on to study with us.

I’ve written a few books of non-fiction, and had a brilliant time doing so (with, erp, maybe one exception). And one of the things that really stuck in my head came from my agent.

We were about to pitch a book on the basis of a short proposal: basically three sample chapters + an outline of the whole book + the book’s introduction. I had thought of the intro as being the least important part of that package, but my agent told me no, it was crucial. I had to think of it, he said, as a manifesto for the book. A declaration of intent, but one that also laid out an argument to the reader: “Here’s why this topic is so important / interesting, and why you won’t be happy unless you buy this book.”

So I took my intro more seriously and rewrote it. We took that proposal out to market. By that point, I was fine with the chapters themselves and had a good, strong introduction. I was much blurrier about the actual outline, though – so I fudged the issue, and wrote an outline that kinda looked like a proper outline. It had all the right headings, but it was deliberately cryptic. My actual intentions as to content remained obscure.

Thanks to my agent’s insistence on getting the presentation right, we got a couple of huge offers and accepted one of them. We then had a Woo-hoo-we’re-so-excited lunch with the publishers at a posh place in London, and after an hour or so, I said, “Guys, the book outline I gave you was kind of cryptic. Don’t you maybe want to know what this book is going to be about?”

And yes: they did – and I told them – but they didn’t really care. They bought the book, and were happy buying the book, without knowing much about what was going to be inside it.

The point is:

1. They trusted my manifesto-style introduction. They thought, “Gosh, yes, this is an interesting and important topic which will engage plenty of our readers.”
   
2. They looked at my three sample chapters and thought, “Yep, this guy can write and this is the kind of material that will engage a broad audience.”

That was it. They didn’t need more. They trusted me (rightly) to do the rest well.

It’s much the same with the opening of any book – novels, included.

Obviously, you don’t open a novel with something that sounds like a manifesto… but that’s more or less what you’re doing anyway. You’re saying to the reader, in effect, “You like novels that are [literate / suspenseful / raunchy / funny / weird / whatever] and this novel is going to completely satisfy that desire in you.”

Those opening pages constitute a promise (“here’s what’s on offer”) and a convincer (“And boy, it’s going to be good”) all in one.

Now, plenty of writers are seduced into thinking that they can only achieve those goals via the sort of gimmick that opens a Bond movie: masked gunmen, alpine setting, ski chase, huge cliff, certain death … but wa-hey – Union Jack parachute opens and theme music begins.

That approach works for Bond movies and it works for some novels, but it’s not compulsory. The only elements that have to be there are:

1. Genre promise. You have to announce, accurately, “this is an xyz kind of book” – a police procedural, a literary novel, a hist-fic epic, etc. Most books don’t fit into a clearly defined genre, of course, but they still have to announce their niche. “I’m a funny, book-club style novel about relationships and loneliness in a digital age.” You’re giving co-ordinates to the reader, and those co-ordinates must be accurate. (That’s why those Bond intros work: you know exactly what kind of film you’re about to watch – a promise made, then kept.)
   
2. Authority. You need to convey authority. You need a reader (who may not have read any of your work before) to think, “Yes, I can trust this person to deliver the promise that is being made here.” And again: authority doesn’t need ski chases and parachutes. When you walk into a bank to take out a loan, you wouldn’t feel comforted if your putative lender were dressed in a yellow ski-suit and spouting double-entendres. The way you need to display authority will vary according to the book you’re writing.

And of these two, the key is authority.

Not many of you are going to falsely signal “gory, Nordic horror novel” when the book is actually going to turn into a sun-drenched rom-com, set over a Provencal summer. So, in effect, it’s authority you need to worry about.

And?

Well, now is a good moment for me to remind you that The Ultimate Start - our latest self-paced video course - is running at the moment. There are well over four hundred of you already taking it (I’m staggered), but you can easily jump in, if you’re a latecomer. The course is £49 if you’re not a Premium Member, but it’s as free as the wind, if you have the wisdom to be a PM. The aim of the course is to get your novel started on the right track – and of course to introduce you to our Ultimate Novel Writing Programme tutors, in case you’re thinking about taking that most excellent course. 

Next week, I’ll talk about how authority can be made to work on the page – with or without ski-chases, yellow jump-suits and plenty of men-in-black getting shot.

FFEDBACK FRIDAY / Setting the scene

This week's Feedback Friday task is from Philip Womack, one of our tutors on The Ultimate Start. It's this:

Rewrite your opening 500 words, this time trimming any unnecessary backstory or description. 

When you're ready, post your work to the forum, then read and comment on the thoughts of at least two of your fellow writers. Can you learn anything from their observations? 

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 Eleven is all about the self-publication route and author-led marketing. I have self-published a trilogy of three books. I learned a tonne. And now, I’m aiming for a traditional publishing deal with a small or independent press. 

That might sound like a contradiction - especially in a month where we’re talking about the power of self-publishing and author-led marketing. But for me, this isn’t a rejection of self-pub. It’s the result of having truly lived it. 

I did the experiment. I ran the numbers. I stood on the other side of my three respective launch days and asked: Is this the life I want as a writer? 

And now I have my answer, I’m headed for traditional publishing. Why? Well, in no particular order: 

1) I write literary fiction: My work probably isn’t going to compete head-on with highly commercial genre fiction that sells in big volumes and lends itself nicely to series. Never say never - but realistically, the manuscripts I’m producing now feel better suited, more at home, with a small or indie press. 

2) I’ve already proven what I needed to prove: My first book reached #1 in 14 Amazon categories across four countries - the UK, the USA, Canada, and Australia - on publication day. It has since revisited #1 in Canada. That bestseller ribbon meant something. It still does. 

But what mattered more was what I learned about visibility: how to get strangers to notice a book, buy it, review it, and then come back for the second one. I’m always happy to be transparent about what that required - in terms of money, time, and emotional energy. Suffice to say: I did it, I got the t-shirt, and that chapter of my life is complete. 

3) I want to focus on being a writer first: Traditional publishing gives me the greatest chance of being single-minded about story. Self-publishing - brilliant as it is - requires you to also be a marketer, data analyst, strategist, and brand manager. I’ve worn those hats. Now I want to hang them up. 

4) I want longevity: I want to be in this world for a long time. Talking about books. Talking about writing. Building a small but deeply engaged readership - not expending attention and effort chasing the next algorithm shift. And I’m incredibly lucky: I now have a job that allows me to live inside this writing world every day. It’s taken the pressure off my manuscripts to “perform.” I can give myself time to grow. 

The reality behind my bestselling ribbon? I published my first book in 2017. Back then, Amazon categories were pretty hidden and murky. I paid someone to help me analyse them because you had to know which questions to ask. The goal? To be a big fish in a very tiny (but valid) pond on publication day. 

Today, tools like Publisher Rocket make that easier, but the principle is the same: strategic positioning. 

Then came launch day. I worked my friends, family, colleagues — anyone who would listen. The book was discounted to 99p. I made 217 sales across the globe, which was enough to reach #1 in those carefully chosen categories. 

Later boosts came through BookBub advertising — an excellent tool — but my ROI remained negative. 

This isn’t a complaint. I had a ball. But it taught me something crucial: selling a book is not magic. It requires attention, focus, skill, analytics, and upfront investment. Exactly what any publisher must invest. 

And that knowledge? It changed me. 

So, would I self-publish again? No. Definitive no. 

The work I’m doing now through the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme is aimed squarely at traditional publishing. 

My last three manuscripts tell their own story. One has had 63+ rejections and now lives in a drawer. One is currently querying: one full request, twenty rejections so far. And now, there’s my UNWP work-in-progress.  

What if this one also faces the same fate? Well, I’m currently ‘composting’ two more novels. I’ll begin again. Because I now understand where my energy belongs. 

Self-publishing gave me clarity. It showed me what can threaten to stop me turning up to my writing - and what always brings me back to the keyboard. It taught me where my emotional boundaries lie: what is within my control, and what never will be (hello, agent submissions). 

So, my goals are simple and stubborn: become the best writer I can possibly be and stay around long enough for success to have a chance to find me. 

That’s where author-led marketing still matters to me — not as a hustle, but as a slow-building relationship with readers. A long game, not a launch spike. 

This month’s focus on self-publishing and author-led marketing isn’t about pushing one path. It’s about giving us the full map. The Ultimate Novel Writing Programme doesn’t sell fantasies. It teaches us students how the industry really works - across all routes - so we can choose with clarity instead of hope, and with strategy instead of fear. 

I’ve walked one road already. Now I’m choosing another - eyes wide open. And that, to me, is the real gift of this course. 

Rachel Davidson was 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. She is now seeking her traditional publishing debut with her latest manuscript. You can find out more about Rachel via her Instagram @RachelDavidsonAuthor.

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

Month Ten is all about getting published via the traditional route. All routes under this umbrella expect some form of submission package: a query letter (more likely an email), a one-page synopsis and an extract of the beginning of your manuscript – often the first 3 chapters. 

So, all I have to do is take my years of writing — the head-in-hands moments, the hours spent staring into the middle distance, my constant, chronic fear of the delete button — and package my story into a nice, easy to ‘get’ product statement. Simples, yes?  

No, not really. But bear with... because it really is important that we learn to approach the publishing industry with our eyes and hearts happily open. 

I’ve been honing my writing craft for over ten years now. My last-but-one completed manuscript collected sixty-three submission rejections (I stopped sending it out because I’d run out of suitable ‘open to submission’ agents). The manuscript currently doing the querying rounds is up to over twenty ‘thanks but no thanks,’ responses. I plan to give it a total of at least sixty-four chances of rejection.  

I have also entered many book competitions over the years and driven myself mad with hope that this one will see value in my writing. On longlist announcement days, I was not easy to live with. I stopped counting the competition entries, having eventually wrangled my hopeful heart into more of a ‘think of the entry fee as a donation to the writing community at large and forget about it,’ approach.  

At various moments in these ten years, whilst crafting and sending my stories out into the world, I have felt incredibly foolish, laughably ridiculous, beyond ‘past it’, alienated from the latest ‘in crowd’ and somewhat demoralised by the whole process.  

Which, I think, simply proves I’m a rational human being. Even seriously accomplished writers find the packaging of our artform somewhat grotesque. Take my Ultimate Novel Writing Programme tutor, Andrew Miller, a twice Booker Prize-shortlisted author. When we talked about elevator pitches, he placed his tongue firmly in his cheek, and said what I reckon every single novelist throughout history has thought at some point: if I could summarise the whole novel in just one sentence, why did I bother to write the novel? It was wonderful to hear a respected author speak aloud the market’s strangeness – the nigh on violent act of having to compress a novel into just one or two sentences. 

But art has always lived inside markets, whether I like it or not. All serious writers have engaged with this reality and endured it with their eyes open. This need to package, whilst it feels antithetical to ‘art’, does sharpen the work and is a vital necessity. 

The often-unspoken truth about The Submission Package is that the elevator pitches, synopses, and comp titles aren’t actually about the book. No: they’re about helping tired, overworked humans decide where to place their attention. That doesn’t make submission packages very noble beasts, but it hopefully makes them more understandable. It’s not about ‘selling out’ your hard artistic effort. It’s about translating it so it can intrigue.  

So, though not easy, embracing the task of distilling my book forces me to be clear on what the story is about. Naming its core ethical and emotional question strengthens my commitment to that question on each page, within every sentence. Choosing suitable comparison titles situates my story within a living conversation - the same kind of useful shortcut to deep impact that simile and metaphor offer within prose. Working on my submission package means my book knows itself better, and its artistic impact can only grow because of that.  

Pulling together a whip-smart submission package, finding the right agents, and choosing the best route into traditional publication are all vital, pragmatic actions that authors have to take.  

Over the years, I have had the great fortune to be exposed to the wisdom and expert advice of other writers in all guises – not least, peers who understand what receiving hundreds of rejections each year feels like. I have had conversations and practical support which has kept me turning up to my writing, even when the vast silence from ‘Publishing Land’ has made me doubt my sanity.  

If I may, therefore, I’d like to leave you with one further thought: publication is a deeply uncertain thing, but community never is.  

Rachel Davidson was 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. She is now seeking her traditional publishing debut with her latest manuscript. You can find out more about Rachel via her Instagram @RachelDavidsonAuthor.

When I knew I wanted to write a book, it wasn’t the idea, or the vocabulary, or the fact that I didn’t think I was good enough that was stopping me; it was the question of how I would ever find the time. Back then, I was working full-time and had four children. I barely had a chance to have a relaxing bath at the end of a long day, so what chance did I have of writing a whole novel? 

What I eventually realised was that I was waiting for a perfect pocket of time: a clear desk, an empty house, candles burning… but that version of ‘writing time’ was a myth. It was never going to happen. Instead, I wrote for half an hour in my lunchtime, and another half an hour when I got home. 

Most writers don’t struggle with ideas. They struggle with finding the time – or rather, the belief that writing needs more time than they have. 

I didn’t magically find more hours in the day; I just stopped waiting for those perfect writing circumstances that would never come. 

These are my top tips for making writing achievable, even when it has to compete with work, health, caring responsibilities, or Peppa Pig in the background… 

1. Set realistic targets  

Realistic being the keyword here. If you say to yourself, ‘Right, come hell or high water, I’m going to write 2000 words today’, great! Go you! Look at you setting the bar high. 

But let’s say you have a meeting that runs over, or one of your kids pukes all over your laptop. Come the end of the day, you haven’t even opened the thing, let alone written a word. 

That pressure you’re putting on yourself? That sense of failure? It’s the enemy of creativity. Writing a book thrives on momentum, not punishment.  

Smaller, achievable goals will keep you coming back. That’s how your book will get written. 

2. One line is better than nothing 

Let’s be honest, if you write one line a day, and only one line a day, it will take you a long time to write a book. But momentum beats volume. Every. Single. Time.  

That one line? That might be the line that hooks an agent. It might spark an idea for a twist. It might simply remind you that your book exists. Either way, that’s progress; you can’t edit a blank page. 

Does that one line need to be written on your laptop in tranquil surroundings? No. It could be on the back of a receipt, a napkin, a takeaway carton. It still counts. You’re still writing a book.  

3. Decide in advance when you’ll write 

Now, this might sound contradictory given what I’ve just said… but there will be moments when you can carve out a block of time. Even if that means getting up an hour earlier than usual, or going to bed an hour later. Beth O’Leary wrote The Flatshare during her commute to and from work.  

The key isn’t to say ‘I’m going to write a whole chapter at half past five in the morning’. It’s committing to getting up a bit earlier and opening the document. What you want to do once that document is open is up to you. You might want to research, or tweak what you’ve already written. You might stay in bed and think. It all counts. 

Protecting this time in advance will take away the daily battle with yourself – the question of ‘Will I/won’t I work on my novel today?’. This is your writing time. Be all L'Oréal about it. You’re worth it. 

If you'd like more invaluable insights and supportive advice from Emma, you can join her on the next intake for the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme or the Novel Writing Course. Fancy meeting her or another tutor before you commit to taking the course? You can book a 20-minute Meet Your Tutor session for just £20, which is fully refundable against the cost of the course if you go on to study with us.