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Worldbuilding is what draws your readers into your narrative. When people remember science fiction or fantasy books, it tends not to be the plot that they revel in, but a general sense of what the world was like: the plains of Rohan, or the hellish mountains of Mordor, or the great desert planet of Dune. 

Successful world-building should feel effortless. There are two major forms of fantasy: the portal, and the entirely fantastical. Both, however, come with the same problems, as the reader must not be subjected to large amounts of exposition, in dialogue or otherwise. Some people like to build their worlds inside out, knowing exactly how the economy works, and how many kings or presidents there were, and so forth. Others like to be more painterly and impressionistic, simply giving a little touch here and there to suggest something.  

You, of course, can find your own balance between these two, and sometimes the former approach doesn’t work. If you are working in the realm of fable, for example, we don’t need to know exactly what it is that the dwarves were mining, and who they sold it to, and how they sustained themselves in the hut in the woods. But if you are dealing with something where you are aiming for the realistic - and yes, this can happen even in fantasy and sci fi - then you would need to work all that out. 

Bad world-building is easy to spot. Names are particularly revealing: some people just choose random names and hope for the best; others will go into great detail in terms of etymology and meaning. Again, finding a sweet spot between the two will help you understand what kind of writer you are. 

You can build up from something simple, like a boy in a village; or you can build down from something, like a planet made entirely of ice. But either way, there has to be a sense of wholeness, and a sense that this is a world that actually exists, just as much as ours does.  

It’s worth remembering that world-building is something realist novelists do as well – readers just don’t notice it as much. 

Here, then, are six tips on how to build your fictional world successfully. 

1. Develop encyclopaedic knowledge

Of course you don’t have to make an actual encyclopedia; but it is very helpful to have a world-building document alongside your manuscript, to which you can refer.  

This can contain information such as what countries are in the world, what their systems are, what kinds of names the characters have, and so forth. This information can then appear more naturally in the weave of the novel.  

The more you know your world, the more readily the information will flow out of your pen (or keyboard) in a convincing way. 

2. Consider geography and weather 

It really helps to have some sense of the kind of world your characters inhabit. You can draw simple maps (even if, like me, you can’t draw.) Is it forested? Is it mountainous? Where do the rivers lead?  Is there another country beyond that mountain range?  

You don’t need to go too far (well, you can if you like), but a general sense of direction is absolutely necessary. Setting helps to define both character and plot, so having a strong sense of yours will help with other aspects of your writing. 

3. History and memory matter 

When we walk down the street, we take in statues, road names, plaques and so on, without really thinking about it. Your characters should do the same. “Mendaro ran down King Vilnius-platz, avoiding the railings around the shining bronze statue of the country’s first monarch” is much better than “Mendaro ran down King Vilnius-plazt which had been named after the country’s first king.”  

Similarly, we all have personal histories, and that can really help to liven things up. When a character walks past a building, he or she can remember what happened there: “Alvo never liked to go past the Titan Temple if he could help it. The shadow of what had happened to Old Bruno seemed to live there, staining the air itself…”

4. Sensation can make a story 

New fantasy writers often forget that we are rooted in the physical, and that the senses themselves inform how we act within the world. Think of warm baking smells, and newly-cut grass; think of polluted air and the smell of petrol.  

The more your characters can interact with the world in that sensory way, the better. 

5. Remember you need rules

If you are writing about magic, then the magic should have limits. Magic is simply a metaphor, in any case, and giving magic to protagonists means that they need to grapple with it: learn it, understand its purpose, and understand what the effect of using the magic is.  

Imagine if, in order to defeat a Dark Lord, your character had to perform a rite that involved killing someone - and not just someone, but a good person. Would it still be worth it?  

Those kinds of questions help to inform the philosophical underpinnings of your novel. 

6. And finally… enjoy yourself 

I think this is absolutely paramount. Building up a fictional world is quite simply one of the most enjoyable activities that a human can do. You are in control! You can make the mountains green, or the seas red, or people eight feet tall, as long as it all hangs together.  

I think too many people come to world-building having ingested a lot of fantasy tropes - orcs, elves, and so forth - and I think the really enjoyable part comes in thinking about these tropes and how you can break away from them. It really helps if your fantasy world has a purpose. Fantasy is a way of exploring our world, and you can do that in your world-building with a great deal of fun. 

Philip Womack is a tutor on the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme. To find out more about working with him on your novel over 8 or 12 months, fill in this form or book an exploratory one-to-one where you can chat with him about your story idea. These sessions cost just £20, and this fee is fully refundable if you go on to book mentoring or study with us. 

The most important sentence you will write is the first one. It’s the one from which everything else flows. The one that sets the story running. The one that helps everything else take shape. 

It’s also the first sentence that your readers are going to judge. That includes agents, publishers, critics and anyone else who can damn your book to oblivion or raise it to the stars. 

No pressure there, then... 

Even so, I don’t want you to panic. I don’t even want you to worry too much about getting those initial words down. Because the important thing to remember is that the first thing you write isn’t necessarily the first thing that everyone else will see. Nothing is set in stone – or fixed to  the page – until the book goes off to the printers.  

I’m not going to pretend that you don’t need to worry about those first impressions. In fact, since I’ve already made you feel nervous, let me also add that it’s not just about that first sentence. The subsequent few sentences, paragraphs and pages are also vital to your success. There’s no getting around it. Your opening does really matter. 

But I’m also going to insist that you shouldn’t allow intrusive thoughts about the importance of first impressions to hold up the rest of your writing. Over-thinking that opening and worrying about its consequences can be paralysing. It can stop you getting to the rest of your book – and stop you being the writer you want to be.  

So let me remind you again of the useful fact that the first sentence of your book doesn’t have to be the first one you write. In fact, it’s often pretty sensible to make it one of the last.  

And before you get to the stage where you’re finishing off your manuscript, I’d counsel you to be pretty relaxed about how you begin. 

Of course, you still have to get something down, and this can still be tricky. I understand the fear of the blank page. But again, don’t let that stop you. There are practical ways of thinking your way around this problem too – and plenty of strategies you can employ to overcome it. 

For instance: 

• Conquer the fear of that empty space and blinking cursor by just getting something down. A tried and tested way to get through inhibition is to try automatic writing. Don’t think, just write. Tell the blank page about your morning, your dreams, what you had for breakfast. Do that for a few minutes every day and see where it takes you. Get used to the idea that you can delete big chunks of writing. And also that you can surprise yourself.  Hold your bigger project somewhere at the back of your mind – but see what emerges if you just start putting down words. 

• Try starting with a scene from later on in your book. If you’ve got a scene that you’re confident will work from later in the plot, have a go at that. Learn from that about the tone and voice – and keep going from there. 

• Write yourself notes about what you want the opening to be and use those as placeholders. If sentences start forming as you’re getting those notes down, so much the better. 

• Write what you think might be the beginning – but keep remembering that it might be temporary. Be aware that you can always revise, revisit, and even delete those initial attempts.  

This last technique is the one that works best for me. For many years I wrote a weekly 1,000-word column for The Guardian. I’d do most of my research during the week and I’d sit down on a Friday morning to produce the article. Which is when the agony also began...  

I’d write and rewrite and delete and rewrite and chisel out, eventually, my first few thoughts. Hours would pass. But once I’d got that opening down, the rest would flow much more quickly. I’d write 50 words in about five hours and 950 words in less than two.  

And then, something else would generally happen. I’d go back and delete the first paragraph I’d written because I’d realise I didn’t need it after all. Or I’d go back and change it – because writing the rest of the article had revealed to me a much better way of putting things.  

 
Those initial agonies were never wasted. They would help me line things up, think about what followed, jump off into the meat of the article and say the things I really wanted to say. And so they also allowed me to come back and write an opening that actually worked.  

All of thisis a long way of saying that your opening is something you can safely worry about later. The really important first thing to do is to just start getting words down. 

If all that doesn’t settle your nervousness about beginning, let me also add something from my experience on the other side of the page. I’m an editor at a publisher. I’m the person reading those submissions. I do my best to be sympathetic. I do notice the first sentence – and I do also care about the first pages of a book. But they aren’t everything. I know the difficulties that writers have in producing them – and I know that, as a result, they rarely represent their best work. I also know that one of the most frequent editing suggestions I make is to change or cut the opening. These words aren’t set in stone. There is always another chance. You can always go back to them later. Or at least, you can so long as you get them down in the first place.  

One last thing.  

Do you think that the sentence that started this article is the first I wrote? Is there any way of knowing? Do you even care that much?  

If your answer to any of those questions is ‘no’ – and it should be – then there’s no reason for you to worry about the first thing that you write either.  

Sam Jordison is a tutor on the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme. To find out more about working with Sam on your own novel over 8 or 12 months, fill in this form or visit the web page. You can also book an exploratory one-to-one with Sam to sense check your story idea before committing to the course. These helpful sessions cost just £20 and are fully refundable if you go on to study or book mentoring with us.

I’m writing this at 6.54am, hunched over a laptop beside a decaf coffee and an itemised to-do list that I can’t quite bear to look at. Did that give you an impression of me? Good, because this month’s topic is character!  

As someone who’s fascinated with psychology, character was always going to be one of my favourite topics - and let me tell you, this month's focus on the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme has definitely delivered! We’ve been learning everything from building out a full, believable protagonist that readers can root for, to crafting an antagonist that has backstory and motivation (not simply a moustache-twirling bad guy who’s mean for no particular reason) to creating believable side characters who make the story feel alive. An excellent read as recommended by my tutor Holly Seddon was The Husbands by Holly Gramazio, which does a phenomenal job of economical character sketches that give big impressions with few words. Highly recommend!  

As with every topic, each person takes away something useful for their story. For me, this month has really challenged me to think about my antagonist. Creating a solid and plausible backstory which explains behaviour without implying excessive empathy is an interesting balance, to say the least! It’s making me work hard on what to reveal, how to reveal it and how to get the voice right (still working on this!) 

Now that we’re four months in, I’m noticing a definite change in my writing. I’ve previously been a chronic over-writer which tracks, since I have a tendency to overexplain things verbally (as my family will surely attest to!) Of course, I didn’t realise I was overwriting until I reached a particularly painful round of editing and ended up cutting an uncomfortable amount of my manuscript. As I’m progressing through the course and giving feedback to others, I’m learning to put a lot more trust in readers. I’m learning to leave gaps, to allow readers to draw conclusions, to hint and to sketch rather than always presenting the full picture. Of course, I’m also learning that the less you write, the more economical and clever you have to be with it. Each sentence must earn its place – a thought that’s making me much more mindful in my drafting this time round!  

The Ultimate Novel Writing Programme is also helping me become more confident in my drafting because I know that (much as I want it to) the first draft is NEVER going to be perfect. Letting go of expectations and having a play with the course tasks is allowing me to be much freer in my writing. Play, as I’ve mentioned before, is so important! It’s something I never want to lose. 

Giving and receiving feedback is becoming much easier too. I’ll admit, when I first started writing, I was terrified of feedback. Any suggested change or any hint that something wasn’t landing right totally knocked my confidence (hello imposter syndrome!). But now, I’ve become much more acclimatised to the process – a useful thing since I hope one day to have an agent and editor, both of whom will inevitably give plenty of feedback! Regular peer and tutor input on the course really gets you used to the whole thing. Having multiple people feedback on the forum is useful for spotting patterns and knowing which areas to address. Added to that, giving feedback to others is, I’m realising, one of the most effective ways to train yourself to edit your own work. I find it’s easier to determine what works for me as a reader, than editing my own work as a writer (no surprise, since I’ve been reading for much longer than I have been writing!) Applying this reader instinct to my own work is so helpful! 

Now, speaking of feedback, I can’t talk about the course without mentioning my wonderful tutor group (they aren’t paying me, promise!). As we’ve become used to reading each other’s work, we’ve also grown together as a group. They’re people I want to share my writing highs and lows with. People I’ll now message ‘just because’. When we first started, I remember Holly saying that we’ll become close and form bonds that will outlast the course – and I get it now. I can’t wait to celebrate everyone’s books as they come out into the world!  

So, my key takeaway from this month’s topic: characters need to be convincing, no matter how minor. I might even go so far as to say that flat characters make for flat stories! Even the paciest, most plot-driven story needs a character that feels 3D. 

Here’s the advice I’d give to anyone grappling with character development; pick a book you like and analyse how the protagonist / antagonist is portrayed. How quickly and effectively do we get the measure of that character? How do they make you feel? Why does it work for you? Then use the answers to have a play with your own manuscript and see what comes up! 

Until next month, happy writing all!   

Want to follow in Rachel's footsteps? You can learn more about the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme and how it can help you on your writing journey.

Once, a long time back, I read a draft query letter from a writer who'd worked as cabin staff on a major airline and had written a book based in that world. In her query letter, she claimed that the natural market for her book was X million people, because that was how many people took a flight each year.

It would be easy to mock that kind of thinking, but I do remember (with a cringe) that my attempts to pitch my first novel in the US took an embarrassingly similar approach. Roughly, “Some of this book is set in New York, and New York is in America, so therefore...” Hmm. Well – I lived and learned.

The bigger truth is, I think, a more or less opposite one: the more intensively local you are, the more interesting you have the potential to be.

For me, the ultimate example of this is Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch. I happen to know Hornby’s agent and she told me that he came to her with six different pitch ideas. She hated the first five and told him so. He, downcast, said, ‘Well, you’re really not going to like my #6 option.’

She nudged him anyway, and he told her about his obsession with the Arsenal Football Club and his idea for a book about that obsession. Now the agent in question is as far from being a football fan as you can imagine. I’d be confident that she’s never watched a football match in real life, and probably never even on TV. But she loved the idea – and told him to write the book.

He wrote it. It became a huge hit in Britain. It was even a hit in the US, which was still less interested in soccerball then than it is now.

Is that surprising or not surprising?

Well, on the X-number-of-people-have-taken-flights model, the book should not have done as well as it did, certainly not in the US.

But that’s not quite the point.

First, the book was a hyper-knowledgeable novel about a niche subculture. Not just that of fandom, or of English-football-fandom, but specifically of Arsenal FC-fandom. (Which, by the way, is the best sort.) People love to gain entrance to those niche communities. That’s why JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy was a hit; why Tara Westover’s Educated was.

Second, and paradoxically, the book wasn’t really about football at all – it was about obsession and addiction and the psychological toll of placing your emotions in the hands of a beast (football) which has no interest at all in your welfare.

And then third, we have this:

“Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.” – Hemingway

And also this:

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.” - Fitzgerald

In writing, the universal arises out of the particular. Seeking to expand the audience by broadening the overt topic of your text is precisely the wrong strategy.

By diving into his ultra-niche world, Hornby ended up delivering a memoir that spoke to all those who read it. His niche story said to his readers that you are not ‘lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.’

And yes, it remains true that American readers read mostly American-authored books. But you don’t crack that problem by sitting in Daventry or Donegal and having your characters say Yee-hah as they crack open Budweisers and adjust the tilt of their Stetsons. If you do that, it’ll almost certainly feel inauthentic, unless you are exceptionally skilled. And even if it felt authentic, you still have a problem: you’re now a writer who isn’t American writing fiction that’s not meaningfully distinguishable from a zillion works by actual Americans. Why would any agent pick yours?

So, double down on what you have.

Pick your real passion – the setting you care about, the obsession that keeps you awake at night – and write about that. The smaller your egg, the bigger the chicken.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY //

The Ultimate Start Lesson Four / Tiny and big

Two FFs this week. For those of you following our much-beloved The Ultimate Start course, which this week focused on world-building, it’s:

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

When you're ready, upload your work here.

And for the rest of us, a different sort of FF.

• Find a 250-word passage that delivers something big via something tiny. The archetypal example here is Jay Gatsby dislodging a clock. The act is tiny – and only briefly mentioned – but the metaphorical reverberation lasts through the book and beyond. As ever, please give us title, genre and any explanation we need.

Share your work in this forum whenever you're ready. 

Til soon. 

Harry

The first act of a novel – the first 20,000 words, let’s say – can be hard to get right.

Your readers don’t yet care a lot about your characters – they don’t know them yet. The story situation is not yet very tangled or involved. Why does a reader need to read your book when they could be mowing the lawn or emptying a dishwasher or watching AI slop on YouTok?

And, OK, there are two basic answers to that question – and an essential prerequisite.

The prerequisite is that you have to get your readers to believe in your world: a place that feels real, characters who seem authentic. Without those things in place, there’s nothing you can do in terms of story-creation that is going to engage the reader. If the reader isn’t on board your train, it doesn’t matter how much coal you chuck into your story-furnace. The reader will still be left behind on the platform.

So, creating a real-feeling world matters. After that, there are two basic tools of story propulsion. They are:

• Creating events that are striking
• Creating questions that are adhesive.

Most writers (including probably even me) think firstest and mostest about that first bullet point. Creating story, on that view, is mostly about getting to fights or revelations or corpses or marriage proposals.

But most books don’t start with a fight. They do, nearly always, start with a question.

Who is this person? Why are they wearing that? Why have they just told a lie? What is it that sends them scurrying to the port at this dark hour of the night?

And both engines always matter.

If you’re only about fights, your book quickly starts feeling like just a succession of fists and guns. Why care? If there’s not a bigger question that looms over the action, we’ve got no big reason to give a damn.

On the other hand, questions (such as those I just listed) need, at some point, to connect with a hard-edged reality. The questions don’t need to start with the big stuff – love, death, injury, risk – but they need to pull towards it. If a book forever paddles around in the shallows, readers won’t give a damn – and they’d be right not to.

You don’t even have to get to the Big Fight quickly, you just need to make sure there are increasing hints to the reader that, oh boy, things are getting spicy. You have to build a world where the fight seems inevitable.

And the balance?

Well, look, I don’t know.

Yes, genre plays a role. The more mass-market your book, the more Events are likely to take priority over Questions. The more upmarket your book, the more Questions are likely to dominate.

But that doesn’t really seem like a helpful comment.

What I personally do is stick a few tentpoles in the ground. These are my Big Events. They’re the fights, the massive revelations, the moment of danger, the big, memorable set-piece type scenes.

I don’t necessarily need a lot of tentpoles. Two big ones is fine for a book that might run to 110,000 words. There will, I suppose, be some smaller tentpoles too, but really not very big ones. In one of my books, the two Big Tentpoles are (i) a caving trip that goes badly wrong, and (ii) a (weird) fight-to-the-death type scene at the denouement. Apart from that? Well, yes, some memorable scenes: a night alone with a corpse, a trip to see a strange man (and possible killer), meeting the grieving parents of the dead person.

But those things only just make it to the level of Big Events. Mostly, they’re just generating questions. (Why is the corpse there? Who is this man, and is he good or evil? Why do these grieving Ukrainian parents have a daughter dead in remotest Wales?)

Now, I’m probably at the skinnier end of things when it comes to tentpoles. Your book quite likely has more poles – and it’s OK if it does.

But Events and Questions?

No matter what you write or how you write it, you need both.

Always. And characters that the reader cares about.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / The Ultimate Start Lesson Three / Big Event tentpoles

Two FFs this week. For those of you following our much-beloved The Ultimate Start course, it’s:

• Rewrite your opening 500 words, this time really focusing on voice. Post your reflection 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?

When you're ready, upload your work here.

And for the rest of us, a different sort of FF.

How long is your book (in words)? What Big Event tentpoles do you have? What questions do you start the book with and how do those things change and enlarge as you progress? Does all this feel like it’s about the right balance?

That’s a really hard FF, by the way – so don’t worry if you get a bit of brain-ache doing it. The reward of doing it is that it should REALLY clarify your book’s journey. Your editing will get much more rigorous and attuned to what your readers’ needs really are. Good luck! When you're ready, post to the forum here.

Til soon.

Harry

I don’t believe there are any hard-and-fast rules in creative writing. As my former colleague Helen Francis often says, ‘If it works, it works.’  

The problem we face as writers, of course, is making what we want to do on the page work for our readers. So-called ‘rules’ and advice can be useful for understanding what has worked in the past for others, but the truth is you’re the only person who can write your books. Which means that the only one who can assert any ‘should’s or ‘shouldn’t’s about your writing is you.  

Here are three commonly quoted ‘rules’ that I think every writer needs to take with a pinch of salt:

1. Write what you know

Many of us begin writing by borrowing from the world(s) we know. That’s very sensible, but unless you plan on becoming a serial memoirist, you’re going to want to reach beyond your own perspective at some point. 

This advice often originates from two well-meaning intentions: 

1. To make things easier on you – writing what you know requires less research and less imagination; 

2. A fear of appropriation – it also gives you more sense of credibility and less chance of stepping on other people’s toes. 

I find this second point is the one that worries the writers I work with the most. However, I think we should be suspicious anytime we find ourselves making craft decisions based on fear.  

Another oft-quoted bit of advice I prefer is: write what you’re afraid to write. Confronting our fears on the page usually leads to much more exciting and interesting work than playing it safe.  

The truth is, writing what you don’t know is harder than writing what you do know, and it does come with risks. The greatest risk is that you’ll get things wrong and offend or upset those that know the topic/place/people/event/etc you’re writing about better than you. As with most risky things, though, the rewards when you do the work to get things right can be great too. 

What I think is essential when writing what we don’t know is to acknowledge our own positionality and understand why we’ve chosen to write about this particular topic/place/people/event/etc. Positionality refers to the social and political contexts that create our identities and the ways our backgrounds, thoughts, ideologies and biases filter how we perceive and interact with the world. Things that shape our positionality include class, race, gender, sexuality, nationality and ability status. We can’t escape our positionality when we write, and we shouldn’t want to. Whatever our stories are about and wherever they’re set, it’s our unique perspectives that shape the reader’s journey through them. However, there are things, places and especially perspectives that each of us probably can’t write well because of our positionality. That’s not a weakness, but I think we do have a responsibility to identify the limits of our positionality in order to understand where our strengths as a writer lie. 

Rather than the safe, stay-in-your-lane approach that write what you know instructs, then, I prefer to encourage the writers I work with to write to the edge of your experience. How far can you push what you know and what you can know? How can you acknowledge your positionality but also widen your perspective?

2. Show, don't tell

I’ve variously heard this clichéd rule first originated from C.S. Lewis, Anton Chekhov and even Aristotle. Whoever is responsible, I think they have a lot to answer for. While it isn’t bad advice for some parts of our work, especially for those of us working in long-form, it can never be applied throughout. 

What it usually means when someone asks us to show rather than tell is that our reader would like this part of our story to be dramatized rather than summarised.  

Scenes that are told or summarised are brief, efficient and factual. This means they require a passive reading mode and generally don’t stir our feelings as readers; we merely have to trust what the narrator says to be true. 

Fully dramatized or shown scenes, however, are slower, richer and full of sensory details, action and dialogue that require a more active reading mode. This encourages us to share in the emotions and sensations of the characters, which tends to make us feel more as we read. 

The latter is definitely more exciting to read, but the truth is we always need a bit of both. The tricky thing is knowing when to use each. 

Showing/dramatisation is best suited for: 

• scenes relevant to your character’s story arc and emotional development; 

• key turning points in the plot; 

• moments of conflict or high feeling; 

• anywhere you want your reader to truly engage with what you’re depicting. 

But telling/summary is really useful for:  

• exposition;  

• places where you want to move the story on quickly;  

• parts of the story with little emotional resonance or significance. 

3. Axe your adverbs and adjectives

In On Writing, Stephen King proclaims: ‘I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops’. Meanwhile, Mark Twain once wrote to a student, ‘When you catch an adjective, kill it.’  

Adjectives and adverbs are describing words, though, so shouldn’t it make sense to reach for them when trying to describe the settings, action and characters of our stories? In fact, aren’t they sometimes essential? It would be pretty difficult, for example, to ask a reader to picture a bespectacled old man driving a green racing car erratically along winding country roads by just saying ‘a man drove a car along roads’. 

One of the problems lies in the debunked rule above. By definition, adjectives and adverbs tell rather than show us what a thing is like or how an action is performed. So sometimes there is a better, more dynamic way to show the same thing. (In the example above, we might observe the effects of the character’s age and poor eyesight in other scenes.) Sometimes there’s not, though. (Colours, for example, often do need to be told.) 

The larger issue with adjectives and adverbs is simply quantity. In Wired for Story, Lisa Cron says: ‘Our brain can hold only about seven facts at a time. If we’re given too many details too quickly, we begin to shut down.’ So, if I tell you a wiry and spritely 90-year-old man wearing tortoiseshell glasses and a hot-pink three-piece suit drove an emerald green 1951 Marauder A three-seater erratically along thickly hedged winding country roads... Well. I suspect you shut down a while ago. 

As with so many things, the key is to be selective. We need to consider:  

• which parts of a scene and setting we most want to draw the reader’s eye to; 

• which descriptions truly add to our writing; 

• that concrete adjectives (those that can be experienced through our senses – e.g. red, wide, hot, salty, loud) help a reader picture things more clearly than abstract ones (e.g. lovely, angry, ugly, fruitful, kind). 

So, trust your instincts – write your own way – and remember that some rules can, and should, be broken. 

Natasha Bell is a tutor on the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme.  

Want to hear more about the course? Let us know and we’ll send the information you need straight to your inbox.  

You can also book a one-to-one with Natasha to chat about your book idea and road test how you’d gel with her as a mentor before applying. These sessions cost £20, and the cost is fully refundable if you go on to study with us.

Today we are joined by the internationally bestselling author Kerry Fisher to hear her insights into this tricky business of publishing, how to get your foot in the door and make it stay there. Read on for her six top tips...

Believe in yourself.

You’re going to have to back yourself long before anyone else does. That means you have to take your writing seriously because, at first, no one else will. (I’ve been published for 12 years, and people are still puzzled that I’m not free to meet up during the day because I have a book to write…) Stop waiting for the perfect moment to begin – you really don’t need a new notebook, desk or summerhouse. Give yourself a word target – two, three, five hundred words a day. Set a timer for twenty-five minutes and write without stopping to check anything. Opinions differ but, for me, a detailed plan saves a lot of time in the long run. If you’re not a plotter, at least write a list of fifteen things that have to happen in your book to give yourself a framework.

Learn to accept and listen to feedback.

It’s human nature to want to hear, ‘Work of brilliance, nothing needs doing’ but feedback doesn’t stop once you get published – if anything it increases as your editor/copyeditor will work with you to make the book the best it can be. That doesn’t mean you have to accept every comment from your mum, friend, writing group or even manuscript critique, agent or editor. But you do need to be open to listening to suggestions. Ask yourself if there’s any merit in what they’re saying. Your gut will probably recognise when a criticism is valid even if your brain is saying, NOOOOO, that’s so much work to put right!

Don’t panic if you hate your book around the 30,000-word mark.

The initial enthusiasm has worn off, the end seems a long way away, doubts start to crowd in. Write the scenes further along the line that you’re excited about and fill in the gaps later. Brainstorm with other writers. Read what you’ve written from the beginning – sometimes you’ll be surprised by how good some of it is! Make notes about what needs to change, expand or improve. Often the writing goes flat because there’s not enough conflict. What can you do to increase the stakes for your characters?

Be professional.

Be punctual, hit your deadlines, be polite, say thank you but don’t be a pushover. Opinions vary on this but I think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask an agent who’s requested a full manuscript for a likely timeframe for a response. If you are offered a publishing contract, try to pin down key dates for the editorial schedule up front. I’m published by Bookouture - my editor and I agree everything from first manuscript delivery to proofread dates before I write a word. It’s not pushy, it’s professional – no book is going to benefit from the stress of edits turning up out of the blue the day before you go on holiday.

Investigate digital-first publishers.

There’s nothing quite like seeing your book in on the shelves in a supermarket or bookshop – glorious feeling! But do not dismiss digital-first (ebook) publishers such as Bookouture, Boldwood, Storm, Canelo and Joffe. You can submit directly without an agent and although most don’t pay advances, the royalties are usually much higher than a traditional deal. It’s a great option if you write quickly because the time between manuscript delivery to publication tends to be much shorter than in traditional publishing. And if you do exceptionally well, some digital-first publishers will also do a print run and try to get physical copies into shops (not guaranteed for anyone, even traditionally published authors).

And finally…

The publishing world is unpredictable. The bit you can control is continuing to learn and improve your craft in order to write (and finish) the best book you can. Enter competitions. I won the best opening line competition at the Festival of Writing in 2011 for my novel, The Island Escape – ‘I was wearing the wrong bra for sitting in a police cell’. It was a boost that gave me the confidence to persevere, and also something to include in my letters to agents. Follow industry social media accounts so that you know when agents open their submissions, when publishing houses are open to direct pitches, when there’s an opportunity to get your work in front of someone who could be the yes you need.

First:

Last week I spoke these words: “I shall grow a monstrous, ‘Come on now chaps’, airman’s moustache and I shall be seen at all times to be smoking a briar pipe, even in bed.”

I spoke them, and I meant them, and I begged forgiveness for past failures.

But –

I had not quite realised the issues that would arise when I joined Briar pipe + large moustache + flammable bed clothes.

I have been forced to give up both pipe and moustache by my family. We are, for now camping in the garden, while the blaze dies down.

And –

Look, I’m quite a commercially oriented writer. I’ve written in multiple different genres (including different types of non-fiction) and I’ve always wanted to get published and get paid a decent crust for doing so. Partly, yes, that’s because I want to earn money and support my family … and to do so without having a Proper Job. (I had one of those once. Shudder.)

But also, if you’re a writer, you want readers and you’re a lot more likely to have those if you have a good publisher properly behind your book and throwing some proper spondulicks at its success.

There are plenty of self-publishers who look at these things quite analytically. They use tools like Publisher Rocket to discover the niches where buyers are most greedily buying and where authors have not yet properly caught up. They look for tropes that are popular in one genre and import them over to a neighbouring genre, in the hope of getting the same kind of success there.

And, OK. I don’t have a quarrel with anyone who writes books and sells them, but I also just don’t believe that most writers ought to take that kind of approach.

So really, my own rules for choosing a writing project are twofold.

The first is: write with your heart.

If I’m not genuinely impelled by a project, I won’t do it. (I’ve had one partial exception to that rule, when I had to write a book to fulfil a contract. The publisher wanted a book that I wasn’t keen on, but I wrote it anyway. The book was OK, ruined by bad editing, steamrollered by bad publishing, and died horribly.)

Writers are generally a little nuts, so the things we want to write about are generally a little nuts. I’ve written a (modern) police procedural about relics of King Arthur. I wrote another about medieval religious practices. I wrote a romance that stretched from the Russian Revolution to the Berlin Airlift.

And – nuts is good. You just have to love the stuff you’re writing about.

Partly that’s because you’re going to be spending a lot of time there. But also there are qualities which won’t get into your book except through love. The best books (mostly, not always) are infused with a kind of humanity and love. One of the reasons why JK Rowling has done so well is that her writing is funny and her voice is warm. Of course, kids want to read about wizards. But of course, they want to spend time with a funny, warm, loving human. You don’t get that feel from a book unless it’s written with love.

At the same time, I take plenty of care with my second rule: write for the industry.

If a book isn’t going to make any money, I won’t write it. (Again with one exception, currently not published, twenty-five years in the writing, which I wrote just because I loved doing it. I may yet seek a publisher for it.)

Mostly though, I understand what the industry wants and tamp the things that I want to write about into the kind of shape that will work for a publisher.

That sounds like a compromise, but it isn’t really. I can’t think of any time I’ve done that where the commercial pull on the book hasn’t improved it. Books get better for being propulsively readable – and what the industry calls for above all is a book that demands to be read.

And, because my moods and tastes vary, the kind of writing I’ve done has varied too. (Little teaser: I have a book in front of an agent now that’s in a totally different genre to anything I’ve written before. I’ll tell you more some other time.)

Personally, I’ve found a genre-wandering approach to a career both natural and positive. I doubt if any really good writer can only write one sort of book well. Quite the opposite: writing is writing. A good crime writer can probably write good rom-coms, or kids’ book, or a memoir.

So be free. Go where the wind blows. Write with your heart, and be ruthlessly commercial, both at the same time.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / The Ultimate Start Lesson Two / Why do you write?

Two FFs this week. For those of you following the Ultimate Start course, it’s:

Identify what the hook of your novel is and share in the forum along with your 500 word opening taking into account what you have learned so far. Before posting check for any energy or intrigue drops. Post 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? When your ready post to the forum here.

And for the rest of us, a different sort of FF.

Just: why do you write what you write? What drew you to your current project? Where’s the passion in it?

But also, a niggly question that I do want an answer to: would your current project be better if it was more commercial? Are there things you’re doing which you know a publisher would be likely to object to? Or are you genuinely trying to write something that you think a publisher could love?

We do often see manuscripts that are clearly passion projects, but also clearly not quite doing what a publisher would want. Is yours one? Tell me. When your ready post to the forum here.

Til soon.

Harry