The steel thread

We’re Build-Your-Booking all this month, but before we get there, I need to say:

WHOOPS.

Last week’s email was written on the basis of a total misunderstanding. I’d assumed that Wiz’s Instagram post (talking about the pain of having work out on submission) meant that she didn’t already have representation. She did and does! And not just for her novel, but for a prestige TV show as well. Major apologies to her for messing up so badly. I’m really sorry to have caused the upset. And … as I well know, the jitteriness of submission remains, even for pro authors with strong representation. So much of the gist of what I said holds true anyway. Just sorry for causing quite unnecessary confusion.

As for the Build-Your-Bookery, this last week has seen two events, one about finding an idea strong enough to power your novel and another about ensuring your sequencing is connected and powerful. (Both events available on playback for just £1; info here.)

Those are both important themes in their own right, but I want to talk today about how they connect.

So let’s say you’re writing a book that has this as its underlying idea:

A failed businesswoman takes on the identity of her gentle, geeky sister to escape dangerous creditors.

I think that idea would need a bit more work to get it properly fit for market, but you can feel its bite already. That sense of a book you need or want to know more about. It’s that bite which makes it (with work) ready to support a book.

What we like about that idea is that it has obvious jeopardy: the dangerous creditors. Those people have to have criminal links and be prepared to use violence. It’s not remotely enough that (say) they might be able to repossess a house or something of that scale. Almost all books need some real splotch of darkness from which to work.

But also: the book promises an adventure into a kind of becoming. Our heroine (ho, hum – what shall we call her – Lori) is one thing and is being pushed to play at becoming another. But because this is a book, what feels like a temporary dodge at the start needs to be a portal into a new way of being. Lori doesn’t need to become gentle and geeky, but she needs to be changed by the experiment. That’s the heart of the book.

Now, it’s easy to think of a pitch like this as simply the thing that makes an agent pick the book up – a marketing sticker. It’s not. It must never be that.

The theme of the second event in this month’s stacked line-up is to do with connectedness.

There’s a causal issue here. Event A has to drive Event B, which has to drive Event C and so on.

You can certainly have subplots in here. So at some stage in the book we’ve outlined, Lori will need to meet a guy quite unlike anyone she’d have dated before. She doesn’t necessarily need to end up with him, but the relationship needs to be transformative.

But the existence of secondary plots doesn’t stop the basic A -> B -> C logic being true. All it means is that we now have secondary, romantic causal chain that runs A₁ -> B₁ -> C₁ in parallel with the main thread.

Now this causal connectedness matters because it gives the story a compelling inner logic. There’s no point at which we can put the book down, no hinge to break its flow.

But the basic pitch has to be there all the time.

This book is about one sort of Lori engaging with the experience of being another sort of Lori and under the shadow of something dark. That’s the book. You can never leave that pitch.

So, for example, you cannot simply get rid of the dangerous creditors halfway through. The ‘causal connectedness’ thing on its own would let you do that (as long as event A still flows into event B and so on.)

But the pitch has to be there on every page. The creditor threat can’t fade in the second half of the book; it has to increase and get darker. (We probably, in fact, need a physical manifestation of that lurking violence. A house set on fire or a car blown up.)

Likewise Lori can’t use her sister’s passport as a way to escape to Greece where, all of a sudden, she has some interesting adventure or romance that doesn’t engage with her sister’s geeky / gentle nature.

The book has to connect causally, but it has tie back to your basic idea, in every chapter.

When plotting works well, these rules give your book an easy and natural flow. The book can be pretty easy to write, in first draft form at least.

Other times, the rules feel like a really tough constraint and it can be a battle to produce that  satisfying first draft. (I’ve had both sort of experiences. You can get a good book out in both ways – just one feels like a tougher wrestle.)

But the rules are the rules. You can’t break them. Compelling short pitch + tight connectedness all the way through. Do that right and your book essentially can’t be wrong. You’ve bound yourself tightly to a pitch you know to be right.

Next week, and still on our Build-Your-Bookery theme, we’ll talk about the opposition: what’s pushing back against your character? It’s not just finding the right level of opposition, it’s about finding the right flavour.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Is your pitch always present?

The big difficulty in dealing with plots is that the damn things are big. To understand them properly, you need to read the book. To read them in miniature, you still need at least 400+ words and it’s arduous writing those words, because there’s a lot of brainache in condensing big to little like that.

So for this week’s FF, we have two options for you.

1. If you have a synopsis, or feel like scribbling one out, then give us your short pitch plus the synopsis.
2. If you don’t have one, then give us your pitch and any 3 illustrations of how we’re going to feel the presence of that pitch throughout the book.

In terms of feedback, the big question is “does this pitch feel alive right throughout the book”? The clearer your pitch, by the way, the easier it will be to give a precise answer to that question.

When you are ready, post in the Townhouse forum.

Til soon.

Harry