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What Is A Prologue And How Do You Write One?Most writers know that the opening of a book is all-important in terms of grabbing the attention of busy agents and editors. Many of us also know from our own experience browsing online that a striking beginning might make a difference between buying a book or not. Hence if how you start your plot can change your literary fortune, prologues can offer a fresh way to launch a narrative. In this piece, we’ll look at what prologues are, a little bit of their history and their main types and purposes.What is a Prologue?What does ‘prologue’ mean? Prologues originate in Greek drama, coming from the term prologos, ‘before word’. Ancient dramatists used them as devices to introduce the play to come and you can see the influence of this in later Shakespearean works, such as Romeo and Juliet, where the Bard uses a prologue to set the scene for  the star-crossed lovers.Another famous prologue is that of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which was written in the Medieval period and introduces his cast of characters and the context of the pilgrimage.As you can see, prologues are used at the start of a work to bring the audience into a piece, but, as you’ll see below, in fiction writing, there are particular types of prologue which you might use to make your book opening more compelling. Purpose of a PrologueAs we’ve seen above, in plays, prologues literally set the stage for the action to come, bringing us into the world of the drama in a succinct way.However, prologues are not always necessary in novels and, indeed, they are a source of debate in writing circles as they can tempt writers to add too much ‘backstory’ about their characters and the setting in one go, before the main plot begins in Chapter One, leading to an overload of information which can be off-putting. Prologues can also easily be too long, meaning the ‘real’ beginning of the story is delayed. Make sure you don’t make your prologue longer than your standard chapter and possibly consider making it even shorter to add real punch. You need to lay the foundations for the plot to come, but without being long-winded.Another difficulty is that prologues often don’t contain the lead character, unless in a mysterious and often unnamed way, so you’ve got to be careful about being too ‘on the nose’ as this device can be a way to generate real tension and excitement about your story.As you can see then, prologues come with various pitfalls, so they can be a challenge to pull off well. We’ll look at some of the reasons why you might use a prologue below, but just remember that not every plot needs a prologue, so don’t feel your work isn’t solid without one.Differences Between Prologue, Preface, Foreword And IntroductionIf we’re new to writing, it can be hard to tell the difference between prologues, prefaces, forewords and introductions and to understand exactly what is a prologue in a book.A preface is usually a short account by an author, explaining the origins of their book, with a foreword often offering an introduction to the text and its author by another person, usually a writer or authority in the same field. An introduction, on the other hand, is a summary chapter, outlining the argument and contents to come, which is used primarily in non-fiction. Indeed, most fiction doesn’t have a preface or foreword on the whole, so it’s not something the majority of writers need to worry about. Prologues are primarily the preserve of novelists then (as well as some playwrights), being a part of the narrative itself, rather than material which precedes it. Types Of ProloguesConsidering the various functions prologues can perform is perhaps one of the most important things if you’re going to include one in your novel. Many writing experts say there are four main types of prologue, involving a future protagonist, past protagonist, a different point of view and one which presents background.Future ProtagonistThis sort of prologue shows us the future self of the lead character – perhaps including their death – in order to set in motion the story of how they reached that point.It is written in the same point of view and style as the rest of the novel, but if you’re using the third person, the prologue often presents the end of the story first, with the journey towards that point beginning in the first chapter. If you’re using a first person voice, the prologue might show the lead writing a letter or memoir, stating why they needed to tell this story, and the tone is often reflective. In this sort of prologue, an older character often is introduced, presenting the overall plot as a walk down memory lane.Past ProtagonistSometimes there’s a juicy event in your protagonist’s life which the reader needs to know to understand them fully. Often, it’s a tragic event, such as a loss or trauma, which might not be given its due in the course of a flashback, but which has set up the wounded detective lead, say, to have a passion for justice. This sort of prologue allows us a look into the past then to let us see what makes the lead tick, bringing to life a powerful event which will draw the reader in and making us sympathise with the protagonist deeply right from the get-go and, luckily, it’s effective when written in the first or third person point of view.Different Point Of View PrologueSometimes, it’s useful to bring in a different narrative perspective in a prologue than the viewpoints presented in the main plot. It can be particularly useful in order to add mystery to the coming story, perhaps, say, by showing a murder in the viewpoint of the unknown killer before the main plot shows the hunt for this villain.You can also use this sort of prologue to create dramatic irony, so the reader sees some event coming down the pipe – probably something which threatens them in some way – whilst the lead remains unaware. In women’s commercial fiction, for example, we might be presented with a cheating husband, while the protagonist wife goes on oblivious – until reality hits later in the book at some point.This sort of prologue is often useful in historical or adventure fiction with, say, an artefact being used or hidden in the past, which the lead only discovers later on, as this brings the world of the book into focus, as well as establishing the compelling question about what this thing is and why it’s important.However, it’s crucial that this sort of prologue is written in the third person, even if the main part of the novel is in the first person, to make it stand out from the rest of the narrative.Background PrologueIf the world of your novel is very different than our own, such as if you’re writing science fiction or fantasy, this sort of prologue can be used to establish your unique setting and its rules in detail, so we understand the main action better.However, this is tricky to pull off as you don’t want to throw your reader into your alien world, say, unprepared, but you also don’t want the book’s opening to become an overwhelming info dump either.Focus then on creating a simple plot which illuminates how your particular world works – preferably one which links to the main narrative. Sometimes, however, the prologue might could take the form of a document which sets out the strange wonders of the world we’re entering and this form of opening offers a lot of opportunities to use your imagination, but, again, it’s a matter or balance as you also don’t want to make the beginning too obscure.Again, it’s good to narrate this sort of prologue in the third person, even if the main plot is told through the first.How to Write a Great PrologueSo, does a book need a prologue? As I discussed above, many novels don’t require one at all, so it might not be necessary for you to learn the skills set out here in order to create a killer plot opening.However, as you can see, prologues can perform some very useful functions in terms of opening a plot with power and they can be particularly helpful when writing certain genres of fiction, so you might want to consider including one in your novel. We all know how crucial a striking and stylish opening is, so bear this in mind when writing your prologue – this will be the first thing agents, editors and the general reader sees of your book, so you must make it compelling. If you’re wondering how to write a prologue, it’s key that you grab your audience’s attention from the first line and keep it. The prologue needs to be essential reading for the rest of the book, so make sure it’s both relevant to the main plot and dramatic. Immediately Engage The ReaderIn order to make your prologue stand out, it’s a good idea to take a powerful event and milk it for all its worth. You must also ensure you’re engaging the reader all the way through and not getting lost in backstory or obscure details. You want the prologue to keep the reader turning pages right into the main narrative, so keep it peppy, no matter what genre you’re writing in. You might not need a car crash or explosion in literary fiction, but even emotional crises can stir emotions enough to lure the reader in.Provide Essential InformationAs I said before, prologues can help with world-building for fantasy, sci-fi and historical fiction writers, allowing the reader to become aware of the specific context of the coming story. Indeed, prologues can also provide relevant information about past events which have impacted the lead or show scenes, such as a murder, which set up the ensuing narrative. In many ways then, prologues can give the reader relevant information for the literary journey to come and can be extremely useful devices.However, as I’ve also stressed, it can be difficult to not overload the reader with information. Add details gradually, like a breadcrumb trail through the forest, knowing you have the whole book to establish your characters and setting and remembering that an air of mystery and unanswered questions can be very alluring. Make sure the reader has the necessary information, but no more. Use a Consistent Tone and StyleIt’s important to remember that, whilst the prologue might well be in a different point of view from the main text or come from the viewpoint of a character whose perspective does not appear in the later narrative, the prologue’s style always needs to fit with that of the main narrative.What you don’t want is for your prologue to seem inconsistent with the rest of the book. Yes, you want the prologue to stand out, but if your prologue doesn’t sit well with the rest of your plot and language, it will possibly offer a false impression of your book to the publishing industry and general reader. You don’t want to confuse your audience as to what your book is like or to have your readers feel perplexed when they reach the first chapter, so make the prologue powerful, but in keeping with the ideas and style of the main text.Keep It ShortI described before how prologues shouldn’t go beyond your average chapter length and this is one way to ensure you don’t bore the reader or include excessive information.Indeed, some of the most powerful prologues are brief, offering just a glimpse into a murder scene or a crucial part of the lead’s past, before delving into the main action. In this way, prologues can be very evocative, without giving away the store. Consider then if less might be more with your prologue.Review Other ProloguesMuch of our skills as a writer come from reading, so research other prologues, particularly those from books in your genre to see how the best ones work.You could even try to experiment by emulating certain types, copying prologues to see how they’re put together, and experimenting with different types from the four given above to see what might work for your novel.Excellent Prologue ExamplesI’ve already mentioned some of the most famous prologues, such as Chaucer’s General Prologue, Shakespeare’s opening to Romeo and Juliet, but there are also plenty of more contemporary examples available, including those from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park and Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity. From ancient Greece to modern action and adventure, there are plenty of juicy examples of prologues to ponder. Think carefully as you read about what the author is presenting in the prologue, what type of prologue it is (does it provide background, for instance) and how long the author has made it. By taking notes and really absorbing what the author is doing, your own ideas and writing craft will grow.Prologues Can Add So MuchAs you can see, prologues aren’t always necessary, but they can add a lot to the opening of a novel if handled well. From ancient Greece on, writers have turned to prologues to provide important past information on the characters and general background. They also can be part of world-building in sci-fi and fantasy or generate context for historical fiction. Moreover, prologues can offer a framework for an older narrator to look back to the past, or to present a different point-of-view – such as that of a murderer in crime – thus adding mystery, as well as dramatic irony and a juicy impending sense of doom.Although you have to be careful not to add too much backstory or go on too long, ensuring that you keep the prologue relevant and consistent with the style of the rest of the book, you might end up with a really special opening to your novel. Try it and see how you get on!

When you’re writing fiction, developing your characters is a crucial point in the writing process. You might have the most compelling plot in the world, full of romance and action and intrigue – but if your characters feel more like paper dolls than people, chances are your book isn’t ready yet. It’s important to be able to tell the difference between round and flat characters, and to know when it’s okay to let a character stay two-dimensional or when they really need that extra axis of development. So let’s dig in!Characters In FictionLet’s define something out of the gate: what do we mean when we talk about ‘character development?’Basically, character development is the process by which a character (particularly in fiction) is brought ‘to life’ by giving them motivations, personalities, wants and desires – making them feel vivid and real, essentially. It can also refer to the ways your characters may change over the course of the novel, their literal development on the page thanks to the plot.For the purposes of this article, we’ll be talking about two – well, three, but we’ll get to that – kinds of characters: flat ones and round ones.What Is A Round Character And How Do I Write One?A ‘round’ character has layers. They’re nuanced and vivid, the kinds of characters you read about and wish they were your friends or to whom you feel an emotional connection. Essentially, the round characters are the story. These characters are your complex protagonists and antagonists, and your key supporting roles. They serve as the plot drivers because they make the decisions on where the story goes.A fully-formed, well fleshed out character doesn\'t happen overnight. Much like meeting someone at a party, it takes time to get to know them. They all start two-dimensional and then you add layers to them – it\'s like growing little onion-people! (Sorry for that strange insight into my brain.)A reader wants to care about your rounded characters, will want to be surprised by them, and will want to follow them on their journeys. The more we explain why someone is the way they are or acts the way they do, the more complex they become, and that\'s the beauty of a rounded character. A good tip is to spend time getting to know the characters that you need to be rounded, and this can be super beneficial before you start writing because that knowledge can influence and better shape your writing.Here are some tips on how to create them:Outline Their Goals And MotivationsA reader cares more when they understand our characters, and the key here is to ensure our reader knows what motivations are driving our character\'s decisions throughout the story. These motivations can be based on good reasons or bad, and will apply to both the protagonist and the antagonist. It seems that the appetite for understanding motivations has increased in storytelling, and so it’s worth looking at two beloved characters who’ve recently had their motivations brought to the big screen:JAMES BONDOver decades, we’ve seen a host of Bond films where he’s more or less the same character: a charmer and a killer. This had a certain appeal, to be sure, but it also made him rather two-dimensional. When producers decided to adapt the 1953 novel Casino Royale in 2006, we were suddenly shown insight into how Bond became a killer (that brilliant black-and-white opening sequence) and what motivated his callous charm (falling in love, discovering her deception, watching her drown). Now we understood why he behaved the way that he did, which made him far more human than he’d been before.THE JOKERPart of the Joker’s appeal in every Batman appearance prior to Todd Phillips’ 2019 film Joker was that he was a madman. He represented anarchy to Batman’s order – very archetypal, comic book stuff. But Joaquin Phoenix’s award-winning performance revealed a failed clown whose inner turmoil gave rise to the chaotic villain we’ve all come to know.Bring Conflict Into Your Character\'s LifeConflict is not only a tool to drive the plot forward, but also shows a reader how your character will respond to a given circumstance. That in turn is interesting to a reader because it will show up traits in a character like their moral standing, etc. We can use another character to demonstrate conflict, or use an internal conflict, or even both. Take Woody from Toy Story as an example of both. He was Andy\'s most cherished toy until Buzz Lightyear came and took pride of place on Andy\'s bed (and heart). Note that introducing Buzz into the story – who posed no threat to Woody physically because they didn\'t have any historical conflict – had a knock-on effect to the internal conflict within Woody. Woody\'s insecurities and fear of being replaced meant his \'good guy\' persona was rattled.Let Your Character EvolveA rounded character will learn something throughout the story, and they’ll be different by the end than they were at the start. Using Woody in Toy Story as an example again, his acceptance of Buzz by the end of the film – and his willingness to understand what it means to share Andy’s attention -- leaves him in a far different place from where he was at the beginning of the movie. You are a different person from who you were when you started your journey; shouldn’t your characters be, too?What Is A Flat Character?A flat character is two-dimensional and uncomplicated. They are often minor characters (though not always) and their role in the story is usually a perfunctory one. It’s rare for a flat character to undergo any kind of development over the course of the story – usually because their development isn’t the point of the story. But that’s not to say that flat characters are a bad thing, or even something to avoid!They can be used for enhancing rounded characters and interaction between the two can reinforce the rounded character\'s strengths, traits and values. Think about The Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz: she\'s simply evil and not given any backstory, but she makes Dorothy look like a saint with awesome morals via the ways in which she provokes conflict. Your flat characters might also be supporting roles like Miss Stephanie Crawford, the town gossip in To Kill a Mockingbird: someone who can help deliver the novel’s message and who can help spur the revelations of the rounded characters, but whose story doesn’t need to be filled out for the reader’s enjoyment.Let’s get into some tips on writing your flat characters:Flat Characters Get Flat NamesI tend to give my flat characters forgettable, common names, or even no name at all – sometimes a job reference will even do, eg. \'the waiter\' if they\'re just in one scene and delivering a cup of tea.Flat Doesn’t Mean BoringYour flat characters can have quirks that will delight a reader but won’t distract them. For example, you can have a clown who\'s not funny, or a dentist with bad teeth. Tom Bombadil is one of Tolkien’s most memorable inventions, but he serves a purpose in The Hobbit, not a distraction – or think about Dame Judi Dench’s performance in Shakespeare in Love, which won her an Oscar and she was on-screen for eight minutes!Enjoy Them But Don\'t Spend Lots Of Energy On ThemIf you feel confused about whether a flat character needs more to them, the likelihood is that the reader will also feel confused about their role. Don’t let that compelling quirky weirdo who shows up in one scene take over the rest of your book (unless, you know, you want them to) – again, you don’t want your flat characters to be a distraction. That’s why they’re flat! Determine their relevance to the scene and then focus on that before getting on with your day.The Difference Between Flat And Round CharactersIf you\'re not sure if you need a round or flat character in any given scene, ask yourself a simple question – do I need the reader to care about them here, or in the story as a whole? If the answer is yes, you need to give them some complexity. If not, they\'re the flat ones.Consider a classic battle scene in The Return of the King: The Ride of the Rohirrim, a last ditch attempt against all odds to save Middle Earth (no pressure). The sequence has both flat and rounded characters within it. We care about the collective force because they are representing the microcosm of the entire trilogy – good vs evil – in a spectacular and emotive way, but do we care about each and every one of the six thousand riders? Nope. We care about Theoden, Eowyn, and Merry – because those are the characters that have been given layers. We’ve spent time with them, seen their lives upended, witnessed their doubts and insecurities, seen their moral and emotional growth, and have agonised alongside them.And while we’re talking about speculative fiction, let’s use a role-playing game example: your well-rounded characters are, well, the characters you’re playing – while your flat characters are your NPCs, your non-player-characters. They’re the ones your main characters interact with along the way.What Is A Static Character?A note: some main characters, including some quite famous ones, are decidedly static characters – by which we mean that they don’t change, even as they’re quite memorable and even by many respects ‘well-rounded’ characters. Remember what we were saying about the Joker earlier? Remove that 2019 film from your brain and think about the character again: we often don’t know his name, his motivations are unclear, and he serves mostly as a foil to our protagonist. Another, more literary, example would be Bertie Wooster (and Jeeves, for that matter!) from P. G. Woodhouse’s Jeeves and Wooster stories. The relationship between Bertie and Jeeves will always be the same, those two men themselves will always be the same, and that’s really part of the joy of reading those stories: that those characters do not change.Without Character You Have No StoryYour characters are the beating heart of your novel or story, and it’s crucial to make sure that you’ve invested them with the time and attention they deserve. Some of them might be well-rounded characters and some of them might be flat – but hopefully these tips and tricks will help you determine which should be which!

We all know that a book with a great hook is something agents, editors, and readers are looking for. But when it comes to books that last, the ones that readers will be recommending for years to come, it’s those with the best plot twists that stand the test of time. Yet plot twists are so hard to write. So how do you deliver thrilling twists and turns that will keep your readers guessing until the very end?What Is A Plot Twist?“I feel that the characters in my book, if they were real, would be like, \"Seriously, another plot twist?” (Author, Meghan Blistinsky)A plot twist is a literary device found in all forms of storytelling, where the reader (or viewer) is lured into the intrigue of the plot and left reeling by a grand revelation or turn of events they didn’t see coming.A plot twist can take place in any scenario, but there are three very important rules a writer must follow:1. It must be plausibleThe reader needs to be surprised by the revelation, but not shocked. All readers love to guess what will happen next, but if the plot twist doesn’t make sense or hasn’t been primed in advance the readers will feel tricked or let down.2. It must be a surpriseIt’s not much of a twist if the reader is able to guess the outcome from the very beginning. A successful plot twist, whether in a book or movie, will keep people guessing all the way through.3. It must be foreshadowedWe all love to think we can outsmart the writer and guess what will happen. But a great writer will make you think you’ve cracked it, and still surprise you with a revelation that makes total sense, but only in retrospect.Why Is It Important To Have Plot Twists In Your Book?It’s not. Plot twists aren’t vital in every book, but they are a great way to add intrigue, keep readers turning the pages, and get them invested in the plot. Not to mention add much-needed hype to your book.And it doesn’t matter what genre you write in. A great plot twist transcends all types of books and stories. We often think of thriller plot twists when considering books with a grand reveal – you can’t have a successful murder mystery without a shocking revelation at the end - but every book can benefit from adding a plot twist (or two, or three, or four) to add tension, intrigue, and keep readers talking.A good plot twist can be used effectively in all genres, from fantasy and YA to rom coms and gothic horror. Even if no one has gone missing or been killed.Plot Twist Examples From Books And Movies“The best stories are the ones with the unexpected plot twists that no one would have guessed, even the writer.”(Author, Shannon L. Alder)There are too many amazing movie plot twist examples and great plot twists in books to list them all, so we’ve split them up into three types. Plus, we’ve kept the descriptions vague so as not to ruin their big ‘wow’ moments if you are unfamiliar with them.Watching a movie, or reading a book, a second time can be extra enjoyable because that’s when we see how the writer planted the clues to the twists throughout the story from the beginning. See if you can think of your favourite plot twists and where they would fit in to these three categories.Plot Twist #1: The Grand RevealThis is generally known as the ‘who dunnit?’ and is used in all crime, thriller, and murder mystery books and movies.Behind her Eyes by Sarah PinboroughA single mother falls in love with her boss and befriends his wife, but something is very wrong.Sharp Objects by Gillian FlynnA reporter confronts the psychological demons from her past when she returns to her hometown to cover a violent murder.Knives OutWho killed crime novelist Harlan Thrombey? A murder mystery with more twists than Chubby Checker.The Orient Express by Agatha ChristieJust after midnight the Orient Express stops in its tracks. In the morning, an American is found stabbed to death. Who did it?Secret Window, Secret Garden by Stephen KingPeople are being murdered. But who is the bad guy when you’re a writer living alone?Plot Twist # 2: The Plot ThickensThese types of plot twists are often used to change the direction of the story. Sometimes the twist is the inciting incident, sometimes the midway reveal, or it can pull the protagonist in a new direction and lurching into act 3. When it comes to a series, these types of revelations can also serve as great cliff hangers.The Maze Runner by James DashnerDozens of boys, and one girl, must escape a maze for freedom. Yet who is behind their imprisonment?Fingersmith by Sarah WatersA novel set in Victorian England follows the intertwining lives of two women from different worlds.ParasiteA poor family scheme to become employed by a wealthy family and infiltrate their household by lying about who they are.The Girl With All the Gifts by Mike CareyA teacher and a scientist living in a dystopian future embark on a journey of survival with an unusual young girl.I am Legend by Richard MathesonA post-apocalyptic vampire thriller, about a lone survivor struggling to live in a world that is no longer his own.Plot Twist #3: Wait! What?Some of the best plot twists are those that you never asked for and come out of nowhere. By adding a huge twist at the end, one that (unlike a murder mystery) you were not waiting for, it changes the entire story from what you were led to believe to something else. Unlike a simple ‘who dunnit?’, these twists throw the biggest curve balls and leave you reeling as the credits roll or you close the book for the last time.Sixth SenseA little boy can see ghosts and is helped by a psychologist…who may not be all he seems.Everything, Everything by Nicola YoonA teen girl has an illness which means she can’t leave her bedroom. Then she falls in love.SevenSomeone is killing people based on the seven deadly sins. But what’s in that box at the end?American Psycho by Bret Easton EllisWe know he’s a cold-blooded killer. Or is he?We Were Liars by E. LockhartA lonely teen girl recounts one beautiful summer, that may not have been so beautiful after all.How To Write Your Own Plot Twists“Beneath every story, there is another story. There is a hand within the hand...... There is a blow behind the blow.”(Author, Naomi Alderman)You only have to read the latest Amazon reviews of a newly-hyped thriller to see how important plot twists are to readers. Many books are sold as having a ‘twist you never saw coming’ – which can backfire if readers are able to guess the grand reveal too early, leaving them feeling cheated. In other words, readers want you to surprise them with twists that they never saw coming yet were obvious in retrospect.This is easier said than done. So how can you, as a writer, achieve that?Here are five plot twist writing tips to keep your readers intrigued and guessing until the very end:1. Let Your Characters Do The Hard WorkIf you have created well-rounded characters with clear intentions and strong personalities, they will often reveal to you something you never initially planned.Relax and leave your main characters to do the walking and talking. Perhaps put them in a strange scenario and see what happens. You may be surprised by where they take you.2. Work BackwardsWhen it comes to the best thriller plot twists, authors often work backwards. They start with the big reveal, then go back and insert subtle clues and pointers alongside dead ends and red herrings. It’s important the clues are hidden amongst the more obvious clues that are placed on purpose to misdirect the reader.For example: If you want the killer at the end of your novel to be the cleaner, you may have her polishing the gun in act one, and you may have her cleaning in a scene where another suspect is acting more obviously guilty. The best places to add plausible clues that lead to your twist is to hide them among action or dramatic narrative where the readers won’t be noticing them as much.Let your readers think they’ve cracked it, then lead them down a dead end and make them circle back.3. Mislead Your Readers On PurposeThis leads us on to misdirection, red herrings, and dead ends. The only way to keep your readers guessing is to play with them. Like any good magician, you make them look at your right hand while hiding the coin with your left.This doesn’t mean simply pointing at the wrong culprit until the big reveal at the end, but entertaining your readers with plenty of action and intrigue until they are yanked out of their comfort zone with a big twist.For example, in Life of Pi by Yann Martel, we are so intrigued by the concept of a man having to survive on a life raft with a killer tiger, that it doesn’t occur to us that the story may be an allegory. And in Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, we are so enthralled by the depiction of a seedy club full of men fighting one another, that we never once consider that perhaps our narrator is far from reliable.4. Give Them A Mega Twist At The End Of The First TwistThere are no rules when it comes to how many plot twists you can have in one book (as long as you don’t make your readers dizzy with them). One fun device is to build up to an expected twist, then deliver a mega-deadly twist straight after.One example of three twists in a row is in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. In the original novel, not only does Dorothy discover that the Great Oz is merely an inept man behind a curtain, but she learns that she could have gotten home simply by clicking her heels. And then, as if that’s not enough drama, once she’s back in Kansas we discover it was a dream all along. Or was it?These twists after twists are a fun way to add tension and speed up the pace during the last act, and to keep readers thinking of the story long after they close the book.5. Play With Your Readers’ EmotionsAuthors love to make you feel – whether that means making you laugh, cry, shocked, or even so angry you throw the book against the wall (then quickly pick it back up, because you simply have to know what happens next).The best way to play with a reader’s emotions is to deliver a roller coaster of gut-wrenching twists. In Romeo and Juliet, we go from the throes of passion and teen love to Romeo’s best friend Mercutio being killed by Juliet’s cousin. A big dilemma we never saw coming. From love to despair, Romeo then delivers another twist when he kills Tybalt in revenge. We go from a cute YA love story to one of violence, tragedy, and drama when Romeo is banished.If Romeo and Juliet were a teen novel today, most readers would expect that arc to lift by the end of the book, proving that love can overcome everything. Yet this is no love story, it’s a tragedy that purposely messes with your emotions. As a final, fatal, twist we see Romeo not only kill himself in the last act because he thinks Juliet is dead – but Juliet wakes up, sees that her lover is dead, and kills herself too!This onslaught of dramatic twists leaves the spectators reeling with every imaginable emotion until at the end of the play they are left completely bereft. But in the very best way. Because, ultimately, a reader wants a writer to make them feel.A Plot Twist With A DifferenceAs a final plot twist of our own, we’re adding a little bit more to this article and supplying you with some inspiration for your own memorable plot twist creations. Now we’ve had a look at what plot twists are, which ones work best, and how to write your own, here are some fun prompts to get you messing with your readers’ minds.What if…- The bad guy isn’t the bad guy after all? The MC is?- The MC falls in love with the friend helping them get the girl?- The imaginary world is the real world?- The MC isn’t the narrator? It’s all been from someone else’s POV?- The good guys were never there to help after all?- The MC isn’t alone, as we have been led to believe?- The narrator is unreliable?- The MC has been lied to all along?- They were pretending to be someone else?- They are not dead?- Or…are not alive?Plot twists, when executed well, are not only fun to experience as a reader, but are also a lot of fun to write. There’s no greater thrill than a reader exclaiming they never saw your twist coming. Next time you are reading a great book, or watching a movie, study where the writer or director is asking you to look and look in the opposite direction. Study the clues, guess the outcome, and try to get one over on the writer. You may even be inspired to write your own unforgettable plot twist.

We\'re thrilled to be offering another round of the Writing for Children course with Eleanor Hawken, beginning in September 2021. The course is six weeks long and is perfect for beginners, lovers of children’s books and for those with a passion for storytelling.Florence Gladwell, a student on the inaugural course, shared her experience with us.(Image: @nickmorrison on Unsplash)Writing For Children With Eleanor HawkenIf I were to sum up my experience of Jericho’s Writing for Children course with Eleanor Hawken, I would say:I’m so glad I did and I’m confident of what to do next. And because of the tutor guidance, frequent quality critique, and encouragement within the group, I really want to do it again!Early ExpectationsI was excited from the day I enrolled. I had a clear set of expectations for myself and from the course. For myself, I wanted to grow the pocketful of ideas I had been carrying around and focus on developing them into a fun, gripping, and marketable story. Another major driver was to get more experience in exchanging critique with people who were interested in writing for kids.From the course I expected everything that was advertised – weekly tutorials; peer-exchange and video meet-ups; covering the ins and outs of the children’s book industry; selecting an appealing narrative voice for different ages; building rounded characters with distinctive voices; creating dramatic tension; establishing a workable plot; as well as making sure to nail the ending.It was a full-on six weeks, to say the least, and I absolutely loved every minute - even if my young daughter sometimes had to nag me to get off the computer.Delightful SurprisesWhat I hadn’t expected was how great it would be to have a diverse range of stories, voices, and skill sets all bouncing off one another. Our group had people working on everything from picture books to YA, contemporary to fantasy, first person to third person with multiple POV, and some beautiful lyrical prose to contrast others with a more tightly-paced style of writing.Although many of the group commenced the course with fully-formed ideas, completed first drafts, and in some cases, well-advanced manuscripts, I did not. This is because after finding no takers for my first manuscript (a middle-grade fantasy adventure), then seeking feedback from Jericho’s manuscript assessors, I decided to let it go and start again. This was a lot easier than I imagined. I had realised the story’s core wasn’t good enough, and this time I was already starting to understand so much more about myself, the industry, and what I really wanted to write.\"What I hadn’t expected was how great it would be to have a diverse range of stories, voices, and skill sets all bouncing off one another.\"At this stage, a course where I could develop an idea with some guidance and feedback sounded perfect. And then one day an email came from Jericho Writers, offering me just that.The Nitty-Gritty: How My Ideas Developed Through the Six Week CourseWeek one: Our homework was to write a brief pitch, such as you might send to an agent. This isn’t easy for anyone. Even our most progressed group members struggled. But with exchanges of feedback and Eleanor’s keen eye, I managed to find a pitch I was really happy with. Now there was just the small task of living up to it.Week two: The exercise involved outlining a simple plot. Again, \'simple\' does not mean easy. This was a big concept to turn around in a few days, but I cobbled something together and submitted it. I was relieved to find I wasn’t miles behind many of those with a first draft. After the group helped me express my ideas more clearly, Eleanor really hit the nail on the head when she explained what made my proposed story special and what it lacked. The worst of it was, my proposal didn’t live up to the pitch. For the time being, I let my ideas marinate – but we’ll get back to that later.\"After the group helped me express my ideas more clearly, Eleanor really hit the nail on the head when she explained what made my proposed story special and what it lacked.\"Week three: We had our first chance to share the first five hundred words of our writing. This is when I discovered how different all our writing styles and voices were. Though distinct, some voices - like mine - were still emerging, while others were well-developed and confident. It was inspiring. I wasn’t the only person to submit multiple edits following critique from a very encouraging group, and the final offering was much better for it.Week four: We were able to share any scene from our story which showcased characterisation. As I went away with my family during this time, I wasn’t able to make use of the group’s feedback to edit. But as it was, most comments were on the things I already suspected weren’t clear enough, while Eleanor’s notes made me completely re-evaluate the relationship of my characters. This fed a lot into how I redeveloped the plot.Week five: This week was all about creating dramatic tension, and Eleanor gave us the option to either submit a scene of our choice or write a scene about the main character entering their bedroom. There were many variations on this theme offered up in the homework as others adapted the exercise to suit their stories. As I didn’t have a settled plot yet, I took the task requirements and built a scene which (with some editing) I think could very likely end up in my final manuscript. Brilliant. Plus, the feedback from the group gave me a lot to think about.\"Eleanor’s notes made me completely re-evaluate the relationship of my characters. This fed a lot into how I redeveloped the plot.\"Week six was supposed to be about endings. But as I mentioned earlier, I had not settled on a plot, and I was having a crisis of POV to boot. I had cheated in all the previous weeks, finding scenes in the first quarter of the story which I was pretty sure would remain the same. But an ending required me to make some decisions. Fortunately I had now been arranging and rearranging plot ideas in my head for five weeks, and I was ready to write something down. So instead of submitting a passage of writing from the end, I resubmitted a plot and five hundred words from a slightly adjusted beginning passage using a new POV. The POV change was hard, but I really wanted it so I could better tell the story as I now imagined it. With some absolutely amazing feedback and encouragement from the group, along with a few rounds of shared edits, I got somewhere that felt right. Even better – it lived up to my pitchIn just six weeks, I had found my story.Expectations ExceededI put a lot into this course, but I got so much more out of it than I expected. I am grateful I had the opportunity, and feel privileged to have been able to experience it with such a great group of people.If you’re interested in writing for children and are looking for a course to progress your skills and story ideas, I can highly recommend this one. Thanks again Eleanor!About FlorenceFlorence Gladwell is an aspiring writer from Australia and mother of one adorable but rascally pre-schooler, who charmed the course participants by drawing pictures for them based on passages they submitted as homework.If you would like to say hello to Florence or ask anything else about how she found the course, you can find her on Twitter @FlorenceGladwe1About Eleanor HawkenEleanor is the published author of nine children’s books, which include the Sammy Feral’s Diaries of Weird series. She has also written numerous books and novels under pseudonyms and as a writer-for-hire for licensed brands such as Disney, Warner Brothers and Universal. Eleanor is an experienced children’s fiction editor, having worked in the publishing industry for over 15 years. She has worked on a wide range of books from young fiction through to YA. She has a passion for storytelling, children’s books and helping other writers find their narrative voice and navigate the path to publication. For more on Eleanor, see her website or Twitter.For more information on the Writing for Children course and how to apply, just click the button below:Writing for Children

One of the huge advantages of taking a writing course is having a book coach, or mentor, by your side giving you one-to-one support. But what does this actually involve? How closely will you work with your book coach, and what will the dynamic be? We asked the US/International tutors on our Ultimate Novel Writing Course to tell us about what mentoring means to them and what to expect.JW: What is book coaching? Can you say a few words about what you would expect your relationship with your students to be like?Lindsey Alexander:The mentoring component of the UNWC is one-on-one customized coaching that\'s calibrated to your needs as you move through the course. Your mentor is your creative collaborator, someone who\'s going to get to know you and your project really well in order to help you ensure that your novel reflects your intentions in a way that\'s going to captivate your reader. Each month, you\'ll submit a portion of your work-in-progress to your mentor. You and your mentor will connect for a conversation over Zoom or by phone, typically for about an hour. You can also opt for written feedback, or choose a combination of the two.\"Your mentor is your creative collaborator, someone who\'s going to get to know you and your project really well in order to help you ensure that your novel reflects your intentions in a way that\'s going to captivate your reader\"In our conversations, we think big and brainstorm, review specific passages in your manuscript to look at what\'s working well and where there might be room for improvement, and navigate the ups and downs of the writing life as you build toward a sustainable creative practice you\'ll be able to stick with long after the course is over.Between these conversations, your mentor is there to field your questions, concerns, and middle-of-the-night epiphanies, and each month, your mentor will gather their group of students for a  Zoom conversation to reflect on the tutorials and discuss progress and challenges together. You\'ll also have the option of continuing your work with your mentor through a manuscript assessment in the final months of the courseA.E. Osworth:I have a really particular pedagogy. I teach it a lot, and I teach a lot of different kinds of students. One thing I find that nearly every writer has in common, especially when they’re working on their first draft, is that momentum is more important than anything else. You don’t know what’ll happen to the finished draft. Then you can go back and apply things to it, but up until then, you are experimenting with choices. So when it comes to working with me – as an instructor, as a mentor, as a peer, as anything – my pedagogy is one that focuses mainly on praise, so that you know which of the choices you’re experimenting with are the strongest, and are getting across your message the strongest. And so you can hoard those choices.My approach to coaching is praise-focused because it gives students the chance to write toward their strongest choices instead of away from criticism, which honestly could stop a writer in their tracks. And the most important thing is to finish that first draft.“My approach to coaching is praise-focused because it gives students the chance to write toward their strongest choices instead of away from criticism.”The other thing that people can expect from me when it comes to coaching is that I have a pedagogy of decentralising the instructor. So in any group of novelists, I believe that we all have things to learn from each other; I am not special in that room. Working with me is a really non-hierarchical experience.I have tools and I am happy to hand those tools over to someone else - but someone else’s experience of their life and their art and their career is just as valid as my experience of mine, and their experience is more relevant to their life. So what you can expect from me is: here is an array of tools, we get to practice using them and then you get to pick which ones are actually working for you. I’m not going to impose my taste or aesthetic, or my practice, on somebody else. My practice works for me because I’m me.Read more on ‘useful praise’ by A.E. Osworth for Catapult.Brian Gresko:I try to be very available to students to field questions, and essentially to be a kind of accountability buddy but also there for support– that might require a pep talk, but sometimes it’s just knowing that somebody is there listening. I think especially with writing for publication – it’s a communicative art. It can help to have someone who is waiting to get your pages, and that gives you a certain amount of energy to complete them.Your mentor gives you real-time feedback on your work, and that also can help guide how you’re moving the narrative forward. I like really getting into the text and talking about story decisions. Structure, and pacing, are both really important to me. Besides reading, I’m a big television watcher and I think it’s a similar principle. Keeping your audience’s attention over around 300 pages is hard, and you have to really think about how you’re going to keep the energy of the reader chapter by chapter.“I try to be very available to students to field questions, and essentially to be both a kind of accountability buddy but also sometimes for support– that might require a pep talk, and sometimes it’s just knowing that somebody is there listening.\"So I will be talking to my students face-to-face once a month and seeing them together as a group once a month, and hopefully getting everyone to share some of the challenges and experiences finding their way through a story I try to help the author thread their way through their narrative structure, before they become lost.Sara Lippmann:As writers, we sit at our desks all day, in our own worlds, with all these characters looming large in our heads. It can be extremely isolating. I know. I get it. I\'ve been there. I\'m still there. As a mentor and coach, I am personable, honest, and hands-on. I will walk alongside you, cheering you on when you need it, but I will not blow smoke. I am an intuitive, close reader - that is, I read for intentionality in order to help you realize your vision on the page.“As a mentor and coach, I am personable, honest, and hands-on. I will walk alongside you, cheering you on when you need it, but I will not blow smoke.”I will keep you on track by holding you accountable, and I will push your work to the next level, encouraging you to lean into your natural narrative strengths and to stretch them beyond your comfort zone, toward greater urgency and resonance. I\'ll challenge you to take risks and dig deep, in order to excavate a larger truth. My style is a mix of merciless and generous, but I always come from a place of openness and love.Lindsey Alexander, A.E. Osworth and Sara Lippmann are available as tutors on the UNWC US/International course. They\'ll give you one-to-one book coaching and expert tuition as you write a publishable novel over a year. Find out more below.UNWC US / INTERNATIONALBrian Gresko is now available as a mentor on the course with a UK/European timezone:UNWC UK / EUROPE

We’re thrilled to be launching another year of our Ultimate Novel Writing Course. It’s the most practical, hands-on course we offer, helping you go from first draft to full publishable manuscript with expert tuition and ongoing support. We chatted to Sharon Dunne, a student on the 2020-2021 course, about how the UNWC has impacted her writing journey.  JW: Hi Sharon! What stage were you at with your writing before the UNWC?  SD: I had very little experience before the course. I\'d always loved writing but it just wasn’t feasible as something to do as a career, at least not in my circle. I started writing properly about a year beforehand and, after eleven or twelve months, I realised that I needed help. I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I was just going with it - but if I wanted to make it a serious career, I really needed some help.  JW: What was your favourite part of the course?  SD: It’s hard to choose! Meeting my group was absolutely amazing because they were such great support. You end up building a friendship - a supportive circle where you can help each other when someone is struggling. That was one of my favourite things. I think the weekly exercises, the feedback, and the tutoring have been excellent as well. I had started with a book, but I ended up deleting a whole 96,000 words and starting again. I’d thought I needed a little bit of help, but I realised quite quickly that it just wasn’t good enough.The first tutor feedback I had was from Wes (Brown, UNWC tutor) and it was really good. He gave feedback in such a supportive way that it encouraged me to start again. Now I’ve just finished my manuscript. It’s just been sent off to Lindsey (Alexander, UNWC tutor) and it’s so much better. I basically learned from the ground up and I worked really hard at it – the whole experience was great.  JW: Amazing! Do you think starting from scratch on your MS was made a little easier because of that support? SD: Yes, definitely! I had started writing without knowing I needed the basics, but once I’d started learning them I realised that [my original manuscript] wasn’t good enough and there was no point in trying to make a load of changes. In the end I just wanted to start again. Actually, I think I was more excited than anything. Whatever chapter I was writing, I would use that for whatever was the focus of the course each week – so I was kind of tweaking as I went, as well. The weekly tasks were really good because I performed them on my work-in-progress as I wrote.   I had started with a book, but I ended up deleting a whole 96,000 words and starting again...JW: It sounds like that corresponded really well then! Which aspect of the course did you find the most challenging? SD: I have four small children and I work, so I suppose for me the most challenging thing really was just finding the time. But I was, and still am, very creative and I was learning very fast throughout the course. It was during that time I realised I just loved it – I really loved it. So I made sure I made the time, whether it was 9pm at night or getting up at 6am and doing a couple of hours in the morning. That was probably the most challenging aspect, but it was good to fully commit.  JW: How have you found fitting the course round your schedule? SD: The course is great; it’s so flexible, especially for someone like me whose time is very limited. The amount of time and effort you give it is up to you and I think the more you put in, the more you’re going to get out of it. So I just decided that I was going to do the task every week no matter what, whether that was late night or early morning. I think that helped with building relationships with everyone in my group, as well. We also set up some monthly zoom calls where we could talk things through and see if anyone needed any help.  JW: It must be lovely to have that nice, supportive environment, because sometimes writing can be quite isolating. How would you rate your confidence with writing after the UNWC? SD: I’m way more confident now! I believe that it’s possible now, and I’ve just committed to keep going.   JW: That’s brilliant! Do you feel that you have something close to being ready to submit? SD: I’ve just submitted my work-in-progress to Lindsey (Alexander, UNWC tutor). I’m waiting for the response and then I’ll have feedback to do the next draft. I have a few drafts done – the second draft is the one that’s just gone over for critique. I would hope that I could then do another draft with Lindsey’s feedback – she’s been great as well – and hopefully then be ready to submit. Actually, last year I booked the Jericho Writers Self-Edit Your Novel Course  for this September, so I’ll do that with my new draft, and I’m hoping that after that I’ll be ready to submit.  I\'m way more confident now! I believe that it’s possible now, and I’ve just committed to keep going.JW: Amazing – I look forward to hearing about how you find the Self-Edit course as well. Lots of people have said great things about Debi [Alper] and Emma [Darwin].  SD: Yes I’ve definitely enjoyed them in webinars! I’ve also found the webinars really good – on the Jericho Website I found the ‘How to Write’ video course that Harry did, and I found that super-useful. I watched the whole thing when I first started writing. JW: To what extent do you feel being an UNWC student has helped you find new opportunities? SD: I think I’ve been opened up to an awful lot of opportunities because now I understand so much more about the fundamentals of writing. I have a lot more knowledge of how agents and publishers work, the different ways to get published, how difficult it is to get published and the standard your work needs to be at before you submit. Also, the importance of having a supportive team – I got to know all the other writers, knew where I could go for help, the different types of assessments and reviews you could get on your manuscript, and the whole writing world in general. I suppose that was especially good for me because I was very new to it – before I started this course, I didn’t know any other people who wrote in their spare time.  JW: I’m so glad you had that for support; having like-minded people around you is so important to keep going. In what ways do you think taking a writing course is helpful (compared to learning independently)? SD: I think mainly it helps because of all the support. I know some people don’t like critique, but I loved it because it told me where I was going wrong. It made me want to change it - otherwise I would have never known! Obviously so much was wrong – nearly everything was wrong – and it was all revealed in the critique so maybe even from the first week it set me on the right track. Lindsey talked me through and I realised, okay, this is just not good enough. I know if I’d kept writing independently, I wouldn’t have improved. Some people perhaps are born being able to write well, but I needed to learn.  JW: You definitely do need that constructive criticism sometimes, especially in the early stages. Is there anything else you’d like to add?  SD: Generally, the tutors were all fantastic, and the group as well. I’ve found that the whole thing has been a really enjoyable experience and it’s taught me so much.  Sharon Dunne is an Irish mother of four young boys. She is a primary school teacher (who previously worked in advertising) and lives in the sunny South East, although she often questions the \'sunny\' part!Sharon is writing a novel called Phoenix Park, which follows the lives of three Irish women, two of whom are running for President. The third is a relentless reporter with the Viral Touch, who\'s covering the election. One of them is hiding a secret and when it\'s uncovered, the trajectory of all three women\'s lives are changed foreverThe Ultimate Novel Writing Course is now open for applications for the October \'22 - September \'23 course.With online tutorials and mentoring sessions led by leading authors in their fields alongside in-person events, editorial assessments, literary agent inductions, and more - no other course offers this level of support as you work towards publication.Find out more:Ultimate Novel Writing Course 2022/23

Character arcs are some of the most important tools in terms of writing compelling fiction, even if they’re played out on a smaller scale in a short story, but certainly when writing a novel. They play a central role in not only establishing your lead’s motivations and thus narrative aims in a book and thus form the spine of the plot arc, but they are what makes the reader believe in and root for the lead which contributes hugely to how much they’ll invest in your story.In this piece, we’ll discover the different ways to develop a strong character arc, together with some examples and a template to help you create your own powerful character arc based on a lead who feels ‘real’ to the reader and who keeps them turning pages.What Is A Character Arc?Basically, in the course of a novel, or even a short story, a character needs to be pursuing a certain goal. What they want and why needs to be obvious to your audience so they can root for the lead to get their aim in the novel. This goal is usually something noble, like finding love in women’s commercial fiction, solving a murder in a crime novel or even saving the world in action or adventure writing, although in literary fiction, the ultimate direction of the character arc might be something more subtle like seeking redemption or freedom.  However, whatever genre you’re writing in, your character arc is based upon this purpose or quest the protagonist is set on and is doggedly pursuing through the piece and your story arc will not have the poignancy or sense of purpose it needs without this being crystal clear to your audience and thus forming the backbone of your plot. How Do You Write A Character Arc?One thing readers are looking for in a satisfying character arc is that the lead will have changed by the end of the book due to all they’ve experienced whilst fighting to get their narrative goal. Therefore, it’s key that your protagonist has grown by the end of your story arc and is not the same person as they were at the start. First Act -- How Your Character StartsIn some ways, this is the prologue work. Who is your character, on a fundamental level? Name, age, race, class, occupation -- the basics, yes, but also things like what kind of food they like, what their aspirations in life might be, if they\'re left or right-handed. (You don\'t necessarily have to know everything about them like their mother\'s maiden name or their third-grade crush or the places they want to visit before they die... but maybe those things are useful, so if you think of them, why not jot them down?)The arc begins (as does the plot of your novel or story) when the character\'s normal life is turned upside down by a trigger event or inciting incident – say, a murder in a crime novel which sets the detective on the hunt for the killer. As they do this, like any lead in any genre, they need to be proactive in going after their narrative goal, entering each scene with the intention to get their story arc aim or move nearer to it, only usually to fail or to make some progress, only to face an even bigger obstacle. Second Act -- How Your Character DevelopsYou\'re not the same person you were yesterday, and you\'re certainly not the same person you were last week, or last month, or last year, and so on -- and neither are your characters. As things happen to them (or because of them), their world changes and how they respond to those changes is key to developing their arc.Maybe the milquetoast office drone thrust into a plot of murderous high-stakes intrigue has discovered that she\'s actually really good in a knife fight. Maybe the fast-and-easy pirate has developed feelings for his first mate, despite saying that he\'d never settle down. Whatever the case may be, these developments and discoveries aren\'t happening in a vacuum: the character is going to have some feelings about what they\'re going through! So it isn\'t just that office drone turns out to be good with knives, but also that she\'s morally conflicted about how exciting she finds it.Authors often forget that there needs to be this emotional reaction after action to make their characters feel human to the reader, but then the planning part too, so the story arc has a causal connection and we see why one thing happens after another, this set-up ensuring the protagonist seems energetic and plucky and which keeps the story arc full of drama and an obvious forward-moving purpose.  Third Act -- How Your Character Ends UpAs your plot builds to a climax or conclusion, the changes your character has undergone will be brought to the fore. How do they react to this new situation, with everything that\'s happened to them? Do they accept it? Do they fight against it? How will they attain their goal -- and how might their goals have changed, as they have changed?Bilbo Baggins is not the same hobbit when he comes home to The Shire as he was when he left. Some of that is obvious, but some of it lives in the background: he\'s traveled, he\'s seen horrible things and wondrous ones too, and now as the book comes to a close, he returns to a life that doesn\'t look familiar any longer.Your character doesn\'t have to go through such immense changes, but chances are they will whether you planned for them to or not. As your story comes to a close, your characters will have been pushed to their limits in one way or another and become someone new. It doesn\'t have to be satisfying, necessarily, but it should be real. It\'s unlikely that the knife-wielding office drone is going to be quite such a shrinking violet after everything that\'s happened to her -- and even if the pirate doesn\'t stay with his first mate, his heart might not be so freewheeling now.Conflicts – Internal And ExternalAn antagonist for your protagonist -- an opposing figure or force against your main character -- is a great way to help build out a character arc because it gives your character something to fight or push against, adding tension and strengthening the lead as the story arc progresses. However, there can be other causes of external conflict than the villain figure, such as a confidant(e), which may be a best friend or family member, who acts as a sounding board for the protagonist and offers support, but who can also accidentally cause trouble for the lead due to well-intentioned meddling. This is something we sometimes see in chick lit, where the boozy best mate might tell the lead’s love interest they’re seeing someone else to create jealousy and supposedly add to the dreamy guy’s interest, but it just leads to a misunderstanding between the would-be couple and scares him off.  Indeed, terrible weather, a rough environment or even disasters can also be ways of preventing the lead from going after their goal, but they can also show their mettle too as often they will carry on anyway. In terms of external conflicts, things get much more interesting when we put our leads in situations which are utterly hellish based on their past traumas or personal phobias or fears and make them face them! Say, in the simplest terms, someone hates spiders (like me!) and then our protagonist has to crawl through a web of poisonous arachnids to save the kidnapped girl which has been the goal of his or her story arc – not only will the reader be sat on the edge of their seat, wondering if the lead will finally overcome their terror for the sake of their bigger plot aim, but we’ll also be privy to the inner world of the lead and the immense inner pressure NOT to do this scary thing and this is called internal conflict.  It can feel mean to us writers, as we’re often so attached to our characters, but the best thing you can do to create a compelling character and story arc is to put your protagonist in the midst of an external situation that makes them quiver (public speaking is more scary to more people than death, believe it or not!) and ensure that you’re also showing the internal monologue of your lead as they fight against their fears.  You can even make them self-sabotage en route to their goals as humans are often wont to do. For example, a detective character could be out to make a big break in a case and then he’ll go out on an alcoholic bender which makes him lose the trail of the villain.  What If You’re Writing A Series?Generally, I tell author clients that if they’re new writers and want to write a series that they should keep this quiet in their submission package and make their first book as self-contained in terms of its character and story arc as possible so agents and editors can sell it as a standalone novel. This is because taking on a rookie is always a risk and the burden of having to sell multiple books may put some publishing personnel off.  In this case then, the character arc needs to be pretty complete by the end, with the story goal attained or near enough so, although you may want to allow a little wiggle room for a future sequel by not providing complete closure.  However, this is good advice across the board as a too sugary ending can seem unrealistic, but this also depends on the genre you’re writing in as certainly chick lit allows for more happy ever afters. Obviously though, if you are intending to self-publish, you have carte blanche and often writing a series is a good idea as a way to develop a following, so your character and story arcs can be left more loose at the end, but with important questions left to be answered, despite the lead’s obvious growth, in order to intrigue a reader enough to buy the next book. What Is A Flat Character Arc?Flat character arcs are exactly as they sound – they stay on a flat line, with the character neither growing in strength and awareness or falling from grace, as in Shakespearean tragedies. They mostly appear in genre fiction, like action writing – James Bond doesn’t change much for all his enemies and situational struggles, for instance – but, more and more, even genre writing is moving towards the emotionally shifting character arc of the protagonist playing a key role in the plot and the book’s overall interest.  If you think of most crime leads now, there’s often a wounded detective figure at the centre (something noted by James Frey in his books on thriller and mystery writing) who finds personal healing by solving the crime and Scandi Noir has brought the victims of the killed characters’ families to the fore so that these figures finding peace and moving on is a key part of the murder plot.  Hence whilst you can pull off a flat character arc by writing in a genre where you don’t have to reinvent the wheel or add much nuance to your main figure, it often helps if there’s a sense of inner doubt about their ability to pull off the huge goal before them which adds something of Joseph Campbells’ ‘Hero’s Journey’ (which deeply influenced Star Wars) into play in which the hero hesitates in their confidence to pull off the story arc aim and this adds some important tension – even if, say, Frodo, is good at the start and good at the end of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and so, arguably, for all his struggles, a flat arc character. How Do You Work Character Arcs Into Your Story Structure?One thing my first writing teacher, Leone Ross, taught me was to really get to learn about my main characters before I started planning my plot, let alone writing my book. She showed us how to create a template for discovering our protagonists in depth.Hence I create a list now that includes the character’s name, age, strengths and weaknesses, their goals etc. Editor’s note: why not download our free Character Arc Worksheet, designed to make your life easier!A Basic Example Of A Character Arc: Cinderella Her nasty stepfamily (the opposition figures) are treating her like dirt when a handsome prince comes looking for his ideal dame (the trigger or inciting incident). The mean girl stepsisters try to force Cinderella aside, but she’s determined to catch her man (the lead sets her story goal and her character arc flows from here). She may be getting grubby scrubbing floors, but she schemes her way to the ball (character takes dogged action to get her goal and grows in defiance and strength). She gets to the ball and catches the eye of the prince, only to have to return before her carriage turns into a pumpkin at 12 (darn external obstacle!).  However, she leaves her glass slipper behind and the prince is now so infatuated with Cinders that he scours town looking for its wearer – and, bam, as much as the mean stepsisters may try to force their feet in, only Cinderella’s dainty foot is a match (she gets her story goal and her character has grown from subservience to power and from loneliness and contempt to love). Does Every Character Need An Arc?Minor players who don’t play a fundamental role like the lead, love interest, confidant(e) or opposition figure certainly don’t need a character arc as their role in your story arc is tangential. These other key players though should have clear goals too which they pursue and which develop their character over the course of the story arc. The love interest’s aim should always be to win the lead’s love, the opposition figure fights to stop the lead getting their story goal and a confidant(e) is there to support the lead and let them talk about their main plot issues and inner turmoils, but they can also accidentally get in the way of the protagonist’s aims by causing mistaken mix ups and so on. Hence we need to see the love interest growing as s/he strives to become the person the lead can adore and the opposition figure may grow in strength through conflict, but also face their own fears and weaknesses in this process so perhaps become changed by the end of the plot. A confidant(e) might well also develop in the process of supporting the lead through their journey, realising their own needs.  Crafting Character ArcsA character’s arc or development involves their proactive pursuit of their story goal which is established when their life is changed by the inciting incident at the start. This helps create a lead readers will identify with and cheer for, but also makes a compelling plot.  The way your lead deals with external challenges, such as conflict with your opposition figure, extreme weather or terrain or natural disasters, as well as facing their inner demons, will all change them as the course of the novel goes on, usually bringing to the fore strengths they never knew they had, as well as some flaws and even possible tendencies to self-sabotage which all add realism to protagonists and make them three-dimensional. Although some genres have flat character arcs without much, if any, development in the lead, generally it’s a good idea to show the evolution of your protagonist over the course of the book towards a positive end, such as healing grief, as well as getting their external goal, such as catching a killer.  Indeed, in most plots, there’s the main one – say, solving a murder – and a subplot perhaps involving romance, so it could be that both story arcs bring out different parts of the protagonist they didn’t know existed at the start. However, it’s also important to remember to give character arcs and a sense of personal change to your other main players too, such as the opposition figure, love interest and confidant(e). The latter two don’t always need to be included in a story arc, but I’d argue that a lead without a villain has less chance of becoming all they can be as the enemy figure forces the protagonist to grow in strength and resourcefulness and confront their inner fears and traumas. Plus, without a concrete opposition figure, there’s less conflict, which is the lifeblood of fiction, and you risk your story arc losing drama and impact. Get to know your lead and other key players well then, preferably by filling in a character questionnaire like the one above before you start work on your book or even short story. Keep asking yourself why, say, a character buys underwear from a certain place and on and on as this will reveal more and more of their values and beliefs and, even if you never directly use this material in your novel, it will give you a confidence as you write these characters.  After this, imagine the world through their eyes – not yours – considering the language or diction they would use as fits their education, interests and background, as this is key to establishing a convincing narrative voice and viewpoint, as well as creating distinctive dialogue – all on top of making a great character arc. It’s worth every moment that you put into knowing your main characters and especially your lead, so you can convincingly show how they act to get their plot goal and react to the obstacles the villain and other external and internal elements which stand in the way of them getting their story arc aim.  It may be painful to see your treasured protagonist suffer as you make them face their worst fears, but it’s what will guarantee your book is gripping and up its chances of publication or be successful when you self-publish. And, mostly, by the end, you get to give the lead their dream or a form of closure which life often doesn’t offer, so it’s not all bad news, but just being cruel to be kind to make them figures your reader never forgets. 

Having a strong protagonist and antagonist is key to making a novel compelling, no matter what genre you are writing in. But what is the difference between them and how you include them in your book?In this piece, we’ll look at what protagonists and antagonists are, and the different types of characters which can play these roles. We will also explore the key elements which bring them alive, giving your manuscript that extra spark which will grab agents’ and editors’ attention from the opening page.What Is The Difference Between Protagonists And Antagonists?We all know every work of fiction needs a hero and a baddie, but how you portray them makes all the difference.An enthralling protagonist, often referred to as the lead, main character (MC), or hero/heroine, can make or break your story. After all, not every book is plot-driven...many much-loved works of fiction have a simple plot but a unique and memorable main character.However, the antagonist – which is also talked about as an opposition character or villain – creates much-needed conflict by getting in the way of the protagonist as they pursue their goals (ie the basis of the plot). The bad guy usually wants the exact opposite of the lead and will do all they can to stop them attaining their desires.Hence, whilst other factors like the protagonist’s own inner fears and turmoils, plus external factors like the environment, institutional bureaucracy and even the weather can all get in a lead’s way, the best means of really generating conflict (which is, let\'s face it, the lifeblood of fiction) is to create a protagonist who matches the antagonist in strength.Making sure your protagonist and antagonist are evenly matched not only gives your lead a great foil to fight, as they travel through their story arc, but it also injects energy into your plot and keeps readers rooting for the main figure. Having equal protagonists and antagonists also allows the main character to grow in a way which is vital to their development as obstacles are thrown in their way.Now let\'s take a look at our good guys and baddies individually, and how they differ. What Is A Protagonist?A protagonist is the central character of a novel – the one whose journey we follow as readers. If they are the sole lead of the story, it is often their thoughts and actions that influence the \'voice\' of the novel and the tone in which it is told.Usually, the protagonist has the lion’s share of the viewpoint in the book and their narrative aims – which might represent one goal for the main story arc and another for the subplot – dominate the novel, being the focus of the reader’s attention and what they keep turning pages to discover.  The standard plot begins with the protagonist’s world being turned upside down by an inciting incident or trigger event which sets them off on a quest to find a new ‘normal’ by the end of the novel, this journey representing the backbone of the story arc. Hence what the protagonist wants and why – their character arc – is key to creating an intriguing plot which readers will invest in.  Types Of ProtagonistsEvery book needs a protagonist or lead character, even if other figures are given viewpoints in the plot too, but the nature of this main player can differ according to the particular genre you are writing in.For example, in police procedural fiction, a cop usually takes centre stage, but crime novels also often feature ordinary citizens who have personal motivations to solve a murder. An example of this is Rosamund Lupton’s bestseller, Sister, in which the protagonist is out to find the family member given in the title.  In chick lit or women’s commercial fiction, the protagonist is usually a woman caught up in the drama of her life (work, romance or family).And in fantasy fiction, the lead is often sent on a quest and has to fight many monsters along the way - such as Frodo in Lord of the Rings who sets out to take the ring to Mordor and save his world from dark forces. Indeed, action and adventure fiction often has a similarly heroic lead who combats an evil villain to stop him/her destroying civilisation (just think of James Bond). In young adult writing, the lead is often a teen who is either simply navigating the struggles of coming of age (relationships, school, sex, friendship) or who can also adopt the roles of an action or fantasy protagonist (ie the chosen one).In terms of literary fiction though, the protagonist’s identity is more diverse and their goals often more subtle, but they will always be there, often involving themes such as the lead finding redemption or healing, with romance still frequently being the core of the subplot.  Whatever you write about, a strong protagonist with a clear narrative aim is crucial to creating a powerful character. Their story arc is something to really consider and plan before writing the first word as it will influence your entire story (unless you’re the kind of writer who needs to hit the keys to discover one’s plot and characters).Can The Protagonist Be A Villain?This question often pops up as we’re largely taught that our protagonist should be sympathetic and likeable so we can root for them to get their goals. There is some truth to the power of a lead having a noble aim in a novel, but not all lead characters have to be likeable (look at Eleanor in Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, or Martha in Sorrow And Bliss).The key thing to remember is that, although we may not like the protagonist, we must understand and empathise with their motives. Even if they’re badly behaved (or even overtly negative or evil) if we can comprehend why a figure is acting a certain way, we can usually find ourselves drawn into their story.Hence why Satan is, arguably, the most intriguing figure in Milton’s Paradise Lost, and why we’re often drawn to serial killer and Mafia stories in true crime and fiction. After all, every human has a shadow side and fiction is the perfect place in which to explore that.So, yes, you can create what is often called an anti-hero or heroine, so long as you’re able to convey the reasoning behind their immoral actions in a way your readers can easily follow. This can be a delicate and complex act of characterisation though, so only engage in this if you’ve got the will to really delve into the darkness of the psyche and the reasons why bad people do what they do.How To Write A ProtagonistIf your protagonist is so important then, no matter what kind of book you’re writing, it’s essential to ensure that you create a powerful lead with a compelling need to meet certain narrative aims by the end of the book.You need to know what they want and why and to show them doggedly going after this throughout the story arc, entering each scene attempting to achieve their goal, whether the main one or that of the subplot (these are interwoven throughout with the main plot getting the most narrative space).A protagonist\'s story arc may involve solving a crime, saving the world as the deadline looms, or finding the love of their life. Often the protagonist’s story arc in literary fiction will be somewhat less obvious, but it is commonly concerned with getting freedom from something (like oppression, war, a bad marriage and so on) or freedom to do a certain thing (travel, seek spiritual peace, justice and so forth).  If you’ve got an anti-hero or heroine in play, the story arc may involve them in murder, world domination or other evil schemes, but it will be something which to them – and thus to the reader – makes sense.  The same is true when writing magical realism or fantasy protagonists with magical powers. As long as you can make the reader believe in the lead’s clairvoyant skills or their blue head with a hundred eyes, then they will care. And if they care, they will keep turning the pages!Getting your readers to feel like they are inside your protagonist’s body and mind is key to them connecting with the main character. Making them as human as possible, through the use of backstory, past trauma, flaws and inner conflicts, is what makes even the most unlikeable lead a hero we all root for.Take Hamlet and his notorious indecision, for example. This is a man who allows power, greed and his ambitious wife to steer him into a horrific mess from which he can\'t escape. As a reader we urge him to do better, we stay by his side because we too understand how easy it is to be influenced by our darker side, and we suffer alongside him at every turn. It\'s a huge testament to Shakespeare that, even four-hundred years later, his protagonists remains both relevant and memorable today. Whether the villain the main character is fighting is external (the environment, a war, monsters), internal (depression, fear, doubt), or a fellow human being (a dark lord, a work rival, the devil himself), the reader need to know whose side they are on.So, let\'s take a look at this all-important baddie figure...What Is An Antagonist?As I mentioned above, an antagonist is the main figure who stands in the way of your protagonist’s story arc goals – the villain or opposition character who adds the most conflict to a narrative by doing their utmost to stop the lead getting their narrative aims.Types Of AntagonistsIn a mystery, a cop lead will want to solve a murder, therefore the antagonist may be the killer. Or maybe it\'s not, maybe it\'s another cop who wants to beat him to the chase.In a women’s commercial or chick flick novel, the protagonist may be in love with and out to catch a certain guy, but she might find herself face-to-face with an antagonist in the form of a love rival. Or maybe her villain is herself, standing in the way of true love.In literary fiction, where the protagonist’s character and story arcs may be more understated, the antagonist will have to be shaped more specifically to the lead’s particular narrative aims. Hence if they want freedom from a painful marriage, the main figure’s spouse could stand in their way, suffocating their bid for personal liberty and a new life.Indeed, as much as larger obstacles, such as war, can cause huge issues for a protagonists (ie a refugee’s attempt to escape dangerous lands with their child) it’s often important to also embody these issues in a specific antagonist figure. Hence a refugee could be confronted by a cruel or unyieldingly bureaucratic guard at a detainment camp, thus symbolising the broader struggle the lead is facing.This allows the protagonist to face a tangible threat in the form of an antagonist figure, rather than the mere abstractions of a situation, offering way more opportunities for fairly-match conflict. A refugee trekking across a hostile landscape may be impactful, but adding a one-on-one fight between a lead and the opposition figure (who in this scenario could be separating the lead from their children and imprisoning them) will definitely be more memorable.With this in mind, it\'s important you don’t start a novel without knowing your antagonist as well as your protagonist, even though the lead will take up most of the reader’s attention. Your opposition figure is there as a key for adding essential dramatic tension to the story, because everyone loves to see the main character battle with highs and lows (just watch a soap opera to see how many obstacles one character can face!).The antagonist also brings both the main character’s grit and inner issues to the fore, thus making them more three-dimensional and providing the reader with the expected sense of the protagonist’s personal growth over the course of their character arc.Hence an antagonist injects conflict into a story arc, but facing off against the opposition figure often makes the protagonist grow positively during the course of the novel by forcing them to confront their worst fears or work on their less pleasant personality traits. In this way, the baddie has the ‘side-effect’ of bringing out the best in your lead and thus performs a vitally important function.How To Write An AntagonistIf your hero is going to be likeable (or at least someone the reader can empathise with) then, with your baddie, you can have fun creating chaos and a figure everyone loves to hate. Although, I’d also be wary of going over-the-top when creating an antagonist as we have to be careful not to lean on stereotypes of the moustache-twirling villain and, instead, come up with more original figures.You don’t have to recreate the wheel with genre fiction, but it’s always good to bring some freshness to writing as agents, editors and the general reader love to see angles they’ve never seen before, such as unusual and unexpected murderers or love rivals. The Darkling in Shadow and Bone is the perfect example of a dark lord who readers fall completely in love with...before realising he\'s the bad guy!Look carefully at your protagonist’s story arc goals to determine how your antagonist\'s personality and how they should act. For example, maybe they’re a female detective looking to solve a murder in the main plot and to find love with a fellow cop in the romantic subplot – and then create a figure who’s going to make their life hell by blocking the lead’s plot aims as best they can.Basically, the development of the antagonist is the primary means by which the writer puts their protagonist up a tree and then cuts it down, as the saying goes!Looking at our hypothetical cop story above, the antagonist could be the murderer who’s going to fight being caught tooth and nail. Perhaps they threaten the life of the main character\'s love interest as well as continuing their killing spree.You can see then that the protagonist and antagonist are really mirror images of one another, wanting exactly opposite aims and being just as dogged about getting them. The antagonist’s motives for acting the way they do needs to be understandable, so backstory will be needed. The reader needs to understand why the bad guy is doing what he\'s doing, even if their logic is warped.Adding Dramatic IronyWhen an antagonist is operating secretly against the lead, with the plot building up to a betrayal at the end, and the reader is privy to this while the protagonist is not – that literary device is called dramatic irony.This works really well as the reader is on the edge of their seat waiting for their beloved hero to catch up and see what they can see. In Shakespeare\'s Othello, he shows Iago’s manipulation of Othello, leading to the latter killing his wife, Desdemona, in jealous rage - even though she\'s innocent of committing adultery. As the audience watches on helplessly, they remain transfixed with grim fascination, forever wondering when the penny is going to drop.Dramatic irony often involved conflict behind the scenes - a form of confrontations between the antagonist and protagonist that isn\'t revealed until the end. For those starting out in writing it can be hard to pull off, so I’d encourage you to consider bringing your lead and opposition characters into each other’s immediate orbits, with verbal conflict and machinations by the antagonist standing in the way of the protagonist.Bad Is As Important As GoodWhilst your work of fiction will invariably revolve around your lead, remember that the antagonist is also central to making a compelling story. So get to know your baddie as well as you know the protagonist.Without a strong protagonist, a story arc can lose its sense of drama and your lead can be seen to seamlessly flow towards their goals with too much ease - something which may lose your audience’s interest. Readers want to see the lead facing major challenges, preferably having a particular villain to focus our wrath on as the person who’s doing all they can to mess with our treasured protagonist’s story aims.Although we absolutely need to create a protagonist who readers can get behind (and to make it crystal clear what they want and why), an antagonist is a key part of developing the relationship our audience has with the main character. Give them a figure they can see confronting and obstructing their beloved lead, someone they can dread and loathe, but are also intrigued by. Maybe they even have some small sympathy for the bad guy\'s damaged humanity.Know Your Protagonist And Antagonist WellIt’s crucial to know your antagonist as well as the lead, giving them good sides as well as flaws to make them more rounded and comprehensible, even if this takes some deep thought about the past or present circumstances which make them act the way they do.Indeed, if you’re struggling to come up with an antagonist to stand in the way of your protagonist, think who is most likely to have the most power to obstruct your lead’s story goals and who represents their deepest fears. Then turn those attributes into a character no one will forget in a hurry.As a writer, you may feel mean doing this to your lead, but remember that this is how you bring plots to life and, ultimately, develop your protagonist and allow them to shine. And when they shine, so does your book!

NaNoWriMo: How To Write A Novel In 30 DaysAh, autumn. Crisp mornings. Brisk winds. Back to school weather, new pencil cases, pumpkin-flavoured everything, and writers all over the world preparing to take part in NaNoWriMo. They’re all a bit bonkers – right? Surely there is no sensible reason to write 50,000 words in 30 days?I beg to disagree. It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and if you’re reading this then I am hoping that it’s something that you’re considering, and if you are, then let me share five good reasons why you should go for it. 5 Good Reasons to Join NaNoWriMo1. November is a Great Month to WriteThe weather’s dire, even when we aren\'t in a global lockdown, so why not put every moment of spare time to use and write? And if not now – when? Even better, get a head start this year by starting in October instead.2. You Have Nothing to LoseIt’s only thirty days, and at the end of it you will potentially have 50,000 words that you didn’t have before. The key to it is letting go of the expectation of writing something GOOD. Nobody can write a perfect novel in a month. Whatever you end up with will need serious editing, if you feel like it. You’re not writing a masterpiece in a month, you’re just going to WRITE. And that is tremendously liberating.3. It\'s Great Fun!Writing is by nature a solitary business, but this is an annual opportunity to be cheered along whilst you do it, to engage in competitive sprinting (writing for a given amount of time without stopping) if that’s your thing, or at least to be encouraged by a host of pep talks and discussions with fellow writers locally and around the world. And a side note: if you’re having fun while you’re writing, it will probably be better than anything you’ve written that’s felt like a chore.4. It\'s a Magic Cure for Writer\'s BlockNo, really – it is. There is nothing like the pressure of a deadline to get you writing. If you get stuck, you can skip to the next scene, or change your story completely, or even throw in the Travelling Shovel of Death (a traditional NaNoWriMo technique). There are many suggestions on the NaNoWriMo forums to help you if you get stuck, and because there is no pressure for your writing to be good, then there is nothing stopping you bouncing off that metaphorical wall and back into the story.5. You Never Know Where This Might LeadThere are many published novels that started life in November - have a look here if you don’t believe me. Seven out of my eight published novels were NaNoWriMo novels. Admittedly each one took a year or more to edit, but we’re not talking about editing now, we’re talking about writing. What I’m saying is: I’m a normal person, whatever that is, and if I can do it, you can do it.How Do I Plan For NaNoWriMo?There’s plenty you can be doing now to prepare to write your novel. If you’ve already got a story idea, there are some brilliant, encouraging and comprehensive guides to planning your novel right here on the Jericho Writers website – see How To Plan A Novel and this guide on how to flesh out your ideas quickly with The Snowflake Method.Planning is just part of it, however. You’re writing a novel, you’ll need to take yourself seriously. If you tell all your friends and family that you’re going to do NaNoWrimo, then you are making yourself accountable, because you can bet they’ll all be asking you how the novel’s going during November and beyond – and as a bonus, it’s a great excuse to get you out of things you don’t want to do. Social events can wait till December – you’re writing a novel. The laundry can wait for a bit – you’ve got writing to do. Shopping? Let someone else take their turn.(On a practical level, if you celebrate Christmas, it’s a good idea to do some festive shopping and Christmas card writing now – December is going to come around mighty quickly if you’ve spent the whole of November writing.)It’s also worth pointing out (in case you’re reading this on Halloween) that you don’t need to plan at all. You can dive straight in on day one, or even several days in, if you missed the start. You can write an entire novel without planning – it’s called Pantsing, or writing by the seat of your pants. It will mean that you’ll probably have more editing to do later, but it’s no less valid a technique. In fact – hands up – I am a Pantser and proud. I never plan. I get bored if I know what’s going to happen.How Many Words Am I Going To Have To Write?To reach your goal by the end of the month, you’ll need to write 1,667 words a day. That sounds like a lot – and it IS a challenge, let’s be honest: if it was easy, everyone would be doing it, wouldn’t they?But if you manage to turn off your inner editor, put aside the urge to fix problems as you go along, and just WRITE – you’ll be surprised how quickly your total goes up. Remember, NaNoWriMo is all about quantity, not quality – and while that might sound counter-productive, actually in the process of writing freely you’ll find that some of what you’ve written is really pretty good.As a 15-year veteran of NaNoWriMo, here are my top tips for getting it done:1. Try and Get Ahead of the GameInevitably, there will be some days in the month when real life will intervene, and you won’t be able to write. If you’re ahead in terms of word count, it won’t feel quite such a slog to get back to the story. Aim for 2,000 words or more a day in the first week, if you can.2. Track Your Progress and Celebrate MilestonesThe NaNoWriMo website has a helpful graph to show your progress and it’s very motivating to stay on or ahead of that target line. Every 10,000 words is a victory!3. Sprints are GreatYou might not be accustomed to writing at speed, but in fact, the only writer you are competing against is yourself. If you can write 300 words in 20 minutes, set a timer and try to do 320 words next time.How Can I Stay Motivated?Writing a novel in a month is something of a rollercoaster. There will be days when your story just flies and it’s hard to write fast enough, and then there are days when every word is painful. There is an acknowledged ‘Wall’ that most participants hit, often around Week Three – so if you’re struggling, you’re definitely not alone.This is where your writing buddies can help. Others in the Jericho Writers community will also be taking part – find a friend for a bit of mutual accountability, and maybe do some sprints together.Join your local NaNoWriMo region, too. There are no in-person events taking place this year, but every region will have its own community and online writing events throughout the month to help you with your wordcount.If you’re not feeling sociable, there are plenty of other resources to keep you going – personally, I can recommend Focusmate and Brain FM to help maintain concentration.Tell yourself that this is only a month, and the achievement at the end will feel amazing. Give yourself rewards for sticking with it, and try to write every day – or don’t go more than a day without writing at least something, even if it’s a sentence. You’ll probably write more.If you’re stuck, the NaNoWriMo forums provide solutions to most problems. You can ask others to unravel your plot dilemmas (often the act of describing the issue to someone else will help your brain to find the solution). You’ll also find extensive lists of user-provided ‘adoptables’ – for example, ‘adopt a plot twist’, or ‘adopt a character’ – ideas for you to throw into your story when you get stuck. They might not work, but they will keep you writing while your brain works out how to pick up your story again. Beware of procrastination, and getting in your own way!At this point I think it’s important to say it again: YOU CAN DO IT.How Much Should I Edit My Writing?Not at all. Just – don’t. It’ll interrupt your flow, cause you to doubt yourself, and takes valuable time away from driving that word count forward. November is not the time for editing – your inner editor should be locked in a virtual cupboard for the duration.I’ve made that sound very absolute, but it’s not quite that brutal. If you make a spelling mistake as you go along, by all means fix it, especially if it makes you twitchy. But what you shouldn’t do is delete anything. If what you’ve just written doesn’t make sense, type ‘FIX THIS’ or some other searchable place marker, and write the paragraph or chapter again. If your plot takes an unexpected detour that you know is horrendously waffly, leave it be. If your characters end up having a long conversation about pandemics, let them carry on and maybe encourage them to discuss Brexit while they’re at it.You know you’re making a mess. You know you’ll read this all later and wail ‘what was I thinking?’ but that doesn’t matter during November. Quantity, not quality!What\'s Next?Whether you make 50,000 (or more!), or any amount at all, celebrate your achievement, collect your winner’s goodies from the NaNoWriMo website, and have a well-deserved rest. It’s a good idea to let that novel sit undisturbed for a while, certainly at least a month.In the dark days of the new year you can revisit it, read through (and marvel at the bits you can’t even remember writing) and decide whether your story has potential. Mostly, despite the mess, it will have some really rather brilliant bits, and then the work of untangling, restructuring, and developing can begin.Have I convinced you to have a go? I hope so. It’s a complete blast. In the words of Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, the world is waiting for your novel. This is your chance!

Punctuation for Writers of Fiction and Creative Non-FictionPunctuation matters. Correct punctuation tells the reader how to read the words you have on the page: where to put the pauses, how to make sense of your sentences.It’s not too much to say that bad punctuation will kill a book. It’ll get rejected by agents and readers alike. Trying to sell a badly punctuated manuscript is like going on a date wearing last week’s jogging pants.The underlying problem is the same in both cases. The badly punctuated manuscript and the dirty jogging bottoms both say, “I don’t care.” I don’t care about you, my hot date. I don’t care about you, my precious reader.Any sane date will just make their excuses and leave. A reader will do the same – and quite right too.So here goes with a quick guide to the major punctuation marks. In each case, we’ll talk about:The basic ruleThe most common punctuation errors that writers makeMore advanced ways to use the toolMost of you reading this will know the basic rules. Even so, it’s likely that you’ll be committing at least some of the errors some of the time (a few of them are very common indeed.) And pretty much everyone will get at least something from thinking about how to use punctuation marks in a more sophisticated, writerly way.The Period, Or Full Stop (.)OK, you know when to use this little beast. You use it at the end of sentences, so long as those sentences aren’t questions or exclamations (in which case you’d use the “?” or “!” instead.)Easy, right?The Most Common ErrorOne of the most prevalent errors in manuscripts written by first time writers is the so-called run-on sentence. It looks something like this:She was a breath of fresh air in our little town, she came into school on her first day with a bunch of garden flowers for the teacher and home-made candy for us, her schoolmates, it should have looked cheesy, but we fell in love with her on the spot.The error here is simple. The writer is using commas (“,”) where they should be using periods. The result is like someone just gabbling in your face, yadda-yadda-yadda, without giving you a chance to draw a breath or reflect.The solution is simple. You chop the sentence up with periods, to produce this:She was a breath of fresh air in our little town. She came into school on her first day with a bunch of garden flowers for the teacher and home-made candy for us, her schoolmates. It should have looked cheesy, but we fell in love with her on the spot.Phew! That’s a mile better already. Notice that there’s still a comma dividing two of the sentences (“It should have looked cheesy” and “we fell in love with her.”)The grammar-reason why that comma is OK is that you have “but” – a conjunction, a connector word – joining the two sentences. In a way, though, I’d prefer you to forget about the grammar and just listen to the rhythms. Say the first snippet out loud, then the second one. If it feels right, it is right. That’s pretty much all the grammar you are ever going to need.More Advanced Ways to Use the ToolBack at school, you were probably told to avoid sentence fragments – the name given to sentences that lack a main verb. (Like this one, for example.)That’s rather old-fashioned advice in some ways, and it’s certainly unhelpful advice to offer when it comes to writing fiction or creative non-fiction.Take my own work. My narrator is jerky, tough, awkward, abrupt. Her voice is all those things too, and the consequence is that her prose makes use of a lot of sentence fragments. For instance:There’s a woman at the wheel. Forties, maybe. Blonde. Shoulder-length hair held back in a grip. Blue woollen coat worn over a dark jumper.I kick the door. Hard. I’m wearing boots and kick hard enough to dent the panel.Pretty clearly here, the periods are dividing my language up into units of meaning, not into sentences. The words Blonde and Hard are just words, after all. They’re not even attempting to be complete sentences.Equally clearly, my narrator’s language forces that kind of punctuation on the manuscript. If you wanted to follow the “period = end of sentence” rule, you’d have to rewrite the text so it looked something like this:There’s a woman at the wheel. She is in her forties, maybe. Her blonde, shoulder-length hair is held back in a grip. She wears a blue woollen coat worn over a dark jumper. [and so on]That’s not just differently punctuated. It has a different tone, a different mood. It’s perfectly fine writing … but it’s not what I wanted. The “correct” punctuation ends up destroying the voice I worked hard to create.As a rough, rough guide, literary fiction will tend to have relatively few sentence fragments, while crime thrillers and the like will have many more.But fiction is much more supple than that general rule suggests. So yes, my character is tough. Yes, she uses lots of sentences fragments in approved noir style. But she also reflects on philosophy, quotes poetry, introspects extensive, and so on. In the end, you build from the character to the voice to the punctuation. It makes no sense to try building the other way.The Exclamation Mark (!)An exclamation mark (or point) marks an exclamation, denotes shouting, or otherwise gives emphasis to a sentence. It’s like a shouty form of a period.But watch out! You think you know how to use the exclamation mark, but …The Most Common ErrorThe most common error is to use the exclamation mark!It’s fine in emails. It’s OK-ish in blog posts. But in novels? Avoid it. As Scott Fitzgerald remarked, “An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes.” It’s like you’re trying to make your punctuation compensate for a failure of your actual writing.If you want a rough rule of thumb, you can use one or maximum two exclamation marks per 100,000 words of prose. If you have zero, that’s just fine. And never, ever have a double or treble exclamation mark in your text. What’s fine on Twitter, looks just awful on the printed page.More Advanced Ways to (Not) Use the ToolSo if I (like most pro authors) hate the exclamation mark, what do you do instead? After all, there may be occasions where you feel your work actually needs the emphasis.But consider these alternatives:#1 “Go get it.”#2 “Go get it!”#3 “Go get it,” he ordered her, sharply.Those options are ranked in approximate order of shoutiness. The first option doesn’t feel especially emphatic. The addition of the exclamation mark adds a little force. The third option adds even more, via a highly coloured verb and adverb combo.But neither of the last two options is great. And the issue here is simply this: the actual bit of underlying dialogue is fairly colourless, and that’s not going to change, no matter how many toppings you put on. In other words, if you started out with option #1 and found yourself thinking, “Hmm, this feels a little bland, so let’s get out the heavy-duty punctuation,” that should be a signal that you need to rewrite things.So a better option than either #1, #2 or #3 above would be:#4 “Go get it. Get it now. Give it to me. Never take it again.”You’re not using anything more than a common old period there, and you’re not resorting to ordering sharply, yelling loudly, yodelling wildly or exclaiming defiantly. But because your dialogue is now unmistakeably emphatic, it’s fine on its own.If the burger tastes great, you don’t need the relish.The Ellipsis (…)An ellipsis is a bit of a slippery brute.What it does is mark the fact that some words are missing. So, in dialogue, for example, people will often trail off, rather than actually complete a sentence.That much is easy – but how do you actually write it? Three dots is pretty much universal, but do you have spaces between them? Do you have a space before and after the ellipsis? And if you have the ellipsis at the start of a sentence, do you have a period (to denote the end of the previous sentence), then a space, then the ellipsis? That option sounds technically correct, but also rather fussy.The good news for you is that none of this really matters. Different style authorities advise different things, with some variation between British and American usage.And in the end, who really cares? Your editor won’t. Your agent won’t. Your reader won’t. It’s just not a big deal. I’d suggest, in general, that you use three dots without spacing in between, but with a space before and after. Like so:“Oh, Jen, if you really think that, then we should … I mean, maybe this was never meant to be.”The Most Common ErrorAs with exclamation marks, the primary error is to overuse these little beasts. What works fine in an email, quickly looks annoying on the printed page.But whereas I’d advise you to hunt the exclamation mark almost to extinction, you can let the ellipsis breathe, just a little. One ellipsis per chapter is probably too many, but you’d have to be quite a fussy ready to object to half a dozen, or even a dozen, over the course of a full length novel.More Advanced Ways to Use the ToolAs with the exclamation mark, the best way to use the ellipsis is to let it nudge you into querying your own writing. If you feel yourself wanting to use the ellipsis, just check that it’s not your writing that needs to change. In nine out of ten cases, adjusting your text will be a better option than using the ellipsis.The Semi-Colon ( ; )The semi-colon is a divider, the way commas and periods are dividers. The comma is the lightest of these in weight: it inserts the shortest of pauses. The period inserts the maximum pause. The semi-colon lives somewhere in between. Here’s an example of all three in action:It never normally rained, but the weather that day was awful.(comma = minimal pause)It never normally rained; my mother didn’t even own an umbrella(semi-colon = mid-weight pause)It never normally rained. That day, though, there was a deluge.(period = strongest pause)And look: you can live without the semi-colon completely. Personally, I quite like semi-colons, but my narrator, Fiona Griffiths, never uses them, so in about 750,000 words of published Fiona Griffiths’ novels, there’s only one semi-colon – and that enters the text via a direct quote from Wikipedia.Short message: if the semi-colon scares you, it’s fine to leave it well alone.The Most Common ErrorThere are no common errors with semi-colons, except maybe overuse by people thinking they’re fancy.More Advanced Ways to Use the ToolThinking of semi-colons as a middle-weight pause is technically correct, but it misses something, nevertheless. A better way to conceive of the mark is this: You need a semi-colon when you have two sentences, and the second one corrects or modifies the meaning of the first.So take those examples above. We used a semi-colon in this context:It never normally rained; my mother didn’t even own an umbrella.The first sentence is, in effect, adjusted by the second. The semi-colon tells us to read the second sentence as a kind of comment on the first one: “look, here’s just how much it never rained.”Or, if you want a slightly more grown-up example, here’s William Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury:Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.But you can get too hung up on these things. Arguably, sentences that speak about each other shouldn’t need any punctuation to get their point across. The text itself should handle the communication just fine. So there’ll be plenty of writers (including my narrator) who’d agree with Kurt Vonnegut’s lesson in creative writing:First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.And who cares if you’ve been to college, right?ParenthesisBrackets () | Dashes – – | Commas ,,There are three types of parenthesis you can use. They are:Commas: The comma, always a useful creature, can be used to separate one clause from the rest.Dashes: The dash – a more forceful beast – can be used in much the same way.Brackets: The bracket (perfectly fine in non-fiction) is relatively rare in fiction.But these three are not equivalent, and not equally common.I just opened up my Word document that contains the entire Fiona Griffiths series, and checked to see how many of each punctuation mark I used. In about 650,000 words of text, I used:39,000 commas, of which, admittedly, many thousand wouldn’t be parenthetical.5,000 dashes, though most of these were actually hyphens, as in “short-tempered”. So I’m going to guess maybe only 1,000 actual dashes.100 brackets, of which many were things like “in Paragraph 22(c)”, where the use of the bracket isn’t really a parenthesis in the normal way.The Most Common ErrorThere are two common errors when it comes to parenthesis. The first error is not to use anything to mark off a clause from the rest of a sentence resulting in (often, but not always) a sentence that is just plain hard to read. For example:The comma always a useful creature can be used to separate one clause from the rest.Tucking commas in around the useful-creature clause makes the meaning pop right out.The second error is kind of the opposite. It’s as though writers get worried that commas aren’t emphatic enough, so they start clamping their text inside brackets, like this:She couldn’t get enough of him (understandable, given her past), so she tried to find reasons why he couldn’t leave.And that feels heavy-handed. A simple rewrite releases the sentence and lets it breathe:Understandably, given her tangled past, she couldn’t get enough of him and she tried to find reasons why he couldn’t leave.There’s more flow there. Less sense of an author forcing information at you. The no-brackets alternative seems much more natural to fiction. The with-brackets version is better suited to the information-delivery task of non-fiction.More Advanced Ways to Use ParenthesisThe real trick with parenthesis – and with commas particularly – is to learn to feel the weight of a sentence.In most cases, commas will cover your parenthetical needs. If you need to rewrite something to make it work, then rewrite it. If you need the greater weight of dashes, then go for it, but recognise that you are, in a small way, pulling on the handbrake mid-sentence. If that’s what you want, fine. In many cases, there’ll be better options.Oh, and though I personally never read my text out loud, lots of authors swear by it – and any hiccups or awkwardness as you read is a huge clue that your punctuation or your text (or both) are at fault.Hyphens and DashesThe hyphen, the en dash, and the em dashWe can’t quite leave a post about punctuation without talking about the various dashes available to you. Specifics in one second, but first, a public annoucement:The specifics don’t really matter.Yes, a lot of writers (especially those college-educated brutes that got Vonnegut all riled up) care a lot about their en dashes and their em dashes. But if you’ve never spent a moment caring about them in the past, you don’t have to worry that you’ve been doing something very wrong. You haven’t. Any “errors” on this scale will bother almost nobody – neither readers, nor agents.So, here’s what hyphens and dashes are and how to use them.The HyphenThe hyphen is on your keyboard as a minus sign.You use it to connect words, as for example:The hot-headed wood-cutter tip-toed past the one-eyed she-wolf.Apart from a slight anxiety about whether a hyphen is needed in a particular context (is it woodcutter or wood-cutter?), it’s hard to get these little fellows wrong. Oh, and although everyone will have a house-style defining when to use hyphens, everyone’s style guide will be a bit different, so there’s often not a clear right and wrong here anyway.The En DashThe en dash is so called because it is a dash approximately the same width as the letter N. And it doesn’t live on your keyboard anywhere: you have to give it life and breath all by yourself. You do this by hitting Ctrl and the minus sign at the same time, to give yourself something that looks like this:Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)As that example suggests, it’s used mostly for dates, or for things that feel much the same, for example: Washington–New York (in the context of a flight timetable, for example.)The Em DashThe em dash is so called because … well, you’re going to have to guess which letter-width it’s named after.You create this little critter in Word by hitting Ctrl-Alt-minus.And the em dash performs the following functions:It marks an interruption in dialogue.“The buried treasure,” he said, as he lay dying, “the treasure can be found just to the right of the old—”It marks a parenthesis in the middle of a sentence.The em dash—more forceful than commas—marks out a parenthesis in the middle of a sentence.But it can also mark out a parenthesis at the end of a sentence.He was allergic to fruit, sunshine, exercise and soap—or so he always insisted.(The “so he always insisted” part is the parenthesis here. If you were using brackets, that whole end chunk would be enclosed in brackets.)It can be used as a slightly informal colon.The result of that informal colon—often a little hint of comedy, or something of a “ta-daa” quality.It marks deleted or redacted words.The accuser, Ms — —, struck a defiant tone in court.Best practice is generally to use the em dash without a space before or after, but that’s one of those things that doesn’t actually matter. Newspapers tend to use spaces and British usage is much more tolerant of spacing and lots of people just don’t know the rules anyway.That’s it from me. Beautiful punctuation is often a sign of careful writing and a beautifully readable book.

A checklist for your novel or manuscript rewriting processSo you’ve written the first draft of your novel (or other manuscript). That’s great. Congratulations! It’s a big moment.But now you need to make sure that your novel draft works on other readers as you want it to. Maybe you’ve just about managed to tame your novel, but now you’re facing A Big Revision or Rewriting of your first draft – so where on earth do you start?Before you edit, revise or rewrite anything, here are some pointers.Step 1: Read Through Your BookFirst, I suggest, you need to do your own appraisal, trying to read your first draft novel straight through, and as much like a reader as you can. I call this “problem-finding”, and by far the best way to do this it on paper, with a pen in your hand.Using track-changes and comment balloons on screen is a poor second, but possible; either way, you’re trying to record your reactions, as a reader, to the story, not start problem-solving: that comes later.Also note any wider thoughts that this reading throws up, but don’t then just dive into the most urgent or least frightening job. Because so many decisions and changes will affect all sorts of other things, it’s terribly easy to lose track, get diverted, lapse into fiddling and tinkering, and generally get into a worse muddle than you started in.Step Two: Organise Your ThoughtsSo, first bring all the different feedback you’ve had together, make an enormous pot of coffee or your working-drink of choice, and start sorting it out into rough categories.Problems that run all through the story: the order you’re telling the story in doesn’t work; a character is cardboard, or vanishes, a lost-letter plot’s in a muddle; the narrative voice is dull.Problems with particular sections: a saggy middle; that scene where the dialogue is flat as a pancake; the too-confusing opening; the crucial but oh-so-difficult sex, or battle, scene.Problems of continuity and consistency, such as paragraphing, how dialogue is punctuated, or how you represent dialect.What I call “bits”: individual corrections and tweaks, from typos, to one-off clunky paragraphs, to missing research.Once you have the overall picture, you can sort it out into a to-do list, and decide on the order to tackle your rewrite. The temptation here is to plunge straight into the revision process . . . but you need to resist that. Before you start to edit, revise and rewrite like crazy, you have a little more organising to do.Step 3: Work From Big To SmallOne possibility is to look at your first page, do everything it needs, then move on to page two, but that’s probably not the best way to tackle it.As with totally renovating a house (only this is one you don’t have to live in at the same time), it’s not wise to do the whole of one room, from damp-course to top-coat, before you start the next. You need to make sure the structure is solid and the roof waterproof, then get the electrician in to move lights and install heating, and only when all that’s done, do you paint the walls and lay carpets.Whichever order you do things in, any major change probably has ramifications elsewhere. Get into the habit of not galloping off to follow up now, but make a note on your To Do list to tackle it at a logical point.And although every writer is different, this, I suggest, would be a good order in which to tackle things:Big structural changes. Don’t worry about the close-detail of stitching the sections into their new places, just do the rough carpentry.Any all-through-the-story things which need shrinking, changing or enhancing.Individual work on scenes and sections, now that they’re all in the (probably) right place.Consistency and continuity things which are most easily done when you put on the right glasses and deal with that issue all together: a character’s taste in clothes, say, or the punctuation and paragraphing of dialogue.Just work through from the beginning of your manuscript, and adjust anything that will adversely affect the reader\'s experience. You could even recruit some beta readers to help you out with this stage.Step Four: Work In LayersAs much as you possibly can, tackle any particular problem working forwards in the story, so that you stay in touch with how the reader reads. It’s super-important for plots which depend on many other elements of the book (sub-plots, foreshadowing, pacing etc). But it also matters for things like characterisation and setting, because the reader is encountering this person or place in stages, through time: make sure you’re in control of how that knowledge develops.If it helps you, work through the novel focusing on just one layer: focus on editing Aunt Anita’s character arc, let’s say, or the way you build a picture of 1940s Manhattan. Ignore anything else (good or bad) if it doesn’t pertain to those exact issues.I know it feels inefficient to “go through the book” so many times, but believe me, you save far more trouble than you spend, because you don’t get in a muddle, duplicate work or cause muddles elsewhere without realising.Step 5: Re-Read The Entire TextIf you follow the advice above, you’ll have far less work to do once you get to the last stage:Do another straight read-through-like-a-reader, in print or on screen. Use this to pick up any darning-in of the big structural changes that’s still needed, and anything else you might have missed. This also is a very good moment to read it aloud, pen in hand, if you haven’t already: it’s brilliant for picking up typos, and more generally getting outside the novel to read it as if you didn’t write it. Just have a big jug of water to hand.Step 6: Stay PositiveIf all this sounds as if it’s more work than writing the first draft was – you’d be right.All authors know that writing is rewriting. Revising the first draft of a novel isn’t easy.True, some rewrite each page or even line, until it’s perfect, then move on, while others hurl a whole first draft down on the page, spelling-mistakes and all, and only then go back and start to hammer it into shape. Still, most would say that they spend perhaps three or four times as long on that rewriting of a page or novel as they did on putting the first version of those words on paper.But, like most things, rewriting gets easier with time. I hope these steps have given you the support you need to get started. Happy rewriting!

What’s great & effective? What’s downright bad?Real Examples From Real Writers.Recently, we ran a competition soliciting opening lines or sentences from real writers, with a small prize available for the winner. We’re going to look at some examples drawn from that competition... along with my own (hyper-picky) comments about what’s really good, and really effective. And what’s just a bit... not so good.Before we plunge into our sentence surgery, three quick comments.First, the examples that follow are drawn from writers writing real novels (or short stories). They are, like you, serious aspiring writers, but not yet published. For the most part, we were looking at works-in-progress, so these examples were all subject to change anyway.Second, opening sentences don’t matter all that much. The opening paragraph of the novel I’ve just handed to my publisher ran, in its entirety, as follows:\'Rain.\'Was that a good opening line for a novel? Well, no one asked me to change it, but does that sentence hook a reader in? And hook them into a story set in Wales, where the presence of rain hardly merits much discussion? I don’t think so.The fact is that the process of hooking a reader usually takes longer than a sentence and writers shouldn’t obsess unduly about the stuff above and to the left of the manuscript’s first full stop. There’ll be plenty more full stops to come.And last: I’m horrible.I mean, yes, I’m nice to widows, orphans and stray dogs, but I’m horrible to slightly iffy sentences. I’m very picky and my standards are high. So if some of my could-do-better commentary below depresses you – well, forget it. It’s not you. It’s me. But if you want to learn how to write opening sentences, then you probably want to look at what follows...How To Write A Good Opening Line:Full stops are your friends. Short, clear sentences will grab your readers’ attention.Use language that will add weight to your sentences.Use your verbs correctly, and your adjectives sparingly.Opening lines don’t have to be loud, subtlety is just as effective.Opening Lines To Novels / Short Stories: ExamplesSo much for the preamble. Now for the sentences. (No authors are named because very few of the sentences I had had named authors on the page.)Example #1\'There were just three things that Samine was certain of in her life; first she was dangerous; second, she was never allowed to leave her room and, third, the spirit of a dragon lived inside her.\'Not bad, though it’s a little too close to Stephenie Meyer’s now famed three-part quote from Bella Swan in Twilight. Still, you can see what the author is wanting to do and the idea itself is fine. Here’s one way of tweaking things without altering anything too much (though it brings it still closer to Stephenie Meyer’s phrasing):There were just three things that Samine knew for certain. First she was dangerous. Second, she was never allowed to leave her room. Third, a dragon lived inside her.That’s shorter, clearer. It’s also better weighted. The key word in the first part of the writer’s sentence is “certain”. The addition of “in her life” doesn’t add much meaning but it does de-emphasise “certain”. My formulation is that bit clearer about where the interest of the sentence lies.One other thing, I’m not sure if this is the place to reveal that Samine can’t leave her room. The middle of one of the three certainties doesn’t tie obviously to the other two and feels a bit different. (#1 and #3 feel like existential statements; #2 feels like a simple, known fact.) But if the middle of those three statements goes, then the whole opening needs reconsideration.Example #2\'The most ironic thing about your first impression of me – I looked like butter wouldn’t melt.\'Interesting. I almost like this.My only real worry is that “the most ironic thing” bit. It feels a bit like a teenage use of ironic, which is perhaps not correct given the context, but in any case, I do wonder if there aren’t simpler, less laboured ways of doing the same thing. Suppose, for example, we just said this:Your first impression of me: I looked like butter wouldn’t melt.That is surely strongly suggesting that that first impression might be way off base, yet it conveys that impression by making the reader do most of the work. As a rough guide, the more the reader feels they’ve made a deduction, the more powerful that conclusion will feel.Example #3\'He’s stalking behind the disused factory, waiting for the flapping of wings to alert him to where you are.\'You remember when I said I’m pedantic?To stalk is a transitive verb, that is, it requires an object. I stalk you, etc., I don’t just stalk in the abstract. So that first clause feels a bit uncomfortable.And “alert him to where you are” also feels a little bit strained. Wouldn’t “alert him to your position” read better? And the double participle (waiting for the flapping) seems a bit needless here. But you only need a little tweaking and this is a strong, engaging opening:He’s searching you out behind the disused factory, waiting for a sudden flap of wings to reveal your position.That’s better.(Oh, you want to delete the word “sudden” from that? Yes, that’s probably better.”)Example #4\'The house had something American Gothic about it, though nothing it was minded to share.\'Excellent!Nothing to pick at, except that me personally I’d probably sooner say “had something of the American Gothic …”. But it’s a great, subtle opening. I like it a lot.Example #5\'What do you pack when you have four minutes to leave your husband?\'Again, that’s great opening line.Oh, and you want to know why that sentence works as well as it does? It’s because it makes you do a double-take. The first part of the sentence makes you think, “oh, this is a question about packing...”The second part makes you go, “whaaaaaat?!” It’s that mid-sentence pivot that gives it wellie.It’s also nice, because it instantly launches the reader into two important story-questions. Not just “why is this woman leaving her husband?”, but “why does she only have four minutes?”Of those two questions, it’s the second one that has the greater bite. Marriages collapsing are (unfortunately) a rather everyday occurrence. Marriages that collapse and give the wife just one minute to get away – well! We want to know more.Example #6\'My mother’s shroud was a grubby net curtain and her coffin was a gun case.\'You like that, don’t you?Yes, and it’s almost terrific.But I don’t like that word “grubby”, at all. It pulls attention away from “net curtain” and the use of a net curtain for a shroud is quite striking enough irrespective of whether it’s grubby. Just delete the adjective. The sentence gets instantly strongerAlso, I hope this writers is about to tell us how come the gun case was big enough to fit a mother. I mean, that’s a very large case, or a remarkably small mother. So long as the author explains that niggle sometime soon, that’s fine, and (once you’ve deleted that “grubby”) it’s a good opening line.Example #7\'It was not a good day to bury a child, let alone ‘The Chosen One’, and the more Thomas Cowper tried to console his mother the more she sobbed, ‘Fear not, Mary... Blessed art thou amongst women.’Hmm.I’m afraid I don’t rate this as an opening line. It’s almost good, but gets itself into a tangle, then trips over itself.And the thing is, the best bit of this sentence is the very opening and the longer it goes on the more the writer overwrites that clean and striking opening.Some full stops would help:It was not a good day to bury a child, let alone ‘The Chosen One’. The more Thomas Cowper tried to console his mother the more she sobbed. ‘Fear not, Mary … Blessed art thou amongst women.’That’s already a lot better. Even so, I’m not completely happy. That opening line now has real merit and launches plenty of story questions (why is this a bad day? Why is a child being buried? Why is this child The Chosen One?)So if it were me, I’d leave the reader dangling a bit more, before starting to answer the questions they really cared about.So I’d run with the first question (why is this a bad day?), and just answer it with a description of winds and rain. Mourners getting soaked. Rain on the preacher’s Bible. That kind of thing.And this approach would work because I’m pretending to answer the questions I opened up with my first sentence ... but not the ones the reader really cares about. It’s like the reader is yelling at me, WHY ARE YOU BURYING THIS CHILD? and all I’m doing is explaining why the day is a bad one. I’ve basically created suspense already, and my description of the weather is just keeeeping that suspense going for longer.Example #8\'Deano’s hair was still wet from the pool and he swept his palm over his scalp trying to chase off the cold. ‘Come on, cock-snot. Pick up. Please.’\'Okay, I very much like the dialogue.I like the contrast with the more formal opening line. The writing itself is fine. Just... I don’t quite believe the gesture you’re telling us about.When people get out of the pool their hair is normally already very flat and smoothed from the water. You definitely can’t chase cold away by palming your already flat hair and it’s not even a gesture most of us feel tempted to make. If he’s cold, he grabs a towel, or moves into the sun, or does something other than what you tell us he’s done.Picky? Yes. But getting those kinds of details utterly convincing from the off is part of what gets a reader into the story. Here, you do get the reader in, but you’ve done so with a tiny – and needless – stutter upfront.Example #9\'The hands on the clock didn’t seem to move, unlike mine as I drummed and fidgeted on the table.\'Hmm, this is okay, but it’s not quite good.The hands-not-moving-on-the-clock isn’t a cliche exactly, but it is a very familiar idea. Likewise fidgeting hands: also a very standard way of conveying impatience. Further into a novel, those kind of issues dissolve a little bit. Sometimes it’s just quicker and cleaner to reach for the familiar, so the novel can hurry onto wherever it’s heading. But in an opening sentence, I think any whiff of cliche threatens a reader’s trust, and you need to extirpate it completely. As I say, there isn’t an out-and-out cliche here, but I do think you’re cycling a little too close to the edge.My verdict? Rethink this sentence from scratch.Example #10\'The cat barked.\'Everyone will want to read on to see what follows. Purrfect. That’s a terrific opening line.Example #11\'The fucking train is cancelled. Again.\'Yep, good – cancelled trains as a sign of commuter distress is well-used, however, so I hope the writer has an interesting way to develop the incident. I would be disappointed in an opening page that just rehearsed the various woes of the commuter – but we’re on sentences here, not pages, and the sentence itself is fine.And finally:Example #12\'I had not been awake long, when I heard the knock on the door, I opened it and saw Sheriff Dennis Munroe on the porch, he stood a little over five foot six, but gave the appearance of being almost cubic he weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds and had arms like a bear, thick, powerful and covered in coarse black hair.\'Here’s one of those ‘sentences’ which is begging to be carved up. A few full stops instantly make this a mile better:I had not been awake long, when I heard the knock on the door. I opened it and saw Sheriff Dennis Munroe on the porch. He stood a little over five foot six, but gave the appearance of being almost cubic. He weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds and had arms like a bear, thick, powerful and covered in coarse black hair.That’s a relief already, only a few remaining niggles really.Using Munroe’s full name doesn’t seem right, since the narrator clearly knows the guy, and we don’t think of people as know as Title Firstname Lastname. Yes, you may want to give us Munroe’s full name in due course, but you don’t have to do it here.Secondly, that last sentence has four ands in it. That feels awkward, especially so early in the book.Third, how does the narrator know what Munroe weighs? I mean, the sheriff is clearly a fellow who likes his meat and potatoes, but that’s different from knowing someone’s measured weight. I’m not convinced.And finally, a minor thing, I have a hesitation about ‘I opened it’: it’s just that you’re narrating every tiny incident, even those we take for granted. Better to take a slightly less blow-by-blow approach.Something like this, maybe:It was early, when Sheriff Munroe came calling. He stood at my door, five feet six and almost cubic. He must weigh close to two hundred and fifty pounds, and he has the arms of a bear: thick, powerful and profusely hairy.I know that last sentence still has three ands, but the restructuring helps the rhythm, at least to my ear. And it’s so much shorter! It has the exact same content as the first sentence, but compresses it into a much shorter space. Result: much more energy per pound – and a much more compelling story.Best Opening Lines: The WinnerThere, we’re all done. If I must pick a winner, I’ll go for:\'What do you pack when you have four minutes to leave your husband?\'Or:\'The house had something [of the] American Gothic about it, though nothing it was minded to share.\'I like both of those. The second is a bit more literary; the first is a terrific opening line for a psychological thriller, or something of that sort. They’re both excellent.And One Last Comment On Story OpeningsThe thing to remember?That your opening line it doesn’t really matter. The opening sentences for my five Fiona Griffiths novels are:#1: Beyond the window, I can see three kites hanging in the air over Bute Park.#2: It’s a Friday afternoon.#3: I like the police force.#4: Rain.#5: ‘Well?’None of those are good opening sentences (though none of them are terrible). And, in most cases, it doesn’t take long to get something that puts a scrap of meat on the reader’s dish. The opening paragraph to my second Fi Griffiths novel, for example, goes like this:Example: Love Story, with MurdersIt’s a Friday afternoon. October, but you wouldn’t think so. High clouds scudding in from the west and plenty of sunshine. The last shreds of summer and never mind the falling leaves.That last sentence already advertises a certain strength and confidence. The reader feels immediately placed in the mood of the story. Because the writing has that confident tone, the reader trusts me.It’s as though they’re thinking, “OK, this is supposed to be a crime story. Nothing much seems to be happening yet, but I can tell this author knows what he’s doing, so I’ll stick with him and see what develops.”An opening paragraph can do more if it wants to, but it really doesn’t have to. Notice that this opening para sets up nothing interesting about the character, the situation, or, indeed, even the weather. It just sets a scene and does so with confidence.If your manuscript does that then, no matter how unshowy that opening sentence, you’re doing just fine.Oh, and if you need a little more inspiration for your opening lines, check these out.More than ready to get the ball rolling with agents, but just need a little push? Or perhaps you’ve had a few rejections but aren’t sure why? Our Agent Submission Pack Review gives you detailed professional advice on how to perfect your submission and increase your chances of securing an agent.Happy writing – and happy editing!

Guest author and blogger Lauren Sapala is a writing coach, the author of The INFJ Writer, and writes about writing, creativity, and personality theory on her blog. She currently lives in San Francisco.It’s often empowering to understand what helps you as a writer, but types only take us so far. First and foremost, you’re you.What builds your own creativity and what holds you back?If you’re struggling to make headway on a writing project, think how you best work, how maybe a “weakness” could be a strength, and what’ll most help you finish – will it be a deadline? Or a designated day of the week to write?For more on the MBTI system, the Myers & Briggs Foundation website is a great place to start. However, I’d urge every writer to experiment with many different methods of writing to find what works best for them. There can be great variation, even among the same type.Every artist is an individual.All artists should give themselves the permission to do whatever works best for them.Are You An Intuitive Writer?I struggled for years as a writer. I wanted desperately to write a novel, but I couldn’t even write the first page. Then, when I finally worked up the courage to take a creative writing course in college, I failed miserably. I stopped writing altogether for seven years.Oddly enough, it wasn’t until I discovered my Myers-Briggs personality type that I began to shine as a writer. Finding out that I was an intuitive personality was just the information I needed to finally move forward.The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a system of 16 personality types that divides people along a spectrum of traits that determine how an individual interprets and reacts to the world.The MBTI system focuses on such tendencies as introversion versus extroversion, and intuition versus sensing (i.e. relying primarily on concrete information gleaned from one’s five physical senses). The complexity of the MBTI system is too vast to be addressed fully in this article, so if you don’t already know your type or you’re interested in learning more about this fascinating area of psychology, I recommend you make use of the wealth of helpful resources that can be found online.If you do already know your type, and you want to know a bit more about how this affects your strengths and weaknesses as a writer, look at my selection of “writers by type” below, to discover how you can start using your type as a creative advantage.These below are intuitive personalities on the MBTI system – ones I seem to work oftenest with, encouraging their ideas and intuitive talent.Tips For INFJ WritersI’m an INFJ writer myself, and so I’m intimately acquainted with many of the most common obstacles INFJ writers face. The number one challenge I see INFJ writers struggle with is perfectionism.INFJs have a rich, all-consuming inner life, and they excel brilliantly at seeing the big picture and imagining the ideal version of how something could take shape in the future. Because INFJs are such amazing abstract thinkers, it’s easy for us to bring together different elements in our mind to form a perfect whole. It’s when we try to make this “perfect whole” a physical reality that we’re confronted with the real world and all the messiness, pitfalls, snags, and less-than-perfect elements it contains.INFJ writers who are unconscious of their own perfectionistic tendencies will get stuck at this stage, always dreaming and never making any of their dreams a reality. It’s only when INFJ writers realize that the real world is never perfect, and anything they create will necessarily be bound to this real-world truth, that they can begin to accept their writing for what it is, flaws and all.Tips For INFP WritersINFP writers suffer the most from too many ideas, and a feeling of being overwhelmed by all the choices and different creative paths they could take. I’ve written on my site on the non-linear way I’ve often seen INFP writers work. This can be a strength, though – a means to connect patterns between scenes, images, characters, and ideas.It’s also not uncommon to see an INFP writer working on several writing projects at once, but the problem is not that INFPs work on too many things at the same time. Instead, the problem is that they tend to judge themselves harshly and resist their natural tendency at every turn.INFPs need a lot of variety. They also need a sense of flexibility and the freedom to be spontaneous and fluid in their artistic pursuits. Out of all the types, INFPs are most likely to work in circles. This means that the INFP writer usually works on one story, then moves onto painting for a few days, then moves onto writing a poem, and finally circles back to the story. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach and, in fact, it can work quite well for INFPs who have accepted their nature and embrace this circular way of working. INFP writers run into trouble though, when they compare their creative processes to others and try to force themselves to work in a linear manner.Tips For ENJF WritersOut of the four intuitive feeling types (INFJ, INFP, ENFJ and ENFP) the ENFJ is the type that is most likely to fall prey to an extremely harsh inner critic.ENFJs are almost preternaturally aware of the relationship dynamics surrounding them, and that includes a thorough assessment of how others view them and how they measure up in the larger order of any community of which they happen to be a part. This leads many of them to easily play the comparison game, and many times feel like they’re coming out on the losing end.ENFJs also have a strong need for connection and community. If they feel isolated in their writing pursuits, or like no one understands them or “gets” what they’re attempting to do with their writing, they can quickly shut down and then begin isolating themselves even further. ENFJs must feel emotionally supported by a group of peers they love and respect. This is when they will do their best work.Tips For ENFP WritersENFPs are similar to INFPs in that they suffer from the feeling of being overwhelmed by too many ideas, but with ENFPs this includes an outer world component that can contribute to even more overwhelm.Simply put, ENFPs are unabashed extroverts. They love people and they love getting out and having adventures with people. A healthy ENFP might work two jobs, have a family, and still take up demanding hobbies such as snowboarding or Spanish classes in their spare time. This kind of schedule usually leaves little time for writing.The number one problem most ENFPs struggle with is finishing things. They begin novels, plays, and short stories full of enthusiasm for the project, but then a sparkly, too-interesting-to-resist person or cause comes along and immediately distracts them. The best method for ENFPs is to devote one day a week to a certain piece of work (maybe the novel they’ve always dreamed of writing) and keep firm boundaries in place around that day so that the project gets a guaranteed slice of their creative energy on a regular basis.Never feel boxed in, though. Find your best writing habits.Always do what works for you.Learn about Lauren’s journey and read more at her site. Learn more about all different MBTI types and writing styles – and check out more free writing advice on us.

The ultimate guide on how to use verbs in your writing, including vivid verb examples and a handy list of over 333 strong verbs!Sometimes you write something and it just feels… dead.So you go to work on it, juicing it up with adjectives and adverbs. Trying to put a sparkle into your writing. Only then do you take a step back and look again.And what you have is actually worse. It’s still flat, but somehow trying too hard at the same time. Like playing canned laughter at your own bad party.So let’s pare back and go back to basics.Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place. From The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. WhiteI believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they’re like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day… fifty the day after that… and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions. Stephen KingOthers, such as Elmore Leonard and Mark Twain, seem to agree.So what’s the problem that all these authors are getting riled up about? The fix sounds simple enough, and yet we may still find ourselves asking: exactly what are vivid verbs?Weak Verb + Adverb Versus Strong VerbTake a look at these sentences:“No, Thomas,” she said very quietly.He ran as quickly as he possibly could to the station.She jumped as high as she knew how off the diving platform.The words in italics are either adverbs or (same basic idea) adverbial phrases. And don’t you feel how cluttered they are? Don’t you feel like there are a lot of words being used there to communicate very little?Here’s how we could have done it:“No, Thomas,” she whispered.He raced to the station.She leapt off the diving platform.Fewer words. No adverbs. Simple, effective communication. Doing more with less.And that’s the basic idea about vivid verbs. If you use the right verb, you will communicate more swiftly and effectively than if you choose the wrong one to start with – then try to patch the damage with yet more verbiage.OK. So that’s a win. But there’s more to explore here – because, yes, there’s another way to go wrong with creative writing verbs, and it’s this.State of Being VerbsTake a look at these sentences:Jerry was a great believer in the virtues of cold water.Jemima was never out of bed before midday.Notice that both those sentences use a state-of-being verb (in this case, “was”) to link a person to something about that person.And, OK, there are plenty of times when that’s a perfectly fine approach. None of the issues raised in this blog post are rules; they’re more like guidelines, or at least useful things to think about.But in this case, both sentences could be made better by using a more active verb – a vivid verb – in place of that state of being one. Here’s how those sentences could have gone:Jerry believed passionately in the virtues of cold water.Jemima lay in bed well beyond midday.Better right? Jerry is now doing something, not just being something. And in Jemima’s case, we’ve removed that negative / state of being approach, and made a positive statement about her indolence. Both sentences seem somehow more active, more emphatic.Oh yes: and you probably noticed that, in the sentence about Jerry, I slipped the word passionately in there. That’s optional, but if you want to strengthen the verb, you can. There’s no neat one-word way to say “believed passionately”, so using an adverb there is certainly a legitimate choice.There Is / There AreAnother perfectly valid construction in English is to start a sentence with “there is” or “there are”. For example:There were countless trees in that forest and only one of them…There are many opportunities at this company…Those sentences are not grammatically wrong. You won’t get shot if you use them.But…Well, we could do better right? For example:Countless trees peopled that forest and only one of them…This company offers many opportunities…Boom!In the first case, we’ve got rid of a horrible empty construction (“there were”), we’ve used a good strong verb (“peopled”), and the whole sentence has got better. It feels like that forest is more alive, more exciting. That’s a perfect demonstration of how a good vivid verb can help fix an underpowered sentence.Same thing with the next sentence too. In the first version, the “company” features only as an afterthought. In the second version, it is actively offering something – it’s the subject of its own sentence and its generosity seems now like a positive act. And note the role of the verb here. The act of generosity is encapsulated in that verb, “offers”. We’ve killed a weak verb, added a vivid one – and our sentence has improved.Better right? And so damn easy.Passive Verbs vs Active VerbsLet’s take a look at two more sentences.The cake was made by my grandma.The fender was bent out of shape by a fallen branch.And yes: you spotted the issue there. In both cases, the sentences use the passive voice, not the active voice. So the person who actually made the cake was grandma. The thing that actually bent that fender was the branch. (Need more help remembering the difference between active versus passive? Check out this easy guide.)So in effect, both sentences pushed the real subject to the back of the sentence, almost as though shoving them out of sight. Here’s how to rewrite those sentences and make them better:My grandma made the cake.A fallen branch bent the fender. (Yes, you could say “out of shape” but doesn’t the word bent already convey exactly that? I think it does.)But again, I want to remind you that we’re dealing with guidelines not rules here. Which of these is better:Detective Jonas arrested and charged the suspect.The suspect was arrested and charged.The first sentence is all about the admirable Detective Jonas. But what if we don’t care about him? What if this story is all about the suspect, and what happens to him? In that case, the second sentence is better. In fact, the use of the passive voice here almost emphasises the suspect’s powerlessness.As always in writing, you need to use your judgement. And if in doubt, you can find extra help here and here!Sometimes Weak Verbs Are OKAnd while we’re on the issue of judgement, let’s just remember that sometimes weak verbs are really OK.For example, you can’t get a much blander verb than say / said. So you might think that your dialogue should be littered with words like trumpeted, shouted, asserted, called, whispered, muttered, declaimed, hollered, and so on.But can you imagine how ridiculous that would get how quickly? And what do you want people to pay attention to? The dialogue itself, or your comments about it?There’s no contest.In other words: weak / dull / lifeless verbs are fine when you don’t especially want to call attention to that part of your writing. Let the dialogue shine. The rest of it can just go quietly about its job.The Ultimate List Of 333+ Strong VerbsOK. That’s a lot of preamble. But you want some vivid verbs? You got em.Here goes, grouped by the kind of word they might replace:Instead of say:Ask, enquire, reply, answer, state, hiss, whisper, mumble, mutter, comment, bark, assert, shout, yell, holler, roar, rage, argue, implore, plead, exclaim, gasp, drawl, giggle, whimper, snort, growl, scream, sing, stammerInstead of run:Sprint, dart, bolt, canter, gallop, trot, zoom, hurry, speed, jog, saunter, scamper, hurtle, rush, scramble, spring, swing, swoop, dive, careenInstead of walk:Stroll, hike, promenade, saunter, march, amble, stride, tread, pace, toddle, totter, stagger, perambulateInstead of look:Observe, glance, stare, examine, peek, study, notice, see, glareInstead of go:Leave, depart, shift, take off, move on, quit, exit, take a hike, travel, drive, proceed, progress, run, walk awayInstead of eat:Pick at, nibble, munch, chew, gobble, devour, consume, demolish, gulp, swallow, scarf, wolfInstead of hold:Grip, clench, grasp, seize, reach, embrace, clamp, clench, clasp, grabInstead of give:Provide, offer, present, hand over, deliver, contribute, furnish, donate, bequeath, pass over, pass to, extend, assign, allow, lend, bestow, grant, award, conferInstead of let:Allow, permit, authorise, agree to, consent to, accede to, give permission forInstead of put:Place, set, lay, position, settle, leave, situate, locate, plant, deposit, plonk, plunkInstead of pull:Yank, heave, haul, draw, cart, lug, hump, drag, tow, jerk, attract, pluck, wrenchInstead of move:Progress, transfer, shift, topple, change, redeploy, refocus, relocate, prod, nudge, induce, cause, budge, stir, lead, encourage, propose, induce, slink, scamper, careen, zip, ram, drift, droop, heave, edge, stalk, tiptoe, creep, crawl, plod, waddle, drag, staggerSensory verbs / quiet:Sigh, murmur, rustle, hum, patter, clink, tinkle, chime, whir, swish, snap, twitter, hiss, crackle, peep, bleat, buzzSensory verbs / noisy:Crash, thunder, clap, stomp, beat, squawk, shout, yell, explode, smash, detonate, boom, echo, bark, bawl, clash, smash, jangle, thump, grate, screech, bang, thud, blareInstead of tell:Order, command, instruct, dictate, require, insist, warn, caution, decree, mandate, charge, direct, dominate, lead, ruleInstead of like:Love, adore, yearn, treasure, worship, prefer, idolise, cherish, admire, enjoy, be fond of, be keen on, be partial to, fancy, care for, appreciate, hold dearInstead of want:Desire, crave, covet, yearn for, aspire to, envy, fancy, require, wish for, hanker after, need, lack, miss, aim for, chooseInstead of cover:Bury, wrap, conceal, mask, veil, hide, cloak, shroud envelope, obscure, blanket, curtainInstead of throw:Toss, lob, chuck, heave, fling, pitch, shy, hurl, propel, bowl, cast, drop, projectInstead of surprise:Confuse, puzzle, bewilder, baffle, bamboozle, disconcert, flummox, perplexHave fun, my friends, and happy writing!

Ever wondered what goes in to writing a nasty villain? Or what makes a good villain? Guest author C M Taylor has put together his top tips for writing the best villains, plus everything else you need to build a well-rounded bad guy.How To Create A Good VillainThe term ‘villain’ defines an evil character who personifies the forces which thwart the progress of the main character. Now, while it is feasible that the villain is the main character – and we will come on to that less usual and more nuanced situation later on – in the vast majority of cases, the villain is villainous in relation to opposing the needs and desires of the main character.This structural role of antagonising the main character is the reason the villain is often described as the antagonist. They are a character who stands in negative relation to the spiritual, emotional, moral or financial progress of the main character, a character who is often described as the protagonist.1. Thematically Develop Your VillainA writer can usefully begin their creation of a villain using villain characteristics via an understanding of theme. Are you writing about loyalty, for example? In which case, your protagonist has issues with loyalty which they must overcome, via the obstacles of the plot, to achieve a healthy, positive attitude to loyalty. Hence the role of the villain is to embody and prosecute a version of loyalty which is negative but tempting, which is corrupt but seductive, which might derail the heroic character’s attempt to achieve a healthy version of the theme.It is the villain’s job to oppose the progress of the hero, and so, knowing the specific thematic nature of the progress which the hero must make, that necessarily takes you some way to defining the nature of your villain. Your villain must be suitable and specifically adept at preventing the thematic success of your hero, hence must embody a negative version of that theme.2. Create A Compelling BackstorySo, once you have understood your theme and decided which negative version of the theme is embodied by your villain, you next ask yourself why they are like this.For an example, let’s stick with the theme of loyalty. Your villain might espouse a version of loyalty which states you must have only loyalty to yourself, or loyalty to chaos, or loyalty to crime, or loyalty to the dead. Any unhealthy version of the theme will do.Let’s pick they have loyalty to chaos and want to bring disorder and anarchy to the whole world. Why are they like this? Their parents were unbelievably controlling and up-tight and rational and crushed the villain with their excessive punctiliousness maybe. Or the villain and their brother were in some youth cadet force which was all about order and discipline and the brother died in an accident born of excessive following of the rules. You see, one you have your thematic relation, you move to explain it via the backstory.3. Build Emotional LogicOur thematically-driven excavation and development of the villain’s backstory allows us to take an emotionally logical approach and explain why the villain is like they are. Continuing with our theme of loyalty, our rule-following cadet was eager and good to start with, tragic events having turned them on to a negative chaotic version of loyalty. Or our young child started off good but was hounded by neurotically rule-bound parents to crave the release of chaos.If you show the reader that it is emotionally logical for the villain to have passed from a state of health to their current corrupted self as a consequence of events, you humanise the villain. You make the reader think that they themselves might plausibly have reacted the same way in the same circumstances. You give the villain an emotional plausibility and a gravitas. And a decent villain needs gravitas, needs the emotional plausibility and heft to pull the villain into their version of the theme, into their version of reality.A good villain is like a moral centrifuge. What they pull towards them and put in peril is the hero’s self, their morality, the hero’s version of the theme. Showing it was entirely reasonable for the villain to arrive at the moral place they are in shows that the hero might arrive their too, and so puts a huge amount of jeopardy in play for the hero.4. Show Physical And Mental ScarsThe clichéd villain is often physically disfigured, right? There being a suggestion of a relationship between moral and physical disfigurement. I would however caution against this simple equation, quite apart from it perpetuating discrimination against people who are unfortunate enough to be physically disfigured, it has been done to death. Why not mix it up? The hero is trying to overcome prejudice against their physical disfigurement while the gorgeous villain is prone to the ravages of narcissism.5. Add In Super Human GiftsYour protagonist has to be special. In some genres like fantasy or science fiction they can be ‘the one’ level of special. In genres such as crime or thriller they can ‘exceptional human being’ levels of special. In genres such as romance or realism, they can ‘normal person pushed to the edge behaves heroically’ levels of special. And if your protagonist is special well, given that it is the job of the villain to oppose the protagonist, then in order to seem anything like able to compete with the hero, the villain needs to be special too.6. Make Your Villain UnbeatableEvery villain needs to seem unbeatable to start with. The obstacles they place in the way of the protagonist must seem insurmountable. If the hero can beat the villain at the beginning, then there are no struggles needed. It is the insurmountable villain that causes the hero to develop and grow.It may be that your story is a tragic and the hero fails to beat the villain in the end. However it ends, in the beginning there must be no way that the hero – in their current state – can compete.7. Writing Well-Rounded Bad Guys And VillainsWhy do villains matter to fiction?  Answering this involves taking this question right back to ask ourselves: what is a story?The crux of a story is concerned with how the main character changes, or fails to change, over time, in contact with internal, external and relationship pressures. A story is a map of this change over time, or this failure to change over time.The change is both an internal, emotional journey and an external, physical journey. Now if the journey comes easily, then there will be no drama, because drama requires struggle. The journey which the protagonist goes on needs to be ripe with struggle – with obstacles, tests, high stakes.The most common and identifiable way to manifest struggle is to have it between people. Between the antagonist (or villain) and the protagonist (or heroic character). It is the antagonist who provides the obstacles standing in the way of the protagonist’s need to consummate their change.It is the test of wills between the antagonist and the protagonist that generates the struggle.On a very simple level, in terms of the mechanics of plot, it is the villain who sets the test and the heroic character who sits the test. It is the villain whose actions provoke the need for the hero to act. Batman without The Joker would have no need to act.The villain is a dark twin to the hero. The villain embodies the shadow qualities of the hero. The villain is what the hero might have been, what the hero might be, should they make the wrong choices, which is what gives rise to the clichéd piece of film dialogue, ‘We are not so different you and I, Mr Bond.’If the heroic character struggles to embody the positive possibilities in a work of fiction, the villain convincingly embodies the negative aspects.The villain personifies the specific forces of antagonism which aim to prevent the protagonist from completing their internal and external journey.8. Does Every Story Need A Villain?The short answer to this question is no – in terms of the villain being a physical personification of antagonism, not every story has or needs this. A story needs antagonism, yes, and most usually this antagonism takes the form of a human being standing in opposition to the progress of the heroic character, but it is not necessary to do this.Antagonism can be generated in other variations than the single, embodied villain. The antagonism might be within the heroic character themselves. It might be a mistaken belief about life which leads them astray or into repeated unhealthy actions; or it might be an addiction.Note that choosing to centre the antagonistic force internal to the main character influences what type of story you are telling. It would be hard to make this choice and write an action story, for example. The choice to situate the main antagonistic force internally, as an aspect of the heroic character, is more associated with character-led stories – literary or dramatic works, or sometimes the psychological thriller. Whereas the more traditional human villain personification of antagonistic force is more usual within crime or fantasy or action stories.There are other forms of antagonism too. It might be centred around a group of people. It might be the family that a young person needs to escape to ‘become’ whole.Or it might be the pain still felt when a parent abandoned a child.Or it might be a best friend who continually leads the main character into activities which are against their best interests.Basically, antagonistic forces can be anything as long as they are the main obstacle in the way of the protagonist achieving what they most need. Traditionally this force has been embodied via the personification of a villain, but the villainous function can be performed within a story by other forces.9. How To Create A Likeable VillainAs I write above, the villain stands or falls on the plausibility of their world view – the villain is the hero in their own eyes. If you can show why the villain has ventured from the path of moral health to become the creature they are today then you have created the route by which the reader can empathise with the villain. And if they can empathise then – in the current parlance – they can possess relatability.All the best characters are layered, multidimensional and above all, unique. So, if your bad guy can have some redeeming qualities, or a journey that the reader can connect with, then that could definitely make for an interesting read.10. What If Your Protagonist Is A Villain?Your protagonist can be both hero and villain – look at Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Or your protagonist can be a criminal – look at The Godfather, at Breaking Bad, at The Sopranos, at Crime and Punishment. Or your protagonist can be an anti-hero – look at Mr Robot.  They can be any of those things. As long as they are subject to thematically congruent antagonistic forces, the rules are the same.As long as we know why they are like they are – In The Godfather, Michael Corleone gets pulled back into the family business of murder and extortion through love of his threatened father. Walter White sells meth – initially at least – to protect his ill family in Breaking Bad. Elliot from Mr Robot illegally hacks computers to out greater criminals.This is a common strategy – outflanking your villains with even greater villains to make your villain comparatively empathetic. Look at Dexter. Yes, he is a serial killer, but he only kills people who are themselves worse than him. He performs bad acts for a comprehensible and relatable reason.11 Examples Of Evil Villains And Bad GuysTricking Othello into murdering his own wife makes Iago a pretty good start to our collection.Another trickster, in Treasure Island, Long John Silver tricks Jim Hawkins, disguising his own role as leader of the mutiny.Why do we care for and want the sociopathic murder Tom Ripley to escape throughout Patricia Highsmith’s Mr Ripley novels? Because he feels love and we feel his vulnerability and inadequacy.And why do we admire Hannibal Lecter in Thomas Harris’ novels? Because he is brilliant and stylish and logical.Only somebody as prodigiously gifted as Moriarty could aspire to being a villain worthy of Sherlock Holmes special powers.Anne Wilkes in Stephen King’s Misery turns out to the fan no writer wants.Xan may seem like the villain in P D James’ The Children of Men but isn’t the broader antagonistic force that of infertility itself.No mistaking that it’s a shark who is the villain of Peter Benchley’s novel, Jaws.Isn’t narcissism the antagonistic force in play in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey?Are dinosaurs the antagonistic force of Jurassic Park? Rather I would say it was the human vanity and over-reaching that lead to the recreation of dinosaurs in the first place. Same with Dr Frankenstein – it’s the Dr not the monster who sets the test.Isn’t the entire Republic of Gilead the antagonist force in The Handmaid’s Tale?

Points of View in Fiction Writing (with Plenty of Examples)What is first person writing in fiction? What’s third person narrative? What’s all this about limited vs omniscient…?How you narrate a story – or what points of view you choose when writing fiction – can make all the difference to its appeal. What’s more, the choices you make now will affect every page (indeed, pretty much every sentence) of your novel.So you’d better get things right, huh?No worries. This post will tell you everything you need to know. We’ll start with some definitions and some examples, then assess the pros and cons of each possibility.Oh, and buckle up. This stuff can sound quite technical and scary, but (a) it’s simpler than it sounds, and (b) the choice you want to make instinctively is probably the right one. It’s really possible to overthink these things!First up: some definitions.All You Need To Know About Points Of ViewPoint of view (POV) is the narrator’s position in relation to the story:First person – the narrator and protagonist are the sameSecond person point of view– very rare and hard to pull offThird person – an ‘off-page’ narrator relates a story about your charactersMixed – combines first-and third-person passagesPoint of View: DefinitionsThe Point of View (or “POV”) is the narrator’s position in relation to the story.There are a few basic possibilities here, one of which is exceptionally rare. They are:First person narrationIn this instance the narrator speaks in the first person, (“I did this, I said that, I thought the other.”) The narrator and the novel’s protagonist are essentially one and the same.Second person narrationHere the narrator speaks in the third person (“You did this”, and so on.) It’s exceptionally rare as a technique and is definitely not advisable for beginners.Third person narrationIn this instance, the narrator speaks in the third person, (“She did this, he did that, they did the other.”) The narrator is basically an invisible storyteller, telling the reader what happens to the novel’s protagonists. Third person narration comes in two basic flavours: limited third person and the extremely grand-sounding omniscient third person. We’ll get more into the detail of those two in a moment, but the basic difference is that a limited 3rd person narrator stays very close to the character whose viewpoint is being used. An omniscient one is more inclined to wander free from the character and give a broader view of things. (Not sure you’ve got the distinction? No worries. We’ll get to more details in a moment.)Mixed narrationIf a novel combines passages told from the first person point of view with passages told from the third person point of view, it has mixed narration – or mixed first and third person point of view, if you really want to spell it out.Point of View: ExamplesExamples of first person narration are legion. For example:The Sherlock Holmes stories (narrated by Dr Watson, in the first person)Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe stories (narrated by Philip Marlowe, of course)Bridget Jones’s Diary, narrated by … well, you’ve already guessed, right?Moby Dick, narrated by … well, put it this way, the famous first line is “Call me Ishmael.”Hunger Games, narrated by Katniss EverdeenTwilight, narrated by Bella SwanThe Kay Scarpetta novels of Patricia CornwellSome of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books (but not all)Here’s an example of first person point of view in practice:“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation.”—Moby Dick, by Herman MelvilleExamples of second person perspective are extremely rare. Famous recent examples include:Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City opens with the line, “You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time in the morning” and then it continues from there, with the protagonist always described as “you”.Italo Calvino did much the same thing in If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller.There are a few other examples too, but you’ve got to be a really smart and skilled writer to do this. In short, for 99.99% of writers out there, just fuhgeddabahtit. This technique isn’t one for you.Examples of third person narration are also commonplace. For example:Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, which is about Lisbeth Salander, but not narrated by herThe Da Vinci Code, about Robert Langton, but not narrated by himJane Austen’s Pride & PrejudiceJohn Grisham’s The FirmStephen King’s MiserySome of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, but not allAnd here’s an example of third person narration in practice:It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”—Pride and Prejudice, by Jane AustenGot that? OK. We’ll skip on to the limited / omniscient distinction, then start figuring out how to apply point of view to your novel.Third Person POV: Limited vs OmniscientOK, the thing that probably most confuses newer writers is the distinction between third person limited and third person omniscient.Quite honestly, though, this isn’t something to trouble with too much. If you want to write in third person, just do what’s right for your characters and your story, and you should do just fine.If you want to know more, however, what you need to know is this:Third Person Limited: Definition & ExampleWhen you use a limited form of third person narration, you stay very close to your character. So the narrator isn’t telling the reader anything that the character in question wouldn’t themselves know / see / hear / sense. Here’s a beautiful example from Anne Tyler (in Breathing Lessons):“They planned to wake up at seven, but Maggie [the point of view character in this passage] must have set the alarm wrong and so they overslept. They had to dress in a hurry and rush through breakfast, making do with faucet coffee and cold cereal. Then Ira headed off for the store on foot to leave a note for his customers, and Maggie walked to the body shop. She was wearing her best dress – blue-and-white sprigged with cape sleeves – and crisp black pumps, on account of the funeral. The pumps were only medium-heeled, but slowed her down some anyway.”You’ll notice that nothing at all in that passage is something that Maggie doesn’t know about. So even when the passage talks about Ira heading off to the store, that’s done from Maggie’s perspective. We know that he goes and what his purpose is there, but we know nothing at all about his walk itself – whereas we know exactly what Maggie’s wearing, and why, and why her shoes slowed her down.This is third person limited (because it’s so closely limited to Maggie’s perspective) and as you can see it delivers a kind of intimacy – even a homeliness.Third Person Omniscient: Definition And ExampleThe omniscient version of third person is, as you’d expect, able to tell the reader things that aren’t directly knowable by any of the characters in the tale. The most famous example of this narrative voice in literature is surely this passage from Charles Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities:“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope,it was the winter of despair, …”As you can see, this isn’t told from any character’s viewpoint. It’s almost as though a lordly, all-seeing Charles Dickens is hovering over London (or England? or the world?) and giving his kingly overview of the situation.This type of writing has become rather less common in fiction, so you’ll tend to stick with broadly limited narration, interspersed (perhaps) by something a little more omniscient in flavour.Point of View: Which One Should You Write In?First Person Point of ViewFirst-person narration shares action as seen through the eyes of your narrator. A narrator can therefore only narrate scenes in which he or she is present.Coming-of-age novels – Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower – work exceptionally well in first-person narration. A lot of YA books are written in first person, because their intimate, emotional narration chimes with their teenaged readership.Romances (with their emotional focus) are also often first person. So are ghost stories with a sense of claustrophobia like Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black.In particular, however, it’s worth thinking about Jonathan Franzen’s dictum that, “Write in third person unless a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly.”In other words: (A) do you feel you have to write in that first person voice, and (B) does that first person voice really sound and feel distinctive, personal and indvidual. I’ve mostly written third person, but my recent detective novels are first person – essentially for the reasons Franzen hints at. Here’s an example from my book, The Deepest Grave. (I’ve made some short edits for length, but mostly this is as it appears in the finished book.)The narrator is Fiona Griffiths, my detective protagonist.I’m a little earlier than I said, but it’s not long before I hear the sound of approaching feet.Katie appears. Sees me up here on my bank. I raise a hand and smile welcome.She approaches.Impressively torn black jeans. Black cowboy boots, well-used. Dark vest-top worn under an almost military kahki shirt. A chunky necklace. One of those broad-brimmed Aussie-style hats with a leather band. […]The look has attitude and personality and toughness, without quite dipping into angry hippy counterculture.Also: she walks with a ski-stick, a mobility aid not a fashion statement.She comes up the bank towards me. Sits beside me.I say, ‘You hurt your ankle?’You’ll notice that it’s not just that the observations are made by Fiona. (eg: “not long before I hear the sound of approaching feet”). It’s also that the character of those observations is shaped 100% by Fiona herself. So yes, the list of clothes that Katie is wearing is a fairly neutral list (though the very short sentences and lack of any verbs – that’s all Fiona). But that summary comment about the overall effect (“the look has attitude  . . .without quite dipping into angry hippy counterculture”) is what Fiona thinks about Katie’s look. I can’t comment myself, because this is Fiona’s narration. She’s in charge.For the same reason, if there were, let’s say, a lion in the undergrowth about to spring out on Fiona, the book couldn’t say anything about the lion, until Fiona herself had seen / heard / smelled / witnessed it in some way.Does that sound claustrophobic? Needlessly restrictive?Well, maybe. But I’m now halfway into writing novel #7 in that series, and when that book’s complete I’ll be close to 1,000,000 words published in the series. And every single one of those words, without exception, comes from Fiona’s voice. There is no other perspective anywhere in the series.In other words, the restriction of first person is real, but you can still write at length, and successfully in that style.First Person Point of View, Pros And ConsThis is quite easy, really! The pro is the opposite of the con and vice versa.Pro: First person narration gives you intense, personal familiarity with the narrator. The reader can’t – short of putting the book down – separate from the narrator’s voice, their thoughts, their commentary, their feelings etc.Con: You lose flexibility. If there’s a lion in the undergrowth, you can’t say so, until your narrator has seen the damn thing. If a key thing happens in your plot without your narrator in the room, then tough. He or she can only talk about it when they encounter the consequences down the road.My comment:I’ve written books both ways. There’s no right or wrong here. I love both. One good tip is to use first person narration mostly when you have a distinctive narrator with a strong voice. Most thrillers are written third person (so they can flip between different points of view (eg: investigator / victim / perpetrator), but there’s no absolute rule. I write mine first person. Likewise, a lot of romance stories are written first person . . . but you can go either way there too.Third Person Point of ViewThird person narration uses “he” or “she”, where a first person narrator would say, “I”.Here’s an example taken from (and this is a blast from the past for me!) my first novel, The Money Makers:They spoke of other things until it was late. They damped down the fire, cleared away the dishes, and walked upstairs. Fiona went right on into the one usable bedroom. Matthew stopped at the door, where his bag lay.‘Fiona,’ he said. ‘You remember you said you would never ever lie for me again?’‘Yes.’‘Any chance of your lying for me right now?’ He looked at the inviting double bed, heaped high with clean linen and feather quilts.She smiled. Once again, ambiguity flickered in frightened eyes, but her answer was clear. She walked right up to Matthew and stopped a few inches from him. Her long dark hair fell around her shoulders, and her face was only inches from his.This scene (and the whole chapter) is written from Matthew’s perspective. So, yes, much of the factual data here (“they spoke of other things until it was late”) was available to both Fiona and Matthew in this scene.At the same time, when they step up close and get intimate, it’s Matthew we’re with, not Fiona. (How do we know this? Because when we get to “ambiguity flickered in frightened eyes”, it’s Matthew that sees this, not Fiona. If that little bit had been written from Fiona’s perspective, it would have had to say, “she felt ambivalent and frightened”, or something like that.Limited vs OmniscientMy advice to newer writers is mostly to forget about this distinction. As a rule, you should stick close to your character – and that means adopting a generally limited point of view.How come?Well, quite simply, readers want to experience story through the eyes and ears of its characters, and that means time away from the limited perspective is time spent away from that precious character-experience.That said, if now and again, you want to dive into something a little more godlike (or omniscient), you absolutely can. Just:Make sure that your godlike voice offers something grand, the way Charles Dickens’s does in Tale of Two Cities. (The opening passage of White Teeth by Zadie Smith offers a rather more contemporary example.)Use that omniscient voice only in small doses. You want to zoom, pretty damn fast, from the omniscient view to the up-close-and-personal one.The golden rule to remember here is that readers want character – and they only get that experience from the limited perspective.Third Person Point of View: Pros And ConsThe main limitation we found with the first person narrative approach was its restrictiveness. My and my Fiona Griffiths books, with every one of those 1,000,000 words locked into one voice, one point of view.So most writers adopting the third person approach will use multiple perspectives. George Eliot’s Middlemarch is one famous example. The same goes for much of nineteenth century fiction, especially of the more epic variety: Dickens, War and Peace, Vanity Fair, Henry James, you name it.What you get from those many perspectives is the ability to see into many hearts, many minds, many souls. That multi-viewpoint narration gives your novel:Richness – all those multiple perspectivesFlexibility – you can set your movie camera up wherever the action is happening. You avoid the restrictions of narrow first person narration.Potentially something epic in scale – because all those characters and voices lend a depth and scale to your story.Also notice this:There are types of suspense you just can’t deliver in a first person novel. So Hitchcock famously distinguished between surprise and suspense.If two people are sitting in a cafe, when a bomb detonates – that’s a surprise.But let’s restructure that same episode with multiple viewpoints, and you get something completely different. So we might see (Point of View #1) a terrorist planting a bomb in the cafe, then switch perspectives to (Point of View #2) the innocent couple drinking coffee right by the ticking bomb. In that case, the simple scene of two people drinking coffee becomes laden with suspense.The reader knows the bomb is there. The couple don’t. What’s going to happen . . .?That’s a type of suspense that we first-personeers (or single perspective third personeers) just can’t deliver.Consequently, third person / multiple viewpoint novels are particularly common with:thrillers and suspense novelsanything epic in scale. We’ve mentioned some nineteenth century fiction already, but George RR Martin and his Game of Thrones series is a perfect example of modern and big. Ditto any door-stopper by Tom Clancy.Third Person Point of View: SummaryMost third person novels are written with multiple perspectives, even if (as in Harry Potter) the point of view stays mostly with a single central character.Advantages and disadvantages? Well, essentially you get the opposite of the first person pros and cons. So third person / multi-viewpoint narration:Is flexible. You can pop the camera anywhere you want. You can deliver suspense as well as surprise.Enlarges your book. It can move you from a narrow-focus/small book to a wide-focus/epic one.Loses intimacy. In particular, if your camera gets too promiscuous – if you just use too many viewpoints – you risk breaking the reader’s bond with your central character(s). If that happens, your book dies!Third Person Narration: The Golden RulesWe said above that the main risk of multiple viewpoints is that you break the reader’s bond with your main character and as a result you end up losing the reader completely.Bad outcome, right? A book killer.Multiple Points of View: Three Golden RulesFiction is about inner worlds and inner journeys, and you need to respect that. So here are the rules:GOLDEN RULE #1Limit your number of primary charactersI’d suggest that, for almost any new novelist, you should not go above three. My first book was a story about three sons, although the sister too had a significant secondary viewpoint. I’d say that count of three-and-a-half viewpoints represents the upper limit for any first novel by all but the most gifted novelists.You can go higher than that. I think of books that run to dozens of viewpoints. But as a place to start?Nope, that kind of thing is too dangerous for 99.9% of you. (And the 0.1% are talented enough, that I don’t really know why they’re reading this!)Your next rule follows from the first:GOLDEN RULE #2Never go more than 3-4 pages before returning to your primary characters.We’ve all watched movies where the leading couple is so incredibly strong that the movie starts to die as soon as one of them is off-screen. Or take that great first series of Homeland, where Carrie (Claire Danes) and Nicholas Brody (Damian Green) had a mesmeric quality together. You could have scenes with both of them in (great!). Or scenes with just one of them in (very good!). But scenes with neither? They flagged very quickly.And sure: you need some filler scenes just to make sense of the story. But if you stay away from your main characters for too long, the book dies. And just because I said “3-4 pages” in the rule above doesn’t mean that you have that much space every time you take a break. You don’t. You need to keep those non-protagonist scenes as short and tight as possible. Three pages is better than four. Two pages is better than three.And our next rule follows from the first two – and from absolutely everything we know about why stories work as they do.GOLDEN RULE #3Every main character (every protagonist) needs their own fully developed story arc.If you use any Point of view repeatedly, the character needs a fully developed inner life, a fully developed arc, a full set of challenges, encounters and personal change – and relevance, too. Is this person relevant to your collective story material?So take my first book, The Money Makers, with its three (and a bit) protagonists. Every single one of those three needed:A motivationA challengeA set of external obstacles (ie: things in the world)A set of internal obstacles (ie: things in their character that blocked them from accomplishing their goals)A crisis, linked to all the things in the list so farA resolutionIn effect, to write a three-handed story, you have to write three stories, each perfectly structured in their own right.Phew!That sounds like a scary undertaking, and yes, I guess it is. But because a book can be only so long, if you write from three points of view, each one of the stories you are telling can afford to be quite simple – the kind of thing that would seem a bit flat if told on its own. (If you’re a bit worried about fitting it all in then you’ll probably find this blog on chapter lengths and this one on wordcount really useful.)As it happens, I love third person / multiple viewpoint narration almost as much as I love first person. There isn’t a right or a wrong in the choice; it’s only a question of how you want to write and how your story wants to be written.

How to write great characters in your novel.How to make them lifelike.How to make them dazzle.What makes a reader glued to a book? What makes that person come back to it again and again?As a rough guide, people turn the pages because of plot, but they remember a book because of character.Don’t believe us?Then answer this. Can you recall, in detail, the plots of:To Kill a Mockingbird?The Hound of the Baskervilles?The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?We’re going to bet not. But do you remember Scout and Atticus? Holmes and Watson? And the badass Lisbeth Salander?Of course you do. And that’s the aim of this post: helping you achieve the same level of vibrating life that these characters achieved. In effect, we’re going to tell you how to develop a character that can be used for both the protagonist (hero) and the antagonist (bad guy). How to write the kind of characters that will elevate your novel to a whole different plane.And it’s not magic. It’s just the logical application of tried-and-trusted writing techniques.But let’s start by figuring out what character development is, and how it works for you.Don’t want to wait for the blah?Just download our 200+ question Character Bio Template. It’s freeGet the Ultimate Character Profile TemplateWhat Is Character Development?Character development is two things:Character development is the the process by which an author develops a detailed character profile. This activity is usually done in conjunction with plot development and takes place as part of the planning process, before the writer actually starts to write.Character development also refers to the way a character changes through the course of the novel, generally in response to the experiences and events gathered through the course of the story itself. This is known as the Character Arc. (Need more? Get plot structure advice here.)Those twin definitions are immediately helpful.Yes: you have to develop a character profile before starting to write, but you also have to knit your character so closely to the story you’re going to tell that the two things seemed joined at the hip. Ideally, the reader won’t be able to imagine any other character occupying your story – just like you couldn’t imagine Girl with a Dragon Tattoo without the inflammatory, exciting presence of Lisbeth Salander.So: the first question is, how do we choose the right character for the story we’re about to tell? That’s up next.Plan Your Character ArcsThe two basic character types in fiction – and how to choose the one who’s right for your novel.There are two basic types of main character (or protagonist) in fiction:The first type is an ordinary character plunged into the extraordinary. And, by this process, they become a little more extraordinary themselves.The second character type start out extraordinary – they could make things happen in an empty room.You need to be careful about identifying which character is which.You might think that Harry Potter can’t be ordinary, because he’s a wizard. But think about it. He seemed like quite an ordinary boy. And when he gets to wizard school he seems quite ordinary there too (daunted by the school, a bit scared of Hermione, and so on.) He’s an ordinary wizard who finds his inner extraordinary self over the course of seven books.Lisbeth Salander, however, never strikes the reader as ordinary. She’s a rule-breaking, computer genius with anti-social traits and a scary capacity for violence. You just know she’s going to cause waves, no matter where she goes.Here’s a quick way to figure out what kind of character yours is:Ordinary CharactersWill typically refuse adventure, or accept it only reluctantlyWill typically have something of the boy next door / girl next door quality to them. That doesn’t mean they have to be boring (we’re all different after all), but it does mean that they can act as a kind of placeholder for the reader. “That person could be me. That adventure could have been mine.“Will typically find something heroic or extraordinary in themselves as a result of the adventure. Something that was buried becomes visible.The adventure has to echo or vibrate with whatever is distinctive about the character. So at the very start of the Harry Potter series, Harry seems like an ordinary boy, except that he’s an orphan. No wonder then that the entire series revolves around Harry completing the battles of his lost parents.Extraordinary CharactersWill often leap into adventure. May even create it.Will typically seem nothing whatsoever like the nice kid next doorWill have something astonishing in them all the time. Something that probably makes them look awkwardly ill-at-ease in the ordinary world.But, as with ordinary characters, the adventure will resonate with who they are. Sherlock Holmes is a detective – so let him solve crimes! Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan is a CIA guy, so drop him into a thriller, not a schmalzy love story!What A Character Arc Looks LikeYou can already see how these three things need to intertwine:Your character’s profile at the start of the bookThe story your character plunges intoThe way your character develops through the course of that storySo for one hyper-simple example, you might have:Harry Potter starts out as an ordinary boy, albeit one with natural wizarding abilityHe is plunged into a life or death battle against VoldemortHe discovers previously unseen reserves of courage and resourcefulness – he finds his inner extraordinary.Here’s another example of the same thing, this time from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice:Lizzy Bennet is an ordinary young woman, but somewhat prone to impulsive and immature judgementsShe is plunged into a tumultuous love story, and …Discovers new wisdom and maturity.These things are beautifully simple when you see them – but needless to say, designing something beautifully simple ain’t so easy. (Just ask Steve Jobs!)Build Your Character Development ArcYour first task? Simple. Just do the same thing as we’ve just done for Harry Potter and Lizzy Bennet.Take a sheet of paper and write out – in a few words only – the following:Your character’s broad start positionThe nature of the storyThe way your character develops as a result of the story you are telling.Do that exercise. Make sure you’re happy with it. And when you are – congratulations.You’ve just taken your first big step in developing your character.Try Our Ultimate Character Profile TemplateAlso called a “Character Bio Template”Figuring out who you want to lead your story is the first essential of success.But the next part – the fun one – is every bit as important. And the rule here is simple:You have to know your main character better than you know your best friend.That’s it.The simple fact is that strong characterisation is based on knowledge. The only way to write a really convincing, lifelike, vibrant protagonist is to know them inside out. If you have this knowledge, you will find yourself using it. If you don’t have it, you can’t.So the problem of writing character comes down to this: you have to know protagonist. And we’ve got a brilliant technique to help with just that.If you haven’t yet started your book, then work on the character creator exercise below before you start. It makes developing a character so much easier.Or cheat! It’s fasterWhy not download our 200+ question Character Bio Template? It’s freeGet the Ultimate Character Profile TemplateIf you have started, but think that maybe you started prematurely, then back up. Do the exercise and then read back through your work, looking for places where your characters seem a little blank.So. Let’s start.Use A Character Profile / Bio To Develop Stunning CharactersBegin with a blank sheet (or screen). And begin to write down everything you know about your central character. Don’t be too concerned to edit yourself at this stage. Just let rip: this will be your character profile. It helps to group your comments a bit under certain themes, but if that inhibits your flow then just write. Group your notes up later.You should cover all kinds of topics, including:BackstoryWhere did your protagonist come from?What was their childhood like? Happy or sad?What were relations like with their parents? Or brothers or sisters?If their father was (say) extravagant, what impact did this have? If their mother was (say) easily tearful, how did this affect them?And what about now, where relations with others are concerned?Were there key incidents in childhood that shaped this person in a way relevant to your book’s story?What about more recent backstory? Their move to Arkansas, joining the army, their first girl/boyfriend? Sketch those things out too.Write how your protagonist’s backstory has shaped their drives, their character arc, and will shape your plot. It helps if examples are concrete, showing your protagonist via actions and choices in specific situations. (And yes: showing matters. If you need a show vs tell refresher, we’ve got it for you.)Looks And Physical AttributesGet to know how your character looks, how they inhabit their body and how they interact with the world:Is your character tall or short? What hair colour, face & body shape, what eye colour?Are they physically graceful? Or clumsy? Or what?What animal do they most remind you of?If you had to choose one image to represent this person, what would it be? [Hint: the best answers to that question often float between the physical and something a bit more spiritual. There’s often something mobile in the image, not just static. examples: “She was like a deer grazing in snow.” or “He was like an iron sword of the old type. Unbending. Strong. Prone to a sudden, flashing anger.”]How does your character sleep?How do they fiddle?Are they impatient?How do they eat? What foods do they love and hate?What do they look like from a distance? Or close up, when seen by a stranger?What is their voice like? Or their laugh?Think of an actor or actress who could play your character. If you need a visual image to work from, then look through magazines until you’ve got something you can use. Pin it up close to where you work, and work from that. Or create an inspiration board, either a real one or using a site like Pinterest, to pin images of your characters, of story aesthetic, etcYour Character’s PersonalityIs your character sunny and carefree, like Lizzy Bennet in Pride and Prejudice?Or hardened, unforgiving, like Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?What impression would they make on a casual observer?Are they screwed up in any way?Are they conflict-avoiders or conflict-seekers?Are they sensitive or selfish lovers?How emotionally involved would they get?How does all of this feed into their character arc (ie: the way they develop through the story)?If you answered a Myers-Briggs personality test in character, what would your character’s results be?RelationshipsWhy has your character chosen this partner?Is he or she like the partners your character normally goes for?Do they go in for cutesy baby-talk? Or hard-edged flippancy? Or reflectiveness?What are their pet names for each other?Do they encourage maturity in the other or bring out the less mature side?What are their disagreements about? Do they row, and if so, how? How do they mend rows?What does one love most about the other? What do they most dislike?What is your predicted future for the relationship beyond the end of the novel?Goals, Fears, AmbitionsBe sure, most essentially, you know your characters’ deeper goals and motivations.What’s their deepest wish?What are they most afraid of?What would failure mean for them? What voices would they have in their head commenting on that failure? (eg: a critical parent, or a disappointed friend.)What’s the goal, the thing they most desire?Does it change? And why?What’s their motivation for wanting it. What does it say about their nature?The Ultimate Character Profile TemplateThe very best way to get to know your characters is to do this:Write a list of 200+ questions about your characterThen answer themDo that, and before too long, you’ll know your character with utter intimacy. You’ll move beyond some mechanical character development exercise into deep, fluent, easy knowledge.Do note that you have to write the questions before you start answering them, otherwise you end up just asking questions that you already know answers to.Oh, and it’s incredibly hard to come up with a really long list of questions that really probe everything about your character – so we’ve done it for you. We’ve created the Ultimate Character Builder, and it’s yours for free.Get the Ultimate Character Bio Template.Give yourself an hour or two on that exercise and, quite honestly, your development of character journey is mostly complete. Nice to know, right?Build Empathy With Your CharactersWhen you are writing a character, their motivation matters so much.You know that thing that literary agents do?“While we liked your book a lot, we didn’t quite love it. We didn’t quite feel empathy with your main character, but wish you the best of luck in finding representation elsewhere.”Makes you want to scream, doesn’t it?And the issue is NOT that your character isn’t nice enough. It’s not that she needs to do more home-baking, or go to more church meetings, or smile more sweetly.The equation is simply this:Empathy = Character’s motivations + reader understanding.That’s it. The whole deal.If a character really wants something, and the reader really gets why that thing matters so much to that character, then the reader is committed. They’ll feel intensely involved. They will, if they’re a literary agent, want to represent your novel.In terms of your character development challenge, that means you need to:Understand your character’s motivations deeplyMake sure your character really cares (because if they don’t, the reader won’t.)Make sure your character’s motivations come through in your writing.And that’s it. Simple, right?Dialogue: Characters In RelationshipWhile we’re on the topic of building empathy, it’s also worth remembering that your character doesn’t exist in isolation – they’re at the centre of a particular web of relationships that will be tugging at them with complex and often contradictory forces. That’s quite likely tough for the character – but great for the reader.And dialogue is where you’ll feel those emotional pulls and pushes most forcefully and in their most alive possible way. Making sure that your dialogue is sinuous and mobile will give a real kick to your character – and add whole new layers to the process of acquiring and retaining the reader’s empathy. More dialogue help right here.That’s It: Character Development – Done!If you’ve done the work on developing your character arc, and you’ve explored your character in detail via our Ultimate Character Development Sheet, then you know what?You’ve completed your character development work. Yay!Truthfully, you’ll be ahead of at least 95% of the other writers out there. Well done you.If your plot is roughly in shape, then you’re good to start writing, and your first draft (though it won’t be perfect) should be a pretty damn good platform for your final, finished book.That said, once you have written (say) 10,000 words of your first draft – STOP.Just stop writing and review what you’ve written so far.Does your character feel like a fully rounded human? Or a cliche? Do you make plenty of reference (where appropriate) to your character’s thoughts, memories, feelings and physical sensations? Does the character feel fresh or stale? Individual, or just a standard character type?If your answers are yes, this character feels fresh and individual, then your work has paid off. You’ve created a great character – and your novel is well on its way to being a damn good one.Congratulations on finishing your book! Keen to improve the first draft and polish your manuscript, but not sure where to start? Get help from an experienced professional editor with our Manuscript Assessment Service. Premium Members get 10% off!

Your first job as a storyteller is a simple one, and a crucial one. You have to get your passengers into your train – your readers into your story. Only then can you hope to transport them.And that crucial first step doesn’t have much to do with characters or story or anything else.What matters first is this: your fictional world has to seem real. It has to grip the reader as intensely as real life – more intensely, even.Writing descriptions that seem vivid, with the use of evocative language, is therefore essential. The buildings, cities, places, rooms, trees, weather of your fictional world have to be convincing there. They have to have an emphatic, solid, believable presence.A big ask, right? But it gets harder than that.Because at the same time, people don’t want huge wodges of descriptive writing. They want to engage with characters and story, because that’s the reason they picked up your book in the first place.So your challenge becomes convincing readers that your world is real . . . but using only the lightest of touches to achieve that goal.Not so easy, huh?Start EarlySet the scene early on – then nudge.It may sound obvious but plenty of writers launch out into a scene without giving us any descriptive material to place and anchor the action. Sure, a page or so into the scene, they may start to add details to it – but by that point it’s too late. They’ve already lost the reader. If the scene feels placeless at the start – like actors speaking in some blank, white room – you won’t be able to wrestle that sense of place back later.So start early.That means telling the reader where they are in a paragraph (or so), close to the start of any new scene. That early paragraph needs to have enough detail that if you are creating a coffee shop, for example, it doesn’t just feel like A Generic Coffee Shop. It should feel like its own thing. One you could actually walk into. Something with its own mood and colour. One vivid descriptive detail will do more work for you than three worthy but colourless sentences.And once, early in your scene, you’ve created your location, don’t forget about it. Just nudge a little as you proceed. So you could have your characters talking – then they’re interrupted by a waitress. Then they talk (or argue, or fight, or kiss) some more, and then you drop in some other detail which reminds the reader, “Yep, here we still are, in this coffee shop.”That’s a simple technique, bit it works every time.One paragraph early on, then nudge, nudge, nudge.As the roughest of rough guides, those nudges need to happen at least once a page – so about every 300 words. If it’s natural to do so more often, that’s totally fine.Be SpecificDetails matter! They build a sense of place like nothing else.Gabriel García Márquez, opening One Hundred Years of Solitude, introduces his village like this:Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs.Boom! We’re there.In his world. In his village. Already excited to see what lies ahead.And yes, he’s started early (Chapter 1, Page 1, Line 1). But it’s more than that, isn’t it? He could have written something like this:Macondo was a village of about twenty houses, built on a riverbank.I hope it’s obvious that that sentence hardly transports us anywhere. It’s too bland. Too unfocused. Too generic. There are literally thousands of villages in the world which would fit that description.In short, what makes Marquez’s description so vivid is its use of telling detail. They’re not just houses, they’re adobe houses. The river doesn’t just flow over stones, its flows over polished stones that are white and enormous, like (wow!) prehistoric eggs.The sentence works so well because Marquez has:Created something totally non-genericVia the use of highly specific detail, andUses surprising / exotic language to make those details blaze in our imagination.That basic template is one you can use again and again. It never stales. It lies at the heart of all good descriptive writing.So here, for example, is a more ‘boring’ space . . . but still one redolent with vividness and atmosphere thanks to the powerful use of atmospheric specificity. In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Offred introduces her room with details that not only grab us but hint at something dark:A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath and in the centre of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has been taken out. There must have been a chandelier once. They’ve removed anything you could tie a rope to.Those clipped words transport us straight to Offred’s enclosed, and terrifying, space. We’re also told just enough to give us an image of that place, enough to heighten tension, enough to tease curiosity. This is just a description of a room – but we already feel powerfully impelled to read on.Be Selective With Your Descriptive DetailsBe selective – don’t overwhelm.It might be tempting to share every detail with us on surroundings.Don’t.Even with a setting like Hogwarts – a place readers really do want to know all the hidden details of – J.K. Rowling doesn’t share how many revolving staircases it has, how many treasures in the Room of Requirement, how many trees in the Forbidden Forest. That’s not the point. (And it would write off a little of Hogwarts’ magic and mystery.)If you’re describing a bar, don’t write:The bar was approximately twenty-eight feet long, by perhaps half of that wide. A long mahogany bar took up about one quarter of the floor space, while eight tables each with 4 wooden chairs occupied the remaining area. There were a number of tall bar stools arranged to accommodate any drinker who didn’t want to be seated at one of the tables. The ceiling height was pleasantly commodious.That’s accurate, yes. It’s informative, yes. But it’s bland as heck.The reader doesn’t want information. They want atmosphere. They want vivid language. They want mood.Here’s an alternative way to describe a bar – the Korova Milk Bar in A Clockwork Orange. This description delivers a sense of intimacy and darkness in a few words:The mesto [place] was near empty … it looked strange, too, having been painted with all red mooing cows … I took the large moloko plus to one of the little cubies that were all round … there being like curtains to shut them off from the main mesto, and there I sat down in the plushy chair and sipped and sippedWe’re told what we need to know, thrown into that murky Korova atmosphere and Burgess moves the action on. All we really have in terms of detail are those mooing red cows, some cubies (curtain booths?), and a plushy chair. There’s lots more author Anthony Burgess could tell us about that place. But he doesn’t. He gives us the right details, not all the details.And if that’s not enough for you, then try reading this.Write For All The SensesYou have a nose? So use it.Visuals are important, but don’t neglect the other senses. Offering a full range of sensory information will enhance your descriptive writing.Herman Melville, say, describes to us the chowder for the ship’s crew in Moby Dick: ‘small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuits and salted pork cut up into little flakes.’ Such descriptions are deft, specific, and brilliantly atmospheric. Where else but on board a nineteenth century American whaler would you get such a meal? By picking out those details, Melville makes his setting feel vibrantly alive.Here’s another example.Joanne Harris’ opening of Chocolat plays to readers’ senses, as we’re immersed straightaway in the world of her book through scent, sound and sight:We came on the wind of the carnival. A warm wind for February, laden with the hot greasy scents of frying pancakes and sausage and powdery-sweet waffles cooked on the hotplate right there by the roadside, with the confetti sleeting down collars and cuffs and rolling in the gutters.These non-visual references matter so much because sight alone can feel a little distant, a little empty.By forcing the reader’s taste buds to image Melville’s clams or Harris’s pancakes – or making the reader feel that warm February wind, the confetti ‘sleeting’ down collars – it’s almost as though the writers are hauling the readers’ entire body into their scenes.That’s good stuff: do likewise.(And one easy test: take one of your scenes and highlight anything that references a non-visual sense. If you find some good references, then great: you’re doing fine. If not, your highlighter pen remains unused, you probably want to edit that scene!)Get Place And Action Working TogetherThat’s where the magic happens!Use the atmospheric properties of a place to add to other properties of the scene. That doesn’t mean you should always play things the obvious way: no need for cliché;.You can have declarations of love happen in idyllic meadows, as in Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, but why not at a bus stop in the rain? Shouted over the barriers at a train station?Your character also brings one kind of mood to the scene, and the action that unfolds will bring other sensations.Lynda La Plante’s crime novel Above Suspicion makes a home setting frightening after it becomes obvious a stranger has been in protagonist DS Anna Travis’ flat, and she’s just been assigned to help solve her first murder case.So the place is influenced by action, once Anna notices:Reaching for the bedside lamp, she stopped and withdrew her hand. The photograph of her father had been turned out to face the room. She touched it every night before she went to sleep. It was always facing towards her, towards the bed, not away from it. … In the darkness, what had felt safe before now felt frightening: the way the dressing-table mirror reflected the street-light through the curtains and the sight of the wardrobe door left slightly ajar.Here a comfy, nondescript flat becomes a frightening place, just because of what else is going on. Go for unfamiliar angles that add drama and excitement to your work.Descriptions As Active CharactersYou know the way that a place can turn on you? So (for example) a place that seems safe can suddenly reveal some other side, seem menacing, then almost try to harm the character.That’s an incredibly powerful way to build descriptive writing into your text – because it feels mobile, alive and with a flicker of risk. You can use plotting techniques to help structure the way a reader interacts with a place: starting with a sense of the status quo, then some inciting incident that shifts that early stability, and so on. The inciting incident can be tiny – discovering that a photo frame has been moved, for example.Having your characters voice their perceptions of a place in dialogue also adds to its dramatic impact, because now the reader sees place both through the eyes of a narrator and through the eyes of the characters themselves. Good, huh?Do you need more help?Did you know we have an entire video course on How To Write? That course has had awesome client reviews, but it’s kinda expensive to buy . . . so don’t buy it!We’ve made that course available, in full, to members of Jericho Writers. Our members don’t just get that course, they also get:An incredible course on Getting PublishedA brilliant course on Self-PublishingA ton of filmed masterclassesAccess to AgentMatch, the world’s best literary agent search toolA brilliant and supportive writers communityChances to pitch your work in front of literary agents, live online every monthAnd moreWe’ve made the offer as rich as we know how to – and made it incredibly affordable too. You can find out more about our club here. Remember: we were founded by writers for writers – and we created this club for you. Do find out more . . . and we’d absolutely love it if you chose to join us.Use Unfamiliar LocationsAnd smart research ALWAYS helps.Using unfamiliar settings adds real mood and atmosphere.Stephenie Meyer, when writing Twilight, decided she needed a rainy place near a forest to fit key plot elements.Like protagonist Bella, she was raised in Arizona, but explained the process of setting Twilight in an unfamiliar setting on her blog:For my setting, I knew I needed someplace ridiculously rainy. I turned to Google, as I do for all my research needs, and looked for the place with the most rainfall in the U.S. This turned out to be the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. I pulled up maps of the area and studied them, looking for something small, out of the way, surrounded by forest. … In researching Forks, I discovered the La Push Reservation, home to the Quileute Tribe. The Quileute story is fascinating, and a few fictional members of the tribe quickly became intrinsic to my story.As her success has shown, it’s possible to write successfully about a place you don’t know, but you must make it your business to know as much as you can about it. (Or if you’re writing a fantasy or sci-fi novel, plan your world down to its most intricate details.)And to be clear: you’re doing the research, not because you want that research to limit you. (Oh, I can’t write that, because Wikipedia tells me that the river isn’t as long / the forest isn’t as thick / or whatever else.)On the contrary:You are doing the research, because that research may inspire and stimulate a set of ideas you might not have ecountered otherwise.The key thing is to do your research to nail specifics, especially if they are unfamiliar, foreign, exotic.Just read how Tokyo is described in Ryu Murakami’s thriller In the Miso Soup:It was still early in the evening when we emerged onto a street in Tsukiji, near the fish market. … Wooden bait-and-tackle shops with disintegrating roofs and broken signs stood next to shiny new convenience stores, and futuristic highrise apartment complexes rose skyward on either side of narrow, retro streets lined with wholesalers of dried fish.There’s authenticity, grit to this description of Tokyo, as opposed to using ‘stock’ descriptions that could apply to many modern cities.Note this same thing with foods: in Japan, your protagonist could well be eating miso soup, as per Ryu Murakami.Or say if your story was set in Hong Kong, you might write in a dai pai dong (a sort of Chinese street kitchen), something very specific to that city if you’re describing a street there.Alternatively, if you are setting something in the past, get your sense of place right by doing your research right, too.In historical novel Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier, set in Holland in 1664, maid Griet narrates how artist Johannes Vermeer prepares her for her secret portrait, musing, to her horror, that ‘virtuous women did not open their mouths in paintings’.That last is just a tiny detail, but Griet’s tears show us how mortified she is. Modern readers won’t (necessarily) think about seventeenth-century connotations like this, so if you’re writing a scene set in a very different era or culture to what you know, research so you’re creating a true sense of place.Use Place To Create ForeshadowingA brilliant technique – we love it!Descriptions of place are never neutral.Good writers will, in overt or gently subtle ways, introduce a place-as-character. If that character is dangerous, for example, then simply describing a place adds a layer of foreboding, foreshadowing, to the entire book.Just read how J.R.R. Tolkien describes the Morannon in The Two Towers: ‘high mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained … like an obscene graveyard.’ It’s obvious from this description trouble lies ahead for Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee.But even if you’re not writing this sort of fantasy, character psychology and plot (as we saw above) can also render seemingly harmless places suspect, too. A boring apartment in Above Suspicion becomes scary when it seems someone’s been inside.In the same sense, we thrill to the sense of a place with excitement and promise, too, like when Harry makes his first trip to Diagon Alley (in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone) to shop for Hogwarts equipment with Hagrid.There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels’ eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon. … They bought Harry’s school books in a shop called Flourish and Blotts where the shelves were stacked to the ceiling with books as large as paving stones bound in leather; books the size of postage stamps in covers of silk.Just weave place and action together like this to create atmosphere, excitement, tension, foreboding.Think About Your Words – Nouns And AdjectivesSpecific is good. Unexpected is great!One final thought. When you’ve written a piece, go back and check nouns.A bad description will typically use boring nouns (or things) in settings, i.e. a table, chair, window, floor, bar, stool, etc.If you try to fluff up that by throwing in adjectives (i.e. a grimy table, gleaming window, wooden floor), the chances are you’ll either have (i) made the description even more boring, or (ii) made it odd.Of course, this works for that first passage we looked over from Margaret Atwood.We sense Offred counting the few things she has in the little room she calls hers, the window and chair, etc., in terse phrasing. We sense her tension, her dissociation, and we feel trapped with her.All the same, play with nouns, with taking your readers to new surroundings. Give them a Moloko. Play with surroundings, how you can make them different, how you can render the ordinary extraordinary. With the right nouns in place, you’ll need fewer adjectives to jazz things up – and when you do use them, they’ll feel right, not over the top.And if you want more on writing techniques, then check out this article on verbs – it’s a must read.Happy writing!

Are you writing a book? Maybe you’re starting out for the first time?Twenty years ago, I was in your exact position. My wife was seriously unwell. I’d quit work to look after her. And yes, a lot of my time was spent caring for her… but that still left a whole lot of hours in the day.I didn’t want to just do nothing with that time. And I’d always wanted to write a book. (I’ve still got a little home-movie film clip of me, age 9, being asked what I wanted to be when I was grown up. I answered, “I want to be an author.”)So, sitting at home, and often quite literally at my wife’s bedside, I opened my laptop and started to write.That book grew into a 190,000-word monster. I was engrossed by the damn thing too. Worked really hard. Was a perfectionist about every detail.I got an agent and I got a six-figure book deal with HarperCollins, one of the world’s largest publishers. And the book went on to become a bestseller that sold in a load of foreign territories too.And best of all? I got a career I loved. I’ve been in print continuously ever since, bringing out about a book a year in that time, and I’ve basically loved every second of it. (Oh, and my wife? Yeah, she’s got a long term condition that will never leave her, but she’s about a million times better than she was back in those days. It’s been an up-down ride, but we’ve been a lot more lucky than not.)A Super-Simple Step-By-Step Guide For New WritersBut you’re not reading this because you want to know about me. You want to know how to start writing a book.You’ve got a big empty screen to deal with. A headful of ideas, a desire to write… but no structure for putting those ideas into practice. You want to know: what next?Well, that’s a good question. (One I didn’t think about too hard about when I started out, but then again I did end up deleting a 60,000-word chunk of my first draft because it was just no damn good.)So what do you need to do next? The book writing process can be incredibly daunting, so we\'ve made it simpler for you.If you want to start writing a book, take the following steps, in the following order…Write A Book In 10 StepsTake one fabulous ideaBuild a blistering plotAdd unforgettable charactersGive your characters inner lifeAdd drama by showing it unfolding on the pageWrite with clarity, economy and precisionWriting for children? Same rules apply!Be disciplinedRevise your draftGet feedback1. Take One Fabulous IdeaIf you want to know how to write a novel, there is only one sensible place to start, and that’s not with the first line as you might think, but with the very idea of your book – the thing you want to write about. This is one part of the writing process which you can\'t avoid. Which is great, as for lots of people it\'s the most fun part.Concept matters massively. It’s almost impossible to overstate its importance. Stephenie Meyer writes competent prose, but it’s her concept that turned Twilight into a cultural phenomenon. Dan Brown, Stieg Larsson, and Stephen King are similar. They’re decent writers blessed with stunning ideas.Agents know this, and – no matter what your genre – a strong premise is essential to selling a book. Given any two broadly similar manuscripts, agents will almost always pick the one with the strongest central concept.How, then, do you get your amazing book ideas? The answer is that you probably already have them. Your killer idea may be germinating in your head right now. It may arise from a passion of yours; it may come out of a book you love.It’s not about the seed of the idea. It’s how you develop it that counts.The key here is:(A) picking material that excites you,(B) picking enough material (so you want several ideas for possible settings, several ideas for possible heroes, several ideas for basic challenge/premise, etc. You want to be able to make choices from a place of abundance.)(C) – and this is the genius bit – you need to start combining those ingredients in a way that ensures you have at least one rogue ingredient, one unexpected flavour in your concoction.So let’s say that you just wanted to write a 1940s, film-noir style, private-eye detective story – an homage to Raymond Chandler and that great generation of writers. If you just replicated all those ingredients, you’d have an unsaleable book. Why? Because they’re too familiar. If people want those things, they’d just buy Chandler’s own work or others of that era. So throw in – a ghost. A German secret agent. Or set the story in a black community in Alabama. Or… whatever. Just make sure there’s one discordant ingredient to make readers sit up and take notice.Need more help? Then go watch this 10-minute video I put together that walks you through this exact part of the writing process.Expert tip:It also helps to know really early on what kind of word count you should be looking at. The gold-standard way to figure this out is to get hold of five or six recently published novels in your exact area. Then count the words on a typical page and multiply up to get an approximate total. If that sounds like too much work, then just use our handy guide. The gold-standard approach is better though!2. Build A Blistering PlotThe next essential for any novelist is a story that simply forces the reader to keep turning pages. Fortunately, there are definite rules about how to achieve this.Here are the rules you need to know:Work With A Very Small Number Of Protagonists These are the main characters in your story. The ones who propel the action and whose stories the readers invest in. You probably only have one protagonist, and that’s fine. If you have two or three, that’s fine too. More than that? Not for a first book, please! They’ll make your job too hard.Unsettle The Status Quo Very Early OnYou could possibly do this from the first page, but certainly within the first chapter. The incident that gets the story rolling is called the Inciting Incident, and it’s the catalyst for everything that follows. Read more about how to make your Inciting Incident work really well here.Give Your Protagonist A Major Life Challenge Do this very early on in the book and don’t resolve things till the very end. The reader basically read the book to see whether your protagonist gets the thing they’re seeking. Does the gal get the guy? Does James Bond save the world?Increase JeopardyThough it\'s important to do this over the course of the book, it doesn’t have to be an even progression, by any means. But by the final quarter or third of your novel, your protagonist needs to feel that everything hinges on the outcome of what follows.End Your Book With A Crisis And ResolutionSo the crisis part is when everything seems lost. But then your hero or heroine summons up one last effort and saves the day in the end. In general, in most novels, the crisis wants to seem really bad, and the resolution wants to seem really triumphant. It’s achieving the swing from maximum light to maximum dark that will really give the reader a sense of a satisfying book. (More on plot structure here.)Delete Unessential ChaptersAnd finally, one more crucial tip: if a chapter doesn’t advance the story in a specific way, you must delete that chapter. How come? Because all the reader really wants is to know whether your protagonist achieves the thing they’re seeking. If that basic balance between protagonist and goal doesn’t alter in the course of a chapter, you’ve given your reader no reason to read it. So axe unnecessary backstory. Ignore minor characters. Care about your protagonist with a passion.Sounds simple?Well, the principles aren’t that hard to understand, although executing the advice can be a wee bit trickier.Expert tip:Use the “snowflake method” to build your structure. The heart of this concept is the idea that you should start with an incredibly bare-bones summary of your narrative – one sentence is fine. Then you add something about character. Then you build that sentence out into a paragraph. And so on. It’s a great way of allowing your plot to emerge somewhat naturally. More help on that technique here – but don’t ask my why it’s called the snowflake method. It’s nothing like a snowflake.3. Add Unforgettable CharactersLong after a reader has forgotten details of a plot, the chances are they’ll remember the character who impelled it. The two things you absolutely must bear in mind when constructing your characters are:Make sure that the character and the story bounce off one another in interesting ways. If, to take a stupid example, your character has a fear of spiders, the chances are that your story needs to force your character to confront those fears. You must bring your character into their zone of greatest discomfort.Make sure you really, really know your character. It’s so often little things, and subtleties that make characters seem human (e.g. Amy has a passion for Manhattan in winter; she collects a shell from every beach she’s ever visited.) If you want to check if you know your character well enough, we suggest you use our ultimate character builder.Oh yes, and one great tip (albeit one that won’t work for every novel) is this: if in doubt, add juice to your character.Here’s an example of what I mean:Stieg Larsson could have just written a book about a genius computer hacker.But he didn’t. He could have written a book about a genius computer hacker with Aspergers.But he didn’t. He could have written a book about a genius computer hacker with Aspergers and a hostile attitude towards society.But he didn’t. He could have written a book about a genius computer hacker with Aspergers, a hostile attitude towards society, and who was also a rape victim.But he didn’t.He also tossed in a complex parental background, bisexuality, a motorbike, years spent in the Swedish care system, and an aptitude for violence.It was the intoxicating brew of all those elements combined that created one of the world’s most successful recent fictional creations.Short moral: if in doubt, do more.Expert tip:Our character development page has got a free downloadable character profile questionnaire that asks you 200+ questions about your character. Those questions basically challenge you to know your character better than you know your best friend. It’ll only take you an hour or two to complete the worksheet – and your character knowledge will be propelled to a whole new dimension of awesome. Honestly? It might be the single most useful hour you can spend right now. Uh, unless you are on a burning ship in a storm. In which case, reading this paragraph is not a good use of your time.4. Give Your Characters Inner LifeOne of the commonest problems we see is when a character does and says all the right stuff, but the reader never really knows what they think or feel.If you don’t create that insight into the character’s inner world, the book will fail to engage your reader, because that insight is the reason why people read. After all, if you just want to watch explosions, you’ll go to a Bond or Bourne movie. If you want to feel what it’s like to be James Bond or Jason Bourne, you have no alternative but to read Ian Fleming’s or Robert Ludlum’s original novels.This character insight is one of the simplest things for a novelist to do. You just need to remember that your protagonist has a rich inner world, and then you need to tell us about it. So we want to know about:What the character thinksWhat their emotions areWhat they rememberWhat their physical sensations areAnd so onIt’s OK to use fairly bland language at times (“she was hungry”, “she felt tired”), but you’ll only start to get real depth into your characters if you get individual and specific too. See for example how much richer this passage feels, and how full of its character it seems to be:Seeing the meat, she felt a sudden revulsion. The last time she’d seen mutton roasting like this on an open fire, it had been when [blah, blah – something to do with the character’s past]. As the memories came back, her throat tightened and her stomach was clenched as though ready to vomit.Because the character has thoughts, feeling, memories and physical sensations all combining here, the moment is richly endowed with personality. A simple “She felt revolted” wouldn’t have had anything like the same impact.Expert tip:Once you’ve written 20-30,000 words or so, it’s worth pausing to check that your characters seem alive on the page. So just print off four or five random pages from your manuscript and circle any statements that indicate your character’s inner life (physical sensations, memories, thoughts, feelings, and so on.)If you find nothing at all, you have written a book about a robot and you may need to rethink. If you do find indicators of inner life, but they’re all bland and unengaging (“I was hungry”, “I remembered a barn like that when I was a kid.”), you may want to juice up your character. If you find a rich inner life, then you’re doing great. Just keep at it.5. Add DramaYour job as a novelist is to show action unfolding on the page. Readers don’t just want a third-hand report of what has just happened. That means you need to tell things moment-by-moment, as if you were witnessing the event. Consider the difference between this:Ulfor saw the descending sword in a blur of silver. He twisted to escape, but the swordsman above, a swarthy troll with yellow teeth, was too fast, and swung hard.(This form of narration is “showing”.)And this:Ulfor was badly injured in a swordfight.(This form of narration is known as “telling”.)The first snippet sounds like an actual story. The second sounds like a news report.Obviously, you will need to use the second mode of storytelling from time to time. Telling can be a simple way to convey facts and speed things up, but for the most part, your tale needs to consist of scenes of dramatic action, glued together with bits of sparse narration. If in doubt, look up our free tips on the ‘show, don’t tell’ rule.Expert tip:One of the real drivers of drama on the page – and one of the real pleasures of fiction – is intense, alive, surprising dialogue. Writing dialogue competently is pretty easy – you can probably do it already.But writing really great dialogue (think Elmore Leonard, for example) is not so simple. That said there are rules you can follow which just make your writing better. For more advice on all this, just check out our page on dialogue.6. Write WellIt sounds obvious, but it’s no good having a glowing idea and a fabulous plot if you can’t write.Your book is made up of sentences, after all, and if those sentences don’t convey your meaning succinctly and clearly, your book just won’t work.Almost everyone has the capacity to write well. You just need to focus on the challenge. So think about the three building blocks of good writing:A. ClarityYou need to express your meaning clearly. Of course, YOU know what you’re meaning to say, but would a reader understand as clearly? One good way to check yourself here is to read your own work aloud. If you stumble when reading, that’s a big clue that readers will stumble too.B. EconomyNever use ten words when eight would do. That means checking every sentence to see if a word or two could be lost. It means checking every paragraph for sentences that you don’t need. Every page for surplus paragraphs. If that sounds pedantic, just think about this. If you tried to sell a 100,000 book that had 20,000 surplus words in it, you shouldn’t be surprised if agents rejected it, because it was just too boring and too baggy. But that’s the exact same difference as a 10-word sentence and an 8-word one. In a word: pedantry matters. It’s your friend!C. PrecisionBe as precise as possible. This normally means you need to see the scene in your head before you can describe it clearly to a reader. So it’s easy to write “a bird flew around the tree”, but that’s dull and imprecise. Just think how much better this is: “A pair of swallows flew, chirrupping, around the old apple tree.” The difference in the two sentences is basically one of precise seeing, and precise description. Need more help? Then you’ll find this article really useful!If you can manage those three things – and you can; it’s just a question of making the effort – then you can write well enough to write a novel. That’s nice to know, huh?Expert tip:Descriptive writing sounds like it ought to be boring, right? Everyone knows what a coffee shop looks like, so isn’t it just wasting words to tell the reader?Except that’s not how it works. The reason why writing descriptions matters so much is that the reader has to feel utterly present in your fictional world. It has to feel more real than the world of boring old reality. That’s where great descriptive writing comes into its own. If you can – economically, vividly – set a scene, then all your character interactions and plot twists will come into their own. They’ll feel more dramatic, more alive. And again: there are simple repeatable techniques for strong descriptive writing. Read more about them right here.7. What If I’m Writing For Children?Same rules apply, no matter the age or genre you’re writing for, but we’ve put together a collection of our best tips for children’s authors, including help on how to get a literary agent who’s right for you and your work.Whatever else, write clearly and economically. If your style isn’t immediate and precise, children won’t have the patience to keep up with you. If a chapter doesn’t drive the story forwards, you’ll lose them. If in doubt, keep it simple. Write vivid characters to an inventive plot. Write with humour and a bit of mischief.But really: if you’re writing for kids, then follow ALL the rules in this blog post, but do the whole thing on a smaller scale. The only really crucial issue that distinguishes children’s fiction from adult work is word count. You just have to know the right kind of length for the specific market you are writing for.That means:Figure out what age range you are aiming atFigure out what kind of books you are writing (books about unicorns for 6-7 year olds? Adventure stories for young teens? Contemporary issue-driven books for mid-teens?)Get hold of some books in the right nicheTake a typical page in those booksCount the wordsMultiply the number of words by the number of pages. Done!Oh, and don’t rely on internet searches to give you the right answer. Because there is so much age-dependent variability in kids fiction, crisscrossed by a good bit of format and genre variability, the only safe route to follow is the one we’ve just given.Expert tip:The most common mistake made by aspiring children’s authors has to do with writing down to children. And that’s wrong. Children don’t want to be lectured or patronised. They want their world to be taken as seriously by you as they take it themselves. One of the reasons Roald Dahl was so successful was that he wrote about stuff that adults (in the real world, outside fiction) would have disapproved of. A giant who spoke funny? Adult twits who behaved badly? A lethally dangerous chocolate factory? Dahl’s willingness to be subversive put him clearly on the side of kids, not adults. Authors such as Suzanne Collins, Veronica Roth, JK Rowling, and Stephenie Meyer all use the same basic trick. Copy them!8. Set Up Some Good Writing DisciplinesThe first rule of writing is this: Good writers write.They don’t want to write. They don’t think about writing. They don’t write a blog post about writing.They write.Sure you can do those other things too, but they’re not what counts. What counts is bum-on-seat hours and that document word count ticking ever upwards.Now the truth is that different writers approach their work differently. There’s no one set of rules that works for everyone. But here are some rules that may work for you. If they do, great. If they don’t, adapt them as you need. Either way, if the rules help you write, great. If they don’t, discard them.So. The rules:Set Up Your Writing Space So It AppealsLose the distractions. Make sure you have a computer, pens, and notebooks that you like using. Get a comfortable chair. You\'re going to be in your dedicated writing space a lot, so it\'s important to find somewhere you can relax. (Just don\'t get so relaxed that you end up spending hours of the time that you allocated to your writing sessions surfing the internet or cuddling your cat.)Eliminate DistractionsGot a TV in your writing room? Then lose the TV. Or change rooms. Get rid of the distractions that most bother you.Determine When And How Often You Will WriteIf you have a busy life, it’s OK if that’s a bit ramshackle (“Tuesday morning, alternate Wednesdays, and Saturday if I get a chance.”) But the minimum here is that you set a weekly allowance of hours for your writing sessions, and stick to it come hell or high water. Pair your writing schedule with:Set A Weekly Target Word CountHit your word count target every week, no excuses. In terms of specifics, it doesn\'t matter how many words you write. Whether you reach a word count of 2,000 each day or 300, what\'s key is being consistent. Once you\'ve started writing and have tangible evidence of your hard work, it\'s likely that carving out some writing time and reaching your target will get easier.Make Some Kind Of Outcome CommitmentFor example: When I have finished this book, I will get an external professional editor to give me comments. Or: I will share this with my book group. You just need to have in mind that this book will be read. That knowledge keeps you honest!Commit To A DeadlineDon’t make that too tough on yourself, but do make it real. Almost anyone should be able to manage 2,000 words a week, even with a busy life. And most adult novels are 70-100,000 words long, so in less than a year, you have yourself a book, my friend. With practice, you’ll get faster.Work To An OutlineI said you needed to sketch your plot, right? (You can get that plotting worksheet by navigating to the top of the sidebar on this page.) Use that outline as your story-compass. If you need to tweak it as you go, that’s fine – but no radical changes, please!Always Prioritise The Reader’s PerspectiveDon’t write to please yourself. Write to please the reader. If you need to imagine an actual Ideal Reader, then do so. Write for them.Don’t Worry If Your First Draft Is LousyIt’s meant to be! That’s what first drafts are for. Jane Smiley said, “All first drafts are perfect, because all they have to do is exist.” Same goes for you, buddy.Take BreaksIf you’re a fidgety writer (as I am), you’ll want to take a lot of breaks. If you concentrate fiercely for twenty minutes and take a break for five or ten, that’s fine. Just keep going that way. This is your writing time, and it\'s important that you set it out in a way which works for you.Warm Up Each DayI always edit my work of the day before as a way to warm myself up for the chapter I’m about to begin. If you like to warm up differently, then go for it. Just remember you may not be able to just start writing fresh text at 9.01 am precisely. Most of us need to warm the engine a little first. Even if all you do for the first ten minutes is get settled into your dedicated writing space and re-read yesterday\'s work, that\'s a great start.And that’s it. Do those things, and you should be fine.9. Revise Your First DraftNearly all first drafts will have problems, some of them profound. That’s okay.A first draft is just your opportunity to get stuck in on the real business: which is refining and perfecting the story you’ve just told yourself.That means checking your story, checking your characters, checking your writing style.Then, doing all those things again. You’ll find new issues, new niggles every time you go back to your work (at least to start with), and every time you fix those things, your book will get better. It’s a repetitive process, but one you should come to enjoy.Don’t get alarmed by the repetitions: think of this rewriting task as climbing a spiral staircase. Yes, you are going round in circles, but you are rising higher all the time.We’ve seen hundreds of new manuscripts every year, and we’re pretty good at recognising common problems. We’ve even got a checklist of recurring issues we find. Most are fixable, so you don’t need to worry too much if some of those apply to you.The thing is simply to figure out what the issue is, then sit down to address it. Remember that all successful novelists started the same way as you did: with a lousy manuscript.Expert tip:Editing your own work can be a challenging and somewhat mysterious process. So we’ve removed the mystery. We’ve put some actual edits to an actual book (by me, as it happens) up on the blog, so you can see how the self-editing process works for an experienced pro author. You can find more about all that over here. While you’re at it, you may want to take a look at the various different types of editing that are available. But don’t jump into paid editing until a very late stage. For now, self-editing will improve your manuscript and build your skills.10. Make Friends, Get FeedbackWriting a book is hard work. It’s lonely. Those around you are seldom equipped to offer expert feedback and advice – and, of course, this is a difficult road. Most first novels do not get published.So please don’t try to go it alone. Here are some things you can and probably should do:Join A Writing Group Or Online Writing CommunityIt\'s really helpful to be able to interact with people who are on a similar path to you, and understand what writing is like. There are many communities to choose from. Like ours! See our expert tip below.Go Public With Some Of Your Writing Goals/AchievementsThat could just mean updating your Facebook page or talking with your friends at the office. The main thing is to avoid your book feeling like a dark secret you’re not able to share.Get Friendly Peer FeedbackWhen your book is finished and roughly edited, it can be useful to seek supportive feedback, of the “Wow, you can really do this!” variety. You’ll need to get tougher in due course, but that early support can work wonders.Build Your SkillsThat could mean doing an online creative writing class, or taking a course, or working with a mentor, or attending an event. Whatever you choose to do, you will improve as a writer and writing & editing your next book will come easier than it did this first time round.Get Professional Feedback Once you’ve done as much self-editing as you can manage, getting some professional feedback is the ideal next step. There is absolutely no better way to improve a manuscript than to get a rigorous set of comments from an experienced third-party editor. Watch this video for tips on how to process and make best use of that feedback.Remember, you don’t have to do all of this at once. This is a marathon, not a sprint. So go easy with yourself when setting out your goals. Under-commit and over-deliver, right?Expert tip:Meet friends in a free and knowledgeable community of writers. I blog there every week and thousands of writers like you meet to share peer-to-peer critiques, gossip, advice and support. And also – friendship. Passion makes friends like nothing else and our community is all about passion. Sign up is totally free. And fast. And easy. Just go here and do what you gotta do.Bonus Tip: Get A Literary AgentLiterary agents only take about one book in a thousand, so before you take this final step, we do suggest that you’ve completed numbers 1 to 9 properly. You should also take a look at our advice on manuscript presentation to make sure you’re really prepared for the next stage. That said, if your novel is good enough, you will find it easy enough to secure representation. Just follow these steps.A) Select Your Target AgentsWe have a complete list of literary agents and you can filter all data by genre, agent experience and more. It’s the most complete source of its kind.B) Choose About 8-12 NamesYou’re looking for agents keen to take on new writers. If they happen to represent authors you love, so much the better. (More advice on how to start your agent search.)C) Write A Fabulous Covering LetterThis can be a little daunting. But once you\'re familiar with the process, it will feel less overwhelming. Try using this advice and sample letter.D) Write A Good, Clear SynopsisSynopsis writing is a process that terrifies most writers, but this is easier than you might think. Just follow these tips.E) Get Your Stuff Out ThereAnd there you have it: 10 steps to help you start writing that novel.This may seem like a long, daunting process, but you want to write a book, and now you know where to start. So let\'s celebrate that for now!Happy writing, good luck. And keep going!

All stories share a simple common structure - so the simplest way to outline your novel is to use that universal template by way of scaffolding.Figuring out that template and how best to use it to create the best story possible for your readers is exactly what I\'m going to do in this post. (Or – full disclosure – it’s what you’re going to do. I’ll just help a little on the way…)In this step by step guide to plotting a novel I will be teaching you everything you need to know about novel plotting - from my favourite mind mapping method, to understanding character arcs and how to tie up loose ends.Are you ready to learn the most important part of the writing process? Here we go...The Best Way To Plot A NovelVery few writers can have a load of story ideas and start writing without any clear direction as to where they are heading and what is going to happen.The novel plotting template I will be demonstrating in this article is more of an outlining process. A simple but detailed plot outline for your book that will serve as a skeleton from which to hang the meat of your story (sorry for that rather macabre visual representation).As you go further into your writing journey you can make this into a pretty bullet journal or a colour coded Excel spreadsheet if you want, but for now you just need a pen and a piece of paper.Ready? Good. Let\'s outline your novel together.What A Story Template Looks LikeA story template is just a simple method for getting all those brilliant pictures out of your head and on to the page in a way that will help your story ideas make sense to your readers. To begin with we need to look at the key components of any story.Write down the following headings:Main character (who leads the story)Status Quo (situation at the start)Motivation (what your character wants)Initiating incident (what disturbs the status quo – conflict)Developments (what happens next)Crisis (how things come to a head)Resolution (how things resolve)And now sketch in your answers in as few words as possible - aim for 1-3 sentences.It\'s important to keep it simple at this stage as complex is our enemy. Fixating on intricate plot detail at drafting stage will only get in the way of finding the actual bones of your novel. And it\'s those bones that will hook an agent/editor/reader.The Novel Template: An ExampleYou probably want an example of what your outline should look like, right?OK. Let’s say your name was Jane Austen and you had a great idea for a story about a prideful guy and a charming but somewhat prejudiced girl. If your were plotting Pride And Prejudice, the outline might look something like this:CharacterElizabeth (Lizzy) Bennet, one of five daughters in Regency England.Status QuoLizzy and her sisters will be plunged into poverty if her father dies, so they need to marry (and marry well).MotivationLizzy wants to marry for love.Initiating IncidentTwo wealthy gentlemen, Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy, arrive.DevelopmentsLizzy meets proud Mr Darcy and dashing stranger Mr Wickham. She despises Mr Darcy and likes Mr Wickham. She discovers Darcy loves her and that Wickham isn’t all he seems.CrisisLizzy’s sister elopes, threatening the social ruin of her family. It now looks like Lizzy can’t marry anyone.ResolutionMr Darcy helps Lizzy’s sister. Lizzy agrees to marry him, deciding now that she loves him, after all.Now that’s easy, right? That’s the whole of Pride and Prejudice in a nutshell, and it was easy.You just need to do the same with your book or your idea, and keep it really simple. In fact, if you struggle to know everything that goes in the ‘developments’ section, you can even drop in some placeholder type comments.If you were Jane Austen you might, for example, start out by saying something like “Lizzy breaks with Wickham, because it turns out he’s a bad guy. He killed someone? Stole money? Something else? Something to think about.”And that’s fine. Don’t worry about any blanks. It’s like you’re building a tower and you’re missing one of the girders. But by getting everything else in place and putting a “girder needs to go here” sign up, the structure is still brilliantly clear. That’s all you need (for now.)Oh, and don’t bother separating those down into chapters just yet, you can worry about that later – but when you do, read this, it’s really useful!Developing Your Story OutlineYou might feel that our template so far is just a little too basic.Which it is.So let’s develop the structure another notch. What we’re going to do now is add anything we know about subplots – or basically any story action that you DO know about, which doesn’t fit neatly into the above plot structure.So if you were Jane Austen, and had a good handle on your story, you might put together something like this.Subplot 1Jane Bennet (Lizzy’s caring sister) and Mr Bingley fall in love, but Bingley moves away, then comes back. Jane and Bingley marry.Subplot 2Lydia Bennet (Lizzy’s reckless sister) elopes with Wickham. She is later found and helped by Darcy.Subplot 3Odious Mr Collins proposes marriage to Lizzy. She says no. Her more pragmatic friend, Charlotte Lucas, says yes.Notice that we’re not yet trying to mesh those things together. In fact, the way we’ve done it here, Subplot 3 (which happens in the middle of the book) comes after Subplot 2 (which comes at the end).But again: don’t worry.Sketch your additional story material down as swiftly as neatly as Miss Austen has just done it. The meshing together – the whole business of getting things in the right order, getting the character motivations perfectly aligned and filling in any plot holes – that’ll do your brain in.Yes, you have to get to it at some stage. But not now. Keep it simple, and build up.How To Use SubplotsIf you’re a fan of Pride and Prejudice, you’ll know perfectly well that our outline so far still misses out masses of stuff.There’s nothing on where the novel is set. Or why or how events unfurl. It doesn’t say a thing about character relations, why each feels as they do. There’s nothing to say on character development, conflict, subtleties, supporting cast, and so on.And that’s fine to start with. It’s actually good.What does matter, however is your character’s motivation.Taking one subplot above as example, Charlotte wants security through marriage to Mr Collins. Lizzy, however, rejects her friend’s rationale. Charlotte’s marriage reaffirms Lizzy’s romantic values and, crucially, also throws her in Mr Darcy’s way again later in the book.Now that’s interesting stuff, but if a subplot doesn’t bear on a protagonist’s ability to achieve their goal or goals, that subplot must be deleted or revised. Luckily, though, our story structure template helps you avoid that pitfall in the first place.In fact, here are two rules that you should obey religiously:If you’re outlining a plot for the first time. Pin down your basics, then build up subplots, conflicts, and so on.If you have already started your manuscript and you think you’re uncertain of your plot structure, stop – and follow the exercises in this post, exactly as you would if you hadn’t yet written a word.And do actually do this. As in pen-and-paper do it, not just “think about it for a minute or two then go on Twitter.” The act of writing things out will be helpful just in itself.How To Plot A Novel: The TemplateRemember that every subplot has its own little journey. Maybe a very simple one, but it will have its own beginning, middle and end, its own structure of Initiating Incident / Developments / Crisis / Resolution.Go ahead and drop everything you have into the grid below for every subplot as well as the main plot.MAIN PLOTSUBPLOT 1SUBPLOT 2SUBPLOT 3INITIATING INCIDENTMAIN PLOTCRISISRESOLUTIONIf you’ve got more complexity to accommodate than this allows, take care. No matter how sprawling an epic you’re writing, you need to be able to identify the essence or heart of the story you’re writing, so try paring your novel down – you can always add more details and columns after.How To Further Develop Your Plot OutlineWhat happens if your plot doesn’t fit into that grid? If you give that exercise your very best go and just draw a blank?You may have a great story idea, but that\'s all it is - a basic idea. So how do you go from there to the plot points?This is particularly hard when drafting your first novel. You may love the vibe of your story, have developed some cool characters, you may even know your rising action or character arcs, but that doesn\'t mean you know how to plot a novel.The basic problems here are twofold:You don’t yet understand your plot well enough, orYou just don’t have enough plot to sustain a full-length novel.Two different problems. Two different solutions. Let\'s look at building a story from an initial idea...The Snowflake MethodThe snowflake method allows you to expand on an idea and flesh it out bit by bit.This doesn’t mean tack on needless bits and pieces, like unnecessary drama just for the sake of it. It means adding depth and subplots, and developing the complexity of your protagonist’s story.Here are four ways to grow your story idea into a full plot.Method 1: MirroringImagine your name is Harper Lee and your story is the tale of a girl named Scout. Let’s say Scout’s spooked by an odd but harmless man living on her street. It’s fine, though there’s not yet enough complexity yet to carry a novel, so complicate it.One thought is giving her a father figure, say a lawyer, named Atticus. He’s fighting to defend a man accused of something he obviously didn’t do. Targeted for who he is, rather than anything he’s done.A black guy accused for looking different? An odd-but-harmless guy who spooks Scout?It’s straightforward, tragic mirroring. Atticus’ fight is lost, the stories interweave, and Scout learns compassion in To Kill A Mockingbird.Introducing that second, reverberating plot strand meant that Harper Lee’s novel had the heft to become a classic of world literature.Method 2: Ram Your Genre Into Something DifferentAnother way to complicate your plot is to throw action into a different genre – such as sci-fi, fantasy or crime.So take The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger.Without the time travel element it would be a standard issue romantic story, but by adding a fantasy element you have something shimmeringly new and exciting.Or take Tipping the Velvet, by Sarah Waters.Evocative Victorian historical novels are nothing new, but by adding a lesbian coming-of-age story in that context the result is a literary sensation.Method 3: Take Your Character And Max Them OutWhy was it that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo went on to get such gigantic sales across the globe?Stieg Larsson took a basic story and made its complex character, Lisbeth Salander, the star. Lisbeth is an autistic bisexual computer hacker and rape survivor - this made the story unique and intriguing.Method 4: Add Edge – A Glint Of SteelA few years back, I was struggling with one of my books, This Thing of Darkness. The basic plot, main characters and final climax were strong, it wasn\'t working. My solution?A glint of steel.I took an incident from the middle of the book – a break-in, and a theft, but no violence, no real time action – and I turned that into a long sequence involving the abduction of my protagonist. The need to rescue the main character made the book!Steel. Edge. Sex or violence.Those things work in crime novels, but they work in totally literary works too. Can you imagine Ian McEwan’s Atonement without that glint of sex? Would The Great Gatsby have worked if no one had died?How To Plot A Novel: The Next StepNow you have your plot, the next stage is to work on character development. I won\'t delve any deeper on that as info on character building is an entire collection of articles, which you can find here. But it\'s important to remember that plotting is merely the first stage of your writing process, because even with a strong plot a book without memorable main characters is nothing.Here\'s a quick summary of what we\'ve learned...Frequently Asked QuestionsWhat Are The 5 Parts To A Plot In A Story?Introduce characters and settingInciting incidentMain story premiseCrisis/RealisationResolutionHow Do You Plot A Novel In One Day?If you know roughly what your story is about, you can plot your novel in a matter of hours (in the most simplest of ways). Ask yourself what your character wants most in the world, and think about the incident that has turned their life upside down. Decide whether they achieve what they want by the end (or get what they NEED) and then show their journey.Start with this simple list:Main character (who leads the story)Status Quo (situation at the start)Motivation (what your character wants)Initiating incident (what disturbs the status quo – conflict)Developments (what happens next)Crisis (how things come to a head)Resolution (how things resolve)From here you can add all the details that will make your story shine.What Makes A Good Novel Plot?As a writer all you should care about is keeping your readers hooked. So make sure you understand your characters and their motivation, add lots of obstacles in their path to success, make them (and your readers) think all is lost, then show your character arc as they grow at the end (and if they don\'t succeed, at least offer some hope).Having completed this exercise you should have lots of notes on your plot and a very strong foundation from which to build your story. Which means now you can have the real fun and add all the details. Enjoy!

When I wrote my first novel, I had no idea the project was hard. I didn’t write a plot outline. I didn’t sit down to plan my story. I didn’t actually do anything by means of any preparation at all.I just sat down, and wrote a book.As it happened, that book worked out well. It sold for plenty of money and went on to become a bestseller.I thought, “Yep, I can do this. I’m a great writer. Of course I don’t need to plan my next novel. I’ll just figure it out as I go along.”Big mistake.My second book was so bad that my editor basically called me in and told me that it was completely unpublishable in its current form.My editor was right. I knew he was. So I went home, opened up the file on my computer. Hit Ctrl-A for “select all”.And hit delete.My second novel – gone.I rewrote that novel and this time it did fine. It got entered into one of the UK’s biggest summer book promotions. It aroused some film interest. (We got an offer actually, and accepted it, but the company went down in flames before I got any cash.)And I date my writing career – my real writing career – from there. Not from my first novel, which did fine, but which just landed in my head and on the page thanks to some benevolent higher power. But from my second novel, which I had to wrestle into existence. Which I had to figure out and plan from scratch.You’re reading this post because you’re smarter than I was back then. You’ve figured out not just that you want to start writing a novel, but that you want to plan it too. You’ve realised that:If you have an outline of your novel – a structure in fact –you’re much less likely to go wrong as you write it.Yes, I know that’s obvious. I was just dumb.So this post is going to tell you how NOT to write a novel the way I tried to do it that second time. We’re going to plan out an entire structure for a novel – a complete story outline, in fact – and we’re going to do it easily.And well.We don’t want an easy way to write a bad story. We want an easy way to write a good one.Are you with me? You are? Then let’s go.How To Plot A Novel Using The Snowflake Method:Write your story in one sentenceDecide on your protagonistWrite a paragraph on settingsAdd a beginning, middle and end to your story descriptionWrite short character summariesExpand your story description to 2 pagesKeep adding details until you’re ready to writeWhat’s The Snowflake Method, And Why Use It?So this post is going to tell you how to build up a novel outline, piece by piece. (For a reminder of plot basics, go here.) The idea of the “Snowflake” method is that it’s circular and incremental. So you don’t build your outline like this:Chapter 1: X happens, then Y happensChapter 2: Something else happensChapter 3: and then something elseetcThat way is really hard to pull off. I’ve written a lot of books and I’ve never once succeeded by attempting this technique. What you’re likely to find is a mess of a first draft. Yes, you can fix it, but it’s much easier to do things right in the first place.The way the Snowflake Method works is much cleverer. It’s a much simpler way to structure your story... and will give you a much better story as well. (The idea, by the way, was first developed by Randy Ingermanson – so, thanks, Randy.)Here’s the basic idea. You build your outline like this:What’s the idea of your novel? Write it down in one sentence.Who’s the protagonist (hero or heroine) of your story. Write that down in one sentence.What’s the setting of your story? One sentence there, pleaseThen you go back to the idea of your story. This time you tease it out into five segments with 1 sentence (or so) for each one.And  so onThe reason this method works is that it works the way the human brain works. It doesn’t ask for a ton of detail upfront before it’s settled in your mind. It uses the actual process of working to generate more thoughts and more detail...so you only ever need to make incremental changes to what you did before.How To Plan Out Your Novel: Approach And MindsetWe’re writing creatively, right?That means two things:It’s going to be slow and jumpy.It’s not like writing a report at work, where you just need to put in enough hours and the job will get done. Sure, you need to put some hours in front of a keyboard . . . but maybe you also need to go walk the dogs, listen to some music, have a swim. It’s often enough when you’re musing but not actually working that you get the breakthroughs you need. So sure, sit at a keyboard: that part is essential. But give yourself the space to do other things too. Make space for those breakthroughs.You’ll make mistakes.And that’s good! Mistakes are good! The imagination has to be able to try stuff out. When you go clothes shopping, you see something you like,then try it on. When you look at yourself in the mirror, more often than not, you’ll think, “Nope, not  quite right.” But if you don’t try stuff on, you won’t find what is right. So let yourself try out ideas. That’s what a first draft novel outline is for. Give those ideas space and time to show you what they’re made of. And don’t get upset if you throw things away. You’ll only get to the great stuff by sifting plenty of just-not-good-enough ideas firstUse The Snowflake Method: Getting StartedBefore you start writing your novel, make sure you have something worth writing about!The idea of the Snowflake Method is that you pen first the heart or core of your novel, so the rest can expand from here.From here, you flesh out, building out to key milestones in plot, profiling how each main character views the story, and so on, and so on – until you’re ready to start.Take a piece of paper or fire up a new document. This is how it’s done.1 Write A One-sentence Description For Your NovelAn easy starting point. This is the sum of your story, your protagonist’s journey. Where will they go, what will they achieve, how will they grow?See if you can condense all that succinctly in a single sentence or two. That sentence is the whole point of the Snowflake Method.So let’s say, you want to write a private eye type story set in 1940s Los Angeles. You love writers like Raymond Chandler, but you want to offer something new as well. So maybe you throw in one unexpected ingredient – you want to do something that Chandler himself would never have done.So, in this example, you’ve chosen to add a ghost story element to your novel. Sure, that’s just an example, but we’ll work with that idea as we develop the way the Snowflake Method actually works.Example: 1 sentence story descriptionA private eye (Bernie Brandon) is trying to track down the killer of beautiful murder victim Amy Adderley... but Amy’s ghost is stalking Bernie.Does that work for you? It works for me, I think. I’d like to know more about that story.2 Who’s The Protagonist (Hero Or Heroine) Of Your Novel?Now write down something – a sentence or two – about your protagonist. Don’t push yourself to write more here than you want, and remember that anything you do write can be scrubbed out and changed later. Changing your mind isn’t bad, remember. It shows that you’re approaching this task in a flexible and imaginative way.But, OK, for now, let’s try something like this:Example: Protagonist description in 1 sentenceBernie Brandon is an ex-cop. Lives alone. Is a problem drinker. Has a soft spot for any beautiful woman, but can’t manage long term relationships. Somewhat lonely. Is an excellent cello player, and plays the cello when he’s feeling blue.Did I say one sentence? I did.Was that one sentence? It was not.But if it comes, it comes. Don’t hold yourself back. The purpose of the Snowflake Method is to build incrementally from a simple starting point. It’s meant to remove the mental block of being asked to build too much scaffolding before you’re ready.But if you’re ready, then let yourself rip. We need to build up your main characters at some point anyway.Oh, and I originally thought that my protagonist was just going to be Bernie Brandon, only I realise I have an impulse to bring the victim / ghost more into the story as well. Maybe this story is going to be a two-hander, where Bernie and Amy both take turns to narrate?I don’t yet know the answer to that, but if you want to write something additional down about your characters here, then do.Example: 1 sentence about another major characterAmy Adderley is a rich girl, dead before the start of the story. She is (or was) a singer.I didn’t find myself having more to say about Amy, so we’ll leave her there for now.3 Write A Paragraph Or So About Your Major Setting Or SettingsOK, we know what we’re doing here, right? We’re working with a 1940s Los Angeles noir. We want to evoke all that Bogart / Bacall smart-talking, hard-drinking era. So:Example: Paragraph about settingsLos Angeles in the 1940s. The place is seedy, post-Prohibition, and most of the big money is dirty money. We’re thinking about big oceanfront homes, with  glossy sedan cars outside. We’re thinking about squalid little diners up in the hills where lonely souls, like Brandon, can get meals after midnight and avoid going home. This is an LA where the girls are pretty, but fallen, and the cops can be bought.And you know what? As I wrote that paragraphClick!Something clicked for me about Amy Adderley. I wasn’t looking for that to happen, but that’s how this outlining method works. You go round the various different elements of your novel (Story, Protagonists, Settings), step by step, adding detail as you go.And pop! Working one one thing, you get an insight into another thing.Those insights are what this outline process is all about. They’re why we use this method in the first place.So I’m going to jump back to my description of Amy Adderley and add this:Example: 1 sentence about another main characterAmy Adderley is a rich girl, dead before the start of the story. She is (or was) a singer – but classical. She loves Schubert lieder and opera. her father, however, is a brute. A nightclub guy who made his money dirtily during Prohibition. The father’s type of singing is strictly nightclub fare – and a lot of his girls will do more than just sing for the customers . . . if the customers pay enough.Boom! You like it?We have to have a reason for why Amy is killed, and her father’s background already provides more than half an answer. And also, we gave Bernie the cello to play, just because he’s a lonely but talented guy and we had to give him something to do in his hours at home. But now Amy is a singer, a classical one. So there’s this lovely link between them. Almost like they could be lovers, right? Except that she’s dead already . . . but that feels just right for the mood of this novel.Notice that we haven’t yet said anything much about our actual story yet, but now that we have an outline of our major ingredients, we’re going to hurtle back with interest to the story itself.So, round we go again. We’re hitting the same basic targets – story, character, settings – but this time we already know more about our ingredients, so we can add layers of detail that weren’t available to us before.Using The Snowflake To Build Your Story OutlineWe’ve got the ingredients for our novel now. So now we need to add layers of detail.OK, so here we go again. And we’ll start by jumping back to the story that we started to create before.4 Flesh Out Your Story Description, So It Contains A Beginning, Middle And EndOur first draft story idea didn’t say a whole lot more than, “Let’s write a Raymond Chandler style novel . . . but include a ghost.”As we started to build the other elements of our novel outline, though, the story itself jumped into view a little more. (We got data on Amy’s father, and possible reasons why his daughter might have got herself killed.)So now we’re going to try to write a version of the story – still maybe only a single paragraph – but this time we’re going to give that story its basic structure: a beginning, middle and end. Already you can feel that first draft idea starting to wriggle into life. Exciting, right?So we might go with something like this.Example: Very short story outline, with beginning, middle and endBeginning: Amy’s father (Dorcan Adderley) sends a henchman to hire Bernie Brandon to investigate the death of his daughter. Bernie rejects the henchman, but meets one to one with Dorcan, and agrees to take the job.Middle: Bernie investigates. Keeps encountering / being pursued by Amy’s ghost. Bernie discovers that Amy had a fling with the son of some big wheel in the LA underworld. [Let’s call the son, Patrick Prettyboy – probably not a name that will end up in the final novel!] Bernie realises he’s meant to think Prettyboy killed Amy. He almost goes to the police with the news.End. Amy’s actual killer was her father. The whole private investigation thing was just a way to throw the blame elsewhere (and win a turf war at the same time.) Bernie doesn’t have enough evidence to take Dorcan before a court, but he confronts him and there is a struggle, which results in Dorcan’s death. Amy & Bernie, by now ‘lovers’ across the ghostly divide, play music into the small hours.How’s that? It’s not a finished story outline, by any means – but doesn’t this already feel like something that could have legs?And I’ll tell you the truth: when I began this blog post, I had no idea what story example I was going to choose. I just made it up as I went along.And presto: we already have the bones of a decent story here!That’s how easy the Snowflake Method can be.So now we cycle back to our characters again.5 Write A Short Summary Sheet For Your Main CharactersOK, I think we now have three or four characters to play with:Bernie Brandon, our PIAmy Adderley, our ghostDorcan Adderley, our bad guyMaybe Paul Prettyboy, though he’s certainly lesser than these other three.So now we’d give them each a whole sheet of paper. We’d start to ask questions about them, and start to sketch out our answers.This is a trial and error process. So maybe we start off by giving Paul Prettyboy his own nightclub to run, a gift from daddy. Except maybe that makes the whole story a little bit too nightclubby in tone. So how about we jump to the other end of things? Maybe Paul Prettyboy runs an upmarket art gallery, somewhere nice in Pasadena. He looks sauve, and sounds suave, but under it all, he’s still just a thug. A mini-me of his father.If you want to get an idea of what questions to ask about your character, you can get a great starting list here.Because we’re beginning to get more detailed – and because this is only a blog post! – I’m not going to give examples of everything from here on.*** A Word Of Warning ***We’ll go on to develop the Snowflake Method as a tool for templating out your story or novel, but first let me make one thing clear.I’m just writing a blog post, and I don’t want that post to splurge to some ridiculous length. But you are writing a book, not a blog post, so you can’t mess around. In fact, for the avoidance of doubt:You have to do this exercise in full.So, you’re going to write one page on each of your major characters, plus notes on whatever other ones pop into your brain.And here’s one more guideline that you just have to follow as you go through this novel outline process. This rule is not optional and it takes precedence over all the others:If you get an idea, write it down.Until you have actually written it (handwritten or on screen, whichever),you haven’t captured it.And you have to capture it:that’s what releases your brain to go on to the next stage.That, in a nutshell, is why most of the people who want to write a novel, don’t write a novel. They think that dreaming around with characters and stories and scenes will produce a novel.It won’t. It doesn’t.What produces a novel is: work.You write stuff down. You start thinking of the next thing. You write that down. You move on.Yes, sure, at times you’ll go back and undo some of the stuff you did before. (So first we had Paul Prettyboy as a nightclub owner. Then we realised we weren’t satisfied with that and changed it to art dealer. But we had to specify ‘nightclub owner’ in order to get to the insight that produced ‘art gallery owner’. Even mistakes are rich in insight.)Right. Lecture over. Back to the Story Outline process.6 Expand Your Story To About Two PagesStick with those Beginning / Middle / End sections. They’re a helpful tool for organising your novel structure.But now you want to get more detailed. So in our early attempt at sketching the story, we wrote:Beginning: Amy’s father (Dorcan Adderley) sends a henchman to hire Bernie Brandon to investigate the death of his daughter. Bernie rejects the henchman, but meets one to one with Dorcan, and agrees to take the job.And that was fine, for back then, but now we want to know more. So that little beginning description might expand to something like this.Example: Story beginning in more detailBeginning: Bernie Brandon is in his office. No work, nothing to do. There is whisky in his desk drawer and he is trying not to drink it.A big scary guy – suit, colourful – comes to hire him. Plonks down a roll of dollar bills. Too much money  for the job. There’s some wise-cracking interchange. Brandon refuses the job. Big scary guy leaves. Brandon gets the guys registration plate, phones it through to the cops – his former colleagues – and gets an ID.Brandon finds the henchman’s car that evening, tails it to a nightclub. Realises henchman guy is working for Dorcan Adderley – with whom he, Brandon, has some history. Brandon barges his way into Adderley’s office and says, in effect, “I don’t work for the staff. If I work for anyone, I work for the boss.”Adderley laughs and gets him a drink. [and so on.]Oh, and you know I said that thing about writing stuff down? That just thinking about it isn’t good enough?Well, I’m right, and here’s the proof.As I was writing that little section above, I thought, “Hey, where’s Amy ghost in this? She needs to make an early entry.” So I almost edited the example above to make room for her, but then realised that this post is meant to give you an example of the  Snowflake Method in action, and that means that I need to show you the bits I missed, the new insertions, the second thoughts . . . all the changes of direction that the Snowflake Method is there to permit.So for that reason, here’s my second shot at that beginning section:Beginning: Bernie Brandon is in his office – blah, blah, blah – all the same as before, right down to Brandon getting an ID for the henchperson.Brandon finds the henchman’s car that evening, and waits outside. As he’s waiting, he hears music – classical singing. Schubert Lieder. Strangely, the (female) singer is singing the exact song that Brandon had been playing on the piano shortly before coming out. He tries to find the source of the music, but it proves elusive. He has a constant sense of being watched.When Henchperson leaves the for the evening, Brandon tails him to a nightclub. [Then all as previously, except I think that ghostly presence has to vanish, almost petulantly, as she/Brandon get close to Dorcan Adderley.]Yeah. That’s better, right? We’ve got a lovely double note coming into the start of that book. A contemporary reader would think, “Yep, this feels a little like Raymond Chandler, but with a subtle , strange different element that I can’t yet place. I like it.”7 Keep Going Until You’re Ready To Stop Planning, And Starting Writing Your NovelThe guy who popularised the Snowflake Method, Randy Ingermanson, has a pretty fixed bunch of guidelines on how you’re meant to do this. So you’re meant to go from a one paragraph description of the story, to a one page / four paragraph description of the story / then onto a full four page description of the story.Something similar applies to the other elements of your novel.If that works for you, then go for it!But really there are no fixed rules here, and no set end-goal. Or rather the only two fixed rules are:You have to write stuff downYou have to circle round between story / characters / themes / settings,adding detail on every go round.And the only end-goal that matters is this:When you feel super-ready to start writing your novel –and not just ready, but actually impatient –then you can start writing your book.Personally, I’m not much of a planner, so I tend to jump into my books sooner rather than later (and, I’ll admit, sometimes regret my decision.)The mere fact that you’re reading this post suggests to me that you’ve got a good bit of planner in you (or you’re just procrastinating quite badly), in which case I think a reasonable stopping point would be as follows.You will have:Several pages of notes / ideas about your major charactersAt least a page on your most important secondary charactersSeveral pages talking about settings, locations, themes, time of year, etc. All the background stuff that will make your novel live and breathe.3-4 pages of notes on your story, and those pages will include . . .A full page (or more) on the beginning / set-up phase of your book. That’ll include the Initiating Incident (in our example, that’s the henchman/Brandon meeting but, even more so, the Brandon/Dorcan Adderley one), but you’ll probably also find yourself describing the immediate consequences of that incident. The Set-Up Phase will probably account for about 25% of your actual final finished novel.You will probably also have a page or so on the Climax and Resolution of your novel. In our example, it would involve the the denouement of the mystery (“Who killed Amy Adderley?”), the physical showdown between Dorcan Adderley and Brandon, and the romantic climax too (the ghost and the PI playing sad classical music into the small hours.) This Climax & Resolution Material will cover the final 25% of the novelThen you’ll also have something on that awkward middle section – the middle 50% – that we just label ‘Developments’.You want to know the truth here? Most authors – including pro authors with multiple books, and even perhaps multiple bestsellers under their belts – will tend to struggle with that ‘Developments’ section.When writers complain about their work (and we mostly love it), the mostly love it), the most frequent reason is that they’re encountering the rocks and white water that mark the transition from Set-up to Developments.So, my own personal guidance (which you should tailor to suit your own personality and your own experience with your particular story) would be to make a decent shot at guessing what your developments section would look like. So I certainly wouldn’t advise that you just ignore it completely.But when you start writing your novel, be aware that you may need to pause once the book is about 25% written, so you can come back to a version of this exercise and redo it.Why redo it?Because you’ll be returning to your story outline process with much greater feel for your characters, your settings, all the richness of that set-up material, and so on.That richness will give you a ton of insight into how to navigate the rocks that lie ahead.If you’re a planner, then you may want to synopsise the entire novel at that point. You might even find that you can do it chapter by chapter.I can’t do it that way – never have, never will – but I do still take a moment at the 25% mark to rethink where I’m going. (Oh, and when I say “take a moment”, what I actually mean is “Spend two weeks grumbling around the house and looking for excuses to do anything else other than sit in front of my laptop and work.” I LOVE writing, and I love being a writer. But that part of the planning process? I do not love.)Ready To Start Writing Your Novel?Get help. It may make the difference between success or failure.When I wrote my first novel, I didn’t write much of an outline. I didn’t plan anything very much.I just sat and wrote.And yes, that novel got published and did well. But yes, I also ended up doing a ton more work than I would have done if I’d planned properly from the start.And my second novel? Well, it was just a total car crash, because I thought I knew how to write novels, when I really, really didn’t.We’ve talked through a lot of the technique you’re going to bring to bear in your own writing journey, and – believe me – that technique is going to reward you a million times over.But wouldn’t you like more help than that?Of course you would! Writing is a pretty lonely business, and wouldn’t it be great if you could:Get comments and feedback on your work from like-minded writers?Get the benefit of a massive super-premium video course on How To Write?Watch filmed masterclasses from top tutors teaching specific examples of writing technique?Meet literary agents and editors online, so you can get a feel for the industry you want to be a part of?Get an entire video course on Getting Published from a bunch of people who have helped hundreds of people like you get published?Watch films & videos especially created for writers like you and focusing on the questions and issues that writers like you are interested in?Have a kind of “Agony Aunt” for writers service, where you could just bring your questions and have them answered with tact and expertise?That sounds good, doesn’t it . . . but surely not for real? Surely nothing like that actually exists?Well, yes, it does. And you’re right here on the site that can make all that happen.Jericho Writers is a club for writers like you and we welcome new members. Once you take out a membership, everything that we can provide digitally comes to you for free. Every course, every video, the entire community, everything. Membership is cheap and you can cancel any time. There are no restrictions at all on how much of our content you can access during the course of your membership.The Snowflake Method is a truly great way to develop and plan your novel outline.But Jericho Writers can help with absolutely everything: writing, publishing, self-publishing, everything.

Haydn Middleton edited books for Oxford University Press before becoming a full-time writer. (Haydn’s Goodreads page shows a selection of his titles.) He has published seven novels for adults and an eighth is forthcoming in October 2018.This piece of writing is going to be about 1,200 words in length, and around the 900-word mark I’m going to tell you something that will blow your head off.Getting The Reader ‘In The Vehicle’That’s a fairly crude way to open a blog post.If you’re a reader of refined sensibilities, it may well have put you off. (Another kind of reader again will go straight to the 900-word mark and check out whatever may be in store !)On the other hand, it may just have tickled your curiosity and made you think, ‘Whatever this showman has up his sleeve, it could be worth me hanging around until the 900-word mark, just in case his reveal is as big as he says.’And that works for books, too.Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events warns children away, but only makes them curious to read on . It’s a fine art, withholding information.So you will see at once that what I’m talking about here is – well – not talking about things. Or rather, making it clear to the reader that in due course you, the writer, will be delivering something rather tasty, but not quite yet.Because it’s not just about what twists your book can deliver – it’s how you, the author, will get us there.It’s the fine old writerly art of withholding information, and it can be classified within the box of technique tricks of known as ‘Getting The Reader In The Vehicle’.Jump In And Snap On Your SeatbeltI took that phrase about the Vehicle from the brilliant contemporary novelist and short-story writer, Haruki Murakami.He once wrote: “For me, a story is a vehicle that takes a reader somewhere. Whatever information you may try to convey, whatever you may try to open the reader’s emotions to, the first thing you have to do is get that reader into the vehicle.”It’s a sad but true fact that if you don’t fairly soon get that reader comfortably seated and belted in, then she probably isn’t going to go on the journey with you.And offering the “bait” of some juicy information that will be delivered a little further down the line can be a good way to encourage your reader to suspend her disbelief.But there are hazards in this approach, too. You can’t share too much, too soon, yet you need to share enough at once to engage interest.In writing your story, you might not choose to address your reader as directly as I did at the start of this piece.You might instead kick off with a scenario which is intriguing but inexplicable (an envelope which arrives in the post one morning, say, containing a human thumb and a pine cone).The implication is that by the end of the tale, the reader will at least have a clearer idea of what’s going on.If the recipient of that envelope himself doesn’t initially understand why he has been sent those things, that can be useful. Because while he tries to get to the bottom of the mystery, so too will the reader.Matters get more complicated if the recipient does know why he’s been sent the package and this is made clear to the reader (e.g. the recipient shows no shock, placing the envelope in a drawer with fifteen others of exactly the same shape and size). Then it is up to the narrator – first-person or third-person – whether he explains at once to the reader what is going on, or else he withholds the information till a later stage.Deftly handled, either approach might work. But ideally, the reader will want to feel that there is a damned good reason why she is not yet being let in on the secret. And what might such a reason be?I guess the main one is that the reader will have happily made a tacit agreement with the author that what he is presenting to her is a glorified joke, and no one wants to be told the punchline half way through a joke, or indeed at its very beginning.That can make for a rattling good read, especially in the case of works like the better short stories which Roald Dahl wrote for adult readers. There’s other kinds of fiction set out to pull off something a little more complicated, to present life in all its unmanageable and distinctly non-punchline-type glory. And it’s with regard to these other genres – which many Jericho Writers clients describe as broadly ‘more literary’ in submitting their scripts – that I’d like to talk from here on in.Smelling Rats And Driving Off CliffsIn telling a serious story about a serious subject (which, as The Catcher in the Rye triumphantly demonstrates, doesn’t mean there can’t also be plenty of humour along the way), it’s inadvisable to hold back key information about a character or situation merely in order to keep the reader reading. She will almost certainly smell a rat, lose faith in you as her driver (you’re taking her on a journey, remember), and jump out at the next set of traffic lights.I’d say this particularly holds true with third-person narratives. If a first-person narrator fails to mention that he is actually married with three children until just before the end of a memoir in which he has been describing his recent courtship of a foreign princess, he can at least claim to have been in denial.‘Unreliable narrators’, such individuals are called.* Amnesiac protagonists, like Christine in Before I Go To Sleep. Or protagonists who rationalise horror, like Fred Clegg in The Collector.Which leads me to the knotty issue of using multiple perspectives in a story, and by that I mean any number of points of view greater than one.I’ve lost count of the number of otherwise promising scripts I’ve read where things start to wobble, fatally, when an author forgets that Character A hasn’t yet found out what Character B has always known about Character C, who in turn has some dirt on Character A.In such cases, the author is not just having to withhold information from the reader, but also from the respective characters. Too much withholding, already!In my world, especially for new writers, there must be an irresistibly good reason ever to use more than a single narrative perspective, not least because then the author can often save himself the bother of writing about the same event twice over – which outside of courtroom dramas seldom makes for the most riveting read.But finally, don’t go away from this post imagining that you should declare absolutely everything about a character or a situation right up front. That can be just as much of a turn-off as keeping stuff concealed.How To Release Plot Information (Without Driving Off Cliffs)As in all things, there’s a happy medium to be found.Share with your readers just enough to keep them intrigued and reasonably informed, but not so much that they’ll be bored. Remembering this helps you time and control release of information for any plot.It might be an idea to think of this reader as an actual friend or acquaintance – use this as a litmus test as to how much you say at any given moment about the passing scenery. If you know that the road after the next bend will lead you straight over a cliff, you really ought to tell.If you feel compelled to share with them every fact you know about every tree you leave in your slipstream, ask yourself whether they would really want to have her ear bent about it.Now with all that advice under your bonnet, off you go.And happy motoring!*That was around the 900-word mark. You don’t have to believe everything you’re told in an opening paragraph. ‘Unreliable narrators’, we’re called.

If characters form the heart of a novel, the plot its musculoskeletal system, then the theme is a book’s soul. These might be personal or social issues, like emotional heartbreak or betrayal, or racial hatred or injustice, which sound all the way through the novel.What Is A Theme?These themes are not likely to be prominent. Lectures are to be avoided: these are no good. But if a book reverberates in the memory long after it’s been put down, rather like the way a trumpet note sustains itself after the instrument has left the lips, then that’s because of the book’s theme.A book with a theme is a book with soul.Write A Memorable BookIt’s that easy. Have you read To Kill a Mockingbird?The appalling shock of racial prejudice in the old American South, the burning sense of justice, the desire to put things right. That’s why the book sold. That’s why readers still remember it today, even if it was a decade or three since they read it.Perhaps you’ve read Pride & Prejudice. Its plot and lead characters, Lizzy and Darcy, are vivid, memorable, but what about the title? Does that just possibly suggest to you that Jane Austen had a certain theme in mind when she wrote it? (Its first working title, also, was First Impressions.)You can write a bestseller without having a theme, but you can’t write a good book without one. You certainly can’t write a book that lasts.How To Find The Theme Of Your BookYou can’t just plug a theme into a book. Other things can be planned, crafted and worked at. But if you approach your theme front ways on, it’ll sound crass and didactic, so what do you do?Well, the most important thing is to write well. If your stories, characters and prose are superbly knitted together, you’ll start to see themes forming like a mist rising from a field at dusk. It just happens.(That may sound rather fluid, we know, though it’s true for all that.)Secondly, it’s fine to have some ideas in mind as you write. They should stay towards the back of your mind, though. Stories must be told through character and action, and it’s these things which should occupy your conscious attention. But if those things are at the back of your mind, then they’ll wriggle their way into your work.Trust us on this, too, that you’ll often enough be surprised by themes. Things will pop up in your work that you never intended to put there. Welcome all such strangers. Great authors always do.Last, as you revise your text, you can shape, nudge, tweak things, so that those themes become a little more prominent. Subtlety is the hallmark. And they don’t have to know that they’re reading a book with soul, intelligence, etc. You needn’t lecture or tell anyone anything.If the soul is there, the reader will find it, whether they know it or not.

In this article, I\'ll share 10 simple steps and practical pointers to help you write shorter fiction, including how to start off and how to end a short story.For about 30 years, I slogged away trying to write a novel. But I just never had the plotting smarts or the emotional stamina, and I became like a madman running again and again at a brick wall, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.Then, one day, and only a couple of decades overdue, I had a rather marvellous thought. You’re used to writing short things – articles, web pages and the like. You’re a sprinter, not a marathon runner. Why don’t you have a go at short fiction? As a journalist and content writer in my day job, I like a deadline. Deadlines concentrate the mind, deadlines force you to finish things. So I googled ‘short story competitions’ and found that, surprise surprise, there were actually quite a few out there, and all with a deadline.One of my very first attempts won a modest prize (£40, I think) in a competition run by a small press. This was encouraging. I didn’t get anywhere with a story for over a year after that, but that small crumb of validation was enough to tide me over. I started writing more and more stories, and I’ve never really stopped since. I must have written over 100 by now. In 2019, a couple were nominated for the Pushcart Prize anthology in the US. And best of all, in 2020 I published my debut collection of short stories, Hotel du Jack.I love writing short fiction, and I always have several stories on the go. But I’m still interested in getting novels published too, and my first, Work in Progress, a co-authored farcical novel-in-emails about an eccentric writers group, comes out from Unbound in 2021. I’m also putting the finishing touches to another full-length MS, working title The Wolf in the Woods.You may have noticed that I went from failing to finish novels to writing short stories… to finishing novels. And that, I believe, is no accident. Starting on short stories is a great way to build up your writing muscles. You get the satisfaction of structuring, shaping and, above all, completing things. At first, you may find you can’t write anything over 200 or 500 words. But after a while, you suddenly realise that your stories are getting longer and more complex, as you start to experiment with ideas and forms and voices.A short story is often not so different in length and shape from a scene in a novel, or even several scenes strung together. And one day when pondering what to write a short story about, you may find you have a different, chunkier sort of idea, one that requires more than a few thousand words to really do it justice. And maybe that day is the day you start on a novel – which you’ll now have a much better chance of finishing, with all the craft and experience that you’ve developed by completing a slew of shorter pieces.So: in a matter of months, I went from being able to finish nothing fictional to writing scores of stories and regularly getting them featured in competitions and magazines. If you’re looking to get your short-story writing off the ground, I hope these tips and ideas of mine will help you too…How To Write A Short Story In 10 Easy StepsRead widelyGet a great ideaExperiment with techniquesTake inspiration from everyday lifeStart writingAdd more levels to your writingEdit, rework, revise, repeatFocus on your beginning……and your endingRecruit beta readersShort Story: What Is It And Why Is It Special?I’ve always loved short stories. I remember my dad reading me the stories of O’Henry when I was little, studying Maupassant’s contes of the Franco-Prussian war for A level, discovering the (now deeply unfashionable) tales of Updike, marvelling at ‘The Language of Men’ by Norman Mailer and Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Garden Party.’ ‘Cat Woman,’ Chekhov, the ‘murdered lady’ series of Cathy Ulrich (now collected as Ghosts of You), Aimee Bender, Salinger, Nadine Gordimer, Denis Jonson, Zadie Smith, David Vann… Oh, I could go on.Sometimes I think short fiction is closer to poetry than it is to the novel. The best short stories are little universes of compressed perfection, where every paragraph, every word, every punctuation mark has to earn its place. Short stories can be intricately plotted or they can relate little more than the movements of a mind in conversation with itself on a small domestic topic. They can be all showing or – whisper it – all telling. They can range over years or take place in a lunchtime, relating the end of a friendship or the decline of a civilisation (though the former, if we are honest, is more common). They seem, for some reason, to talk a great deal about death.Short stories can take one tool from the fictional toolkit – voice, character, dialogue, structure, point of view, idea – and major on that, almost to the exclusion of all others. They can talk of boring or obvious topics in fresh ways, or they can deliver great weirdnesses and wild thought experiments. In short, they can do whatever they like. They just have to be true to themselves, and make us believe in them, and not go on for too long.For length, mind, we will need our piece of string. Short stories can be 30 pages long, or they can just be a few paragraphs. If we include flash fiction here – and why wouldn’t we, though it’s almost a whole separate article – we are looking at stories that can be as short as 100 words (technically known as drabbles).There are those who look down on flash fiction, but this I’m afraid is mere ignorance (I can say this with confidence, as I languished in this sort of ignorance myself till not so long ago). Not convinced? Try reading this or this or this or this or some of these. Flash is a distinctive sub-genre of short fiction. It is much harder than it looks, very much not just the offcuts of longer stuff, and the best exponents are very fine writers indeed.How Do You Structure A Short Story?There are many ways to structure a short story. You could have a beginning, a middle and an end. You could have a mini-version of the classic novel structure or one of the seven basic plots. You could have a classic sting in the tale – think of the stories of Roald Dahl or O’Henry or Saki. Or the best way to start a short story might be to just start writing – and see what shape starts to emerge. Often voice or idea is far more important than structure in a short story, and you can often retro-fix the shape once you’ve nailed those essential components first. Because short stories are, well, short, you can sometimes even plan and draft them at the same time.Some stories read almost like anecdotes or well-crafted jokes; others appear to have no obvious plot in a novelistic sense, but are more like tableaux vivants which, like an interesting painting, reveal more meaning and information with every look. In some, like Hemingway’s ‘Hills Like White Elephants,’ nothing really appears to happen; there is talk of ‘an operation’ in a tense conversation between a couple, but the reader has to look between the lines to intuit what’s happening. All this, again, points to the wonderful fluidity and flexibility of the form.One classic way to tell a story is what I call the Pivot structure, where you set one non-human element against another, usually human, event or relationship. Over the course of the story, the non-human element starts to tick away like a metaphor engine for the human element of the story, resonating with different meanings as the narrative develops.For example, I’ve just read ‘Little Tiger’ by JR McMenemie, a beautiful story told from the point of view of two children who have just lost their gran. Their Mum is upset at having lost her Mum, and Dad is trying to comfort her. The kids have never been to a funeral before, and returning to their house in the aftermath is clearly a very unsettling experience for all. Mum engages in some aggressive tidying up, while Dad – who is struggling to juggle the competing claims of his children and his wife – starts laying a little heavily into the booze.Then, all of a sudden, the kids find a butterfly, sitting on top of a picture of a beach where they all spent many holidays with gran. This is odd, as in the story it’s February, in northern England. The children feed the butterfly some banana, and are keen to make a pet of it. All of a sudden, Mum announces that the butterfly is her Mum, come back to say goodbye. In the morning, however, the kids wake to discover that the butterfly is gone; Dad explains that they couldn’t really keep it. Do you really think the butterfly was Nan? they ask. The story ends with Dad’s reply:‘I don’t know, son. It could have been. Your mum says some funny things sometimes. All I’m saying is that your grandma didn’t like bananas.’This crude, simplified summary doesn’t begin to do justice to the patient, emotionally intelligent storytelling of the piece, but you can see that the butterfly acts as a pivot on which the whole story can keep turning. It is, by turns, a distraction, a projection of grief, potential proof of an afterlife, an emblem of marital devotion and, in its release, a key to the processing of loss and the attainment of a certain understated resilience. Do we live on after we die? Dad is doubtful, but he loves his wife and sees no value in challenging her theory. And she, in her turn, aching with love for her absent mum, can be forgiven a little magical thinking. If, indeed, it is magical: who, after all, can be certain that she is wrong?10 Steps To Writing A Short Story, With Examples1. Forage The World For Story StartersOne of the attractive things about writing short stories, as opposed to longer stuff, is that you don’t need to work out a fully-fleshed outline, snowflake-style or otherwise, in order to get started. Nor do you need oodles of background words about characters, stakes, setting, timeframe and so on. You just need an idea.And that idea doesn’t even need to be an idea in the grand sense either; it can just be a prompt. It might just be a chance remark you overheard on a bus, a funny ornament in a front garden you pass every day, an odd-looking chap you spot on a holiday beach, a sudden childhood memory. It might be a smell or a view or a colour; it might be a thought triggered by a film or a radio programme or a children’s book. Of course, it might also be a break-up you’ve never got over, a terrible act of cruelty you once witnessed, or a historical event that has always had a special resonance for you.When you start, you won’t necessarily know what’s a story-worthy idea and what isn’t. So the first thing to do is to cultivate the habit of looking and listening, both to the outside world and to the things that bubble up in your mind. Now this might sound easy, but often it defeats people because they can’t believe it will ever get them to a finished story. We sometimes envision creativity as this wonderfully crazed, instinctive outpouring, whereas this note-taking business feels like something rather dull and premeditated.But your notebook, whatever form it takes, is where all the raw data of your stories will start to emerge. No data: no stories. So you have to get into the habit of jotting things down, and trusting that this is a worthwhile thing to do, and just repeatedly doing it even if you don’t really believe that yet, even when your first efforts are just dreadful callow things like So here I am writing in this book or Milk, wipes, olive oil. Post office! As with a half-used tube of toothpaste, you sometimes have to squeeze the crud out to get to the good stuff.For inspiration, try Morning Pages – as popularised by Natalie Goldberg, Julia Cameron and others. Basically, you sit down at the start of your writing session – it doesn’t even have to be morning! – and you just write down whatever comes into your head for 10 minutes. Don’t censor what pops up – just record your thoughts.You might be amazed what occurs – shopping lists, dreams, the fag-end of a row with your partner, a glimpse of a first crush, childhood memories, strange bits of wordplay, spiritual reflections, a person in your life you haven’t thought about for ages… It’s all good, and it could all get used somewhere in your fiction. Just as the stand-up sees the world as a bunch of set-ups waiting for a punchline, so the short-fiction writer sees the world as a bunch of prompts waiting for a good story.2. Go With The Idea That TinglesMy Dad always said that he could tell a really good piece of cheese because it gave him a funny tingly feeling behind the ears. I spent much of my childhood trying (and failing) to experience this elusive dairy-led sensation. But I do at least get the tingle when it comes to stories.Over time, you’ll start to look at the bits of mental flotsam in your notebook, and you may find there’s a phrase or an anecdote or an image that you keep coming back to. When that happens, you may well have the first tinglings of a story on your hands.From time to time I go back through my notebooks and highlight bits of scribble that I think I might be able to use. Sometimes it’s a setting. My story ‘The Beach Shop’ in Hotel du Jack, for example, about a heartbroken man stalking his ex-wife on her holiday, was inspired by my early-morning stops at a cafe on a French campsite. I loved the locale, and just started writing about it till a story came.Sometimes – often in my case – it’s a bit of anecdotal autobiography. My story ‘Plane-spotting‘ was inspired by reading a story to my young son about an airport where all the planes are animals. I thought it would be funny if the Dad was a real aviation nerd, increasingly infuriated by the inaccuracy of the drawings, and it just went from there. With the flash ‘Eau de l’avenir,’ the inspiration was a smell – or rather, a scent.To give one more example of how ideas turn into stories, George Saunders says his flash fiction ‘Sticks’ came from something he saw from his car every day. ‘For two years I’d been driving past a house like the one in the story, imagining the owner as a man more joyful and self-possessed and less self-conscious than myself. Then one day I got sick of him and invented his opposite, and there was the story.’When you note down stuff, you don’t know if you’ll ever use it, or if you’ll end up using it several times. You may use it in a way that’s a complete betrayal of the original memory. You may dredge it up again, years later, and forget you ever jotted it down in the first place. It doesn’t matter: you’ve got it down now, and it’s adding to your imaginative store. It’s all good.3. Try A Thought ExperimentAnother way to approach a story is to ask yourself: What if…? What if supermarket shelf-fillers and nurses were the most celebrated and best-paid members of society, and celebrities and lawyers were considered the lowest of the low? What if an epidemic of kindness broke out in the world – Agapia-117, let’s call it – and threatened the stranglehold of capitalism, with its built-in systemic reliance on rabid self-interest? (Just riffing here, obvs.)These kinds of story offer you a rich counterfactual challenge. Depending on the challenge, you might offer the reader the pleasure of watching an unexpected idea play out, or you might challenge yourself to pull off a narrative feat that the reader doesn’t know about until the end: What if (to cite a notorious example) you could tell me a whole story that turns out in the end to have been narrated by a cat? What if you wrote an alien contact story, only for us to realise at the end that the narrator lives on another planet, and the ‘aliens’ are actually humans from earth?The idea for my story, ‘Nothing So Blue,’ came to me when I asked my son for ideas of what I could write about. ‘Write about becoming invisible,’ he said. Now sci-fi isn’t really my thing, but then I thought: ‘What if you were granted a superpower, and it turned out to be a bit rubbish?’ Now that, I thought, was very much more my thing.A great example of the thought-experiment approach is ‘The Rememberer’, by Aimee Bender:‘My lover is experiencing reverse evolution. I tell no one. I don’t know how it happened, only that one day he was my lover and the next he was some kind of ape. It’s been a month, and now he’s a sea turtle.’4. Borrow A Form From Everyday LifeStructure doesn’t come naturally to us all (guilty), but an easy way to get round that is to give yourself a nice constrained timeframe, such as the hours of a day or the seven days of a week. I use this structure in a few of my stories, notably the title track of Hotel du Jack, because it offers a natural scale of narrative progression. On Monday, we meet the cast of the story and get a sense of what’s at stake. On Tuesday the first signs of conflict emerge. Wednesday sees problems escalate, Thursday brings a false dawn, and on Friday things really kick off. Saturday is the day the crisis resolves and the loose ends are tied up, and Sunday has that nice sort of epilogue feel to it. It is the day, as Craig David tells it, on which one chills; the day one rests after creating a world.You might choose a lunch-hour, or a night, as Helen Simpson does with her insomniac narrator in ‘Erewhon’ (collected in Constitutional), a man in a roles-reversed world who stays up worrying about kids and money and sexism while his high-powered wife lies snoring indifferently next to him. It could be a date or a work meeting or a conversation between dads at the side of a junior football match, where the competitive nature of the chat echoes the changing fortunes of their kids’ respective teams and the climax of the story coincides with the final whistle.Taking this idea a step further, hermit-crab fictions – also known as borrowed forms – are stories that are made out of everyday verbal templates. The more banal the form, the better – think product reviews, missing-person reports, recipes, maths problems, listicles, top tips, user instructions…The trick is to try to stick quite closely to the structure you’re stealing, so that the story you tell will seem even wilder or more heartbreaking by contrast with its dull container. As you go through your day, you’ll come across thousands of these dead bits of copy – from insurance letters to FAQs to parish newsletters. Choose one, and make it your own.I’ve written hermit-crab stories in the form of a shopping list, board game rules, FAQs and even a penalty charge notice. In Hotel du Jack, you’ll also find a ghost story told as a neighbourhood forum thread, a reflection on #metoo in the form of board meeting minutes, a meditation on grief in the form of a dishwasher glossary, and a product recall notification. Another story, ‘Active and passive voice’, dissects a flawed relationship through the structure of a grammar lesson. Meanwhile ‘My Mummy is…‘ was written – out of a sense of profound inadequacy – just after I’d read a book with my 5-year-old son at school entitled My Daddy is a Firefighter.One of my favourites pieces of flash fiction, LIFECOLOR INDOOR LATEX PAINTS® – WHITES AND REDS by Kristen Ploetz, manages to condense an entire life into a trio of paint palettes. George Saunders has a lot of fun with this response to a customer complaint. Here’s a story of long-term love that’s also a 5-star blender review. And this story is just receipts.If you’d like to read more hermit-crab narratives, here’s a couple of great anthologies to inspire you: Fakes by David Shields and Matthew Vollmer, and The Shell Game, edited by Kim Adrian.5. Start WritingIf you’ve got a prompt that feels rich and interesting – whether it’s a vague memory or a thought experiment or a borrowed form – the next thing to do is not worry about how to write a good beginning of a story, and just get something down.My process at this point is crude: just bang a first draft out. If you have an idea that feels like a start, get it down and start playing around with what happens next. If you have an idea that feels like an ending, get it down and think about how your story might get you there. But do the thinking by actual writing. This is not a drill! And this is not a novel. Just write.As you go along, the idea will start to build and coalesce, especially as, remember, you chose something that’s already glowing and tingling for you. As the juices start flowing, you will start to see possibilities open out for you – structural bridges, snippets of dialogue, observations that you sense suddenly belong somewhere within the fabric of your story’s world. You can start to put in little headers too, little pegs to mark out future sections. Jot all these extra thoughts at the bottom of your doc, keep typing, and fold them in as you go.Sometimes, as the story starts to flow, you may get stuck on one bit but can start to see how a later section would work. Go with the flow, and start filling in that later section instead – just leave yourself some meta-notes for the bits you need to come back to later e.g. insert scene where elephant appears for first time or add in funeral-home bit here to explain why Moira’s always hated lilies.The same process also works at a micro-level, too. Often your ideas for the story run ahead of how quickly you can phrase things. Thinking about the broad contours of your story and fine-tuning phraseology are different creative tasks, and it’s not always easy or efficient to flit between the two. Don’t waste time waiting for the mot juste to arrive – just put in a bit placeholder copy or add some “xxxxxxxxxxxs,” and move on. Just get the broad brushstrokes down, and then you can go back and finesse the detail later.I guess the approach I’m advocating here is a bit like ‘writing by the lights,’ a phrase that inevitably takes us back to a line from EL Doctorow: ‘Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ Sometimes the idea you have is a perfect little synopsis, and all (!) you have to do now to flesh it out in a way that does justice to the conception. Sometimes you just have an opening scene, or an image, or a character to work with, and you have to build the rest of the world around them. But the remedy is the same in every case: get that first draft down.The more stories you write, the more you get a sense of the optimum length for a particular piece. Some short stories are almost like extended gags; they go out and back in a simple anecdotal arc that culminates in a snappy zinger. Others require patience and stamina to deliver their potential. Their form might be much more complex: a spiral, a mosaic, a musical symphony of contrasting and resolving themes. But the best way to build up to writing complex stories is to start by completing simpler ones. And the best way to complete a story is get a first draft down fast. Then the real work can begin.6. Work In Another LevelA satisfying story can usually be read on more than one level. There is the surface level, and then there is a sense of an underlying meaning. If your story is to feel like more than a mere skit or vignette, we want to have a sense that there is another perspective, a subtext, a theme that’s whirring away in the background as we read.I’m not suggesting that you start with a grand theme and try and mould a story to it; that will usually lead you somewhere strained and leaden. I just mean that when you write your story, you want to have an eye on how others will find it interesting or meaningful. You don’t have to have a pat answer to this question, quite the opposite in fact. Where novels often build up to an accumulated truth, the best stories often have an inconclusive, open-ended quality.Often in life, when you think about it, we are working through familiar challenges and conflicts in a variety of different guises and permutations: freedom versus commitment, future hopes versus mortality, child versus parent, addiction versus abstention, ego versus altruism – the list is endless. What short stories often do is replay one of these central conflicts for us in a way that is both very specific – involving particular individuals in detailed interactions – but also has a timeless, universalising feel to it. Life is ambiguity, and things rarely get resolved. So, as your story takes shape, ask yourself: which pattern am I enacting here?This might sound a bit complex, but really it’s very simple, because every story we tell inevitably has the potential to speak beyond its own obvious remit; the trick is just to polish your words in the light of their wider applicability. As you start to get your story down, have an eye on the meanings and themes that emerge with it, and shape your material accordingly. You don’t have to be able to say what the story is really about; you just need to leave enough space and enough interesting glimmers for the reader to want to fill in the blanks.Take, for example, Conrad’s ‘The Secret Sharer.‘ This rich and subtle tale is full of nautical detail and has the feel of being based on a true incident, lightly fictionalised. But Conrad is careful throughout to dial up the elements we can all relate to: the fear of not being good enough, the loneliness of command, the terror of being brave, and so on.Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Fly’ – as well as being a pair of beautifully observed little scenes – speaks to us about bereavement, and the agony of a loss which can no longer even find expression. And in retrospect, we see that JD Salinger’s ‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish’ – for all its enjoyable elements of comedy and social satire – speaks also to the corrosive effects of trauma and the inadequacy of our responses to it.7. Edit. Revise. Rework. Repeat.Writing, as so many have said, is re-writing. Now that you have a rough draft down, the real work can begin, as you hone and polish and finesse your story into the best story it can be, and remove in the process all avoidable friction from the reading process. A few pointers:Look hard at the movement and logic of the story. Read the story out loud to yourself, and see if it makes good narrative sense. Is the middle soggy? Are there any tedious info dumps? Is there too much telling at the expense of showing? Is there a good balance between different sections and viewpoints (if you have more than one)? Is the story long enough, or do you rush to the conclusion and throw the ending away?Look out for redundancies. Strip away phrases, sentences and even sections that don’t add anything to the mood or voice or development of the story. Murder your darlings – all those bits (phrases, plot points, devices etc) that you’re really fond of but don’t really fit into the texture of the story you have developed.Add in clarifications and bridges. Editing isn’t just taking things away. Sometimes it’s about adding things too. If a transition between two sections isn’t clear, or your intro throws up a commonsensical question that you don’t ever answer, the reader will be too busy scratching their head to fully appreciate your story. Sometimes just a clarifying phrase here or a subtle time or place reference there can be all it takes.Look for words and phrases that you know you over-use. I’m a sucker for ‘suddenly,’ ‘seemed,’ ‘now’ and ‘screenwash’. I have certain pet thoughts and jokes that, if left to my own devices, I will happily try and shoehorn into everything I write. Watch out for ‘had’ too – if half your story is in the form of a past-perfect flashback, that’s probably going to be a problem. See more tips on self-editing here.8. Look Extra Hard at Your Start…The start of your story needs to work hard to lure us into the world of your narrative. It must intrigue us from the off. We want to feel instantly that we are in an interesting place, where interesting things may happen, and that we can trust and enjoy the person who is telling us about them. Ambiguity, cliche, long-windedness, unnecessary cleverness – these can all spell death to a good intro.You might start with an intriguing hook (‘In the beginning, Sanford Carter was ashamed of becoming an Army cook’ – ‘The Language of Men’, by Norman Mailer.) You might set the scene with a sweep of historical backdrop (‘Paris was blockaded, starved, in its death agony’ – ‘Deux Amis’, by Maupassant.)Or you might start by setting the rules of the world, as in ‘By the Waters of Babylon’ by Stephen Vincent Benét, in a way that has the reader wondering from the very start what will happen if one is broken:‘The north and the west and the south are good hunting ground, but it is forbidden to go east. It is forbidden to go to any of the Dead Places except to search for metal and then he who touches the metal must be a priest or the son of a priest.’Naturally I am instantly curious about what happens if I head east. And the Dead Places? These are things I need to know about.For more on this topic, see my 10 examples of how to start a short story.9. …And Look Extra Hard at Your EndingYou need to bring your story to a conclusion in a satisfying way that is of a piece with the style and mood of the narrative that you have created. If you have written a taut, sting-in-the-tale mystery, the ending should close things off with a satisfying snap that tells us the case is closed and justice – consistent in some way or other with the internal logic of your piece – has been served.A story that is more reflective and interior in tone, on the other hand, will ideally finish with a line that adds a new perspective or dimension to our understanding of the whole, and keeps rippling and resonating in the reader’s mind long after they have finished reading.The ending can be a shock to the system that makes sense of everything that’s gone before; ‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish’ is an obvious and powerful example of this. Or it can zoom away from the action, just as a camera takes leave of its subject. Or it can inject a twist that calls into doubt everything you’ve read so far. It can sometimes be read two different ways, leaving the reader to work out their own ending.And it can of course just show that the world keeps on turning. My ‘Ella G in a Country Churchyard’, for example, brings a story of an uncomfortable parent-child conversation about mortality to a close with the Dad asking: ‘Ready for some sausages?’ This could be seen as an evasion, but then again there are no adequate answers to the girl’s impossible questions about what happens when we die. Life goes on, and it is almost teatime.10. Get Another ViewDon’t send out the story to any magazine or competition until someone else has read it and fed back to you. And not just anyone, but someone whose judgement you respect, and who can give a candid take on what’s working and what isn’t.You may have a trusted beta reader – perhaps your partner, or a relative or friend – who always reads your stuff, or you may get feedback from a Facebook group. And of course there’s the Townhouse. These are great resources, but in my experience nothing beats being part of a real-life writers’ group.In a writers’ group, you’ll have the experience of reading your words to others – itself often very instructive, as you can often sense where the story is working and where it’s dragging just from the quality of attention in the room. And you’ll get constructive, practical feedback from people who are dealing with the same challenges, albeit from different perspectives and genres. Short stories lend themselves particularly well to group critique, because they are often just the right length to read in full.No doubt there will be feedback – from yourself as well as from others – and you will need to decide which bits you want to act on and which, not: learning the difference is a lifetime’s work. Inevitably you will find yourself returning to step 7, and perhaps steps 8 and 9 too, but that’s no bad thing. Writing is re-writing, remember.How Do You Write A Short Story in One Day? Can you Write A Short Story in One Day?Yes! It’s perfectly possible to write a story in a day, or less. Sometimes, when you get a great idea, the piece – especially it’s a flash or shorter fiction – may emerge fully formed.That’s not to say you’ve only been working on it that day – in my case, a story might get drafted in a couple of hours that I’ve been turning over in the back of my mind for a couple of years.And that’s not to say it’ll be the final version either. While you might be able to complete the draft in a day, it’s always wise to sleep on it and come back to it next day, to review and revise, and to get some other people’s feedback too.Publishing Your Short StorySo, you’ve written your short story, but what next?There are loads of litmags and competitions out there. Many of the editors and organisers are aspiring writers themselves, and can be wonderfully supportive with feedback even when they’re not able to accept your story. You can find useful lists here, here and here.Sometimes there’s a prompt or a theme, which can be a great help when you’re stuck for an idea. With magazines, take some time to read a few stories and get a feel for what they like, and whether you’d be a good fit. Simultaneous submissions are generally acceptable, especially as it can take months to get a response (just make sure you let them know if you get accepted elsewhere). Before you enter, always read the requirements carefully, and get the formatting and labelling right.Have lots of stories on the go, so you move on when you get stuck. ‘At any given moment, I have a half-dozen story ideas shelved in my mind,’ says Benjamin Percy, author of the collections The Language of Elk and Refresh, Refresh. ‘I always choose to write the one that glows brightest.’Above all, don’t be afraid to keep submitting. For most of us, rejection is the norm and an acceptance is the exception. The more you submit, the luckier you’ll get, and the less those rejections will sting.You can do this!

Guest author and blogger Mari Griffith is a bestselling author of historical fiction. For fans of Philippa Gregory and Hilary Mantel, Mari’s debut novel Root of the Tudor Rose has been internationally acclaimed. Read her top tips on making the most of our annual Festival of Writing.I’d kept trying various writers’ advisory groups, but nothing really opened any windows of understanding for me. I had a knowledge of writing after thirty eclectic years in broadcasting, churning out scripts for documentaries, concerts, children’s programmes, the Schools Broadcasting service, even on-air programme promotions. But a novel? That was something very different.Then I came across some publicity for a writers’ weekend conference in York. Coming to my very first Festival of Writing, I found myself among like-minded people there for the same three reasons – to hone craft, to meet other writers and to relish the whole experience.Motivating workshops and one-to-ones provided insights I needed to get me into good habits. I saw the sense of crafting my novel, of getting to know my characters. I learned about scene setting, plot development, pace, character arcs, convincing dialogue, evocative prose … suddenly, there was so much to think about. My 2B pencil was working overtime!Home again, I realised the need to keep up the momentum. I junked my Prologue and twenty thousand words of my current draft and promptly enrolled on the Writers’ Workshop online course with Debi Alper and Emma Darwin. I never regretted it. They were unfailingly focussed, practical and pleasant in their teaching. Emma guided my footsteps as a writer of historical fiction and Debi offered flashes of pure inspiration. I’ll always be grateful for her thoughts on ‘psychic distance’!My association with the Writers’ Workshop has been enormously beneficial. It has given me confidence in my work and the ability to be my own best critic. That’s important for a writer because it means that your book will be as good as you can possibly make it before you show it to anyone else. Anything that can be enhanced thereafter by editors or book doctors becomes a valuable bonus. Chances are that your work will eventually be good enough to publish, if you can find an agent – and you might manage to do that in York, too. It has been known!Ultimately, everything depends on you, what you make of this golden opportunity. Having thought long and hard about it, I’ve drawn on my own experience to come up with six bullet points to help you make the best possible use of everything the Festival of Writing offers:Pick the workshops that best suit your writing to find out how you can improve and market it.Make notes: then write them up when you get home. Don’t trust to memory, otherwise you’ll never remember all the stuff you’re going to learn.Target your Agents and Book Doctors with care: they tend to specialise. Someone who’s looking for Crime Fiction isn’t likely to help you much with quirky chick-lit.Arm yourself with business cards, which give your basic contact details – you’ll be amazed how many you dish out.Don’t be pushy – not everyone wants your opinion on Kafka.And don’t be shy, either. If you spot a spare seat at the breakfast table next to a bunch of Book Doctors, just ask politely if you can join them. They’ll make room for you. Honestly!These days, I’m a veteran delegate at the Festival. I keep coming back because there’s always something new to learn.It’s fun, too, and that’s not just the craic in the bar of an evening. What’s also special is that since delegates, agents, book doctors and workshop leaders are all on campus for the whole weekend, you’re likely to enjoy useful conversations over lunch, while browsing in the book shop or even in the queue for the loo. I once shared a taxi from York station with Julie Cohen and had a fascinating chat. Another time, I chose Andrew Wille as my book doctor and he remains an encouraging friend to this day.Now I’ve had two books published and my third is a work in progress. I’m delighted to say that I know how it feels to have written a bestselling book (marvellous, in case you were wondering!), and I have the satisfaction of knowing that people do read and enjoy what I write. That’s very special.And the downside of all this? Well, there isn’t one. True, it’s not a cheap weekend, but it’s probably a lot cheaper than the membership fee at the local golf club.And you need to weigh the cost against the result – which is invaluable.

As an editor, I’ve recently read a couple of submissions where the author is writing about someone they knew, in one case a brave, soldier father, in another an interesting aunt. Our biographies are often submerged in our novels: the idea of a roman a clef was precisely this: thinly veiled characters whose identity could be guessed at by the reader. Many authors find this a useful device from Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, to Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, to Scott Fitzgerald in Tender is the Night or even Violet Trefusis in Broderie Anglaise.It’s not so much why authors write about their own families and people they know, it’s how they go about it. Do you stick to facts or do you muck about with them?My first novel was based on the life of a cousin of my great-grandfather’s, a soldier in the Great War who kept some (rather dull) war diaries that were published after his death in 1918 and are often quoted by military historians because of the pinpoint accuracy of his observations of the landscape and his obsession (very necessary) with the ranging of his guns as an artillery officer.But what interested me was what he was really thinking on the inside.I’d found draft diaries in one of those tin boxes with his name in white paint on the side and the top that hinted at a much more interesting interior life: he was a Catholic convert and obsessed by his religion, he had a tender but slightly tentative relationship with his wife and was enjoying the war enormously, although he writes about his suffering, too. Even more interesting was the fact that all the (to me) interesting bits had been scored out with blue pencil before they were published.Here was my subject, I felt.But this was my first novel, how the hell did I go about taking emotional possession of someone who had really existed? The facts of his life daunted me to start with: they seemed so final and definitive, how could I change them and what would I change them into? And not only that, but the detail of the Great War almost crushed me to death. It’s a huge subject about which I knew not very much.I mentioned what I was doing to someone (a great mistake, never mention tender subjects like this at a dinner party as you run the risk of exposing yourself to the highly contagious disease of doubt, rife amongst authors), and he said, ‘Oh, but hasn’t the First World War been done to death?’Well, yes, it had. But not by me, I decided, after a bad day or two. I proceeded with my task.My hero, Gerard (his middle name, in fact), died in real life in 1918. Did that mean I had to somehow write about four whole years of the most written about war in history? After about a year, I realized that I could do whatever I liked. For fictional purposes, I killed him off sometime in early 1915, but I used the text of the real (and indescribably moving) letter written by the priest who buried him to his wife in the actual novel, a letter that afterwards appeared in The Faber Book of Letters, adding another twist to the whole roman a clef business.When the book was reviewed in the TLS, the reviewer knew of my character’s real identity and mentioned his quite famous war diaries in the review. So what was true and what wasn’t? By the end I couldn’t remember and quite frequently confused my own fiction with fact, so successful had I become at my task of ‘playing God’. In fact, immersing myself in the First World War changed my life for good. As a result, I took my then young children every Remembrance Sunday to the ravishingly beautiful service in Westminster Abbey, something they remember now with great intensity. We visit the real Gerard’s grave whenever we go that way through the haunted battlefields of the Somme, too – and I always weep.If you want to take emotional possession of your characters, let them take the same of you.

When Is A Book ‘Not Asian Enough’?There’s been a lot of recent discussion about diversity in publishing. A lot of people lament the fact that there aren’t enough diverse characters in fiction and that there\'s little inclusive language in books. There is diversity in the people who live in the UK and diversity in the subsection of those people who write books, so why the mismatch? As part of this discussion someone brought up the fact that books with BAME protagonists are judged by a different set of criteria – one of which is is this book Asian enough/black enough?This question winds me up. What is the benchmark for a book being Asian enough? Who sets it? How often is it reviewed? What is the point of it?I write romance, arguably the biggest-selling genre in fiction. I’m British/Sri Lankan. Asian is part of who I am. It’s not something I consciously work at. If you asked me to list the things that define me, my Sri Lankan background would not make it into the top five. As a kid, I lived in a regular house, went to a regular school, and read the same books, watched the same TV shows and listened to the chart show every week, just like the rest of my classmates. Of course, there was the odd Goodness Gracious Me moment, but mostly, my life wasn’t vastly different to my friends’. It wasn’t as though as soon as I shut the front door I was transported into another world of saris and spices. Yet, if you read mainstream fiction featuring Asian characters you’d think that was the case. No wonder everyone was so astounded that Nadiya Hussein chose to flavour her cheesecakes with fizzy pop on The Great British Bake Off (or that she even baked in the first place!).My first book featured middle-class Sri Lankan characters. I wrote about people who were, basically, a bit like the Asian people I know. I submitted it to agents and small publishers, I had a few notes back, and a few requests for the full manuscript. ‘Asian Lit’ was popular at the time; White Teeth and Brick Lane were still riding high. The most useful feedback I got back was “I like it, but I don’t know where I’d place it”. It wasn’t Asian enough for literary fiction and not white enough for genre fiction.Being the pragmatic sort, I wrote the next book with white main characters. Given that I write about middle-class people, the things that worry white characters would be pretty much the same as the things that bother Asian characters – job security, sexism, bullying, the quest for love. Besides, people are people, regardless of what shade they are, and white characters have the same range of feelings as brown ones. I placed this book with a small publisher relatively easily.Why Diversity In Genre Fiction Is ImportantIf you want fiction to represent the experiences of a wide range of people, you need accept those experiences as they are presented – even if they don’t fit into your preconceived notions. Rich people face different challenges to poor ones. First-generation immigrants face different challenges to their children. No two Asian homes are the same, because no two families could be the same. So perhaps we should stop trying to pretend that they are. How can fiction show the reading public any variety in the Asian experience of life if the publishing industry insists that that very variety does not exist (or, more accurately, that the reading public won’t buy it)?‘Diversity’ isn’t about showing Asian characters doing things in an \'Asian\' way, or gay characters doing things in a \'gay\' way or disabled characters doing things in a disability-adapted way all the time. That’s just pandering to stereotype. Diversity is achieved by showing characters of different backgrounds doing things in their own way and telling their unique stories. If it makes minority characters look less different than the majority expect them to be, that might even be a good thing.In case you hadn’t guessed, I write under a pen name since my real name is difficult to spell, and it helps to keep my writing career distinct from my day job – but I have always submitted my work to publishers and agents under my real name. I think (although I have no data to back this up) that the ‘is it Asian enough’ question arises not from racism as such, but from a skewed assumption of what readers can stomach.As a point of principle, I always have at least one Sri Lankan secondary character in each book. In my latest book (Please Release Me) the heroine is mixed race. I’m sneaking minority characters into mainstream genre fiction one book at a time. Interestingly, readers don’t seem bothered at all.

Guest author, journalist and blogger Sam Jordison shares how he wrote Enemies of the People in six weeks.One of the biggest challenges any writers must face is, you know, actually writing. The sitting down in front of a computer and typing side of things. The finding the time. The ploughing on: despite blocks and distractions. The getting out of the words even though you might have a headache. The thinking and the doing and the typing. Did I mention the typing? No books are ever published without typing.And put like that, it sounds too obvious to even mention, yet the physical act of writing is one of the most fascinating and difficult parts of the process. At literary festivals, writers are invariably asked questions about how they carve out the space to sit down and write, and how you keep going when the going gets tough. Some of the best interviews on the craft of writing in the world are those published by the Paris Review and the first thing they always ask is a variation on the question of pen, pencil, typewriter or word processor?When I teach my Creative Non-Fiction Course, meanwhile, I always like to try to address the question of how you physically get the words down. The advice I offer is generally to try to be flexible, because not only is every person different, every writing day is different. One of the worst things you can do is beat yourself up and obsess over the fact that you haven’t hit an arbitrary word count. Equally, another of the worst things you can also do is to fail to get any words down on a regular basis. Most often I try to suggest that people get into a sensible routine that fits them, not to worry too much if progress is slow, but to always try to make progress.I like to hope that this is good advice. I’ve followed it myself in the past – and managed to produce a dozen books and plenty of journalism by doing so. But more recently, I have discovered two things that can work even better: a fierce deadline and a burning sense of injustice.If you have a burning desire to write a memoir, a piece of journalism, or a biography then use that energy to propel your writing.In early spring of 2017, I was asked to write a book about the people that brought us Trump and Brexit and the general sense that the world is spinning off its axis. I was also asked if I could write it in about six weeks. And make it reasonably long.My first thought was: oh, hell yeah!The rage I was feeling at the collapse of our democracies and the rise of a dangerous and malevolent right-wing would perhaps start to feel a bit less impotent. If I could channel my anger into a book that would tell the truth about post-truth and provide real facts instead of alternative-facts, I might have a small hope of influencing things for the better.My second thought was: oh, hell.I’d have to do an awful lot of writing and research in a very short time. And I’d have to – as already discussed – actually sit down and do it.But that’s when the two weapons of clock pressure and anger really kicked in.I didn’t spend any more time wondering about how I was going to write the book. I didn’t have time for that. All I could do was get going. If I wanted to nail the people who had done so much to make things so bad, I just had to get going.I’m not going to lie and say it was easy. It was stressful and tiring and my head was whirring for six solid weeks. But lots of the things that usually get in the way of writing just weren’t around. There was no putting it off until tomorrow, because tomorrow was too late. There was no wondering if I was doing things the right way – because I was arguing with people who seemed so obviously wrong.And it worked. At the risk of sounding like a Nike advert, the thing I realised that sometimes the best approach to writing is to just do it. I got the words down. And as I type this article, I’m waiting for the first copy of the resultant book to come through the post. It’s called Enemies Of The People and even though it probably has a few rough edges, and a few clumsy sentences that I might have improved if I had more time, I also hope that the way it was written has given it rawness and energy and a burning sense of indignation. It feels important. And I’m very glad I sat down and wrote it.Sam Jordison’s Enemies Of The People was published in the UK on 1 June 2017.

Something to be conscious of as a fiction writer is the market for which you write. Young Adult (or YA) fiction isn’t a genre, but it’s a defined label in publishing, typically considered for readers aged 12-18, and those who are coming of age, though this too is fluid.Since the publication of titles like J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, YA is a term you need to know if you’re writing fiction for young adults, and want to convince literary agents and publishers that you can do it well.The most important thing is to always read debuts in your genre, and for the age you’d like to write for. These are the books publishers are looking for.Whilst it’s true publishing trends will always shift, books read by your ideal ‘audience’ are evidently the books they enjoy, so it pays (literally) to be conscious of them.Read on for our top tips on how to write a YA novel and learn about the market for this age group.Step 1: Write Your Own TrendsetterIt pays to be aware of trends in young adult literature and the market, if only so you can buck them a little.This is a balance, however.Readers of The Bookseller can see regular updates on new UK book deals, and every spring, may espy annual coverage of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, with ample talk and speculation of what’s hot and selling as foreign printing rights are bought and sold. There will always guaranteed be a sentence or two on trends, on what publishers of Middle Grade or Young Adult books are hunting for.It’s as well to be conscious of trends, but what’s trendy will soon be outdated. If you’re still writing, a hot topic now could be obsolete by the time you’ve finished your novel.Trends move fast, and a single book can also change things.Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight happened to be a YA phenomenon, but the ensuing paranormal romances ‘competing’ for attention with Twilight blurred a little into one another, even as the tide continued and anticipated the rise of dystopian fiction, Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, James Dashner’s The Maze Runner, and so on.The lesson of all this is to try and present an idea (even an old idea) authentically. Vampires have been written about before and Bram Stoker’s titular Dracula preying upon Lucy Westenra laid the founding of an established trope. Twilight just happened to hit a certain chord for its readership and this at once predicated and, in so doing, slightly nullified its trend.So be careful and cautious of trends, since these can be a double-edged sword. Trends are transient, they escalate and subsist again.Whilst it pays to know your audience and what’s in the bookshops, to be conscious of the books teenagers are drawn to and reflect on why this is the case, bear in mind trendsetter-novels aren’t necessarily the books you want to compete with. Satiated trends mean a saturated book market (for the time being).Even if you’re ahead of the bookshops, trying to keep up with publishing news and new book deals, what you know now won’t be the thing your writing can keep up with.You’ll need to write your own trendsetter.Step 2: Read, Read, Read YA FictionThat said, read around and shop as much as you can for YA fiction, obvious or intuitive as this may sound. Your novel can’t exist in a vacuum. It’s no good disregarding what your audience is reading now, so know YA books to know your audience.You’ll need to write in this subtle tension, conscious of taste in YA, of past commercial successes, making your novel similar enough and yet entirely original.  You must create a book that fits into the market.Read around the sort of thing already out there you’d like to write, too. It’s not that vampire-human romances hadn’t been written about before Stephenie Meyer’s Bella and Edward. It’s not that Greek gods hadn’t been written about before Percy Jackson and the Olympians from Rick Riordan. It’s been observed how similar J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of being a Wallflower are, etc.You’ll want your book to fit with a canon of similar stories, without just writing ‘copies’ of things done before.YA novels like Beauty by Robin McKinley, A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas or Uprooted by Naomi Novik share links to Beauty and the Beast, but each of those books is still unique. The same is true of books like Ash by Malinda Lo or Cinder by Marissa Meyer, with ties to Cinderella.It’s just that an old idea was reworked by an author in new ways.So learn what teenagers like, then read what they like. (If you’re not sure, look up book blogs like The Mile-Long Bookshelf.) How does your novel compare to the YA books you’ve found? How do you feel your own work will be judged?It’s also worth noting that it pays to read contemporary YA fiction. Classical lyricism and verbosity needn’t concern you so much as writing a resonant, gripping story to hook modern readers.There have been various game-changers in fiction-publishing for young people. Melvin Burgess’ Junk (or Smack in the US) was one. The book won the Carnegie Prize and Guardian Children’s Fiction Award in the UK in 1996. Whilst its subject (heroin addiction) caused ripples of shock, Junk paved the way to an increasingly mandatory style of authentic, honest, raw writing that’s now commonplace in YA publishing.The success of Junk among its readers, with its prize-winning status, changed perceptions and sent publishers a message.What’s needed in successful YA fiction is resonant, emotional experience teenage readers can connect with.Step 3: Know Your Subject (And Write Sensitively About It)If you’re also thinking of writing a young adult novel on a possibly more controversial topic, explore sensitively and with all due research. Don’t just write to shock. Write to be poignant, and so to connect.The Fault in our Stars by John Green caused a stir when it was accused of being ‘sick lit’ (a pair of terminally ill teenagers fall in love). Whilst its subject seemed to ‘shock’ some adults, its poignancy that so stirred readers nullifies these sorts of ‘grown-up’ objections.Who cares?The Fault in our Stars isn’t a shocking novel. It’s a moving one. It’s been adapted for film, its catch-lines passing into contemporary language via its readership. (‘Okay?’ ‘Okay.’)Melvin Burgess has shared how his novel Junk, about teenage drug addiction, has been life-changing for some teenage readers, but it’s important to note Melvin Burgess knew his setting. He knew these emotional landscapes.More recently, Lisa Williamson wrote a resonant transgender protagonist in her YA novel The Art of Being Normal, though she herself is cisgender, but she’s spent time working for the UK’s Gender Identity Development Service. She brought her experiences to her writing.Bear in mind, though, LGBT+ is not its own separate genre or subgenre, nor should fiction be defined by country or ethnicity, as still per some bookstores.Patrick Ness’ novel More than This features protagonist Seth, who is gay, but this is incidental to its main plot and it’s okay for this to be the case. Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell is a high-school love story between a Korean boy and an American girl, and sometimes it need only be this simple.You needn’t write clunkily to make a point.As Rainbow Rowell herself has said:“Why is Park Korean?” The first time I was asked that question, three or four months ago, I had a pretty short answer: “Because Park is Korean.” … Because Park was always Korean. Because I think there should be more Asian-American characters in YA, especially boys. (And also more chubby girls.) Because it’s up to people like me, who write, to write them.Only by writing sensitively and incidentally can writers help make sure all sorts of characters become unquestioned players of mainstream fiction, not sectioned by ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability or anything else.Everyone, everything, should be mainstream, especially in YA and new adult publishing.Teenagers, who will be faster than adults to question norms and pick up on injustices, should be catered to in the novels they read and not be defrauded in this respect.Appreciate and accommodate for diversity in your own YA writing.It’s good also to have first-hand experience of what you’re writing, but if not, the importance of empathy and careful research to create an authentic emotional experience can’t be stressed enough.Step 4: Know Your Audience (And Keep Prose Authentic)This is important. You must know your audience. You can’t write about living in a teenage character’s shoes unless you know teenagers well. If you can’t remember or don’t care, find someone else to write about and to.YA readers will be looking for experiences outside their own, looking for ways to challenge and break rules, and will be (strongly) averse to feeling patronised or educated in fiction. Write about being a teenager, and never write to educate.Again – to best do this, read and read up on YA novels that are doing well.Respecting ‘voice’, too, author Joan Aiken has also observed adolescents are ‘lightning-quick to spot hypocrisy or artificiality’. Never patronise and never attempt a ‘coolness’ that can’t sound organic, at home and natural in your first-person narratives.An inauthentic teenage voice will destroy your book before it ever reaches a literary agent. This offers a good reason YA fiction should be taken seriously.A manuscript assessment can also certainly give you invaluable editorial feedback with insights into the commercial perspective that drives YA publishing, and to harness your own voice in a way that sounds both raw and compelling in YA fiction.Happy writing!

I was recently asked to recommend some books on how to write a book and on any related topics. I started to trot out the obvious suggestions - the well-known best books on writing fiction, on creative writing, on how to improve writing - then realised there was a real trove of material out there. So, with some short comments, here are my top suggestions, by writers, on writing:Let’s get the two most obvious ones out of the way to start!1. Getting Published by Harry Bingham. A reliable guide to traditional publishing and finding an agent.2. How To Write by Harry Bingham. How To Write gets excellent reader-feedback. It doesn’t pick out one single aspect of technique or pretend that you can learn how to write in a couple of months. It’s a big, meaty, book on every part of a writer’s toolkit.3. On writing: A memoir of the craft by Stephen King. You needn’t be a fan of Stephen King’s to enjoy this honest, compelling tome – and I know it has legions of fans. For me, the most striking part was King’s list of the books he read in any given year. That list is intelligent and eclectic and goes to show that good writers simply can’t read too much or too well.4. Story by Robert McKee. A book for screenwriters, but still one of the best analyses around. This book belongs in the pantheon, no question.5. Let’s Get Digital by David Gaughran. A key text for the new generation of self-published authors. David’s book should be read in conjunction with his Let’s Get Visible.6. Write. Publish. Repeat. by Johnny B Truant and Sean Platt. The strategies in the Write. Publish. Repeat book won’t work for most writers. Those authors’ basic mantra is to write heaps and heaps of material and build a career as much from the volume of output as from its quality. I can’t, as something of a purist myself, really get excited about that approach, but you still need to read the book. It’s got a lot to say, and it’s usually right.7. Aspects of the Novel by EM Forster. The following 5 titles aren\'t quite how-to guides, but deserve a place on this list nonetheless.8. 10 Rules of writing by Elmore Leonard. A brief (and somewhat tongue in cheek) list of suggestions. You could probably break all of Leonard’s rules and do just fine – and indeed, I do quite often break them.9. The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler. This essay is a vastly important milestone in the development of crime fiction: a manifesto for a new age, and a manifesto that has echoed well beyond the walls of that genre.10. The Art of the Novel by Milan Kundera. It’s important to read what writers have to say about writing – and a variety of writers at that.11. Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov. You won’t always agree, and you don’t have to. The important thing is that you run the arguments in your head.12. How Fiction Works by James Wood. Wood is arguably today’s most influential critic – and he writes beautifully. My comment above that you need to run the arguments in your head applies here too. Wood’s book offers a personal and partial view. (He loves sentences and doesn’t, astonishingly, even mention story.) But he’s so good that his partial is worth most people’s everything.13. Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. Not really the how-to book that most people think it is. But it’s still fun and still worth a look.14. Imagine by Jonah Lehrer. Part of a new wave of popular neuroscience. This is not specifically about writing but is, for my money, very illuminating indeed about the creative process.15. Wired for Story by Lisa Cron. Also popular neuroscience. If you like something with more how-to-ish ambition, you’ll certainly get more from Cron’s book.16. The Elements of Style William Strunk Jr. A must-read on a list like this.17. Reading like a Writer by Francine Prose. Well-written, thoughtful, gently inspiring. One of the best books on how to write a novel.18. Word Painting by Rebecca McClanahan. Elmore Leonard would presumably want to kill Rebecca McClanahan, but I’d be on Rebecca’s side.19. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. An approach to creativity more than, directly, a how-to-write-a-bestseller type book. But it’s great, heartfelt.20. Stein on Writing by Sol Stein. Sol Stein was a very respected editor (as well as being a novelist himself). Stein on Writing is his attempt to set down the rules by which he’s lived. It was the first how-to book of this sort that I read, and I still have a soft spot for it, although the tone can be a little self-important at times.And finally, some other books that have, at the very least, been thought-provoking and helpful ones for me:21. Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell22. Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon23. The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler24. Outlining your Novel by KM Weiland25. Where Do You Get Your Ideas? by Fred White26. From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler27. A Dash of Style by Noah Lukeman28. The 4 a.m. Breakthrough by Brian Kitely29. Nail Your Novel by Roz Morris30. The Creative Habit by Twyla TharpNeed more writing advice? Or if you need more recommendations, then try popping your favourite book into a book recommendation tool and see what other users are raving about. Good luck, and have fun.

Clarity is key in getting our point across as writers. When our writing is clear, our meaning is clear. When our writing is unclear, our meaning is muddled. And when our meaning is muddled, our readers can’t properly engage with our work.Fortunately, you can improve the clarity of your writing by brushing up on a few key fundamentals.This article contains four key tips and some examples of clarity in writing. How To Improve The Clarity Of Your WritingClarity starts at the sentence level. Think about your sentences as mini movies that your readers play in their heads. They need to know the actors and the actions of these mini movies to correctly picture what’s going on. If your writing is unclear at the sentence level, your readers won’t understand what’s happening in your work. Worse yet, they may disengage from your writing because they can’t understand it.We start by thinking about clarity at the sentence level because if your sentences aren’t clear, your paragraphs won’t be clear. If your paragraphs aren’t clear, the rest of your work won’t be clear. Unsure about how to ensure your sentences are clear and easy to read? Not to worry. Let’s take a look at four easy ways to improve sentence level clarity.1. Reduce Sticky SentencesThere are two types of words in sentences: working words, which convey meaning to the reader and are essential to the purpose of the sentence, and glue words, which are the extra words that hold sentences together. Glue words aren’t essential to the meaning of your sentence. They’re not the actors or the actions. If you remove or rewrite your sentence to eliminate these glue words, the sentence will have the same meaning. It may even be more clear for your readers to understand. Sticky sentences are sentences that contain too many glue words. They should be rewritten to improve clarity for your readers.While glue words are important to make your sentence coherent, when you have too many in a sentence, it becomes hard to read. By removing unnecessary glue words, your sentence becomes clearer.Consider the following: It doesn’t matter what kind of coffee I buy, where it’s from, or if it’s organic or not—I need to have cream because I really don’t like how the bitterness makes me feel.I add cream to my coffee because the bitter taste makes me feel unwell.Each sentence has the same main idea: that the narrator can’t drink coffee because it makes him or her feel sick. However, the second sentence is clearer and easier to read than the first because it has fewer glue words. The meaning isn’t obscured by extra words.You should aim for an average of less than 40% glue words in your sentences. That doesn’t mean that all of your sentences have less than 40% glue words. Some may have 50%, some may have 30%. As long as your document averages at 40% glue words, your work will be clear.This is also important to consider when writing a great opening sentence for your novel.2. Avoid ClichésClichés are phrases like actions speak louder than words, love is blind, and the grass is always greener on the other side. Many writers use clichés when they’re trying to sound relatable or to make their writing more accessible. Unfortunately, clichés often do the opposite: alienate readers that aren’t familiar with the phrase or do not understand it.Even though these expressions are older than dirt (see what I did there?), when isolated, their meaning isn’t clear. This reduces the chance that your audience will engage with your work, especially if your audience is made up of non-native speakers. When editing, aim to remove phrases that aren’t universal or don’t translate well into a different language. That way, your work is accessible to everyone.3. Make Your Subjects And Verbs Shine With Active VoiceWhen your sentence is in the active voice, your subjects and verbs are clear. When it’s in passive voice, your subject is unclear.Here’s an example of passive voice:The sample was selected.Who is selecting the sample? We’re not sure, because the sentence doesn’t say so. Passive voice leaves your sentence open for interpretation by the reader, especially when it’s uncertain who or what is performing the action in the sentence.Consider the same sentence in active voice:Researchers selected the sample.Now, the subject is clear. Readers won’t need to think very hard to understand this sentence.There are a few types of writing where passive voice has its place, but typically, active voice is better. While passive voice isn’t technically wrong, it can make your writing harder to understand, which, in turn, makes it less engaging. 4. Use Precise WordsAdverbs are words that add colour or style to your adjectives and verbs. Like passive voice, adverbs aren’t grammatically incorrect, but they can reduce clarity because they prop up boring, imprecise verbs.For instance: Scarlett ran really fast.Scarlett sprinted.In the first example, the word “really” is an adverb that modifies “fast,” which is itself an adverb that modifies the verb “ran.” The word choice in the second sentence, “sprinted,” is more precise. Replacing adverb + verb constructions with a precise strong verb will paint a clear picture for your reader.Common adverbs that are guilty of propping up weak word choices include:reallyjustveryactuallyin order todefinitelyabsolutelyIf you see these words in your writing, you can likely improve your clarity by cutting them and choosing a more specific verb or adjective in your sentence.Do You Want Help From Prowritingaid?Wondering how you can easily improve the clarity of your writing? An editing tool can help. ProWritingAid’s 20 reports identify clarity issues in your writing and make suggestions for fixing them. Here’s just a taste of what ProWritingAid can do:The Writing Style Report at ProWritingAid can help you find and fix instances of passive voice in your writing. The Writing Style Report at ProWritingAid can help you identify unwanted adverbs and use precise verbs in their place. The Clichés and Redundancies Report at ProWritingAid highlights these phrases so you can brainstorm new and better ways to say the same thing. The Sticky Sentences Report at ProWritingAid highlights sticky sentences and identifies the glue words so you know what to change or remove to improve your sentences.Clarity In Writing: Final ThoughtsYou can have the best idea in the world, but if your writing isn’t clear, readers won’t know it. To make your writing clearer, you have to start with your sentences: the fundamental building blocks of your writing. By eliminating adverbs, making passive verbs active, forgoing clichés, and removing extra words in your sentences, you’ll ensure your writing effectively communicates your ideas.

Travel writing is a popular but challenging market segment. You’ve moved to France and want to tell people about it? Unless you’ve got magical writing gifts, you’re almost certain to find that ground has already been over-cultivated, and a literary agent is likely to reject your manuscript on that basis alone.Any exotic location or (really) any genuinely original way of exploring those locations will stand out from the pack. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is one great example, as is Along the Enchanted Way by William Blackler.Novelty and comedy can also work: pogoing round Ireland, or riding a goat to Kandahar are all hooks on which to tell a tale. Even a simple bus journey can make a riveting read. It’s how you write about it that matters.Seven Tips For A Successful Travel Book1. Do your research – pre-travel research enriches the whole experience; post-travel research adds depth and accuracy to what you write. While travelling keep notes or you will forget. Take photographs to illustrate your words.2. Be curious – about everything and everybody. What makes many travel books enjoyable is the people encountered along the way. Talk to everyone and never stop asking questions. Listen with a sympathetic ear. Look behind the glossy exterior, delve beneath the surface.3. Have a sense of wonder – Colours seemed so much brighter when we were children. Try to see the world with that same freshness of vision.4. Use all your senses – sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. Develop a feeling for the culture and history of a place. And a sense of humour allied to keen observation can make the most ordinary of experiences entertaining.5. Don’t neglect your inner journey – Many of the most successful travel books are as much about the emotional journey the author makes as they are about the physical journey. The resolution of a personal issue or a change in attitude adds interest and brings the reader closer to the author.6. Write with passion – To fully engage the reader (or indeed, a literary agent) your book must have something in it that you care about strongly. An issue, a cause, the pursuit of a lifelong ambition. Without this, your writing is in danger of seeming flat.7. Be an open door, be receptive. Travel with open eyes, ears, mind and heart.

Guest author and blogger William Ryan is author of the Captain Korolev Novels, shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year, The Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award, the Ellis Peters and John Creasey Daggers and the Irish Crime Novel of the Year (twice).He teaches on the Crime Writing Masters at City University in London and shared with us this excerpt, expanded and adapted, from the book he co-wrote with M.R. Hall, Writing Crime Fiction, on writing great supporting characters. Whatever your genre, enjoy these words of wisdom.Who Is A Supporting Character?When you’re writing a mystery novel, or any novel for that matter, you need a protagonist who works for the novel. That means, in my view anyway, that they have to be intriguing enough that the reader wants to spend time in their company, that they are the character whose eyes this story must be told through and that they are the character who makes all the key decisions that take the story from the beginning to the end. Let’s presume you have just such a character, filled with multiple layers and tempting internal contradictions. Now you need to populate the rest of the novel. So you need some subsidiary characters.Subsidiary characters don’t have the same functions as the detective in a mystery novel – they don’t drive the story in the way that the central character does, although they may be key to how it progresses. In general, they exist for one of the following four purposes:To be the victim of a crime, either directly or indirectly.To prevent or obstruct the detective from solving a crime.To assist the detective in solving a crime.To tell us something about the detective or the setting.For example, a child may set out to mislead a detective by lying to them but actually end up assisting their investigation by inadvertently revealing a key piece of information. This unintentional assistance might result in the child’s murder, making them a victim, and the discovery of their body may reveal a more sensitive side to the detective’s personality that hasn’t been apparent until then. That character is earning their place on the page. There are always exceptions, of course, but if a secondary character doesn’t fulfil at least one of the four roles outlined above, you probably need to reconsider their inclusion. You may still have a valid reason for keeping them, but it’s probably a good idea to work out what it is. If the reason you come up with isn’t related to pushing the story forward then you may well want to kill them off. It’s seldom the case that a character gets a free ride in a good crime novel – they have to work for you, and for the central character, or they have to go.Aside from asking what their role in the novel is, it’s always a good initial question to ask of each of your secondary characters: ‘who do you appear to be, and who are you underneath?’ By hiding something about a character at the outset, you will, almost effortlessly, make them interesting and potentially surprising. Also, because you know that you’ll have to reveal the truth about them later on, you’ll begin to foreshadow that truth and, because you’re going to be straight with your reader, except when you’re misleading them, you’ll be circumspect about confirming the appearance the character maintains at the outset – and the reader will pick up on that.You will also need to understand why each of your subsidiary characters behaves the way they do in the novel. Even an insane serial killer will generally have a reason for their murder spree – no matter how bizarre it might be – and discovering the reason why a murder has been committed is often to discover the killer. Not every character in the novel is a murderer but that doesn’t mean their motivation shouldn’t be explored. If the detective’s spouse leaves them half way through the book then your readers will want to know why. Likewise the senior officer to whom a police detective reports may well have valid reasons for interfering in their investigation and trying to rein them in, and it will help if you, and the reader, understand their concerns.Often the motivation for the subsidiary character’s behaviour will have something to do with the central character. Conflict is, after all, going to help drive your plot forward. In Ian Rankin’s The Black Book, Rebus is in conflict, of one sort or another, with every one of the major subsidiary characters, and most of the minor ones as well. The more conflicts you can establish, the more challenges and obstacles your detective is likely to have to overcome. Sometimes the conflicts may be subtle – your detective may be attracted to another character that may, at least initially, not feel the same way about them. This relationship may be only a sub-plot in the novel, but it might tell the reader something of the detective’s character and, hopefully, make the reader warm to him or her. All of the central character’s conflicts with other characters will have a trajectory over the course of the novel and will, generally, be resolved by its end even if, with a series, only in an uneasy truce until the confrontation resumes in the next book.As with the central character, you are going to have to name your subsidiary characters, decide what they look like, where they’ve come from and fill in the details of their personality. With the more minor characters, you may not have to do this – a taxi driver who follows a suspect at the detective’s request isn’t going to have enough time allocated to them in the novel to allow for much more than the briefest of sketches. However, that said, the more time you spend thinking about a character, even if they only make the briefest of appearances, the more vivid they’ll be on the page. It’s a bit like the research you’re going to do for your novel – much of your work won’t make it onto the page. Instead it forms a hidden structure that gives the novel its authenticity. The reader believes in the world you’ve recreated for them, because you’ve done the research and speak with authority on everything you describe. It’s the same with characters – because you know all of this information about them, they acquire a depth on the page.Although there are no absolute rules about the number of secondary characters in a crime mystery, remember that the reader will struggle to get to know more than a dozen with any degree of intimacy (you can discount minor characters who appear for less than a page in coming to this number). Obviously each novel is different and some, by their very nature, will be more heavily populated than others but it’s generally a good idea to be wary of extended casts, especially when their role in the story might be easily combined into another character’s.This brief overview of how to write subsidiary characters has been set in the context of crime fiction, specifically the mystery novel, but it equally applies to most other genres and most literary fiction. If you think of the solution of the crime as being the objective of the detective, then the points discussed above relate to any novel where the protagonist has to overcome challenges, whether external or internal, and conflicts to achieve their objective. For example, romantic fiction tends to work exactly the same way – the lover’s objective, which they may not necessarily be aware of, is to find love in the arms of another character. Most of the other characters are going to either be rivals for the affection of one of the two characters, or exist to provide conflict, assistance or obstruction in relation to the final goal, or be in the novel to give insights into the character of the lover or the loved one.You can certainly include other characters, perhaps for humour or even tragedy, but making sure the characters justify their place in the novel, behave logically, have hidden depths and interact properly with the central character is going to make your novel stronger and, ultimately, better.

At our annual Festival of Writing, we’ve hosted a number of panels with literary agents that give writers the chance to meet, talk and ask questions.(And if you’d like to be one of the first to get Festival of Writing news, including discounts, the best way is to sign up for emails or become a Jericho Writers member.)We have ended past agent panels with a scary-but-brilliant session called Slushpile Live, where some very brave writers stand up, read the first few paragraphs of their work, then get live feedback – X-Factor style – from the assembled agents.One of the main purposes of Slushpile Live is to get writers to understand that a piece of writing shows its quality very quickly indeed. (Which means, by the way, if you are entering any Festival competitions yourself – read your writing aloud before you submit anything.)If the first few paragraphs smell wrong, the whole book is going to be wrong. If, on the other hand, there’s a sense of excitement around those opening paragraphs, you can bet that the writer has real quality. That doesn’t mean that everything’s definitely fine thereafter – a plot might vanish, there might be a confusing sprawl of characters, the basic concept might even be wrong – but at least you know you’re in the hands of someone with genuine talent.That said, let’s jump straight to insider tips that, time and again, caused our panels of agents to groan.7 Novel Starts To Make An Agent GroanOr eight, really. One good way to earn a rejection would be to write terribly, but that doesn’t apply to you and it’s too obvious to include. So seven it is.1) Dreams and Wake-upsThere’s no question that this opening must be the least popular possible gambit with agents. It induced a kind of no-no-no from agents every time it came up – and one of our panellists reckoned she saw these kind of openings in as many as 1 in 8 manuscripts.And yours needs to stand out.Those dreams-to-waking-up moments are just terrible ways to begin a book. Partly because they’re just so common but also because they give the reader a false start. The beginning of a book is where you most want to get the reader involved as quickly as possible and those false starts are achieving the exact opposite of that goal. In other words, they put off the moment when a reader feels “in” the story, and you want that moment to come as soon as possible.2) Starting Your Book Too EarlyA playwriting colleague of mine used to ask her students to share the strongest introductory scenes from their works-in-progress and any time someone submitted something that wasn\'t the first scene of the play, she would tell them to cut the earlier scenes and start with the scene they\'d submitted.You want to start at the closest possible moment to the beginning of your story - so if your story gets started with, let\'s say, Jilly finding a letter sent from her dead husband... don\'t start your novel with five pages of Jilly waking up, thinking about her day, brushing her teeth, making breakfast, dropping her daughter at school, stopping by the bank, and no sign of the letter until god-knows-when. Readers are hungry for story and they won\'t wait for several pages. They might not even wait for one - so get your reader interested in the first paragraph, or even the first line.3) Rushing the PunchlineIf the first two errors have to do with going too slow, this one has to do with going too fast.I once saw an opening page from a new writer that was, in so many ways, a fabulous opening. It was a description of a young woman in Victorian-era New York getting ready to go out. The period wasn’t directly mentioned, but it was suggested by lovely, tactfully-chosen detail. The description of the light and the smells were just right. We felt we already knew something of the woman, thanks to the strength and precision of her voice.Oh, and there was that lovely sniff of story as well. Part of her routine involved winding a bandage around her breasts, in order to flatten her chest and give her the figure of a slender young man. And then I hit the end of that first page, where the writer went from seeding hints of story (why is she passing as a man? who is she? where is she headed?) to delivering an expository ramble that read something like, \"It was necessary for me to dress as a man because when I\'d arrived in New York two years before, I soon discovered that there was painful little employment for a lone female and so I began to disguise myself as a man and...\"So much of the mystery that had been seeded into the opening paragraphs was trampled over by the too-hurried reveal.If the readers wants to know something, that’s great, but don’t be fool enough to tell them. Of course, you will need to reveal some answers at some point - but you should only reveal them once you’ve had time to build other little motors to drive that reader-interest, like introducing some other characters, setting up an intriguing situation, or just generally getting yourself much further into your opening setup.4) Jumping ScenesAnother thing that really doesn’t work is jump-cutting too often in the opening pages. It might work in movies (although, does it?) but on the page it\'s quite a bit more confusing. It\'s quite common to see an author to structure their opening like this:Quick-fire 350 word prologue that is a jump-forward to some exciting scene later in the book.Key scene between protagonist, Jed, and his boss at work.Scene with Jed’s future love-interest, Cara, on a bus in the Kalahari.Then there’s some key backstory involving Jed.Then the book actually starts.Now obviously this kind of setup is a good example of starting too early – but it’s not just that the start of things proper is delayed, it’s also that the reader experience is fractured.Remember that it can be hard for a reader to get into a new novel.On line 1, page 1, the reader doesn’t know the protagonist, their situation, maybe even the setting or the era. The more you break up the opening sequence, the more times you are asking the reader to make the investment of figuring everything out again. (Oh, who is this? Cara? Hmm, she’s new. Does she connect to Jed? Don’t know.)Of course a reader is willing to put some work in, but don’t push it. The more fractured your opening, the more at risk you are losing them.5) Too Many CharactersDon’t crowd your opening page or two with too many characters.It’s the same issue as we’ve just discussed. Your reader is doing plenty of work already, figuring out where they are, what the situation is and so forth. Don’t make the reader also try to keep track of multiple people (especially ones with similar names).Just keep it simple until you’ve hooked your reader. Then you can start to complicate things.For a similar reason, you shouldn’t jump points of view too much (or perhaps at all) in your opening section. Let the reader get into the book, then they’ll be ready to start to explore the minds of other key characters. If you rush that process, you will lose your reader.6) Too Many WordsWe\'re writers, so of course we\'re in love with words. I, too, have been there: you\'ve written a really beautiful sentence that expresses a particular mood or thought... and then you follow it up with seven more sentences that bash away, less gracefully, at the same thought. Or maybe that three-line sentence could actually be ten words and flow much nicer.You cannot edit your work too hard.And you absolutely cannot edit your opening page too hard. Although it’s easy to think only about word count, what you’re really looking for is beautiful writing. Chop out anything that’s wrong, or rewrite it. Get rid of any surplus. It\'s likely that you could cut 25-30% of your opening page and only make it better -- or at least you\'ll know then that every word is pulling equal weight.7) Too Big, Too SoonOne of the brave writers we had read at the Festival of Writing delivered an opening paragraph that involved a widower looking round the room he had shared with his dead wife, musing on her memory, then going into the bathroom to give himself a handjob.Now, we’re not prudish, nor are agents – indeed, we like big, bold, daring storytelling. But sex and violence can be off-putting until it’s set in the context of a specific character and their situation.We\'re rarely there at the end of the first page, let alone the first paragraph - so keep your powder dry until your reader is emotionally prepared for the fireworks.An ExceptionListen, there will always be exceptions to all of these rules. Paul Kingsnorth\'s The Wake throws its reader into the deep end of language and setting, leaving you to pick up his hybridized Old English as you hear the narrator talking about plot points and characters you couldn\'t possibly grasp off the bat -- and Toni Morrison\'s Paradise begins indelibly with the lines, \"They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time.\"But they\'re exceptions to the rules, these great novels, written by great writers so in command of their craft that they\'re able to take a risk and have it pay off -- and you can bet that they all edited the daylights out of their novels (see rule number 6). Your novel will tell you whether or not it can pull off an opening trick like that, but only if you\'re absolutely sure you\'re listening closely! And even if it can... why not give these tweaks a shot to see if it gets even stronger?Best of luck!More than ready to get the ball rolling with agents, but just need a little push? Or perhaps you’ve had a few rejections but aren’t sure why? Our Agent Submission Pack Review gives you detailed professional advice on how to perfect your submission and increase your chances of securing an agent. If you\'re not quite at that stage, try out our Opening Section Review for some experienced direction and advice.

Hi! I’m Allie Spencer and I taught at the Festival of Writing in 2018, along with many other fantastic writers, agents and publishers. As tutors, our aim is not just to get you thinking about your writing but thinking differently. Sometimes it’s that extra piece of information or a fresh approach that can make all the difference. This year, one of the things I will be talking about is story and discourse and how you can harness it to see your work in a completely new way.One of the concepts often mentioned in creative writing tutorials is that of ‘showing not telling’. For those of you who have yet to encounter it, ‘show not tell’ means that instead of an author passing information on directly to the reader (‘John felt angry’), that information is instead conveyed indirectly (‘John could not speak; the blood pounded in his head and he felt his fists clench’). This does not mean that one should never ‘tell’ – there are times when that is essential – but it moves the emphasis from what happens in a text, to how the reader can best experience and engage with what is happening. Thinking in terms of story and discourse takes this one step further. It allows an author to separate out action from meaning and therefore focus on creating multi-layered narratives rich in interest and nuance.To begin with, we need to be clear about the terminology. ‘Story’ is the stuff that happens: it is the pure events, the actions, the ‘she got off her chair and walked to the other side of the room’ part. To look back at our show/tell example: ‘he shouted’ is story; ‘he was angry’ is not. However, the story often forms only a small part of the text. The rest is made up of ‘discourses’: the unspoken conversations we as authors have with our readers in order to create atmosphere, implicitly pass on information or suggest ideas that add to the understanding of the ‘story’. Sometimes the ‘story’ and the ‘discourse’ will be one and the same (for example, when an action or event has symbolic or ironic overtones) but, for the most part, they exist independently of one another.So, why should we as writers be particularly interested in discourse?  Isn’t it the same as creating atmosphere or description? Well, not exactly. One of the reasons why we need to be aware of it is because, as authors, our job is to create believable imaginary worlds. Now, our lived experience of the world is not purely a series of consciously-perceived events but instead a mishmash of thoughts, perceptions, emotions, connections, ideas and half-realisations. Sometimes these are entirely subconscious. For example, researchers at the University of Colorado have found that people holding a hot drink, even for a few seconds, judge others around them to have ‘warmer’ personalities than when the same person holds a cup containing an iced liquid. These half-conscious or subconscious thoughts are the real-life equivalents of discourses. By being aware of the power of discourses and how they operate within our writing, we can help make our imagined worlds, and our characters’ reactions to them, as real as possible for our readers.To explore this further, I’d like you to watch the following clip on YouTube. Even though this is a screenplay rather than a piece of prose, the basic divide between story and discourse remains the same. It’s the closing scenes from the pilot episode of ‘Endeavour’, the series about the young Morse set in the1960s:Watch Clip HereA little background for those who do not know either the Endeavour series or the older Inspector Morse programme: the young detective in this clip (Endeavour Morse) does not leave Oxford or resume his degree, as the dialogue suggests. Instead, he stays in the city and progresses up the police ranks until he becomes an inspector.Watch the clip through a couple of times, just to get an idea of what is happening. Then play it again and try to separate out the ‘story’ (action; factual information given to the viewer through dialogue; physical setting etc.) from ‘discourse’ (atmosphere; allusions; emotion; suggestions). Remember that sometimes the ‘story’ will also be ‘discourse’ – be aware of this and try to spot it when it happens.What did you notice? One thing which quickly becomes apparent is the lack of actual ‘story’: a young man walks down some stairs carrying two suitcases and exits a house; he is met by another man (DI Fred Thursday, although this is not mentioned in the clip) standing next to a black Jaguar car, who asks him what time his train is. The older man then tells the younger not to worry about a mistake he has made. The younger man asks if he can drive and they make their way through city streets in the car. They have a conversation about the young man’s future and the older man offers to mentor him. The younger man looks in the rear-view mirror and the face of a third, much older, man appears there. Some music plays. The younger man continues to look in the mirror while the traffic lights change to green. To get his attention, the older man says his surname (‘Morse’), followed by his first name (‘Endeavour’). They drive away and the screen fades to black.It is left to the discourses to transform this sequence of events into a powerful and evocative piece of drama. Right at the start of the clip we are made aware of the emptiness of the house as Endeavour leaves: the fact that no one is there to say farewell indicates the loneliness of the young man’s situation. The ticking clock emphasises the silence in the house and also suggests the theme of passing time which will be key to our understanding of the next few scenes. The subsequent interactions between the two men are laden with symbolism: Endeavour asking to drive and receiving the keys from Thursday suggests he is taking control of his own destiny, for example. Also apparent is the indication that DI Thursday is, in many respects, the man young Endeavour will eventually become: he will reach the same rank in the police force and drive the same make and model of car. The most powerful example of discourse, though, happens at the end, when the face of Morse as a much older man appears in the rear-view mirror: Endeavour is, quite literally, looking at his future. In fact, he appears to see it too because he continues to stare at the mirror and doesn’t pull away when the lights change – the camera shot used to show the green light is from Thursday’s viewpoint, not Endeavour’s. The use of the iconic ‘Inspector Morse’ theme tune at this moment further underlines the connection that has been made between Endeavour’s present and his future: we, the audience, know which road he will take and we have already seen his destination.Of course, there are many other discourses at work in this clip and you are welcome to try and find as many as possible; it is a great example of how writers can use suggestion, prefiguring, metaphor and irony to enrich and add layers of meaning to a narrative. Good writing (whether prose, screenplay or poetry) should always work on more than one level. Being aware of story, discourse and the difference between them will help you to look objectively at your own writing and, if you need to, add in that little bit extra. Your readers will love you for it!Allie had a jam-packed weekend at the Festival of Writing 2018. She hosted a mini-course on How to Write a novel in 3 Hours, a Session 2 workshop on Four Act Structure and her Sunday workshop, ‘Telling Tales – What Makes a Story Come Alive’.

Women’s fiction is a broad category – too broad, really, since women’s interests are as varied as women themselves. (We don’t have ‘men’s fiction’, after all.)Teasing out the heart of fiction women may enjoy lies, possibly, in relationship – and these can be romantic, but also historical or contemporary, comic or serious, commercial or literary. A rollercoaster plot alone may seem insubstantial without heart and drama, stemming from character and relational dynamism.Without reverting to sweeping generalisation (since we all need light and serious fiction), reading women need and often demand similarly thoughtful reading material.We’ve asked one expert – Julia Hamilton, author of Forbidden Fruits and other acclaimed novels – to have her say on what works, what doesn’t and what literary agents are after.Julia Hamilton Shares Her ThoughtsWhat exactly is ‘women’s fiction’? And what differentiates it from ‘romance’?Statistics tell us that women read more than men and they buy more books than men, thus the concerns of women’s lives are very important to today’s market. Women’s fiction includes romance – a big, serious market producing big serious revenues – but women’s fiction, just like the women who read it, has evolved to include subjects and themes that range beyond the constraints of romance. Literary agents will respond especially to work taking old genres and reworking them in new ways.Women’s fiction is a growing market that includes many facets of other genres: it can be literary, it can be commercial, it can be contemporary or it can be a multi-generational saga, witness the success of Rosamund Pilcher. In all cases, however, the woman is the star of the story and her changes and emotional development are the subject...The heart of the story may include romance but it is invariably a novel driven by a relationship at the very core of the plot.Women’s fiction tends to be longer, about 100,000 words or more, but it can be as short as 50,000 words plus. Longer women’s fiction allows the development of multi-layered, multi-charactered subplots. There’ll be more introspection and description and buckets of backstory.A man may be waiting for the heroine of these novels, but he’s not the centre of events. You have stories of sisters or women’s friendships. Every major publisher knows relationships are all and there is almost always a life-affirming resolution, even if the story is a sad one.If you’re interested in writing women’s fiction, then you must read it in all its glorious diversity. If you’re not reading it, you probably won’t be writing it. Don’t worry about where the story will take you – just do it.

Fantasy fiction is a difficult area – and many fantasy first-time writers can neglect the basics. For more, see Geraldine Pinch’s words of wisdom below.How To Write Fantasy: Author Geraldine Pinch Shares TipsWriting fantasy is not an easy option or a quick way to make money, but if you have the imagination to see wonders and the skill to describe them, if you have things to say that can only be said with dragons, then fantasy may be your genre.The best preparation for writing fantasy is to read myths and legends from lots of different cultures.Many fantasy classics are longer than the average novel, but you don’t have to write a multi-volume epic to break into the fantasy market. Anything from 90,000 to 200,000 words is an acceptable length. Ideally, your novel should be satisfying as a standalone work, but perhaps have the potential to be the first of a series.Literary agents see hundreds of manuscripts set in vaguely medieval worlds, in which magic works. There will need to be something distinctive and compelling about your manuscript to make it truly stand out. Don’t base your book on a role-playing game. Don’t feel that you must use the standard cast list of warriors, wizards, dragons, elves, etc. Only write about elves if you are passionately inspired by elves, if you have something new to say about them.Creating new worlds is one of the most enjoyable challenges in fiction. Readers (and that includes literary agents!) should feel that you know everything about your invented world and its history. Getting to that stage may take years of thought, planning and research. Then, be ruthlessly selective. Most of your beloved background material should stay in your notes. Genre novels are expected to be fast-moving, so don’t start with pages of scene-setting and explanation. Plunge into the story as quickly as possible and only tell your readers what they need to know when they need to know it.Your basic plot doesn’t have to be completely original. You might choose to tell an old story with a new twist or from an unusual viewpoint. There will always be a market for classic quest stories and battles between good and evil, but if you don’t genuinely care about how and why the ‘good guys’ win, neither will your readers. If you give your heroes unlimited magical powers, it will be hard to get enough tension and conflict into your plot.Try to restrict the number of ‘voices’ you use to tell your story. If your main viewpoint character is an outsider of some kind, this will make it easier for your readers to identify with her or him. Your characters don’t have to speak in pseudo-archaic language, but they shouldn’t all sound like American teenagers, either.Finally, remember that what works in a fantasy film or comic won’t necessarily work in a novel. Blow-by-blow accounts of sword fights can be boring to read and huge battle scenes just confusing. In a novel, action scenes need to be personalised. Show what an individual warrior is thinking and feeling as he fights, and take your readers right inside the world of your imagination.Then get your manuscript to a literary agent… and best of luck!

How to finish writing a book and schedule your writing time.One of the hardest things about finishing a novel – before you think about ideas, characters, or plotting – is finding time and confidence with all those words to write.Maybe writing a novel seems like a mammoth task, a distant dream.Read on for tips in writing productivity, how to get organised with your writing, and how to finish your book draft.A massive spoiler: you can do it.How To Schedule Your Writing Time (By The Hour)How can you be sure to finish a novel you start?Lots of writers prefer spontaneity to planning out writing times. If vagueness hasn’t been helping, though, setting goals could help make a novel seem less imposing.Goals may adapt as you go on, too (perhaps by the day, if you’ve written something one day that negates what you were planning to do the next day, and so on). This shouldn’t be an inflexible process.Just decide on your writing days per week, how much time you know you’ll roughly have to dedicate to writing on each day.Some days, you may have an hour or two. On others, you know you may just have twenty minutes.Twenty minutes can still count.If you want your novel written, you’ll need determination – and Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope even paid someone to get him up and bring coffee, so he could write in the few hours before he went to work. Even if your designated writing times aren’t every day, they should still be fixed (as much as you can make them).Show up for your writing, keep it habitual.If you’ve been struggling to make time for writing on a more fluid basis, see if actively planning your writing like this makes a difference.How To Set Your Writing Goals (And Achieve Them)Let’s explore this idea of hours more, how you’ll make the time productive, once you’ve scheduled it into your day.Perhaps you’ll allot in your diary (or mobile calendar) an hour of each weekday to writing your novel. List its ideal outcome. Does Chapter 1 need starting? If you’re further on than that, does a scene need revising? Does a ‘filler’ or ‘bridge’ section need getting down on paper, before you go back and figure out how to make it better later?Maybe there’s a weeknight you know you’ll have limited time, so take out just twenty minutes for research, making an outline, editing, or mind-mapping ideas for a scene. Maybe there’s a weekend you know you’ll have lots more time, so set yourself a bigger task.Try giving one ideal outcome to each time you write, to help turn your novel into a manageable project (so if you do more than that, wonderful).Few people can find long stints of time to write as they’d like. The only agreed solution (between the ‘planners’ and the ‘pantsters’) is to carve writing hours into a schedule, then stick to them, making them useful.You can always break up your writing time with something called the Pomodoro technique, too – 25 minutes of work, then 5 minutes to break – rewarding yourself as you go. Or think of a time of day when you feel most creative- such as early afternoon- and schedule some time then.Bring your close family and friends along, too. Your desire to write is a part of you, so having support and understanding from others will help.How To Protect Your Writing Space (And Headspace)Whilst it’s possible to write anywhere, your headspace and surrounding environment can help you keep up a writing discipline.Surround yourself with writerly comforts. Some need black coffee, others need green tea. Some need quiet, others need jazzy playlists. Some need cushions, others need a wrist support. Some need scattered notes, others need filing systems.Make your writing spot a place you’ll literally love coming to.If it’s just not possible to create a makeshift writing space at home, settle yourself where you’ll feel comfortable, even if it’s just in bed with a laptop. (And why not?)Respecting your physical space, the bustle of a café could be less taxing than the bustle of home in terms of productivity. If you need to remove yourself from home distractions for a bit, why not take yourself to a coffee or lunch? Treat yourself to whatever feeds your writer’s brain. Perhaps during a lunch break at work, you’ll be able to take yourself and your laptop to a café somewhere.Also, any space (and anyone’s headspace) nowadays is easy to infiltrate with wi-fi. Protect focus by turning off the wi-fi. (You can always ‘reward’ yourself with the Internet later.)Keep things fun, just keep yourself to task, too.How To Keep Going And Finish Your NovelFirst, Start Now.There’s never going to be a time when you’re readier to write than the present. Start writing, then keep it habitual, even between projects. Carry a notebook and pen with you. Try jotting ideas on the go. If you’re a first time writer, try checking out this page for extra advice and inspiration!Second, Release Some Pressure.Allow yourself to be carried along, to enjoy and let loose. Allow your first draft to be imperfect because otherwise it can’t get written. You’ll have time to edit once it’s out on a page, but you can’t edit from nothing (editing, by-the-by, we can help with once you’re ready).Third, You Can Do It.If you’ve set yourself a word count of 10,000 words every month (as an example, aiming for between 2,000-3,000 words per weekend), you could have a first working draft in less than a year before all your structural editing and revisions go in.Fourth, Remind Yourself How Much You Want This.If you want to be published, you’ll need to be resilient, as well as kind to yourself. Getting a first draft out is hard, and a first draft is allowed to be flawed before you go back and edit.Oh, And Fifth?Get some damn help! Our editorial services are there for your assistance, as well as an incredible self-editing course that will help you on your way to finishing your novel. Most importantly, hang around in a supportive writing community, crammed with expert resources, that will help you achieve what you want to achieve.

In this article we will break down all you need to know about the unreliable narrator.Contains spoilers!We’re going to figure out who the unreliable narrator is and how using one will impact your story. We’ll discuss the different types of unreliable narrators at your disposal, and how to choose which one is right for you. We’ll also dissect some real-life examples – what type of unreliable narrator was used and how did they impact the storyline?Above all: this is intended as a practical guide for writers wanting to explore one of the richest and most enjoyable writing approaches of them all.But first, the basics. A definition.Unreliable Narrator DefinitionWhat does unreliable narrator mean? An unreliable narrator can be defined as any narrator who misleads readers, either deliberately or unwittingly. Many are unreliable through circumstances, character flaws or psychological difficulties. In some cases, a narrator withholds key information from readers, or they may deliberately lie or misdirect. While the term is fairly new – it was first used by literary critic Wayne C Booth in 1961 – unreliable narrator examples date back hundreds of years. Medieval poet and chronicler Geoffrey Chaucer used various unreliable narrators in The Canterbury Tales, for example the bragging and exaggerating Wife of Bath. Some Shakespearean characters could also be described as unreliable. Could we trust Hamlet, in his grief and paranoia, to tell us the whole truth and nothing but the truth? In modern writing, unreliable narrators feature frequently in crime and thriller books, but the technique can be used to withhold information and surprise readers of any genre, as the many thousands of readers who enjoyed romantic suspense The Man Who Didn’t Call by Rosie Walsh can testify. An unreliable narrator usually tells the story in first person, but there are notable exceptions to this such as Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None which uses limited third person. The world’s bestselling mystery novel uses an unknown narrator who shows us the numerous points of view of the potential killers (and victims) trapped on an island. Is An Unreliable Narrator Right For Your Story?What Is The Effect Of An Unreliable Narrator? The unreliable narrator in literature, if written well, will cause the reader to experience the delight of a shocking twist or a dawning realisation that they have been misled. When readers have been told a story from a specific point of view, we cannot help but side with the storyteller, even when they are doing dubious things or making bad decisions. This can make for complex and conflicted feelings when readers realise they have been double-crossed by someone they trusted. If readers feel that they have been outright lied to with no possible way to sniff out the truth though, the effect can be negative. For this reason, it’s essential to balance the mistruths with some careful foreshadowing and stitching in of ‘clues’ so that when readers look back and think about the story after the reveal, they feel satisfied and impressed rather than frustrated. What Is A Reliable And Unreliable Narrator? A reliable narrator is the antithesis of an unreliable narrator. The reliable narrator tells readers all the pertinent information they need to know, albeit from their own point of view, and they do so as accurately as possible and in good faith. An unreliable narrator also tells a story from their own point of view but the information they share is designed to mislead readers or obscure the truth.   In locked room mysteries, where any one in a group of people could be responsible for a crime or misdemeanour, authors can tell the story from all their points of view so a reader has to try to work out which of the narrators is unreliable and which is reliable. Sometimes, of course, there can be more than one unreliable fly in the ointment. Agatha Christie was a master of such a technique. Why Is The Unreliable Narrator Right For Your Story? An unreliable narrator can perform ‘sleight of hand’ by hiding clues and prompting readers to look in the wrong direction. For example, they may build up a picture of another character’s behaviour that makes you believe they are guilty of something. This is especially useful in crime and thriller writing but it can work well in any story that requires suspense and surprise. An unreliable narrator, when he or she is one of several points of view telling the story or alone, can – to put it bluntly – mess with a reader’s mind. They can make a reader mistrust other narrators or characters or second guess their own understanding of events. As with any literary device, it is important to think about how your use of the technique will improve your story. Would using an unreliable narrator allow you to fit an intricate plot together more effectively? Would it help to showcase a complex character? Would it drive the story along in a way that a truthful narrator telling the story would not achieve? Will it add that ‘cherry on the cake’ that is currently missing from your work in progress? Unreliable narrators can be incredibly fun to write, but it’s important that you know why you’re writing them. Types Of Unreliable NarratorsThere is an argument that any first–person narrator who does not have an omniscient view of all events, is unreliable. They can only share their personal experiences and those that they have been told, they have filtered everything through their own experiences and beliefs, and even if they are not ‘baddies’ they will have their own motivations and desires which can’t help but effect their reading of events. All of which is true. Where I believe a narrator becomes unreliable, is where their take on the situation and the way they tell their story to readers, creates in the reader’s mind a significant gap between what they’re led to believe happened, and the truth. The Deliberately Unreliable Narrator Those who lie, obscure and otherwise deliberately mislead. A deliberately unreliable narrator is often – but not always – a ‘baddie’. But even if someone has been deceitful for wicked reasons, their actions should still be believable. No-one is just plain evil for no reason, so make sure that even the most cruel and manipulative liars have a motive for their behaviour – even if it’s a screwed–up motive! Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn contains one of the most famous unreliable narrators of the last decade: Amy Dunne. We first get to know Amy through her diary entries which lead up to her kidnap. At the midpoint twist, we find out that Amy is not only alive but has been meticulously writing a retrospective diary to frame her husband for her murder. The plot is complex, with multiple twists and reveals, but the basic idea of a narrator creating his or her own cover story through a diary is actually a very neat and rather simple one. The other main character, Amy’s husband Nick, is also a deliberately unreliable narrator which makes for a very twisty book. In his case, Nick tries to paint the best picture of himself by keeping his infidelity from the reader, which is a very tame form of manipulation compared with his wife’s character. You can find out more on how to create your own bad guy, here.The Impaired Narrator Alcohol is an oft-used tool for enabling narrators to have holes in their story and misremembrances. Alcoholic Rachel from Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins is a prime example of this. Rachel is woven deeply into the other characters’ lives, but has memory blanks over key events. In some ways, she is openly unreliable – she doesn’t hide her drinking or her struggle to remember events from the reader – and the reader is invited to join her as she tries to uncover the crucial moments that she has forgotten. Drug use in a narrator would also fit this role, but drinking alcohol is a more universally understood experience so it’s arguably easier for readers to both empathise and imagine themselves in the narrator’s role. The Psychologically Unreliable Narrator What is sometimes, rather unkindly, called the ‘madman narrator’. Patrick Bateman from Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho is one such ‘mad man’ who tells a shocking tale of murder and mayhem… until it’s revealed that one of his supposed victims is still alive.  In modern books, psychological unreliability often takes the form of a narrator whose psychological issues or traumas have jumbled up their memories or made it hard for them to understand the circumstances and events in which they have found themselves. If you would like to use a psychologically unreliable narrator, it’s essential to give them nuance and characteristics outside of their ‘issues’ or readers may balk at the use of trauma or illness to simply drive plot or mislead. Every character deserves to be well-rounded. The Unaware Narrator Those who are passing on information that they have been told by another unreliable character. Sometimes this is due to blindly trusting those around them, sometimes it can be due to memory or other issues which make them rely on someone else’s events. The main character in the brilliant Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson has a rare condition that makes her forget everything that has happened that day, waking up each morning with no recollection of who she is or where she is. She only knows what those around her tell her, and what information she finds that she has left for herself on previous days. The Naïve Narrator The naïve narrator is a little like the unaware narrator but does not have the maturity of thought to understand the events they are describing. Child characters can be used to simplify an adult situation or express a naïve take on events. For example, Pi, the eponymous character in The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, who tells a tale of survival that is both entirely unbelievable and extremely moving. Teenager Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is unreliable through his youthful inexperience, which lead him to misunderstand the situations in which he finds himself. Although he is naïve, he is also an angry and rebellious teenager and it is through this lens that Caulfield views the world and interprets it. The wonderful Notes on a Scandalby Zoe Heller contains an adult character – Barbara – whose own moral code, inexperience and loneliness make for a naïve and skewed reading of events. As readers, we begin to understand what is really happening even when she doesn’t, which is both thrilling and devastating to watch. Tricks To Creating Unreliable NarratorsAs with writing twists, my approach to unreliable narrators is to write them as if they’re entirely honest, as if I – the writer – completely believe the story they are telling. I try to forget that some of what they’re saying is untrue and write it as if it’s gospel. Writing my second book, Don’t Close Your Eyes, which includes an unreliable narrator, I wrote the story as if all characters were telling the truth. Then, when I had completed the first draft, I went through carefully and changed some of those details to lies. An unreliable narrator has maximum impact if the reader has truly bought into their story and believed them, right up until the moment where it is revealed that they are untrustworthy. To help foster your readers’ trust, keep as many details accurate as possible. If the narrator is a frequent, outright liar from the start of the novel, readers will not put any stock in their story. Whereas if we see them telling the truth, possibly even going out of their way to be honest to a fault, it will be all the more shocking when we realise that we’ve been well and truly had. So, there we have it, the unreliable narrator. What did you think? Have we missed anything? Anything else you’d like to add? Head on over to the Jericho Townhouse and let us know your thoughts. 

You may be asking yourself \'what does character motivation mean, and why do I need it?\' Well, this article will answer all your burning questions, and help you in developing your own well-rounded and interesting characters.What Is Character Motivation?Character motivation and plot are very tightly linked.They are the Little and Large of writing fiction. A strong character will have a clear motivation, which will generate the plot. In J R R Tolkien’s fantasy novel Lord of the Rings, the hobbit Frodo needs to destroy the Ring of Power to save Middle Earth. In Daphne du Maurier’s psychological thriller Don’t Look Now, a husband needs to protect his family from what he considers are sinister forces. Ideally speaking, the character’s development will be linked very closely to the points in the plot: each stage will have an effect on the character; but motivation will always push the character towards achieving a goal.    So, what is character motivation in literature and how does it effect the reader experience? Motivation is the force which pulls the reader through the story, as it creates a sense of empathy with the character. If a character’s motives are unclear or repellent, then it can cause the reader confusion or unease. And we don’t want that. Writing fiction is in part about trying to make sense of the world around us, which means trying to understand ourselves.Is A Character’s Motivation The Same As A Goal?A character’s goal is ultimately the end result of the motivation. Think of a footballer: his goal is to win a match; his motivation is more complex, linked to ambition and to the pride in his team and to his financial success.So, what are character motivations and how to they link to their goal? Frodo’s final goal is the destruction of the ring; his motivation is to save Middle Earth. In Don’t Look Now, the goals change: initially, the protagonist, John, wants to protect his wife from what the narrator believes are sinister forces, which means that his specific goal is to remove her from their influence. Then it’s to find his wife; then it’s to reach home. But his motivation is always to make sure that his family are safe.How Does A Character’s Motivation Affect A Story’s Plot?A character’s motivation will be the major plot driver. In Homer’s Iliad, the motivation of Achilles is his anger at being dishonoured by King Agamemnon. This means that he withdraws from fighting the Trojans, which means that the Greek forces are routed. When his best friend, Patroclus, is killed, Achilles is then motivated to take revenge on the Trojans, and thus fights and kills Hector.  Motivation is important. Without it characters are limp and lifeless. Too often I see characters that are wetter than the wettest blanket. They are flat, and events happen to them, and they let things carry them along without questioning or thinking. A character must have life, and motivation is partly what brings it. It’s the electricity pouring into the assembled body parts of your creation. You are Victor Frankenstein: your character needs to be galvanised into life!Should Readers Relate?This is an eternal question: and the answer is, not necessarily. The general consensus is that a character must create empathy: that doesn’t necessarily mean sympathy. Our protagonists do not have to be saints: too much of that, and your reader will fling the book aside in disbelief. But on the other hand, if they are too cruel or unhinged, then the reader can be disgusted.  An excellent example of an artful, successful and complex character is Humbert Humbert, the hero of Nabokov’s Lolita: he’s a murderous child molestor. His voice is exceptionally compelling: but we do not need to like him. The key is to create characters that aren’t cliches. So we are instead fascinated by his language and his style, seduced by him as much as we are revolted by his desires. (If you want to know more about writing villains, then read this.)How Do You Determine A Character’s Motivation?A character’s determination is determined by what he or she wants. When you’re writing, you will develop your own process, but it’s a good idea to begin with your setting. A setting will produce a character: a general on a spaceship hurtling towards unknown planets will want very different things from a housewife on a farm in Wyoming.  It’s a good idea to test your characters. Put them into normal situations and see what they do; then introduce an element of surprise. How does your character react? That will help you to understand what motivates them. Need and necessity are two very powerful things that produce the friction and the energy for a good story. Powerful motivations include a desire to survive; to save or to protect, or to change things for the good.  You then need to decide what your character’s goal is in relation to the plot. This is very much determined by genre: the rational motivation of a detective is to find the murderer, so his goals will be step by step movements to uncover evidence against him; the motivation of Humbert Humbert is to avoid detection and to seduce Lolita, so his goals change as he travels across America. The former is a rational motivation; the latter is more conflicting and complicated. How Do You Write A Powerful Character?There are many techniques to develop a powerful character, and as you continue to write, you will find that you will hone your own. Different things work for different people. Some writers like to create little biographies or dossiers for each character, detailing every aspect of their life from cheese preference to first sexual encounter to number of moles on their cheek. Others prefer to go with the flow and allow the story to shape the characters.  Whichever way you choose, a character must have fully formed motivation. Ged, in Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, is motivated to find a dark shadow that he himself has released; as it’s also a part of himself, the novel becomes an exploration of psychology and a movement towards a mending of a fractured psyche.  In a T C Boyle short story, The Lie, two middle class American teenagers fall in love; the girl becomes pregnant. The lovers don’t want the baby to disrupt their young lives; and so, they fall into a pattern of deception that has a tragic, terrifying consequence. Their motivation is to get through college and become successful adults; but their goal is to do so by hiding a pregnancy. And thus the complexities of character are born: we empathise with them, but we are horrified by their actions. When all else fails, put your character in a pub, and see what he or she does. Do they go to the bar and ask for a drink? Or do they sit by the side, nervously scanning the room for a friend? You can then draw out the more general motivation. And maybe treat yourself to a glass of wine as well. Your motivation: relaxation; your goal: finish the wine.So, there we have it, a full breakdown of character motivations. Have we missed anything? Anything else you’d like to add? Head on over to the Jericho Townhouse and let us know what you think. 

What is it that makes a truly exceptional genre novel? What can an author of a horror, science-fiction, fantasy or any kind of genre novel bring to their work that elevates it in some way, so that when reviewers write it up they describe it as ‘transcending its genre’?That’s a phrase that used to annoy the hell out of me until I realised the essential distinction between ‘literary’ and ‘commercial’ fiction.All fiction deals in conflict of one kind or another. It can be a moral conflict, perhaps the threat of war or the consequences of unreasoning prejudice. It might equally be the need to survive an invasion, or a plague, or the unintended consequences of an earth-shattering new technology.My concern in this article has to do with the source of that conflict.Broadly speaking, the distinction between literary and commercial fiction is this: literary fiction deals in internalised conflict. That could be fear, jealousy, greed, desire for power or revenge, thwarted love and so on. It’s these internal conflicts, after all, that are the cause of so many of the great tragedies that characterise humanity. Wars of religion, of power, of survival. In Greek myth, the entire Trojan War took place because Paris fell in love with Helen of Troy and stole her away from her husband. A ten-year-long conflict is thereby triggered entirely by one person’s desire for another, regardless of the consequences.Commercial fiction, on the other hand – and remember, we’re speaking broadly here – deals in externalised conflicts. It creates dramatic stories out of direct conflict with something ‘other’, other races, other religions, other cultures, classes or political orders, and so on.Fantasy at its most basic, generic level deals with the threat of a ‘dark power’ of some kind – with magic turned to evil purposes. A good deal of science fiction deals with the consequences, intended or otherwise, of sudden technological change or scientific discovery. Those consequences are external – created in a lab, or built in a workshop, rather than formed in a human mind.Once I realised this distinction between internalised and externalised conflict, the defining quality of the very best sci-fi and fantasy became clear to me. It synthesises both approaches – and most often it does so by externalising what is otherwise an internal conflict.Some of the best examples are in film as much as in literature. In Star Wars, our internal conflict between what we know is right, and our own, darker capacity for evil, is externalised in ‘the Force’. The Force can be channelled for good, but it has a seductive side – one that can ultimately lead one to commit terrible acts of genocide or injustice, should one fall prey to darker emotions. The Force, then, is our own internal dialogue between what is morally right and wrong, objectified as a physical part of the universe into which we tap.So why does this work? Because where that internal dialogue between good and bad is in the real world entirely subjective, Lucas, in his screenplay, makes it into a distinct, objective thing that can be tapped into and that can influence us. Externalising what is otherwise an entirely internal dialogue allows the reader – or in this case, the viewer – to see that internal conflict in an entirely different light.Similarly, the plot of The Lord of the Rings revolves around a journey to carry a ring of enormous power back to the mountain where it was forged, in order to destroy it. The ring is our desire for power, objectified and made external, rather than internal. It’s this externalised internal conflict that in part makes this such a strong and overwhelmingly popular story.It’s very often the case that budding fantasy writers will make the mistake of entirely externalising the conflict in their novels; the source of evil in this case is always a Rising Dark Power of some kind. The hero is always pure and true. And it’s boring.The best way to write such fiction is instead to introduce internalised conflict, to balance the external.Frodo in The Lord of the Rings struggles with his own internal desires, and the seductive power of the ring – all he must do is slip it onto his finger, to achieve power he can only dream of – and he struggles with this internal conflict (made flesh by the ring) all the way to Mount Doom. Gollum is a stand-in for the terrible price that the ring can exact on those too weak for its seductive power, and he also represents what can happen to us if we allow the worst parts of ourselves to override our conscience.This internal conflict on Frodo’s part, then, balances the external conflict with Mordor’s armies, on the march to retrieve that very ring. It also elevates the story above one of simple good and evil by reminding us these conflicts exist within us, as well as outside us.In Frank Herbert’s Dune, we at first appear to have a simple tale of a messianic figure, born to lead the Fremen to victory against an imperial occupying force. But Herbert quickly elevates the story by focusing the narrative around Paul of Atreides’ struggle with the path his life appears to be predestined to follow. By imbibing the spice of the worm, he can see the future, and his role in it; but as in the best Greek tragedies, it’s a path he rejects utterly, even while his attempts to resist fate cause the very events he foresees to take place with grim inevitability. The external conflict – between the dastardly Harkonnens and the Fremen led by Paul – is balanced by Paul’s own, equally gripping internal conflict.In Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, a policeman is working undercover, living with people whose lives revolve around a drug called Substance D. He’s so deep cover, even his bosses don’t actually know his identity; he wears a futuristic ‘scramble suit’ when he meets with his superiors, so they cannot find out who he is, thereby assuring him absolute anonymity as he searches for the source of the drug.One day, he is given a new assignment; to investigate one of the people living in the same house as him. He has, in fact, been asked to investigate himself.This creates a wonderful internal conflict that balances the external – the search for the source of the drug. Increasingly schizophrenic from his own use of Substance D, Dick’s character finds himself struggling with his own identity, as to whether he is a policeman, or the addict he is investigating.If your book isn’t coming together – if your characters feel lifeless, or lack motivation, or feel wooden and two-dimensional – provide them with an internal conflict to balance the external. It’s that conflict that, when handled properly, keeps readers glued to the pages.To sum up: the best sci-fi and fantasy fiction takes internal conflicts, and re-represents them as external conflicts in a way that creates a kind of ‘useful distance’, allowing readers a degree of objectivity on their own fears and desires they might not otherwise have. But even then, that conflict must be mirrored through your protagonists’ own thoughts and actions, and their own internalised moral dialogue.

Writing historical fiction gives writers a fantastically rich background against which to write. But the old verities of fiction – character, story and prose – remain as important as ever.Here a few practitioners offer their words of wisdom on how to write historical fiction which will feel brilliantly alive – and wonderfully saleable.Tips From Emma DarwinEmma Darwin is author of acclaimed literary historical novel The Mathematics of Love.It goes without saying that you’ve researched your historical facts. That includes manners and morals as well as stage-coaches and corsetry: how people behave in matters of sex or smoking must be as accurate and convincing as how they cook or bet or fight. You’ve kept a sharp eye out for things you didn’t know you had to check: don’t make your medieval peasants eat potatoes, or your Regency heroine tell her fiancé to ‘step on the gas’, and don’t forget that everyone always wears a hat outdoors. You’ve read writing of the period and found a voice for your novel that’s neither incomprehensible, nor twee pastiche, nor crashingly modern.And then you must leave it all behind, because you’re not writing history, you’re writing fiction, and fiction is all about what you can make the reader believe you know: not what you’ve learnt in a library, but what you know as naturally as you know your own house. The worst writing you’ll ever do is what you write when you’ve got a history book in the other hand. The best is when your characters and their points of view are so alive to you that of course you write what they see and how they see it, their voices filling that panelled room or smoky alehouse.And all of that must happen without you once letting the reins drop. Your readers want to live and breathe history, but they won’t keep reading if the narrative grinds to a halt on a hill of historical detail. Find it all out, get it right, and then, in a sense, forget what you’ve found and write. You’re telling stories, not histories.Tips From Susan OpieSusan has been senior editor at HarperCollins and publisher of Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl, among many other works of historical fiction.Before you embark upon your historical novel, ask yourself: who are you writing for? Not only must you have a clear idea of your potential readership (male, female, crossover, and how literary), but also you should bear in mind the state of the market in this area as well. The publishing industry changes, and it has certainly done so in this field within recent memory.The market demands good fiction, but also looks for a strong sense of authenticity. That’s as applicable to commercial historical novels as it is to the more literary kind. Remember, readers want to come away from the novel feeling that they have been entertained and that they’ve learnt something, as well. They might then go away and discuss the book in reading groups, so it’ll have to stand up to such scrutiny (and the scrutiny of literary agents, of course!)The biggest successes in the area have tended to evoke a period we think we know something about, and have then gone on to shine a new light on it, bringing it to life in a fresh way. It might be told through the eyes of a character not directly in the line of historical action, allowing the narrator much more freedom to move and to comment. Generally, readers are drawn in by familiar elements (if not the period, then a famous character or setting), but not so familiar that they’ve heard it all before.Keep an eye on what’s come out over the past year or two, also on what’s about to come out. If a particular character, setting or period has featured several times already, why would a literary agent or publisher take on another book of the same kind?If you receive an offer of publication, the harsh reality of the industry will mean that your publisher will ask you to produce books in quick succession. That can be hard in this genre; research takes time, and the novels themselves tend not to be short, so you’d better love the period you’ve picked. It’s much easier to write regularly in a period you know well rather than try to change eras with every new book.If all that hasn’t put you off – good luck!Tips From Harry BinghamHarry is the founder Jericho Writers and author of historical novels Glory Boys and The Lieutenant’s Lover.First, authors of historical fiction need to write good fiction, meaning a strong plot driven by strong characters and prose, but the historical genre does make a difference to the writer, all the same.In my experience, settings drawn from history give a rich backdrop for novels. Make sure you relish the opportunities you get to use an evocative vocabulary. Pay attention to nouns. Get specific and reach for details that illuminate the period.Keep dialogue modern, with the occasional dip into the vocabulary or grammatical structures of the past. Use of the occasional, now obsolete, slang or idiom can help. One other point, for commercial novelists especially, is that you do need to be careful about the attitudes of your characters. An English gentleman born in the nineteenth century would (almost certainly) have been racist, homophobic by modern standards. You’ll still need the empathy of contemporary readers, so you will need to finesse these issues. On the whole, unless you are portraying villains, you should have old-fashioned attitudes tempered by more liberal concerns, even if these never quite wind up winning.Finally, enjoy writing. It ought to be pure joy. It certainly has been for me. Good luck!