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In this article you will learn:How to write great characters in your novelHow to make them lifelikeHow to make them dazzleWhy Are Characters So Important?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.What 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 reluctantly.Will 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 door.Will 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 book.The story your character plunges into.The way your character develops through the course of that story.So for one hyper-simple example, you might have:Harry Potter starts out as an ordinary boy, albeit one with natural wizarding ability.He is plunged into a life or death battle against Voldemort.He 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 judgements.She 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 position.The nature of the story.The 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 your 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.If 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 siblings?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 romantic partner? 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 character.Then answer them.Do 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 Jericho Writers Character Building Worksheet, and it’s yours for free.Give yourself an hour or two on that exercise and, quite honestly, your character development journey is mostly complete. Nice to know, right?Build Empathy With Your CharactersWhy your character’s motivation matters so muchYou 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 deeply.Make 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.

Here’s a list of essential screenplays for every serious screenwriter to read – screenplays, not films. If you are a budding screenwriter, you can’t just watch the film and learn screenwriting from it. You must read the screenplay itself. Watch the film, but the screenplay is the thing. Read the rhythms. See scripts unfolding. I’ve noted a few places where you can get movie scripts online, but the web is a rich resource. You can find most things if you poke around. Hopefully, these scripts will give you a sense of how to format your screenplay, write dialogue, create captivating characters, and more.Here’s the list. 30 Must-Read Screenplays1. Some Like It HotA deft blend of comedy and drama. Given there are two romances which matter, plus whether our two ‘ladies’ are going to get executed by the Mob, there’s a lot of plot to deal with and it’s done with wonderful grace and wit. A great film. (Read the script.)2. CasablancaIs this as good as everyone says it is? Casablanca is here because it tops most lists, though for me, the film is in the acting. The script itself plays a supporting role. (Read the script.)3. Psycho A landmark in film-making and scriptwriting. To kill the heroine midway is a terrifically bold and (still) shocking decision, yet one that does not derail the film. If you tried the same in a novel, you’d kill the novel. Here, it works. (Read the script.)4. ChinatownChinatown is magnificent, packing a ceaselessly interesting plot whilst combining two stories of real human weight (a corruption tale, an incest one). Decades after its making, the film packs emotional clout. Though Chinatown is often held up as a perfect example of the three-act drama, I do question that. Isn’t it, in fact, a film that brings plot twists steadily and unexpectedly throughout the film? Read the script and see what you think. (Read the script.)5. The Godfather A film whose power comes from the emotional force of seeing a decent man corrupted by his family and his circumstances. The gangstery stuff is all great, but the central story is one of emotional destruction, handled so unflinchingly. Its script details the Italian-American mafia life in such rich texture, taking the film beyond its (stunning) visuals. (Read the script.)6. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid I love the sunshine in this film, the wit, the friendship, the lightness of touch. It’s a film willing to linger in places where plot isn’t being driven forward – a risky ploy in movie-making, but one that, in this instance, goes to create a film that is greater than a mere bank-heist Western. (Read the script.)7. Bringing Up BabyMismatched lovers falling in love despite apparent unsuitability has never been better handled. Yes, the acting is spot on, but forget about that. The script has a wonderfully light touch, one that’s happy to get ever crazier as the long night draws on. And that final dinosaur scene? Lovely. (Read the script.)8. American BeautyA poignant film that starts with an astonishing script. Each character is beautifully formed, all with a convincing personality – before the actor comes to fill it – and each must deal with an aspect of appearances complimenting Lester’s own journey. That’s far too rare in movie scripts, but American Beauty shows how it can be done. Plus, on top of that, the drama is wonderful, its twists unexpected. (Read the script.)9. MementoMemento is told in reverse chronological order, but this wasn’t just Christopher Nolan trying to be smart. Its structure is vital not just to audiences stepping into the shoes of Leonard (an amnesiac), but to unveiling the crux of the tale, revealing the story just wasn’t what we thought it was. (Read the script.)10. Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless MindThis film serves as a philosophical exploration of identity and love. It’s moving, thought-provoking cinema, delivering fully on entertainment as well. (Read the script.)11. When Harry Met Sally When two graduates have a chance encounter it results in a short-term friendship. But they are forced to deal with their feelings for one another when they meet again five years later. The witty dialogue and excellent characterisation are instantly apparent in both the film and the screenplay. (Read the script.)12. To Kill a Mockingbird This 1962 classic is centred around Atticus Finch, a Depression era lawyer, who sets out to defend a black man, who is accused of raping a white woman. It\'s expectedly harrowing and beautifully done. The final court scene is a particular standout. (Read the script.)13. CarolA woman who works at a department store encounters the beautiful Carol who\'s shopping for a Christmas gift for her daughter. Things take an unexpected turn when they develop feelings for one another. This film excels at drawing you into the protagonists\' worlds. (Read the script.)14. Pulp Fiction In this crime drama, a group of criminals and misfits are brought together in the underworld after a series of incidents. This is a much beloved classic which will entertain you as much as it will teach you about film. (Read the script.)15. Rear Window This 1954 film centres around a photographer who is stuck in his apartment with a broken leg. Bored, he begins to surreptitiously spy on his neighbours and, after lots of monotony, comes across something shocking. This is the screenplay to examine if you want some guidance on pacing and building suspense. (Read the script.)16. Gone GirlThe screenplay for this psychological thriller was written by the author of the book it\'s based on and it shows. The characterisation is excellent and the pacing is perfectly executed as you are drawn into the worlds and minds of a husband-and-wife pair of unreliable narrators. (Read the script.)17. The Shawshank Redemption A man who receives a life sentence in prison becomes a rather unconventional prisoner, all while claiming his innocence in the murders of his wife and her lover. This film has a pretty even focus on character development and plot, making it both engaging and thought-provoking. A classic which became more popular in the years after its release than when it was initially released. (Read the script.)18. Little Miss SunshineWhen their young daughter wants to participate in a beauty pageant, a family travels across the country in the hopes of making her dream come true. This film goes way beyond its premise, and tells a coming-of-age tale while also navigating family dynamics and mental illness. Sharp, funny, and brutally honest, this is a must-read (and see). (Read the script.)19. Get OutWhile we all love familiar tropes and happy endings, nothing beats a good plot twist. In this horror/thriller, it\'s probably one you won\'t see coming. Or, at least, you won\'t expect every detail of it. The acting, writing, and directing all align here to create a film and screenplay which instantly captivate. (Read the script.)20. RoomAfter years of being held captive for seven years by a kidnapper, a young woman and her son strive for freedom. Another film based on a book (with the screenplay written by the author), the majority of this tale is told from the perspective of a five-year-old boy, a unique viewing point which enables the reader/viewer to comprehend things that the narrator cannot. This is as simultaneously heart wrenching and endearing on the page as it is on the screen. (Read the script.)And to complete the top thirty, hats off to these, the next 10 screenplays to read (and watch): Annie Hall The Sting Apocalypse Now The Usual Suspects Shakespeare in Love The Best Years of Our Lives LA Confidential Raging Bull The Life of Brian 12 Angry Men 20 Of Our Favourite ScreenplaysIf you\'re looking for more screenplays to tear through, here are 20 more of our favourites:The French Connection Little Women (2019)The Manchurian Candidate Citizen KaneBlade Runner High Noon La La Land Thelma and LouiseDead Poet\'s SocietyPan\'s LabyrinthThe Silence of the LambsGravityMiseryAmerican HustleBridesmaidsSingin\' in the RainLadybirdThe Social Network12 Years a SlaveThe Breakfast ClubThese scripts contain a wide range of themes and topics, and it might be helpful initially to read scripts from the genre you want to write/are writing in. But whether you\'re a screenwriter who writes comedies, or one who favours thrillers, every one of these screenplays will help you learn and grow as a writer.

Writing is scary – but of all the scary things about it, perhaps the scariest is getting the concept right. The hard fact is: a lousy concept will kill your novel, no matter how good your actual writing is.And how can you isolate the concept? The thing which makes the difference between success or failure? The answer is via your elevator pitch – a very short summary of what makes your book so special.We’ll get to some examples in just a second, but let’s start by defining terms . . . and understanding just why your elevator pitch is such a massive deal.How To Write A Great Book Pitch:Keep it to 20 words or less.Be original.Make it memorable – An astronaut seeking to survive. A woman who fakes her own murder. An ordinary boy – an orphan! – going to an extraordinary school.The result should make the listener say, “tell me more!”What Is An Elevator Pitch For A Novel?And why does it matter so damn much?An elevator pitch is the term given to any sales pitch that could, in theory, be delivered in the space of a short elevator ride.The idea is that you might find yourself in the elevator with Someone Important who can’t, for those twenty or thirty seconds, escape or deflect your attentions – so you can use that time to deliver a sales pitch so utterly compelling that that Person of Importance is drawn in and wants to hear more.To be clear: this is a fantasy scenario.You are never likely to be called upon to pitch your book in this way. It’s just not how any normal submission process happens.(Or, for that matter, how any normal elevator ride happens. I’ve twice been in an elevator with the CEO of a major publisher. On both occasions, we chatted about the weather, or the shiny new canteen, or whatever people normally talk about in elevators.)But that notional elevator pitch still matters, because it’s a neat conceptual way to understand:The very heart of your book’s Unique Selling Point – which in turn determines,How literary agents could pitch your book to a publisherHow an acquiring editor could pitch that book internallyHow a sales team could pitch that book to retail buyersHow a publicist could pitch that book to reviewersHow you could describe the book – pithily but attractively – on social mediaHow the book blurb could pitch that book to readers (online or physically)And no book succeeds unless it’s pitchable in that way. In fact, you can define an elevator pitch like this:An elevator pitch for a novel is a very short summary of what makes the book:UniqueStrikingFresh, andCompellingIf your book pitch doesn’t tick those boxes, your book is unlikely to sell. An agent will think “can I pitch this to editors?” and think, No, probably not. An acquiring editor will think, “can I pitch this book in house?” and think, No, probably not. And so on down the chain.The book pitch is, in a way, the very heart of book marketing. It’s the heart of your product. The heart of your brand.How short is very short? Well, there are no set rules, but I’d suggest that fewer than 20 words is ideal. Fewer than 50 words is essential.If you like, you can think of the pitch as being something that would work and stand out amongst the hurly-burly of social media. If you had just 280 characters to talk about your book, what would you say? That’s not a bad discipline to apply.Brevity is key, not because that theoretical elevator ride is short, but because you need to isolate what is special about your book. That means discarding nearly everything about the book – for example, the settings, the plot twists, the great characters, the genius denouement, and so on.Sure, you need to get to those things in time. If the Very Important Person in the elevator gets out on the same floor as you and says, “Sounds great, tell me more”, then all those other things are going to matter too. A great elevator pitch is essential, yes, but it’s never enough on its own.But still. The elevator pitch is very short. And it matters.Example Elevator PitchesHow successful novels get that way . . .Here are some examples of elevator pitches. These are our versions of the pitch in each case – our attempt to isolate what makes these books special. So here goes:TwilightA teen romance between an ordinary girl and a boy who is actually a vampire.[15 words]The Da Vinci CodeA professor of symbology unlocks codes buried in ancient works of art as he hunts for the Holy Grail.[19 words]Gone GirlA woman (Amy) goes missing, and her husband is suspected of murder. But the sweet diary-writing Amy of the first half of the book is revealed to be a very different woman in the second half . . .[36 words]The MartianAstronaut, stranded on Mars, has to figure out how to survive.[11 words]Brokeback MountainA love story between two male cowboys.[7 words]Harry Potter seriesOrphan boy goes to school for wizards.[7 words]Alex Rider seriesYoung James Bond.[3 words]I hope it’s obvious that these books all have great premises. We’ll look at exactly what makes these ideas so great in a second . . . but first let’s have some (made up) examples of elevator pitches for books that could never sell.So here are some really bad elevator pitches:Eco-fantasy for 6-7sThree children go to a fantasy world where they must save the planet and learn about the importance of recycling and the dangers posed by electro-magnetic radiation.Non-literary literary fictionA slightly mediocre book about two somewhat boring people in whose lives nothing seems to happen.Paranormal romance (2018)A teen romance between an ordinary girl and a boy who is actually a vampire.We get books like these, as do literary agents. Anything lacking a grabbing, easily communicated pitch is already at a disadvantage . . . or to put that more bluntly: will simply never sell.And notice that the paranormal romance pitch in the list just above is exactly the same as the pitch we put together for Stephenie Meyer’s hyper-successful Twilight. What makes this second pitch so terrible, and the first one so great?It’s timing of course. Agents need something that will make editors sit up and say, “Hey, tell me more.” When Twilight first came out, that pitch was electric. Now? It’s so tired, it needs to sleep.Need more help? If you want more help on anything in this post, then do check out our How To Write course that has a crazy-good 1 hour video on these exact topics. The course itself is quite pricey, so we generally recommend taking out a cheap monthly membership which gives you access to EVERYTHING we offer in terms of video courses, masterclasses, etc – and at an easily affordable, cancel-any-time price. Find out loads more hereHow To Write Your Elevator PitchOK. So you know why an elevator pitch matters so much – because it’s THE key sales element in the chains that runs from:You ⇒ Agent ⇒ Acquiring editor ⇒ PublisherPublisher’s sales team ⇒ Retail buyer ⇒ ReaderPublisher’s publicity & marketing team ⇒ Reviewers ⇒ ReaderYou know what you want to achieve: a pitch that is Short, Unique, Striking, Fresh, and Compelling.So how do you actually achieve that?The most important thing to understand is that you throw out almost everything in your novel. Take that Harry Potter elevator pitch: “Orphan boy goes to school for wizards.”That doesn’t say:Anything about VoldemortAnything about Harry’s parentsAnything about his muggle uncle & auntAnything about Hermione & RonAnything about his summons to the schoolAnything about the specific storylines once Harry is at HogwartsAnd that’s not just OK. It’s good. That’s the whole point of the exercise. You are not seeking to explain your book in the elevator pitch. The only answer you are seeking to elicit is, “Hey, that sounds interesting. Tell me more.”When you get the “tell me more” type response from anyone (the agent, the acquiring editor, etc), you know you’re golden. That’s the point at which you can start to explain the broader context and story of your book, confident in the knowledge that you already have a good hold on your listener’s attention and interest.Great pitches combine a tiny bit of WHAT the book is (eg: in Twilight‘s case, that’s a teen romance), with a sense of WHY the book will be great to read (eg: “ooh, a girl and a werewolf: that sounds dark and sexy . . . and scary . . . and sexy . . .”)So the way to write your elevator pitch is to ignore everything about your book . . . except the aspect that will most make your reader say, “tell me more.”There’s no one approach you have to take. So the Harry Potter elevator pitch worked with a setting (that school for wizards.The Gone Girl one relied on its twist. (Real Amy is different from diary-Amy!)The Martian one relied on a setup / premise. (Astronaut stranded on Mars: how does he survive?)And so on.Remove everything from your book description except the part that most interests the reader.And keep your pitch intensely short. Under 20 words is good. Under 10 words is excellent. Anything over 50 words? That’s not an elevator pitch; that’s a snoozefest.Is Your Elevator Pitch Any Damn Good?And what you should do if it’s not.So write your elevator pitch. And that means:Actually do it!Or, in fact, it means:Actually do it right now this minute,or I’m going to get a mite tetchy.Reading a blog post about elevator pitches is a genius idea if it impels action: if you actually start to write and examine your own elevator pitch.Reading the same blog post if you don’t actually DO anything as a result doesn’t count as research. It’s procrastination.OK, so you have written / are currently sketching your elevator pitch.So is it any good? Do you have a saleable novel in front of you? Or an unsaleable clunker?Well, once you have a draft of your elevator pitch, you simply need to ask yourself, is it:Very short (<20 words, for preference)?Unique – does it feel original? Does it feel distinct from all the other books out there at the moment?Striking – is there an edge? Do you feel a glimmer of steel somewhere? (An astonaut seeking to survive. A wife who fakes her own murder. An ordinary boy – an orphan! – going to an extraordinary school.)Fresh – does your idea feel timely? Does it feel like part of the next iteration of what’s happening in your genre / fiction in general?Compelling – does it make any listener say, “Hey, that’s great, tell me more.”?If your pitch checks those boxes then, my friend, you have a winner. Sure, you still have a lot of work to do in actually writing the novel that lives up to the pitch – but yo’re on the right track.Congratulations.And if not – if you have an uneasy sense that you haven’t yet nailed this issue – then you have to nail it. Don’t con yourself into doing more work on that awkward Chapter 27. Or finessing the character of Bazhran the Bad any further.You have to write a novel whose pitch gets a reader to that crucial, “Tell me more” point.Oh, and if you aren’t sure whether your pitch has nailed it or not, then – trust me – your pitch hasn’t nailed it.We’ve got some great suggestions for how to develop and improve your core ideas right here. And if you want help writing your cover letter and synopsis, why not try our agent submission pack review.

When I wrote my first novel, I started to worry that I was off the mark regarding how many words I had to offer. I was scared that agents would reject my book simply because I had got the length wrong. How many words are there in an average novel, how many pages in a book, how many words per page? I didn’t know.I went to a bookstore, gathered some (big, hefty) novels in a genre like mine, and sat there on the shop floor and counted the average words per page to come up with a number. It turned out that, yes, in terms of book length, I was at the very long end of things, but not impossibly long.I sold that book for a good six-figure sum, and have never looked back since.At least you don’t need to run down to your nearest bookstore, since this guide will tell you quickly the ideal word counts for every category of novel.Average Word Count For A NovelThe average word count for adult fiction is between 70,000 to 120,000 words. For children’s fiction, the general rule is the younger the audience the shorter the book, and for YA novels the average is 50,000-70,000 words. Non-fiction word counts sit between 70,000-120,000 words. Word counts also vary by genre, as detailed.How Long Is A Book Of Adult Fiction?Novel word counts vary by type of bookSo: how many words in a novel?Broad GuidelinesWe’re going to talk some specific genres in just a moment, but it’s worth setting the landscape a little first, just because you may as well know the territory here, and because a lot of fiction simply doesn’t fit in tidy boxes.So, the average wordcount for a typical novel is anywhere from 70,000 to 120,000 words. I’d guess that the actual average number of words in a novel was somewhere close to 90,000 words. (How come? Because novels mostly cluster at the shorter end of that 70-120K spectrum. There are plenty of prolific authors who might never break the 100,000 word barrier.)These guidelines assume that your book is broadly commercial (rather than highly literary, let’s say) and that you are writing for adults. If you are within that broad zone, then as far as length goes, you’re doing fine.But then again, sometimes fiction is long.If your story justifies the length, you needn’t worry if you get up to 150,000 words, or even 180,000.But that is on the very long side. 180,000 words print about 650 paperback pages. You only get away with novels of that scale if the story has an epic quality and storytelling is remorselessly excellent. (Also, don’t trust any source on the internet which tells you that such stories are unsaleable. They’re just not. My own first novel was 190,000 words long and was sold to HarperCollins for a lot of money.)Genre RomanceIf you are writing true genre romance – the kind of thing Harlequin Mills & Boon is known for – then books are typically short. Your target is probably 50-60,000 words.That said, longer books that still tell a proper romantic story, can do well. These books generally run from 75,000 to 100,000 words, or in rare cases a little more.ExamplesWhen we Believed in Mermaids – Barbara O’Neal – 100,000 wordsAnd Then You Loved Me – Inglath Cooper – 90,000 wordsThat Boy – Jillian Dodd – 80,000 wordsRescuing Lord Inglewood – Sally Britton – 55-60,000 wordsWomen’s FictionA lot of fiction written for women will have an element of romance, but is far more complicated and interesting than classic Mills & Boon fare. Such books will have a minimum length of 75,000 words but seldom exceed 110,000.See our comments about saga though!ExamplesMe Before You – Jojo Moyes – 140,000 words — very unusual length for women’s fiction this one, but it was a very unusual book!The Storyteller’s Secret – Sejal Bedani – 110,000 wordsWhere the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens – 105,000 wordsThe World That We Knew – Alice Hoffman – 95,000 wordsThe Dressmaker’s Gift – Fiona Valpy – 80,000 wordsBridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding – 75,000 wordsFamily SagaSaga, by definition, has an epic feel, and you’re not really in saga territory at less than 150,000 words. But some of those books are very long. I have a friend who writes saga and her publisher actually wants books of 250,000 words. That’s about three ordinary novels squashed into one. Wow! (And, uh, you don’t get paid three times as much, so unless you really want to write saga, I’m going to suggest you review your choices!)ExamplesThe Thorn Birds – Colleen McCullough – 195,000 wordsCrime And Thriller GenresCrime novels often run a little longer than women’s fiction. So 75,000 words is fine as a lower limit, but anything up to 120,000 words is unproblematic. Truth is, as long as you make sure every single word counts, you can go up to 135,000 words without troubling anyone.ExamplesI Am Pilgrim – Terry Hayes – 195,000 words (epic feel to this book, hence the length)Talking to the Dead – Harry Bingham (that’s me by the way!) – 115,000 wordsI let you go – Clare Mackintosh – 95,000 wordsThe Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins – 95,000 wordsThe Crossing (Harry Bosch) – Michael Connelly – 80,000 wordsHistorical FictionHistorical fiction is a slippery category, because it’s not really a category. A literary-type love story set in Renaissance Venice is very different from massive war story about the Mongol hordes. Reader expectations are utterly different in both cases.So for “normal” historical fiction – typically, a somewhat literary category – I’d suggest that 75,000 to 100,000 words is about right.But as soon as you introduce the sense of something epic – in time, space, and magnitude of events – you can get up to word counts of 150,000 to 180,000 words, or even more.ExamplesWhat the Wind Knows – Amy Harmon – 100,000 wordsBeneath a Scarlet Sky – Mark Sullivan – 150,000 wordsWolf Hall – Hilary Mantel – 200,000 wordsFantasy And Sci-fi GenresFantasy novels can be long. They can be up to 180,000 words, or even over 200,000, but the novel must be wonderful and must fully justify its word count. In other words, you must be scrupulous about editing every sentence for length.With SF, you really just need to explore your niche, as it can be quite variable. Epic space opera can easily run to over 150,000 words, whereas a short, hard space disaster book might run to just 60,000 words.If you’re not sure of your genre, just find the most appropriate bestseller list on Amazon and take a look. You’ll soon get a sense for where your book needs to fit.ExamplesLord of the Rings / The Fellowship of the Ring – J. R. R. Tolkien – 190,000 wordsThe Atlantis Gene – AG Riddle – 135,000 words1984 – George Orwell – 90,000 wordsHarley Merlin and the Secret Coven – Bella Forrest – 110,000 wordsLiterary Genre - Novel Vs NovellaIf you’re writing for a more literary audience, then the rules above apply on upper limits. In other words, anything up to 120,000 words, no problem.And lower limits are quite a lot lower. A good, short literary novel might be 60,000 words. A very good, very short novella might be as little as 45 or 50,000. The shorter it gets, the better it needs to be.ExamplesWolf Hall (by Hilary Mantel) is over 200,000 words On Chesil Beach (by Ian McEwan) is just 40,000 words longA Note About Our Word Count EstimationsIn some cases, word counts are published and in those cases, we’ve used those published sources. In other cases, we’ve used online tools such as Reading Length to estimate the length of a work. We would expect the actual length to be within +/- 10% of our stated length and usually closer. We have rounded to the nearest 5,000 words in all cases.How Long Is A Non-Fiction Book?Memoir And BiographyMost memoirs need to be in the 70,000 to 100,000-word range. Only if you’re a major celebrity can you blow right through that word count and just keep going.ExamplesBecoming – Michelle Obama – 165,000 words. I’d say she’s a major celebrity, though, so …Educated – Tara Westover – 100,000 wordsThe Salt Path – Raynor Winn – 90,000 wordsPopular Non-FictionFor the kind of book that normally sits on the front tables at Waterstones or Barnes & Noble, you’ll find that 70,000 to 120,000 words is about typical. If the topic really justifies length (and especially if your credentials are highly impressive) you can go longer, but check that you remain interesting, even at length.ExamplesReally hard to give examples, because this is a very broad category indeed. But for what it’s worth …Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahnemann – 150,000 wordsFear: Trump in the White House – Bob Woodward – 135,000 wordsHillbilly Elegy – JD Vance – 75,000 wordsA Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking – 50,000 wordsNiche Non-FictionFor anything really niche – e.g. How to Get Started in Internet Fraud – there are no real limits. Just write a good book on the topic and let length look after itself.How Long Is A Children’s Novel?Young Adult FictionYA fiction usually needs to be 50,000 to 70,000 words. You can go up to 100,000 if your material is phenomenal and justifiable, but no longer than that… Or at least that’s what I used to say, except that Stephenie Meyer really rewrote the rules. So yeah, you can go over 100,000 words if you are about to reinvent an entire category of fiction.ExamplesTwilight – Stephenie Meyer – 120,000 wordsHunger Games – Susan Collins – 100,000 wordsThe Fault in Our Stars – John Green – 90,000 wordsOutside – Sarah Ann Juckes (our head of membership content) – 70,000 wordsMiddle Grade FictionChildren’s fiction is so varied in terms of length, type, illustration. Your best bet is to go to a good children’s bookstore and look at books like your own in terms of target audience. Multiply up by the number of pages and get to a rough word count. The younger the child, the shorter the word count.ExamplesIt’s not really safe to offer examples. Your best bet is to figure out what books yours is comparable to, then sit down and count the words on 2-3 typical pages. Get a rough average. Multiply by the number of pages in the book. And that gives you your rough word count.Self-Published Work And Ebooks: Word Count GuidelinesIn the world of print and physical bookstores, length kind of mattered.There’s just a minimum cost of printing a book, trucking it to a store, marketing it, and everything else. Since a 50 page book for $7.99 just feels like bad value most of the time, books like that were never commissioned by publishers. They just didn’t happen.Because traditional publishers still tend to think of print first and digital formats second, the same thing still mostly holds true.For them.But if you’re self-publishing, it just doesn’t need to hold true for you. What if you wanted to write:Beach read romances – 30,000 words each – in a series of 8 or so books. Well, heck, you can do it. Readers love that kind of thing.Short, subject-led books on internet marketing, or cat nutrition, or meditation technique. Well, heck you can do it. Readers can get real value from that kind of thing.There’s no right or wrong here. The only golden rule is:You communicate the type of book accurately to the reader, andYour pricing reflects the length / value you are offering.I know that’s technically two golden rules, but the second one is kind of a repeat of the first.As a rough guide, I’d say that a 30,000 word book shouldn’t sell for much more than $2.99 / $3.99.If your book is very short – 15-20,000 words – it probably wants to be $0.99 or free.Do You Need To Edit Your Novel?Take a good look at the average word counts you need for a novel or non-fiction.If your book is too long and you need to cut it, don’t fret. It’s often possible to take a good 30,000 words out of a book without really affecting the content, just by being rigorous about what works – what words, sentences, paragraphs, scenes and chapters truly earn their place.The secret to effective self-editing is always just a relentless search for material that isn’t really contributing to the story . . . and searching at every scale. So you need to ask, “Is this chapter or scene really needed? Could I cut it or simply delete it?” But you also need to ask, “Does this sentence contain more words than it needs? Could I do the same job more effectively with less?”Bear in mind that cutting a 12-word sentence down to 9 words might feel like nothing to you . . . but that’s the same proportionate reduction as cutting a 120,000 word novel down to 90,000 words. And you only achieve that kind of reduction by being picky about every single word.

Do you need a literary agent? Are they worth having? And how do you actually maximise your chances of getting a literary agent?Getting a good literary agent and avoiding dozens of rejection letters may feel impossible, but it really isn’t.In our comprehensive guide on how to query agents, we will be talking about what makes a good agent, how to find the right literary agent for you, and how the publishing industry works.So get ready to discover your first agent. This may well be the blog post that changes your writing career!Find A Literary Agent In 8 Simple StepsWhether you\'re writing literary fiction, or a commercial genre novel (such as science fiction or historical fiction), to get in front of traditional publishers - especially the big four, such as Penguin Random house or Harper Collins - you need a literary agency to represent you.Here\'s our very simple 8 point checklist which we will go into detail further along. If you can get past point 1, then you\'re good to go!Write a wonderful bookHave realistic expectationsPrepare your manuscript properlyResearch agents with careSend out simultaneous submissionsPrepare for agent rejections – it happens (a lot)Review your progressGet out thereBut before we run through the list, let\'s answer some urgent questions.Do I Actually Need A Literary Agent?The answer to that question depends on who you are and what you are writing.You definitely DO NOT need a literary agent if:You are self-publishing your work on Amazon. You can just upload your material for free without anyone’s permission or approval. The only time you would need a literary agent as a self-published author is if you sold a lot of copies in the English language, and you needed an agent’s help with foreign language sales, audio sales, film/TV rights, and the rest.You are approaching independent publishers. Some smaller indie publishers don\'t require you to have an agent. They may not pay a big advance (or any, in fact) but if they cater for your target audience and specialise in your preferred genre, then you may be happy to work with them direct.You are writing poetry or flash fiction or other non-commercial art forms. Agents are there to make money. If your work is art-for-art’s-sake then (a) great for you, but (b) forget about an agent.You are writing niche titles that won’t attract significant advances. Let’s say, for example, you are writing a book on “How to Care For Your New Alpaca”. I guess there IS a market out there for alpaca owners who need that kind of book, but most agents want to make money and that book won\'t sell the kind of numbers they need.You DO need an agent if:You\'re writing commercial fiction. A traditional publishing house (ie the kind who dominate book stores and trade press) only takes submissions via literary agents. You won\'t even get close to them without the right agent.You\'re writing a children’s novel. Read the paragraph above. Every word of that applies to you too.You\'re writing narrative non-fiction. Walk into a large bookstore and look around at the front tables bearing non-fiction. Ask yourself, “could my book live here?” If the answer is YES, then you need a literary agent for the exact same reason the writer of that book has one (because they will do).If the answer to the question is NO (probably because the book you’ve written is too niche to appeal to the general reader), then it’s doubtful whether you need an agent . . . or an agent needs your business.There are, of course, always exceptions.Many commercial fiction authors are very successful working directly with digital first publishers, such as Bookouture, who you don\'t need an agent for. Or they may already have a good relationship with an editor. Other writers with a large and established following (ie celebs or experts in something), may also be sought-after directly by a publisher.The best rule of thumb before starting your agent search is think about what authors you want to emulate and see how they got there.Do you need an agent?How Much Do Literary Agents Cost?This is a very easy answer.NOTHING.The only money you pay an agent is commission – typically 15% of any income earned on home sales and 20% of anything earned on overseas or film/TV sales.So if they don’t make money for you, they don’t make money for themselves.Never ever pay an agent upfront, not to read your manuscript or to submit to editors. If that is what they\'re asking, then they\'re not to be trusted.Are Literary Agents Worth It?Let\'s see what you get:Access to publishers who would otherwise not take you seriously – and those are the publishers with the huge sacks of money availableAccess to the best editor for your work (because it\'s an agent’s job to know who’s who in the publishing world)Someone with a great track record of conducting auctions for books like yoursSomeone who can organise the exact same thing globally. And where your agent doesn’t know the territory themselves (Bulgaria, say, or South Korea), they’ll work with a trusted counter-party who doesSomeone who has trodden the book to film route before and can guide you through that (most treacherous) mazeSomeone of real editorial acuity who, most importantly, knows the market for your book and how to optimise your writing for that target audienceSomeone whose financial interests are exactly the same as yours (ie you both want this book to sell)Is an agent worth it?If you want your book to become a Sunday Times Bestseller, be in a book shop window, feature in the press, reach your ideal audience, be translated into other languages, be made into a movie, and make you money - then yes. You need a literary agent.But how do you find these most elusive of angels? Let\'s start with the hardest part...1. Write A Wonderful BookThe bad news is that the best agents want the best books. Each submission is a long shot, but there are no shortcuts!And the right agent doesn\'t just want a great book, they want one that is easy to sell to an editor, who they will be able to sell to bookstores, who they can sell to the public.See where this is going?Debut authors who are about to start querying often call literary agents \'gate keepers\' like it\'s a bad thing - but it\'s not. They are the filter between books the public are most likely to buy, and books (no matter how brilliant) that probably won\'t sell.So how do you write a book that will grab an agent\'s interest?Look at what sells: You can\'t easily pre-empt the market or trends, but if it\'s easier to find agents with a romance or thriller (rather than your horror book featuring cowboys and unicorns) then look at changing genreKnow your comps: If your books is unique yet still sits comfortably between two best sellers in its genre, then use them as comparisonsGet your pitch ready: If you can\'t get a potential reader excited about the premise in less than a minute then an agent with 300 manuscripts to read in their inbox won\'t give yours any more time eitherLearn to write: This may seem obvious, but you can have the best premise, but if your sample chapters are littered with bad grammar and clunky prose then no good agent will take it onGet an editor: This may seem counter-productive, many agents work with writers to strengthen their story before submission. But have a professional editor look at your work first will ensure that at least it won\'t be the writing, language, pace or plot stopping your work from being taken on. Details of where to find this level of support can be found right here.Write a wonderful book!2. Have Realistic ExpectationsLiterary agents spend most of their time handling existing clients. A typical agent might take on just two new authors a year, and most agents receive around 2,000 manuscripts a year. That means, inevitably, they reject most submissions.This is disheartening, of course – but it’s not about odds. Finding a literary agent is about:Quality. If your book is strong enough, it will sell. At Jericho Writers have virtually never seen an exception to that rule, and we have handled thousands of client manuscripts over the years.Professionalism. Even when you get a no, keep it professional and courteous. Publishing is a small industry and you will cross paths with all these people again!Faith in yourself. We’ve had clients who have sent their (very good) manuscripts out to 2-3 agents. They didn’t get a positive response, so they gave up.I once encountered such a client at a crime writing festival. We\'d helped edit her manuscript, so I asked how she’d got on. She’d been to three agents, hadn’t got anywhere, and shelved the manuscript. I pretty much yelled, \'you can’t do that!\' I told her she needed to reach out to at least a dozen agents in total before drawing any final conclusions. So she did, she got an agent, and then a book deal!Persistence. Let’s say you take your first book out to 12 agents. No one offers you a deal, but you get back some encouraging comments. What then?If you quit - you are not a writer and never really were one. That’s when the real writer keeps going. You might write another book. You might take your existing book and get editorial help on it. Or you rework your book and take your original idea down a different and more exciting road.After a long time in this game, I can tell you that persistence wins every single time.3. Prepare Your Manuscript ProperlyAgents see hundreds of manuscripts, so don’t miss out because you didn\'t follow their submission guidelines. Even the font and size matters. Check!Also, eliminate spelling errors and don’t rely on a computer spell check (bee shore of what ewe right).Lay your manuscript out like a book, not a business document, which means no space between paragraphs, and with the first line slightly indented. Every page should be numbered, your title and your name in the header.You do not need to worry about copyright, either. Making a fuss about it marks you as an amateur.Pro tip. Don’t name your documents for your convenience; think about your agent instead. So whereas you are unlikely to be confused by a document called novel.doc on your computer, that’s of no help to an agent sifting through 30 unread manuscripts on her e-reader. So call your manuscript, for example, A Farewell to Legs, Maggie Mildasmilk, First 10K words. doc.That’s cumbersome from your point of view – but amazingly helpful to the agent. And it’s the agent you’re trying to impress!Select an agent with care4. Select Agents With CareTime to research literary agents!Remember many take up to three months to get around to reading your book (even though most know within a few pages if it\'s right for them). Therefore send your submissions out in batches, much like applying for many jobs, because even agents don\'t expect you to wait for their response before moving on.The Simplest Way To Find An AgentYou can Google search for days, hunt through Twitter, and look at the acknowledgement pages of your favourite books - or you could become a member of Jericho Writers. Our AgentMatch tool is quite simply the best way to find a literary agent, and we often run free trials!In one easy search you\'ll be able to find all the UK and US agents you need, listed by genre or agency size or experience.Then when you want to learn more about any given agent, you simply dive into their individual profile, where one of our native English-speaking graduate researchers (most of whom have BAs / MAs in English or Creative Writing) has put together a detailed profile, along with a ton of specific data about that agent.Find out more about our AgentMatch service here, read about specific agents via our agent blogs, or discover more about becoming a member here.Send out simultaneous submissions5. Send Out Simultaneous SubmissionsMost agents have submission guidelines that require the following:Your first 3 chapters, 10,000 words, or 50 pages of your manuscript (check individual requirements)A short query letter (download our FREE template)A 500-700-word synopsis, unless agency guidelines explicitly ask for something elseMost agencies take submissions by email, others provide an on-line form, so follow instructions or your query letter and manuscript may get lost or dismissed.How Many Literary Agents Should You Approach?You are aiming to generate a shortlist of about a dozen names. What you’re looking for is:Agents who are open to your genreAgents who are genuinely open to new clients (which will often mean younger or newer agents)Agents with whom you can find some point of contact. So it might be that a given agent has one of your favourite authors on their client list (in your genre or out of it), or said something in a blog post somewhere that really resonated with you, or shares a passion (for sailing say, or synchronised swimming.)Why a dozen agents?Because if you approach fewer you risk being rejected just because the agents you approached had their hands full of existing work at the time you approached them.So why not more than that?Well, OK, you could go to more. 15 would be fine, and maybe even 18 wouldn’t be too crazy. But really, as soon as you are querying 10 or more agents, one of those guys WILL ask for a full request if your book is good enough.If you send your book out to 12 agents, and get either rejection slips or silence, then you need to ask yourself why. Either the book idea is not exciting enough, or your writing isn\'t good enough (painful, but important to know).Don\'t use up your chances with other potential agents by trying to flog a dead horse, go back and look at your book proposal and see why it\'s not working.How To Write A Query Letter (ie Covering Letter)It’s not hard to write a good query letter. In fact, if you can write a half-decent book, you can unquestionably write a perfectly good query letter (download our FREE template).Here\'s an example:Dear Mr Redintooth,I am currently seeking an agent for my first novel, A Farewell To Legs. The novel (at 81,000 words) tells a love story, set against the background of a busy amputation clinic in Glasgow. I have enclosed the first three chapters plus a brief synopsis with this submission.[Then one short paragraph of no more than 100 words describing the setting / hero / premise of the book]I\'m a 30-year-old accountant from Leeds. This story arose from my own experiences during a recent trip to Glasgow. The book attempts to deal with themes of loss and suffering in an accessible, moving, and uplifting way. I was particularly keen to write to you, after your success with Goodbye, Little Ear, the biographical work by Mr Van Gogh.I very much look forward to hearing from you.I look forward to hearing from you.Yours,Ms MildasmilkIf you have completed a well-recognised MFA or creative writing course, then say so. If you are a professional writer in any other capacity (in journalism, TV, radio, etc), then say so. Ditto, if you’ve won any prize that has real merit. If you have a recommendation from ourselves or any other person or organisation likely to command respect, then you can say so too – but expect to be checked up on.But it’s really OK if you are Mr or Ms Unknown of Nowheresville.My own literary agent once had a totally unsolicited submission from an unknown Englishwoman living out in the Middle East. He liked her writing and took her on . . . and that author has gone on to write (and sell) a book or two – and win a small mountain of literary prizes to boot.ALL agents have stories like that, so you need have no anxieties about being unknown. It’s the manuscript that matters, not the person behind it.Prepare for rejections6. Prepare For Agent Rejections – It Happens, A LotIt\'s all good knowing where to find a literary agent, and it doesn’t matter how good your book is, you will receive at least one rejection letter in your writing career. Every single successful author - from Rowling to King - have been rejected.And most of the time it has nothing to do with you, your book or your query letters!Reasons Why Literary Agents May Reject Your WorkThey’re busy with clientsThey’re on maternity leave/left the company/not taking anyone else on and haven’t updated their websiteThey’re overwhelmed/not very efficient and have 2,000 unopened submissionsThey have an author who is writing closely competing workThey didn\'t like itThey really liked it. They just didn’t like it quite enoughThis is why we recommend you send your manuscript off to five or so agents at a time (one agent per agency, to start with). Then, for each rejection you get, send another off.Keep a spreadsheet with the date, their name, agency, email address, notes and feedback - and colour code it for Waiting, Rejection, Full Request and Offer. Some authors even buy a big box of chocolates, and eat one with every rejection.Well, you may as well get some pleasure from the pain!7. Review Your ProgressIf you\'ve reached the end of your list and you\'ve still had no bites, then it\'s time to look at where you\'ve gone wrong. If you’ve tried your luck with agents and got nowhere, then the chances are that one of the following apply to you:You haven’t tried enough agents (or you’ve tried the wrong ones)Your approach to agents has been howlingly badYour novel has just totally misjudged the market – for example by having a word count that is either way over or way under what agents and publishers are seeking (word count guidelines here.)Your book just isn’t good enough (YET!)If you handle your submissions process with proper professionalism – and the fact that you’ve read our monster post this far already is a very good sign! – then #4 may be the issue.So then the question is, how near or far are you from success? The submissions process itself should give you some clue:You have had warm, personal and encouraging rejections. That’s great. That means you are in the zone. You just need to identify any remaining issues in your text, then nail them. If you are in this category then seek professional editorial feedback. It may simply be a matter of changing the genre or a few plot tweaks.You have had at least one request for your full manuscript. Again, if I were in that camp, I’d certainly be seeking editorial help.You have had no full manuscript requests / no warm feedback / silence / standard issue rejection slips. That means – nothing much.Your manuscript could be in the top 10-15% of all manuscripts submitted and come to that same end. You really could be a future bestseller, and still have that outcome with your first round of submissions...or you may really need to hone your writing skills.Remember I told you earlier that I rated persistence above talent?Yep. Well, this is the stage where you find out quite why that matters so much. So either get professional help with your novel, or write your next book and start querying that one all over again.8. Get Out There: Go To Events And Meet AgentsFinally, if you want to meet agents in person and get feedback from them directly, you can.Our Festival of Writing brings committed writers face-to-face with agents every year. You’ll get direct feedback on work and, just as useful, hear agents talk about the realities of their industry, what they’re looking for, any tips and advice they can give. (Joanna Cannon is one author who signed with her agent just after the Festival.)Through our in-person and on-line events, you’ll meet agents, editors, and publishers – plus it’s uplifting to realise the industry is warm, welcoming, and always open to new writers.Frequently Asked QuestionsHow do you get a literary agent for a screenplay?Much like authors, screenwriters also need agents. Here is everything you need to know on perfecting your screenplay and finding representation. You can also take advantage of our screenplay and script coverage service.How do you get an agent for TV?There are two ways of seeing our story come to life on the big screen. If you\'re a screenwriters, see above, or choose an agent for your novel with experience in film rights (then hope your book gets optioned). Most agencies either have an in-house agent who specialises in film rights, or they work with a partner agency.Who are the literary agents looking for new authors in 2022?The best way to know who is looking for what this year, is to take part in our Agent Match free trial. Alternatively, for a comprehensive look at the top 400 UK literary agents looking for new talent this year, check out this article. And for the US you can click here.How do you get an agent for poetry?Most agents take on commercial fiction, genre fiction, children\'s literature, and non fiction - but there are a few who are interested in poetry. The easiest way to discover which agents are looking for poets is to visit our Agent Match page and search via genre. If you\'re not a Jericho Writers member then look out for our free trial and discover a whole world of agents around the globe!Find The Agent Of Your Dreams!Lengthy as this guide is, we know that some of you will still have questions. For that reason, we’ve put together our jumbo literary agent explainer – a kind of FAQ for all things agent. You’ll probably want to take a peep at our Getting Published guide as well. You can get that hereSo off you go, get that literary agent of your dreams, and don\'t forget to visit our blog for further research. The best agents, top traditional publisher, and best deal is out there waiting for you!

“Show, Don’t Tell” is one of the oldest pieces of advice to new writers, but it can be kinda confusing without some show and tell examples.What exactly is the difference between Showing and Telling? Is “Showing” always right? And is Telling always wrong?As we’ll see, “Show, Don’t Tell” is good advice in certain circumstances. Not just good advice, in fact, but absolutely essential to any half-decent novel.At the same time, virtually every novel ever written contains passages that are told, not shown . . . and that’s fine. You just have to understand which mode of writing to use where.These things get confusing when spoken about in the abstract, so we’ll use plenty of showing vs. telling examples to show you exactly what’s what.Sounds good? Then let’s motor.What Is ‘Show, Don’t Tell’?‘Show, don’t tell’ is a technique authors use to add drama to a novel. Rather than telling readers what’s happening, authors use this technique to show drama unfold on the page. ‘Telling’ is factual and avoids detail; while ‘showing,’ is detailed and places the human subject at the centre of the drama.Show, Don’t Tell: What This Actually Means‘Don’t tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass,’ Anton Chekhov once advised.Here’s an example of what he means:Telling:The night was cold and moonlit. The sleigh moved fast through the forest.Showing:Ekaterina was shocked by the cold. She’d known winters before, but never this far north and never this deep. Burrowed under furs as she was, she still felt her eyelashes freeze. There were crystals of ice on her face where her own breath had frozen solid. It was a clear night, and they raced through the whispering pines, like a feather drawn over a sheet of silver. It seemed magical. Impossible. Temporary. Forbidden.What do you notice?You’ll instantly notice a number of things here.How To Recognise The “telling” ModeAny piece of prose written in the “telling” mode:Is factual.Is brief.Is an efficient way to communicate data.Prefers to avoid detail, and is happy to convey broad overarching messages. (“It was cold.”)Is not necessarily human-centred, and as a result...Does not, in general, stir the heart.How To Recognise The “showing” ModeAny piece of prose written in the “showing” mode:Is human-centred (usually, though sometimes only by implication).Is a slower, richer, more expansive way to communicate.Is not efficient – quite the reverse!Loves detail.Tends to place the human subject right at the centre of things, and as a consequence...Can often stir the heart.An Example Of Showing Vs Telling From LiteratureYou want an example of showing story from literature? OK, try this:TellingThe parties were dazzling and opulent. They spilled out of the house, into the  garden and even the beach. [That’s my version of how a “telling” version might go.”ShowingIn his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. … The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive … floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside … the lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher.You want to guess which method Scott Fitzgerald used to describe the parties in The Great Gatsby? I’ll give you a clue: it wasn’t the first of those ways.An Extended Example Of Telling Vs ShowingOne more example – this one a little bit more extended. The example here comes from my own book, The Deepest Grave, which I’ve chosen just to make the point that these rules and disciplines apply to all of us. To Scott Fitzgerald. To me. To you.So, here’s one more example, as before given in in two possible versions.TellingBowen, Katie and FIona find a sheet of vellum in an old Welsh church.ShowingBowen lifts the 1953 fish-restaurant newspaper out of the wooden wall box.‘I suppose that can go.’He looks glumly at the mess behind the cupboard, knowing that it’ll be his job to clean it. Katie looks into the box, now missing its newspaper floor.Glances once, then looks more sharply.‘No, that’s not right,’ she says, and starts picking at the bottom with a fingernail.I already looked under the newspaper and saw just the pale, bleached colour of old pine – pine that has never seen the sun – but that was me being dumb. Me not knowing how to see.Katie picks at the bottom and it comes away.A sheet of paper, blank on the upper side, but with writing in clear purplish-black ink on the lower. Latin text. A hard-to-read medieval hand.I’ve given you quite an extended chunk of ‘showing’ here because quoting at length makes a few further points very clear.As well as everything we’ve said so far, Showing:Is dramatic – it’s story told as drama. You could actually imagine the long-form version of the scene above as something played out on a stage or in a movie. Literally every time that you could imagine a piece of writing as a stage or movie play, you are reading something that is shown not told.Often involves dialogue. It’s no coincidence. Movies involve actors saying their lines – and again, literally every time you encounter proper dialogue in a book, you are reading a scene that is shown, not told. In the example above, the characters immediately started talking about what they had found, thus emphasising the dramatic quality of the moment.Plays out in real time. Take a look one more time at those two passages just above. The first – basically “three people find vellum” – isn’t real time at all. There’s no sense of elapsed time there at all. It’s told like a news report on CNN or the BBC. In the extended passage – the one from my actual book – you could imagine a clock on the wall, counting out the seconds as the scene  elapsed. If you had to make a guess at how long it took from Bowen fishing out the newspaper to Katie finding the vellum, you could actually make a reasonable guess.These thoughts lead us to the next massive point you have to know about the whole showing / telling thing:Namely, why people get so obsessed by it.Show, Don’t Tell: Why It MattersPeople get obsessed with showing vs telling. Here’s the reason why.OK. Here’s a question for you:Why do readers read books?That’s a real question, and you should think about your answer.If you think about it, you’ll probably give me some answer like:Readers want to get involved in a story.They want to experience emotion through the lives and adventures of fictional characters.They want to get swept up in other people’s dramas.And yes. Exactly.And to immerse ourselves in the experiences of those characters, we need to feel them as the characters themselves feel them – which is real time, minute by minute.That’s the whole deal right there.If you want to get your readers emotionally engaged, you have to plunge them into the drama of the moment. It would be no good Jane Austen telling us that “D’Arcy proposed to Lizzy Bennet and Lizzy said no.”The whole reason we read Pride & Prejudice is to be with Lizzy as she experiences that first (awful) proposal. To feel her emotions and reactions almost second by second as she goes through that scene.Readers always experience the closest emotional contact with their character during scenes that are shown, rather than via facts that are simply reported.As a matter of fact, I don’t particularly like the “Show, Don’t Tell” mantra for two reasons, the first of which is that Henry James phrased the whole thing better:“Dramatise! Dramatise! Dramatise!”That’s so easy and so clear. If you have a patch of writing that seems a little low energy – a little blank, a little dull – then just let those commandments echo in your head.Those dramatic scenes are all, always, shown not told. Those scenes are what keep your readers reading your novel. Your novel should be formed almost completely of such scenes.By this point, you’re probably thinking, “Ah, OK, I’ve got this. I see why this is so important. I gotta remember never to tell story, and always to show story.”And that’s what some people think. And what some writing tutors teach.And they’re all wrong. Stick with me, and I’ll tell you why.“Show, Don’t Tell”: Why This Rule Is Sometimes Just Plain WrongSo far in this post, we’ve looked at – and preferred – examples of writing that were shown rather than told.We’ve said that showing is more dramatic and more engaging. It’s the way we plunge our readers into the drama of our story. It’s our basic method for getting them to experience the emotions of our characters.And that’s all true. But right at the start of this post, I also said:TellingIs factual.Is brief.Is an efficient way to communicate data.And hold on – those things can be good as well as bad, right?So, sure, if we have some crucial scene – D’Arcy proposing to Lizzy Bennet, or my gang of Bowen, Katie and Fiona finding some vellum in a church – then you have to show that scene, not merely report the action.But let’s say, you have a line in your book that says:“Years passed and during that time Yulia hardly ever thought of the incident again. It was gone. It belonged in some past life,to some past self. She was busy now with other things. Only then, one bright, clear day in March . . .”That’s telling, right? It’s the narrator just reporting stuff, not showing it.And according to the “Show, Don’t Tell” mantra, telling is bad.But It Isn’t!What is telling? Telling is the wrong way to deliver dramatic scenes (which should, of course, compose the vast bulk of your novel), but it can be great way to deliver information that is essential to your story, but of no great dramatic consequence.So take that “years passed” passage above. How would you even go about showing all that? Would you really have Yulia waking up day after day, month after month, and year after year, NOT thinking about whatever that past incident was?Sure, that would be showing not telling . . . but you’d be crazy to do it that way.The truth here is pretty simple:If you have essential factual information to deliver, and that information has no dramatic interest in its own right, then just tell it. Don’t try to show it, because you’ll slow your book right down – and probably kill it.Showing is for drama (and your book should be mostly drama.)Telling is for the efficient delivery of all the non-dramatic information your book requires.The way I usually think about it is that my dramatic scenes are the stones in my wall, but for the wall to hold together, to be intact, it needs a little bit of mortar too. The mortar is the glue that holds all the good stuff together.Yes, there’s a lot more stone than mortar in the wall.Showing and telling: you always need both.How To Use “Show Don’t Tell” in Your WritingSeven steps to totally awesome greatnessWe’ve talked a lot about general principles, but it would be kinda nice to implement them, right?So here goes with the 7 Ninja Tips of Showing vs Telling Greatness. You are now officially just one short rocket-ride from success …1. Use DialogueDialogue always delivers a scene that shimmers with life and emotional movement. (Especially when you write dialogue right, of course!) What’s especially great about dialogue is that it makes the reader decode the speaker’s true meaning in exactly the same way that we have to decode it in real life.So if a character says, “Yes, I’d absolutely love that,” they probably mean that they’d love it … but if it’s a macho guy being invited to get work experience in a make-up boutique, you would probably guess that he’s being sarcastic.That’s a pretty clumsy example, of course, but the gaps between what a character says and what they really mean can feel really alive to the reader. (And a lot of fun for the writer, too.)2. Punctuate Your Scene With ActionsSome scenes will punctuate themselves with action very naturally. If you are writing a high intensity scene, such as a battle scene for example, your scene will be naturally studded with big, dramatic activity. But almost all books will have plenty of less action-intense scenes. So, for example, you might have a big corporate meeting in some glossy boardroom. The events being discussed might have huge consequences for your characters and your story … but there’s no onrush of dramatic activity. No cities being set on fire. No Vikings with swords. No car chases. No nothing.But you still have to include actions.If you don’t the scene will start to float away from the characters and seem unreal, without anchor. How do you show your story in this instance? What you need to do is insert actions anyway. You actually need to engineer something to punctuate the scene.So yes, getting up, turning pages, pouring coffee, looking out at the view – all those things count and help — somewhat.But maybe the corporate mogul at the heart of the action could at some point get angry. Hurl a coffee cup at a wall. Start shredding a binder full of company documents. Those things wouldn’t count for much if you were writing an action-adventure book, but for the kind of scenes you’re talking about, they deliver exactly what you need.Short message: all scenes need actions, and those actions need to be suited to your place, your characters, and the kind of story you’re writing. Vikings with swords for one kind of book, thrown coffee cups for another.3. Exploit Your Physical SettingActions and dialogue help, because they help keep your characters alive on the page – and alive in the mind of the reader.For much the same reason, great descriptions of place help as well. They anchor everything that’s happening in the scene. That anchoring means that the stuff you’re describing feels like real things happening to real place in a real location.Now, I’m not for a moment suggesting that you need to write whole pages of purple prose talking about the wind in the palm trees, or whatever else. What I am saying is that you need a paragraph or so to locate the action relatively early in the scene … and then you need to keep nudging the reader to remind them where you are.So let’s say your scene is taking place in a rainy New York garden. You’d have two or three sentences setting the scene. (Let’s say: iron railings, rain, noise of police sirens, a sad-looking willow tree, smells and steam coming from the back of a Chinese laundry opposite.) Then you start to let your scene unfurl and, as the characters move and talk and act, you drop in little sentences like, “rain dripped from the willow.” or “She paused to let the howl of a nearby siren pass down the street.”You’re not interrupting the action. You’re just helping the reader actually visualise it.4. Make Use Of Your Character’s PhysicalityIn the example just given, I suggested that you might write “rain dripped from the willow.” And, good, that’s perfectly fine.But let’s bring your character right into that rainy garden, shall we? So you might have something like this:“Rain dripped from the willow. Her hair was getting soaked but he couldn’t help noticing that she seemed barely aware of it. And this was Esmee. Esmee who was normally so conscious of the tiniest bit of discomfort or, as she put it, ‘outdoor horribleness.’That’s effective writing, because you have the physical location and the character interacting – and interacting to a specific emotional / story purpose. In this case, that purpose is to emphasise that Esmee is so taken aback by the events of the scene (whatever those are), she’s stopped noticing stuff that would normally really bother her.The short moral: use your characters’ body and physical sensations to make them physically present and alive in your scene.5. Use Specific Words, Not Generic OnesAnother easy win here.If you are trying to locate a scene in a place that feels real, you want to get specific rather than generic.So “rain dripped from the tree” feels blandly universal. “Rain dripped from the willow” feels already more specific and immediate.Sometimes, of course, you’ll want to get really specific. Something like this maybe: “rain dripped from the willow’s long, drooping tendrils. She noticed that the tree was balding, losing leaves, as though unhappy to be here. As though longing for escape.”I don’t want to suggest you always need to be that specific – sometimes it’s fine for a willow to just be a willow – but in this case, some specific comments about a tree rebound back to hint something about what the character’s might be feeling.Short moral: always prefer the specific to the generic. And sometimes, if it makes sense, you can get very specific.6. Always Make Space For The Reaction ShotYou know how in the movies, you’ll always get the reaction shot? LIke this, I mean:Beat 1: “I don’t want to marry you,” she said. “I never did.”Beat 2: Close up of the guy’s faceAnd it’s kind of obvious why you have those rhythms. If you don’t have the reaction shot, you’ve lost a lot of the drama from the action of beat 1. You need both.And it’s the same with novels. Sometimes, you’ll need a whole paragraph describing a reaction. Sometimes you’ll leave it to dialogue. Sometimes you’ll make do with hints, but leave plenty of scope for creative ambiguity. And any of those routes (depending on the situation, depending on your story) are fine. What’s not fine is to leave the action without a reaction.Short moral: always include the reaction shot! Easy.7. Don’t Be Rushed: Let Readers Feel The BeatsFInal ninja tip of all-out showing & telling awesomeness:Don’t rush.Yes, you want to write a compelling and dramatic scene. Yes, you may have your heart set on a whole long action sequence with plenty of gunplay and chase scenes and whatever else.But let the reader enjoy it! Let them savour the moment!Don’t say, “the car was out of control. The car careened downhill and struck Damon on the hip, smashing him to the floor.”That’s OK, but where’s the time to savour anything? The lovely thing about this moment is that Damon notices the car is out of control and he’s right in the firing line.What does he think? What does he do? What does he feel?I don’t know, because this author hasn’t told us. It’s slower, yes, but it’s actually more exciting to tease out that moment in more detail:The car was clearly out of control. Damon could just about see a driver but there was something about the curve of his shoulders, the loll of his head, which suggested the driver had lost consciousness, or worse. The fall of the hill put Damon right in the firing line. He remembered thinking, “I’m going to be hit. I need to move aside.” He probably took the very first part of that action too. Some sideways move. Some break for shelter. But …”And so on. You can see that by slowing the action down you’ve actually ramped the excitement up. Pretty good, huh? And fun to write, every single damn time.That’s it from me. Have fun with the showing & telling. Do it right, and your scenes will come alive, and you’ll enjoy writing them too.Happy writing!

Starting out simple and layering upGood novels start with decent plots. So start with a simple sketch outline, then make it progressively more detailed. We show you exactly how to do it. The simplest way to write a terrible book is to start out having no idea what your story is, or where it’s going to lead. The easiest way to avoid that outcome is to prepare a simple outline of your plot before you even write the first sentence. The downside of this approach: you actually have to do some thinking before you can start writing. The upside: you won’t end up writing a terrible book. Which is a plus point, no? 7 Steps To Writing A Plot Outline For Your Novel:Understand the purpose of your outline.Start with a barebones outline.Add a midpoint.Have a firm sense of purpose.Integrate your characters.Complete your outline.Work in circles.Understand The Purpose Of Your OutlineAt its simplest, a plot outline can be defined as a very simple, barebones summary of your story. It could be as short as a single page outline. Or it might run to as many as ten or twenty pages. Either way, it’s important to realise that you’re not telling the story, you’re summarising it. So if your outline feels flat and unengaging, that’s fine. Your story itself can’t be either of those things, but your outline just needs to be functional, clear – and brief. The outline is for you, and for you only. It’s not for a reader either now or in the future. The approach we’re going to recommend in this post is to start really simple, then start to build as you get more insight into detail. Here goes. Start With A Barebones OutlineIt’s commonly said that there are only seven plots in the world. We’re not totally sure about that, in fact, but it’s certainly true that pretty much every novel will adopt the same rough shape. That shape, at its simplest, is as follows:Status quo: This is the situation at the start of the book. So, for example, if we were dealing with a Lee Child / Jack Reacher novel, the status quo might be “Jack Reacher is travelling through rural Montana, wanting to heal after a particularly bruising recent adventure.” At this point, nothing has happened. The situation is stable.Inciting incident: The inciting incident is whatever happens to disturb that status quo. It could be an apparently small thing, or an obviously big one. So in Twilight, for example, the inciting incident is simply that Bella Swan’s attention is caught by an attractive – but odd – boy at school. In our Reacher story, it could be that an unseen sniper kills the bus driver dead and seems intent on killing everyone else on the bus too. Either way, the important issue is that the status quo has been disrupted. The reader already feels that a story has been set in motion.Developments: This is the big middle chunk of your book. This is the part that probably occupies you from (say) 15,000 words into your book right up to 10 or 15,000 words before the end. It’s the scariest part of your outline, whether you’re a new novelist, or a seasoned scriptwriter, or anything in between. We’ll talk more about this element of your plot later in the post, but for now just bear in mind that your character will encounter obstacles, victories and reversals – but the victories won’t be permanent and the reversals won’t be lethal. Everything is still in play … but the stakes will gradually rise.Climax: We said that the stakes gradually rise and, by the end of the book, the stakes feel like life and death. In a romance story, your protagonist will feel that she has to get this guy, because he is going to be her forever one. In a thriller, it’s not just that your protagonist’s life is in danger, it’s that some vast other risks are in play as well (a bomb in New York, a high school massacre, or whatever.) It’s not too much to say that the success of your book really stands and falls by how profound and engaging this climax moment feels.Resolution: Then your story needs to resolve. It could be a triumphant resolution: Jack Reacher wrestles the bad guy on the lip of a gigantic dam and ends up hurling him over the edge to his destruction. Or it could be a bitter failure: The guy your romantic protagonist really, really wanted rejects her, or dies, or otherwise becomes unavailable. Or you could have some bittersweet ending. So in The Fault In Our Stars, the two romantic protagonists are truly in love (yay!), but their sickness takes its inevitable and tragic course. I strongly recommend that, for the first draft of your plot outline, you simply use those five headings. Quite likely, you have a pretty clear idea in your head of the first two of those stages, and a fairly clear idea of the last two as well. So just write down whatever you know under those headings. If you don’t have a clear idea, just leave a blank or a write question to yourself. (For example: “Jack Reacher has to find a way to escape the prison. But how?”) Most likely, the area where you’ll struggle most is the Developments section – but don’t worry. Just write what you know. We’re about to move to the next stage. Before that though, let me offer one more heading, which is kind of optional … and kind of doesn’t fit into a post on plot outline … except that it really, really does as well. So especially if you are writing a book with an interesting or complicated character, I suggest you make notes on:Main character(s). A paragraph or two of notes on each of the main characters in your novel will help inform the work you do on plot – and vice versa. Your plotting insights will also enrich your main character. And because you want to think of character as fluid rather than static, you should also consider making some short notes on …Character arc or character development. You want to sketch – in broad, simple terms only – how your main character changes or develops through the course of the book. More help on that here.Got that? Good. OK:Onwards.Add A MidpointWe just said that the developments section is the one you’re going to struggle with the most – and that’s fine. That’s just part of the joy of writing. But we can make your job a bit easier. The single hardest thing about that developments part of your book is that it feels very long and unstructured. So the simplest way to navigate it is to give yourself a solid anchor in the middle. That anchor is typically a piece of major drama in a particular scene (read more about how to perfect that dramatic scene, here). Sometimes it’ll look as though the protagonist has ‘won’. Sometimes it’ll look like he/she has ‘lost’. But either way, because we’re not yet at the true climax of the book the defeat or victory will be a false or temporary one. The actual type of drama involved will depend on your book. In a crime thriller (like the ones I write, for example) there will typically be an episode of action/adventure that also does something to change the complexion of the case being investigated. So I’ve had my protagonist get involved in hostage situations. I’ve had her be abducted. I’ve had her investigate a major unexplored cave system. And so on. They’re the sort of extended, memorable sequences that should echo long after the reader has finished the book. A romantic story needs the same kind of major twists. So it could be that your happy couple go away on what should be the holiday of their dreams, only for things to go terribly wrong. Or an ex-boyfriend/girlfriend comes along to mess things up. Or something else. If you can determine what your midpoint is, you’ll find your whole plot feels more manageable. Imagine your plot as a bridge. In the first ‘barebones’ version of your plot outline, we just had a major support at the Initiating Incident point and then again at the Climax/Resolution one. The rest of your plot was just a long stretch over the void. By introducing a midpoint, you give yourself another major support element. So it’s like you only have to manage the span from the Initiating Incident to the Midpoint , then from the Midpoint to the Climax. By breaking that developments section into two, you’ll find it much, much easier to navigate. Have A Firm Sense Of PurposeIt probably goes without saying, but we’re going to say it anyway … No plot will cohere or feel compelling unless your protagonist has a really clear sense of purpose. That purpose can morph a little through the book, but it can’t change its essential nature. So a Jack Reacher novel, for example, might start with Reacher trying to protect the bus passengers from the sniper … but as the narrative evolves, he might end battling a plot to – I don’t know – swamp Great Falls in drugs, or plant a bomb under the state Capitol, or whatever it is. But there has to be a solid continuity in what drives him throughout the book. He can’t start off chasing bad guys in Montana, then zoom off somewhere else and start some totally different story. The way to be sure that your outline is staying on track is to define, upfront, what your character’s motivation is. You may also want to explicitly state who their antagonist is and what the obstacles in the way of their success are. (That approach works better for some books than others, so if it doesn’t quite make sense to you, you can just ignore it. Who’s the antagonist in Twilight, for example? There isn’t really a great answer to that question.) Integrate Your CharactersSo far, we’ve spoken of a plot outline as something almost mechanical – like a piece of clockwork you just have to wind up and set in motion. But of course your plot is propelled by its characters and the best stories aren’t character-led or plot-led, but led equally and powerfully by both. You can read more about plotting here.To take an example, think of John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. The twisty, double-crossing plot needed a suspicious and experienced spy at its heart. And if that sounds cold, then the spy, Alec Leamas, also had a desperate desire to find love, to be able to trust again after his years of secret service. That character – cynical, but with that hopeless dab of longing – turned an efficient spy story into a twentieth century masterpiece. The best way to bring your characters and plot into perfect synchrony is to develop them both together. So you probably want to work on your character worksheets (more here) at the same time as you’re developing your story outline. So you might fill out your developments section with a new idea you had for a scene there. That might trigger an insight into your character, so you’d go and add something to your character worksheet. Then back again. You’ll find you don’t even need to work too hard on the integration. If you develop your story and your characters alongside each other, each element will bleed into and influence the next. The process will happen automatically and in a beautifully seamless way. Complete Your OutlineHow far you take your outline is very much up to you. Some writers like to plan very intensively. Some like to use the Snowflake method. I know writers who will write a detailed 30 page synopsis of their novel before they proceed. I know others (like me!) who do the absolute bare minimum. Who just trust their instincts to be able to create on the run, if you like. So I’m not going to tell you how far you need to take your outline. What I will say is that if you want a detailed plot outline template to follow, then you may well want to use Blake Snyder’s famous beat sheet from his ‘Save the Cat’ book. That book was written for screenwriters and doesn’t have universal applicability to novelists, but a lot of people find it helpful all the same. So if you are Mr/Ms/Mx Detailed and you want a roadmap, then here it is: Opening image. This is like a touchstone for where your protagonist is at the very opening of the book. Theme stated. All decent books (or films) should have some underlying theme or debate. You want some statement of that theme – possibly playful; you don’t have to be too heavy – in the opening couple of chapters of the book. Set-up. This corresponds roughly to our Status Quo section Catalyst. This corresponds roughly to our Initiating Incident section. Debate. Is the hero going to rise to the challenge posed by the Initiating Incident? Quite often there’s a refusal or reluctance, before something tips the hero into changing their mind. Break into two. That’s the moment that launches the story from the opening set-up into the excitement of the Developments section. It’s where your character decides to accept the adventure being offered and launches off into the guts of your story itself. B story. A really good tip this. Very often, there’ll be some secondary story to accompany your main one. So if you are writing a broadly action-themed novel, the secondary story might be a romantic one. Introducing that that secondary tale right after the opening section is done and dusted feels just about right in terms of timing. Fun and Games. This is Snyder-speak for the opening round of action, where your premise really starts to make itself felt. So if you were writing (let’s say) an ‘action’ film set in an old folks home, this is where you’d really start to have fun with the premise. Yes, things are at stake here, but this is still the lower stakes portion of the book. Things seem to matter, but they’re not that consequential compared with what follows. Midpoint. As discussed above. The quivering dagger at the dead centre of your book. Bad guys close in. After the midpoint, things feel more consequential. Yes, your character may notch up some ‘wins’, but the mood, broadly, will be one of increasing seriousness as you move towards the climax of your story. All is Lost. It looks like everything is lost. Bond is captured and the villain is going to detonate his bomb. Or Lizzy’s Bennett’s silly sister has gone and destroyed her hopes of happiness with Darcy. Dark Night of the Soul. This is the interior / emotional counterpart of the ‘all is lost’ moment. It’s how the character reflects to themselves after the disaster that’s just happened. Break into three. This is the moment where the character bursts out of their despair. Where they come up with one last desperate stratagem, or some last effort of will. Finale. This is the climax and resolution elements we’ve already spoken of. Closing image. This is the image that shows where we are now – and is often a mirror image, in some way, of where we were. As I say, there’ll be elements of that template that may seem very helpful, and others that may not especially speak to you. So grab what you want. Discard what you don’t. And when you come to thinking about adding in more details, read this article on chapter lengths – it’s really helpful!Work In CirclesIn most things we do, we want to work in a logical, disciplined way. Start at the beginning. Follow a plan. Complete the task. Done. Outlining a novel is not like that. It’s the opposite. I’ve already mentioned that you’ll probably be developing plot as you develop character. So you’ll dive from one thing to another and back again. Good. That’s not indiscipline at work. That’s creativity. But also –  You’ll make mistakes. You’ll screw up. You’ll have ideas, you’ll write them down – then you’ll figure out they’re bad and you’ll delete them again. Good. That’s not incompetence at work, it’s creativity. A cyclical, repetitive, trial-and-error type process is exactly what you’re after. That also means you’re not going to be able to sit down and develop a decent plot in a weekend. That’s not how it works (or almost never anyway.) So give yourself time. Forgive yourself errors. And have fun. Happy plotting. Happy outlining. And happy writing … 

How To Write Prose- The Best WayWhen you send your work off to an agent, the agent’s first look will be fast, smart and brutal.They’ll ask, “Do I even like the concept for this book?” And they’ll ask, “Can this person write? Does this feel like the prose style of a serious, professional author?”If the answer to either of those questions is in the negative, you’re on the path to rejection, no matter how hard you’ve worked on all the rest of your manuscript.Well, we’re not going to address the issue of ideas in this post (though you could check out our comments in our article on writing an elevator pitch, if you’re worried, or see what we have to say about checking and developing your ideas.)We’re going to deal with the second of the things that an agent (or their assistant) has uppermost in their mind when they consider your submission.Quite simply, they’re thinking:Can this person write?Agents see hundreds of manuscripts and you’ll need yours to say, from that very first page and paragraph, “Yes, this is good prose. You are in the hands of a confident, capable writer. You will not be wasting your time with what follows.”What are you aiming for? You are aiming for prose that is:ClearEconomicalPreciseIf you can check those three boxes, you’re doing fine. John Grisham isn’t some kind of prose writing superstar. Nor is Suzanne Collins. Nor is Stephen King. Their genius all lies elsewhere.9 Ways To Perfect Your Prose Style:Avoid clichés.Be accurate.Keep it short.Trust your reader.Cull your adjectives.Mix your rhythms.Ditch the modifiers, let the verbs do the work.Use unexpected words to shock readers into understanding.Ask for help.If you can write clear, economical and precise prose – and it isn’t hard to do – you’re basically forcing the agent to read on. To judge your novel on its merits. To give your story a chance.Here’s what you need to do.Not sure what prose writing is? It’s basically the opposite of poetry. Any novel is written in prose. So is the text in any newspaper. So is the letter you write to your bank or your doctor or your secret lover. When novelists talk about prose style, they really just mean the way you write. Does your writing sound good or bad? Does it do the job you want it to do? Or does the way you express things always let you down? Wikipedia has more on what prose is, if you want to know that.Kill ClichésCliché is the enemy of every author. And you recognise it when you see it, right? We’re talking about things like this:His eyes were blue enough to swim in.She felt a sharp pain, as though cut by a knife.The breeze whispered softly through gently waving trees.It’s like watching a movie we’ve all seen before. It’s language that’s stale, old, past its sell-by date.But cliche creeps in all over the place. The flame-haired passionate redhead? She’s an old, overused stereotype.The midnight hostage exchange in a deserted warehouse? Seen it, read it.The rose-covered cottage with a smiling old lady and lots of home-made cakes. Yep, nothing new there.The simple fact is that wherever you grab for pre-made stereotypes – scenes, people and settings that we’ve seen a million times before – you bore your reader that tiny bit. You distance them from the text, when what you want is to hug them close.So, look for cliches everywhere.Then kill them.Need more help? We have a brilliant video tutorial on Cliches – it’s part of our How To Write course and is available free to members of Jericho Writers. If you’re serious about writing, you probably want to consider joining us. You get tons of free learning materials, live online classes, an active and supportive community, and so much more besides. Learn more or join us.Be AccurateLet’s start with an example. Consider this sentence:She lay in the early morning light listening to the roar of traffic softly rising like mist in the streets.What do you think of that? Good? Bad? Half and half?I hope you said that it’s an awful sentence, because it is. If I were an agent and I encountered this sentence on page 1 of a submission, I would read no further. Why? Because the writer isn’t in control of their language and that proves to me that they aren’t yet ready to go pro.So let’s see what’s wrong.“She lay in the early morning light” – that’s fine. Nothing wrong with that.“listening to the roar of traffic” – yep, OK. (Although why is there a roar of traffic in the early morning? Unless there’s a very specific setting which answers that question, I worry that we’re not really dealing with early morning here, in which case why say so?)“softly rising like mist in the streets” – OK, that’s where this sentence collapses completely. If traffic roars, it can’t softly rise. You could have a murmur of traffic doing something softly. Or a roar of traffic doing something loudly or violently. But roar + soft just doesn’t work. The two ideas are fighting each other.And that’s not all of it. Mist doesn’t rise, it just hangs. It’s a stationary image, not a moving one. So that’s another fail.And why say ‘In the streets‘? Obviously cars are in streets (so why bother to remind us?) And if you want to talk about a slow-rising mist, then isn’t that more naturally a rural metaphor? In which case the word streets again introduces an awkwardness.In short, the writer of that sentence failed the Accuracy test, because they weren’t sure enough what they wanted to say and ended up just serving up a mess.Oh, and if you think I’m being picky here, then I admit it:YES! I’m picky.So should you be. Prose style matters – and it’s good that it matters!Books are made out of sentences and sentences are made out of words. If you\'re not very picky indeed about your word choices and sentence constructions, you will never be (or deserve to be) a real professional author. So be picky. It’s the first ingredient of success.Keep It ShortWhen you write, treat your manuscript as though you had to pay 10p a word for the privilege of writing. Look at this paragraph, for example:He walked slowly away, trying not to make any kind of sound. His feelings were in a turmoil, roiling and boiling, a tumult of emotion. He couldn’t help reiterating to himself again and again that he had done the right thing; that he had done everything he could. He insisted to himself that she, too, would surely see this one day.Ugh. Let’s try that again. Here’s the same example, tightened up.He crept away, his feelings in turmoil. He had done the right thing, he told himself. One day, she would see this, too.Almost a third of the length. And everything about it is better. It doesn’t just say it faster, it says it better. In the first version, all that verbiage just got in the way.And again: you just can’t be too picky here.Let’s say you had a sentence in your book that was 12 words long, when it could say the same thing in just 9-10 words. Would you make the change? Or would you just think, nah, who cares?I certainly hope that you said you’d make the change, because look at it like this. What if you write a 120,000 word book that could be reduced to 90 or 100,000 words without losing any material content? That book would be 20-30,000 words overweight . . . and would be way too baggy for any top-end literary agent to get involved with. But you will only cut that 20-30,000 word surplus by finding the 2-3 unnecessary words in that 12 word sentence and cutting them out. That’s what that part of the editing process is all about. There are no shortcuts.In short: good writers work at their writing. Getting your prose style right is all about acute attention to detail.If a bad sentence bothers you, you just need to keep going until you get it right.You have to care about your sentences –because your entire novel is made of them!If you’re not open to cutting your work in service of your novel, making it the best you can, we’re in trouble.Trust Your ReaderAnother amateurish trait is that of not trusting the reader. We get many clients who write something rather like the following:He rolled in agony. Fire shot through every limb. He felt like screaming out in pain. His entire face was distorted with the grotesque effort of not shouting out.That uses many very forceful words (agony, fire, screaming, distorted, grotesque). You don’t need that many words to do the job. It’s as though the writer of this snippet doesn’t trust the reader to get the point, so he/she keeps making the same point again and again like some classic pub bore. Readers will ‘get it’, as long as you write in clear, forceful, non-repetitive language.Here’s another example.What do you think of the following little dialogue / micro-scene?“Yes?” I nudged.“Yes, only . . .” she hesitated, then stopped completely. Waved her hands at me to signal she was done, or that I should look away. Some gesture like that.“So, yes, we should invite him?”“Of course. Fine. Whatever you want. It’s not like I care.”We don’t know what’s going on here of course – presumably, if we read this in a book, we’d have more background to make sense of it all. But it’s pretty clear, isn’t it, that the woman here has some set of quite strong, deep emotions about the guy they might or might not invite to something – and she’s not that keen to talk about what she feels.#And you got all that, without the writer having to spell anything out at all. The writer just dropped stuff on the page and let you figure it out.So now take a look at this way of doing things:“Yes?” I nudged her, anxious to know what she would think.“Yes, only . . .” she hesitated, then stopped completely. She waved her hands at me to signal something. I guess she was quite conflicted about me inviting him. Maybe she was a little bit angry, plus a little embarrassed. Her body language was more than consistent with these two emotions, so I decided that I should try to clarify the situation in order to identify her opinions more precisely.“So, yes, we should invite him?” I said, hoping that this time I would get a more detailed answer.“Of course. Fine. Whatever you want. It’s not like I care.”But although she said she didn’t care, it was evident to me that she did. As a matter of fact, when she spoke the words “whatever you want”, it struck me that maybe she was being passive-aggressive, that although she said “whatever you want”, maybe what she actually means was, “No, I’d prefer not to see him.”That’s terrible, right?And it’s terrible, partly, because this version of the dialogue massively breaks the “keep it tight” rule. But it’s also terrible because it just lectures the reader in this horrible heavy-handed way on stuff that the reader can perfectly well figure out for themselves.It’s even worse than that, actually, because in the first example, all the nuances of the situation were left open to the reader to figure out. In the second example, all that clunky explanation just crushes the nuances underfoot.The moral of this story?Trust your reader. They’re smart like that.(And get more dialogue help, if you want it.)Cull Those AdjectivesTo stick with this theme, and especially when it comes to descriptive writing, double adjectives are almost always a no-no. The second adjective almost always weakens the first.You want an example? OK, so take a look at this:He leaned over the black iron railings, the coarse grey cloth of his sleeve catching on the sharp, treacherous spike.Deleting any superfluous adjective improves this description straightaway:He leaned over the iron railings, the coarse cloth of his sleeve catching on the sharp spike.That’s better, right?But I hope you notice that we can go one step better again. Every sentence needs nouns and verbs, while adjectives are definitely optional. And in many cases, a sentence just doesn’t need any adjectives at all.So in fact, the best way to write that sentence would be simply:As he leaned over the railings, his sleeve caught on the spike.Good writers use adjectives sparingly. And if you\'re in doubt, write the sentence without the adjectives and see if it works better. If it’s actually missing something then reinsert the adjective. Your prose will instantly tighten and feel more alive, more taut.Want more help on descriptive writing? Then get it here and here.Mix Your RhythmsShort sentences are strong. So use them. But too many? All short sentences? They’ll irritate the reader. You’ll annoy them. A lot.Aren’t you annoyed already? I bet you are.Equally, if you work with only longer sentences, you risk losing the reader, who’ll miss that bit of grit, of sharpness, that shorter sentences bring.The same thing applies across the board.Description is great, but too much of it? Every small thing described? You’ll lose the reader.Abstract nouns are great – but big blocks of them? You’ll lose the reader.Emotional language is great. It’s a big part of why we read. But constant examination of every small emotion? Yep, you know what I’m going to say: you’ll lose the reader.The secret, always, is variety – and flexing your language according to the mood and moment of your story.So if your hero gets brutally dumped by his long time partner? Then look in detail at his emotions!But if you’re in the middle of a tense action scene? Now’s probably not the time for all that.Of course, it sounds obvious if you put it like that, but it’s not always so obvious as you write your text. One great trick, used by plenty of pro authors,is to read your work aloud. If it starts to grate with you, or if the rhythms seem awkward to say, then stop and rewrite!It’ll be worth your time, guaranteed!Work Those Nouns, Work Those Verbs!Look at these examples, and figure out what’s wrong with them:He said loudly, raising his voice so she could hear it across the field.She jumped high in the air.He said as quietly as he could.In most cases, of course, you’ll do better to simply cut out the adverbs (the things that describe the action – like loudly, high, and quietly). English is rich in vocabulary so in most cases, there are neater ways to say what you’re after. For example:He called to her (adding, across the field if you want).She leaped.He whispered.I’m not saying those replacements are always better – you have to use your judgement given the particular place you are in your story. But as a rule of thumb? Ditch the modifiers and let the verbs do the work.There’s a similar trick to see whether your nouns (words for objects) are working hard enough for you. Compare these two examples:He passed her some food, on an old white plate.He gave her lamb tagine. Big scoops of it, mounded on a plate of old porcelain, with a faded floral rim.The first sentence is very bland, partly because all of the components words are very bland. If you listed all the commonest words in the English language, them pass, food, old, white, and plate would surely be amongst their number.The second sentence has some much less common words, lamb, tagine, scoops, mounded, porcelain, faded, floral, rim. Because those words are less common, they feel tangier to the reader. They burn brighter in the reader’s imagination.Again, I’m not saying you can use this trick all the time – your judgement has to come first; sometimes simple is good – but it’s worth bearing in mind. If you read over your prose and find it a little bland or lacking in energy, then giving (especially) your nouns and verbs a big more zing will make a huge difference.Do you find this helpful? We have some brilliant video tutorials on prose writing – they’re part of our How To Write course and the whole thing available free to members of Jericho Writers. If you’re serious about writing, you probably want to consider joining us. You get tons of free learning materials, live online classes, an active and supportive community, and so much more besides. Learn more or join us. We’d love it if you did!Add Some Little Flashes Of GeniusYou’ll occasionally find a phrase that perfectly captures something: an unexpected word use that shocks a reader into understanding. Here are some dazzling examples of what we mean:“A quick succession of busy nothings.”“One moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.”“I shall be dumped where the weed decays, and the rest is rust and stardust.”These are snippets from writers of genius – Jane Austen, Graham Greene, and Vladimir Nabokov. Never try forcing this on your every paragraph or page (they didn’t). Only a scatter of diamonds here and there has effect, so go for it, if you can.And if that seems a bit daunting to begin with, then start small.The main trick in writing well is simple:You just have to care enough.We mean that pretty literally.Let’s say, there’s something you want to convey. Something, let’s say, about those moments of transition in childhood, when new possibilities suddenly open up.You’re talking about a semi-magical moment, so it would be great if you could find a description that had a little magic to it. But how to do it?The answer is, you write something and see how you feel about it. Maybe this, for example:It was one of those moments in childhood, that suddenly seemed rich in possibility.That’s OK, right, but not exactly magical. So just let your imagination find what you are trying to say? What is it that for you conveys that idea of ‘rich in possibility’?As soon as you ask that question, you might start finding some answers. For example:It was one of those moments in childhood, where the future suddenly bloomed, like a field full of poppies.A moment in childhood, where a window swung open, letting in the sunshine, letting in the future.Or of course, you might end up with something like Greene’s own version:“One moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.”Bear in mind, he probably didn’t write that sentence cleanly at the first time of asking. He probably wrote something, felt it wasn’t quite right, then fiddled with the sentence until he was happy.That’s how writers write. Dissatisfaction + more work = the route to better writing!Get Writing HelpI hope you know by now that Jericho Writers is a club for writers just like you.We have a ton of helpful advice to offer. There are free courses. Free films. Free webinars where you can ask agents and authors real questions about your work. There’s a community full of writers like you exchanging questions and comments on each other’s work.And once you take out your (low cost, cancel-any-time) membership, everything within the club is absolutely free to members. It’s like you get access to the world’s best resource bank for writers, and pay just a fraction of what it would cost to buy those things outright.Does that sound good? We really hope so. We built the club for writers like you, and we’ve already helped 100s of writers to achieve their dreams of publication.

The Art And Craft Of Beautiful Manuscript PresentationManuscript presentation makes a big difference to the way literary agents receive your work. Yes, sure, agents are looking for wonderful writing above all, so in that sense the way you format your manuscript is secondary . . . but getting an agent is hard, so you may as well make sure that first impression is a good one.And of course remember this: literary agents aren’t mostly looking to accept a manuscript. They’re looking for early warning signs that say this author hasn’t taken enough care to be worth reading further. So the lousy presentation of your book’s cover page can screw up your chances of success before your book has really given itself a chance.Sounds scary?It doesn’t need to be. Follow the tips below and you’ll be fine.What Is A Manuscript?There’s a difference between a manuscript and a book, and it’s much the same as the difference between a writer and an author. A writer is anyone at all who writes. An author is a writer whose work has been published.The same thing is basically true of manuscripts / books, so a reasonable definition of the word ‘manuscript’ would be:A manuscript is the text of your novel (or work of nonfiction),before that text has been turned into the finished book.In the old days, when the industry still worked with paper, the manuscript was literally the stuff you printed off on your home printer. When I sent my first manuscript out to literary agents, the damn thing ran to more than 180,000 words and it was enormous. Over 600 pages of printed paper, as I recall.These days, your manuscript may well never be printed off at all, anywhere.Quite likely, you will work away at your manuscript on a laptop. You’ll send it to an agent by email. Any editorial work will be conducted by email and an e-copy of your manuscript. When the thing is ready to go out to publishers, it’ll go as a computer file, only.It’s referred to as a manuscript though: it’ll only become an actual book once it’s been typeset and bound (and becomes an actual hard copy, dead-tree book), or once it’s been formatted and packaged up as an ebook. (As a matter of fact, I think some of the kudos that still attaches to trad publishing as opposed to self-publishing has to do with the way it marks out that transition.)Format Your Manuscript Professionally:Use double or 1.5 line spacingUse a standard fontMake sure to use font size 12Use standard marginsChapter breaks should be marked by page breaksInsert page numbersIndent paragraphsDon’t overuse the ellipsis… Or, exclamation marks!Title pages should also include your name, contact info, and wordcountManuscript BasicsSo your manuscript is basically just a computer file that lives (for now) on your home computer only, but may in time come to sit on the e-reader of your literary agent and (you hope) a whole bunch of editors too.While the manuscript remains on your laptop and nowhere else, then you can format it just as you please. There are no rules at all. No one will see. No one will care.I know one (really good) literary author who has poor eyesight and weirdly bad spelling. So he types in a huge font size – Arial, size 16, often all bold – and just ignores the spelling errors.If he sent out his work out like that, it would make a terrible first impression on anyone reading it. But he doesn’t. That’s just the way he works.So manuscript formatting rules only apply when you’re ready to go out to agents . . . and even then, you need to realise that there are no rules, exactly. There’s no standard manuscript format. No required novel template that you have to follow, or else . . .So the only real rule of manuscript presentation is a simple, ordinary one:Your manuscript should look like a clean, professional document.If you obey that one single rule, you’ll be just fine. That said, there’s a follow-up quasi-rule, which can be expressed as:You probably want to set out your manuscript in a way that is most helpful to a literary agent.Those guys read a lot of new manuscript submissions, so if you make their life harder, you are – even if just in a small way – acting against your own best interests.Ways you can make an agent’s life easier include:Helpful choice of filenamesMaybe the file on your computer is called novel.doc, because you hadn’t settled on a title when you started to write. That’s fine – plenty of my novels have started out that way too. But remember that an agent may be looking at your submission alongside 50 others. So don’t call your documents novel.doc / synopsis.doc / query.doc – you’ll confuse the agent almost instantly. Best practice would be to name your file something like The Great Gatsby, Scott Fitzgerald, first three chapters.doc. [Except I think that title might already have been taken . . .]Clean, clear title pageI\'ll give more detail on that in a secondNo unnecessary additional textYour manuscript is just a working document, that has – prior to publication or the offer of a book deal – no special status in life. So don’t write dedications in here. Or Author’s Notes. Or long acknowledgements. If there”s a really compelling reason why you need to do these things, then OK. But in most cases, all that stuff can wait.Easy readability for the main text itselfMore on that shortly as well!Oh yes, and I should probably also say that in the screenwriting trade, there are fierce and important rules about formatting. They matter because of an equation like this: length of screenplay = run time = production costs. That equation does not apply if you\'re writing a novel or nonfiction book, and the result is that the publishing industry requirements about format are much looser. And quite right too!How To Format Book Title PagesApplies both to novels and non-fiction books.Your title page should contain:The book’s title in a large fontA subtitle, if the book has one. Most novels won’t.A quick genre specifier, if you want it. “A crime thriller”, for example. I’ve added “A novel” to the page below, only because this page was prepared for the American market where “a novel” is quite often used as a kind of subtitle.Your nameThe book’s rough word count, rounded to the nearest 1,000 or 5,000 wordsYour contact info (Email, phone, address) in the bottom right hand corner, or otherwise somewhat secondaryIt doesn’t need anything else. It doesn’t need and shouldn’t have a copyright notice. (See an example of the title page for one of my novels.)Oh, and NO ARTWORK. Unless you are a professional illustrator, say, you just want to keep the front cover bare of anything except text. Remember that the publisher, not you, will decide what the final book looks like, so sticking your own imagery on the book will, in most cases, look a awkwardly amateurish.Epigraphs, dedications, acknowledgements and all that kind of stuff can be left for when your book makes it into print. At this stage, you really don’t need that kind of thing. If you really must put in an epigraph, you can certainly do so on the second page or (probably italicised) on the cover itself.Your cover page would ideally not have any page number on it but, as you can see from the image, I didn’t bother eliminating the number from my title page. It’s no big deal.Manuscript Text Formatting GuidelinesFollow this broad template, and you’ll have a happy literary agent . . .The following guidelines will mean that you deliver the kind of manuscript that any literary agent will instantly consider professional and easy to navigate. If you want to deviate from any of these exact strictures, you probably can.The golden rule is to deliver something that looks like any normal, professional document AND one that is laid out like a book, not a business letter. (ie: indented paragraphs not line breaks in between.) And even that rule about indenting the paragraphs is often not followed by first time writers.But are literary agents going to turn down great work just because they don’t love the paragraph formatting? Of course not. So don’t worry too much.OK, enough preamble. For a nice looking manuscript, you want to present it in something like the following way:Make sure to use double or 1.5 line spacing.Use a nice ordinary font. (Times New Roman, Garamond, or Georgia are all good choices. Arial is quite common, but maybe better avoided as sans serif text is just harder to read at length.)Ensure that you use a font size no smaller than 12, and no larger than 14.Use standard margins. Your existing defaults are probably fine, but check.Chapter breaks should be marked by page breaks, so each new chapter starts on a clean sheet.You can mark each new chapter with a number, if you care to. Or anything at all, really, just so long as it’s clear what’s going on. (If you’re worried about how long your chapters are, or how many pages are in a novel, then read this and put your mind at ease).Don’t forget to insert page numbers (though, truth be told, all that matters less now that everything happens in e-form. It’s still a nice touch.)Indent paragraphs (using the tab key or the paragraph formatting menu – don’t rely on the space bar). Do not leave a double space between paragraphs except as a section break.Oh, and don’t overuse the ellipsis (“…”) or the exclamation mark. Professional authors use those things very sparingly.This page shows my own choices: a nice looking chapter header (but mine is a lot fancier than you need.) Modest paragraph indentation, I like 0.3″. A personal, but not wacky font. (I usually use Garamond, though I’m not quite sure what I used in this example!) Line spacing that’s clear, but not too spacey. (I generally use 1.5 line spacing, though you can go as low as 1.25 if you really want.) Plus a nice neat page number, of course.It would be good practice to include your name and the title of the book in a header or footer, though I haven’t done so in this image.Oh, and did you notice that the very first paragraph in that page was not indented? That’s technically correct and looks quite classy . . . but don’t worry if you haven’t done it. At that level, no one will care. (And that’s one big thing to remember about manuscript presentation. You need your work to look clean, professional and literate. If you check those boxes, then you’re fine. Really, truly, nothing else matters – except the quality of your actual book, which needs to be amazing.)Manuscript Format: Dialogue PresentationThis isn’t a full guide to dialogue format, so do check more complete sources if you need, but for a quick refresher:Dialogue counts as new paragraphs, so it should be indented.When speech by one character is interrupted by a descriptive line, and then the speech continues, this all counts as one paragraph. Begin the next paragraph with the next speaker.Use single quotation marks for dialogue. When dialogue is followed by ‘said X’ or ‘chortled Y’ you should not capitalise either the s of said or the c of chortled. This is true even if the dialogue ends with an exclamation mark or a question mark.If the speaker quotes someone else within dialogue, you show that inner quotation with double inverted commas. Like this, for example: ‘No,’ said Hugh patiently. ‘What Sophie actually said was, “Go to hell, you bloody idiot!” Words to that effect anyway.’For more help on writing dialogue in the first place, then nip over here.Again, though, that rule about quotations within dialogue is hardly ever going to matter . . . and no one at all will care if you get it wrong. It’s your novel or non-fiction which matters!Dialogue Format: An Example   ‘This manuscript is nicely presented,’ said the agent.   ‘Indeed it is,’ said the publisher. She paused briefly, to strike off a few zeros from an author’s royalty statement. ‘It is well presented. And intelligent. And beautifully written.’   ‘But Oprah won’t like it.’   ‘No, indeed. Nor the Chief Buyer at Walmart.’   ‘So we’ll reject it!’ they chorused, laughing wildly.   Their limousine swept on through the rainy streets, leaving a faint aroma of cigar smoke and Chanel no. 5 lingering on the mild springtime air.Use the example above for guidance – or, if in doubt, open any paperback book. The way it’s laid out is the way yours should be.Manuscript Presentation: Punctuation BasicsYour presented manuscript needs flawless punctuation. A few last tips.There is one general rule for punctuation. It is there to help avoid ambiguity.Commas are tricky, but often missed out before names. Get into the habit of putting them in and you will avoid absurdities like the ones noted by Lynn Truss in Eats, Shoots and Leaves.Hyphens are an endangered species, and only the writer can save them. Again, it is vital to avoid ambiguities and absurdities – for instance, the white toothed whale. Is it the whale or the teeth that are white?It is a good rule to avoid lists of adjectives but, when you have them, check to see if any should be hyphenated. You can have a dining room, but a table there becomes a dining-room table.Semi-colons are also endangered, yet can bring a deal of subtlety to a writer’s style. A semi-colon links two related sentences; the second often elaborates or adds context to the first. A semi-colon is stronger than a comma, but not as strong as a full-stop.Colons are used where one sentence introduces another. The rule is simple: use the colon when one sentence introduces the next.The three mistakes that our editorial team sees most commonly are these:1. Not Enough Use Of CommasCommas are like a tiny pause within a sentence and they can divide sentences into little blocks of meaning. They can make (especially) long sentences much easier to parse and comprehend. And commas are free. Use them!2. Use Of Commas Instead Of Fullstops/PeriodsYes, we like commas, but commas aren’t there to divide one sentence from another, if you use commas where you mean to use fullstops (periods), you will end up with sentences that never seem to end, writing of this sort will drive your editor mad, punctuation-related homicides are rising sharply as a result. (*)3. Misuse Of ApostrophesThe mistake which will have most agents screaming has to do with apostrophes. These are simple, so get them right. (‘It’s’ means ‘it is’, It’s raining, for example. ‘Its’ means the thing belonging to it, The mouse gnawed its cheese, for example – and ‘its’ is correct. No apostrophes are added to other possessive pronouns like his or hers, either.) If you’re unsure, look these things up.* – Oh and if you wanted to know how that sentence ought to look, it’s like this:Yes, we like commas, but commas aren’t there to divide one sentence from another. If you use commas where you mean to use fullstops (periods), you will end up with sentences that never seem to end. Writing of this sort will drive your editor mad. Punctuation-related homicides are rising sharply as a result.If you wanted a semi-colon instead of a period after “mad”, that would be very elegant and your editor would probably want to give you a kiss. Instead of shooting you. Which has gotta be a win, right?Frequently Asked QuestionsHow Do You Prepare A Manuscript For Submission?There are many things to consider when preparing your manuscript for submission as manuscripts have to be formatted quite specifically. The first and most essential thing is to ensure that your manuscript has been thoroughly edited and is as well-written as possible. Manuscripts tend to be written in Times New Roman font in a size 12 and are double spaced with no separation between paragraphs (though each paragraph other than the very first should be indented). The most important thing is that the text itself, and the formatting, are clear and readable, and you have provided all the necessary information somewhere within the manuscript.What Is The Proper Format For A Manuscript?A well-formatted manuscript will feature A4 pages, should have a font size of 12, be written in a legible font (such as Times New Roman), have regular margins, indented paragraphs, and be double spaced. Manuscripts also include a title page, a header, and page numbers and each line of dialogue should be indented and should start on its own line.How Many Pages Should A Manuscript Be?The number of pages in, and the general length of, a manuscript varies considerably in terms of genre, topic, readership, and many other important factors. Most manuscripts tend to be around 70,000-120,000 words long, which equates to around 250-450 pages. But children\'s books are generally far shorter (especially ones written for infants!) while certain books, such as fantasy and historical fiction, are much longer than that.Get HelpWriting a book is hard. Getting an agent is hard. Getting published – well, that’s still harder.And getting well published? Actually making a career out of this thing? That’s never been even remotely easy, and (if you’re talking about traditional publication) may be harder than it’s been for decades.So get help. Don’t start spending crazy money, but get help.If you\'re eager to polish your manuscript, but aren\'t sure where to start, get help from an experienced professional editor with our Manuscript Assessment Service.

A short journey to the sewerWe’re always on the side of the book. We’re always on the side of the writer.With books, we want them to be as good as they can be – written well, edited well, pressing clients to be as wonderful as they can – and if you have the guts and determination to pick up a pen and write a book, we’re on your side.And that’s why we are firmly, emphatically, viscerally opposed to vanity publishing in all its forms. This is a story, yes, about Austin Macauley, but it is also a story about a whole raft of other vanity presses too. Snakes, worms and weasels, every one.Why such strong language?Because vanity publishers take vast sums of money from authors to publish their books. This is in contrast to how to best practice in both traditional publishing (where publishers pay you), and modern ebook-led self-publishing where it costs nothing to upload your book to retailers like Amazon, and where per book royalties are excellent. So if you want to know more about what to avoid – and about Austin Macauley Publishers specifically – then read on. A more complete guide to (proper, legitimate, profitable) publishing can be found here.What Is Vanity Publishing?Vanity publishing is where authors pay for their book to be ‘published’ and where ownership of the book passes to the publisher as part of the contract.Vanity publishers never call themselves by that name. They’ll say they offer ‘partnership publishing’ or ‘hybrid publishing’ or say they offer a ‘contributory contract’ or anything else of that sort. But if any publisher:Asks you for moneyEnds up owning the rights to your bookyou should regard them as a vanity publisher.That’s if you’re polite, and inclined to be generous.Quite frankly, we prefer to think of them as thieves and fraudsters.To be clear: they are not breaking the law. But whether some narrow legal test of fraud is or is not met misses the ethical heart of the issue. The fact is that these publishers are offering writers a contract which they basically know will not meet the legitimate dreams and aspirations of those writers.What Vanity Publishing Looks LikeWe’ve spoken to one writer who was offered a ‘contributory contract’ from one vanity publisher (not Austin Macauley), requesting from her a staggering £7,000 to publish her poems.This lady was dying of cancer, and she wanted to earn a little something for the son she’d leave behind. Thankfully, she called us first, and asked for our advice.What we told her was this:There is not meaningfully any market for poetry, and certainly not of the (sincere, but quite home-spun) verses she’d written.She would never see that £7,000 againSales would be modest in the extreme. Aside from any sales she made to friends and family, her sales would quite likely be zero, nothing, nix, nada.She almost certainly would get a nicely produced book to hold in her handsShe would not find that book being sold in bookshopsYes, the book would be available on Amazon, but so are 5,000,000 other titles. Uploading a book to Amazon is easy. Selling it once it’s there – that’s hard.She would not, meaningfully, get any marketing support from the publisher once the book had actually been produced.In effect, she’d be paying £7,000 to have her book printed & the rights owned by somebody else. You could easily spend no more than £1,000 for a book of that length, print as many copies as you wanted, work with lovely, truthful, well-intentioned people, and still retain all the rights to the book.Naturally, she did not use that publisher to ‘publish’ her work. Instead, she went to a reputable local printer and, for a modest sum, got the thing printed up for local distribution. She told me that she wanted everyone who came to her funeral to get a copy.And look, there’s something good here and something awful.The good thing is that a dying woman made a book that she wanted to create. That spoke her thoughts to those she cared about.There is nothing at all of vanity in that impulse. In that sense, the term ‘vanity publishing’ is a total misnomer. I’ve seen a lot of people snared by vanity publishers, and in not one single case was vanity the issue. On the contrary, it’s naivete, hope, and nothing else.So that’s the good thing. A dying woman wrote and distributed some verses.And here’s the bad thing: someone wanted to steal £7,000 from her. Sick, dying, and not at all wealthy.Did I say bad?I meant awful.The thing about vanity publishers is they don’t really publish at all. They get books designed & printed. You can do that too, just google “typesetting”, “cover design” and “book printers” and you’ll have everything you need.Or use an ethical outfit like Matador, or Lulu, or CreateSpace, or IngramSpark, or Completely Novel, and you’ll get a fair service at a fair price. (What each of those outfits offers is different, so you can’t just compare prices – it’s more complex than that.)So if you just want to pay something to produce 10 books (or 100, or 1,000), you need to work with a company like one of those guys. Or source your own design / copyediting / cover design, etc. It’s not hard, and it can be very rewarding.What Are The Alternatives To Vanity Publishing?A word about traditional publishing and modern self-publishing[This section talks about the alternatives very swiftly. If you need more help, go to our main publishing advice page that gives you a load more detail in a very helpful format.]Traditional PublishingOr you can publish in the traditional way with a regular publisher.The advantages of that route:you get paid, upfront plus (potentially) royalties as wellyou get a real publisher working hard to market your bookyou will be sold in bookstores and have the pride of having done a hard thing well.There’s also one obvious disadvantage:It’s very hard to get accepted by a traditional publisher – the rate of success is probably 1 in 1000 submissions (or even worse)If your work IS of that quality, you probably need a literary agent. Details on how to do that can be found here. We answer further common questions about literary agents here. We also offer free lists of agents in the US and the UK.Self-publishingIf you don’t want to go that route – too hard? too slow? you don’t want to lose control of your book? – then modern self-publishing is also an excellent answer.Modern self-publishing involves selling your book via Amazon and/or the other e-tailers such as Apple.You will make a majority of your sales – perhaps over 90% of them – via ebooks, but it’s perfectly possible to create and sell print-books as well. They’ll be of good quality and will be available to readers all over the world.The advantages of self-publishing include:Royalties are superb: Amazon pays 70% royalties on ebook sales, whereas traditional publishers will pay just 17.5% (or less, if you inlcude the amount you’ll owe your agent.)It’s easyIt’s fastYou reach readers right across the globeThe disadvantages include:you have to handle the various bits and pieces yourself: cover design, ebook formatting. Most people will just outsource those tasks, but you still need to find the right people for the job.Because of those tasks, you are likely to pay something to get our book published – but $1500 / £1000 would be a perfectly reasonable  budget for most.You have to market your book. Amazon is a platform; it’s not going to market on your behalf unless you have some prove sales potential already.There is still a difference in kudos between self-publishing and the traditional sort. That doesn’t really make sense to us. (Who do you admire more: someone who sold $100,000 worth of self-published books on Amazon? Or someone who got a £1000 book deal from some remote bit of Penguin Random House?) But still: it matters to some people.If you want to find out more about how to self-publish your work, you can find out with our (characteristically comprehensive) guide here. Info on book descriptions here. Info on categories and keywords here. Advice on getting your book covers here.It’s also true that writing really well is a skill that can be learned – and then learned some more. If you’ve struggled with literary agents in the past, it may well be that your actual book isn’t as strong as it could be. For that reason, we’ve got useful advice on how to write a book right here.Learning About Writing And PublishingAlso – this does’t quite fit on this page in a way – but: it’s possible you don’t yet know enough about the whole writing/publishing industry to yet make a decision on how to proceed. And if you think, yes, maybe that applies to me, what then?Well, there’s a LOT you can do. If you feeling like flashing the cash (a very little bit), I’d urge you to become a member of Jericho Writers. You’ll get access to the world’s best resources on writing, publishing and self-publishing. Info here. You should also, certainly, join our Jericho Townhouse writing community, that just gives you an exceptional way to meet other writers, and exchange questions help and community. View our forums, our blogs, our groups.Austin Macauley – A Close-up Look At One Vanity PublisherHold your nose, folks. We’re heading down . . .This post grew (as you may have guessed) out of an encounter with Austin Macauley, a vanity publisher. Or rather: multiple encounters, all of them negative.We heard about authors feeling cheated.We heard about authors being threatened with legal action if they spoke out about their experience.We heard about authors going to court against the firm.We heard about a prominent blogger – a person of integrity and intelligence – being threatened with legal action for speaking out about these things.So we thought we’d look into Austin Macauley reviews . . . and we did not love what we saw.If you\'re asking yourself \'is Austin Macauley publishers reputable?\', we have the answer. No.In this updated post, we take another look at Austin Macauley – but please remember that ALL vanity publishers operate in much the same way. What we say about this firm could, mutatis mutandis, be said about all its snakelike brethren. Indeed, we DO say it about all those firms.Oh, and to be crystal clear: we do not believe that Austin Macauley is engaged in illegal activity. In our opinion, what they do is totally unethical and close to cheating, but some bad things are within the law; vanity publishing very much included. (Alas.)Okie-doke. So-If you Google “Austin Macauley”, as I just did, you may find this:Screengrab taken 17.5.2020And – huh?A publisher who advertises?Go and Google Penguin Random House. Or HarperCollins. Or Simon & Schuster. Those guys don’t advertise.Why not? Because their business model works like this:Find great books. Publish them well. Make money.No part of that relies on advertising to authors and luring them in. (So how do they get those great books? They pay for them. And authors and literary agents bring them all their best stuff.)But the Austin Macauley model works like this:Find authors willing to part with cash. Part them from their cash. Deliver some kind of book. That’s it.The book doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t have to actually sell. AM doesn’t even actually have to try to do all the things that real publishers do to make sales. Of course not! They’ve already made money. From you!Bu I get ahead of myself.Here’s what they say on their website home page (text copied 24 April 2018)We pride ourselves on our hybrid publishing model, a progressively more popular means by which both new and previously published authors can establish themselves in the increasingly competitive world of books.This is horseshit.Here’s that same bit of text with my explanations in brackets:We pride ourselves on our hybrid publishing model [we take money from authors which no reputable publisher does. Deep in our snakelike hearts, we know that this is a horrible way to make a living, but we may as well make a virtue of it and pretend it’s normal.]a progressively more popular means [Rubbish. Traditional publishing is great. Self-publishing is great and has zoomed up in the world. Vanity publishing is used only by those who don’t know any better. It’s “popular” largely with those people who don’t know better and who are taken in by flashily effective advertising.]by which both new and previously published authors can establish themselves in the increasingly competitive world of books [Double-rubbish. You want to know if Austin Macauley establishes writers in the the world of books? OK. So do this. Go to the biggest bookstore near you. See if you can find any Austin Macauley books. Browse the shelves. Ask a checkout clerk. Seek specific titles by name. You will find almost none, and most likely none at all. And if I’m wrong, I’ll give you a dollar and a kiss for every one you find.]Indeed, let’s take the partnership / hyrbid / vanity agreements that Austin Macauley and its peers offers. We’d want to ask:What is the median cost to the author of these partnership agreements?Partnership implies some joint sharing of risks and rewards, so do these firms contribute a sum broadly equivalent to that contributed by your authors?What are the median sales of partnership titles? Note that ordinary averages (means) can be distorted by one or two high-selling titles, so a median figure would be helpful. This is a crucial question, and you should not part with a single penny before getting an answer.What, loosely, is the median financial outcome for partnership authors? Do they recover their contributions via royalties? Do they generally make a profit, and how much? And if they make a loss, what is the average magnitude of that loss?I hope it’s obvious why these questions are important.Austin Macauley Publishers operates within the law insofar as it prints books, makes those books available on Amazon, available for order by bookshops (not the same as saying that these books are likely to be stocked in bookshops). It makes modest efforts to secure publicity for its books and authors.All that does not amount to a good deal. It amounts to a right royal stinker of a deal.Avoid Austin Macauley. Avoid its peers. And may they, one day, all bite the dust!

The romance genre is one of the best selling book genres in the world, and that includes erotica novels full of unforgettable sex scenes.So how do you get over the awkwardness of writing sizzling action, and learn to write sex scenes that your readers can\'t get enough of?In this article I\'m going to be talking about erotic fiction; from how to start your first draft and engage your reader\'s imagination, to ensuring you are writing high quality erotica that will have your target audience wanting more!So, like any good romance, let us start at the very beginning....What\'s The Difference Between Romance Novels And Erotica?The simplest way to look at the two is this:Romance novels have the sex scenes revolve around the plot.Erotic fiction has the plot revolve around the sex scenes!So before you start writing erotica, ask yourself whether your story is about the characters and an exciting plot (that just so happens to have the odd steamy scene) - or whether the hot action is what your readers want, and you simply have to thread each sex scene together with a plausible storyline.Which leads us on to structuring your story - because, like any genre, your romance needs to have a plot!Structure Your StoryNow I’m not going to go into a ton of detail about how to write a great book - because every successful author of erotica will have a different story to tell. All I will say is that you do need to respect your basic story structure.Writing erotica novels is no different to writing any other kind of fiction!The teasing quality of a suspense-driven story (Will the heroine succeed or not? Does he or doesn\'t he like her?) should match up perfectly with the will-they/won’t-they quality of the romantic/erotic dance. Without that suspense, that build up, you have no momentum driving the story forward.That said, when it comes to writing erotic fiction, your story can be relatively simple – and relatively short. A 50,000 word story wouldn’t work so well as a crime-thriller, but it’s plenty long enough for erotica.Hit The BeatsAnd I\'m not talking BDSM here!\'Hitting the beats,\' in the most basic of storytelling ways, simply means making sure your book has a story arc. this may sound formulaic, but if you have too much of any of these segments, some or missing, or they are in the wrong order then your readers will notice as the pacing will feel \'off\' and it won\'t keep readers hooked.Make sure your romance or erotic story includes all of this:Set The Scene (Act 1)Where does the book take place? Is it on a tropical island? Or in a 19th century mansion? Two very different stories.Introduce The CharactersFrom the onset we need to know who the characters are - is the MC a love-starved vampire or a controlling millionaire (or both)? Readers need to see what the main character\'s life was like before the...Inciting IncidentWhat happens in the book that\'s a point of no return? This is the part when the book gets going.The Middle (Entering Act 2)Some writers struggle with this part as it\'s generally the least exciting part of the book. It\'s where the character grows and learns things, it\'s their journey or discovery. What will happen between your two characters? Add lots of twists and surprises.False Peak/False DefeatThe book isn\'t over yet. There\'s either worse things to come or hope on the horizon. Keep the readers on their toes.Things Can\'t Get Any WorseYour hero/heroine thinks that all is lost, then they work out the solutionThe Hero Overcomes (Enter Act 3)Show the MC overcoming their internal or external struggles and finally getting what they set out to get at the beginning of the storyHappily Ever AfterBecause you are writing erotica/romance, it\'s important that you have your two main love interests get together at the end. And if they don\'t, well, at least hint that they might in future books. Always end on a high note!Let\'s take a look at what makes amazing writing and what the best erotica writers consider when building their worlds.Think CharacterEven if your story is simple, your characters shouldn’t be. The power of sexual tension (and release) is multiplied tenfold on the page if there is some conflict and resolution between the characters.That doesn’t have to mean the two main characters are always shouting at each other (though that could work). It means you must have some kind of push-pull dynamic that will have to be resolved somehow … and often via them taking all their clothes off.It also means that your characters have to develop through the course of your story. The sex they have on first meeting won’t feel the same as the sex they have at the end of your book.But sex is just sex, right? Wrong.Writing Sex To Reflect PlotMost people, when thinking about adding sex scenes in their erotic novel, focus on the body parts. What goes where, who does what, what they are wearing etc. But it\'s so much more than that.Sex doesn\'t belong in any book without a purpose. Much like in any other genre, a sex scene is no different to an action scene. Every fight isn\'t the same, every car chase is different.The sex your protagonists have at the beginning of the book should not be the same as the sex scenes at the end of the book. They have been on a journey, they know one another better, their relationship has helped heal old wounds or accomplish what they set out to do.How they interact with one another has to move the plot forward and show character growth in such a way that you\'ve moved beyond the sexiness to something a lot deeper.But you need to do this subtly. How?Show...don\'t tell!Show Don’t TellWhen writing erotic stories, showing and not telling is vital.People read erotica to be part of the sex, to feel the same emotions the characters are feeling.That means you can’t merely report that character X had great sex with character Y. You have to let the scene unfold, action-by-action, on the page. Keep plenty of dialogue there too, make it part of the plot. Remember that interesting character interplay = interesting sex.Put yourself in their shoes (or lingerie) and imagine what they are experiencing. Engage all five senses. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? What can they smell, hear, taste, see?Make sure that what the setting and props reflect the story. If the scene is set in a 19th century mansion then is he ripping off her silk ballgown? Do the candles in the chandeliers flicker? Is she feeling off her gloves finger by fingers?Alternatively, if they\'re on a dessert island, do they have sand in their mouth and hair? Can they hear tropical birds and the crash of waves? Is the warm breeze caressing their naked backs?How To Write A Great Sex SceneWe\'ve established the importance of character, story structure, and showing not telling when writing your erotica novel as a whole - but how do you write your individual sex scenes?Here is my simple guide in ten easy steps (this advice refers specifically to erotica, the genre my Unbreakable trilogy, starting with The Silver Chain, is written for. Although it can be applied to sex scene writing in general):Create A Picture Of The Characters, Imagine The FlowIf you can, put yourself in the scene. If you find that too difficult, then superimpose famous heart-throbs, or a secret crush, on to your characters.Imagine these characters making love in front of you on a screen, and describe what you see and feel. Put yourself in the picture. If it\'s not exciting you...then it won\'t excite your readers!Make Your Readers CareBecause if they don\'t, they\'ll soon get bored.Your protagonists may come from different worlds, or there may be a difference in age or in the balance of power between them, but they are drawn to each other like a couple of magnets.And once we know how this dynamic works, we will know how and why they like one another, and your readers will be attracted to them, too.Remember that in erotica, upon first meeting, these characters have one aim - to have sex with each other. And the aim of most readers is to watch that attraction unfold, grow and reach an unforgettable climax (in every sense of the word).Voyeuristic, yes, but true!Choose Your LocationSo next, place them in a sexy environment for this first time.Depending on their age, situation, energy, athleticism and/or pure machismo, the back of a clapped out Ford Cortina or the bins behind the Plaza cinema might be just the place for a quick, rough first time, and that will certainly do it for some readers.Any good erotic writer is more than capable, like the old Martini adverts, of creating a sex scene any time, any place, anywhere!But others usually pick up an erotic novel to get away from the dirty old mean streets of real life. They\'re after escapism!So whisk your characters off to a place you’d like to be. A moonlit beach, or a sumptuous penthouse hotel room, or a soft rug in front of a roaring fire.Imagine you are a film director setting the perfect scene. Make sure there\'s low lighting and great music or some other subtle sound track. Garish lighting and deadly silence are not always the sexist ambience, at least for the first time.But as the story progresses you can really have fun with your characters - having them so hot for each other that after the first seduction they’ll do it anywhere. A lift, a restaurant, a riding stable, an art gallery.And to keep us on our toes, you can also later on play with the dynamic, too. Have the meek heroine take the lead, for once. See how the hero responds to that.Don’t Forget The Build-Up/ForeplayBuild up sensuously to the physical act with suggestive conversation which will either be blatant and in your face, or playful, teasing, even holding back.Depending on whether you have just 50,000 words to play with and it\'s straight forward erotica, or whether you are writing a 90,000 word steamy romance, you can decide how long it takes them to get together.They can have wild passionate sex in chapter one, then get to know one another...or they can spend four chapters stealing glances at one another. Either way, stick to your story beats in terms of pacing and keep the readers just as tense and excited as the two lovers!Also, remember characters don’t stand woodenly about like actors in a bad am-dram before they get down to it. Have them eating, drinking, dancing, singing, involve us in that experience, then show us their clothes, how well they fit, are they too formal or tight, how good does it feel as they come off? Unbuttoning cut-off jeans can be just as sexy as unzipping a ball gown.Make it tense, passionate, breathless, but …Take It SlowIn real life the first time you have sex with someone new is often urgently desired but ends up fast and disastrous, but this is fantasy!So although there can be some hesitation, shyness and teasing, ultimately everyone, reader included, needs to be on tenterhooks to get their hands on each other and get down to it.Teasing the characters means teasing the reader, which is what they picked up the book for in the first place!Structure Your SceneStructure your scene like the sex act. That is, foreplay, action, climax, wind down.Too obvious? You might think so, until you start writing the scene.Think of the foreplay as the aforementioned setting. The removal of clothes, the first sensation of skin on skin starts the action rolling in the obvious direction.If it helps, think of a movie scene. I know actors always say how pedestrian and workmanlike it is simulating sex in front of a crew of burly cameramen, a bank of arc lights and a demanding director, but imagine yourself as an extremely involved, generous, hands-on director with your characters.Make sure the bed is soft, the studio is warm, and soon they’ll take off on their own towards the strong, satisfying, long-awaited penetration! As for the climax, well, no beating about the bush, is there? This is when the glorious pinnacle of where we all want to be is reached, and tread carefully here with the language (see below). Challenge yourself to find different ways of describing that rush of ecstasy. Avoid waterfalls, avalanches, orchestras!What actions or words stimulate the eventual moment? Focus on emotion just as much as action here.Keep A Tad Of Realism AliveSlightly unrealistically erotic couples tend to come together every time but if you want to be more realistic, let one come before the other and show who is the generous one, who is thoughtful, who is selfish. Or are they both equally considerate, and if not, will they become so as the novel progresses?Finally, the wind down is often the hardest. After the shivering and shuddering, do they fall asleep, or analyse, or do it all over again? I often have a knock at the door, or a phone call after the act, so that in the early days the couple are never at leisure totally to relax or take each other for granted until the next drama occurs.Find The Right Balance Of Cinematic And PlausibleMake it dramatic, but human. Not impossibly athletic, but not mundane either.The characters will already be attractive and/or beautiful, or arresting in some way to turn the reader on. The men have got to be strong and well hung and very experienced (unless the opposite of that caters for a specific audience).The women are generally curvaceous, soft and wonderfully proportioned, and if not experienced, then primed and ready to learn. Again - if you write for a different audience then change your characters to fit the readers\' ida of perfection.If this is a romantic setting, lots of kissing and stroking, exploration. If this is more down the BDSM route, then the participants will get their kicks from spanking, binding, and pain. But there is always room for sensuousness and tenderness - and most importantly, whatever they do in the bedroom must be a natural part of the plot AND help the reader understand the characters better.Don’t Get Coy With Your LanguageKeep it simple, punchy, evocative, but not obscene or anatomical.Don’t, like John Updike, veer away from simple words and use hideous ones like ‘yam’ to describe a penis. Don’t use euphemism or flowery words, either. ‘Cock’, ‘cunt’ and ‘fuck’ are acceptable with some publishers, but not others, and certainly not in the new mainstream type of erotica.There\'s a difference between well written erotica and graphic pornography!You also have to use your powers of evocation very carefully to avoid sounding awkward or coy. So ‘manhood’ and ‘sex’ can be used, but sparingly. Read erotic romance books and other works of your chosen genre, or find a publisher’s house style, to find what works and what publishers/readers prefer.Use The Rhythm MethodNext try to get into a rhythm similar to the rhythm of sex.Slow, slow, quick, slow. Yes, that’s it. Like a dance. Why else to you think dancing was considered so daring in the old days? It was the nearest people could get to each other in public. And have you ever seen sex better choreographed than in the Argentine tango?Frequently Asked QuestionsDo you still have questions about writing erotica? Here are some FAQs...How Do I Start Writing Erotica?Start with your characters and setting, think about how they influence your plot, and what kind of relationship they may have. You may want to practice with fan fiction first or self publish before approaching a publisher.How Do You Write An Intimate Scene?Begin with all four senses and picture yourself in the scene. What are you feeling? Try to avoid brash or corny words, keep it simple, and focus more on the characters, the setting and the emotions than the step by step actions. No one reads erotica because they want a How To sex manual.How Do You Write A Steamy Romance?Steamy romance novels are different to erotica as the sex is part of the plot and moves the story forward. With romance novels the characters and plot are the most important part...then the sex. Whereas with erotica it\'s all about the sex and the plot matters less.With steamy romance novels try and focus on the characters, what they want and how being with the one they love will achieve their goals. Don\'t add sex scenes for the sake of it, ensure there\'s a build up, lots of teasing, the pull and push suspenses, and then a big climax (as it were).The Ultimate Guide To Writing SexAnd there you have it, everything you need to write a sizzling sex scene for your erotic fiction.Just remember to connect with all your senses, write about whatever specific kink interests you, and have fun. The last part is the most important - because if you\'re not enjoying yourself your readers won\'t either!

Speech gives life to stories. It breaks up long pages of action and description, it gives us an insight into a character, and it moves the action along. But how do you write effective dialogue that will add depth to your story and not take the reader away from the action?In this article I will be guiding you through seven simple steps for keeping your fictional chat fresh, relevant and tight. As well as discussing dialogue tags and showing you dialogue examples.Time to talk...7 Easy Steps For Compelling DialogueGetting speech right is an art but, fortunately, there are a few easy rules to follow. Those rules will make writing dialogue easy – turning it from something static, heavy and un-lifelike into something that shines off the page.Better still, dialogue should be fun to write, so don’t worry if we talk about ‘rules’. We’re not here to kill the fun. We’re here to increase it. So let’s look at some of these rules along with dialogue examples.“Ready?” she asked.“You bet. Let’s dive right in.”How To Write Dialogue In 7 Simple Steps:Keep it tight and avoid unnecessary wordsHitting beats and driving momentumKeep it oblique, where characters never quite answer each other directlyReveal character dynamics and emotionKeep your dialogue tags simpleGet the punctuation rightBe careful with accentsDialogue Rule 1: Keep It TightOne of the biggest rules when writing with dialogue is: no spare parts. No unnecessary words. Nothing to excess.That’s true in all writing, of course, but it has a particular acuteness (I don’t know why) when it comes to dialogue.Dialogue Helps The Character And The ReaderEverything your character says has to have a meaning. It should either help paint a more vivid picture of the person talking (or the one they are talking to or about), or inform the other character (or the reader) of something important, or it should move the plot forward.If it does none of those things then cut it out! Here\'s an example of excess chat:\"Good morning, Henry!\"\"Good morning, Diana.\"\"How are you?\" she asked.\"I\'m well. How are you?\"\"I\'m fine, thank you.\" She looked up at the blue sky. \"Lovely weather we\'re having.\"Are you asleep yet? You should be. It\'s boring, right?Sometimes you don\'t need two pages of dialogue. Sometimes a simple exchange can be part of the narrative. If you want your readers to know an interaction like this has taken place, then simply say - Henry passed Diana in the street and they exchanged pleasantries.If you want the reader to know that Henry finds Diana insufferably then you can easily sum that up by writing - Henry passed Diana in the street and they exchanged pleasantries. As always she looked up at the sky before commenting on the weather, as if every day that week hadn\'t been gloriously sunny. It took ten minutes to get away, by which time his cheeks were aching from all the forced smiling.No Soliloquies Allowed (Unless You\'re Shakespeare)This rule also applies to big chunks of dialogue. Perhaps your character has a lot to say, but if you present it as one long speech it will feel to the modern reader like they\'ve been transported back to Victorian England.So don’t do it!Keep it spare. Allow gaps in the communication (intersperse with action and leave plenty unsaid) and let the readers fill in the blanks. It’s like you’re not even giving the readers 100% of what they want. You’re giving them 80% and letting them figure out the rest.Take this example of dialogue, for instance, from Ian Rankin’s fourteenth Rebus crime novel, A Question of Blood. The detective, John Rebus, is phoned up at night by his colleague:… “Your friend, the one you were visiting that night you bumped into me …” She was on her mobile, sounded like she was outdoors.“Andy?” he said. ‘Andy Callis?”“Can you describe him?”Rebus froze. “What’s happened?”“Look, it might not be him …”“Where are you?”“Describe him for me … that way you’re not headed all the way out here for nothing.”That’s great isn’t it? Immediate. Vivid. Edgy. Communicative.But look at what isn’t said. Here’s the same passage again, but with my comments in square brackets alongside the text:… “Your friend, the one you were visiting that night you bumped into me …” She was on her mobile, sounded like she was outdoors.[Your friend: she doesn’t even give a name or give anything but the barest little hint of who she’s speaking about. And ‘on her mobile, sounded like she was outdoors’. That’s two sentences rammed together with a comma. It’s so clipped you’ve even lost the period and the second ‘she’.]“Andy?” he said. ‘Andy Callis?”[Notice that this is exactly the way we speak. He could just have said “Andy Callis”, but in fact we often take two bites at getting the full name, like this. That broken, repetitive quality mimics exactly the way we speak . . . or at least the way we think we speak!]“Can you describe him?”[Uh-oh. The way she jumps straight from getting the name to this request indicates that something bad has happened. A lesser writer would have this character say, ‘Look, something bad has happened and I’m worried. So can you describe him?’ This clipped, ultra-brief way of writing the dialogue achieves the same effect, but (a) shows the speaker’s urgency and anxiety – she’s just rushing straight to the thing on her mind, (b) uses the gap to indicate the same thing as would have been (less well) achieved by a wordier, more direct approach, and (c) by forcing the reader to fill in that gap, you’re actually making the reader engage with intensity. This is the reader as co-writer – and that means super-engaged.]Rebus froze. “What’s happened?”[Again: you can’t convey the same thing with fewer words. Again, the shimmering anxiety about what has still not been said has extra force precisely because of the clipped style.]“Look, it might not be him …”[A brilliantly oblique way of indicating, \'But I’m frigging terrified that it is.\' Oblique is good. Clipped is good.]“Where are you?”[A non-sequitur, but totally consistent with the way people think and talk.]“Describe him for me … that way you’re not headed all the way out here for nothing.”[Just as he hasn’t responded to what she just said, now it’s her turn to ignore him. Again, it’s the absences that make this bit of dialogue live. Just imagine how flaccid this same bit would be if she had said, “Let’s not get into where I am right now. Look, it’s important that you describe him for me . . .”]In short:Gaps are good. They make the reader work, and a ton of emotion and inference swirls in the gaps.Want to achieve the same effect? Copy Rankin. Keep it tight. And read this.Dialogue Rule 2: Watch Those BeatsMore often than not, great story moments hinge on character exchanges with dialogue at their heart.  Even very short dialogue can help drive a plot, showing more about your characters and what’s happening than longer descriptions can.(How come? It’s the thing we just talked about: how very spare dialogue makes the reader work hard to figure out what’s going on, and there’s an intensity of energy released as a result.)But right now, I want to focus on the way dialogue needs to create its own emotional beats. So that the action of the scene and the dialogue being spoken becomes the one same thing.Here’s how screenwriting guru Robert McKee puts it:Dialogue is not [real-life] conversation. … Dialogue [in writing] … must have direction. Each exchange of dialogue must turn the beats of the scene … yet it must sound like talk.This excerpt from Thomas Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs is a beautiful example of exactly that. It’s  short as heck, but just see what happens.As before, I’ll give you the dialogue itself, then the same thing again with my notes on it:“The significance of the chrysalis is change. Worm into butterfly, or moth. Billy thinks he wants to change. … You’re very close, Clarice, to the way you’re going to catch him, do you realize that?”“No, Dr Lecter.”“Good. Then you won’t mind telling me what happened to you after your father’s death.”Starling looked at the scarred top of the school desk.“I don’t imagine the answer’s in your papers, Clarice.”Here Hannibal holds power, despite being behind bars. He establishes control, and Clarice can’t push back, even as he pushes her. We see her hesitancy, Hannibal’s power. (And in such few words! Can you even imagine trying to do as much as this without the power of dialogue to aid you? I seriously doubt if you could.)But again, here’s what’s happening in detail“The significance of the chrysalis is change. Worm into butterfly, or moth. Billy thinks he wants to change. … You’re very close, Clarice, to the way you’re going to catch him, do you realize that?”[Beat 1: What a great line of dialogue! Invoking the chrysalis and moth here is magical language. it’s like Hannibal is the magician, the Prospero figure. Look too at the switch of tack in the middle of this snippet. First he’s talking about Billy wanting to change – then about Clarice’s ability to find him. Even that change of tack emphasises his power: he’s the one calling the shots here; she’s always running to keep up.]“No, Dr Lecter.”[Beat 2: Clarice sounds controlled, formal. That’s not so interesting yet . . . but it helps define her starting point in this conversation, so we can see the gap between this and where she ends up.]“Good. Then you won’t mind telling me what happened to you after your father’s death.”[Beat 3: Another whole jump in the dialogue. We weren’t expecting this, and we’re already feeling the electricity in the question. How will Clarice react? Will she stay formal and controlled?]Starling looked at the scarred top of the school desk.[Beat 4: Nope! She’s still controlled, just about, but we can see this question has daunted her. She can’t even answer it! Can’t even look at the person she’s talking to. Notice as well that we’re outside quotation marks here – she’s not talking, she’s just looking at something. Writing great dialogue is about those sections of silence too – the bits that happen beyond the quotation marks.]“I don’t imagine the answer’s in your papers, Clarice.”[Beat 5: And Lecter immediately calls attention to her reaction, thereby emphasising that he’s observed her and knows what it means.]Overall, you can see that not one single element of this dialogue leaves the emotional balance unaltered. Every line of dialogue alters the emotional landscape in some way. That’s why it feels so intense & engaging.Want to achieve the same effect? Just check your own dialogue, line by line. Do you feel that emotional movement there all the time? If not, just delete anything unnecessary until you feel the intensity and emotional movement increase.Dialogue Rule 3: Keep It ObliqueOne more point, which sits kind of parallel to the bits we’ve talked about already.It’s this.If you want to create some terrible dialogue, you’d probably come up with something like this (very similar to my previous bad dialogue example):“Hey Judy.”“Hey, Brett.”“You OK?”“Yeah, not bad. What do you say? Maybe play some tennis later?”“Tennis? I’m not sure about that. I think it’s going to rain.”Tell me honestly: were you not just about ready to scream there? If that dialogue had continued like that for much longer, you probably would have done.And the reason is simple. It was direct, not oblique.So direct dialogue is where person X says something or asks a question, and person Y answers in the most logical, direct way.We hate that! As readers, we hate it.Oblique dialogue is where people never quite answer each other in a straight way. Where a question doesn’t get a straightforward response. Where random connections are made. Where we never quite know where things are going.As readers, we love that. It’s dialogue to die for.And if you want to see oblique dialogue in action, here’s a snippet from Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network. (Because dialogue in screenwriting should follow the same rules as a novel. Some may argue that it should be even more snipped!)So here goes. This is the young Mark Zuckerberg talking with a lawyer:Lawyer: “Let me re-phrase this. You sent my clients sixteen emails. In the first fifteen, you didn’t raise any concerns.”MZ: ‘Was that a question?’L: “In the sixteenth email you raised concerns about the site’s functionality. Were you leading them on for 6 weeks?”MZ: ‘No.’L: “Then why didn’t you raise any of these concerns before?”MZ: ‘It’s raining.’L: “I’m sorry?”MZ: ‘It just started raining.’L: “Mr. Zuckerberg do I have your full attention?”MZ: ‘No.’L: “Do you think I deserve it?”MZ: ‘What?’L: “Do you think I deserve your full attention?”I won’t discuss that in any detail, because the technique really leaps out at you. It’s particularly visible here, because the lawyer wants and expects to have a direct conversation. (I ask a question about X, you give me a reply that deals with X. I ask a question about Y, and …) Zuckerberg here is playing a totally different game, and it keeps throwing the lawyer off track – and entertaining the viewer/reader too.Want to achieve the same effect? Just keep your dialogue not quite joined up. People should drop in random things, go off at tangents, talk in non-sequiturs, respond to an emotional implication not the thing that’s directly on the page – or anything. Just keep it broken. Keep it exciting!This not only moves the story forward but also says a lot about the character speaking.Dialogue Rule 4: Reveal Character Dynamics And EmotionMost writers use dialogue to impart information - it\'s a great way of explaining things. But it\'s also a perfect (and subtler) tool to describe a character, highlighting their mannerisms and personality. It can also help the reader connect with the character...or hate them.Let’s take a look here at Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower as another dialogue example.Here we have two characters, when protagonist Charlie, a high school freshman, learns his long-time crush, Sam, may like him back, after all. Here’s how that dialogue goes:“Okay, Charlie … I’ll make this easy. When that whole thing with Craig was over, what did you think?”… “Well, I thought a lot of things. But mostly, I thought your being sad was much more important to me than Craig not being your boyfriend anymore. And if it meant that I would never get to think of you that way, as long as you were happy, it was okay.” …… “I can’t feel that. It’s sweet and everything, but it’s like you’re not even there sometimes. It’s great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn’t need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can’t just sit there and put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can’t. You have to do things.”“Like what?” …“I don’t know. Like take their hands when the slow song comes up for a change. Or be the one who asks someone for a date.”The words sound human.Sam and Charlie are tentative, exploratory – and whilst words do the job of ‘turning’ a scene, both receiving new information, driving action on – we also see their dynamic.And so we connect to them.We see Charlie’s reactive nature, checking with Sam what she wants him to do. Sam throws out ideas, but it’s clear she wants him to be doing this thinking, not her, subverting Charlie’s idea of passive selflessness as love.The dialogue shows us the characters, as clearly as anything else in the whole book. Shows us their differences, their tentativeness, their longing.Want to achieve the same effect? Understand your characters as fully as you can. The more you can do this, the more naturally you’ll write dialogue that’s right for them. You can get tips on knowing your characters here.Dialogue Rule 5: Keep Your Dialogue Tags SimpleA dialogue tag is the part that helps us know who is saying what - the he said/she said part of dialogue that helps the reader follow the conversation.Keep it SimpleA lot of writers try to add colour to their writing by showering it with a lot of vigorous dialogue tags. Like this:“Not so,” she spat.“I say that it is,” he roared.“I know a common blackbird when I see it,” she defended.“Oh. You’re a professional ornithologist now?” he attacked, sarcastically.That’s pretty feeble dialogue, no matter what. But the biggest part of the problem is simply that the dialogue tags (spat, roared, and so on) are so highly coloured, they take away interest from the dialogue itself – and it’s the words spoken by the characters that ought to capture the reader’s interest.Almost always, therefore, you should confine yourself to the blandest of words:He saidShe answeredHe repliedAnd so on. Truth is, in a two-handed dialogue where it’s obvious who’s speaking, you don’t even need the word said.Get CreativeAs an alternative, you can have action and body language demonstrate who is saying what and their emotions behind it. The scene description can say just as much as the dialogue.Here\'s another example of the same exchange:Joan clenched her jaw. “Not so!”“I say that it is.”His voice kept rising with every word he shouted, but Joan was not going to be deterred.“I know a common blackbird when I see it.”“Oh. You’re a professional ornithologist now?”Not one dialogue tag nor adverb was used there, but we still know who said what and how it was delivered. And, if you\'re really smart and develop how your characters speak (pacing, words, syntax and speech pattern), a reader can know who is talking simply by how they\'re talking.The simple rule: use dialogue tags as invisibly as you can. I’ve written about a million words of my Fiona Griffiths series, and I doubt if I’ve used words other than say / reply and other very simple tags more than a dozen or so times in the entire series.Keep it simple!Dialogue Rule 6: Get The Punctuation RightDialogue punctuation is so simple and important, and looks so bad if you get it wrong. Here are eight simple rules to know before your character starts to speak:Each new line of dialogue (ie: each new speaker) needs a new paragraph – even if the dialogue is very short.Action sentences within dialogue get their own paragraphs too. The first paragraph of a chapter or section starts on the far left, and the next paragraph (whether it starts with dialogue or not) is indented.The only exception to this rule is if the sentence interrupts an otherwise continuous piece of dialogue. for example: “Yes,” she said. She brushed away a fly that had landed on her cheek. “I do think hippos are the best animals.”When you are ending a line of dialogue with he said / she said, the sentence beforehand ends with a comma not a full stop (or period), as in this for example: “Yes,” she said.If the line of dialogue ends with a question mark or exclamation mark, you still don’t have a capital letter for he said / she said.  For example: “You like hippos?” he said.If the he said / she said lives in the middle of one continuous sentence of dialogue, you need to deploy those commas like a comma-deploying ninja. Like this for example: “If you like hippos,” he said, “then you deserve to be sat on by one.”And use quotation marks, dummy. You know to do that, without me telling you, right? (Yes, yes, some serious writers of literary fiction have written entire novels without one speech mark - but they are the exception to the rule.)Use the exclamation point sparingly. Otherwise! Your! Book! Is! Going! To! Sound! Very! Hysterical!Dialogue Rule 7: Accents And Verbal MannerismsRealistic dialogue is important, but writing dialogue is not the same as speaking. Remember that the reader\'s experience has to be smooth and enjoyable, so even if your character has an accent, speech impediment, or talks excessively...writing it exactly as it\'s spoken doesn\'t always work.AccentsIf you want to show that your character is from a certain part of the UK, it often helps to add a smattering of coloquial words orIn The Last Thing To Burn by Will Dean, the antagonist, Len, has an accent (Yorkshire or Lancashire, it\'s obvious but never stated). The protagonist is trapped inside this man\'s honme, she has no idea where she is, but by describing the endless fields and hearing his subtle accent the reader knows exactly where in the UK she\'s trapped.Len says things like:\'Going to go feed pigs\' and \'There\'s a good lass.\'You can highlight location, a character\'s age, and their social standing simply by giving a nod to their accent.On the flip-side, if they have a foreign accent, it can sometimes be too jarring to write dialogue exactly as it sounds.\'Amma gonna eata the pizza\' is an awful way to write an Italian accent - it\'s verging on racist. Try to avoid that. Instead, simply mention they have an Italian accent and let the reader fill in the blanks.Accents Written WellBut, of course, there\'s always an exception!Irvine Welsh writes English in his native Scottish dialect and it\'s exemplary - but nothing something we would recommend for a novice writer.Here\'s an excerpt from Trainspotting:Third time lucky.  It wis like Sick Boy telt us: you’ve got tae know what it’s like tae try tae come off it before ye can actually dae it.  You can only learn through failure, and what ye learn is the importance ay preparation.  He could be right.  Anywey, this time ah’ve prepared. Perhaps, if you have a Scottish character in your novel you may want them to speak in a strong accent. But getting it wrong can ruin an entire novel, so unless you are very skilled and very confident, stick to the odd coloquialism or word and leave it there.Verbal MannerismsWhether you realise it or not, we all have speech patterns. Some of us speak slowly, others pause, people also trail off mid-sentence. Some people also use verbal mannerisms, such as adding a word to a sentence that is unnecessary but becomes a personal tic (such as \'man\', \'like\' or \'innit\'). Or repeat favourite words. These can be influenced by age, background, class, and the period in which the book is set.Here\'s an example of two people talking. I won\'t mention their ages or backgrounds, but see if you can guess.\"Chill, Bro.\"\"Chill? I\'m far from chilled, you scoundrel. That\'s my flower bed you\'ve just dug up.\"\"I found something, though. It was sticking out the ground.\"\"Outrageous behaviour. So... You... One simply can\'t go around digging up people\'s gardens!\"\"Yeah. And what?\" They both stared down at the swollen white lumps pressing out of the soil like plump snowdrops.\"What is it, though?\"Harold swallowed. \"Fingers.\"A Few Last Dialogue RulesIf want some great examples of how to write in dialogue, read plays or screenplays for inspiration. Read Tennessee Williams or Henrik Ibsen. Anything by Elmore Leonard is great. Ditto Raymond Chandler or Donna Tartt.Some last tips:Keep speeches short. If a speech runs for more than three sentences or so, it (usually) risks being too long. Break it up with some action or someone else talking.Ensure characters speak in their own voice. And make sure your characters don’t sound the same as each other. Remember mannerisms, speech patterns, and how age and background influences speech.Add intrigue. Add slang and banter. Lace character chats with foreshadowing. You needn’t be writing a thriller to do this.Get in late and out early. Don’t bother with small talk. Decide the point of each interaction, begin with it as late as possible, ending as soon as your point is made.Interruption is good. So are characters pursuing their own thought processes and not quite engaging with the other.Frequently Asked QuestionsWhat Are The 5 Typesetting Rules Of Writing Dialogue?Part of the editing process is to ensure you format dialogue correctly. Formatting dialogue correctly means remembering 5 simple steps:Only spoken words go within quotation marks.Use a separate sentence for every new thing someone says or does.Punctuation marks stay inside quotation marks and don\'t forget about closing quotation marks at the end of the sentence.You can use single quotation marks or double quotation marks - but you must be consistent!Beware of capital letters. Always at the start of a sentence and after the quitations mark.How Can You Use Everyday Life To Perfect Your Dialogue?Listening to people speak will really help you perfect good dialogue. Sit in a cafe and people watch. Watch their body language and how they express themselves. Their verbal mannerisms, tics, how they choose their words, the syntax, speech patterns and turns of phrase. Make notes (without being spotted) and look out for contrasting word choices and personas.What Is A Bad Example Of Dialogue?There are plenty to choose from above - but the worst things you can do include:Using too many wordsWriting an accent how it\'s heard (unless you are Irvine Welsh, which most people are not)Writing dialogue that\'s irrelevant or misleadingUsing too many dialogue tags (or none at all)Bad punctuation - remember dialogue formattingAvoid long speechesHow Do You Start Dialogue?There are many ways to start dialogue. You can ease into it, by introducing the character to the scene. Or you can jump in median res, slap bang into the centre of the action. Much like life, sometimes we hear a person\'s voice before we see them - they pop up out of nowhere - and sometimes we call them or walk into a room where they are, and we have rehearsed what we plan to say.See what works best for your scene, your characters, and the genre you are writing in (dialogue in a crime thriller will sound very different to dialogue in a young adult novel, for instance).That\'s All I Have To Say About ThatWe really hope you have found this article interesting and that you have now found the confidence to tackle the dialogue in your novel.What your characters say and how they say it can make the difference between a good book and one that everyone is talking about. So get eavesdropping, get practising, and read as many books and plays as you can to create better dialogue.Practice makes perfect and don\'t forget to enjoy yourself!

In a short story, where a whole world or emotional journey can be summoned up and dramatised in the space of a few pages, every line and word has to count – and that’s especially true of the way you begin. Here, for inspiration, are a range of starting strategies from some great exponents of the form…1. The Telling Detail“One Dollar And Eighty-seven Cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheek burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.”From ‘The Gift of the Magi’, by O HenrySometimes known as the American Maupassant, O Henry’s stories are tightly plotted narratives of ordinary lives with lots of humour that usually end with a classic sting in the tale that, while surprising, flows with unerring logic from the story’s premise.In this classic tale, we know the whole set-up within a few lines. It is Christmas and Della has no money to buy a present for her beloved husband James. In their whole house they possess only two things that they really value: his gold watch and her golden hair. In a formula that has been much copied since, we watch Della sell her golden locks to raise money to buy a fancy fob for James’s watch, while unbeknownst to her he has pawned his watch to buy her a set of ivory combs that she has long coveted for her (now departed) hair!It is a tale that sounds tragic, but is actually heartening, because in the end the couple are confirmed in their real gift: the love they bear each other. (Plus, of course, Della’s hair will grow back!) But it all stems from a single telling detail: that opening cinematic detail of a tiny sum of money, piled up in pennies and scrimped from tense negotiations with tradespeople, that is all Della thinks she has to show James how much she loves him.2. The Paradox“In the beginning, Sanford Carter was ashamed of becoming an Army cook. This was not from snobbery, at least not from snobbery of the most direct sort. During the two and a half years Carter had been in the Army he had come to hate cooks more and more. They existed for him as a symbol of all that was corrupt, overbearing, stupid, and privileged in Army life…”From ‘The Language of Men,’ by Normal MailerPublished in 1953, ‘The Language of Men’ tells the story of an over-sensitive, frustrated serviceman who, after years of being passed up for promotion and never finding his niche in the army, ends up as a cook – the thing he hates most about the army. Immediately we are curious: What will happen to a man who becomes the thing he most despises?Carter feels that he never manages to understand other men, to feel either equal to them or able to lead them. ‘Whenever responsibility had been handed to him, he had discharged it miserably, tensely, over conscientiously. He had always asked too many questions, he had worried the task too severely, he had conveyed his nervousness to the men he was supposed to lead.’Even after starting to enjoy his work as a cook, the story builds to an incident where the men come to him and ask for a tin of oil for a fish fry-up they are organising – a party to which he is not invited. Carter stands his ground, and earns some grudging respect, but then undercuts it all again after the event with his ‘unmanliness’ – the true source of his self-disgust.The whole drama of a man failing to fit in with and gain respect among other men is foreshadowed in the paradox that’s set in motion in the story’s opening lines.3. The Historical Backdrop“Paris was blockaded, starved, in its death agony. Sparrows were becoming scarcer and scarcer on the rooftops and the sewers were being depopulated. One ate whatever one could get.As he was strolling sadly along the outer boulevard one bright January morning, his hands in his trousers pockets and his stomach empty, M. Morissot, watchmaker by trade but local militiaman for the time being, stopped short before a fellow militiaman whom he recognized as a friend. It was M Sauvage, a riverside acquaintance.”From ‘Two Friends,’ by Guy de MaupassantA protege of Flaubert and the author of the novel Bel-Ami, Maupassant wrote over 300 short stories, many of them – like this one – set during the Franco-Prussian war, and showing how innocent lives are swept up and crushed by futile, brutal conflict.This story starts with a brief paragraph of context and another telling detail: the absence of sparrows. At this point in the conflict, the Prussian army has established a blockade around Paris and is seeking to starve out its citizens.The two friends of the title were passionate fishermen in peacetime, and after a chance encounter they convince each other to go off and fish once again. As well as the hunger they feel, they are motivated by a hankering for a return to the innocent pleasures of their pre-war lives.They slip out past the French lines, to an area where they think they will be safe, but after a brief interval of bliss the Prussians detect them, with tragic consequences…The opening line describes the war situation in vivid, journalistic terms, after which we are plunged into the tale of these two innocents. In a few telling phrases, it provides context and general background for the very particular tragedy which is about to ensue.4. The Anecdotal Approach“Margot met Robert on a Wednesday night toward the end of her fall semester. She was working behind the concession stand at the artsy movie theatre downtown when he came in and bought a large popcorn and a box of Red Vines.“That’s an… unusual choice,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually sold a box of Red Vines before.”From ‘Cat Person,’ by Kristen Roupenian‘Cat Person,’ reportedly the first short story ever to go viral, tells a simple tale of a doomed romantic encounter. Margot, a student, meets an older guy, Robert, and they begin a flirtation that turns into a date that turns into a rather unsatisfactory (for her) sexual encounter.Robert starts off as rather funny and charming, but over time we see that he is needy, insensitive, possessive, and utterly unaware of what Margot is thinking or feeling. Margot regrets the whole thing but doesn’t know how to tell him; Robert, when he is let down, turns all-too-predictably toxic. In short order he goes from mooning after her to demanding who she’s slept with to calling her a ‘whore.’This sequence of events struck a chord with many, many people because it is clearly so familiar. The story emphasises the banality of the whole progression by narrating events in a straightforwardly chronological, anecdotal style, right from the opening paragraph. This approach serves to underline the depressing banality of Robert’s misogyny while implicitly asking the question: Why should women have to accept this as normal?5. In Media Res“And after all the weather was ideal. They could not have had a more perfect day for a party if they had ordered it. Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud. Only the blue was veiled with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimes in early summer. The gardener had been up since dawn, mowing the lawns and sweeping them, until the grass and the dark flat rosettes where the daisy plants had been seemed to shine. As for the roses, you could not help feeling they understood that roses are the only flowers that -parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing. Hundreds, yes, literally hundreds, had come out in a single night; the green bushes bowed down as though they had been visited by archangels.”From ‘The Garden Party,’ by Katherine MansfieldLiterally ‘in the middle of things’, an in media res beginning is where the story drops us into the middle of the action of the narrative, so that we are instantly caught up in events. In this case, we are plunged into the excited bustle of a well-to-do family preparing a sumptuous garden party, and the story does a fantastic job of building up the anticipation and painting a picture of the affluence of the hosts. There is a marquee to put up, a band on its way, an enormous delivery of fancy flowers, fifteen kinds of sandwich, and a retinue of servants to ensure everything is ready.Beginning with ‘and’ adds to this effect, giving us to understand that garden-party fever has been going on already for days, and seeming to hark back to earlier worries about what the weather would be like on the day. But against all this blithely affluent gaiety comes the story’s turning point: news that a poor workingman living in a cottage nearby has died in a sudden accident.Laura, a daughter of the house, wonders if it appropriate to continue with the party, especially as all the noise and music and bustle will carry to the grieving widow (who also has six children, we later discover). But just as happens to the reader with the introduction, she is swept along by the occasion, and only really reconsiders the incident at the end of a successful party, when her mother suggest she take a basket of sandwiches from the party down to the widow. Laura’s reaction to this difficult task is initially ambiguous, but ultimately it seems as if again she finds a way to paint the tragedy in complacently optimistic colours, choosing to find a serenity and beauty on the dead man’s face and so blind herself to the grim reality of the tragedy and the agony of the grieving wife.6. The Refrain“The thing about being the murdered extra is you set the plot in motion.You were a girl good at walking past cameras, background girl, corner-of-the-frame girl. Never-held-a-script girl, went-where-the-director-said girl.You’ll be found in an alley, it’s always an alley for girls like you, didn’t-quite-make-it girls, living-four-to-a-one-bedroom-apartment girls. You’ll be found in an alley, you’ll be mistaken for a broken mannequin at first, you’ll be given a nickname. Blue Violet, White Rose, something reminiscent of Elizabeth Short, that first girl like you, that most famous one. The kind of dead girl who never really dies.”From ‘Being the Murdered Extra,’ by Cathy UlrichCathy Ulrich’s extraordinary ‘Murdered Ladies’ flash fictions present a series of stories – there are 40 of them in her collection, Ghosts of You – which always begin with the same line: The thing about being the murdered extra/girlfriend/moll/classmate/witch/dancer [etc] is you set the plot in motion.It’s a thought-provoking line, which grows in power with every repetition. On the face of it seems strange to see these women as setting the plot in motion, when they are all victims of male violence. But we start to see that what they set in motion is actually the story that the people who survive them will appropriate from their lost lives, and blithely relate in their absence.Each woman may set her plot in motion, but in each case she is not alive to explain how everyone gets her wrong, or projects their own version of events to absolve themselves too easily. We see that this theft of each woman’s own story is another violence that is done to them, something the stories seek in some small way to redeem. As Ulrich says: ‘Every story is looking for the lost girl from the title […] I am looking for the lost in these stories. I don’t know if I will ever find them.’7. Setting The Rules“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. Afterwards, both the man and the metal must be purified. These are the rules and the laws; they are well made. It is forbidden to cross the great river and look upon the place that was the Place of the Gods—this is most strictly forbidden. We do not even say its name though we know its name. It is there that spirits live, and demons—it is there that there are the ashes of the Great Burning. These things are forbidden—they have been forbidden since the beginning of time.”From ‘By the Waters of Babylon,’ by Stephen Vincent BenétIn any story that seeks to build a world that is not ours, there is some work to be done in establishing the reality of that world – its customs, its landscape, its people, its rules. World-building stories can sometimes fall down when they indulge in too much of an expository info dump, as the accumulation of background detail can quickly dent narrative momentum.What’s so clever about the start of this story is that the rules are themselves the engine of the plot. We pan cinematically across the edges of the story’s territory, and understand the legends and forbidden areas of this world. But the quest of the narrator – who is indeed the son of a priest – will take him east, into the forbidden Place of the Gods (about which, of course, we are already very curious). At the outset of the story we do not the time in which the story is set, what kind of being he is, or where he lives. But all these things will be revealed as the narrator’s journey through a post-apocalyptic, post-technological world takes him to places that gradually start to seem very familiar…8. Beginning With The Inciting Incident“The day my son Laurie started kindergarten he renounced corduroy overalls with bibs and began wearing blue jeans with a belt; I watched him go off the first morning with the older girl next door, seeing clearly that an era of my life was ended, my sweet-voiced nursery-school tot replaced by a longtrousered, swaggering character who forgot to stop at the corner and wave good-bye to me.”From ‘Charles,’ by Shirley JacksonScreenwriting guru Robert Mckee describes the inciting incident as a moment that ‘radically upsets the balance of forces in your protagonist’s life’. It’s the moment when our main character is plunged out of their normal routine and a challenge or quest appears which will shape their journey, and with it the rest of the story. It’s common to locate this point near the start of the story after some introductory ‘normality,’ so that we can understand how the main character’s life is to be disrupted.But here the inciting incident is placed by mystery and horror writer Shirley Jackson – best known for The Haunting of Hill House – at the very start of the story. Everything that happens flows from Laurie starting kindergarten. Laurie gets cheekier and less innocent with each passing day, as he brings home increasingly hair-raising tales of an even naughtier boy called Charles. The whole story deals with the comic escalation of Charles’ behaviour, as reader and narrator alike become ever more curious to meet the errant child and speculate on what his parents are like.I won’t spoil the ending, except to say that there is perhaps a clue in the mother’s lament in the opening paragraph about the end of an era of innocence…9. The Thought Experiment“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.”From ‘The Rememberer,’ by Aimee BenderAimee Bender’s story begins by asking the reader to imagine something extraordinarily counterfactual: that her lover is regressing through millennia, going through the evolutionary process so fast – a million years a day, in reverse – that we can actually track his progress by the day. One day he is a baboon, another a salamander; eventually he is no longer even visible to the naked eye.As with so many of Bendee’s stories the result is mournful, strange, poetic and profound. She takes a surreal thought like this and turns into a powerful meditation on memory, the difference between evolution and maturity, speciesism and loss. And it all begins with that challenging idea which confronts us in the very first sentence.10. THE CONUNDRUM“1-0. Who would expect the Embassy of Cambodia? Nobody. Nobody could have expected it, or be expecting it. It’s a surprise, to us all. The Embassy of Cambodia!Next door to the embassy is a health center. On the other side, a row of private residences, most of them belonging to wealthy Arabs (or so we, the people of Willesden, contend). They have Corinthian pillars on either side of their front doors, and—it’s widely believed—swimming pools out back. The embassy, by contrast, is not very grand. It is only a four- or five-bedroom North London suburban villa, built at some point in the thirties, surrounded by a red brick wall, about eight feet high. And back and forth, cresting this wall horizontally, flies a shuttlecock. They are playing badminton in the Embassy of Cambodia. Pock, smash. Pock, smash.”From ‘The Embassy of Cambodia,’ by Zadie SmithThis subtle and absorbing story from Zadie Smith opens with a mystery: an embassy, set in a leafy north London suburb rather than a grand central district of the city, and a wall, behind which a mysterious game of badminton is being played. The rest of the story picks at this mystery and uses the imagined score in the ongoing game-playing as a backdrop to the unfolding tale of Fatou, a domestic servant to the affluent Derawals, who has escaped servitude and dodged abuse in Africa only to face privations and hardships in London.Each mini-chapter of the story is headed with a score from the badminton match – from 1-0 up to 21-0. This mechanism provides a rhythmic framework to the tale. We may never learn who actually holds the rackets, but we see that the back-and-forth motion behind the wall of an embassy – an institution with the power to grant deny or people access to whole a country – is a fitting counterpoint to the enforced travels of impoverished migrants, and to the desperate movements of Fatou’s hopes and fears in a world where she has little agency or resources, and only one friend.Now you’ve seen how these authors have done it, it’s time to get stuck into actually putting pen to paper – or fingertips to keyboard – and start writing your short story. For more from Dan, check out his top 10 steps for writing short stories (with even more examples!).