Time to Write

Advice on how to write a novel, from best-selling author Lisa Jewell

What should you write about in your novel?

In a Daily Mail article about a new contest for first-time writers, best-selling author Lisa Jewell shared this advice:

"Don’t write for the publishers and don’t try to second guess the market; it’s elusive and impossible to pin down.

Just write what’s in your head and what’s in your heart and give the reader a reason to keep turning the pages, whether it’s love for your characters or a need to find out what happened ten years ago or what happens next."

The importance of support when you write

Jewell doesn't mention support explicitly but it's obvious from her account of her own writing history that it played an important role. When she sent out the first chapters of her book, she had nine rejections but the tenth agent wanted to read the whole book. That motivated her to finish it, although it took another year.

She says, "A friend in Australia read my daily output and cheered me on."

That book was Ralph's Party, which got her a six-figure advance for two novels and eventually sold more than 250,000 copies the first year it was out. Her newest novel is The Girls. It will be available from May 6, 2016. 

What if it feels impossible?

Jewell says, "Don't worry if it feels impossible. It's supposed to feel that way." 

The contest for first-time novelists

The contest has a first prize of £20,000 and guaranteed publication, and is free to enter. Details are here. Entries must be received by April 16, 2016, and if your novel isn't finished you must be able to complete it by October 30, 2016. 

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The "Future Self" dilemma

This is one of those, "Is it just me?" quandaries, where you wonder whether what you're experiencing is universal, or personal and probably you'll just embarrass yourself by mentioning it. I'm talking about how disappointing my Future Self often turns out to be when he turns into my Present Self.

Here's an example. I belong to a lot of MeetUp groups. If you haven't heard of those, check out MeetUp.com, and you'll find hundreds, probably thousands, of groups of people interested in specific topics and activities, like photography, art, cooking and just about every other subject you can imagine. 

I'll see something interesting scheduled for a week from now, like an interesting talk or a visit to a gallery or a mini-workshop.

I imagine my Future Self going to the event, meeting people, enjoying the activity.

My Future Self is a gregarious, fine fellow, a man of the world who pursues many interests. I sign him up for the event and we are both happy.

When it's time to go to the event, my Future Self has turned into my Present Self, and something has definitely gone wrong in the interim.

My future self is unconcerned with trivial details like the weather. My Present Self looks out the window and sees that it's drizzling and thinks, 'Do I really want to go out? '

Whereas my Future Self was certain he would meet interesting new people, my Present Self remembers that time I went to an event and got buttonholed for thirty minutes by The World's Most Boring Man Who Also Had Bad Breath.

My Future Self didn't bother with the details of how he would get to the venue. My Present Self looks at the Underground map and sees he'd have to change twice and walk twenty minutes.

My Present Self decides to stay home and Get Things Done. He can envision the short-term Future Self catching up on paperwork, clearing up the home office, getting a start on organizing those documents for the tax return. Yes, we have made the right decision and the Future Self will get to work right after dinner!

After dinner, the former Future Self notices that one of our favorite movies is starting on BBC2. When the movie ends he decides it's too late to get started on any work, it'll be best to leave it for tomorrow.

My Future Self was going to finish this post with a brilliant solution to this problem, but once again he's let us down.

I'm pretty sure he'll come up with it tomorrow.

 

James Patterson's advice on how to succeed as a novelist

The key to success as a novelist

In a Daily Mail article about a new contest for first-time novelists, best-selling author James Patterson shared this advice:

"Obviously, and I know this from experience, perseverance is the key to making it as a writer. You have to be able to accept rejection and keep doing. If you know it's what you want to do, then you need to make it happen. No one else will make it happen for you."

It's all about the story--and the surprises

Patterson writes, "In my novels it’s all about the story. I don’t try to be a great prose stylist; I try to be a great storyteller. I like to imagine the reader is sitting opposite me and I’m telling the story directly to them.

I don’t want that person to get up until I’m finished. I want to keep their attention with continual surprises and twists so they’re not bored for a single moment."

The hardest part of writing a novel

I think most writers would say it's the middle of the story that's the toughest, but Patterson says for him it's the ending. He says, "Expectation has been built up through the course of the novel and you need to deliver a conclusion that fulfils it. If you can do that, you’ll have a satisfied reader."

If you want to check out how he does it, Patterson's latest novel is Truth or Die, published in paperback by Arrow.

The contest for first-time novelists

The contest has a first prize of £20,000 and guaranteed publication, and is free to enter. Details are here. Entries must be received by April 16, 2016, and if your novel isn't finished you must be able to complete it by October 30, 2016. 

Writers, is writing "moments" in our future?

Are we heading for an era in which moments are becoming as important as stories? 

This question was prompted by an article in the current Fast Company about Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti. I'm not a fan of Buzzfeed's clickbait headlines, but that doesn't mean there's nothing worth learning from their success. Here are some of the key points from the article:

• Instead of trying to draw people to their own website, they go to where people are already, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
  
  
• They tailor their content to each social channel
  
  
• They use data extensively to keep learning what works and what doesn't - when something works, they build on it, often in other platforms (e.g., an article on "30 Awkward Moments Every Short Girl Understands" became a scripted YouTube video and a cartoon that appeared on Facebook).
  
  
• Everyone at BuzzFeed Motion Pictures is multi-hyphenated--they write, direct, produce and do each one better because they've had experience with the others. 

IS IT THE MOMENT FOR MOMENTS?

BuzzFeed has made more than 7000 videos in the last three years. The head of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures is Ze Frank. He told the magazine, "The modern opportunity necessarily means that you have to question almost every one of those decisions [about how to make videos]. Things like, 'Should we be talking about story as the prime vehicle for video versus a moment or a character?"

One of their series is called You Do You. it focuses on four female characters but, the article points out, "the narrative arc that's woven through the episodes...is secondary at best." When they offered a package of the twelve episodes for $2.99 via iTunes, the series was number one on the TV series chart.

Each episode is three to four minutes long. You can watch them on YouTube--here's the link to the first one: you do you episode one. Basically, it's the women talking about their fears. (Is it just me, or should the director have told them to talk more slowly?)

Episode Four sees them driving to a wedding and talking about whether or not they're successful enough. The pacing has improved but it's a conversation spiced up visually with some cutaways illustrating what they're saying.

I'm not saying that moments are killing stories. That would be too BuzzFeedy. But as writers, it might be good to be aware that the popularity of the short form has consequences for how and what we write.

Publisher Selina Walker's advice for writing an outstanding novel

How to attract a publisher for your novel

In a Daily Mail article about a new contest for first-time novelists, Selina Walker, Publisher of Century and Arrow at Penguin Random House UK, shared this advice:

"It should be a story that asks questions of the reader; that takes us from our known world and plunges us into another; it should be filled with believable characters who we care about; and it should have a narrative with a beginning, middle and an end that draws all the different strands together in a satisfying way."

What's the dramatic question of your novel?

As an example of a gripping story she cites Harlan Coben's new novel, Fool Me Once. She says, "This is a thriller that quite early on asks a single dramatic question: if you think your husband is dead (and you were with him when he was murdered), why can you now see him on the nanny cam in your daughter’s bedroom? Impossible to put down, you just have to find out what happens next."

That's a good example of a high-concept story--I'm working on an online course in how to come up with high-concept ideas for films and the same methods work for high-concept novels. I'll let you know on this blog when that course is ready.

The contest for first-time novelists

The contest has a first prize of £20,000 and guaranteed publication, and is free to enter. Details are here. Entries must be received by April 16, 2016, and if your novel isn't finished you must be able to complete it by October 30, 2016. 

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Agent Luigi Bonomi's tips for writing a novel agents will love

How to attract a literary agent

In an article about a new contest for first-time novelists, agent Luigi Bonomi shared this advice:

BEGIN THE FIRST PAGE WITH A GREAT SENTENCE that pulls the reader in. Your first important reader is likely to be an agent (if you're looking for representation), and Bonomi says, "If the first page is well written, captivating, intriguing with the promise of a great plot to come, then the agent will continue reading. After just a few pages, they will get a sense of whether this is a story for them."

As an example, he cites the opening sentence of Coming Home, a psychological thriller by Annabel Kantaria: "I was making bechamel sauce for lasagna when I found out that my father had died."

His other tips for winning over an agent:

• Open mid-scene, so the reader is interested immediately in the story. You can go back later and fill in what happened before that scene, if necessary.
  
  
• Provide the agent with a 2-3 page synopsis of about 600 words that includes the ending.
  
  
• Double space your manuscript and proofread it carefully.

The contest for first-time novelists

The details of the contest, which has a £20,000 first prize and is free to enter, are here. Entries must be received by April 16, 2016, and if your novel isn't finished you must be able to complete it by October 30, 2016. 

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Writing success: a band shows the way

What can writers learn about success from a band?

The band X Ambassadors has some lessons for writers about how to get ahead.

USA Today quotes band member Sam Harris as attributing their progress to "perseverance (playing any and all gigs available), connections (people who like you may help you later) and remembering who's really important" (the fans). 

The writers' version would be taking any and all writing gigs available, networking with a variety of people connected to publishing or film or TV production, and remembering we are writing for an audience, not for ourselves.

Harris added the important proviso, "Obviously the music [or the writing] has to come from a personal place...but at the end of the day, these fans are the ones that are doing everything for you."

Writers don't have the same relationship with fans until their writing is published or produced, but we can substitute whoever is our primary audience--which, in the first instance, could be agents, producers, or publishers. 

Think outside the box to get attention for your writing

Harris also revealed that when the band kept getting rejections from venues, he made up a fake manager named Paul Lewis. The clubs were more responsive to a manager than to a band member and eventually they were able to get a real manager.

Obviously, you have to be careful with things like this--sometimes the line between a prank and fraud is a thin one. But it certainly demonstrates creativity in marketing.

They also went $30,000 in debt to produce their second self-funded EP. A great example of self-belief because it paid off. Naturally, if it had failed we'd be calling it delusion.

Hang in there past the "no"

One final useful comment from Harris: "The business is built on no. That's the sad part. It's just the land of discouragement. But there's that amazing feeling when you get that yes...If you want it easy, go work at a library and just shelve books."

The way libraries are going, that may not be a great career choice, but if Harris ever gets tired of music, he should apply for a job teaching at Harvard Business School.

Writing motivation: get mad!

What's a good source of writing motivation?

We tend to think that the desire to communicate, to see people enjoying our words, and maybe a modicum of recognition as the motivators for writing, but sometimes getting mad works, too.

In the March issue of The Writer magazine, children's author Pamela Jane recounts how her eighth-grade English teacher accused her of copying a story she'd written. When she denied it, he told her in front of the rest of the class, "I don't believe you." 

She didn't speak, but inside she was saying, "Just wait. Someday I'll be a real writer. Then you'll be sorry."

By the time she became an author, the English teacher was dead, but he'd unwittingly given her a kind of gift: "a gritty determination to prove he was wrong."

BEING ENCOURAGED TO WRITE HELPS, TOO

In the same article, Pamela Jane shows the other side of the coin. A chemistry teacher astonished her by saying he wasn't worried about her chemistry grade "because I know that someday I'm going to have your books on my shelf." 

When her first book came out she sent him a copy and a letter telling him how much his words had meant to her. He read her letter at his retirement ceremony.

PS: Don't stint on encouraging words, you never know the effect they may have.

(You'll find plenty of encouraging words in my book, Your Writing Coach, published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

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How to write a screenplay that stands out

What makes a screenplay stand out?

If you're writing a spec screenplay, what makes it stand out?

Following the formula of the hero's journey or the three-act structure, using a software program to make sure your formatting is correct, and having a script that's the right length are important, but they're just enough to help your script avoid standing out for the wrong reasons.

To stand out for the right reasons, your script has to offer something extraordinary. Here is what Tim Bevan, co-chairman and co-founder of Working Title Films said at a recent interview at the BFI: "Be bold...It's better to fail triumphantly than to be boring. I don't want to see bland movies." 

What makes it a bold screenplay?

There are a number of elements that can make a script reader sit up and take notice:

• A topic we haven't seen before, or not often. Example: The Danish Girl
  
  
• A new angle on a familiar story. Example: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
  
  
• An innovative style of storytelling: Example: Boyhood

Often, we censor ourselves when we think of something different. It seems too risky to try something that hasn't been done or is out of the ordinary. Ironically, those are exactly the elements that might give us the attention a more run-of-the-mill script will not win.

The downside of bold scripts

Bold scripts often don't sell right away, because the uniqueness that may scare you can also scare potential buyers. However, often those people will recognize your talent and will ask you to adapt a novel they own, develop a story for which they don't have a writer, or serve as a script doctor. That can be a great start to your career, even if it doesn't lead to a quick sale. 

Write it write: the elephant in the room

"The elephant in the room" is a popular phrase that has traditionally referred to an obvious major issue or problem that nobody is talking about because it is taboo or would be too embarrassing to acknowledge. 

According to Wikipedia, "In 1814, Ivan Andreevich Krylov (1769-1844), poet and fabulist, wrote a fable entitled 'The Inquisitive Man' which tells of a man who goes to a museum and notices all sorts of tiny things, but fails to notice an elephant. The phrase became proverbial.^[3] Fyodor Dostoevsky in his novel 'Demons' wrote, 'Belinsky was just like Krylov's Inquisitive Man, who didn't notice the elephant in the museum....'^[4]

Lately, I've seen it used to mean simply the biggest problem or issue, not one that is unnoticed or ignored. 

I'm fascinated by how language changes, and this may be an example of a phrase in transition. There's a logic to this change, but some usages and patterns appear mysteriously. For instance, why do so many people now start a sentence with the word so, especially when answering a question? It seems to be replacing "well" as a way of buying a moment while you formulate your statement. 

PS: A headline that may have been the result of watching too many political debates appeared today, about a new computer mouse with "unpresidented" ergonomics." In the same article, Julian Horsey (who may not have been responsible for the headline) calls it "very unique." That's another word in transition--unique means one of a kind, so nothing can be very unique or a little unique, but increasingly the word is being used to mean unusual. 

 

 

 

Why I want more rejections of my novel

I admit it. My YA novel, Reptile Nation, has been rejected a mere 14 times so far, but I'm hoping for more.

There are only two good stories about rejections:

"My novel was accepted by the first agent or publisher I sent it to."

or

"My novel had 99 rejections before it was accepted by an agent or publisher." (Admittedly, this one is good only if the book then turns out to be a success, but let's be optimistic.)

Since I missed the first one, I'm going for the second. 

This book marketing genius made a fortune on a book with blank pages

On a podcast today, I heard about a clever woman who some years ago created a book called "Everything Men Know About Women."

She self-published and got women's clothing chains to stock it as a gift item. She didn't take returns, and wouldn't take an order for less than 100 at a time.

She said whenever the buyers were women (which was most of the time), they ordered the book.

She ended up selling hundreds of thousands, then a publisher gave her a lucrative deal and she retired.

Obviously, my mistake is actually putting words on my pages...