The Novelwriter's Toolkit Read online

  THE

  Novel-Writer’s

  TOOLKIT

  Your ultimate guide to writing and publishing a successful novel

  Edited by Caroline Taggart

  David & Charles

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Acknowledgements

  PART 1 WRITING YOUR NOVEL

  The Realities of Being a Novelist

  What’s It All About?

  Heroes, Villains and Others

  Setting

  Getting Characters to Talk

  Telling the Story

  As Good As It Can Be

  Nearly There

  PART 2 INSIDERS’ INFORMATION

  Studying Creative Writing

  Learning to Write

  The Agent’s View

  Acquiring Fiction

  First Impressions

  Before You Send Anything

  Always Judge a Book by its Cover

  It’ll Probably Never Happen, But …

  The Publishing Process

  PART 3 DIRECTORY LISTINGS

  UK & Irish Book Publishers

  Agencies & Consultancies

  Literary Consultants & Editorial Services

  Useful Organizations

  Online Resources

  Bursaries, Fellowships & Grants

  Writing & Publishing Courses

  Competitions & Prizes

  Festivals & Conferences

  INTRODUCTION

  It may or may not be true that everyone has a novel in them: if you have bothered to pick up this book, it’s likely that you hope there is a novel in you. It’s also likely that you find something about the process of writing a novel and getting it published a little bit daunting.

  If so, you have come to the right place. The Novel-Writer’s Toolkit aims to answer all those questions that are buzzing around in the back of your mind, from ‘How do I start?’ to ‘How do I find an agent or a publisher?’

  The book is divided into three parts. The first is designed to make your novel as good as it can possibly be. It deals with the practicalities of being a writer (’plonk yourself in front of the computer and stay there’ is not a bad place to start). There are suggestions on creating plot, characters, setting and dialogue and, eventually, on editing your work so that it is ready to send into the outside world.

  Part Two contains invaluable advice from industry insiders, from what an editor is looking for to how to prepare an outline and compose a covering letter that will make a busy agent want to read more. It describes what happens to your manuscript once it has been accepted, considers some aspects of copyright and other legal matters, and gives a salesperson’s view of what makes a book sell.

  Finally, the Directory lists agents and publishers who deal with novels – professionals who are potentially interested in your work. The information in each entry is intended to help you decide who might be right for you, so that you don’t send a graphic novel to someone who is interested only in literary fiction, or vice versa. There are also details of literary consultancies and writing courses, useful organizations and online resources, competitions, prizes, grants, festivals, conferences and more.

  As an aspiring writer, you can imagine that there is nothing more exciting than having a published book with your name on the cover. It’s up to you to finish the job, but here are – we hope – all the tools you need.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The articles in Part Two and those quoted in Part One originally appeared in Writer’s Market UK, 2008, 2009 or 2010 editions, published by David & Charles. Their authors are:

  Dominic Brendon, currently Key Account Director at the large international publisher Simon & Schuster. Previous to that he was sales director at Kyle Cathie Limited, a smaller independent publisher with a string of bestsellers behind it. His early background was with a London-based bookselling chain where he did 13 years at the coal face.

  Simon Brett, who started his professional career as a comedy producer, first for BBC radio and then for London Weekend Television, before becoming a full-time writer. He has published over 80 books, many of them crime novels or psychological thrillers, including the Charles Paris, Mrs Pargeter and Fethering series. His humorous writings include the bestselling How To Be A Little Sod. For radio and television he has written many plays and series, like After Henry and No Commitments.

  Sara Crowley, shortlisted for the Faber/Book Tokens ‘Not Yet Published Award’ in 2007, and winner of the Waterstone’s 2009 Bookseller’s Bursary. Her short stories have won prizes and been widely published. She blogs here.

  Caro Fraser, author of the bestselling Caper Court series of legal novels and of six stand-alone novels, including A Little Learning and A World Apart. She is currently working on the eighth in the Caper Court series. Her website is www.caro-fraser.co.uk.

  Jane Friedman, for 12 years editorial director of Writer’s Digest Books, America’s leading publisher of ‘how to’ and inspirational books for writers of all sorts. She now teaches in the e-media department at the University of Cincinnati and speaks at writing and publishing events. Visit his homepage.

  Sophie Hannah, a bestselling crime writer. Her latest novel is Lasting Damage (Hodder, 2011) and you can visit her website here.

  Penelope Hoare, former Deputy Publisher of Chatto & Windus, an old-established traditional publishing house, now part of Random House, which in its turn is part of the giant international company Bertelsmann. Chatto & Windus owns the Hogarth Press, the publishing company founded by Leonard and Virginia Woolf, and as an imprint still retains its own personality and high standards.

  Dr Hilary Johnson, who has edited a writers’ magazine, taught creative writing and judged writing competitions. She has been organizer of The Romantic Novelists’ Association’s New Writers’ Scheme and worked as a publisher’s reader. For many years she has run her own highly regarded Authors’ Advisory Service and is a scout for a leading literary agent. Visit her here.

  Jonathan Pegg, who founded his own agency in 2009 after 12 years at Curtis Brown where he was a senior agent. Prior to becoming an agent he was an agent’s assistant, foreign rights executive, and publicist for books. He has worked with a range of prestigious authors, and his interests include both fiction (literary fiction, thrillers, historical and quality commercial) and a broad range of non-fiction. Visit his homepage.

  Jem Poster, the author of a collection of poetry, Brought to Light (Bloodaxe, 2001) and two novels, Courting Shadows (Sceptre, 2002) and Rifling Paradise (Sceptre, 2006). He is Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University.

  Caroline Taggart, editor of Writer’s Market UK 2009 and 2010 and a bestselling author in her own right. Her latest book, The Book of English Place Names, is published by Ebury Press.

  Much of the information in Part One first appeared in The Everything Guide to Writing a Novel by Joyce and Jim Lavene (Adams Media, 2004).

  Part 1 Writing Your Novel

  For many would-be writers, finding ideas isn’t the problem – the hard part is turning them into full-length novels of publishable quality. An idea that seems brilliant for the first few pages may run out of steam; characters and dialogue come out wooden; or there may simply not be enough hours in the day to sit down and write. This section addresses the question of making your work as good as it can possibly be.

  THE REALITIES OF BEING A NOVELIST

  Organizing Your Life – and Your Ideas

  Jim Rohn, a motivational speaker, once said, ‘It takes what it takes.’ He was referring to finding the right place to live your life. For most writers, that ‘place’ is writing a book. It’s a dream that can become reality, but not without some hard work.

  I
t Takes Time

  Some people find writing more arduous than others. You may be like Monet, able to finish any project quickly and easily, or more like Michelangelo, taking years to complete what others do in months. Either way, writing a novel is a demanding process. Not only do you have to produce the words in the first place, but you also have to make them the best words they can possibly be: there is always something to be revised or edited. Telling a long, complex tale requires time and patience. If you can’t imagine yourself spending hours in front of your computer when other members of your household are asleep or out enjoying themselves, it may be better to focus on some other dream.

  It Takes Commitment

  Most beginning novelists have lives: families, jobs, responsibilities of one sort or another. You may have a partner who doesn’t understand your compulsion to write, or well-meaning friends who remind you that you will probably never be published. But if you want to make a success of your writing, you have to make a commitment to it.

  Commitment means parking yourself on the chair in front of the computer and staying there. It means finding time for character analysis and revamping your plot when you’d rather be playing football or going out shopping. It means staying up late, getting up early on Sundays and bank holidays, giving up afternoon naps. In fact, if you have a busy life already, it may sometimes seem as if you are giving up sleep altogether.

  There is also a financial commitment. If you sign up for a creative writing course, or buy books on writing, or send your manuscript to a professional literary consultant, the cost mounts up. Not to mention the paper and postage involved in sending work out to agents and publishers. Starting a novel can be daunting if you realize what you are letting yourself in for, but the better prepared you are for the task, the better your chances of completing it. Thousands of writers start writing a novel every day. Only a few finish, and even fewer get their work published.

  Writing Discipline

  Most successful writers have a routine; a daily way of weaving their writing into their lives so that it is a job like any other. Here are five starting points from which to proceed:

  •Have a plan and set lots of goals. What are you going to write, and by when?

  •Set aside specific times for writing. Many of us are at our best early in the morning, but some work best at night. Either end of the day is usually good, as those are the times when you are most likely to get peace and quiet. Get into a pattern of working and stick to it.

  •Set yourself a specific minimum number of words to aim for; even if it’s only 50 you’ll still see your manuscript growing over time.

  •Make good use of any unexpected ‘spare’ time. Have your notebook or laptop with you at all times. If that train or plane is going to be delayed, don’t just sit there – write.

  •Consider joining a writers’ group, either face to face or online: many set deadlines by which all members are expected to produce a piece of work for discussion, which may be just the impetus you need.

  Stay Organized

  Organization is a skill that anyone can learn. Because writers are essentially small business people, it’s important for them to learn it as early on in their careers as possible. If you do manage to sell a book, you’ll be glad you kept those receipts, letters and notes. They prove to the tax authorities that you’re serious about your career – and enable you to set legitimate expenses against the tax you pay.

  Your computer can keep track of appointments, phone numbers and all sorts of information related to your notes, your research and your writing. But for letters, receipts and other miscellaneous bits of paper, there’s nothing like a filing cabinet. Keep a folder for receipts, another for correspondence (or several if you have several projects on the go and want to keep their correspondence separate) and a third one for all your random notes. Keeping your ideas and other writing-related information close at hand and in an orderly fashion can save you hours of hunting through the glove compartment and your other handbag – and that gives you more time to write.

  It Takes Good Material

  There is no hard-and-fast rule to help you decide whether you have a novel in you. But it’s an important question to ask yourself: do you have enough material to create 300–400 pages of printed text? Many would-be novelists find as they start writing that they run out of steam after only a few pages – their novel is really only a short story. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but by taking the time to examine what you want to write before you start, you can save yourself the heartbreak of beginning a manuscript that is never going to be completed.

  You know all this? And you aren’t put off? OK, let’s look at what else you are letting yourself in for.

  What Is a Novel?

  The writing field is full of rules and regulations – a number of them crop up later in this book. Some of them you can break, some you can’t, and the length of a novel is one of the ones you can’t. That’s because today’s novel is defined largely by word count. For most styles of novel, the bare minimum is 50,000 words, the maximum for a beginner 100,000 words. I say for a beginner because many modern novels – Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the later Harry Potters – are much longer than that. But they are the exceptions: as a rule of thumb publishers are looking for novels of about 85,000–100,000 words, and you don’t want to make the uphill task of getting published more difficult by asking them to make an exception in your case. If you are typing in double spacing in A4 format, 250–300 words will fill a page, so if you end up with a manuscript of about 300 pages you won’t be far wrong.

  What Is a Genre?

  The word is originally French and means a type or sort. It’s used in the book world to mean a type or style of novel – mystery, science-fiction, fantasy, romance – each with its own characteristics. A traditional romantic novel always has a happy ending: boy gets girl. A good science-fiction story must contain elements of understandable science: it must obey some rules, even if they are strained to the limits of the author’s imagination.

  Within these broad genres, there are many, many sub-genres: under ‘mystery’ or ‘crime’ you find the hard-boiled private-eye stories of Mickey Spillane, the amateur sleuths of Agatha Christie or Simon Brett, and the insider’s-look-at-the-forensics of Patricia Cornwell or Kathy Reichs. If you are writing genre fiction it is important to understand these niches and therefore to understand your market. Is your mystery novel a police procedural like Ed McBain’s or a techno-thriller à la Tom Clancy? Is your science-fiction story psychological or does it depend on your characters meeting weird and wonderful beings from another world? Or both? A good look at the market and plenty of objective homework categorizing your novel will be time well spent.

  Some writers are rebels, defying classification for their work. Are Anne Rice’s vampire novels horror or romance? Readers have their own opinions. It’s not against the rules to write a book that contains elements of more than one genre, as long as you understand the combination and have given some thought to the market.

  What Is a Mainstream Novel?

  A mainstream novel tends to be more eclectic and less simple to identify than a genre novel. It doesn’t obey the genres’ rules.

  Perhaps the easiest way to define it is to consider what it lacks. Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, for example, is partly a romance, but it doesn’t have a happy ending. So it doesn’t follow the formula set out for romantic novels. Sebastian Faulks’ Engleby has elements of the thriller – a girl has disappeared and we don’t know how or why – but the novel’s scope is much broader and deeper than that of the average genre whodunit. Mainstream authors are free to follow their instincts and truly write what their hearts dictate. That’s why it is harder for mainstream novels to be successful, but why the best of them are so deeply satisfying.

  Finding Ideas

  Most writers don’t have a problem coming up with ideas for novels. They’re more likely to have a problem pickin
g and choosing between all the ideas that occur to them. It’s a bit like having five children who all need shoes. You don’t have the money to buy shoes for all of them – or the time and energy to write five novels at once – so you have to decide which child needs shoes most urgently or which story simply won’t wait to be written.

  Faced with a choice between ideas, choose the one that makes you feel as if you could drag yourself out of bed at five in the morning to write it. The one that’s burning a hole in your brain. The others will wait. Mentally put them to one side for now and start working on the story that’s most important to you.

  Use Your Imagination

  A good imagination can get you started. A great imagination can take you to the moon. Tap into the wellspring of your imagination – if you’ve been neglecting it with too much reality, you’ll probably have to work on it. Give yourself time to dream every day. Find a quiet corner and allow yourself to imagine all the possibilities around you.

  A story idea may spring from your imagination fully formed. Or it may just be the germ of a story. Elizabeth Kay had the idea for her fantasy trilogy The Divide when she visited Costa Rica and saw the ‘magical’ effect of the Continental Divide, separating the Atlantic from the Pacific. What better place to create another world, in which fabulous creatures are real and her human hero is the mythical being? Then she used her imagination to add a wealth of detail and to invent strong, believable characters who had adventures and triumphed over their difficulties.

  Reality as Inspiration

  Many authors create their novels from something that really happened to them. Others watch the news and scan the papers for events. They write down scraps of ideas that strike them as story possibilities. Creating fiction from real life is nothing new. Even writers with fantastic imaginations sometimes need a jump start.