Guest Post and Giveaway: Alison Morton on Writing Trilogies

Alison Morton's ROMA NOVA trilogy

Trilogies. As a reader, I love them. What is more satisfying than following a set of characters off into a new adventure, the sheer joy of seeing them develop as people, facing up to new challenges, discovering new family secrets or buried treasure or resolving long and bitter rivalries over the generations? Or perhaps they have a more internal theme focusing on the emotional ups and downs of three generations of women who come to live in a new country and pass wisdom up and down the family chain.

But I’m also a serial reader.

When I put the third book of a trilogy down, I’ve been known to sniff, gulp and reach for a strong cup of tea. The world I have loved for nearly three hundred thousand words has shut its door, the characters have vanished to the other side of nowhere.  Then to my joy (and not a little relief) I discover the author has written a fourth book, a follow-on. I have my credit card out before you can say ‘Harry Potter’.

As a writer, it’s both similar and different. When I started my first novel, INCEPTIO, I had no idea what I was doing. Writing was an impulse, a reaction to a dire film and thinking I could produce something better. But not even halfway through the first draft, I realised I had a far bigger story than I’d anticipated.

So I did the classic thing - I turned it into a trilogy.

The trilogy dilemma

SUCCESSIO, the last Roma Nova thriller in the original trilogy, set off into the world last June. The heroine had finished her journey with birth and deaths, traumas and triumphs, and I had closed her file on my computer. Now for wine, sun and leisure.

But one of the main secondary characters was whispering in my head, ‘Tell my story. You know you want to. Think of all those readers, begging for more. You’ll get fat, lounging by the pool. Get back to work!’

Juno!

Yes, this was the tough, no-nonsense Praetorian Aurelia Mitela insisting. Now, it’s not good for your future health if you disobey a Praetorian special forces officer, let alone one who’s also one of the most powerful women in Roma Nova. And her story of undercover work, loss, struggle and living at the most dangerous time in Roma Nova for three centuries – the Great Rebellion – was too tempting.

So begins a second trilogy within the Roma Nova world; it starts in the late 1960s with AURELIA and reaches to the 1980s. Fascinating how technology and attitudes have changed in fifty years! Research traps abound; some inventions we think recent were around in the late 1960s, others are surprisingly modern.  

This time round, I have the benefit of my own experience plus Roma Nova is familiar territory. But the gods punish hubris so I re-read the first trilogy and marked up the passages that referred back to the times when Aurelia had been a young woman. With a new three-book cycle within an established series, readers can start their Roma Nova adventure with AURELIA without having to plough through the first three.

But I do hope they will be so entranced, they'll want to go back and grab the first three books!

 AURELIA is out now in ebook (various formats) and paperback.

AURELIA: available now on Amazon

 Late 1960s Roma Nova, the last Roman colony that has survived into the 20th century. Aurelia Mitela is alone – her partner gone, her child sickly and her mother dead – and forced to give up her beloved career as a Praetorian officer.

But her country needs her unique skills. Somebody is smuggling silver – Roma Nova’s lifeblood – on an industrial scale. Sent to Berlin to investigate, she encounters the mysterious and attractive Miklós, a known smuggler who knows too much and Caius Tellus, a Roma Novan she has despised and feared since childhood.

Barely escaping a trap set by a gang boss intent on terminating her, she discovers that her old enemy is at the heart of all her troubles and pursues him back home to Roma Nova...

Buy from Amazon: http://authl.it/B00WIQL08A?d

Other retailer links here: http://alison-morton.com/books-2/aurelia/where-to-buy-aurelia/

Read about Alison and Roma Nova: www.alison-morton.com

Connect with her on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AlisonMortonAuthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/alison_morton @alison_morton

 GIVEAWAY!

A signed copy of AURELIA (paperback) is available to one of our lucky readers!

Just comment below, telling us whether you prefer to read stand-alone fiction or a series like a trilogy, and your name will be entered into a draw. (UK only)

The draw will take place on Monday 25th, so please do remember to check back to see if you've won!

Week Twenty-One: Narrative Choices

Week 21 - my blog comes of age!

First off, a huge thank you to everyone who has bought the ebook of this blog so far. Every single purchase is vastly appreciated. And thank you to those who have spared the time to review the book too. It has seven 5 star reviews so far!

You really do make a difference to a book's success by buying and reviewing. So thank you.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I expanded the first 20 weeks of this How To Write A Novel blog into a great value ebook, and you can download it for only £1.99 here:

21 WAYS TO WRITE A COMMERCIAL NOVEL.

So, onward and upward!

This month I've been looking back through some advice I gave to writers a few years back when editing women's fiction for Salt Publishing. While rummaging through those old documents, I found some interesting thoughts on narrative voice and point of view characters, and decided to share them on the blog.

The voice you adopt for each novel is a vital thing. It informs your entire book from line one, and can make or break a story. Yet it's surprising how few writers invest serious time in considering the voice or voices they have chosen to tell their story. This is something I've had to think about quite frequently myself over the past year, because even though I have nearly thirty published novels, and dozens of short fiction titles out there, you never stop learning new tricks in this business, however old a dog you become.

So I thought I'd discuss narrative voice this week.

Choices over the kind of narrative voice we use in each story seem to happen instinctively for most people. This may be because voice comes first for them, like a whisper in the dark, or because experienced writers have an instinctive grasp of the whole from the part.

To expand on that last idea, the first scene, the first line, even the very first word you choose to write: these should automatically inform the book to come. They tell us upfront who's speaking - and perhaps as crucially, why. They may suggest character, plot, motive, context, even ultimate destination. It is not too far of a push to say that the first page of a novel can behave like a blueprint of the whole novel. Macrocosm and microcosm in perfect harmony. The big in the small, and vice versa.

At least, that's the ideal. How does your first page measure up?

• Check your first line. Does it intrigue? Does it suggest? Does it cause a double-take?
• Have you in some way invoked the magical territory, as the storyteller does with the traditional line, 'Once upon a time ...' ?
•  Is the character whose voice we hear powerfully drawn enough from word one to make us stop and settle down to hear his or her story?
• Voice is the writer's as much as the character's. What about your first page tells us what a special writer you are and why it would be worth reading your book?
• Can we 'see' what is going on? This is a visual age so don't neglect to build a picture in the reader's mind. Whatever you see when you close your eyes and think of that first page, THAT is what you need to draw with language.
• Clear, broad, generous, confident gestures. Don't skimp. Give them the works.

Giving the reader the works ...

The novel I'm working on right now is becoming an impromptu experiment with point of view. This is mostly designed to obfuscate - great word and much-underused - a plot twist that I need to keep buried as long as possible, but also to solve a narrative-specific problem I had. The jury is still out on whether it will work, but right now the book is being written in both first person and third person.

Fussy? Possibly. Confusing? Maybe that too, but I do want the reader to be pushed a little off-balance by the telling. Hopefully though not so much of either of those that the book will fail because of it.

Intention is everything with narrative choices. Doing something like that - splitting the narrative in some unorthodox or risky way, or stretching it out to include more than two or three point-of-view voices, for instance - just because it sounds like an interesting idea ... That's never wise. It's a literary move, perhaps. To experiment is a natural urge for an avant-garde writer, and thank goodness someone is doing it for those of us who can't. Genre writers tend to follow a smoother, better-worn path where narrative is concerned. The tried and tested. But the slippery narrator is everywhere today. The strange but intimate little voice in the ear, spooking and confusing and charming and intriguing the reader. That's what many editors are looking for right now. Only it takes nerves to go after that with real gusto. To take the inevitable risks and hope someone left the safety net in place. Because sometimes, when you do it, even the editor who asked for such things specifically may back off, saying, 'Actually, no. It doesn't quite work. Good luck elsewhere.'

These are some of the obstacles we face as writers. The stick, and nothing but. The poisoned carrot. The hand that turns out to be empty when we tap it. The bottle of air.

So why keep writing?

I know why I keep writing and trying to sell novels, by hook or by crook. To eat, for sure. To pay my bills and keep a roof over my children's heads. But also because I cannot countenance making my living, or whatever scratchings I can make if a living is denied to me, in any other way. Despite all the hard knocks and betrayals, this is still the business for me. Putting down a word like the first stone in a drystone wall. Then another. Then another. Then another. And watching a new world begin to take shape from that silent accretion. Because the rush of a well-wrought sentence is better than cocaine.

QUESTION: If your narrator is not secretly you, who the hell is it?

21 Ways To Write A Commercial Novel

I'm thrilled to be able to announce that the first twenty-odd weeks of this Creative Writing blog have been turned into an ebook!

Many thanks to everyone who contributed comments.

Bursting with up-to-date information and entertaining anecdotes from the world of writing and publishing, this guide also features helpful comments on writing from both new and established writers, including Rowan Coleman, Katie Fforde, Judy Astley, Lesley Cookman, Nuala Ni Chonchuir, Alison Morton, Elizabeth Moss and many, many others. A goldmine of advice for writers from an author of over twenty commercial novels, covering these general topics:

Beginnings
Fake It Till You Make It
Commercial Ideas
Research
Planning
Hooks And Teasers
How To Open Chapters
How To Close Chapters
Writing A Commercial Scene
Location, Location, Location
Writing Complex Characters
Staying Commercial
Novel Avoidance Syndrome
Writing The Commercial Synopsis
Dealing With Rejection
Other Writers
Four-Point Commercial Checklist
Changing Identities
Ten-Point Guide To The Commercial Novella
Writing Your Novel
Rowan Coleman’s Advice To New Writers 

It's entitled 21 Ways To Write A Commercial Novel and is out now as an ebook, only available on Amazon Kindle. 

Grab your digital version of this CW blog now - enlarged and with comments added! - from Amazon

Week Twenty: Ten Ways To Tackle The Novella

Writing a briskly paced novella can easily be fitted between longer projects.

Apologies for taking so long to resume my weekly posts on How To Write A Novel. I was beset by health issues while trying to finish my novel, and time got away from me.

But you behold me back in the saddle, and ready to apply the crop. If you'll forgive the slightly BDSM metaphor.

There have been times this year when I have not felt able to grapple with the larger canvas of my novel, but wished to produce shorter fiction for self-publishing. (One must eat, after all.) On those occasions, I have turned to the tricky form known as the novella. The novella is not long enough for the label of 'novel' yet too long for a short story. It's generally considered to begin at about the 15,000 word mark, or sometimes 20. And it ends in the region of 40,000 words whereafter it can safely be considered a novel.

I have one short festive novella for sale at the moment, recently published, as an illustration of the lower word band: The Oddest Little Christmas Shop. And its sister novella, published during the summer under the pen-name Beth Good, which is rather longer: The Oddest Little Chocolate Shop. But even that is still too short to be a novel. Both these novellas have sold very well.

So how do you approach the writing of a novella as opposed to the novel form? Are there any inherent differences, apart from the merely technical one of length?

Here are TEN WAYS to tackle the writing of a novella.


1. One Plot To Rule Them All
The novella does not have room for multiple subplots. Decide in advance on your main plot, and perhaps one closely matched subplot, then execute the narration as simply as possible.  


2. Clear Premise or Theme
All stories have a basic premise or theme - crime never pays, or love conquers all - but in a novel, these 'messages' can be complex or layered. In a novella, the premise should be so simple or clear-cut, it can be gleaned from a one sentence description of your story.

3. A Few Good Characters
The novella is not the best place to unfold a sprawling family saga. Think of it as a cross between a fairy tale and a Beckett play. You can have more characters than a short story could comfortably hold, if you wish, but you will achieve greater intensity by focusing on a narrow range - say, two to five characters at most.

4. There Can Be Only One
Closely allied to No. 1, this is a requirement for simple narration. I don't mean simplistic - you could chose a strong and complex character as your narrator. Even an unreliable narrator. But choose either first person or only one third person POV narrator. If you stray from this, your style of narration should remain consistent, at least.

A short festive novella: one narrator, one POV, one storyline.

5. Short Scenes, Kept In Proportion
Avoid overly drawn-out ten page scenes. Plan your novella as a series of beats, like musical notation. Important scenes are a long beat, transitional scenes a short one. But even your 'big' scenes will be shorter than in a traditional novel. Think minimalism.

6. Keep The Line Taut
All stories require tension and conflict, but in a novel, you have time to build slowly to a climax if you wish. In a novella, as in a short story, you need to hit the ground running. Establish your basic conflict in the first pages, then add to it in each new scene until you reach maximum tension, like the Buckaroo game where the donkey eventually kicks off his load.

7. Experiment With Structure
I normally divide my novellas into chapters, because I feel that provides a novel-like structure to shorter fiction. But you could experiment with alternative methods of division: a line break between sections could work well in a short novella with only one narrator, and maintain tone very nicely. Or you could break up sections with a repeated gimmick: a quatrain of poetry, for instance, or a riddle, quotation or aphorism in italics. Have fun with it!

8. Rounding Out And Tying Up
Some writers approach the novella as a novel in microcosm. But a novel may have very different reasons to a novella for existing, and one thing that divides them is the idea of overarching structure. A novel's overarching purpose or structure may be very complex indeed, even diffuse, which fits our way of reading novels over an extended period. With a story that can be read in one sitting, plot structure needs to be strongly rounded, with a distinct sense of closure or completion, as any loose ends or vague petering out will be glaringly obvious.  

Sometimes a novella is so successful, it can spawn a series or brand: Oddest Little Chocolate Shop

9. Pitching To Publishers - Or Not
Within popular genres such as science fiction, fantasy or romance, there is a traditional market for the novella. Many publishers, especially those who run a strong digital list, will take on a good novella that fits their guidelines on length and content. If you have written a niche/genre novella, look at publishers' guidelines for submissions within that field. Many digital start-ups, for instance, welcome novella writers. Though be warned, you are unlikely to be paid much. My advice, therefore, is to self-publish where possible, and market on social media as a 'quick read' to fans of that genre. For non-genre novellas, especially shorter ones, the market remains vague and unpromising. Good luck!

10. The Novella Series
The short form of the novella lends itself well to a series. This can be linked by title alone - see my Oddest Little novella brand above - or by characters, setting, or even theme. It is always useful to plan the series before starting, but you may come to it after one or two publications have been successful. Probably best to keep word count and structural divisions similar between titles, as readers expect this. Maintaining a particular narrative style will also please readers who liked your first book for it. A five book series is a good length for a series, especially for shorter novellas, and when self-publishing, you can produce a higher priced omnibus edition at the end.

QUESTION: What makes you choose to read a novella rather than a novel?

Week Nineteen: Beginning and Ending Chapters

Commercial novels demand tighter chapter endings and beginnings than other kinds of books, to maintain tension across a broad readership.

In any commercial novel, from thrillers to romances, the writing is generally expected to be fast-paced and gripping wherever possible. Notable exceptions aside, there is little space for leisurely meandering towards an important event, or for interesting sidetracks between events. Once the reader puts your book down, perhaps to sleep or have dinner or get off the train, you have lost them - unless you can leave your main character in such a breathtaking spot at the end of each chapter that they have no choice but to pick it up again as soon as possible.

Beginning A Chapter

There are two or three basic ways to begin a chapter.

The first is to pick up exactly where you left off at the end of the last. This is where the chapter division is not there to indicate time passing, but delivers a 'beat' in a scene, i.e. a pause which allows vital information to sink into the reader's mind. Maybe some great revelation has just been made, or a terrible confrontation enacted. A pause is required, for both reader and character to dust themselves off, reevaluate the world of the story, shake their heads at someone's villainy, or gather another important clue in a whodunnit.

The second method is to break up the story into intervals or sections of time, i.e. indicate that time has passed. So the last chapter ends with, Jack turned over in bed and let himself drift off to sleep, giving up on the impossible question of how a cat had been able to escape a locked room. The next chapter might then begin, with perfect convention, The next morning, Jack woke with the answer. A secret trapdoor!

'The next day Muldoon's alarm woke him at 7am as usual.' Wait! That's not a very exciting way to start a chapter. Hmm. 'Muldoon had only been asleep a few hours when he was woken by an almighty explosion.' Yes, much better.

Or the chapter break might serve as a useful point at which to jump to another character's point of view. So the chapter might begin, At that very moment, Sylvester the cat was walking along a narrow wall some ten feet below Jack's window, his slitty green eyes fixed on the bouncing approach of headlights in the dark. For less experienced writers, this method is usually better than shifting viewpoint midway through a chapter, even if it means very short chapters; no offence, but it is genuinely difficult to shift POV during a scene or within a chapter without jarring the reader's trust in the narration. And the shorter the chapter, the more tense and fast-paced the narration, so you win both ways.

In general, keeping chapters short is a sound commercial approach. Our attention spans as readers are getting ever smaller as books contend with time spent on television, films and computers. The theme should be simple, the blurb a soundbite, and the chapters as succinct and purposeful as you can make them.

So how long should a chapter be? This depends on genre and individual tastes. Sci fi novels set in space are often great tomes with chapters as long as your arm, for instance. But anything over ten pages needs to earn its place in a would-be commercial novel, and even a three page chapter is not a bad idea if the episode contained within it has the force of a sledgehammer. Basically, anything that gives a genre novel more of a 'hook' for a reader also endows it with more commercial value.

Literary writers, this does not apply to you. Though frankly, you will not ruin your stories by making them snappier.

Ending A Chapter

The end of a chapter is a moment fraught with danger. Will the reader continue onto the next chapter, and possibly risk lack of sleep or missing their train stop, or will they put your book away and start again tomorrow? Obviously writers don't want readers to starve themselves or avoid visiting the toilet in order to read on. (Honest, guv.) But if you can leave a reader on tenterhooks and keen to return to your book after a necessary break, you are less likely to lose them.

Ending a chapter on dialogue is always a great choice. Dialogue can contain far more in a shorter number of words than prose narration can ever hope to do, because good dialogue reveals character, and character drives plot. So with dialogue you get both pace and character, along with nuance and plot. It's a winning combination.

But what kind of dialogue?

In general, you need something that will shift the narrative in a new direction, such as a vital or shocking reveal: 'Sylvester is an alien, not a cat,' she explained, bursting with excitement, 'and his species are planning to invade Earth!' Or a piece of information that will make the reader turn the page in a fever of anxiety: 'Get out, get out, the whole building's wired to explode!' 

Readers browsing in bookshops or libraries (and editors looking for new writers!) often scan the first few chapters to get a sense of pace. So make sure your first few chapters in particular begin and end in exciting ways.

If you don't have anything that explosive to hand, don't worry. You only need to suggest that the plot is about to shift or a huge reveal is about to happen. It's called cheating, and it's okay so long as you don't do it too often in a book, because that can alienate your reader very quickly. For instance, in the above example where Sylvester is disclosed at the end of the chapter as being an alien, the next chapter could begin, 'Don't be ridiculous,' Jack exclaimed, shaking his head in disbelief. 'Sylvester is not an alien, he's a real cat. I just had him neutered.'

If going with prose instead of dialogue, a short paragraph is best. Something that both sums up what came before and points to what's next. Even better is a pithy one-liner, if you can get that to work without over-egging the pudding. But don't forget that the need for pace and the 'reveal' of vital information still applies. For example: Sylvester sat motionless, watching the vast mothership descend out of cloud.

But the main idea with both dialogue and prose endings is to make it impossible for the reader to chuck the book aside and carry on with their lives without giving another thought to your story. So whichever kind of chapter ending you choose, tick the checklist to see if it swings the story at a right-angle, reveals character, drives plot, and makes your reader turn the page.

QUESTION: How do you prefer to end your chapters - and why?

Week Eighteen: Writing Your Novel

Sometimes you need to put everything else aside ... and just write.

I have been busy writing my novel this week, in amongst the usual mad stuff that happens towards the end of the school holidays, and didn't get round to doing my weekly blog post until now, on a Friday!

So I thought, what can I blog about?

Then it struck me.

I've been so busy writing recently, I haven't had time to think about how-to-write or what to blog or any of that other background nonsense that goes on when you're a writer and a busy parent and a professional with obligations to fulfil. It can be hard to get a strong writing schedule going when you are being pulled in ten different directions at once. I've been saying no thanks, and not yet, and maybe another time, and sorry ... all so I can write. I'm between contracts, as they say, and have to finish this novel before I can get back into a healthy situation, writing-wise.

So this week's 'how-to-write' advice is very, very simple.

Just write your novel.

And here's how:

If possible find a private space where you can write undisturbed for a few hours. A place where everyone knows you are working and are under orders not to burst in, asking where their clean socks are kept or when dinner will be ready. Virginia Woolf knew all about this: unlike gentlemen, women of her era rarely had access to 'a room of one's own' where they could write. In an earlier age, Jane Austen had to write in a corner of a busy room with people coming and going around her. But anywhere will do, even the cupboard under the stairs or a shed: at one stage, the place we were living in was so small, I had to turn the tiny frosted glass porchway into my study. It was boiling hot on sunny days and freezing in winter, and the postman thought I was mad, but it was a private space away from the kids and it worked.

Block out extraneous noise with headphones or ear plugs, or listen to music.

Lock or block the door.

Hang a sign on the door that says Go Away or warn family not to approach. (Maybe set an alarm to go off elsewhere to let them know when it's safe to ask you if you want a cuppa. One hour minimum, better yet three.)

Know what you aim to write beforehand, so you don't waste the first 20 minutes fiddling about with a plot change or dithering over a character's name. Outline the scene or chapter you need to write, then execute that plan as closely as you can without becoming rigid about it.

Put fingers to keys, or pen to paper, and just write. Get into the 'zone' where words flow and you barely need to think what you're writing, it just happens naturally. If you're the sort who corrects as you go along - as I am - make sure you don't get bogged down in minutiae. If you get stuck on a problematic sentence or scene, just sweep past it and make a side note to return later. The important thing is to make the most of your writing time. To get the words down and build a respectable word count by the end of the session. You can always craft them later.

Set a goal that works for you: 3 pages by lunchtime, or 1000 words before midnight. It doesn't matter how much, only that you hit your goal more often than you miss it. Be realistic and don't push yourself if your life is currently insane. If you're unwell or working a full-time job, time slots will need to be shorter. And if you have a young baby in the house, you may have to write between feeds: 300 words here, 100 there. It all adds up.

At the end of each writing time, congratulate yourself, regardless of how much or how little you managed. It's not easy, writing a novel. It's a marathon, not a sprint, and it takes stamina and determination. Maybe you've only written one page today, but it's still one page more than you had when you sat down to write. So treat yourself to a nice coffee or whatever makes you feel good. You've earned it!

QUESTION: Do you have a set routine when you write that helps you get 'into the zone', or is it different every time?

Week Seventeen: Researching Your Novel

Every novel requires some form of research, even if it's only where you might buy a ribbon for an old typewriter like this. Sounds like detective work? It has its moments ...

Every novel needs to be researched, not just stories set in bizarre or exotic locations, or historical novels. If you already know your world well - you work or live there, for instance - this research may be minimal. But you will still need to allocate time to do it. For instance, does your fictitious law firm share its name and location with a real-life company? Better change that, or you risk being sued. And how many doors does that particular make of hatchback have?

Basic tips include: keep a notepad at the ready, in case you spot an answer to a riddle while out and about, or hear an interesting fact on television; keep copious, detailed notes of all your research, preferably in one place (I learned this the hard way); if taking notes from the internet or a book, keep a note of URLS, article titles and author names, page numbers and full publishing details (remember to do this even when you cut and paste, so you can refer back to that website if you later need more details or are compiling a list of acknowledgements or a bibliography). Also, importantly, if a fact is vital to your story, double or indeed triple-check it with a respected source. Don't just accept Wikipedia's version, in other words!

Try to research in a meaningful way. If you're looking up a fact about handguns, don't get sidetracked into reading three chapters on field artillery, however fascinating. Don't let research become a fetish.

Some facts can be easy to research or double-check. A few clicks and you have that missing data. But for complicated settings, especially historical ones, you may need to compile a vast wealth of accurate, double-checked details, some of them hard to discover in the first place. Sometimes thorough research may be your only path to a finished manuscript. Sometimes you can type Chapter One with an easy conscience, and deal with issues as they come up.

So how to go about this?

I can't write this novel yet. I don't even know what my main protagonist's surname should be. He's Russian, born 1947, his father was a political prisoner ... Time to hit the books!

Research First, Write Later
Some writers prefer to do their research before they begin the novel. That way, all the information they need is close at hand. They can plan a book, secure in the knowledge that their plot hinges on a particular stagecoach journey time in 1823; not only have they checked that timetable, they know all the inns along the way, what kind of meals they might have offered a weary traveller, and even how the coach driver would have been dressed.

But this method - research-first, write-later - holds considerable dangers for the unwary writer.

If you think research is more entertaining than the hard work of writing the actual novel, and have not set yourself a cast-iron deadline for beginning to write, you may find yourself drifting. One month, two months, three ... and the novel is never started. In the end, you may find you've spent a whole year on researching the minutest detail of your proposed story, and are now so bored by it, you chuck it over for some new, as yet unresearched idea.

To avoid this danger, decide beforehand when you are going to start writing the novel - and stick to it! Anything you don't know by then will have to be researched on the hoof. Which brings me to method number two for researching a novel.


Researching on the Hoof
Those impatient to start chapter one may well decide they know enough to begin writing without further research. Hopefully these are not delusional types whose efforts will soon end in disaster, but those who have prior experience of writing about this world or location - or are in the category I mentioned above, i.e. they know it intimately because it's their everyday world. My own preference is for plunging in at page one, perhaps after a cursory check on date, time, location for my story, then researching on the hoof, i.e. as I write.

The method is simple.

You're writing an historical novel, and your protagonist is changing her dress. You can't recall what might have been worn to an informal soiree in the late Regency. Or you know the gown, but not the shoes. What would they have looked like? For my Tudor stories, I have used the internet and also fantastic book and website resources like The Tudor Tailor to ensure my descriptions of clothes for various social classes are as accurate as possible. So to check those facts, to get each tiny detail correct, you stop work for a few minutes - hopefully not more than an hour! - and do your specific research. Then get back to the job of writing.


Visiting Locations
Whichever method you use, if you need to visit a certain location for your book - a local factory, for example, or an area of London - you will need to plan ahead. There's no good visiting after you've written that scene, as seeing a place with your own eyes may completely change your approach. If it proves expensive - for instance, involving a trip abroad - try to find a way to use that location again. That way you're getting more than one book for the cost of a single research trip.

Take notes and photographs, which should be as exhaustive as possible. Write down what you photographed and in which order so you can readily identify your shots later. Buy postcards, guide books, local maps. Grab secret candid shots of the locals for your own use. Making your own film on an iPhone or camera is also advisable if you need to really capture the atmosphere or remember how you got from A to B. After all, you don't know when you will be able to return there. (You could even share it on Youtube and social media, and get a little advance publicity for your project.)

Don't simply wander a location though, taking notes and photographs. You're a novelist, which means you need to write in the narrative voice of a person who is actually in that location, at a certain time, doing particular things. So approach your visit as if you are that person. Imagine where he or she would stand or sit, how they might act, what kind of smells and sights and textures they might experience. Make notes later, if you like, but that part may need to be deeply internalised. Drawn into yourself and experienced through the senses of your narrator, in other words. And that's something no external fact-finding can replicate.

Plus, don't forget that research is a legitimate tax-deductible expense if/when your book is published. So even if you don't have a contract yet, keep all receipts from research trips and general expenses.

When writing THE QUEEN'S SECRET, I was lucky enough to live only a few miles from Kenilworth Castle, where all the action takes place in 1575. Being a 'local' meant I was able to visit the location frequently, check all my facts personally, and really soak up the atmosphere.

Writers' Resources
Never underestimate the usefulness of long library visits, especially to specialist libraries - though getting a Reader's Ticket may be tricky - or a good research book written by an expert, but the internet is where you're likely to find most nuggets of information quickly. It's also great for turning up odd information, the kind that's hard to pinpoint in a book. The toilet habits of medieval princes, for instance.

Join groups on Facebook in your chosen field, or on Goodreads, or an informative group blog like English Historical Fiction Authors - anywhere people gather to exchange information. If really stuck, try a shout-out on Twitter and hope people retweet your request for information until someone turns up an answer or a possible resource to try. Social media is a great place to ask research questions, so make friends with other people interested in your research area. Some historical programme presenters are actually on Twitter and might reply to a question or two, if you're polite and not pushy.

And get yourself a Youtube account, or browse there. If you can't visit a location, you may find it's already on film on Youtube - someone's amateur holiday film, perhaps, or a genuine expert's view, perhaps compiled themselves or a snippet from a television programme. It's free, and it all helps.


Employing the Writer's Flannel
Sadly, it's not always possible to find the fact you need, or not at the time you need it. In that case, you may need to use 'writer's flannel' to bypass your problem. This is a kind of textual shuffle, a little narrative sleight-of-hand, whereby you appear to have used a fact, but have actually sidestepped it. In other words, when in doubt, write around the unknown fact and hope nobody notices. They probably won't. 'Her shoes pinched' is better for conjuring up an atmosphere than a detailed description of the stitching and fabric of a pair of Regency shoes.

There can be such a thing as too much research, often evidenced by large wodges of barely digestible information or description. The ideal is to digest it all yourself, then only use a small percentage of what you know, keeping the rest on hand so that you sound like an authority on the subject, yet never bore the reader with your excess of knowledge.

Queen Victoria finished her slice of plum cake and glanced at the text message alert on her iPhone ... wait, that doesn't sound right. Oh hell, no one will notice!

Finally, remember that no one version of history, or indeed any other 'fact', is the definitive one. Some facts and dates may be reasonably solid and easily verified: when Queen Victoria died, when the First World War began, the current members of the cabinet etc. But most 'facts' are rather more slippery than that. How long is a piece of string, how many minutes to soft boil an egg? Bear this simple truth in mind when taking notes: just because the writer of an article or book is respected as an expert and has letters after their name does not mean their version of the truth is the most accurate one. We all have opinions and biases, and that includes 'experts'.

I repeat: trust no one. Do your research, double and triple-check it, then write what you believe to be the truth. Oddly enough, that's all anyone else can do too.

QUESTION: do you prefer to research beforehand or on the hoof? Does it jar you out of a book when you spot a fact that's wrong?

Week Sixteen: Where To Start Your Novel

Some writers make notes or write outlines beforehand; others plunge straight into the story ... but where do they start?

There is nothing so wonderful as beginning to write a new novel. The failures are all ahead of you, only a few preliminary notes and a feeling of excitement - which could be indigestion - are behind you. You've been bottling it up for days, weeks, perhaps even months. Now at last you can write your first few pages ...

But where to start? When Victoria sits down to write her sixteenth blog post? Or a few minutes beforehand, when she gets that life-changing call from her agent? Perhaps you should go further back, start with some cleverly-sketched backstory: maybe that day many decades ago when she stuck her puny ten-year-old fist in the air and vowed to become a bestselling novelist, or when she had that incredible idea for a kickass story while balancing on an inflated gym ball in her exercise class?

The start of your novel is not about set-up and backstory, though it can involve those to some extent. Rather, it is a sacred moment, breathing life into clay you have shaped with your own hands. Your world is born out of nothing; your characters rise up and start making things happen; a predestined chain of events is set in motion, racing toward an unseen finish line. The beginning of every story is that moment when a storyteller invokes the magic territory by saying the four magic words, 'Once upon a time ...'

Heads turn in the room, a hush descends, people settle, and your readers willingly step alongside you into the magical world of The Story.

"Once upon a time ..." Erm ...

None of which helps the novelist in any practical sense, though it may put more pressure on her to get it right. So let's look at more practical methods of deciding where to start.

I am not speaking now to those people who launch into faeryland like The Fool in the old Tarot pack, not looking where they are going but whistling merrily, a pack on their back, stepping out over the abyss as though it were solid ground. Those people are either deeply talented magicians, implicitly trusting the story to keep them from falling, or they are idiots who think planning will stifle their creative spirit. I am talking instead to the rest of us, mortals with a brain, who know storytelling is an art but also know themselves to be capable of whacking great mistakes, so like to venture out with some kind of story map in their pack, from 'X marks the spot' on the back of an envelope to the most up-to-date Sat Nav.

So where to begin?

Most writers know that character shows itself most clearly under pressure. Like the old Latin saying, in vino veritas (truth in wine), a character reveals itself through the choices made when the usual social constraints have fallen away, perhaps because a zombie has come crashing through the living-room window or they've discovered a bomb under the table.

The door opened, and Captain Darkblood stood there, a snub-nosed revolver in his hand pointing right at my heart. "Step away from the typewriter, Victoria. You've written your last adjective."

Equally, the time to begin a story is when your character is under pressure. Not just any pressure, but an inciting pressure, a pressure that forces them to take action. Not pressure that crushes and near-destroys your protagonist, in other words - that comes later, at the climax - but just enough pressure to make your character jump up and start dancing. So Victoria is feverishly typing her blog post when the call comes in: her agent says, 'Now look, Victoria, I don't want you to worry, but apparently there's a bomb under your desk.'

How's that for a hook?

Obviously though, as readers on page one, we can't really care - beyond basic human sympathy - about a character we don't know yet. So Victoria is about to be blown to smithereens. So what? Go ahead and let the bomb detonate. The world could do with one less writer. (More chance for the rest of us, eh?)

So either we need to make the reader care from line one, which is tough to achieve, or we need to show the character just before the pressure situation, to reveal them as sympathetic and someone we ought to care about, someone funny or kind or clever or worth our attention in some way. A child, obviously, gets an instant sympathy vote from most people (except other children!) but in most cases the writer's main protagonist will be an adult. So how to make them sympathetic in a hurry?

Okay, you might say. Let's have Victoria's young curly-headed son pop his head round the door in the first paragraph, and say sweetly, maybe with a tear in his eye, 'Hey, mum, you haven't forgotten we're visiting Grandma in the hospital, have you? I've baked a special cake for her.' To which Victoria will reply, 'No, darling, of course not. I know how important it is for you to visit your dying grandmother who may snuff it at any moment and ... Oh wait, is that the phone?' Cue agent with bomb warning/threat. Now we have Victoria, her young son, and a specially baked cake about to go skyhigh. Plus the dying grandmother will never get to see her family again ...

Seriously though, the real key to making a reader care what happens to your main protagonist is narrative voice.

That's it. Everything else is just scenery, window-dressing.

Narrative voice does not have to be trustworthy or sympathetic in the conventional sense; it can trick us, lie to us, even make our stomachs churn. But it must force us to keep reading.

This initial narrative voice - which can be first, third, even second person - must enter the reader's head from line one and hold them spellbound. So make it a magical voice: intriguing, clever, intimate, confidential, witty, sexy, dangerous, inviting, moreish - right there in the reader's ear. Your narrative viewpoint character on page one is your storyteller, even if this is a prologue and a character who is never seen again. The narrator can change later, especially in a multiple perspective novel, but the first voice or voices encountered are all-important. The narration can be sympathetic or even vile; but we must care what happens next. Because this is the voice that says the magic words, 'Once upon a time ...' and woe betide if they fail to hook the reader.

So to recap, very simply, in answer to the question 'where does my story start?' the answer should be, 'at or preferably just before a moment of inciting pressure, involving a narrator we immediately care about or whose potential failure intrigues us.'

So dump the backstory and start just before the big bang instead. You'd be surprised how little backstory you really need, and how much can be conveyed in a line or two of dialogue, further on, on a strictly need-to-know basis. Make the reader trust your narrator, and they'll come along for the ride without the backstory.

QUESTIONS: which novels have you read that reeled you in from page one, and how did the writer do it? Do you ever have problems knowing where to start your story, and how do you deal with that?

Week Fifteen: Writing Scenes

Cut the waffle, and make something happen ...

This may seem obvious, but novels are made up out of scenes. Yet one of the problems even established writers can face is moving their characters in and out of scenes cleanly.

You've probably read examples of this yourself in published novels: the characters are talking, but nothing changes. Nothing happens. The reader is forced to gnaw her own arm off out of sheer frustration.

So what's gone wrong? The writer is 'between scenes' here, unsure how to manoeuvre her characters out of one situation and into another. So what you get first is an introduction scene - rather like a green room at a festival - where the characters wait before going on stage. Later you will have a debriefing scene where characters discuss the events of the preceding scene. The writer tells you what is going to happen; then shows it happening; then reminds you what just happened.

If you find yourself caught in this trap, the thing to do is take a leaf out of a scriptwriter's book and start writing in scenes.

Essentially, this entails imagining your story as a film. You create a 'storyboard' made up of scenes - the encounter scene, the kidnap scene, the campfire scene, the sex scene, the rescue scene - and then write straight in and out of them. No long intros, no faffing about with mundanities, no scenes of exposition afterwards that may leave your reader squirming with boredom. You cut to the chase, as they used to say in movie-making.

In media res ...

Most good writers know to start a scene in media res: in the middle of things. But I've seen this taken to extremes: no introduction at all, no scene setting, just a line of dialogue and bang, we're away. That's not the answer either. In film, there is usually an 'establishing shot' - the outside of a hospital or house, to let us know where this scene is set - and you need that in your novel too.

The establishing intro does not need to be elaborate. A simple one-liner like, 'Charlotte Street was empty and dark, except for a sickly pool of light under the one street lamp still working' may be all you need. Or if retelling Little Red Riding Hood, a neat jump cut from a terrifying encounter with Mr Wolf might be, 'Grandma's house is on the other side of the wood, and a good fifteen minute walk; today I reach it in eight minutes flat, my face hot with exertion. "Grandma?" I knock, but there's no reply.'

Then write your action scene.

A scene should be like a kernel, a seed that contains all the information - the DNA, if you like - about your story, but in miniature. If you can write individual scenes that mimic, in some way, the overarching action of your plot, you will be doing well. This should happen naturally when you are on top form, and struggling for it will not improve your novel, so don't worry too much. But if you see it happening, learn from that and see where else you can draw comparisons with other parts of your story or echo your theme in a scene's backdrop or action.

Gustave Dore's portrayal of the poet Dante, lost in a dark wood in the Inferno - this happens to us all!

To help with this, stay visual in your writing. Your creative brain is much cleverer than your conscious mind, so trust yourself to reach for a strong visual metaphor when setting your scene. Landscape and specific objects may seem to have arrived in a random manner, but if you're writing well, you may find they click perfectly with your story. The scary dark wood in Little Red Riding Hood is a common visual metaphor for when characters have lost their way or are faced with the unknown - see Dante for more details. Henry James knew about visual metaphor when he called his novel about broken relationships The Golden Bowl, as did Dashiell Hammett with The Maltese Falcon.

Objects like this may be brilliant visual metaphors, or they may be McGuffins, unimportant except in their value to the plot. Either way they provide a hook for the reader that makes a story truly memorable. In particular, they provide a pivotal point around which an action scene can swing, giving it added momentum on the way out.

Keep scenes as short as possible. Short scenes avoid the loose ramblings of a writer who is mentally on her way to the kettle, and they increase the pace and tension. Books can sag, especially in the middle. A series of short scenes, sharp in, even swifter out, can tauten your structure until it sings with tension.

Anything that goes over more than, say, six or seven pages, is edging into long scene territory and will slow your novel and lose you tension. If you can't avoid that, it's probably quite a complex scene, in which case, see if you can break the big scene into smaller units of action. This works best when there are multiple characters and you can switch between them, as a camera lens might do during a fight or confrontation.

For inspiration, see this classic scene below - using a musical pocket watch as a focal and auditory point for the scene - from For A Few Dollars More.



In general, avoid lengthy scenes - these easily slip out of your control and into unnecessary dialogue you did not intend to happen - especially those that remain in one location, like the interior of a car. Road trip stories are an exception, but even then, find a way to break up the monotony of a claustrophobic setting: force your characters into bars, up mountains, down holes in the road - anywhere but the passenger seat!

QUESTION: Have you ever found your characters talking aimlessly - maybe over a pot of tea - and been unsure how to move them on? What tips do you have for maintaining scene tension?

Week Fourteen: Four-Point Commercial Checklist

"Murder will out," they say, and many in publishing still claim to believe the same of good books. "Great writing will always find a market," we are told as writers, along with that golden oldie, "All good authors will be published eventually."

This sop to our vanity is no longer true, if it ever was. Or it can be true if we are prepared to self-publish.

Not every writer will get their books into the shops. And the journey to get them there - and keep them there - is more complicated and fiendish than anyone outside commercial fiction would ever believe.

Commercial publishing is shrinking, and author lists are shrinking with it. More rapidly than ever. There is every possibility that you will write a good book this year or next, perhaps even a great book, yet be unable to place it with a reputable publisher. Or you may have talent and a reasonable track record, yet fail to attract a publisher willing to go to contract on the strength of a proposal alone. Meanwhile the bills have to be paid ...

It's tempting to assume that every book taken on is now a major risk for publishers, except new work by the very top names - or complete unknowns. Yes, dear new writers with good books, you are not in too bad a position in terms of attracting publishing deals. New writers have not yet 'failed', so you will always be more attractive to the money people whom editors have to convince when they decide to acquire a book. But woe betide if your debut sells less well than expected. Because it's all about sales these days. And I can perfectly understand why publishing is fast becoming a closed shop. In this culture of fear, risk-taking is akin to professional suicide. Far better to give a flat no - or offer the most meagre terms possible - than lose money on a book deal and face the firing squad yourself.

So what's the answer to this narrowing of the publishing arteries?

As I see it, there are several courses open to writers in this position. You can resign yourself to diminishing advances and precarious contracts, and maybe even shift into self-publishing, or you can change what you're writing to become even more commercial, in the hope that this will save you from the graveyard of good writers that has become mid-list publishing.

Literary writers will, quite rightly, reject that last idea. Literary fiction has always been a precarious medium - and anyway, out there on the razor's edge is the best place for experimental fiction to thrive. If you expect no money, and are happier with a small publisher who understands what you're trying to do and will support you with that, you will not miss earning your living by words alone.

"I'm not compromising my creative spirit to churn out a blockbuster. I love this garret."

Mid-list authors keen to explore the freedom and adventure of self-publishing may shrug off traditional publishing at this point and find a new path through these dangerous waters, and good luck to them. I have paddled there myself and know it can be very liberating to self-publish, not to mention lucrative.

For truly commercial writers who do not wish to self-publish, however, adapting to the demands of this brave new marketplace is the only viable response. Nobody wants to drag themselves to the desk every morning feeling like a dinosaur, reading their sales figures with a heart sinking as rapidly as the numbers.

But what does it mean, to write more commercially?

The answers change in specifics according to each publisher and genre, but in general you need to ensure this simple Four-Point Commercial Checklist applies to your manuscript, at least to some degree:

Strong or high-concept story, preferably strikingly original in some elements, but not so original that it won't fit into current book categories. Check it can be described in a simple phrase - or better still in the title itself.

High stakes action. Start with life and death, then work upwards. The more people potentially affected by your story, the higher the stakes.

Accessible, cleanly written prose. Your book can be as complicated plot-wise as you like, but it must be written for as broad a readership as possible. Keep sentences uncluttered, say what you mean, be elegant if you wish - but save your deathless prose for your literary alter-ego.

Larger-than-life characters that keep a reader turning the pages. (You may think you write these anyway, but it's a fair bet you don't. Think larger. No, even larger than that. You need characters a reader will never forget.)

As you can see from that list, writing more commercially is nothing to do with writing in a popular genre or following trends or writing longer or shorter books. It's about making your books memorable without becoming melodramatic, and simple without becoming simplistic.

It comes down to being a great storyteller. And above all this, you also have to believe in your story and not write in in a cynical, 'this will get me published' way.

Tough, huh?

"Jim knew he only had thirty seconds to save the entire universe ..." Are your stakes high enough?

If you knuckle down and do all those things, and still can't get a publisher to take your book, let's face it, you're screwed. But don't worry. There's always self-publishing. More on that in another post.

Oh, and my latest novel WITCHRISE is published today!

QUESTION: What do you think makes a book commercial these days? And would you ever change the way you write just to keep being published?