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reverb: getting writers read

Writing for Publication

One of reverb's editors offers some useful and challenging advice to new writers

To start with, a large caveat – I am not a writer, I’m an editor. My experience of writing comes from having waded through hundreds of manuscripts that have been submitted for publication, editing novels and working with writers. I believe that this has given me a good understanding of what makes something publishable and what doesn’t – and perhaps more importantly what it is that makes writers successful. This article will take the form of a series of dos and don’ts – some of which are highly opinionated and I make no apologies for this – my genuine intention is to help people focus on writing well. Unless stated otherwise, assuming that I am talking about the writing of fiction novels.

If you haven’t got it, you can’t learn it

You cannot be taught to be a writer. You must have some innate talent. This doesn’t mean that all writers are born with the ability to write beautiful flowing prose – being a writer is a process of constant development and takes a great deal of hard work. I must be clear here about what I mean when I say ‘writer’ – I judge a writer to be someone who writes something that is truly worth reading. Anyone, and I do mean anyone, can knock out a competent enough story given enough time, practise and guidance; and while it might be diverting it would never be something that you would go out of your way to read.

How do you know if you are reading a ‘writer’? If, after I finish reading something, I want to tell other people about it (in a positive way) then I know that it was written by a ‘writer’. This sounds like (and undoubtedly is) and arbitrary criterion, but it is the best measure I have found. To take a popular example, Dan Brown (of Da Vinci Code fame) writes some shockingly bad sentences, but his plotting and pace of narrative make the whole a book you want to share – he is therefore a writer.

Spend money on books and wine, not creative writing courses

Creative writing courses can teach you a great deal about plotting, character development and structure. However as discussed above, if you haven’t got that innate talent, they can’t turn you into a writer. Worse, what they can do is take people who have the potential to be a writer and turn them clones who produce perfect ‘creative writing’ material. Time and time again I have received manuscripts that obey all of the ‘rules’ of creative writing and without exception they have ended up being insipid and formulaic.

I believe that the best way to learn about being a writer is to read – widely, voraciously and analytically. Read across the spectrum of writers, identify those that you like and analyse why it is that you like them. Break down their style, their language and their structure and learn from it – though take care to make sure you don’t simply end up attempting to imitate the style of someone else. Whenever you read, no matter what you are reading, part of your brain should be analysing what it is that works and doesn’t work. You should soon find that you are doing this without even thinking. Does this mean that you lose some of the enjoyment of reading because you never really switch off and get caught up in the text? Yes, but at the same time you discover much more to appreciate in it and help you own development.

There are two things that creative writing courses offer that are definitely of use, but you don’t need to go on creative writing courses to get them. The first is an understanding of the need to self-edit – more on this later. The second is feedback. The very process of writing something makes it impossible for you to truly see it through the eyes of a reader. I know that showing someone else your work can be the hardest thing in the world – but the reality is that you are writing to be read, and someone is going to have to read your work sooner or later. I believe that there is much to be gained from joining (or forming) a writers group and actively sharing opinion’s and guidance on each other’s work. This by the way is where spending money on wine comes in. One note of caution – the members of the group must be brutally honest, and you have to be very thick skinned. It is all too easy to temper your criticism for fear of hurting someone’s feelings – but remember, if you don’t share your full and honest opinions then you aren’t helping them. Bearing this in mind, all criticism should be constructive – highlight problems, absolutely, but suggest solutions. Whenever I reject a manuscript I always try and offer some constructive advice on how it can be improved. I think that the best approach to showing your work to others like this is to assume that they will hate it, they will pick apart every single line that you have sweated over, that they will unanimously declare it the worst thing they have ever read. That way no matter how harsh their criticism might be, it is at least better than you have been expecting (unless of course you really have written the worst thing that they have ever written – which in itself must take some talent).

It takes hard work

Here is a very simple way of discovering if you stand a chance of being successful as a writer. Add up the number of hours over the last month you spent watching television/playing computer games. Then add up the number of hours you spent writing. If the writing hours are less than the tv/game hours then you are never going to be successful as a writer (of course you could be a successful writer taking a break between projects, but let’s assume you aren’t).

Two things that are common to all of the writers that I have worked with are dedication and passion. They live and breathe writing and are driven both by a desire to succeed and a desire to improve. There isn’t a single day when they aren’t writing or editing or thinking about their next project. I often meet people at parties who, on hearing that I work in publishing, say ‘Oh, I’ve always been meaning to write a novel, I’ve got this great idea…’ None of these people will ever write a novel, because if they had the passion and dedication to write one they would have already started.

How much time should you dedicate to writing? The simple answer is, all the time you can afford – but as a rough rule of thumb I would expect you to be spending 20 hours a week, minimum, on it. That might strike some of you as an impossible amount of time, and that I don’t understand the hectic modern life you lead. Perhaps I don’t, but if you are really serious about writing, then you’ll find the time. Have a 30-minute train journey in to work each day? That’s five hours a week straight off that you can spend editing a print out of the work you completed the previous night. Hardly anyone takes a full lunch hour, but even 30 mins scribbling on a pad while you eat your sandwich everyday gives your two and a half hours a week. If you work in an office consider staying an hour later every night and writing there – you will miss the worst of the commuter rush and not be tempted by the distractions of home.

Don’t waste time on short stories

Many would-be writers dedicate a lot of time to working on short stories. While some might argue that it gives you the opportunity to develop your use of language, plotting and characterisation my person view is that if you seriously want to be writer by all means knock up the odd short story once in a while, but that you should spend no more than 10% of your writing time on them. You are never going to make a living writing short stories. You might get some in print on collections, you might win some competitions, but you are not going to pay the mortgage.

It is sometimes argued that it is worth dedicating time on short stories because if you do get them published, then a publisher will take a full-length submission from you more seriously. Speaking as a publisher, I don’t give a damn how many short stories you have got published, and I am going to judge a novel submission on the text I receive and nothing else. Another argument is that writing short stories give you good experience that can be put to use in writing a novel. Again, I disagree. Short stories and novels are utterly different propositions – you wouldn’t train for a marathon by running 100m sprints – likewise you are never going to write a novel unless you start working on a long narrative. The problem is that short stories are easy to write – most people don’t have the skill to develop a narrative or characterisation over a long text – you don’t have to worry about that in a short story. You also get the buzz of completing a piece of writing in a relatively short period of time – a novel is going to take you the best part of a year, a short story, a weekend. If you want to be a real writer then you have to give up the easy, quick gratification of short stories and get your teeth into a serious piece of writing.

Write about what you don’t know

‘Write about what you know’ – it’s a well-known mantra, and to my mind it is mis-guided. I can understand why it is told to aspiring writers – good writing involves depth, rounded knowledge of your characters, locations and events. To me however it smacks of laziness and lack of creativity. People write about what they know because it takes a lot less effort than comprehensively researching something that is new to them – and yet learning about a different community, way of life, subject, skill or environment and doing so through the eyes of a writer can be an exceptionally stimulating experience.

Precisely because you don’t know about something, having chosen to write about it you are likely to end up knowing more about than the things that you know. Let’s take setting for example. I live in Croydon, so if I was writing a work of contemporary fiction then it would be very tempting for me to set it here – I can describe it in great deal, I know its characters, I know its streets. Or at least I think I do – in the same way that a writer cannot look at their manuscript in the same way that a reader can, I can’t ‘see’ Croydon in the way that a visitor might. I would be a lot better of setting a book in Brighton and spending a couple of weeks walking the streets, researching the history and writing down everything that I see.

There is also the creativity aspect – as a writer of fiction you are endeavouring to express yourself creatively – focus solely on writing about what you know and there is danger that all you end up producing is (potentially well written) reportage – events and places that you have experienced stitched into a whole that contains little real originality. There is a more prosaic consideration as well - if people only wrote about what they knew, the world of fiction would be a pretty mundane place.

Edit, edit and edit again

You are not going to get it right first time. It doesn’t matter how good you think your masterpiece is, your first draft is just that – a draft. When you finish the last line on the last page you are probably about a third of the way through the process of finishing your novel.

The next thing you need to do is re-read the entire book as a reader focusing on the structure and pace of the narrative. Does it hang together? Is pace maintained? Do you want to keep reading? You might have meticulously planned your novel, but all of the planning in the world can’t match reading a book through the eyes of a reader. You might find that whole sections are redundant and slow the book down – if this is the case, take a deep breath and cut them out – you shouldn’t think about the time you have invested in these passages, or how good the writing might be – if they don’t work, you must lose them. You might find that the order of entire chapters can be re-arranged – if so, give it a whirl.

Once you are reasonably happy with the structure, give the book to someone who has no contact with it before and ask them to read it. The best person to get to do this is an avid reader – you are bound to know some. Ask them to give you a brutally honest critique of it – note what they say about the style, but at this stage focus on what they think of the structure. If it doesn’t work for them, then listen to their feedback and try again. If you disagree strongly with what they say, get someone else to read it. If they agree with the first reader, then you are wrong. Only the very best writers can be truly objective about their own work, and by definition none of them can view the text in the same way that a reader does encountering the book for the first time.

Once you are happy that the structure works, then it is time to really focus on your style – does it work? Is it consistent? You will need to work through the novel giving real thought to every single line – is it right? Could it be improved? You might have sweated over those lines the first time they were written, but as that writing took place over a period of months it is all but impossible to perfectly maintain the same style. Once you have got it to the stage where you don’t think that it can be improved further, track down a couple more long-suffering friends and get them to read it for you. Once more, be open-minded and take on board any criticisms they might have.

It is only after going through this level of self editing that I would consider it worth sending a manuscript to a publisher or agent. The manuscripts that have really struck me in terms of polish and professionalism are one submitted by authors who have a rigorous approach to developing and editing their work.

You’re in this for the long run; set yourself targets, work to a plan

You might think that you have one great book inside you, waiting to be written, but to be a writer you have to look beyond a single work. The chances are that your first novel isn’t going to be much good – and certainly your first draft of your first novel is probably going to be pretty dire. Rather than think of every novel that you write as an end in itself, think of it as an element of your development as a writer.

One of the worst things you can do as a writer starting out is dedicate years to writing and re-writing the same book – at some point you must draw a line under it at, put it to one side and start on something else. By all means return to it with fresh eyes when you have got another project under your belt, but accept that you are unlikely to have got it right first time. Now I know that there are dozens of examples of writers who dedicate years or even decades on an initial masterpiece, however there are vastly more who achieve success by steadily developing there talent through a series of (often unpublished) books.

This is very much open to debate, but I think that if you are serious about making a go of it as a writer then you should look to be writing a novel a year – and view it very much as a learning exercise. I would envisage this year as a couple of months of research and planning, six months of solid writing and four of editing and redrafting. Based on my 20 hours a week figure that means for a 75,000 word book you would have to knock out about 150 words an hours during the six months of actual writing – not a massively demanding target. As you might have gathered from my comments on editing, I don’t think you need to beat yourself up over every single line of the first draft. The most important thing is to get a first draft down on paper and use this as the foundation of your final novel.

Adhere to the submission guidelines

This might seem like the most obvious thing in the world, but you would be amazed at how frequently people ignore it. If a publisher has specified how they want material submitted to them, then you must adhere to it – exactly. Some of their requirements or formatting might seem strange to you, and you might think that close enough is good enough – but it isn’t. Some publishers will simply ignore material that it is not submitted to their guidelines. Others will review it, but you will already have a black mark against you. The reason for this is not the formatting per se, it is your approach. A publisher isn’t just looking for material that they can publish; they are looking for authors that they can work with. If you don’t bother to adhere to their submission guidelines then you are sending them a message that you are going to be difficult to work with. The editing process involves a significant amount of work on both sides – it means hitting deadlines, it means working as a partnership. If you manuscript has potential, but is going to require work then the publisher will want to be sure that you are going to be up for doing your share of it.

Never write a couple of sample chapters, send them to a publisher and plan on writing the novel if they show interest

This follows on from the previous point – it doesn’t reflect on the quality of your writing, it does reflect on your dedication and professionalism as a writer. If a publisher is interested in what you have written, then they are going to want to see the rest ASAP. If you tell them you haven’t actually written it yet, then they are going to peg you as a time-waster and you will have blown what could have been a real opportunity.

First impressions are the most important

It shouldn’t be the case, but it is – 90% of the time I’ll have judged a submission after just reading the first page – and I suspect that I’m not alone in this. Furthermore a good first page will make me well disposed to the subsequent pages, even if they aren’t of the same standard. Because I know that the person can write I am more forgiving of later slips and am more inclined to believe that they can be dealt with through editing. Likewise if the first page is poor I am likely to approach the rest of the text in a negative frame of mind – even if it is good, it is going to be hard to win me over.

In a nutshell, your first page needs to be a killer – and here’s a good way of testing if it is. Give ten of your friends your first page and two ‘dummies’. Ask them to read them and rank them either 3, 2 or 1 based on how much they want to read the rest of the book – 3 for the one that they most want to continue reading, 1 for the least. If your first page doesn’t get at least 27, then it needs work. Where are you going to get two dummy first pages? Well, as I said, I’m not a writer, but I’m enough of a hack to pull one together in a few hours – you can find it here. It is pretty lowbrow, but aimed to have a hook.
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