Starting Out
With Alan Bradley, Jennifer Dance, P.S. Duffy, Anna Hope, Mary-Rose MacColl, Jennifer Vanderbes, Audrey Thomas and Eric Walters.
This month for Fiction Craft we asked a group of novelists for their best advice for first-time novelists. There’s lots of great stuff below, so I won’t belabor any of it. The only thing I’d emphasize is that when you write your first novel, odds are it is going to be an exercise in learning how to write. So it will take years – it should take years. If it doesn’t take years, it means that either you are a genius (which you really aren’t, right?), or it is not very good. But don’t be put off by the fact that you are not a genius and your attempt -- or at least your first attempt -- at a first novel is not very good. Most people who want to write but don’t, don’t because all they can see is the bad stuff they’ve written. When they go back to re-read their work with fresh eyes, they can’t see the good stuff because good writing is invisible by definition. So when you re-read your manuscript, give yourself credit where credit is due. And use that as evidence that you can actually write, some of the time at least. The more you do it, the better you’ll get. By the time you get to book two, you should know how to write and the work should flow much more easily. If it doesn’t, well, I hear there is need for workers in the trades.
Oh, and one final thing: lower your expectations. As discussed above, you are probably not JD Salinger or Harper Lee. Most first novels sell a few hundred copies and then end up going to the pulper or remainder house. Such is life. It is not a reason to not write.
Alan Bradley is the author of the Flavia de Luce mystery series which started with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. The sixth and most recent book in the series The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches. He lives in Malta.
The urge to write is like the urge to turn handsprings on the roof: it is not easily susceptible to the advice of others.
In spite of that, I’m willing to throw out a few stray thoughts in the hope that even a single one of them might take root and bear fruit.
Firstly (is there really such a word?) I’m inclined to say, “Forget everything you’ve been told”, but that’s not entirely true. There are as many ways of writing as there are writers. What works for me might be the worst thing in the world for you.
One thing, though, that all published novels have in common is that their authors completed them (unless, of course, the author happens to be someone of the stupendous stature of Charles Dickens).
So that would be suggestion number 1: Finish your book. Don’t dissipate it by walking around talking about it: sit down and write it from first page to last. That will put you in the top one-half-of-one-percent, right off the bat.
Write only about what you know? This is another of those canards that has been flopping about gasping for air since the invention of the pen. Did Jules Verne live 20,000 leagues under the sea? Did H.G. Wells live in the year 802,701 A.D.? Was Thomas Harris present at the eruption of Vesuvius? Hogwhiskers!
Suggestion number 2: Use your imagination and do your research. If you do so adequately, no one will believe for an instant that you weren’t born in Crim Tartary, or the House of Commons.
Suggestion number 3: Don’t ever pay anyone to read or edit your work. The world is swarming with gatekeepers, and the path to publication is precarious. Focus instead on signing with a reputable agent. This is absolutely essential nowadays. If your novel is worth publishing, a good agent will have it sold by the day after tomorrow.
Have you ever seen King Lear set in Sans Comic? Of course you haven’t, and there’s a reason: editors, agents and publishers want a manuscript that is a delight to read: a crisp, clean monotype font, such as Times New Roman speaks volumes about the author. Polish until it squeaks.
And check your grammar and spelling. I once agreed (reluctantly) to read a manuscript by someone who assured me they had written a classic. It began like this:
I had nothing to loose.
How much more of it did I read?
Exactly!
Suggestion number 4: Times New Roman, 12 point, regular, double-spaced, if you please. NFS: No Fancy Stuff.
And one for the road: Suggestion number 5: don’t write genre fiction. If you do, your manuscript will be no more than one more herring wiggling in a net of millions. Write a novel that defies description and see that it gets into the right hands.
Oh….and one more thing…..
Good luck.
Jennifer Dance is the author of the novel Red Wolf. She lives in Stouffville, Ontario.
I didn’t realize how much I have learned over the last decade until I started to write this blog!
1. Don’t agonize for days over the first sentence, or the first page of your masterpiece. We all know that these are the most important words you will ever write, but in my experience, the first few paragraphs of the story magically make their appearance about three-quarters of the way into the book!
2. Just write! Don’t stop to find that elusive word. Get your thoughts down. You can sort out the order later. When the creative juices are flowing, go with it. I have great respect for writers in the pre-word processor days. How they did it with pens and paper or even typewriters ... I do not know.
3. Eliminate distractions such as a computer that beeps at you every time a new message comes in on Facebook.
4. Keep a notepad and pencil at the side of the bed for those middle-of-the-night flashes of genius. If you don’t write them down they will have evaporated by morning.
5. Connect with your feelings so that you can relate to how the characters think and act in certain situations. Use all of your senses.
6. Write about things you are familiar with, or are passionate about. Life experience helps. For me it’s been a matter of making the most of the window between having experienced life and becoming senile!
7. Don’t use the same adjective twice on the same page, or even in the same chapter. Use the “find” feature. You’ll be appalled at how many times you use some words.
8. Read your words aloud to feel the rhythm of what you have written. It works so much better than reading in your head.
9. Don’t try to demonstrate your knowledge of language by using long words or multiple adjectives. More than likely you will lose the reader.
10. Brush up on grammar and punctuation so that your manuscript is as clean as it can possibly be when it hits an editor’s desk. This increases your chances of having it read.
11. Don’t go off on a tangent. You’ll lose the thread of the storyline. There are some things that you find interesting but that the rest of the world doesn’t. Figure this out.
12. Create tension in dramatic moments with short sentences, short paragraphs.
13. Don’t let criticism devastate you. Listen to it and weigh its merit. If you decide there is value in it, be brutal about cutting out sections or making changes, but always keep the original version so you can go back to it if it doesn’t work out. That knowledge helps to make the cutting less painful.
14. Back up your files on an external hard drive in case your computer crashes, or email an attachment to yourself from time to time.
15. Gird your loins in the hunt for an agent or a publisher because, unless you are very fortunate, this is the hardest part of the whole process.
P.S. Duffy is the author of the novel The Cartographer of No Man’s Land. She lives in Rochester, Minnesota
If I were to offer advice to first time novelists on the craft of writing, I’d put a bit of a twist on the show don’t tell dictum—that mantra passed on to every aspiring writer. My add-on would be, don’t show too much. Whether showing or telling, don’t spoon feed your readers; don’t over-describe, don’t be too literal in depicting action, characters, setting, inner thoughts, motivations or even the nature of the central conflict. Give the reader what they need to know, those few critical details, and not a jot more. Because to fully engage readers, you need to actively engage their imaginations, not just your own. Let readers draw their own inferences, create their own pictures, ask their own questions. The six-word story attributed to Hemmingway, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn” is famous for the wealth of unspoken context it evokes, and it’s the act of conjuring up that context that makes the story so emotionally compelling, so memorable.
That’s not to say one should write like Hemmingway. The narrative voice can be as spare or as lush, lyrical and poetic as you like. But to keep the story alive in the reader’s mind, it’s a good idea to allow for some ambiguity, to respect readers’ intelligence, to give their imaginations room to breathe. The most consistent reader feedback I’ve received about my novel is that the characters and the world of the book stay with them long after they reach the story’s end. As important as your main character’s long nose is to your image of him, if it isn’t important to his character (and thus to the story), don’t mention it. The reader’s image of him may end up quite different from your own, but working with the few key details you do provide, that image will be sharper and last longer because the reader has participated in creating it.
In addition to fiction, I write in the neurosciences for Mayo Clinic. Fiction and scientific writing require equal degrees of linguistic precision, but unlike fiction, science writing tolerates little or no ambiguity. The goal is a literal transfer of information. In fiction, the hope is that readers go beyond the words on the page and that the words resonate within, maybe in ways you hadn’t even thought of. It doesn’t matter if those baby shoes are leather or canvas, pink or white. What matters is that they were never worn.
Anna Hope is the author of the novel Wake. She lives in London, UK.
My advice for first time novelists would be to keep going. It may seem obvious, even a little trite, but it’s so, so true. Books take a long time to write. Your first book is very unlikely to be published. If you’re serious about writing novels, you have to be in it for the long game.
It took me six years of writing almost full time before I got my first book deal. Before that I had completed a manuscript for a novel that almost got published but then…didn’t. And while that was hard at the time – I’m glad now that that book isn’t out there representing me. It was a lovely book, and it taught me an awful lot about character, and plot and voice and all those technical things that are so important to learn – but it was a training ground and not a fully achieved work.
Write every day. Or at least, as often as you can. If you don’t the weeds come, and then the brambles, and then the creepers and vines (I’m mixing up my eco-systems here, bear with me) and before you knew it, it’s a hard job to clear your path through. (Not that I’ve got anything against weeds or jungles you understand, just not on the pages of my book.)
Also, and perhaps most importantly, think a lot about structure and plot. I think many first-time writers underestimate the importance of plot. MFA programmes (my own included) tend to be stuffed full of very talented writers, but at that early stage most talent lies in voice. Voice will be what got you into the programme in the first place. Now, voice can’t be taught. It’s like your fingerprint. It’s what make you unique. It’s what makes your work sing. But plot and structure can be taught, and should. When I first took a class in plot I was very sneery about it all. Who was this man talking about three act structures and the like? Didn’t he know that literature stood above and apart from all of those shabby, over circumscribed techniques? When he got us to read a book in film structure I was astonished. I didn’t need plot! I was going to write wonderful, elliptical Virginia Woolf-esque novels. I was going to bring back the experiments of modernism for the 21st century! Now, that’s a noble aim, and I’m sure there are many more talented authors than myself who are doing just that right now. But I’ve learned that plot matters. Particularly in the current economic climate, when fewer and fewer first time novelists are being published. Read for plot, watch movies for plot, think about the nuts and bolts of story. Pick it apart. See what makes it tick. And then build your own beautifully structured, well-plotted piece of writing, let your voice sing loud and clear, and I wish you the very best of luck.
Mary-Rose MacColl is the author of the novels In Falling Snow and No Safe Place. She lives in Brisbane, Australia, and Banff, Alberta.
When my mother was a young newspaper journalist in the 1950s, the British children’s writer Enid Blyton visited Australia. Blyton was a family favourite, although her most well known books, the Noddy series, never appealed to me. I preferred the Secret Seven, a band of children who solved crimes and then had sandwiches with “lashings of ginger beer.”
My mother was sent by her newspaper to cover Miss Blyton’s only Australia press conference, which was held in an old hangar at the local airport. Flanked by her Australian publisher and a representative from the Prime Minister’s office, Miss Blyton stepped down from the plane on a blistering hot day, wearing, as my mother would faithfully report in the next day’s edition, an aqua twinset and pearls, looking just like the young Queen Elizabeth. She shimmered across the hot tarmac.
When Miss Blyton and her entourage entered the hangar, the gaggle hushed, the only sound a slow squeaky overhead fan, hopelessly inadequate to cool the space. The official party took to the podium, the PM’s man extended a welcome, and the publisher made a little speech. Miss Blyton was silent, my mother noticed.
Someone asked the first question. In later versions of the story, it was my mother herself. “Miss Blyton, where do you get the ideas for your Noddy stories?”
Miss Blyton cocked her head, looked at the questioner as if he was a dog that had talked, and said, “Why, Noddy tells me.”
I don’t know if this was a true story. In our family, it was always a story about mad writers. But now, having written four novels and enough bottom drawer stories to fill several bottom drawers, I don’t think Enid Blyton was mad at all. As a writer, Noddy does tell you, but you have to be ready to hear. And in order to hear, you have to quiet the other voices in your head. I have a muscled ego which is very loud in my head. It gets me to the writing desk each morning and makes me work hard. In this way, it’s helpful. But it doesn’t actually create anything and when I start letting it run the show, it bosses me about and I stop writing. Noddy disappears. When I find him again it’s in quiet spaces, more likely on early morning walks in nature or swimming than at the writer’s desk with its terrible expectations. Noddy comes and my job is to listen. It’s so simple and yet so difficult to achieve.
Audrey Thomas is the author of numerous novels and collections of short fiction, including Local Customs; Tattycoram; Goodbye Harold, Good luck; and Coming Down From Wa. She lives on Galiano Island, British Columbia.
When I sit down to a novel, I usually have the last page written before the first. I explain this by asking you to imagine you have decided to go to Paris next summer. You may not have decided whether you will fly to London and take the Chunnel across to France and a train from there, or fly directly to Paris, or rent a car from Calais or....All that you know is that your final destination is Paris. Now you can begin to plan your trip.
For me, this tends to keep my goal in mind at all times. That last page may undergo changes, although it is usually the first few pages that have to be discarded. Does that make any sense? (If we were talking about short stories I might have a different suggestion.)
I tend to write the school day, even though my daughters are grown up; the school day was the free time, when the house was quiet. At about 2:30, I would put my writing in a box, clear the kitchen table, which was my "desk" for a very long time, and start to think about dinner. This made me very disciplined, and although I may be more flexible now, I'm still happiest in the old routine. However you achieve it, routine is important, even if you can only manage an hour a day, half an hour, fifteen minutes; it all adds up.
I think you have to be excited about what you are writing. That's easy at first, it's like the beginning of a love affair, but you have to find ways to maintain that excitement--and not by fantasizing about how much money you are going to make! Charles Dickens had a few talismans always on his desk, the same ones; perhaps something like that will help, perhaps some phrase that is important to you, though please not "Keep Calm and Carry On"' that's become so trite, it's on everything these days.
The last word? BEGIN BEGIN BEGIN. (And good luck)
Jennifer Vanderbes is the author of the novels The Secret Of Raven Point, Easter Island and Strangers at the Feast. She lives in New York, New York.
Don’t worry about writing what you know. Write what you want to know. Your fundamental knowledge of human behavior will seep onto the page whether you like it or not, so don’t fence in your imagination by tackling only the local and familiar. Writing a novel is like going back to college – except you only get to choose one course, and you’ll be taking that course every day for four (if you’re lucky) years. Your passion and curiosity for the subject should be boundless. Are there things about certain people and predicaments that puzzle you? Do you wonder what would happen to a woman forced to choose between her two children at a concentration camp? Do you find it challenging to feel compassion for a young Russian man who axes his landlady? Are you oddly fascinated by the flu epidemic of 1918? If you’re overwhelmed and daunted by your subject, I’d say you’re on the right track.
Also, relax. Think of your first draft (there may be ten or more) as notes to yourself. It’s a process of discovery, of learning. Get messy and enjoy the mess; enjoy the false starts and the mistakes. You don’t need to impress anyone with your novel until it’s done. Take risks. Embarrass yourself in the name of ambition. You can always revise what doesn’t work. And learn to welcome the feedback of people who tell you what doesn’t work. It’s a supreme act of laziness – understandable! -- to hope your early readers tell you every page is perfect. Learn from your mistakes, because if all goes well, you’ll write more novels, using the tools you fashioned and collected while writing the first.
Eric Walters is the author of numerous novels including The Rule of Three, which is the first in a new three-book series; the Camp X series; Between Heaven and Earth; Bifocal; and Black and White. He lives in Mississauga, Ontario.
I’m often asked advice by emerging writers and recently I realize that my advice is, at best, dated. I found myself sounding like an old man – no I’m not yelling at anybody to get off my grass – but some of my ‘pearls of wisdom’ fall into the category of speaking about what was instead of what is, and perhaps most important, what is going to happen next.
My good friend, and fellow writer, John Wilson, talked about how we’re going on a hike. We don’t know how long we’re going, what the terrain will be like or the weather, but just pack your bag and go. Nobody would ever go on a hike that way but that’s the emerging world I’m being asked for advice about. I know about the past – I had to walk ten miles to school each day in the snow (year round), uphill in both directions, fending off wild animals and dinosaurs.
Okay, slight exaggeration, but things were different. But then there was basically only one route to publication. It involved convincing a company to publish your work. You sent out manuscripts – paper and using something called Canada Post – and hoping you’d be accepted. Electronic publication was something out of Star Trek, and self-publishing was something done by the desperate as an afterthought because nobody thought their writing was good enough to publish.
Absolutely nothing that I wrote in that paragraph is now true.
While the traditional route of publication – find a publisher – still works, it is not the only route. Electronic is viable, immediate, and much cheaper. Social media, including blogging is respected, and an integral part of traditional publishing. Self-publishing is not only respected (think of the Writers’ Union allowing membership of self-publishing) but may position the writer in a superior position. You own the rights. You are the captain of your ship. Publishers are chasing after successful self-published works. They understand that self- publishing can make money. They are aware – and perhaps a little bit afraid.
What hasn’t changed?
1) Your skill as a writer must be developed. My advice is the same as always. If you want to be a writer, then write. The ten thousand hour rule applies to writing as much as it does to basketball.
2) Take advice, don’t be afraid to rewrite, and if possibly engage the services of a professional editor. It’s wonderful your wife/husband/best friend/ neighbor think you are a great writer. Get the opinion of somebody who doesn’t love you.
3) Read good people. I’ve learned more from John Steinbeck than any person I’ve actually met.
4) See what the market wants. Please no more vampires – I wish I could drive a stake through the heart of Twilight – but be aware of trends in the market.
5) Being published doesn’t make you a writer, it makes you a published writer.
6) Writing is a wonderful thing and is rewarding just in the process of doing it. If you want it to be more than a hobby than treat it – and yourself – as a profession and as a professional. Be wary of doing things for free. It may be good exposure, but as the very wise and incredibly witty Claire Mackay used to say, ‘you can die of exposure’.
7) Be strategic. Go and get what you are trying to get. If you’re waiting for a publisher to knock on your door asking for your manuscript then you’re going to waiting a long time.
8) Don’t tell me that you’re ‘thinking’ of writing something. Unless you have previous documented psychic ability, thinking about it does not produce a product.
9) We all have only so many words in us each day. Blogging, tweeting, facebooking, and listserves all take words away from what you could be writing.
10) Write because you love to write. That is the most important thing.
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SHAUN SMITH is a novelist and award-winning journalist in Toronto, Canada. His young-adult novel Snakes & Ladders was published in 2009 by the Dundurn Group. His book Magical Narcissism: Selected Writings on Books, Writers, Food, and Chefs was published by Tightrope Books in June 2013. shaunsmith.ca
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