Fantasy novelists – your first pages: 5 more book openings critiqued by @agentpete @mattschodcnews and me!

I’ve just guested again at Litopia, the online writers’ colony and community. Each week they have a YouTube show, Pop-Up Submissions, where five manuscripts are read and critiqued live on air by literary agent Peter Cox @agentpete and a guest, or sometimes two. This time the other guest was one of Litopia’s longtime members, Matt Schofield, an award-winning war correspondent who now writes fiction.

The format is simple. Five manuscripts, each with a short blurb. We hear the opening pages, then discuss how they’re working – exactly as agents and commissioning editors would consider a submission. And there’s now an added goody – each month, the submission with the most votes is fast tracked to the independent publisher Head of Zeus, and several writers have already been picked up after appearing on the show. (So we take our critiquing very seriously… no pressure.)

As you can see, there is oodles to learn from the chat room comments alone. The audience might not always know why something does or doesn’t work, but they know when they’re engaged, or confused, or eager to read more. Then your trusty hosts discuss the whys and hows.

We talk about:

• Blurbs that promise the right things and seem to live up to their promise… or don’t.
• Titles that set the right tone, or are hard to remember, or are too much like other titles.
• An interesting case of slipped point of view – so easy to do when you’re settling a reader into a story.
• Examples from many flavours of fantasy, all with their own sets of expectations – urban fantasy, timeslip, steampunk, epic, children’s, and fantasy on the borders of science fiction.
• How much information the reader needs in the first pages and what else they need to draw them into the story and its world.
• Worldbuilding – a whole subject of its own in this kind of novel, and it brings its own delights and pitfalls We talk about how easy it is to confuse the reader, and suggest ways to adjust the opening to avoid this.

Find the full show here. And if you’ve got a manuscript you’d like critiqued, apply here.

There’s a lot more about writing in my Nail Your Novel books – find them here. If you’re curious about my own work, find novels here and my travel memoir here. And if you’re curious about what’s going on at my own writing desk, here’s my latest newsletter. You can subscribe to future updates here.

‘Music was the writing tool to give me courage for this daunting task’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Stephen Weinstock

My guest this week is another returner to the series, which is rather appropriate as the concern of his book series is reincarnation. He is a composer, pianist and dance accompanist for musical theatre with the UC Berkeley, Princeton, Juilliard, and the ‘Fame’ school. Last time he guested here he wrote about the hidden structures that tell stories. This time, nearly a year has passed and he finds himself questioning the role music is now playing in his writing life. So this is a slightly unusual Undercover Soundtrack, one of questions rather than statements. Nevertheless, you can expect some stirring musical choices. He is Stephen Weinstock and he’s on the Red Blog with his Undercover Soundtrack.

‘Hidden forms that tell a story’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Stephen Weinstock

You can’t read much about writing advice before you trip over an essay about story structure, and how it works invisible magic on the reader. My guest this week has used sophisticated musical structures as the skeleton of his fantasy series, a series of nested reincarnation tales inspired by The Thousand and One Nights – and his influences range from Alban Berg to Frank Zappa. For him, music does not so much conjure up a scene or a character as an entire shape, of how an idea moves into a story and where it eventually goes. He is uniquely qualified to do so, as he is a composer, pianist and dance accompanist for musical theatre with the dance faculties of UC Berkeley, Princeton, Juilliard, and the ‘Fame’ school (though he has not yet said if he is reincarnated). Stephen Weinstock is on the Red Blog with his Undercover Soundtrack.

SHORT BREAK I’ll be taking a short break from blogging but will be back with a post on 30 November.

‘Music is my writing cave, my TARDIS’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Rysa Walker

I was so delighted when I found out my guest this week writes to music. She’s the winner of the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) with a story of genetically enabled time travel, death threats and romance. She says music is her writing cave and time machine, shutting out the modern chaos of family life, rewinding her to times in her own past and conjuring up periods like the 1893 Columbian Exposition. She is Rysa Walker and she’s on the Red Blog with the Undercover Soundtrack to Timebound.

‘The mystery of enchanted forests and the thrumming chill of icy passes’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Melissa McPhail

My guest this week began writing at roughly the same time as she started piano lessons. She says music and writing have always been natural pursuits for her, ways to help her grapple with a fundamental need to express the inexpressible. When she needed an aural companion for her epic fantasy series she found it in Bill Whelan’s rousing Riverdance. She is Melissa McPhail and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.

Savoury chocolate, bad reviews, finding an agent and writer’s block – interview at Lorna Suzuki’s blog

If you come to my house for dinner, I will cook the most bizarre recipe I can find and it will be a dish I’ve never tried before – so an adventure for us all. That’s probably how I approach my fiction too, although I didn’t realise until Lorna Suzuki asked me a bunch of questions at her blog All Kinds of Writing. (Lorna’s pretty cool, BTW – she’s a fifth-dan instructor of  Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu which she draws on for her kick-ass fantasy series Imago.)

Once we’ve dispensed with the chocolate porcini risotto, we settle down to more useful matters – how to handle bad reviews, what to do if you’re struggling to find an agent, tips for self-publishers, how to handle writer’s block… Come on over (and bring a good supply of Lindt 99%)…