Your first pages – 4 more book openings critiqued at @Litopia by literary agent @agentpete, author Jon Duffy 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 four 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 longtime Litopian and author Jon Duffy.

The format is simple. Four 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.

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.

On this show we talk about:

Blurbs – the information a reader needs from a blurb or sales summary. How long a blurb should be. How much of the plot you should describe.

The author’s biographical details – how important are they? Who takes notice of them? Do they matter to readers or are they more significant for literary agents and publishers?

Difficult names – if you’re using names that are historically accurate but difficult for 21st-century readers to process and distinguish, should you make them more accessible?

What gets a reader involved in a scene and the characters? A lot of it is down to the writing style. Here’s where you’ll hear an old chestnut of writing theory – show not tell.

Description versus story – how much scene-setting does a reader want at the start? Could some of it be left until later?

Titles – we always discuss the suitability of titles! Many of the titles were intriguing on first glance, but did they hit the right genre notes?

Opening scene – has the writer started with the right scene or is the reader primed to hope for another set of characters? What expectations has the blurb and title set up? Is the romantic lead a bit too stalkerish for the genre?

Vagueness versus detail – is the opening scene weighed down with commentary and would we prefer more straightforward action?

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.

Your first pages – 4 more book openings critiqued at @Litopia by literary agent @agentpete author @anniesummerlee 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 four 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 longtime Litopian Annie Summerlee @anniesummerlee , who has published short stories in a range of online publications.

The format is simple. Four 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.

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.

On this show we talk about:

Where to start the story – this was a huge issue for every one of the entries. Although a novel’s opening chapters require a lot of scene-setting, they need to offer more too. The reader needs to become engaged with the story and the characters, not just the descriptions of the world. Here you can see what happens when the author gets that balance wrong.

Writing from the viewpoint of an animal – this is enormously tricky. Vocabulary, world view and description all have to be carefully tailored to make this work. Has this author managed it? Judge for yourself and see how your impressions compare with those of the genius room and the panel.

Need for more dialogue and action – many of the openings were heavy on description but light on character involvement.

Titles that are too long, too difficult to remember or misleading – titles have to do so much. They are one of the first ways we reach out to the reader. Are we doing it effectively? On the show, we always spend a while considering the title for each entry and whether it’s doing its job. And some of them are just right! Come and see why.

Comparison titles – what they are and why it’s useful for you to identify them.

Blurbs that need more attention – it’s so hard to summarise your book in just a paragraph. One of the best ways to learn is to see the mistakes that others make – and when a writer has a blurb that hits all the spots.

Tiny writing details that matter – all these authors wrote smoothly and vividly, but sometimes there was an odd word choice or lexical repetition. Notice how they matter!

Action versus emotion – why do we make a distinction about that? One of our most interesting discussions.

The importance of knowing your genre – so that you give readers the thing they enjoy. Though you then also give them more than they were expecting.

Self-publishing – we briefly discuss self-publishing! How it’s more feasible today than ever – and why. And tips for success.

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.

Your first pages: 5 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.

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.

On this show we talk about:

Pacing and rushing – how a dramatic situation can leave the reader cold if it’s rushed.

Vagueness vs specifics – how specific details will give the reader a much more vivid and engaging experience than blanket statements. If your character suffers from ‘lack of love’, show us how this operates in their day-to-day life. Show not tell!

Intimacy versus brooding – while we want to feel the narrator is taking us into their confidence and sharing their deepmost troubles, some readers might find this too heavy, especially when we’re meeting the character for the first time. Would a bit of humour help? We discussed. Sometimes there isn’t a consensus.

Book length – is 100,000 words too long for a YA novel? If there is an optimum length, what is it?

Meta-stories – how much can the writer break the fourth wall? If the reader is constantly told the characters are not real, or the rules of reality keep bending and changing, how will the writer keep readers hooked?

Verse – one of the most difficult feats to attempt is a book in verse. Our brave versifier very nearly pulls it off. His slips are only slight, but they show how exacting this form is.

Blurbs – how long should a blurb be? How detailed should it be? If your blurb is for a novel, does it sound like a novel or like a non-fiction book? Does it pitch to the appropriate age group? Does it end with an intriguing tease that makes the reader open the book? A great blurb tip for a poet who was venturing into novels – to write a blurb with punch, think of it as a prose poem.

Titles – titles are as tricky as blurbs. This time we had titles that were accurate but too bland or generic to be memorable; titles that would work for memoir but don’t work for novels; and titles that would be impossible to remember because they are alien words.

Action – what kind of action is compelling and what kind of action might become dull and repetitive?

Comedy and humour – how difficult it is to write humour effectively, how the jokes in a YA novel must take account of a YA audience’s interests and priorities.

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.

Your first pages – 5 manuscripts critiqued at @Litopia by literary agent @AgentPete @AJ_Dickenson 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 Andy Dickenson @AJ_Dickenson, ITV reporter and YA author.

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.

This week’s edition had a range of genres. Speculative fiction, fantasy, sweet romance, contemporary and – a new one on me – Martini-flavoured spy thriller in a grounded steampunk world.

Have you heard of that? I hadn’t. But it turned out to be an accurate description.

As always, the manuscripts had many strengths. They were fluently written and thoroughly realised. The authors often had solid track records in other areas of writing. But how did they do as novelists, and were these submissions ready to wow an agent or publisher?

There were several issues we discussed.

Titles – Some titles suggested the wrong genre. Or weren’t memorable enough. Or didn’t catch the spirit of the text. Some hit exactly the right notes, but even so, the chatroom audience still had questions, worrying about whether the word order could be switched for more oomph.

Blurbs – Blurb-writing is a dark art of its own, and mostly loathed, but whenever you present a manuscript, you have to write a short summary. Some blurbs hit just the right notes, promising plenty of the kind of action that would appeal to readers of that genre. Some gave too much, so the reader was confused by the end. Some gave far too little – a vivid moment from the action, but no indication of the overall trajectory of the book, whether it would be personal essays that dwelt in the moment or a bigger arc, perhaps of tragedy, perhaps of healing. It’s so interesting to learn what the reader needs from that one, agonising paragraph.

Beats of action – one of the openings had an interesting incident, but was cluttered by another incident that took too much of our attention before switching to the important character. At the start of a novel, the reader is so adrift, they are easily overloaded.

Purpose and lack of purpose – one of the manuscripts had a vivid setting with one character observing another. But somehow the narrative lacked purpose – we didn’t know what the protagonist was there to do. This made the narrative hard to understand.

Starting at the wrong moment – two of the manuscripts were trying to front-load a lot of explanation and back story, but had done it in scenes that were not intrinsically interesting.

Developing a writing voice – this wasn’t a problem in any of the manuscripts we examined. All flowed beautifully in styles that seemed natural to the writer and suitable for their chosen genre. But Peter, as an agent, and also as Head Lit of Litopia, sees a lot of manuscripts that lack these qualities, so we spent one segment of the show discussing the elusive ‘it’ factor – how do you find your own writing voice?

Enjoy! 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.

Thriller writers – your first pages: 5 more book openings critiqued by @agentpete @anniesummerlee 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 longtime Litopian Annie Summerlee @anniesummerlee , who has published short stories in a range of online publications.

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 masses to learn from the chat room comments alone. The audience might not always know why something doesn’t work, but they know when they’re engaged, or confused, or disappointed, or laughing at things they shouldn’t, or eager to read more. It’s our job as trusty hosts to pinpoint the whys.

We talk about:

• Blurbs that don’t set up the story’s unique intriguing world, or tell us about the characters, or set up the story’s fascinating central dilemma.
• Titles that are too general, or set the wrong tone, or not memorable enough, or just right.
• Where the author’s real interest is – how a sparkling line can help the author play to their true strengths.
• Openings that dawdle too long in setting and description or characters who clearly won’t be important.
• Whether it’s too soon to veer into back story and how much to include.
• Language that inadvertently comes across as comic.
• Misconceived opening scenes and whether the author would be better starting with a different kind of situation.
• Whether a novel sounds like a thriller – or something else! And what that ‘something else’ might be.

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.

Becoming you – how to develop confidence as a writer

On a recent episode of Litopia’s Pop-Up Submissions, we intended to talk about writer confidence, then the show went in another direction. But it’s worth a proper discussion.

Litopia founder Peter Cox, who is also a literary agent, told me confidence is a major issue for his members. ‘Either it never gets a chance to develop, or gets fatally knocked by so much conflicting advice (thank you, internet). But without a sense of self-confidence, I don’t believe a writer can develop their own true voice.’

Voice

First, let’s define voice. It’s what makes you unmistakably you. Your style. Your thematic signature. The distinctive hue of your world. As Peter says, this comes from confidence.

Here’s my take.

I remember when I wasn’t secure about my voice and other distinctive whatnots. I regularly rebooted myself, to be like the authors I was reading, or to act on feedback from critique groups or other publishing people.  

I seemed to be a jigsaw. A bit of this and that. And changing all the time.  

But gradually, I discovered that if a technique or approach didn’t fit me naturally, I couldn’t keep it up. It was a strain, like clothing that was too restrictive. But sometimes a new thing did fit. I kept it, and once I used it, it changed anyway, bent to my own shape.

If you do enough of this…

…eventually you’ll know…

• Your writing style – whether it’s poetic or not, descriptively detailed or not, pacey or not, emotional or not.
• Your thematic signature. There will be certain aspects of life you’ll tend to write about, and certain characters – because those are your curiosities as a member of the human race.

Curiosity. Look closely at this word. It’s highly individual. It’s how your originality works. Originality also comes from confidence – when you know it’s okay to do what you’ve never seen before. 

You’ll also know what flavour of book you’re suited to write. If you like the conventions of the crime genre, or the horror genre, or paranormal, medical thrillers or historical romance, or whatever, write them. They are genuinely you. The readers who like those conventions will enjoy your enthusiasm. If you like the nuances and ambiguities of life, and metaphorical resonance, you have a literary bent. Write that. Perhaps you’re a mix of genre and literary; often they’re on a spectrum. Learn who you are and be that.

Muddling and fiddling

This sounds so inefficient and clumsy. Is it really a way to learn?

It’s the only way. Because writing isn’t just a technical skill. It’s an art as well, and the art is, arguably, the trickier aspect. It comes from a complex and unique source – our inner landscape.

This holds for other artforms besides writing. Recently I interviewed a visual artist who said he gets inspiration by meditating, by submerging in an inner world he doesn’t listen to in everyday life. Actors also do this kind of deep exploration. Just last week I met a manager at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. She said that much of actor training is about understanding themselves, and to an extent that most of us never consider. What they respond to, how they make others feel.  

Whether actors, artists or writers, we all create from this unique source. We find it by discovery, by dismantling what we do and rebuilding, trying on feedback or advice, listening for the change that rings true, that enlarges what we can do. Slowly it becomes an inner courage, to be who we are.   

When does this experimenting stop?

It doesn’t. There are always new things to learn as writers, readers and human beings. Also, each book goes through cycles of confidence – at least, mine do. I start in a muddle. After a while, some ideas sing well with it. Some don’t. I can treat feedback constructively, especially negative. I can recognise feedback that doesn’t align with my intentions, so it doesn’t demolish the work, which certainly happened a lot in the blundering days.

So that’s how I’d define confidence. How would you define it?

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.

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.

Your first pages – 5 #speculativefiction manuscripts critiqued at @Litopia by literary agent @AgentPete @AJ_Dickenson 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 Andy Dickenson @AJ_Dickenson, ITV reporter and YA author.

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 always, the submissions had many strengths – and much to teach us. This week’s edition concentrated on speculative fiction, and several times we found ourselves discussing what that actually is. As you’ll see from the critiques, some authors identified their manuscripts as speculative, but the panel felt they were better described by another label – fantasy or fable. In the case of the fable, this made a vast difference. One panellist felt the book had overplayed its message – but when we considered the book as fable instead of speculative fiction, this changed our expectations of the book.

Another interesting issue that arose was prologues. Prologues abound in speculative fiction, and these submissions gave them a good go. Some were riveting. Some seemed little different from a first chapter. Some were too different from the first chapter – and left the reader wishing for more of the kind of action in the prologue.

We also talked about orientating details that are necessary for reader comprehension, the suitability of style for the material and the mood of the world, how much the reader needs to know to get involved in a story, and styles that seemed to rush through the material instead of lingering on the interesting details.

Enjoy! 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.

Literary and historical 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.

This time the submissions had a theme – literary and historical, so in our discussions we aimed to define the characteristics of these. We discussed how literary blurbs are not like genre blurbs, and how a blurb can create the wrong impression about a book or give away too much. We discussed how you might create a coherent literary work out of a story with many points of view. We looked at how an author might unify a novel by setting it in a short space of time or a particular geographical place. We identified a fantastic example of showing instead of telling.

We considered openings that were thematically effective but seemed to need a more human centre. We considered titles – the risks of using a name as a title, and a title that gave the wrong message about the tone of the book. We also discussed awkward phrasing – which led us to identify another hallmark of literary work, the author’s control of language and nuance.

We also discussed Matt’s own fiction, which is emerging – in various guises – from his phenomenal experiences reporting on four wars. How do you make real life into fiction? What about transitioning from journalism to fiction writing – are there stylistic habits that journalists have to unlearn? (Spoiler: yes there are…)

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

There’s a lot more about beginnings and genre/non-genre notes 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.

Your first pages – 5 more book openings critiqued by literary agent @agentpete , writer @simnett 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, thriller author Ed Simnett (who has a frighteningly interesting CV that will probably keep him in thriller material for years).

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 always, the submissions had many strengths, and much to teach us. There were blurbs that told us too much and blurbs that left us puzzled. There were blurbs that promised a different tone from the actual text. There were scenes that drifted into confusing reverie before we had grasped where we were and whose experience we were following. There were titles that were too generic for the striking ideas in the actual book. There were awkward expositional parts, where clearly the writer was anxious about how soon they should be ‘explaining’ everything. Find the full show here.

And if you’ve got a manuscript you’d like critiqued, apply here.

If you’d like help with your writing, my Nail Your Novel books are 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.