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.

‘Sadness and longing in the wildest pleasures’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Rohan Quine

My guest this week writes urban fiction imbued with magical realism and horror. His characters are drawn directly from soundtracks, from music that expressed their desperation, loneliness, fragility and streetwise sass – Sinead O’Connor to Madonna; Dead Can Dance to Suede and Soft Cell. He is Rohan Quine and he’s on the Red Blog with his Undercover Soundtrack.

‘I write about love and hope’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Kim Cleary

My guest this week says she writes about love and hope – and that her writing is in thrall to songs about finding or losing love. She describes her novels as urban fantasy for anyone who longs to discover they are extraordinary, and her musical companions are a soulful, heartfelt ensemble – Joni Mitchell, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Leonard Cohen. She is Kim Cleary, she has published her first novel Path Unchosen, and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.

‘Melancholy, softly-haunted halls’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Leah Bobet

Before she was a writer, my guest this week was a musician. Proficient on piano, guitar and French horn, her most cherished instrument was her own; she yearned to be an opera singer. That didn’t work out, but she says she still feels ruled by the visceral power of music. Her stories come from musical phrases and metaphors that don’t explain themselves. Sometimes she writes by candlelight. She is award-winning urban fantasy author Leah Bobet, and she’s on the Red Blog with her Undercover Soundtrack.

‘The visceral feeling when a piece of music strikes me right’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Paul Anthony Shortt

My guest this week says he’s often wished his readers could hear the soundtrack he has in mind while he’s writing. For his urban fantasy Locked Within, that was a stack of movie scores, but also some surprising cover versions and a piece by Sarah Brightman that would send any red-blooded writer charging into battle. He is Paul Anthony Shortt and he’s on the Red Blog with his Undercover Soundtrack.