How is it Going?
"Don't get it right. Just get it written." (James Thurber)Writing a novel is a journey, with uphills, downhills, thickets and dark muddy places. Here are some snapshots taken along the way.
Where did this one come from?
I've written the first thousand words of the new novel. It's a near-future dystopia, set in a decayed and divided London. It centres on the networks of tunnels under the city: disused underground railway, sewers, utilities, old command headquarters, maybe even the...
Title
I have written the first words of a new novel. They are, of course, the title. This one is called To the Church in Philadelphia. Why THAT? What does it mean? Are we going to hear a sermon? That would be an immediate turnoff for 85% of possible readers....
Why you shouldn’t write your sequel
Going back to that sequel: the one I had pledged to my agent without any idea what was going to happen in it. I know why the industry likes sequels. A reader who has enjoyed the first book will want to read the second. Unlike the first time around, they have a good...
Video
This is a new departure for me. I am making a video. The video is of one of my short stories, The Curse of the Ferryman. The plan is to release it on social media to promote myself as a writer. (Cunning, eh?) But also it's an experiment with live storytelling and an...
Start, but expect to come back
As promised, I have sent my agent a synopsis and first three chapters of a possible sequel to the latest novel. It needed to be done, and it is done, but as I have said, it’s not something I feel I’m particularly good at. Those three chapters in particular… They do...
Synopsis
You want to pitch a book to someone in the industry who already has an idea of the kind of thing you do. They've read the first in your series, and they've asked, 'Is there a sequel?' The good news is you probably won't have to write the whole thing out before you...
Write What You Can Bluff
My wife and I spent the last fortnight cycling around Rajasthan with a couple of tour guides and a group of other Brits, all very lovely people. I had confessed early on that I was a writer, and my fellow travelers were interested. I was asked several times if I was...
The Rule of Magic
Right, settle in. Let’s talk about Magic. For this purpose, we’ll define it broadly. ‘Magic’ means anything that works or happens in your written world that cannot, according to our understanding of science, work or happen in the real one. It means dragons that fly...
Reader’s reports
My draft manuscript has been to my favourite readers. Their reactions, in brief: Reader 1 said she needed to know more about how the magic worked; Reader 2 thought the first part was too slow; Reader 3 said he couldn’t tell until he was some way into the book what...
Landscape
The setting of your novel is as much a character as any of the actors in your story. It drives the action just as they do. It deserves at least as much attention from the writer. Well, I think so. The word "setting" covers many things. If you are writing historical;...
To Cut or to Keep?
It’s a nice scene. It takes place at dawn, when the grasses are thick with dew. Under a cedar tree two sisters are discussing things that have happened, and why their world is as it is. We learn a bit about one of the sisters from the way she reacts. It It's an...
First Lines
"She was young to know such of life, and how to end it." Does that work? As a first line, is it intriguing, or just pompous? Does it pull the reader in or put them off? To hell with it! What I have written, I have written: the first edit of my second draft. Let's...