News of Book Three…and Four
Posted by Mike in Books and Reviews, Publishing on June 14, 2011
Angry Robot
The news has broken, and you can read about it here and here, but since you are on my website I can tell you about it myself.
I am pleased to announce that Angry Robot Books have agreed to publish two more books in the series, The Courts of the Feyre. The third book in the series, Strangeness & Charm, concerns what happens when the escapees from The Road to Bedlam are released into the wider community, and the fourth brings this series to a finale with The Eighth Court.
These books will feature Niall and Blackbird as well as Niall’s wayward daughter Alex. The stories will be complete in themselves as with Sixty-One Nails and The Road to Bedlam, but will be best enjoyed as a series following Niall’s adventures through the four-book sequence.
The reason for the late announcement on the website is that I have been on a research trip to track down a rare medieval survivor, along with some surprises that even I did not suspect. All I can say at this stage is that these fit perfectly into the stories being written at the moment and you will see the fruits of that trip presently.
Strangeness & Charm is scheduled for June 2012, with the fourth book, The Eighth Court, due for release in early 2013.
The Write Fantastic 2011
Posted by Mike in Events Schedule on May 21, 2011
The Write Fantastic
You will remember last year that it was the 5th Anniversary of The Write Fantastic and that lots of us went along and celebrated with them in Oxford. Well, it was such good fun that we all agreed it should become an annual event.
This year’s TWF May Event will be at St Hilda’s College Oxford on Saturday 28th May – there will be lots of genre authors there including TWF authors Juliet E McKenna, Kari Sperring, Ian Whates and others, with guests including Ben Jeapes, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Pat Cadigan, Anne Gay – you can see it’s grown a bit in the last year and promises to be a fantastic genre day out.
There will be some books available at the event, but feel free to bring along your own copies as I am sure there will be opportunities to get books signed by the many authors attending.
The event kicks off at 10:00 and full details can be found at The Write Fantastic website.
Hope to see you there!
The Devil’s Arrows
While writing The Road to Bedlam, there were a number of things that I wanted to achieve. First and foremost I wanted to continue the story of Niall and Blackbird from where they were left at the end of Sixty-One Nails, and show the impact the events in that book had on their lives. This was the continuation of their story, but I also wanted to reveal more of the world they inhabit.
In Sixty-One Nails, the world was seen almost exclusively from Niall’s perspective, and I wanted to bring in some new viewpoints to balance Niall’s view. As Niall’s new responsibilities took him to new places, I wanted to show that the ancient roots of folklore extended way beyond London. One of the things I love about England is the way that ancient and modern are layered over each other, and the way that English people take things that may have their origins in the beginning of history entirely for granted, simply working around them or in some cases incorporating them into their modern lives.
Near the beginning of The Road to Bedlam, Niall is sent North, in part to get him away from what is going on back at the courts, but also to fulfil his role as Warder and have him dig into some odd incidents. This is part of his initiation as a Warder and his first test in his new role. He uses the mystical routes which traverse the land known as the Ways to travel north, arriving at a node-point in Yorkshire:
I arrived in a cornfield; a twenty-foot-tall brown stone spike emerged from the gently swaying heads. Yards away, another finger of stone pointed upwards. The spike was scored with deep marks as if huge claws had scraped down it. Lichen coloured its surface with curly-edged stains of red and amber. I wondered whether the stones were part of the Way-node or here simply to mark its presence.
The stones in question are known as The Devils Arrows, or The Three Sisters, or sometimes as The Greyhounds. They stand a little way from the A1 trunk road aligned NNW-SSE along a line almost 200 yards long.
The Devil's Arrows (photo by Mike Shevdon)
Shown here are the smaller two of the stones, measuring 22 ft and 18ft tall respectively. The largest, pictured below, is 22 ft 6 inches tall and is set back in a small patch of grass beneath some trees just across the road that runs down to the A1 junction. When I discovered them, it immediately struck me how well the modern road was aligned with them.
The stone by the road (photo by Mike Shevdon)
Legend says that the stones were thrown by the Devil from How Hill at the village of Aldborough and fell short, about a mile away, though they predate Christianity by about 2000 years and whoever threw them managed to hit holes that had been carefully prepared and packed with grit and cobbles, as an excavation in 1709 discovered. The stones are rectangular in section and are deeply scored with what appear to be claw-marks, though they show no sign of tool working, either in the grooves or in the way they were formed. The marks are probably due to weathering – similar stones at Plumpton Rocks show the same markings.
Though three stones are standing today, there is at least one other:
“Foure huge stones, of pyramidall forme, but very rudely wrought, set as it were in a straight and direct line…whereof one was lately pulled downe by some that hoped, though in vaine, to find treasure.” John Leland, 1530s
The upper section of the fourth stone is said to stand in the grounds of Aldborough Manor, someone having hauled it that last mile, presumably to save the Devil the trouble, and the lower half forms part of a bridge over the river Tut in Boroughbridge.
Close up, the stones are huge, rough and warm to the touch. They are visible on Google Maps, if you care to look, where they stand in a crop-field much as I saw them when I visited. To the people of pre-Roman Britain they must have been a significant symbol, though whether this was of religious significance or as some sort of boundary marker is lost to us.
What is not lost is the sense of awe one has standing next to them, even after 4,000 years.
Agent and Publisher Submissions
Posted by Mike in Publishing, Uncategorized, Writing on April 7, 2011
We have reached the final episode in my series, The Twelve Rules of Writing, with this post addressing the subject of submitting to agents and publishers.
To remind you of what Rule 12 is all about, here it is:~
12. When’s the best time to submit my work to an agent or publisher?
Straight away! Agents and publishers are notoriously slow in responding and generally spend their time having lunch or reading books that are already published. By submitting your work before it’s finished you get ahead of the queue and don’t waste time waiting for a response.
Make sure you include critique from your Mum – no-one knows you better – and don’t worry about those pesky submission guidelines. They’re only there for the clueless and you don’t want to be one of those, do you?
All too often, writers finish a piece of work, do a run-through edit looking for spelling mistakes and grammar issues, and then get carried away by the excitement of reaching the end and send it off to an agent in the hope that it will be picked up and published. In 90% of cases this work is not ready for submission. If you do this and then read back through what you’ve sent, you will almost certainly find areas where you could have improved your submission. This is a wasted opportunity.
There is no single method that will bring you success with an agent or publisher, though great writing is a prerequisite, but there are plenty of things that you should and shouldn’t do. Bear in mind that submitting requires a different set of skills to writing, where you have already spent many hundreds of hours honing your skills. This is a new skill-set, and you will need to spend time developing these skills, practicing and improving, before you send in your submission.
The following may help you along the way:
Finish your work before submitting
A publisher or agent will want to see that you can not only start a story, but finish one as well. They are not interested in part-completed projects or work-in-progress. If it’s not finished, it’s not ready for submission. This applies to all fiction – non-fiction is different and can work from an outline or proposal. Finish your work before even considering submission.
Polish your work
A publisher or agent will look at a piece of work once. If you submit it before it is ready then you are having them look at work that is not your best, which is a wasted opportunity. Only re-submit the same work to the same agent or publisher if they have asked you to look at some issues and re-send. Resubmitting multiple versions of the same piece just emphasises that you were not ready the first time and makes you look premature and unprofessional.
Have your work objectively critiqued before submission
There will be mistakes in your work that you cannot see because they are your mistakes. We are blind to our own weaknesses. Get someone independent and objective (not a family member or best friend who may tell you what you want to hear) to review your work and give you critical feedback. When they offer you honest feedback that criticises your work, accept it graciously – they are doing you a huge favour. You do not need to pay for this – join a free critique group.
Take a break from your work
Having finished your work you are naturally impatient to see if it will be successful, but time is your friend. If you leave it alone for at least a couple of weeks you will return to it with an objective eye and will almost certainly be able to improve it.
Research agents and publishers
In the meantime you can research agents and publishers. They are not homogenous, they like different things and accept submissions based on different criteria. Be clear on where your work is positioned in market terms and then find agents that accept submissions based on that market. The best agents are the ones who already represent authors who write what you write – likewise publishers. If the agent’s listing or website says “No fantasy” and you’re a fantasy author then eliminate them from your list – no always means no, and you are wasting everyone’s time if you submit.
Check Predators and Editors
Once you have a lits of candidate agents and publishers, ordered by how suitable they are for your work and whether they are open for submissions, you will need to check that they are legitimate. Remember the simple rule – in publishing money flows to the author, not the other way. If there are expenses then these should be deducted from your income. If there are up-front charges, reading fees, assessment charges or deposits then this is a RED FLAG.
Predators and Editors is a website that tracks unscrupulous members of the publishing business. They also have a wealth of resources on submissions – read and digest before submitting. They are also seeking donations to defend against a court case at present, so please consider donating some money towards this. They are a fantastic resource for writers that deserve our support.
Spend time on your query letter and synopsis
If you spend three years writing a novel and then three hours writing a query letter and synopsis then you are doing yourself a disservice. An agent or publisher will read your query letter and synopsis not just for factual information but to get a feel for your writing style and your ability to communicate. It is a showcase for your skills and a sample of your abilities. It should be professional, courteous and clear. It should be short, but give all the information needed to take your query forward. In general it should:
- Be addressed to the named agent you have selected, using the correct form of address
- Include your contact details: name, email address, physical address and phone number
- State the genre and word-count of your work
- Give a brief one-page summary of the main plot, characters and setting
- List any paid publishing credits relevant to this work
- Mention if you are submitting to anyone else (no more than one or two others)
It also needs to include your unique voice and the things that makes your work so special that it will stand out from the rest of the slush-pile. Query letters are hard to write, so be prepared to go through many revisions and to work at getting it just right. You will also need to write a synopsis that summarises the main plot, explains what’s at stake, and tells the reader why they should care. You are distilling 100,000 words down into a page, so make every word count. Have both your query letter and synopsis critiqued objectively by someone independent.
Be Selective
Prioritise your list of agents and publishing according to how well they fit your work. Find a couple that are absolutely right for you and research them in more detail. Read their blog, website & Facebook page if they have one. Read books published by their clients, get to know what they like and don’t like but stop short of actual stalking. Agents and publishers show you what they like by publishing it – you owe it to yourself to find out what that is and see if they’re likely to buy what you’ve produced. If it doesn’t look right, it probably isn’t. Put them on your reserve list and find someone else.
In your query you will mention whether you are submitting to anyone else. This is where submitting to a maximum of three agents or publishers wins because you show that (a) you have done your research and (b) that you think they are right for you. Don’t be tempted to lie about this or anything else. If this works out then you are starting a relationship of trust, which you wan to be based on honesty and integrity. Publishers and agents all talk to each other and you have a strong chance of being found out.
Follow Submission Guidelines
If this wasn’t in bold already, I would put it in bold. Follow the guidelines. Agents and publishers are trying to help you by telling you what they would like to see. If they say five pages then send five pages, if it says 1,000 words, then send 1,000 words. If they say no attachments then don’t, for heaven’s sake, send them an attachment. Thousands of authors get rejected every year because they don’t read and follow the guidelines – don’t be one of them.
Check everything three times
Once you have submitted your query and synopsis you cannot get it back. If you have done your research well, then these are very likely the best agents in the world for you, and you won’t want to mess up your one chance with them. Check, check and check again. Check grammar, spelling, format – re-read the guidelines and get someone else to check for you. Ensure you have the right email address, postal address, subject line and anything else.
Stop, go back and re-read your synopsis. Is your query letter perfect? Absolutely perfect? Does it meet the guidelines?
Then when you are absolutely sure, you can send it.
Wait by working
You are going to have to wait for a response. A busy agent or publisher (and most of them are very busy indeed) will prioritise for the existing clients and business first. They will have other work that has to be done and they will fit reading queries into their day where and when they can. They may be reading your query on an overnight flight at 4am, tired and restless, which is why it has to be electric. Yours may be the 60th query they read that day, which is why it has to stand out. In any case, you will have to wait.
Use the time to work on your next project. Don’t be tempted to revise your query letter or synopsis yet as it will just depress you. You will find the mistake you missed, or realise you have left something essential out, almost certainly. Let it go, it’s done. You need to wait as long as the guidelines say for a response before doing anything. If you haven’t heard by the response time, or after three months if there is no guideline, check the agent or publisher’s website and blog – they could be on holiday, sick, have had a bereavement or a host of other things which have prevented them from reading your query. Remember to check that you used the right email address.
If there’s no obvious reason for a delay you can send a polite reminder, stating what you sent and when, asking if they can confirm that your query was received, and requesting an estimate of when you might hear back. That’s all. Occasionally agents and publishers fall into a black hole. This is unfortunate but is often outside anyone’s control. All you can do is move on and try again somewhere else.
Be ready for the response
I worked out at one point that approximately one query in ten thousand, maybe fewer, gets a positive response, but this is not a lottery and not everyone’s chances are equal. If you have done your research, followed the guidelines, polished your work and written something wonderful, then your chances are significantly better than that. Nevertheless, it may be that your chosen agent’s list is full or that your favoured publisher doesn’t have room for you. It may also be that you’re not ready.
If you get: Not for us or No thanks – that means your query has been read and rejected. That may be because it doesn’t fit with the list (back to research) or because your writing isn’t good enough yet (back to writing). Whatever you do, don’t argue or respond – just chalk it up to experience and get better.
If you get comments, such as “I liked this but we don’t have any room on our list right now” or even better, “This would be better if….” then you are favoured. An agent or publisher has taken time to give you feedback and that doesn’t happen often, so you are doing something right. Take it as encouragement, take the comments to heart, and move on. Don’t re-submit unless you are asked to.
If you get: More Please – normally you will be asked for a partial, often the first 50 or 100 pages, as a sample of your work. If this happens then you have attracted interest and the agent or publisher wants to see whether you can develop a story. Spend time going over what you will send them in exactly the way you did with your query and synopsis – remember, you only get one shot at this.
If you get: Please send full MS – Either after a partial or straight away, this means strong interest in your work and at the very least you are probably going to get feedback from a publishing professional. You are going to have to wait again, as reading a full MS takes a lot of time, so when you send it ask them to confirm receipt and give you a date that you can check back with them. Celebrate, then get back to working on your new project in the knowledge that you’re getting somewhere that may or may not lead to a publishing deal.
These are the normal outcomes from a submission, but there may be others – a phone call, questions in an email – some may ask if you can give them exclusive time to read the submission, in which case you need to agree a reasonable time limit before you take your work elsewhere. Adopt a polite, sensible and professional approach and you should be fine.
If you have reached the stage that you are ready to submit to an agent or publisher, then you have reached a milestone. There are many people who never complete a full story, indeed many who want to write but never do. If you have done that then you have achieved something rare.
It is likely that you will receive at least some rejections. When you do, remember that it is your work that was rejected, not you, and that your work can get better. Polish, research, develop – hard work is what pays off. Take every rejection as a spur to learning and you will achieve your goal.
Completing any substantial piece of writing is a beginning, not an end, and only a road to further beginnings.
Finding the Plot
Plot development is at the centre of this week’s article in the series Twelve Rules of Writing – in particular the subject of outlining. As a quick reminder, this is the extract from the original article: ~
11. Do I need to outline my story or just write it?
That depends. If you already have a detailed outline in your head, then you don’t need to outline it. If, on the other hand, you have no plot or structure then you need to outline the plot you don’t have. It’s easy, just indent every other sentence until it makes sense.
Outlining is just one of the techniques that can help you if you are struggling with plot, and since we mentioned it, let’s start there:
Outlining
The purpose of outlining is to allow you to operate at different levels within the overall plot arc. At it’s most basic, we can start with an overall premise and three labels: Beginning, Middle and End. Note that you don’t have to adopt a 3-act structure and if you already have a structure that works for you then use that, but the important thing is that you impose some structure.
Once you have an overall structure you can begin to fill out the levels beneath the overall structure with elements, initially at high level and then in more detail. The point of outlining is that you can dip down into detail anywhere in the plot as it occurs to you without worrying about how you get there. There is a freedom in this that liberates you from the narrative sequence and allows creative expression.
You don’t need software to outline, though there are some useful tools you can use which include outlining functionality such as OmniOutliner, Scrivener, NoteLiner and others, but you can just as easily use sticky notes or index cards. The key elements are that you should be able to expand and collapse each element independently allowing you to focus on that element without worrying about everything that precedes or succeeds it, and that you should be able to move elements about in the structure if you want to. That might be laying cards out on a surface, or clicking and dragging a paragraph.
Potential pitfalls of this technique are in the level of detail to which you descend. If you drop down too far you can over-outline an element and steal all the fun and surprise from that scene so that when you come to write it you find there’s nothing to do and your pen is dry. On the other hand you can push the level of detail so that you are, in fact, writing the scene and then you’ve lost the big picture, which was the purpose of outlining in the first place.
The trick is to stay light and agile, swapping between scenes and adding in detail all across the story arc until you have enough that you think you can write it. Then stop outlining and start writing.
Freewriting
If outlining had an antithesis it would be freewriting. In freewriting we ignore structure and follow the narrative path to discover where it leads. There is a different kind of freedom in this, in that it liberates the writer from structure and allows their subconscious to manifest in the story, revealing new truths and discovering hidden jewels. Writers sometimes talk about characters walking in and taking over, which is an aspect of freewriting – if it feels right then go with it.
The downside is, of course, that you can end up writing material that has no discernable plot – a structureless story without development or progression. In some cases this can be avant-guarde, but mostly not, and it can leave the reader disorientated and unable to follow.
The most powerful tool for the freewriter (some would say for any writer) is the delete key. If something isn’t working then have the courage to delete it. If it was good after all then you will be able to re-create it, if not then it is better gone. This can mean that you are deleting more than you are left with, but if that’s what the story demands then so be it. Remember that freewriting can produce a lot of material quite quickly, so there is seldom a problem with insufficient words.
At its most powerful, freewriting is revelatory and inspiring, but not for the faint-hearted.
Snowflaking
Snowflaking is a little like outlining in that it operates at different levels of detail, but it is rather more formal in approach. This technique starts at a high level, one sentence summary of the plot and then iteratively creates increasing layers of detail until the story is written. Note that this is different from outlining in that in outlining you are encouraged to switch levels and move around within the story arc as the mood takes you, but in snowflaking the direction of progress is towards increasing levels of detail.
The power of this fractal approach comes from the link between the overall premise and the final story, and it is almost guaranteed to provide you with a story that is true to the original idea. The weakness is that it doesn’t allow you to deviate from that idea, and can produce results that are formulaic and uninspiring. It also relies on a brilliant premise, and if you have that then this technique can generate a story quite quickly and relatively easily, but if you don’t then it can feel like you are just digging yourself into a deeper hole.
If you really need a formal structure and a regulated approach then this technique can work for you, but don’t let it stifle your creativity.
Backtracking
Backtracking is an alternative approach to plot development that starts with the end and works backwards to the beginning. This sounds initially strange but can be very useful in certain circumstances. If we take the example of a murder-mystery, we can start from how the murder was done and then work backwards to the clues generated, the red-herrings created, the characters who would be suspect and the beginning of the story, which could be where and when the body was discovered.
The power of this technique rests in the questions. Why was the victim killed? Who would want them dead? Had they done something to deserve it? Who would have a motive? Where would the murder take place? Questions are powerful because they feed back into character. What sort of person would kill another human being and then conceal what they had done? This gives you an insight into that character and allows you to write about that person in a way that feels true and vital.
Backtracking can be used to plot an overall story, but also at a more detailed level. If you have an event in the story arc that you need to get to but you find yourself blocked, then you can work backwards from that event by asking why it happened. What happened to lead to that event? Who was involved, and what was their motivation? These questions may lead you back to a different point in the story than where you were trying to write from, and allow you to discover why you were blocked.
The weakness in backtracking is that it can lead to plots that seem tenuous and contrived, since there is a web of dependency leading to the final event, created specifically to support that event. When using this technique you should question each link in the chain and ask whether that is really there for the story or simply to make the plot work. Otherwise you may find your story dominated by plot devices and helpful coincidence.
Which Technique?
Each of these techniques has strengths and weaknesses and each is more or less appropriate in certain circumstances, so which would I recommend? The answer is all of them. Writers need to develop a range of techniques and tools for dealing with different problems and learn when to use a particular technique. This comes with experience and practice, so trying each if these techniques is a good place to start. You will find that each has benefits and each comes with it’s own restrictions and limitations.
This is not a definitive list of writing techniques and there are others that you can learn and experiment with. Try mind-mapping or borrow Robert McKee’s excellent screenwriting technique documented in Story. Use flowcharts, cover the walls with sticky notes, fill notepads with random notes and build character databases. All of these have their own strengths and weaknesses, and you can discover them for yourself by experimentation.
There is no single recipe for good story writing any more than there is one writer of good stories. Each writer must discover what works for them. But if you find yourself stuck and you’re wondering what to do about it, try a different approach – you might find that you solve more than just the problem you’re faced with.
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