Developing as a Writer
Lesson 1 - Concept, Story, Writing
In Week One we will first take a big picture look at us as writers and get into a more focused mindset before embarking on our next draft. We will focus on really knowing what type of writer we are and then being able to answer, what our book is about, before bringing that big picture overview to our structure and reassess what ‘shape’ our novel is in – does the novel work and are all the themes and ideas well balanced? And we apply this to our opening and reevaluate our start in light of now knowing our ending and what our novel is about.
“The ‘success’ of your novel depends on the strength of your concept, the quality of your story, the quality of your writing.”
Would you agree? Now you’ve written the first draft of your first novel, or maybe even the fifth draft of your third novel, you probably have a few things to say about writing and also a lot of questions. This course, rather than answer your questions directly, intends to do the opposite and ask you questions to consider because only you are best placed to know if your manuscript is ready to be published.
I meet a lot of authors who ask the same of a publisher or an agent, wanting to know if their writing is any good. Sadly, that’s where the problem lies. Growing as a writer, getting to the stage where your manuscript is ready for the world, basically requires you to answer that question yourself. When you’ve become the writer you want to be, you will know. You’ll know when that manuscript is ready. So the purpose of this course is essentially to help you get to that point of self-realisation. To put to you the questions you need to confront as a writer, making sure that next draft, in your heart-of-hearts, is truly stand-out and will not look out of place on the front table of your local bookshop.
To do this we’re going to take a two-pronged approach. First, is to delve a little more into that concept of self-realisation and be honest about why we are here in the first place. Why do we want to be a writer? There’s no need to do a lot of soul searching at this stage as this is an open-ended question. Instead think more about what your goal is as a writer. Why do you want to be published? Because if the goal is simply to be a published writer, then what comes next?
What type of writer do you want to be
Our first mini exercise is to think about what type of writer we want to be. This is because our first piece of advice to you as a writer is to acknowledge that you, yourself, are a writer. You’re not an aspiring writer or someone who wants to become a writer. You are now a writer and need to take yourself just as seriously as a writer as you would Maggie O’Farrell or Andrew O’Hagan or Eliza Clark. So rather than focusing on becoming a writer, consider what type of writer you want to develop into.
David Nicholls said that his desire as a writer was to emulate Marian Keyes. What is your goal as a writer? Is it sales? Is it the prestige of literary fiction? Is it to produce something with apt social commentary? Is there a genre you love and want to be known for? Is it to be considered a ‘good writer’ by friends and have your books promoted in local bookshops? By answering this question you get a gauge of what you want to get out of the writing process and thereby an idea of what your book needs to do, who it needs to appeal to, the writing styles and comparable novels which have already done that which you can emulate.
For example, do you want to have a Number One Best Seller? If so, what in your writing style is addictive and devour-able like Marian Keyes or Ali Hazelwood? Did you read EL James or Dan Brown and say, “I can write a better book than this”? This is where being snobbish about other writers can hold us back. If that thought did come into your head when reading their books, you would not be the only one. But also ask yourself, did you engage with your audience for the amount of years that EL James did with hers, spending years creating fan fiction initially for a world she loved and knew like the back of her hand? So many people like to scoff at her books, but EL James is a great writer – because she knows her audience and her competition, from being on those fan fiction sites for years. The success of 50 Shades was not a fluke. She knew millions of people were on romance forums and devour that type of work. She is a great example of a writer who knows her audience well.
So what type of writer are you looking to be? Because success for each of us can mean different things and each type is so validating. It’s an impossibly wide spectrum but to give you an idea of what we mean, here are some great contemporary writers to consider:
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EL James – Global Phenomenon series of books
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Jojo Moyes - Known for her bestselling novel "Me Before You," continues to captivate readers with her emotionally resonant and engaging storytelling; million selling
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Andy McNab - A former SAS soldier, action novels using his military experience, very popular
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Anthony Horowitz - Known for his Alex Rider series, written several standalone action novels and adult thrillers, maintaining a broad readership, written for TV
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David Nicholls - author of "One Day," renowned British writer known for his emotionally resonant and sharply witty novels about contemporary relationships.
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Jessica Andrews - received significant acclaim for her debut novel "Saltwater," won the Portico Prize for Literature in 2020 and was praised for its lyrical prose and insightful exploration of themes like identity, family, and place
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Naomi Booth – published by and well championed by her publisher, established indie publisher Dead Ink Press, known for her evocative and compelling storytelling, with works like "Sealed" and "Exit Management" receiving critical acclaim for their exploration of environmental collapse, bodily anxiety, and contemporary urban life
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Eliza Clark – One of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists, her writing embraces the socially unacceptable, and wryly explores themes of gender, power and violence.
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Tom Crewe - PhD in nineteenth century British history, an editor at the London Review of Books, to which he has contributed more than thirty essays on politics, art, history and fiction. The New Life, his first novel, earned him Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award, described by judge James McConnachie as “thrillingly intimate” and “a compassionate and tenderly sensual account of masculine sexuality”
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Eleanor Catton – Youngest Booker Prize winner, author of The Luminaries, The Rehearsal and Birnam Wood. As a screenwriter, she adapted The Luminaries for television, and Jane Austen’s Emma for feature film. Her ambitious novels combine plot with wit and psychological insight, probing the mechanics of society’s failures and triumphs
You can choose another writer that better suits you, but at the end of this lesson, when you introduce yourself to your fellow writers and tell them what book you're writing, let them know what type of writer you would like to emulate. There’s no need to be self-conscious – for example, I am very open in wanting to emulate David Nicholls. Who suits you?
One of the most important things in writing is finding your own voice and leaning into what you do best. When I first started, I tried to write this super stylised, lofty literary fiction, but it just didn’t click for me. I eventually realized it was a bit silly to force myself into writing something that lacked a humour and warmth I naturally wanted to bring to my work. What I learned from that is to embrace what comes naturally to you. Play to your strengths, and let your writing flow from there.
What do you need to say?
You may have already completed a first draft but you could still be at the stage where you’ve had so many things come out, like different subplots, character ideas, or creative ideas that you might have lost what you were trying to say in the first place or the novel has become a different thing entirely. Even writing a fifth draft, it is never too late to sit down and ask yourself, what do you need to say? What is the point you are making with this book?
What are you passionate about and what do you need to put on the page? Again, no matter what draft you are on, reassess this. Then, how do you shape your thoughts and feelings into a novel?
A recurring question you will get asked is: What is your novel about? And this is the key question to ask yourself at this stage in the process as many come away with a draft and find it really difficult to pinpoint an answer. ‘Well, it is about a lot of things,’ may be true but it may mean there’s a lot going on in your draft and it needs a little honing. Consider ways to answer the question: The literal answer – say something about the world of your novel – perhaps the setting, the genre, and the kind of novel it is – ‘it’s a coming-of-age novel set in the afterlife where the recently dead are working in government bureaucracy. There’s a narrative answer – which is what happens within that world: 'it’s about a man who wants to win back his partner’s love through a community music festival'. And there’s a thematic answer – the overall sense of the book: 'it’s about loss and coming to terms with opportunities lost through learning to forgive'. Can you pinpoint your novel in one sentence for each?
Shape and Structure
Now consider one of the core aspects of a novel: how do you make something that has never happened feel true?
What is important to you? What is the biggest experience of your life? And how do you shape this into a novel? What structure would give this shape? Again, you may think these the questions you have to consider at the start of the writing process, but editing is rewriting and rewriting is the start of another writing process. Therefore, for your novel to work now that you have completed your first draft, your structure may need to change and be given careful consideration.
Redrafting is taking your ideas and putting them in a framework – a shape – that is undoubtedly a narrative rather than a string of anecdotes. By this we mean a finite event that you can set your story within, which will give a beginning, something to keep it moving through the middle, and then a clear point of focus that the reader knows the protagonist is working towards. Biopics do this well and there are a lot of examples from films: Bohemian Rhapsody uses the Band Aid concert as its frame to tell the Queen story. Invictus centres around the Rugby World Cup in South Africa but brings together considerably bigger themes within this shape. But so many novels do this too. For example, on the Indie Novella Writing Course we examined Us by David Nicholls and he explores the dynamics of a marriage and the father-son relationship through the framework of ‘the Grand Tour’, a European multi-city family holiday that lends the structure for him to explore all the themes that were important to the author. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes centres on a letter received from a solicitor. Eliza Clark’s Penance is framed around a reported murder of a teenage girl by three other teenage girls, but is really about so much more.
Is it clear from the outset of your book what your themes would be about? We’ll talk about openings later too, but consider whether the reader gets a handle on what this book is about, i.e. what you are trying to say and what you will focus on, from the outset.
Consider coming-of-age novels. How do you tell a story of growing into adulthood without telling the whole thing but rather distilling it down into a structure and a framing device or framework? How do you take a wide theme like parenthood or being a teenager and give it a structure? It could quite easily be a series of anecdotes and incidents but how do you give it a shape? What event can you create which gives it that framework, that gives it a beginning, a middle and an end? Settle on your themes and decide upon the book you want to write. What type of book and what style do you want to write it in?
Plotting vs Making it Up
As publishers, even the novels we take on, we ask authors to reconsider their plot and go away and make changes. That’s not to say you should resist doing this yourself – writers sometimes think with a first draft the publisher will take it on just for the quality of writing alone and then it will be the editor’s job to get it into shape. The truth is that publishers will make these suggestions, but your structure still needs to be as watertight as it can be before it reaches us for us to know how much work we need to put in. Therefore, it’s not too late to start revisiting the plot.
Are you able to improvise? Do you know the main story beats?
What kind of book are you writing, what are the themes of the book, what it’s literally about, the setting, the world you are going to explore? First drafts can be like the scaffolding and you could want to change that scaffolding now you know more what the novel is. You have the chance to really hone it in this next revision, cement those foundations. For me there was more planning needed in starting the second version of my novel than it took to write the whole of the first.
It is sometimes helpful to think of story and plot as the order of events within this scaffolding. Creating different structural ideas and creating little boxes where you know things will happen and can move them about in your structure. What lens are you looking it from? David Nicholls' Us starts by saying it is looking back at last summer. Penance is through a fictionalised ‘true crime’ lens.
What big moments do you build the book around? Knowing the destination will give you confidence. Know how the ending should feel rather than the specifics themselves.
Openings – The Beginning and The Ending
Almost counterintuitively the parts which are most likely to change from when you first pen your novel to the point it is ready to submit, are the beginning and the ending. For endings, it is always helpful to know where you’re heading before you begin – many of us already know the final scene right from the start. But that isn’t to say that it doesn’t sometimes change as writers start writing in earnest. Many original endings never make it into the final edit of the book. Rather, the author uses that original ending as a sense of what the eventual ending should feel like and its only when that first draft is done they can pen the right ending that fits all those other scenes and the journey their characters have gone through. The same, more so, with the beginning. The start of a book is usually a jumping off point, however in novels it is often true that the seeds of an ending will be sown in the beginning i.e. the author will go back to the beginning and take those themes, those hints about what this novel is, and craft an opening that really suits the novel – that is really readable and will draw in the reader, offering them a glimpse of the journey that the novel will be.
Concluding Notes
A lack of structure is the common issue, even after a few drafts. If you want your novel to start well and then resolve, you need to have a really confident structure in place. Have you explored your novel yourself and know it inside out, and do you know what you want a reader to feel at each point? Because that’s what a novel is: it’s a set of feelings you’re extracting from a reader across 80,000 words. So if plotting isn’t your thing, then how do you want your reader to feel after the opening, when do you want them to feel intrigued, when do you want them to feel shocked but need to find out why this shocking thing has happened. A novel is an emotional journey to the reader so structure it as one. Even the best writers forget this. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve received as a writer is, ‘don’t get high on your own supply.’ We sometimes are so in love with our own writing we forget it’s not about us. It’s about articulating our thoughts, feelings and our concept to a series of strangers.
Masterclass and Writing Exercise
Each week will finish off with a Masterclass provided by someone in publishing we love working with and through whose experience we can really hone our writing. This first week we are delighted to welcome back literary agent Laetitia Rutherford from Watson, Little who delves into how she works with authors especially after that first draft and what she suggests to make a novel the best it can be. Just click the below to access it.
Writing Exercise
In these Writing Exercises we will focus purely on our novels and how to articulate them to a reader – or fellow writer. This week start by introducing yourself to your fellow writers on the group and say which writer(s) you would most like to emulate and why. Then tell them a bit about your novel. Try to use all three of the literal, narrative and thematic to describe your novel. And then, if you can, discuss what frame you are using or what could be the potential frame for your story.