On my last post I spoke about developing an action plan following my time at Alt Fiction as the weekend. So one week on, how am I doing?
A quick run through my “to do” list and I can cross off some of my tasks: I’ve written this post (when I finish it!) , I have signed up with the British Fantasy Society, and I have started to look at my web presence.
This is a strange phenomenon and could come across as narcissistic, but the results of a quick Google have shown:
“Richard Barber” – comes up on Google UK on Page 5
“Richard Barber” +horror – puts me on the first page of results in second, third and 5th.
“Richard Barber” + author – comes up on Google UK on Page 2
An interesting observation is that writing this column does not, per se, seem to improve those rankings as I have been using “Google Alerts” and last week’s post never came up (although I did find out about a lot of other Richard Barbers). Perhaps more concerning is that none of these results found my website.
Obviously this is just the start of a process and there’s a long way to go… and I need to keep in mind that this is to support my writing, not to replace it!
At the same time I have reviewed how I promote my writing when I get published. So far I tend to put a message on my website and on Facebook to draw attention to anything I get published. However this time, to be more assertive, I’ve sent emails out to a group of people I know. My first message was on my latest short story “Race” which has just been published in Morpehus Rales IX. Will this make any difference? It’s hard to know yet but I’ve had some positive feedback from the people I have contacted so far.
I’ve been to Alt Fiction this weekend in Derby (an event supported by Writing East Midlands!) and I’ve come away with my head full of plans and ideas. Perhaps the greatest “lightbulb” moment I had was something that Stephen Jones said: which is this for a genre writer attendance at conventions/conferences such as this are absolutely essential. (I had been coming to the same conclusion following my attendance at the World Horror Convention in Brighton earlier in the year.) If ever I discover the secret to time travel, as well as advising myself not to touch that chicken curry in March, I’ll go back to my younger self and demand that I start attend conferences earlier in my career.
But I am where I am, and Quantum Physics notwithstanding that’s unlikely to change. On a more practical note attending the conventaion gave me a list of areas I need to address to develop myszelf and my writing and I thought I would share them here:
What I need to do!
Enhance my “market knowledge” so:
- Subscribe to the British Fantasy Society
- Subscribe to Locus
- Review my list of “top 10 short story markets” and use it!
Build my online presence. Therefore:
Post this blog each week
Review my website
Look at how to develop my online presence (this throws up an interesting dilemma: If I do a Google Search I find there is a Richard Barber who is a medieval historian and gets more hits than me! Do I adopt a pen name to differentiate myself from this other Richard?)
And all of this around making sure that I keep on top of my writing “targets” both in the progress for my novel and other projects I’ve got in hand. I’ll try and follow my first “mid-year resolution” and post again next week to say how I’m getting on.
In my last post I outlined my plans for my third session: a 10K extract focussing on the the relationship between Reverend Jenk and Agatha. Well, a lot can change in the world of writing in the space of a few days.
I put the plan to Miranda and she was happy with the suggestion so I had my target of finishing session two by today and then starting work on draft 3 of the novel, initially focussing on the relationships of the main character Chris Symes, with the idea that this would form session three in a couple of months.
In the interim I had a response from one of the agents I pitched my novel to during the World Horror Convention last month. They liked it, they had some concerns but they liked it.
I’ve submitted work to agents in the past and only ever had once personalised response and that hadn’t been promising. Now here I was with a bonafide positive reaction to what I had written. I felt like my writing had just taken a huge leap forwards.
Now how to make the most of this opportunity? The agent had raised some concerns about the opening chapters - in particular relating to Chris Symes’s introduction (can you see where this is going - sounds a bit like session 3 to anyone?). So I could simply carry on with my game plan and submit the Agatha/Jenk session to Miranda and then the Chris Symes session in July… but I’m not sure that delay would go down too well with the agent.
So today I’ve contacted Miranda with a new suggestion: if she’s got time I can submit the prepared session 2 today and then a “fast-tracked” session 3 on Chris Symes in a couple of weeks… or if that’s too intense we drop Agatha/Jenk for the moment and I’ll submit the reworked Chris chapters in a couple of weeks. Either way it means within 4 weeks I’ll have something to take back to the agent that has strengthened the introduction of Chris’s character.
Under the mentoring scheme I have 6 sessions with Miranda, each session comprising work of up to 10,000 words. Now this creates a challenge as the novel I have written is somewhere around 120,000 words so even my O’ level maths tells me that during the course of the mentoring scheme Miranda will see half of the novel. As I’m just about to send me second session across the quandary comes in selecting what to send (except it doesn’t because I know what I’m going to send, but for the purposes of dramatic effect let’s pretend I don’t).
I could simply send the first 6*10,000 words of the book, or the last 6*10,000 words, or I could mix it up and select alternate batches of 10,000 words just to keep Miranda on her toes.
My first extract was simple: the first 10K of the novel, that was a no-brainer. When it comes to trying to find a publisher/agent they’re only going to want to see the first three chapters so it stands to reason that my first session needed to include them. It also made sense because it was about setting up the scene and the characters which seemed an important subject to be focussing on.
For my second submission I’ve eschewed the 10K and 10K and 10K routine until I’m halfway through the novel and run out of sessions. Instead I’ve focussed on one of the principal relations within the novel (between Reverend Jenk and Agatha; this means nothing to you now but stick with me and it might make sense eventually) - and one I was aware was weak in my original draft. In the second draft the relationship has been considerably developed so I’m keen to see what Miranda will make about the way the characters interact.
So that goes off within the week. I’ll let you know how it goes down and whether Miranda thinks such an approach is madness itself!
This is a short blog post. I don’t want to tempt fate.
I received back an excellent report from my mentor. By some miracle I’ve pulled off all the things we were looking at.
He says the opening is now a quantum leap from where we started. All the problems with overwriting and empathy and structure and show v tell are no longer there.
I am happy with the first 20,000 odd words now and so is he.
So, short of a bit of copy editing, spell checking and so on I can say that I won’t touch any of the first part of the book again before I begin the submission process.
What a great feeling.
I’m going to stop typing now and crack on with the bit in the middle that I’m working on before I tempt fate.
This is the section I’m submitting for my 6th and final extract, so I want to really put some graft in on it.
Fingers crossed.
This may come as a strange admission… but although I have finished writing the first draft of my novel I didn’t know how the story ended. All I did know was that the ending I had for the first draft didn’t work and needed some major revision.
The second draft of the novel has resulted in significant change to the structure and content of the novel; with whole chapters being culled and new episodes being brought in. During this process I haven’t directly dealt with the problem of “the ending that isn’t”… but it has been a continual subject within my own thinking.
As the novel has altered so my understanding of the story has subtly shifted. Like a dripping tap, that issue of the ending has been working away in the background until now I know how the story ends. And I can tell you - that’s a relief! Whilst I was confident that the ending would come eventually, knowing that I now have a clearer idea of what is going to happen (whilst also realising that there is still a lot of detail to be fleshed out) stills the rising panic that I didn’t have a suitable ending and that the one that already existed just wouldn’t do.
So now all I have to do is write it: Easy peasy!
Since I received my 4th extract back from my mentor I’ve been thinking a lot about point of view.
What is meant by point of view in regards fiction writing? Well, this should be obvious, it is through who’s eyes you see the story.
The same story can look very different depending upon who is doing the looking.
There are a few different types of point of view.
First person. The novel is written as if by the narrator. I did this, I did that.
Second person. The novel is written as if the reader is the narrator. You did this, you did that. This is really unusual and is rarely employed by novelists. I can only think of a handful of examples- Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney, parts of Complicity by Iain Banks and more recently Sum by David Eagleman.
Omniscient or the God Perspective. This is written as if from the perspective of a narrator who knows everything, can dip in and out of every character’s head and can see the whole thing.
Third person. This is somewhere between omniscient and first person, in that the novel is written as if from the point of view of a particular character, but the character is still referred to by name. As in Grace did this or Grace did that.
I have written all this out as a way of clarifying something to myself. My present work in progress is written in Third person, but in the draft that I am working from with my mentor it takes the POV of several characters.
Grace is the main character, but in parts of the novel we see through 3 other character’s eyes.
Now, this isn’t omniscient as there are very clear breaks between the sections and whilst we are in a particular POV we only see what that character can see.
In my last extract Tim asked me whether I needed Maximilian’s POV in order for the story to work and suggested that the tension may be increased by us not knowing his motives.
I came to the conclusion that he was right and am now spending a long time removing Maximilian’s POV from the story and ensuring that the information that was provided from these sections fits in elsewhere.
Without resorting to cliche, okay a little bit, a wee bit of a lesson has been reinforced here, you don’t need to show everything. In many situations not allowing the reader access to the full information makes for a more intriguing read.
Which having thought about this for a few weeks makes me now realise why I never really find books written in Omniscient as satisfying as those written in First or Third person.
As a reader I want to be transported into another life or world or mind of a character. I want to believe that I am that character and see through their eyes.
And despite occasional megalomaniac moments I just can’t get in the mind of someone or something that can see or know everything. It just doesn’t work for me.
Along with the 6 extracts we get to submit we have the opportunity to attend a mentoring day in the Big Smoke.
Apart from the industry figures that we got to meet there was the benefit of meeting up with the other mentees. Writing is essentially a lonely job. You spend a lot of your time on your own, making stuff up and then typing it out, deleting it all and starting again. The mentoring program is great in that it gives you direct response on your work from someone who has been through the publishing process. But, still, you don’t get to meet your mentor. And who can blame them? Writers are generally weirdos.
So, I got to meet with 7 or 8 other human beings who were going through or had just gone through the same scheme as I had. And they weren’t weirdos. Some of them were even friendly and chatty.
From an industry point of view we had presentations from Will Atkins, Director of Macmillan New Writing, Arzu Tahsin, Editorial Director at Orion and Carolina Sutton, Agent at Curtis Brown. They talked us through how they work, what they do, how to craft submissions, the future of the publishing industry, the etiquette of approaching agents and much more. Really great stuff.
I’ve been to conferences before, heard agents and publishers talk, but the ability to sit in a room with only 8 other people and quiz influential people in the industry was invaluable.
I stopped short of thrusting my manuscript in their faces of course.
That would be rude.
I left the day feeling positive, fired up and highly motivated.
I write within a genre (well, two actually… horror and fantasy) and that brings with it a number of advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages tend to be the way people look at me when I tell them I write horror, and start to shuffle backwards and check for hairs on my palms or the bloody axe half-hidden behind my back, and the reaction from many “mainstream” publishers and agents who look at you as if you might grow a second head at any moment (horror? Do people still read that stuff?) and cast their eyes around wildly for something, anything they can press into use as a makeshift crucifix to ward you back to the dark shadows you obviously emerged from.
On the counter side is the fact that working within a genre means there is an identifiable group of other people who are doing the same thing. I have just returned from the World Horror Convention (WHC) and although I have previously attended one day conventions and workshops this has been a different experience for me. Here is a group of people who are passionate about the genre in which I write. People who understand when I wax lyrical about a piece of cover art by Steve Crisp (this man virtually drew my library!) or meet the author of a book I enjoyed years before.
Before I attended the WHC I expected to enjoy the experience, what I hadn’t appreciated was how important it would be. This is a group of people who understand what is happening within the genre publishing industry and actually shape what is going to be coming out in print for the next few years. I have no doubt that amongst those conversations at the bar and in the corridors there are deals being done and relationships being forged and strengthened that will bear literary fruit.
For me, I have come away knowing a few more people than I already did, a renewed understanding that it’s okay to want to be a published novelist (and that yes, it’s a crazy ambition, but it’s not an impossibility), a clearer understanding of where I am with my writing career and what I need to do next to progress it, more books than my little arms could cope with on the train home, and a stunning piece of Steve Crisp artwork. Not a bad result for a long weekend in Brighton.
At the beginning of the World Horror Convention I had the opportunity to make a pitch to a number of publishers and agents working within the genre.
Having never made a pitch before I did my research; I read up on all the participants, made notes on their interests and read and re-read this on the train down to Brighton.
I entered the room; a small, awkwardly shaped bar where they sat behind cramped tables and this was when I made my first discovery: they’re the same as the rest of us! No second heads, no-one with more than the standard 2 eyes, just normal people.
It didn’t take me long to make my first pitch, and quickly after that my second and third and so on. I came to the convention weighed down with typescripts of my synopsis and first three chapters (all double spaced, single sided, 12 font) as the grooves worn into my shoulders will testify.
So, what did I learn? There are two key things I will take away from my experience at the pitching tables:
i) Understand your book! I know this may sound strange, I have been working on the rewrite of novel for months, I can quote whole passages with my eyes closed, so of course I know it. But do I Understand it? Within a few minutes of pitching I had a Road-to-Damascus moment in explaining what my novel was about. I understood it…in the same way that writing a synopsis (or rewriting one after you’ve re-written the book) helped to crystallise my understanding of the work and highlighted issues that still exist within the narrative arc, so making a pitch required me to focus on the absolute core of my novel and deliver it. For me that process has given me an invaluable insight into my novel, and as I’m still mid-rewrite, an opportunity for that to influence the final product.
ii) Learn your pitch. This is not unrelated to my first point. I had envisaged a scenario where I would place my offering on the table in front of the publisher and they would flick through the cover sheet and synopsis and ask a few pertinent questions, and some of those I pitched to did in fact do just this. But others looked at me, looked down at the document I laid before them, and waited. And waited. And it quickly became clear I was going to be the one doing the work around here. This wasn’t like an interview for a job where the panel has a list of questions written down in front of them. I was expected to sit down, pitch my story to them without (one assumes) coming across like a babbling fool, and then the questions would begin.
So what do I take away from this experience? Well, none of the individuals I approached said, “of course I will print this,” and pulled a contract from their back pocket for me to sign, nor did any of them look at me with incredulity and ask “you’ve written what?”. Whether anything will come from the pitches I made I have no idea and I won’t know for weeks and possibly months (in some cases, many months) to come. But as a learning experience and an insight into what I need to do to develop the business-side of my writing, and another tool in my array of writing techniques, it has been a true learning experience.
