WRITING LIFE 20 Beginners: Boxing clever Join the writers’ training programme 22 Author experiences: The one-man magazine How Dave Griffiths launched his own indie magazine 34 Ten top ti
Trang 1“Starting to write seriously
NEWS YOU CAN USE!
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stories
Trang 3EDITOR’S LETTER
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JULY 2016 www.writers-online.co.uk
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© Copyright Warners Group Publications plc ISSN 0964-9166 Warners Group Publications plc are not able to investigate the products or services provided by the advertisers in Writing Magazine nor to make recommendations about them Readers advertisers offering to publish manuscripts While few conventional publishers seek a fi nancial contribution from authors, many such advertisers do seek a payment (sometimes thousands of pounds) and readers should remember there can be no guarantees such publishing arrangements will prove profi table There have been cases in which subsidy publishers have provided unduly optimistic reports on manuscripts to encourage authors to commit themselves to fi nancial contribution Readers should be aware of this and should not allow their judgement to be blurred by optimism Manuscript advisory services do normally charge for their time, but agents normally do not (although some agents do quote a reading fee) While documentation and be willing for their names to be disclosed.
is the ebook manager for the Troubador Publishing Group
She oversees the ebook department while working alongside retailers’
merchandising teams to push titles into promotions She educates authors and colleagues about developments in the digital publishing fi eld Rachel
is also the editor of the Self Publishing Magazine website:
www.selfpublishingmagazine.
co.uk, which is a free online
resource that informs authors about indie publishing
is an author and professional screenwriter with more than 25 years’ experience in fi lm, television and publishing as a writer, story development consultant, and editor He teaches craft-of-story workshops through Stanford University’s Online Writer’s Studio and guest lectures through UCLA Extension Writers Programme, and
is a regular presenter at leading entertainment and publishing industry conferences in the
US and UK Visit him at
www.jeffl yonsbooks.com and
follow on Twitter @storygeeks
is a freelance proofreader, writer, copy editor, journalism tutor, reporter, and page designer for various organisations, newspapers, and magazines He has been a journalist for 27 years, working for
the Manchester Evening News
series of newspapers, PA New Media/Ananova, and newspapers
in Congleton, Ormskirk, Wigan, and London Visit Dave on
his personal website: http://
davegriffi thsjournalist.tumblr com/ and check out Barmcake
of on a practical level (for example, see p11 for a thorough analysis of the current e-publishing options available), but as writers, I’d say not at all
You’ll tie yourself in knots trying to second guess the market, and by the time you’ve noticed a trend and reacted to it, the landscape has changed again The beauty of writing is its freedom We create our own worlds, we populate them We describe them in our own unique ways We express ourselves And isn’t that what why we’re all drawn to writing?
Judging the Self-Published Book of the Year Awards (p24) this month,
it struck me how many of the titles would suit mainstream publication,
if publishers’ lists weren’t already too crowded And how many of them wouldn’t But that’s irrelevant What matters more is that all those authors have invested themselves fully in their titles All of them are labours of love and their fulfi lment is its own reward So go ahead, write that 250,000-word epic Invent a new genre Diligently double space your manuscript or scribble it on the back of envelopes Shout it from the rooftops or hide it in your bottom drawer Just create, and enjoy it for its own sake Jonathan Telfer
Editor
DAVE GRIFFITHS RACHEL GREGORY
Trang 4INTERVIEWS AND PROFILES
COVER STORY
16: Star interview:
Maggie O’Farrell
The leading contemporary novelist
says personal relationships are at the
heart of all her novels and her own
family is her muse
COVER STORY
28 Beat the bestsellers
The style and technique of
Andy McNab
30 On writing:
Lewis Carroll
30 How I got published:
Women’s fiction author Anna Bell
44 Shelf life: Donna Leon
The esteemed crimewriter shares her five
favourite reads
COVER STORY 52 Subscriber Spotlight
WM subscribers share their writing success stories
58 Circles’ Roundup
Writing groups share their interests and activities
74 Crime file: Sarah Hilary
86 Author profile: Belinda McKeon
The award-winning writer talks about swapping her writer
and editor hats
108 My writing day: Scott Mariani
The prolific thriller writer’s approach is to
get his head down and get on with it
In this issue
WRITING LIFE
20 Beginners: Boxing clever
Join the writers’ training programme
22 Author experiences: The one-man magazine
How Dave Griffiths launched his own indie magazine
34 Ten top tips: Keeping your cool as a writer
Don’t let writing stress make you hot under the collar
46 Talk it over: Find your voice
Advice on finding your unique writing voice
78 Technology for writers: Digging deep
Secrets of successful research
110 Notes from the margin
Technology troubles drive our columnist to thoughts of destitution
PUBLISHING
10 Grumpy Old Bookman: Printing money
Explaining the big bucks behind the big books
11 Ebooks: Beyond Amazon
Understand the constantly changing e-publishing landscape
13 From the other side of the desk:
Piers Blofeld
32 Publishing behind the scenes:
Arriving at the end point
Our Matador novel comp winner reaches final marketing and preparations for launch
85 Research tips: Group focus
Plan your questions to get the best answers from a focus group
to get into print and
publishing industry news
47 Novel ideas
110 Notes from the margin
A 6-day Arvon writer’s retreat worth £600
WIN
p21
Trang 55
JULY 2016 www.writers-online.co.uk
42 Poetry competition winners
Read the winning entries in our Open Poetry Competition
66 Poetry primer: Poetry from A to Z
An alphabetic guide to the language of poetry
36 Pen pushers:
Setting the scene
Exercises to inspire creative use of setting
37 Train your brain: Red editing pen
39 Open competition launch
Win cash prizes and publication in our
1,000-Word Short Story Competition,
open to all writers
61 Subscriber-only
competition launch
Win cash prizes and publication in
our Travel Short Story Competition,
open only to subscribers
COMPETITIONS
AND EXERCISES
COVER STORY
26 Story structure:
What’s the story?
Do you have a story or just a
situation? What’s the difference and
why should you care? Hollywood
script doctor Jeff Lyons explains
40 Open short story winner
Read the winning entry in our
First Line Short Story Competition
48 Under the microscope
We critique the first 300 words of a
reader’s YA novel
50 Fiction focus: Whose life
is it anyway?
Putting real-life characters into
fictional stories may be tempting,
but consider it carefully
62 Subscriber-only competition winner
Read the winning entry
in our Anticipation Short Story Competition
74 Behind the tape
Crimewriter and police officer Lisa Cutts answers your crime procedure queries
76 Fantastic realms:
Town & country
Horror has a rich tradition of rural settings, but urban locations are increasingly
common We explore the landscape and current trends
14 Non-fiction: Five mistakes beginner writers make
Start your non-fiction writing on the right path
68 The business of writing: Time travel
Work several months ahead to meet print deadlines
72 Features desk: Feature perfect
How to structure your feature article from snappy first line
to satisfying conclusion
83 Going to market
103 Travel writing know-how
NON-FICTION
OUT AND ABOUT
33 Away from your desk
Get out of your garret and feed your head
with some writer-related cultural activities THE
SELF-PUBLISHED BOOKS OF THE YEAR
p24
NON-FICTION
Back soon!
Writing for children:
Animal Magic!
p70
Trang 6Australia’s Financial Review.
‘Literary history is sprinkled with stories of tempestuous relations between famous writers and their editors,’ she said.But she pointed out: ‘There’s a flipside Editors are also a writer’s coach, psychiatrist and chief advocate, and the masterpieces that thrill us would never reach our outstretched hands without them.’
She explained that Max Perkins had told Ernest Hemingway, ‘that epitome of gun-toting, punch-swinging masculinity’, to ‘tone it down’… and survived
Max Perkins (pictured) fought for Hemingway’s The Sun
Also Rises, which in 1926 was considered too profane to publish
by conservatives at his firm
And she described how the world eventually ‘found out that Raymond Carver’s famously spare writing style was the result of his editor, Gordon Lish, slashing and burning every sentence’
Figures of speech
Love is all around
Sisters Bea and Leah Koch own The Ripped Bodice,
in Culver City, California, claimed to be the only exclusively romance bookstore
in the United States Bea looks after Regency and other historical romance, and Leah checks out the contemporary, paranormal and erotica subgenres, especially witches and sports romance
Destiny Jackson, writing in the Hollywood Reporter, said Bea Koch had told her: ‘I was writing my thesis, Mending the Ripped Bodice, about
the portrayal of romance in fiction We realised there was no dedicated bookstore
to the genre Which is crazy! It seemed like it should lend itself to a bookstore
experience because romance is such a personal genre for so many people.’
Men make up twenty percent of the readership of romance novels, Bea said
‘But I think there is a taboo topic around it There is an issue to talk openly
about sex and books There is some embarrassment that might have contributed
to it, but that’s the exact opposite of we’d like to present There should be no
embarrassment when walking into The Ripped Bodice.’
Robert McCrum, of the Observ er,
added his well chosen words: ‘As well as giving the English language a kick-start, Shakespeare can also conjure characters apparently out of nowhere, giving ‘to airy nothing a local habitation and a name’
He has populated our imagination like
no other writer: Hamlet, Juliet’s Nurse, Macbeth, Mistress Quickly, Lear, Othello, Shylock, Portia, Prospero and Romeo…
the list of classic archetypes stretches out
to the crack of doom (Macbeth), a cast of
characters perhaps more real to us than any others in our literature.’
Robert explained that the plays, ‘often
rooted in ancient myth, in which these theatrical legends appear, have become archetypal stories, too’.
He added with a flourish: ‘More than Dante for the Italians, Goethe forthe Germans, or Pushkin for Russia, Shakespeare remains an icon for English-speaking peoples throughout the world
Such ambitions came naturally From the first, he was always pitching his work on the biggest stage imaginable The motto
of the Globe, his theatre, was Totus mundus agit histrionem (The wholeworld is a playhouse).’
Image: Andrea Vail CC/Flickr
Bravo for the Bard
Trang 7Successful non-fiction authors are,
by definition, experts in their subject matter, but should avoid using too much specialised language, suggested Phil Stamper-Halpin, manager of publishing development and author platforms for Penguin Random House, on the company’s News for Authors website
Phil, who wrote an article on this topic, together with editors from several publishing imprints, said this tendency could lead to ‘overuse of jargon or professional lingo, or to explain things
in a way that’s difficult for a layperson
to understand’
He emphasised the importance of knowing your readers ‘What is their background? How much do they already know about the subject matter?
When you connect with readers and develop a relatable but unique author voice, you can become a permanent part of your readers’ lives
‘The writing process is full of pitfalls that writers of all experience levels can slip into, but great stories are made by how you address and overcome them
Whether by focusing on showing your story to readers or drawing out the lesson for a richer reading experience, you will end up with a stronger story
by watching out for these pitfalls in revisions And in this way, your readers will stay engaged and learn from your words,’ he added
7
JULY 2016 www.writers-online.co.uk
American popular scientist Carl Sagan (1934-1996), who was author, co-author
or editor of twenty books,
including The Dragons of Eden
(1977), which won a Pulitzer Prize, once wrote: ‘What an astonishing thing a book is.’
He continued, the Goodreads website recalls:
‘It’s a flat object made from
a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles But one glance at it and you’re inside
the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs
Books break the shackles
of time A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.’
The magic of books
Journalist Anthony Cummins was obviously disappointed
when a friend did not want to read the book of short
stories he recommended
‘Short stories are for magazines,’ she told him; ‘if I’m
reading a book, I want it to be a book.’
Anthony told the tale in The Daily Telegraph, adding
that he didn’t think she is alone in assuming that the
short story is the novel’s poor relation in this country,
whereas ‘North American writers are more likely to make
a name for themselves from stories…’
Anthony, who also writes for the Big Issue and the Times Literary Supplement, said it is
now fashionable to build novels out of short stories Two of the writers to publish short story
collections this year have previously written novels in this style – Mark Haddon (The Red House),
and Philip Hensher (The Emperor Waltz).
He praised recent collections – ‘a new crop of short fiction proves how nimble the form is’…
‘several new collections of short fiction are as carefully designed as a pre-iTunes LP.’ Anthony concluded:
‘It’s a form that asks for more attention, not less But going by the current crop, it deserves it.’
Short focus
Spot the difference: Mark Haddon’s
The Pier Falls in the UK (left) and US (right)
Trang 88 JULY 2016 www.writers-online.co.uk
TITLE
We want to hear your news and views on the writing world, your advice for fellow writers
– and don’t forget to tell us what you would like to see featured in a future issue
Giving up? I’ve thought about it
When I first told my friends about my plan to submit
my novel to agents and publishers, they all cried ‘No!’ in
horror They worried how I’d cope with rejection
‘You’re too sensitive,’ said my girlfriend ‘You are!
You changed the voice on your SatNav, because you
said the default voice sounded… “too judgemental”
of your driving.’
Well… I am a little sensitive, it’s true But, this was
different I had confidence in my book Secretly, I
thought I’d get a handful of rejections before someone
recognised my genius and signed me up Don’t we all
harbour that secret hope when we submit our work?
It didn’t happen like that To date, I’ve had seven
rejections For someone like me, that’s a lot I dread
opening my email now, but you can’t read email with
your eyes screwed shut You have to do this with your
eyes and your heart wide-open Yeah, it’s scary
Rejection isn’t all bad, though I’ve received some great
feedback from publishers This whole experience has
been a lesson in humility, reality and it has definitely
made me stronger I know there will be many more
rejections, and I’m ready for them
In the meantime, here is my submission survival-guide:
1 Take any rejection gracefully, and not personally
2 Watch all the Rocky movies for inspiration
3 Keep reading and writing, to improve your work
4 Keep trying
NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIEDDon’t give up, submit
The star letter each month earns a copy
of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2016,
courtesy of Bloomsbury,
www.writersandartists.co.uk
Write to: Letters to the editor, Writing Magazine, Warners
Group Publications plc, 5th Floor, 31-32 Park Row, Leeds
LS1 5JD; email: letters@writersnews.co.uk (Include your
name and address when emailing letters Ensure all
letters, a maximum of 250 words, are exclusive to Writing
Magazine Letters may be edited.)
When referring to previous articles/letters, please state month of publication and page number
STAR LETTER
I found Tina Jackson’s advice in Basic Features (WM, May) about
generating a good idea and constructing a story quite inspiring It’s not enough to just attend a workshop or a gallery opening and think you have a story – you need to have an angle I found this out last year when
I walked the Isle of Wight coastal path and pitched the idea of walking round an island to a national magazine well in advance of the Isle of Wight Walking Festival and they snapped it up
You don’t have to travel far to find a good story; explore your home town with a pair of fresh eyes, as if you were a tourist on your first visit and seek out a good idea and an upcoming event to hang
it on Perhaps someone famous stayed there and the anniversary of their birth or death is later in the year Just remember that national magazines usually plan months ahead, so make sure you pitch your idea at least six months in advance
Happy explorations!
FIONA TROWBRIDGE Sandown, Isle of Wight
Inspiring features
In my work as event director, I plan the project month by month; keep on top of deadlines; have great notes in readiness for meetings – yet, when it comes to meeting competition deadlines, I’m pants
2016 was to be the year when I took myself in
hand, and entered every competition in Writing
Magazine but here we are, April, and not a single
entry submitted Paper Post-it notes drop off the board; computer Sticky Notes get overlooked on an over-crowded screen, and the wall calender is overcrowded with dentists, doctors, rowdy suppers – all the good things in life – so no hope there Then a flash of inspiration!
When the March issue dropped through my letterbox, I worked my way
through the competition and the Writers’ News pages, picking up the pieces I
wanted to target For each one, I created a blank Word doc using the story’s subject, word count and deadline as the file name, bringing them all together
in one folder Now, when I open the folder, whatever I am working on, I am gently reminded of the other deadlines
I know it sounds a bit anal but here we are: file “01 : Letter to the Editor_wordcount open_end_April” mission accomplished “02.Paranormal_
May16_1500” is in hand, so this may indeed be the year that I actually write.The only problem is – where to file the folder?
JO SCOTT Broadstairs, Kent
://FILE_FULFILLED
Trang 9In almost every interview in WM the author says ‘Read extensively.’
I’ve tried – I really tried
I tried historical fiction – two pages in I put it down never to pick up again
I tried romance I got as far as the heroine swooning (or the modern version of it) and dropped it in disgust I’ve never seen a woman swoon for love in my life
I tried a gritty chicklit (my daughter loves them) and hated it
Women behaving like thugs doesn’t interest me
Erotica is a non-starter – I must be one of the few who never read
I pick up a book, attracted by the cover, read the blurb on the back and put it back Sometimes I read the opening pages of a book online I would love to read extensively, but I can’t find anything to read
Am I the only one to find modern book trends uninspiring?
YPS are recommended by the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook
Self-publishing a book is cheaper
and easier than you think
May I share a revelation that I hope might help
others struggling with the choice of first or third
person for their novels?
I was fifty pages (all in the first person) into my family
saga when I ran into a brick wall My protagonist – my
fault not his – had become a bore His point of view, his
feelings, his problems He was strangling my story
I rewrote it in the third person Ever take off a pair
of tight shoes? Or get out of your girdle, ladies? Or stop
watching paint dry? Wow, what a relief! My characters
danced for joy and skipped onto the page laughing and
shouting and turning cartwheels Free! Thank God we’re
free at last! Here we are, now write about us! Never
mind him and his boring same old feelings
My book was transformed from a wishy-washy
watercolour to a brilliant eye-watering Jackson Pollock
Now I can see for miles, not just to the end of the street
Now you can see the circus – not just the ringmaster
Even my protagonist was impressed and
bloomed and blossomed like a rampant bamboo
First person? Last choice!
FRED CANAVAN East Cowes, Isle of Wight
I’ve just discovered a sneaky writing trick
In the past I’ve found that if I’m given a prompt or a theme for a writing competition, I’ll think up scenarios that I would never have dreamed of had
I been given the ‘any genre, any theme’ open brief The constriction acts as a kind of creative pressure with successful results (I’m just one of those people who find too much choice daunting.)
In April’s issue of WM I noticed a flash fiction competition with a certain
theme Inspiration came immediately and in no time I had my piece written However when I read the guidelines I realised it wouldn’t quite fit I was disappointed as I thought the story good Then I remembered another flash
fiction competition advertised in WM This one had an open brief, but I’d
already put it aside as I hadn’t come up with any good ideas for it With a little bit of editing down to the shorter word count, my story now fitted perfectly
So from now on whenever I see the ‘dreaded’ any genre, any theme open
brief in WM, I’ll just have a sneaky look at the themed competitions and see if
they’ll give me the inspiration I need
MARY SHEEHAN Dunmore East, Co Waterford, Ireland
Flash of inspiration
Widely disapp ointed
Trang 1010 JULY 2015 www.writers-online.co.uk
Michael Allen explains the big bucks behind big books
There has always been big
money in publishing I’ve
never seen much of it
myself, and you probably
won’t either – but it’s interesting to
know how it’s earned
So we’ll start with Sir Walter Scott
In the early nineteenth century Scott
was a highly successful novelist, but he
was also a partner in a printing firm
owned by his friend James Ballantyne
In 1825 this firm went bust Scott was
left with a personal liability for debts
which amounted, in present values,
to over £9.6 million He refused the
many offers of help and dedicated
himself to writing more books at a
prodigious rate By the time of his
death in 1832 he had almost paid off
the debt, and it was fully discharged
shortly after he died
The fact that the right sort of book
could generate huge sums did not go
unnoticed As a result, books which
were thought capable of being big
sellers (particularly novels) became
valuable properties Publishers began
to offer big advance payments just
for signing the contract
By the end of the 19th century the
smell of money had attracted a new
breed of middleman into the
book-publishing business He (and to begin
with it was usually a he) became known
as a literary agent Publishers, such as
William Heinemann, despised him
and referred to him as a parasite But
writers soon realised that having an
agent could be a big help in negotiating
a contract and maximizing income
AP Watt was arguably the first
important agent, and he represented
such famous names as Wilkie Collins,
Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling
In the 20th century there were
further developments that affected the
way in which serious money was made
The first was the growth of sales in
paperback form, particularly after the
end of World War II This increased
the power of the agents still further, because now they could sell the same book twice, even in the home market
First they could sell it in traditional hardback form; and secondly they could do a deal with those distressingly vulgar upstarts, the paperback guys For example, in 1980 the paperback rights
to Judith Krantz’s Princess Daisy sold
for a then-record $3.2 million
It took the traditional publishers some time to wake up to reality (it usually does), but once they noticed the large profits being made in paperbacks, the bigger firms either bought
up one of the new paperback companies as
a going concern, or they built their own paperback divisions from scratch
Either way, an agent who acquired a thoroughly commercial author – either through skill or pure chance – was in a powerful position
Armed with a potentially valuable piece of intellectual property, the agents could drive a hard bargain
And they soon found a way to pit one firm against another: they did it by selling the anticipated bestseller via
an auction The agent sent the same book to the ten biggest publishers in town Simultaneously The biggest offer secured the deal This didn’t make the agent popular but it certainly made him and his author a pile of money
And so we continued, much until the present day, with large sums of money occasionally being paid in advance, sometimes to previously unknown authors And now, courtesy
of a report in The Bookseller, I
can tell you of a further dramatic development Some really smart thinker has come up with a kind
of preliminary auction This time, the agents are being invited to bid
against each other, just for the right to represent one promising new author
A lady called Felicia Yap, who has taken a course at Faber’s creative-writing academy, has produced a thriller which has been considered so absolutely red-hot that no less than eight literary agents were willing to bid for the right to represent her
Who dreamed up this cunning plan, and how the auction was conducted, I am not in a position to say In any event, the winner was Jonny Geller, the joint chief executive
of that venerable firm of agents, Curtis Brown Mr
G is well known, to those paying proper attention, as the representative of such other successful thriller writers as Sam Bourne and SJ Parris
However… Before we get too excited, let us remember that things can sometimes go pear-shaped, even with a powerful agent behind you
Back in the noughties, 4th Estate was persuaded to pay a reported
£350,000 for the rights to Gautam
Malkani’s novel Londonstani But
sales did not go quite as expected So Malkani is no longer with his original publisher and is being obliged to crowd-fund the publication of his new novel through Unbound
Similarly, Louise Walters’ first novel,
Mrs Sinclair’s Suitcase, published in
2014, had respectable sales figures for
a debut book and did particularly well
in foreign rights: the book has been translated into fourteen languages, and two of her foreign deals were for six-figure sums But the publishers have flatly rejected her second novel (‘too difficult’) and now she is taking the self-publishing route
So, my advice, as ever, is to tread carefully though the minefield of modern publishing And don’t get too excited about the money
An agent who acquired
a thoroughly commercial author – either through skill or pure chance – was
in a powerful position.
“”
Printing money GRUMPY OLD BOOKMAN
Trang 11JULY 2016 www.writers-online.co.uk
E-publishing is a constantly changing landscape Understand the marketplace and distribution options available with advice from
Matador ebook manager Rachel Gregory
ften, I’m contacted by
prospective and existing
clients who are convinced
that the only way they will
be successful as an ebook
author is to publish exclusively
through Kindle There are inarguable
benefits to doing this for some authors
but from my experience of the market,
it isn’t the best option for everyone
– and it’s certainly not the only
route worth considering
It’s fair to say that it’s
becoming harder to make
sales in an increasingly
competitive market It’s
also true that Amazon
remains the dominant
ebook retailer and the
distribution options that
are available to indie authors
are diminishing… but there are
still plenty of choices to make
The digital publishing
landscape is changing…
It’s impossible to ignore the influence
that Amazon is having in the evolving
digital publishing landscape There is
no disputing that it holds the lion’s
share of the ebook market; the figures
are too significant to be overlooked (it
is home to almost 75% of all ebooks,
including indie titles, and around
85% of all self-published ebooks)
Apple and Nook hold joint second
place for distributors in America in terms of the number of new ebooks made available for sale through them each month, with Google Play and Kobo following closely behind So, what does this keen competition between Amazon and other retailers mean for authors? The answer is not clear-cut While earning information indicates that over 80% of paid indie ebook authors were publishing through Amazon
in 2015, the oft-publicised opinion that this means there is no real contest
in terms of distributors
is shortsighted When considering the return that an author receives per sale, Amazon is far from generous Kindle’s pay-per-page system, brandished
as a new, fairer remuneration method for authors, can result in
a fluctuating, minimal royalty rate
Retailers take varying percentages from each sale and Amazon’s cut
is among the lowest, provided an ebook is priced within a certain threshold, but it is the only retailer
to take a delivery charge in addition
to their cut in many cases According
to analysts of the Author Earnings
Survey (www.authorearnings.com),
when considering indie ebooks as well as those published by the trade,
Beyond Amazon
the smaller ebook retailers were found
to be giving a larger return to indie authors; over a third of the royalties that Kobo currently pays go to self-published authors
Saturated by self-publishing
Self-published writers are forging their way ahead in the ebook market This has elicited a mixed response from the industry With a saturation
of new titles comes the inevitability
of a more selective customer base and the resultant fallout… there is reluctance from trade publishers to sell their ebooks at a lower price (in
a bid to maximise the return they receive for every hard-earned sale)
Increasingly, suppliers are seeing publishers as competitors as opposed to collaborators, which
in turn creates complications in the form of competitive pricing, hefty retailer-imposed discounts, price matching as the norm across the industry and more limited merchandising opportunities for independent authors
Also concerning (and relevant because of its affect on retailers’
earnings, their reputations and their willingness or reluctance to distribute new titles) is the problematic issue of questionable quality assurance in the ebook sphere This has long been a simmering issue but now, retailers are
Retailers who are selective about the content they acquire will start to see customers moving across to them.
“”
O
EBOOKS
p11 Changing ebooks.indd 11 23/05/2016 10:37
Trang 1212 JULY 2016
EBOOKS
www.writers-online.co.uk
taking action It may have had a part
to play in a number of ebooks being
removed in Scribd’s summer 2015
purge of romance titles, wherein they
cited the need to keep content ‘fresh’
It has certainly led to a generalised
reluctance to purchase indie unless
there is an assurance of quality Some
retailers have even blocked new
publisher sign-ups This does not
signal the end of ebooks Authors and
publishers might have to work harder
to be featured, but it may mean
that those retailers who are selective
about the content they acquire will
start to see customers moving across
to them, rather than turning their
backs on the ebook format This
could be why Amazon launched its
error-reporting system for ebooks
early this year, whereby readers can
flag errors and inaccuracies in a title
they are reading… missing the point
that quality assurance should not
take place after a title has been made
available for sale
How are these changes
affecting authors’ options?
Although some people are predicting
the end of the ebook, there is still
plenty of growth in the market;
self-publishing is a prime example
but there is also related progress
in the form of new start-ups who
are introducing innovative ways to
publish In the wake of each closure,
other companies inevitably fill the
void, bringing ingenuity Existing
businesses may step in and salvage
the useable elements, combine them
with their own ideas and launch
something new that might just work
This is not about trying to predict
future progressions Not many critics
thought the ebook subscription
model could withstand the market
when it was launched, particularly
not when Kindle Unlimited was
pitched against it Yet, Scribd
continues to thrive since its 2007
conception Similarly, who could
have predicted the surge in demand
for ebooks in libraries, even during
the height of ebooks’ popularity?
All you can do as an author is to
research your target audience and
each distributor in order to make
informed decisions about how and
where to publish
People are still buying ebooks, but
they are making their buying decisions differently Largely gone are the days when a consumer would make a decision based solely on a seductive price Now that print is in resurgence, authors need to pay ever more careful attention to their readership, as well as
to the products that they are producing
In a changeable industry, there is one constant – as an author, your motivation lies in gaining readers The catch is that the reduction in indiscriminate ebook buying coincides with the diminishing distribution options that are available
As each channel folds (first Blinkbox Books, then Oyster, Flipkart’s ebook store, and now Nook’s UK sales channel) the choices for authors are reduced In light of this, what is the most effective way to e-publish?
Whether you are working with a company or going DIY, you have options Different solutions suit varying budgets and aims There are companies that will guide authors through some or all of the production process Despite the more restricted choices, you are still far from being tied to one retailer In fact, in the wake of so many retailers shutting down, many of the remaining ones have introduced tempting initiatives to attract the best new content – and the most promising authors
So, with a fair amount of choice still available to you, how should you tailor your approach to ebook publishing?
Assessing your distribution options
With second-place so closely contended among several of the best-known ebook retailers, it’s important to know what demarcates them from one another
The following is just a sample of distributors
that you can publish through Some of them accept manuscripts from authors, others require publisher affiliation; a legitimate self-publishing company is likely to have contracts signed with several of these companies
KOBO WRITING LIFE is a
possible option for those who are keen to distribute through Canada’s popular ebook store Affiliated with WHSmith, its own figures show that its customer base is heavily weighted towards women aged 40+ and readers
of popular fiction It offers lots of opportunities to feature ebooks in themed promotions on its homepage, which are promoted worldwide It
is worth noting that while it offers a manuscript conversion tool, it produces files to meet its specific requirements
NOOK PRESS is free to use and
carries the clout of a major book retailer (it is owned by Barnes &
Noble) However, its ebooks are placed in a segregated section of their store This may be a selling point for you – it’s certainly intended to be a USP – but it won’t suit everyone It’s now only available in the US; the UK store has closed
APPLE iBOOKS If an ebook adheres
to its strict specifications then it can
be sold on its site, whether or not you used the epub creation tool, iBooks Author, which creates ebook files in a proprietary format If you are publishing
a picture book, Apple might be your preferred option – it offers an intuitive design tool and gives the best return
to authors on sales of complex ebooks Currently, there are no obvious moves to push indie content over other content, which creates the impression of a level playing field for authors
GOOGLE PLAY has recently put a
hold on new publisher accounts It will not accept submissions from individuals, but you can sell ebooks with it via a publisher or aggregation service that already has a Google Play account
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
WHAT DO READERS WANT?
In addition to looking at retailers’ requirements, decide what is most important to you when it comes to publishing an ebook Consider the genre and the target audience/reader demographic Where do these people buy their ebooks? Certain retailers appeal to specific customers; do your research For example, children’s and young adult publishing is one of the main growth areas for digital at the moment, with some retailers recognising this trend and dedicating additional time and money to these digital store fronts.
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Things to consider when
choosing your distributor(s)
Do you mind its exclusivity
terms, if it has them? Do
the benefits outweigh any
negatives? Is this the place
where your target audience
shops? Does the retailer
have a good reputation with
customers and authors? Are
merchandising teams open to
suggestions from individuals or
publishers about relevant new
content? Does it supply content
to other, smaller retailers? Are
schools and/or libraries crucial
to your selling strategy? Know
the answers to these questions
before you proceed.
13
JULY 2016
One of the biggest complaints authors make about
the process of submitting their work to agents is the fact that the chances are they will get a standard one
or two line rejection and that there will be no feedback contained in it But the fact is that even if you do get
‘feedback’ it needs to be taken with a pinch of salt
It is rare that it is exactly what it seems
At least ninety percent of what crosses my desk just gets our standard rejection I’d love to give feedback
on more, but not only do I not have the time to give everyone the attention they probably deserve, I just don’t have the stamina either
For the remaining ten percent I have a variety of responses A very small number, mostly writing non-fiction, are told they should approach specialist publishers direct: if your book has a clear niche appeal this makes sense and the sums of money involved will likely mean there’s no point in involving an agent
A few others, pretty much always first time novelists, get turned down but encouraged to keep going, develop their craft and to come back to me with their next book I can’t stress enough how much I believe the bottom drawer is
an aspiring author’s best friend One of the curses of publishing is that it encourages authors to stay with novels they should let go of Move on, write more, write better!
self-Mostly, though, the reason I get in touch is because there are elements that I really like but there is also significant work will be required for the book to be ready to show to publishers In other words, I really only get in touch because
I think there is something practical I can actually do
And it is this practical aspect that is I think so often overlooked by writers (and I know, I’ve been there myself) who are often preoccupied by being told that they are ‘good’ That is not an agent’s – or a publisher’s – job Our job is to find things that will work in the market place and that is a slightly different thing, and it is that which is at the heart of ALL rejection letters
Don’t expect personalised feedback and when you get it, don’t take it as gospel, warns Sheil Land agent Piers Blofeld
OVERDRIVE supplies ebooks to
libraries worldwide as well as to some
retailers, predominantly in America
If you publish through a publisher,
independent or otherwise, they
will probably have an account with
OverDrive, allowing you to make your
ebook available to most libraries in the
UK and the USA
AMAZON KINDLE KDP SELECT
is not the only way to self-publish
an ebook with Amazon, but it is the
prevalent method If you use a publisher,
they may have access to some other
Amazon platforms with consistent
royalty options for authors One of the
terms of KDP Select is that it requires
exclusivity; once you sign up, you
are locked in for ninety days During
that period, you can arrange a
five-day promotion, making your ebook
available for free or for a reduced price
that increases incrementally It may
also approach you about featuring your
ebook in a Daily Deal, and there are
paid-for advertising opportunities that
you can bid for
Don’t overlook libraries!
At the end of 2015, OverDrive
announced that its readers had borrowed
over 169 million ebooks in the course
of the year That’s fractionally below a 25% increase on digital lending through them in the previous year According
to the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), 47% of the UK population has used a library in the last twelve months and there is huge demand for content in ebook format Libraries are a vital part
of the digital supply chain This is reflected in the success of BorrowBox,
an Australian ebook distributor that is enjoying growing success It supplies
to the majority of libraries in Australia and New Zealand, as well as to some libraries in the UK The great thing about distribution through libraries is that there is real competition because one library can purchase its ebooks through several sales platforms so they each want to provide the best, wide-reaching content
Put simply, acquisitions librarians are the gatekeepers between new content and their patrons – for them, a lot rests on making good buying decisions and acquiring the best content… but they are willing to take a chance on new titles, provided they are priced competitively and they are associated with a reputable publisher Librarians make their buying choices quickly and
on a tight budget The only way to stand a chance of being purchased by librarians, even if your ebook is readily available to them through a supplier they use, is to produce excellent quality content, and to be noticed As with retailers, securing merchandising spots and promotion through respected review sites such as NetGalley.com, are crucial in securing the first few sales;
word of mouth can help from there
To conclude…
As with any aspect of self-publishing, the distribution process can be an experimental one; try not to see it
as an either-or decision There are a number of great ebook publishing platforms available to authors Their efficacy really depends on what you hope to achieve when publishing your ebook Good luck!
13
JULY 2016
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Although I’m not normally a
fan of so-called motivational
or inspirational quotes, that
one, from Ralph Marston of the
Daily Motivator, strikes a chord You
could argue it is true for almost all
aspects of life, but in my view it is
certainly true of writing
Even those of us who have been
working with words for years make
mistakes, and I expect to be committing
howlers and bloopers until I retire
There is no avoiding them They are
a sign you are human, and that what
you’re trying to achieve is challenging
As a writing tutor, I’ve worked with
many students nervous of putting a
foot wrong when they embark on a
writing journey – and hamstrung by
the essential constructive criticism
which follows when they dare take a
step forward
It shouldn’t be like this, and the only
way to get over it is to celebrate the
error, laugh at it, talk freely about it, be
proud of it – essentially, ‘out’ it
As writers, we should aim towards
becoming fearless about making
mistakes, unashamed of them when
we do, and satisfied to have improved
because of them Beginners have the
most to learn – and the most mistakes
to make from which to learn No matter how shameful you think yours are, someone, somewhere, will have beaten you for cringe value Surely my own early-career toe-curler – inviting myself to the offices of an editor who had commissioned me, in order to use her ‘library’ for research (she had neither a library, nor a spare desk, nor an inclination to spend time with me) – will put your apostrophe humiliation to shame?
However, learning from your mistakes
is conditional upon your recognition
of them What if you don’t see where you’re going wrong? What if you’re repeating mistakes, and can’t understand why you’re not progressing? Could these unseen mistakes be holding you back?
It was this idea that drove my new
ebook, 50 Mistakes Beginner Writers
Make Faithful to its title, it explains the
things you might be getting wrong as you kick start your non-fiction writing career – and offers guidance towards putting things right Here are five
It’s untrue that writing is – or should
be – a solitary pursuit One of the pleasures of the job is the interaction with people whose paths you wouldn’t ordinarily cross Setting aside your friends and family, your writing team has to include other writers, editors, press officers, researchers, librarians, experts, spokespeople – and ordinary members of the public
Fellow writers will furnish you with support, feedback, companionship Editors will offer guidance, leads Members of the public will provide case studies to support the themes of your articles Experts will offer quotes with which
to lend authority to them Librarians will help if you’re stuck on research
In non-fiction you need people, because people solve the problems you encounter
‘Is my article any good?’ (Ask a more experienced writer – he’ll tell you.)
‘I can’t find an expert in thingamijigs
to interview!’ (Ask your editor – she might know one.)
‘I don’t know what to write about!’ (Eavesdrop on members of the public – they want you to write about the price of milk and the inefficiency of
Starting off in non-fiction writing? Get yourself
on the right path by following advice from writing tutor and experienced feature writer
‘Give your mistakes the respect they deserve, learn what they
have to teach, and they will propel you forward.’
Five mistakes
BEGINNER WRITERS MAKE
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JULY 2016 www.writers-online.co.uk
the bus service.)
I understand some new writers may
want to work independently of outside
influence, but it can’t work that way
The process of publication involves
editors, sub-editors and designers, all of
whom take the words you provide and
shape them into a finished product on
which not only your fingerprints will
be found Publishing is a team sport
Embrace it in your writing too
2 Me, myself and I
A knock-on effect of seeking to work
alone is introspection You mine only
the content of your head for material
You’ll have heard the advice to ‘write
about what you know’ – and what can
you possibly know better than, well,
you? If you’re like one of the many
students of mine who choose writing
because they ‘can’t wait to tell the
world what I think’, then writing about
oneself or one’s opinions may seem an
obvious choice
It’s not that this can’t lead to sales If
you have a dramatic story or adventure
to relate, you may interest an editor
If you have a controversial opinion on
a niche issue, and can argue your case
well, you may be able to sell a ‘my shout’
piece to a newspaper or magazine
But there are problems Beginner
writers can find it difficult to know
which aspects of their lives are
marketable, and which aren’t Getting
it wrong and failing to sell yourself
in this way can be demoralising
A rejection of your opinion can
also sting The thin-skinned can be
knocked sideways It hurts
Mostly, readers are selfish They
want to read about themselves, more
than about you It’s a harsh truth, but
readers aren’t interested in who you are
– merely in what you write Mainly,
it’s what you write for them or about
them that matters
This article is, I hope, interesting
to you because it deals with your
mistakes, not mine Most other
articles in this magazine are profiles of
writers – offering useful and practical
insights – or advice articles to writers
about their work There is a far greater
market for writing about the reader –
than about you
Look outside of your head for ideas,
and look to those people I mentioned in
No 1 to help you They will sustain you
in the long run
3 Not reading
‘If you don’t have the time to read,’ said Stephen King, ‘you don’t have the time
or the tools to write.’
I hear the ‘no time to read’ excuse
a lot No time to read – but plenty to write? Take half of your allotted writing time and dedicate it to reading
It is that important Reading inspires ideas, broadens your mind and stimulates your intellect It boosts word power, improves grammar and punctuation, and shows you what language can achieve It fills you with questions and inspiration – lifeblood
to any writer It makes you more interesting, which will eventually make you more readable Reading is fuel to your writing fire
Take time to find material you like It could be recipes; it could be superhero comics To begin with, it doesn’t matter,
so long as you start to read If you’re stuck, ask one of those people from No
1 for recommendations – tell a librarian
a bit about yourself, for instance, and she’ll find you a book, no problem
Don’t worry about the impact reading widely may have on your writing style
or ‘voice’ – another common concern among beginners Good non-fiction is straightforward, factual and educational
Editors and readers of non-fiction aren’t bothered with signature literary flourishes or artful linguistic displays
And once you’ve got the reading habit, you’ll find you want to read more, and a greater diversity of material Indulge yourself Local and national papers, glossy magazines, cheap magazines, books, ebooks, and blogs Boxes of cereal, road signs, ‘lost cat’ notices on lampposts Classified ads, notices in windows, terms and conditions and legal smallprint The junk mail through your door; the fliers that drop out of your magazines
Catalogues, phone directories and dictionaries Twitter streams, Facebook
rants, Daily Mail comments The quotes
on movie posters Read everything
4 ‘I have no ideas’
It’s important to disavow beginners of this myth because all sorts of negative consequences stem from it – writer’s block being just one
You never have no ideas Your actual problem is you have too many
Every thought you have had as you’ve been reading this article is an idea
If you read No 1 and thought you need even more people than I suggested you might – then that’s an idea How about ‘The ten people you need to write
a novel’? There’s a piece right there, for a writing magazine or literary magazine Every thought you have while reading something I urged you to read in No
3 is an idea You may read a ‘lost cat’
notice on a lamppost and wonder how effective such notices are You may be curious enough to eventually follow
up with the number provided to see whether the campaign was successful You may then call cat charities and see whether some research has been done
on the subject And you may, then,
have a great idea for Cat World on your
hands – ‘What to do when your cat goes missing’ or ‘Five great lamppost “lost cat” signs that worked’
Everything you experience through your five senses is an idea Everything you feel is an idea
You have an absurd amount of ideas Nurture them and explore them
5 Forgetting your reader
This article is for beginner non-fiction writers Others may have come along for the ride, but I haven’t (I hope) lost sight of my target reader, nor stopped speaking to him at any point
It’s a common mistake to do just that But first, you need to know who your reader is Before you write, you must decide for whom you are writing Writing without a reader in mind is like lecturing to an empty hall
Once you have decided who he is,
do not get sidetracked and address others If I were to abruptly start talking about poetry, I would be turning away from the target reader
I captured in my introduction, and addressing wannabe poets who may have long ago turned the page
I do understand the beginner’s urge to write for ‘everyone’ and to want to reach
as many people as possible Writers want
to communicate with the masses That
is honourable But the problem is the masses aren’t reading The readers of this magazine are writers, a minority, not non-writers, the majority Every publication has a specific demographic you cannot ignore – a tiny fraction of the billions on the planet Speak to them If you speak to them well, they will want more And they will propel you forward
TAP HERE
To learn more about the craft
of feature writing
Every thought you have had as you’ve
you cannot ignore – a tiny fraction of the billions on the planet Speak to them If you speak to them well, they will want more And they will propel you forward
For more mistakes and how to avoid them, see
Alex’s book 50 Mistakes Beginner Writers Make:
http://writ.rs/
50beginners
Trang 16Personal relationships are at the heart of all Maggie O’Farrell’s
novels and the Northern Irish novelist’s own family is her muse,
she tells Tina Jackson
It’s no surprise that prize-winning
and bestselling novelist Maggie
O’Farrell, that subtle chronicler of
her characters’ circumstances, has an
intuitive way of writing
Northern Irish author Maggie’s new
book, This Must Be the Place, is a
wide-ranging sprawl of a tale that moves through
different times and locations across the
world to tell in various voices the complex,
involving story of the relationship between
American academic Daniel and reclusive
film star Claudette
‘The book is sort of about their marriage
and why they can’t be together,’ says
Maggie ‘I knew I wanted to write a big,
wide-canvas novel with a large number of
different views.’ Having settled the middle
of her three children, off school with a
bug, with an audiobook on the sofa in her
home in Edinburgh, she is warm, friendly,
and talks fast
‘I didn’t know if I could do it but I
wanted to try I knew I wanted it to be huge
– it almost covers most of Daniel’s life and
beyond and a life isn’t a simple thing It’s
incredibly complicated, you have experiences
in childhood that resonate I don’t think one
person can tell that story I wanted to write a
book that had a polyphony of voices.’
The story, shifting between locations
JULY 2016
16
and voices, appears to the reader in the order Maggie conceived it ‘I pretty much wrote it as it appeared on the page I didn’t write the sections and then move them upon the page.’
This Must Be the Place was written as
a reaction to Maggie’s last novel, 2013’s
Instructions For A Heatwave, set in the
famously hot summer of 1976, and featuring a London Irish family against a
backdrop of the Troubles ‘Instructions For A
Heatwave followed very strict technical rules
– it took place over four days, it had four narrators – and I set myself those challenges deliberately because you like to see if you could do it,’ says Maggie ‘So after that I had the urge to write a large, unfettered book
I’ve never worn a corset, but I imagine it’s what it feels like to take one off I wanted to take off all my own self-imposed rules and write something that felt full of life.’
It’s a broad sweep of a tale that teems with life, all the more memorable for being rendered with Maggie’s nuanced delicacy
With locations including Donegal in 2010, Brooklyn in the 1940s and China in 2003, Maggie captures snapshots of the episodes relating to the lives of Daniel and Claudette that will have lasting resonances
The novel builds up a picture but is not related chronologically ‘Part of the way I
PLACES
IN TIME
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that felt full of life
“”
STAR INTERVIEW
see life is that the past and the present are
not separate,’ says Maggie ‘The present
is the past amended, particularly in the
way we apprehend it – our memories and
nuances For this book, I had the idea
that I was going to write something quite
ambitious, with a warped chronology, a
braided chronology.’
Usually Maggie writes a close third
person, but Daniel – a flawed but generous,
larger-than-life man – prompted a change
‘I’d never written in first person before,
which was defamiliarising,’ describes
Maggie ‘I’ve never had a male first person
– so that was a challenge But I really loved
writing Daniel’s section As soon as he
appeared it was natural – I didn’t have to
struggle to find him, he’s interested and
digressional and uninhibited and that causes
him problems in the novel but as a narrative
device that was very freeing.’
To keep track of the details of her giant
fictional canvas, Maggie went out and:
‘Bought the biggest pinboard money can
buy, really massive, and covered it with
Post-it notes, a different colour for each
character, and every morning I’d move
things around That was how I tried to
keep track of it all.’ But life, especially with
young children – Maggie and her husband,
the author William Sutcliffe, have three:
Saul, Iris and Juno – does not always go
according to plan
‘I was cleaning my teeth one morning,
and my youngest daughter, who was two
at the time, came into the bathroom She
was saying, “All gone, all gone.” In her
hand she had this huge ball of mashed up,
chewed, multi-coloured paper So my whole
structure was completely destroyed,’ Maggie
creases with laughter – after the event, and
having triumphantly pulled off her self-set
writing challenge ‘I kept saying, it will make
the book stronger – it did completely force
me to reassess everything.’
Maggie wrote this book as she has written everything since she first had children: in between childcare ‘I’m not saying that writing with small children is easy but if you really want to do it you will find a way,’ she believes ‘I have to be disciplined to fill in
my tax return and hang out the laundry, but I’ll write without hesitation if I can.’
For Maggie, motherhood and writing are inseparable ‘That Cyril Connelly quote about the pram in the hall being the enemy of good art? It’s absolute rubbish!
My children are my muse!’ she exclaims
Even the wide-ranging territories of This
Must Be the Place were in part inspired by
– and a reaction to – family life ‘A lot of it
is to do with having small children Being
a mother is the biggest privilege in my life but the endless, Sisyphian domestic tasks…
your life is much narrower than it would
be otherwise, and this book was a world away from that.’
Maggie’s way of writing is not to set out with a plan, or have a method ‘My process
is not having a process I know writers who plan meticulously I’m paraphrasing but William Boyd has said he plans for
a year without putting pen to paper I’m the opposite – I cast my net out into the darkness and see what I get I like the idea of something being unpredictable Something will take on a life of its own and find its feet.’
In her case, the ‘something’ is likely to be related to relationships and the seemingly inconsequential moments that can tip the balance of a story From her first novel, 2000’s
After You’d Gone, she has used vignettes
and snapshots from the narrative past and present to build up layers of intricacies in her characters’ emotional lives and relationships
This Must Be the Place is Maggie’s seventh
novel, and all of them in some way involve interrupted close relationships of some kind She’s reluctant, though, to pigeonhole her themes ‘Part of me is interested in the anatomy of a person – what makes you who you are, what shapes you Families will come
up because we all have one It’s not so much
a story, it’s a periodic table – elements of who
we are,’ she says
The part of writing a novel that dismays many writers – when difficulties emerge, which they inevitably do – is something Maggie sees as a way for the writing to work itself out ‘I think you have to trust the problem A novel knows more than you do You have to let it find its form.’
She writes to find things out ‘Books start with a question for me, a desire to understand something, to comprehend how
it could happen.’ Her fourth book, 2007’s
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, had its
beginnings when: ‘I heard about the way women would be put in asylums for reasons
of immorality and left there, and I wanted
to comprehend how it could happen.’ Her character Esme has been kept in a mental institution for sixty years, and when it shuts, she is released into the care of a great niece Absence is another theme that repeats in
her novels, and in This Must Be the Place,
one of the absences is the way Claudette loses the possibility of living an independent life when she becomes famous She is far and away the most overtly glamorous of Maggie’s characters ‘I was slightly reluctant
to make her a film star but I wanted her
to vanish,’ explains Maggie Two things fed into Claudette’s occupation ‘I read about the folk singers from the 1970s who vanished – there was Vashti Bunyan, Shelagh McDonald – and I had a really
17
JULY 2016 www.writers-online.co.uk
▲ Click here to
listen to an
extract of This
Must be the Place
or buy the book from Audible
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You’ve got to let it go out into the world, and write the book you want to write.
strong memory of a friend of a friend,
who went from being an ordinary bloke to
being a Hollywood movie star In a week
I remembered being in Soho with him
and everyone stared and then looked away
It filled me with horror and I thought, I
wouldn’t want to be you I’d hate not being
able to hide.’
Maggie began her writing career when she
was editing TV listings at The Independent
in the mid 1990s, but she’d been obsessed
with reading and writing since childhood
‘I’d always written, even as a child – I’d
graphomania, the urge to record things
I used to spend all my pocket money on
stationery – I still do, actually!’
At university, she went on a writing
workshop with the poet Jo Shapcott
‘I wanted to be a poet, I wasn’t very
good though,’ she shrugs ‘But it was a
revelation She talked about rewriting, and
writing and pushing it as far as you could
go She was the first writer I’d ever met
– they’re these mythical beings when you
haven’t met any.’ After she started working
at The Indy, she went to poetry classes
with Michael Donaghy at City University
‘That was when I started writing seriously
It was nothing short of life-changing, it
really was.’ An Arvon course with writers
Barbara Trapido and Elspeth Barker was
the game-changer: she showed them an
early draft of After You’d Gone and they
liked it Maggie was so surprised that she
ran out and fell in a ditch
Maggie first met her author husband
when they were both undergraduates at
Cambridge ‘It’s like any couple in the same
line of work – there’s a lot less to explain,’
she says Having an in-house critical editor
is very handy ‘We always read each other’s
work and we’re pretty harsh with each other
When he first read Esme Lennox, he said,
it’s not bad but you’ve got to rewrite half of
it He was right, but it did take me a while
to admit that.’ During the writing of This
Must Be the Place, the most difficult part for
Maggie was writing about a child character,
Niall, with eczema ‘Partly because his own
condition is as bad as my daughter’s She’s
got absolutely chronic eczema, it can be
life-threatening, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted
to write about it I don’t often write from
life and it brings to the surface how you feel
about watching your daughter suffer My
husband kept reading it and saying, “too
angry”, “too angry”.’
Maggie’s books are broadly contemporary
– parts of Esme Lennox are ‘historical’ – but
her writing territory largely encompasses
periods within living memory ‘With any
kind of historical writing, you have a huge responsibility to get anything historical right – it’s all a construct but you have to get
it right But it’s a tricky balancing act You have to research it, and I believe you have
to read the fiction of the period.’ For 2010’s
Costa Novel Award winner The Hand that
First Held Mine, set in the 1950s, Maggie
read memoirs by May Stott and Katherine Whitehorn and fiction by Muriel Spark and Jean Rhys ‘Women’s status has changed enormously, but it’s not that difficult to imagine how they would have felt – I don’t think people’s emotions would have been different in the past, although their circumstances would have been,’ she says
The key with research, she says, is not
to let the details overwhelm your narrative
‘You have to throw out about 90% of the research – the things about how Bakelite was made, and details about cotton manufacturing You see people hanging on
to those details in their work, because they love them, and it always jars.’
The parts of This Must Be the Place
involving Claudette’s life in 1990s London, which include an auction catalogue of artefacts, are based on Maggie’s own historical memory ‘The things I had for the auction catalogue were my own! I went through boxes of my own stuff, and I felt as
if I’d hit paydirt – mixtapes, floppy discs, my son asked me what they were! – and these things seemed nearly antique even though they’re from the early 1990s.’
Maggie’s novels are widely read as contemporary women’s fiction, but are so beautifully written and crafted that they are also perceived as literary fiction Maggie doesn’t care which ‘I deliberately don’t think about whether it’s contemporary or literary fiction,’ she insists ‘I never even think about that I think it’s really bad for yourself to think you’re being defined It would feel like being hemmed in You’ve got to let it go out into the world, and write the book you want to write The idea of writing with an imaginary reader is very off-putting – I don’t think about it being read It’s a satisfying conversation in my own head.’
MAGGIE’S WRITING ADVICE:
Trang 19Self-publishing well requires flexibility and solid preparation Ensure you’ve allowed enough time
for each stage of your project with this handy infographic from SilverWood Books
Allow 1–3 weeks
Allow
week
Proof Reading • Both an art and a science• Choose font, size and
spacing/leading
• Serif fonts are more readable
• Attention to detail during page layout
• Allocate ISBN
TypeSetting
• Professional, credible, mainstream quality
• Genre-appropriate
• Single, strong concept
• Needs to sit well in the current marketplace
COVER DESIGN
• Identify target readers
• How will you reach them?
• What is your platform?
• Decide RRP
MARKETING STRATEGY
• Check page proofs
• Finalise cover design with correct spine width
• Check cover proof
3
3
1
• POD or bulk printing?
• Specify choice of paper and cover finish
• Rigorous last checks because errors later can be expensive
• List on Nielsen Bookdata
Preparation for print
• Print management
• Check and approve printer’s proof
• Confirm size of print run
• POD can be as quick as 3–5 days
• Bulk printing up to 4 weeks
• File types for a wide range
of e-reading devices
• Technical skill often required
• Timescale depends on complexity and interactive elements
EBOOK FORMATTING AND CONVERSION
• POD has built-in, fast, efficient worldwide distribution
• Bulk printing needs trade distribution
• Legal Deposit copies
• Upload ebook to distribution sites
DELIVERY OF PRINTED COPIES AND TRADE DISTRIBUTION
PRINTING
Chapter 1
Tt
Timescale will depend
on printing method
FINAL PROOF CHECKING
www.silverwoodbooks.co.uk
Discuss your next book with Publishing Director Helen Hart:
E: info@silverwoodbooks.co.uk T: +44 (0)117 910 5829
All SilverWood print and ebooks are carefully designed, formatted
and finished to the highest publishing industry standards
How can our friendly and supportive team help you…?
Trang 2020 JULY 2016 www.writers-online.co.uk
Iwas told many years ago by
a boxing coach that the most
important thing for a fighter wasn’t
how quickly he got up after being
knocked down, but how often
I wasn’t sure if there was a hidden
message for me there – I was actually
on my feet and smiling at the time –
but that long-ago lesson came back to
me when reading recently that a writer
who had been ‘floored’ by rejection was
considering quitting altogether
This led me to thinking that there are
certain aspects of writing akin to boxing
Get some experience
The ‘contender’ who never sets foot in
the ring is not worthy of the title In
the same way, the writer who doesn’t
write is only pretending To find out
if you can write, you have to do it
Write as much as you can and as often
as you can Find out what you want
to do, what you could be good at, and
most of all, what you enjoy If you’re
not enjoying writing, go do something
else, otherwise you’ll never convince
yourself or anyone else
Learn ringcraft
As with all undertakings, there’s a way
of doing something well… and a way
of ending up on the floor Writing
is all about telling a good story and
keeping the reader hooked (Bear in
mind, this is especially important with
editors and agents – all of whom have
to be hooked to take it any further)
You can learn a lot from others by
reading, attending conferences, talking
to authors and other writers to find
out how they do it – even taking a
creative writing course Basically, don’t
expect it to come easy just because
you want it That’s a quick way to get
bruised and disappointed
Expect the unexpected
Many a would-be fighter found
himself on his back saying, ‘I never
saw that one coming.’ In the same way, many writers don’t expect their work to be turned down, and consequently don’t have a plan for what to do next (For those in doubt, it’s get up, dust yourself off and send the manuscript somewhere else) Some rejections come simply because what you’ve written is too derivative, has passed its read-by date/gone out of fashion, needs some reworking or was submitted to the wrong person
Keep moving
In writing terms, keep writing
Standing still doesn’t accomplish anything If you already have something out there on submission, start on something else Many a writer has sent off a manuscript and waited, only to have an agent or publisher come back and say, ‘What else can you show me?’ This is not an urban myth There are agents and editors out there who can spot something special about a piece of writing, and are willing to ask this question rather than simply reject the submission and forget it You don’t want to be caught flat-footed, because their attention will soon move on to someone else and you’ll have missed the opportunity
Ignore the crowd
It’s very easy to get swayed by a deluge
of well-meaning advice – usually of the ‘Why don’t you get a proper job?’
variety, or the ‘If you want to succeed you should be writing such-and-such.’ Take
no notice First and foremost, you have
to write for yourself, to satisfy that inner desire to put an idea on paper Until you’ve done that – and I suggest more than just a few times – you won’t have given yourself a proper chance If you’re wondering where the boxing metaphor
is, it’s simple: turning and listening to the crowds’ advice – most of whom have never stepped into a ring – will leave you hurt, disappointed and confused
Fight above your weight
Stretching yourself is the only way
to improve A writer who doesn’t try harder each time isn’t really moving
on With each completed project, read and re-read and look at it carefully to see how you could do it better, even if
it means more editing and revision
The best form of defence
is attack
Instead of wishing something to happen, come out fighting Don’t wait for inspiration but put heart, body and soul into your writing When it’s done, send it out A reluctant, even half-hearted attempt won’t get you there and you’ll get nothing out of it other than a metaphorical bloody nose Don’t forget, there are agents, publishers and self-publishing channels out there, all waiting for you
to do something
Don’t ‘telegraph’ your punches
The most captivating writing is the kind which keeps readers on their toes Don’t let them know what’s coming up; keep delivering surprises, tension, pace and that ‘page-turning’ skill we all strive for Don’t allow your story
to ‘flat-line’ Instead keep injecting regular peaks of excitement and the unexpected If it seems a bit slow, see where you can make changes A chapter which ends on a down note is
an excuse to stop reading
Keep yourself writing fit
Slacking off leads to wasted muscles,
a loss of coordination and effort, and consequently, no real progress In place of gym work and road running, you have to keep that muscle in your head active, alert and constantly seeking and acting on fresh ideas
Activity breeds activity and the brain feeds on energy, promoting new or alternative directions, all of which are vital for working writers
BEGINNERS
Boxing clever
Seconds away, Adrian Magson isn’t pulling his punches in his writer’s training programme this month
Trang 21EXCLUSIVE WM COMPETITION
To enter, submit up to 500 words, fi ction, non-fi ction or poetry, on the theme
‘retreat’ Entry is FREE and you will need to submit your entry online by 4 July.
TAP HERE TO ENTER
For more information about The Clockhouse and Arvon’s other writing centres,
see the website: www.arvon.org
The Writers’ Retreat at The Clockhouse is in the
grounds of The Hurst, Arvon’s Shropshire writing
centre and the former home of playwright John
Osborne Everything in The Clockhouse has been
planned to help you focus on your writing, away
from day-to-day distractions Writers have their
own apartment, with bedroom, study-lounge and
bathroom, and all food provided And if you need a
break, for inspiration step outside into the grounds
– 29 acres of woodland, a spring-fed lake and
beautiful views of the Shropshire Hills.
Arvon, renowned for its creative writing courses,
is offering one lucky winner a six-night stay
at its new writers’ retreat in Shropshire
p21 Big competition.indd 21 24/05/2016 10:06
Trang 22AUTHOR EXPERIENCES
There wasn’t one big Barmcake
moment The idea of starting
an entertainment magazine had been bubbling away for a couple
of years while I was working as
a sub-editor for the Manchester Evening
News series of newspapers.
I noticed there was an appetite for free magazines and newspapers in record shops, pubs and coffee shops, yet most of the titles were aimed at an under-forties audience and some
of them were padded out with dreary press releases and long-winded interviews
There was also a new crop of paid-for magazines which prized design over text;
beautiful-looking for sure, but I felt they
were more style over substance
I missed the music ‘inkies’ of my
youth, such as Sounds I missed the hectic prose of NME writers like the
late, great Steven ‘Seething’ Wells
On a more mundane level, I was struggling to find a decent gig guide that covered West Yorkshire, Manchester and Sheffield
So in early 2014 I thought – what
if I could use the internet to create a really good print magazine? What if I could use my 25 years’ experience as a journalist to write articles that aimed
to be a cut above other entertainment magazines and websites?
So I did it Over the last two years,
I have published five 32-page editions
of Barmcake (catchline under title –
Northern entertainment for the aged) The issues come out every spring
middle-and autumn
The 1,500 copies of each issue are available free in about forty venues in Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Sheffield and Glossop I have written almost all of the articles, designed the magazines, edited them and delivered them I seek advertising and have set up a website and also Twitter and PayPal accounts
Barmcake covers music
and comedy mainly, but also books, films, art, TV, theatre and pubs I have had exclusive interviews with the likes of Ken Dodd, John Shuttleworth, Viv Albertine, Elkie Brooks, John Cooper Clarke, Ian McMillan and Pete Wylie I have done features on
a vinyl record club in Glossop that attracts people from all over the country and a woman who makes
Writer, editor, publisher, ad exec and delivery boy Dave Griffiths
explains how he launched his own indie magazine, Barmcake
THE ONE-MAN
MAGAZINE
fabulous cross-stitch portraits of bands and TV stars
Barmcake was nominated for
magazine of the year in the 2015 Prolific North awards (the organisation holds the largest creative/media awards ceremony outside London)
I’ve also received some lovely comments from readers:
‘Midlife without the crisis.’
‘A thing of northern indie music/arts aceness Aimed at old folk like me but cool kids will love it too.’
‘It is a refreshing change to read good, well-researched interviews.’
A LEARNING CURVE
But while the editorial side went more
or less as planned, dealing with the printers was a steep learning curve The advertising and marketing side was also unknown territory for me And I underestimated the amount of time it takes to make a magazine on my own (about three months)
And then there’s the money
Everyone wants to know about the money How much do you earn from it? How do you raise the money?
The first issue of Barmcake was paid for with money from a Manchester
Evening News voluntary redundancy
deal I thought it was time to go freelance: the nature of journalism had changed and fewer sub-editors were needed Being a sub-editor felt like being a polar bear on a rapidly shrinking ice floe (except polar bears are more cheerful)
I became a journalist in 1989, working as a reporter for local papers
in Cheshire, Lancashire, London and Essex I became a sub in the late 90s and then joined PA New Media shortly before it changed its name to Ananova
I wrote and subbed live commentaries of sports events and SMS/text message/website summaries
p22 Publish your own mag.indd 22 23/05/2016 12:26
Trang 23of the events Ananova was a
computerised talking head so I also
wrote phonetic texts for it to read (the
Llanelli rugby report was always a
tricky one)
It was an exciting time to work for
a ground-breaking national website
but it gradually evolved and needed
fewer journalists I returned to print
journalism at the Manchester Evening
News a few months later.
I’d become disillusioned with digital
journalism At first, the internet
seemed to offer apparently limitless
ways of covering different stories and
hearing different views, yet many
websites became very samey and
obsessed by the trivial
PATH TO PRINT
Internet sites lack the personal touch of
a newspaper or magazine Each edition
of Barmcake is yours to hold, to savour,
to read how you want – not something
borrowed on a screen That’s why
Barmcake is print first
I wanted a northern name and across
my circulation area there are different
names for bread rolls – teacake,
breadcake, bun, scuffler and barmcake
I chose Barmcake as it’s the funniest
word and it also means daft in the
north: ‘Starting a print magazine in the
digital age? You barmcake!’ (No-one
has actually said this.)
Barmcake is A5-size so readers can
stick the magazine in their pockets It’s
free because it’s easier to distribute in
pubs and shops and I want as many
people as possible to read it
The design is deliberately simple
and retro (the headline font is similar
to that used on the credits of 1970s
sitcoms) I use Scribus, a free design
program for Windows, which takes
some getting used to after Quark but
is very good
I start with the four-page listings at
the back of the magazine – I look at
websites of every gig venue, theatre,
cinema, art gallery and museum in
my circulation area I study book
publishers’ websites and film websites
to check on new releases I also look
at local papers and pub websites for
suitable events
As I build the listings, I look for
suitable interviewees, cover stars and
a picture-led centrespread I contact
possible interviewees early on, either
by their websites or via venues and
book publishers About 75% of people
I contact agree to interviews I prefer email interviews as I think people open
or press releases
In the first four issues, there have been about eighty articles, ranging from two-par briefs to four-page interviews
I wrote all of them, bar a feature by a friend and two pieces by people who contacted me I’d like to feature other writers but I want to be able to pay them first
The photos are free – they are either from the artistes, their PR folk or I take them myself
I only start looking for adverts when
I know I have decent features in the bag My advertising rates are similar to A5 beer magazines in pubs
There are always difficulties on the way from first listing to last correction – people who promised an interview months earlier need chivvying along or there is going to be a four-page gap in the magazine Or the interview arrives just before deadline and you have to shoehorn (er… I mean brilliantly edit)
a huge piece onto one page At these tense times, I have to remember to channel my inner John Le Mesurier and remain calm and polite at all times
The reason each magazine takes three months to do is because I want
to research and write my interviewees properly So for issue 4, for example, I read four books before the interviews
The essays also take time to get right
And I have to drop any Barmcake stuff
if I’m busy with my other subbing, proofing and writing work
There are technical issues which seem quite daunting after the comfort
of relying on company IT teams – for example a lightning strike hit my computer just before I sent pages to the printers And just how do you convert
a pdf into a jpg?
The specs needed for making a magazine were a mystery to me at the start Type of paper for inside pages?
Type of paper for the cover? Where
do you want colour pages and where
do you want black and white ones?
(There are certain restrictions.) How
many pages do you want? (There are more restrictions.) The first printer I went to was spectacularly unhelpful Fortunately I found another who was very good
I deliberately pay over the odds for the paper and covers and the magazine
is all-colour I want Barmcake to be a
at the new issue!) and on Creative Kirklees, a council website
I deliver the copies; choosing places which have reading material and welcome readers Just before I release a new issue, I put jpgs of the pages from the previous issue online
Okay – the money I didn’t seek advertising for the first issue and I didn’t set up my PayPal account for donations until issue three So for issues two, three, and four I received £400
in advertising and donations The cost
to print one issue is about three times that Other costs are a tankful of petrol
to distribute each issue and postage
I thought about using Crowdfunder, but it would be difficult to choose
a target amount and too consuming to run I applied to the Arts Council for a grant after I noticed an entertainment website
time-in Manchester receives money from them, but I was unsuccessful
My other work largely pays for
Barmcake at the moment, but I can’t
continue to do that in the long term Even though issue five has more adverts than ever before (five, compared with two in issue four) I probably need to employ someone else do the advertising
as I don’t have the time or expertise to
do it properly Alternatively, I need a regular sponsor
But editorial is my top priority There are magazines full of adverts distributed in umpteen places which no-one reads because the editorial is terrible
And as for making money, no-one writes books or starts bands to make
a profit – they are passionate about doing it and it feels like the right thing to do So do yourself a favour,
try a bit of Barmcake!
AUTHOR EXPERIENCES
23
JULY 2016 www.writers-online.co.uk
Barmcake issue
5 is out now
To buy copies
of issues 1-5, make a donation
Trang 24Promising a rare insight into the
daily lives of members of the
police force, and what they deal
with on the frontline, out on
the streets or behind the station
doors, Who’d Be a Copper? is
sure to find a curious audience,
not least among crime writers
looking to add a realistic feel to
their fiction And if that doesn’t
entice readers, Jonathan’s savvy
blurb quote – ‘I can write what
I like, even if it brings the police
service into disrepute, because I
don’t work for them any more!’
certainly whets the appetite
Chris Labinjo, The Living Dolls
Origin, £9.99
www.thelivingdollsbooks.co.uk
With a hefty 580-plus large-format
pages, The Living Dolls
Origin is one of those
genre epics which a time author would have difficulty placing with a publisher, but that’s their loss It’s elegantly written and the near-future setting – in which genetic manipulation aims to eradicate disease, creates mixed species ‘humans’
first-and ultimately makes dreams reality – is vividly realised, in exhaustive detail Chris commissioned the stunning cover, scripted trailers and managed a team of freelances before enlisting Matador to produce the professional-level finished product, even going
so far as to blur the lines of reality
by creating a web profile for his fictitious company, IBC
Self-Publishing
Telfer highlights the best
self-published titles of the year
Choosing the winners of
our annual Self-Published Book of the Year and Writers’ Circle Anthology
Awards – organised by Writing Magazine
and sponsored by the David St John
Thomas Charitable Trust – is always
a formidable challenge Gone are the
days of flimsy pamphlets, poor design
and bad writing Instead, the WM
self-publishers impress more each year with
the levels of accomplishment shown
Some would suit the lists of Big Five
publishers Others would be difficult
to place but could do very well with
the right marketing approach, an area
in which the dedicated ‘authorpreneur’
can often outperform the limited
resources of mainstream houses
All of these shortlisted titles – and
many other excellent publications
that didn’t quite make the shortlist –
display high production values, strong
attention to detail and exemplary
writing Congratulations to you all!
SELF-PUBLISHED BOOK OF THE YEAR
An Unknown Woman, Jane Davis, £8.99 www.jane-davis.co.uk
An Unknown Woman is the story of a secure and contented 46-year-old,
Anita A dramatic house fire kicks off the novel and a chain of events and revelations that calls into question everything Anita holds dear and even her personal identity
With experience of mainstream publication – after her debut was published
by Black Swan when it won the 2008 Daily Mail First Novel Award – Jane
Davis works to the same rigorous standards in her self-publishing
‘I refuse to be defensive,’ she says ‘Instead, I produce a product that meets professional standards Knowing your own limitations is key.’
Jane manages a team of supporting freelances and produces trade quality mass market paperbacks through printers Clays The result really does meet those professional standards, and the eye-catching cover has already been recognised with an award from Book Expo America’s Indie Author Fringe
An Unknown Woman is Jane’s seventh novel so she is well versed in
communicating with her audience (her recent promotion of an earlier novel with a free download month reached 27,000 readers), but says marketing within a limited budget remains a challenge However, she maintains a strong web and social media presence, speaks at author events and book clubs, holds regular signings and takes stalls at craft fairs: an example for us all in taking a professional approach to self-publishing
Kathy Oldham, Tom Davies Trio:
Motoring in Mid-Air, £9.15
Tom Davies Trio is the embodiment
of a certain kind of book that initially helped elevate self-publishing towards respectability, and exactly the kind of activity our late prize founder David
St John Thomas used to relish: the niche non-fiction title unlikely to make its money back in the wider market but with a ready audience among enthusiasts The tale of three early 20th-century entertainers, it taps into circus and vaudeville history and the early days of bicycle racing and motorcycle stunts, with phenomenal attention to detail and an admirable selection of supporting images
Antony N Britt, Dead Girl Stalking,
£10 www.antonynbritt.com
Determined to produce a finished book indistinguishable from professional publications, Antony N
Britt oversaw every aspect of Dead
communicating with her audience (her recent promotion of an earlier novel
first-and ultimately makes dreams reality – is vividly realised, in exhaustive detail Chris commissioned the stunning cover, scripted trailers and managed a team of freelances before enlisting Matador to produce the professional-
p24 Self Publishing WINNERS.indd 24 23/05/2016 14:48
Trang 2525
JULY 2015 www.writers-online.co.uk
Girl Stalking himself,
enlisting help only for
the two most crucial
things to outsource:
proofreading and cover
design His dedication
has been well rewarded,
with an attractive book
that meets its market
perfectly The cover
design, length, prose,
blurb, internal layout
every element ranks it
alongside mainstream
thrillers, although what
first caught our attention
was his explanatory but
intriguing hook, The
first date ended with her
death; the second was
more terrifying.’
Emma Harding, Thinking about
Fostering? A Practical Guide, £7.50
www.hilltopcommunications.co.uk
A common oversight for
self-publishing authors is the importance
of self-editing With control of
the product and the purse-strings,
we often throw everything we
have at self-publishing projects in
an attempt to create a definitive
reference, where commercial
publishers might be more
conservative with the page count
Emma Harding makes the right
choice in Thinking About Fostering?,
a slim, visually appealing, guide,
crammed with practical information rather than purple prose It’s easy to imagine the book being shared by agencies and councils to encourage and enlighten potential foster parents, exactly the niche Emma has been targetting for sales
Liz Ringrose, A Salzburg Sunrise, £8.50
www.lizringrose.co.uk
Liz Ringrose played up the Salzburg connection to help sell her first published novel, persuading the country’s oldest bookshop, Buchhandlung Höllrigl, and Salzburg’s English Centre Bookshop to stock it A well-pitched, page-turning holiday
read, A Salzburg Sunrise is the
story of thirty-year-old Natalie Grey, who enjoys a holiday romance as she attempts to get her life back on track after her husband leaves her Liz handled the typesetting and design herself, including the back and front cover
That cover perfectly illustrates the power of restraint, with the four key elements – title, author, teaser and recommendation – given room to breathe and complement each other against the Austrian landscape backdrop
Writers’ Circle Anthology Award
RUNNER-UP
Chester and the Eggie Boo, Nick Mackie,
£5.25 www.shufti.co.uk
Two eye-catching picture books made the
shortlist this year, both by Nick Mackie As
an award-winning illustrator, Nick has complete creative
control over his picture books, and the benefits are
clear, with endearing illustrations and exceptionally high
production values Nick drew the images, designed the
lettering and laid out the pages, allowing for a stylistic
unity that is missing from many self-published books,
although we should emphasise that you should only attempt this if your
design skills are exemplary The first is aimed at adults, a light-hearted Let’s
Dress Jeremy cut-out book, that sold well as a pre-Christmas novelty, and the
second, for younger readers, is Chester and the Eggie Boo, which earned him
this runner-up spot Chester immediately caught our eye as an outstanding
example of self-publishing for children’s books, that we quickly shared with the
collective WM children, although the limited text and short page count gave a
couple of small proofing slips nowhere to hide
by members in group sessions For each exercise, members had to incorporate three prompts from Jamie
Cat Callan’s The Writer’s Toolbox, and three stories for each set
of prompts have been selected for the anthology, to show the different ways each member interpreted the brief It’s a fun approach, leading to a more cohesive feel than an unrelated selection of writing, and the stories are mostly on the brief side, usually no more than three or four pages, fulfilling the reader-friendly, dip-in, implication of the anthology’s title
blog, Dining on Words takes a cute approach to presenting
its writers’ work, using the format of a menu to group selections: Appetisers are ‘moreish morsels to tickle your taste buds’, Main Courses are ‘hearty reads’, etc, with an occasional culinary flavour to the writing to match It’s an accomplished and attractive publication, with all eight group members contributing £50 towards costs and collaborating
on every aspect of production There are even some stories written collaboratively, producing some of the anthology’s standout pieces
Delayed Reaction, Just Write, £6.99, www.delayedreaction.org.uk
Another professional-level selection from last year’s
Anthology Award winners Just Write, Delayed Reaction is
testament to the value of producing anthology pieces to order Each of the ten group members wrote one story for the collection, all set on the same delayed train They agreed
on background and setting details and shared information about each other’s characters to allow them to crossover between stories The book itself is of the highest standard, well-designed, with individual title pages for each story,
a reader-friendly layout and attractive cover, all coming together to create an appealing package that is already into its second print run
Narrative Threads, Bridport Story Traders, £5.99
A relatively young writers’ group, Story Traders have grown
in five years from six founding members to over twenty, sixteen of whom contribute to their first anthology Stories were specially written for the book, loosely tied together by the theme ‘rope’, chosen to allow a wide range of potential approaches and to pay tribute to Bridport’s rope industry heritage A sensible limit of 1,750 words was applied to all contributions to give every member an equal chance – although many pieces are much snappier, some less than
a page, and haiku and poems refresh the palate between stories The result is an attractive and easy-to-read collection, hopefully the first of many
£250
£250
crammed with practical information rather than purple prose It’s easy to imagine the book being shared by agencies and councils to encourage and enlighten potential foster parents, exactly the niche Emma has been targetting for sales
Liz Ringrose,
Sunrise
www.lizringrose.co.ukLiz Ringrose played up the Salzburg connection to help sell her first published novel, persuading the country’s oldest bookshop, Buchhandlung Höllrigl, and Salzburg’s English Centre Bookshop to stock it A
p24 Self Publishing WINNERS.indd 25 23/05/2016 14:48
Trang 26JULY 2016 www.writers-online.co.uk
STORY STRUCTURE
26
If I were to ask you, ‘Do you
know what a story is,’ you would
probably feel a little put out After
all, you’ve probably been writing
stories for a long time, in fact, you
might even make your living from
writing stories Honestly, he’s asking
me that? The cheek!
‘Story’ is a common term d’art
in the world of creative writing
Everyone knows what a story is,
right? You would think so, but,
alas, this is not the case So don’t be
offended by my question, because
what we’re about to discuss is
something that is not taught in
writing classes, post-graduate degree
programmes, or written about in
most writing-craft, how-to books
Knowing how to tell that you
have a story, and that it can survive
the long story development process
from beginning to end, is not some
random bit of knowledge you pick
up off the grass It is skill that can be
learned, like riding a bike And once
learned, it can lift your storytelling
craft to a level of mastery that will
save you time, money, and months
of frustration writing yourself into
literary corners and blind alleys
To appreciate the power of what
I am about to describe, we must
first begin with two obvious
questions: what do I mean when
I use the term ‘a story’, and if
something is not a story, then what
is that ‘something else’?
When I ask groups of writers
(novelists or screenwriters) to define
this most basic storytelling idea,
‘What is a story?’ I get as many definitions as there are people in the room The responses are always generic and canned:
• A story is a narrative
• A story is the sequential beats of what happens in a story
• A story is your plot
• A story is what your characters do
• A story is a narration of events coming to some conclusion
All of these (and there are many others) have some ring of truth to them, and for the most part suffice when it comes to answering the question ‘what is a story’ But, none
of these definitions define the thing itself in a way that has meaning and significance for storytellers So, here
is a working definition of a story that captures the essence of the thing:
A story is the combination and interplay of character and plot that is
a metaphor for a human experience leading to emotional change.
Essentially, what this is saying is that if you are writing something that involves
an individual carrying out actions on the page that combine to create a personal experience of emotional change, and that experience conveys some insight into the human condition, then you have a story Given this definition, it then follows that a story possesses five identifiable components:
This list of bullets is not arbitrary, or pulled out of some hat, like a rabbit
by a magician No, these components derive from story structure itself, that’s why they are real and possess the full force of drama (or comedy) Every story has a structure If it doesn’t, then it’s not a story, it’s something else If you have these five components clearly identified in your writing, then you can have confidence you have a story, and not that ‘something else’ You can be confident that there is an underlying foundation supporting your writing that will emerge as you write, and that will support your entire writing process
It is beyond the scope of this article to deal with the topic of story structure and its critical role in the story development process, but knowing how to identify a story – before you start writing – is invaluable to novelists struggling with any new story idea,
or an old idea that is ‘going nowhere’ This is the craft skill I alluded to earlier This is that bit of story wisdom that for
Do you have a story or just a situation? What’s the difference and why should you care?
Hollywood script doctor Jeff Lyons explains
What's the
story?
• A story reveals something about the human condition,
or makes a statement about what it means to be human.
• A story tests personal character, over and over, to reveal deeper character.
• A story has subplots that are dramatic and thematic reflections of the journey of the protagonist, and that open windows into character and motivation.
• A story ends in a different emotional space than where it began.
• A story is driven by a strong moral component motivating the protagonist through the middle of the story, resulting in dramatically interconnected scene writing.
THE FIVE COMPONENTS OF A STORY:
For a more detailed breakdown of structure’s role in the story development process,
see Jeff’s book Anatomy
of a Premise Line: How
to Master Premise and Story Development for Writing Success,
here: http://writ.rs/
lyonsbook
p26 story vs situation.indd 26 23/05/2016 10:36
Trang 27JULY 2016 www.writers-online.co.uk
STORY STRUCTURE
some comes automatically, elegantly,
without thought – as talent – but that
for the rest of us comes as learned
craft Regardless of how it comes,
as a gift from the gods, or as
hard-earned mastery, this knowledge
can make all the difference between
getting lost in the story woods, and
writing reams of meandering pages,
versus staying focused, directed, and
intentional in your writing
What do you do, however, when
you write a story only to discover that
those five story components are weak,
or missing? You love your idea, but
don’t want to abandon it This is the
other side of this story vs no-story
coin Remember, all stories have a
structure If they don’t, then they’re not
stories, they’re something else – that
‘something else’ is called a situation
This is, in fact, what most genre
writers (horror, police procedural,
detective, mystery, romance, etc) are
creating when they think they are
writing stories Situations are parts of
stories, they are not stories themselves
But, they can still be compelling,
fun, entertaining, and wonderfully
engaging How can you tell if you have
a situation? Like stories, situations have
five identifiable components
A situation is all about the puzzle,
mystery, or problem to be solved Look
at any police procedural TV show,
or mystery novel (Agatha Christie,
Sherlock Holmes, etc), or most monster
movies They are all about one
question: how quickly and cleverly can
the protagonist get out of the pickle
they are in and solve the problem
Let’s take a classic (and my favourite)
set-up: the twenty-something kids
caught in a cabin in the woods with
the monster/slasher/alien outside trying
to get in to eat/slash/probe them The
only questions are: how many kids are
going to be eaten/killed/probed, how bloody is it going to get, and who will survive? That’s it Nobody is going to have a big revelatory moment where they realise they have to change their life to be a better person There will be
no moments where we get profound insights into the inner workings of the protagonist (assuming there is a main character) And any twists or plot complications will be all about ratcheting up the tension of the problem/puzzle, not pushing characters
to some behavioural edge where we see who they really are as people The only change in the emotional space will be one of moving from happy-go-lucky (opening), to terror-filled (middle),
to relief at surviving (end) In other words, the hero or heroine will end the adventure in the same emotional place inside themselves as they started
The most important differentiator of all is that there is no, or a very weak, moral component to the situation
Moral component is a complex topic, again outside the scope of this article, but what it means is that the protagonist is driven from the inside
by some basic belief about him or herself, which is essentially wrong, but that is colouring all their actions outside themselves in the story world
They are acting badly, because of this characterological blind spot, and this is what they heal and change in the end
Every story has this; every situation does not This one element alone is enough to help you quickly identify
a situation from a story Does your protagonist have a flaw that is screwing
up their lives, that they would have anyway, regardless of the threat of being eaten/killed/probed?
Bridging the divide
There is, however, one grey area worth mentioning This is what I call the
‘basically good person caught in the no-win scenario’ scenario In the film world, some good examples of this are:
Gravity, The Martian, Taken, Godzilla
there are many others These are all situations masquerading as stories, but they fall into this grey area; a little bit story, a little bit situation
The differentiator that pushes them over the story line into a situation
is that the heroes and heroines in all these ‘stories’ are all focused on surviving the problem/disaster/
• A situation is a problem, puzzle, or predicament with
an obvious and direct solution.
• A situation does not reveal character; it mainly tests
a character’s problem-solving skills.
• A situation’s plot twists ratchet up the puzzle or mystery
(stakes), but rarely open character windows.
• A situation begins and ends in the same emotional space,
especially for the protagonist.
• A situation has no, or a very weak, moral component,
leading often to episodic writing.
THE FIVE COMPONENTS OF A SITUATION:
predicament they are facing, not working out some deep-seated flaw that is mucking up everyone’s lives around them They are basically good people, thrust by circumstance (not
of their own making) into fighting a losing battle, even though they may win in the end And this is what saves the story day; we root for them because they are getting crushed and find the will to live, or make some horrible choice that saves others They don’t really change, they’ve always been good, and they end the story the same way, just beaten up and a bit worse for the wear – but alive
All of those movies were huge at the box office; great successes financially and with audiences The fact is, movie/
TV audiences love situations, and readers love them in fiction The caveat here is that to be successful on the screen, or in print, situations must overcome their story weaknesses, and this means doing three things: be fun,
be entertaining, and be engaging They may not have anything to say about the human condition, and the protagonist may just be a leaf on the wind of fate, motivated only by a will to live, and not by some twisted moral flaw they have to overcome in the end, but that’s alright as long as the reader has fun,
is engaged, and is entertained Stories have to do these three things as well, but stories have the advantage of having
a compelling human story driving the drama or comedy, on top of being fun, entertaining, and engaging
But, if you have a situation and you don’t want to let it go, then your responsibility as a writer is to make it the best situation you can make it (from a reader-engagement perspective) Stories are not better than situations, they are simply more complex So, write stories that will bring readers to tears, or bust their guts laughing, and teach them what
it means to be human along the way; or write a situation that will make them bite off their nails, and scream out loud in excitement, unwilling to stop reading for fear
of missing what’s next Whichever you choose, do it consciously, be a conscious writer Learn your craft
to know a story from a situation, because when you do, whatever you write will be stronger, and readers will come back for more
p26 story vs situation.indd 27 23/05/2016 10:36
Trang 28BEAT THE BESTSELLERS
Bravo Two Zero is the highest
selling war book of all
time Published in 1993,
shortly after Andy McNab
(real name Steven Billy
Mitchell) left the Special Air Service
(SAS), it catapulted him to instant
fame He had spent ten years in the
SAS before he turned himself into a
bestselling author
Bravo Two Zero
The book which made his name is
an account of an eight-man SAS
patrol dropped behind enemy lines
in Iraq during the first Gulf War of
1990-91 Their mission was to cut
the underground (fibre-optic cable)
communication link between Baghdad
Authentic military detail and a breakneck pace are the hallmarks
of the SAS soldier turned thriller
bestseller, says Tony Rossiter
and north-west Iraq and to find and destroy mobile Scud missile launchers
The action begins on 22 January 1991, when a Chinook helicopter takes them from a remote airfield in Saudi Arabia deep into enemy territory The area where they are dropped turns out to
be swarming with Iraqi troops and the patrol’s radio communications prove to
be ineffective It’s not long before a boy goat-herder stumbles across the patrol and their whereabouts is compromised
There’s a firefight as the patrol is forced
to split up and run for their lives Three are killed, four – including McNab – are captured and one manages to escape into neighbouring Syria The book records the patrol’s superhuman endurance on night marches over the desert in extreme conditions, with an ice-cold wind and driving snow, with the lights of enemy vehicles not far away McNab is just four kilometres from the Syrian border when he is
captured The remainder of Bravo Two
Zero – about half of the total narrative
– records what happens to McNab
in captivity He’s held for six weeks and subjected to horrendous torture
Released when the war ends, he needs several months of medical treatment and rehabilitation before he can return
to active service
There are question marks about
the veracity of Bravo Two Zero
McNab’s account and that of his patrol comrade Chris Ryan (real name Colin Armstrong), who escaped to Syria, are contradictory on many points
Moreover, the explorer, Arabist and former SAS reservist Michael Asher, who visited Syria with a Channel 4 film crew in 2000 and interviewed many eyewitnesses, concluded that there was
no evidence that the Bravo Two Zero
patrol accounted for a single enemy casualty This was corroborated by the
22 SAS regimental sergeant major at the time of the first Gulf War who, based on the debriefing given to the regiment, said that the book’s claim to
be ‘the true story of an SAS patrol in action’ was unfounded
From a writer’s perspective, however,
the truth or otherwise of Bravo Two
Zero is beside the point What matters
is that it is a cracking war story There’s
an enormous amount of technical detail about guns, military equipment and the day-to-day routines of an SAS patrol in action (to understand what was going on, I found that I often needed to refer to the glossary of military abbreviations, acronyms and SAS slang) This nitty-gritty detail gives the book its realism and authenticity The narrative is driven along by the author’s instinct for survival, and the
Bravo Two
– about half of the total narrative
and rehabilitation before he can return
Zero
is that it is a cracking war story There’s
an enormous amount of technical detail about guns, military equipment and the day-to-day routines of an SAS patrol in action (to understand what was going on, I found that I often needed to refer to the glossary of military abbreviations, acronyms and SAS slang) This nitty-gritty detail gives the book its realism and authenticity The narrative is driven along by the author’s instinct for survival, and the
Bravo Two Zero is the highest
bestseller, says
© G raham J epson/W riter P ictur
Trang 29reader keeps reading because he (and
it’s probably a ‘he’ rather than a ‘she’)
wants to know how McNab will get
through his many physical and mental
ordeals There’s a lot of military slang,
expletives and the kind of death-related
humour that, I can easily believe, is the
only thing that keeps soldiers going
when things are as bad as they can get
When Bravo Two Zero was filmed in
1998 (with Sean Bean in the star role),
McNab wrote the screenplay
Bravo Two Zero was followed by
McNab’s autobiography, Immediate
Action (1995), which was at the top
of the bestseller lists for eighteen
weeks It largely chronicles his life after
enlistment in the Royal Green Jackets,
with particular focus on the intensive
training exercises he went through and
the time he spent in Northern Ireland
When it came to the SAS, he liked
the fact that what his superiors were
interested in was the end result – not
how it was achieved He was left alone
to do his job in his own way, and that
had a strong appeal Immediate Action
has the same detailed descriptions
of weaponry and the same feeling
of authenticity as his first book; but
perhaps its most appealing feature is
the brutal honesty with which the
author shows us some of the more
disagreeable and unpleasant aspects
(dishonesty, extreme egocentricity) of
his own teenage character
How he began
Andy McNab had an inauspicious
start in life Found in a carrier bag
abandoned on the steps of Guy’s
Hospital in Southwark, he was brought
up by his adoptive family in Peckham
He attended nine different schools
over seven years and he became a petty
criminal In 1976 he was arrested for
burglary and put in juvenile detention
While there he was visited by an army
recruitment team and offered early
release if he joined up
He was sixteen years old when he
went straight from juvenile detention
to the army He has said that the army
turned his life around, opening his
eyes and making him realise that there
were opportunities available if he was
prepared to take them He moved
to the SAS in 1984 after passing the
entry test (known as ‘selection’) at his
second attempt By the time of the first
Gulf War, when he was put in charge
of the Zero Two Zero patrol, he was
a sergeant and had been awarded the Military Medal
Andy McNab was seventeen years old, but with the reading age of
an eleven-year-old, when he read his first book He later said: ‘I can vividly remember the feeling of pride and achievement I felt from reading
my very first book It was a Janet and John series and was meant for primary school children but I didn’t care I’d read it, a whole book, and I was hooked!
‘I’m a perfect example of how reading became so important in my life and really changed my life.’
Fiction
McNab drew extensively on his SAS experience for his first novel,
Remote Control (1998) Its hero, Nick
Stone, is an ex-SAS man who finds himself enmeshed in a complex web linking British and US Intelligence, Columbian drug cartels and the IRA With the exception of one little girl, the entire family of his friend is wiped out Who did it, and why? That’s the question Stone sets himself to answer Although the book is a novel, the amount of real information McNab gives about the SAS’s operating methods resulted in
an injunction to prevent publication
Before publication was allowed to
go ahead, the book was vetted by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and McNab signed a legally binding agreement to submit all subsequent books for MOD vetting He has said that as a writer he has not found the vetting process to be a major problem MOD officials typically
go through the book highlighting paragraphs they’re unhappy with, and
he changes the text accordingly
He has written sixteen further Nick Stone stories, all of them characterised
by their violent action, fast pace and authentic SAS detail In the latest of
these thrillers, Detonator (2015), an
assassin’s bullet on an isolated Alpine pass and a high-level Russian conflict propels him into a brutal mission; as the body count increases, he becomes one of Europe’s most hunted men
McNab has also written three thrillers about ex-SAS trooper turned MI5 operative Tom Buckingham, and he has co-written the Boy Soldier series of
books for children He has also written
four Quick Reads – most recently, On
the Rock (2016), about an attempted
terrorist attack in Gibraltar These are short new books by bestselling authors promoted by The Reading Agency charity, which says: ‘They are perfect for regular readers wanting a fast and satisfying read, but they are also ideal for adults who are discovering reading for pleasure for the first time.’
In recent years McNab has visited the Army Foundation College in Harrogate, talking to new recruits about his war experiences and encouraging them to engage with the idea of reading and writing He has written three YA books – the Liam Scott New Recruit series – based partly
on the experiences and anecdotes
of new recruits at Harrogate When planning this series he invited them
to think about their own army experiences, both good and bad, to write it all down, and to send it so him
so that he could put it into the books And that is what happened: ‘I may have written these books and created the characters,’ he said ‘But plenty of the material comes from those young lads up in Harrogate These are their books too, I hope they are as proud of them as I am.’
What sets McNab apart from most other thriller writers is the amount of authentic detail his books contain As
The Sunday Times has put it, ‘McNab’s
greatest asset is that the heart of his fiction is not fiction; other thriller writers do their research, but he has actually been there.’
BEAT THE BESTSELLERS
books for children He has also written four Quick Reads – most recently,
the Rock
terrorist attack in Gibraltar These are short new books by bestselling authors promoted by The Reading Agency charity, which says: ‘They are perfect for regular readers wanting a fast and satisfying read, but they are also ideal for adults who are discovering reading for pleasure for the first time.’
the Army Foundation College in Harrogate, talking to new recruits about his war experiences and encouraging them to engage with the idea of reading and writing He has written three YA books – the Liam Scott New Recruit series – based partly
on the experiences and anecdotes
of new recruits at Harrogate When planning this series he invited them
to think about their own army experiences, both good and bad, to write it all down, and to send it so him
so that he could put it into the books
Trang 3030 JULY 2016
INSPIRING WORDS
Not all great writers are great spellers If you want to be
published, it’s imperative to submit an immaculate,
professionally presented manuscript That means
decent grammar, correct punctuation and, above all, no spelling
mistakes No editor is likely to tolerate a writer who does not
take the trouble to spell words correctly
I keep two reference books close-by on my desk: dictionary
and thesaurus I don’t trust my laptop’s spellchecker; it takes no
account of the context Of course, these days there are plenty
of online dictionaries and thesauruses, but I’m old-fashioned
enough to prefer a hard cover and pages I can leaf through with
my fingers I use the Concise Oxford Dictionary and the Collins
Thesaurus The latter has seen better days: the spine has gone
and it’s now split into half a dozen sections; but as it still has all
the pages, I’m reluctant to replace it
Of course, a dictionary is not only for spelling It should
give you a precise – and concise – definition of each word, thus
differentiating it from other words whose meanings are similar, but
not identical It will also usually show how the word is pronounced
In addition, I have an old two-volume copy of the Shorter
Oxford Dictionary, picked up a few years ago in an Oxfam
bookshop sale for just 99p Of course, with its 2,672 pages, it’s
not exactly short It contains around 163,000 words, plus
word-combinations and idiomatic phrases, ranging from the days of
King Alfred to the present day The meanings are illustrated by
quotations which are either dated or assigned to their authors I
don’t often use this dictionary, but if I need to check the origin of
a word or to look up examples of its usage, there’s nothing better
For well over a hundred years the most important
and influential English dictionary was Samuel Johnson’s
Dictionary of the English Language published in 1755
‘To make dictionaries is dull work,’ wrote Johnson,
illustrating one definition of ‘dull’ But, as many writers have
suggested, a dictionary need not be a dull thing to read On
the contrary: a few minutes spent casting your eye over a
page or two can be a rewarding experience A dictionary
can (to borrow a phrase from the BBC’s charter) ‘inform,
educate and entertain’
‘I needed to stand out from the crowd
I’d heard of an American author who’d found bestseller success from podcasting a novel So I wrote a chapter
of a book, recorded it on my laptop and uploaded it to a podcast-hosting website
I then wrote and recorded a new chapter every two weeks, and nine months later
I’d finished my podcast novel, Millie
and the American Wedding Whilst I got
about a thousand hits a month, it wasn’t enough to get publishers knocking on my door
‘Whilst I’d been podcasting, I’d started to write for the women’s fiction blog, Novelicious About a year into writing the columns there was a buzz around self-publishing with the introduction of Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing I decided to self-publish my podcast novel
I put my novel up on Amazon Around this time I was submitting the third novel I’d written I got nowhere, so I self-published that too
‘I didn’t bother submitting my next novel Instead I uploaded
Don’t Tell the Groom straight to Amazon It sold 11,000 copies in
three months and earned a spot in the Kindle top 100 In the same week, I had emails from a UK publisher and an Italian translator wanting to buy the rights I tweeted what had happened and wrote, tongue and cheek, that I thought
I needed an agent Amazingly, two agents replied asking me to send in a submission
A week later I had signed with an agent, and the next month I had a three-book deal with a UK publisher
‘It had taken four years, five novels, eighteen podcasts and over a hundred Novelicious columns, but finally my dream had come true.’
Anna Bell is the author of The Bucket List
to Mend a Broken Heart, (Zaffre, £7.99).
On writing Tony Rossiter explores great
words from great writers
Anna Bell demonstrated her sales potential by
e-publishing her first three novels, before securing an agent and publisher, she tells Dolores Gordon-Smith
What a comfort
a dictionary is!
LEWIS CARROLL
of a book, recorded it on my laptop and uploaded it to a podcast-hosting website
I then wrote and recorded a new chapter
How I got published
• Don’t be afraid to start something new Giving up and letting go of your first book can be gut wrenching But if you’re having no luck getting it published, then write something else You can always go back to an old novel, but you never know if your next idea will be the one that catches the attention of an agent or publisher
• Read widely Read in your genre to know current trends, to understand the generic conventions, and to know your competition Read outside your genre too – as a women’s fiction author I read autobiographies to understand how real-life human experiences and emotion translate to a reader I also read thrillers to remind me of pace and plot twists
TOP TIPS:
p30 on writing HIGP.indd 30 23/05/2016 09:22
Trang 31Looking ahead:
Editorial calendar
Strong forward planning will greatly improve your chances with freelance submissions
Here are some themes to consider for the coming months.
8 October
is National Poetry Day, which this year has the theme of ‘messages’
31 October is
Halloween – get your
fright on, WM writers.
12 October
The fi rst Labour prime
minister, Ramsay MacDonald, was born
80 years ago, the Jarrow March set
off to London in protest against poverty and unemployment following the closure of the town’s main shipyard in 1934
©traveljunction/fl ickr
3 October
James Herriot,
beloved author of
veterinary tales All
Creatures Great and
Small, was born 100
In January 2018, Mary Shelley’s classic
Frankenstein will
celebrate its 200th anniversary It created
a whole sub-genre of horror; if you are going
to add to it, or give the familiar story new life, this is the ideal hook
25 October
The National Theatre complex was offi cially opened by the Queen
40 years ago
26 October
Alma Cogan, once one
of the UK’s biggest singing stars and now relatively unknown, died 50 years ago
p31 Editorial calendar.indd 77 23/05/2016 09:23
Trang 32PUBLISHING BEHIND THE SCENES
We pick this article up at
a particularly exciting
point for End Point, our
competition-winning novel The book, now ready for press, has
been checked one last time and the files
packaged up electronically and sent to the
selected book printer, CPI
Jennifer Parker, who has handled the
design layout and file checking for the
book throughout the production stages at
Matador, is now liaising with the printing
company over proofs, pre-flight work
(checks done on the files before printing)
and delivery dates Jennifer remains ‘in
charge’ of the title until our warehouse
receives the books from print
Jennifer has also passed the completed
book files to our ebook department, led
by Rachel Gregory, who has started the
ebook conversion process
‘Working in InDesign, we will apply
styles to each element of the text,
demarcating headings and quotations
from the body text, for example, so that
the software recognises the individual
elements and they are coded differently
and the coding can be interpreted by the
ebook reader When we’re happy with the layout, we will export an industry-standard epub file and check that it validates (works on e-readers) Then, it will be uploaded
in time for the publication date and
we can start working with retailers
to generate sales via merchandising promotions,’ says Rachel
Rachel’s team will also set up metadata for the ebook and ensure this is disseminated to all the ebook platforms we work with such as Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Overdrive, Borrowbox, Sainsburys, Scribd and many more, ensuring that the ebook version will be widely available across retail trade and library supply
On the marketing side, Sarah Taylor, who is handling all the marketing for Peter’s novel, has already pre-marketed to the local press with the ‘local author wins national novel prize’ campaign – for which she is awaiting feedback at the moment As soon as the printed books arrive from the printers, this early, focused marketing will be ramped up with a full and extensive media campaign aimed at getting reviews, features and interviews with Peter across all media – from magazines, newspapers, blogs and online forums and radio
‘Peter’s book has many “hooks” for
me to work with,’ says Sarah ‘The competition winner angle is fantastic – but we’ve got local, regional, specialist and niche subject matters all to be targeted as well.’ Sarah, working with our media databases and her own contacts, will draw up media marketing lists for Peter and his book that will encompass all possible publicity angles
‘As well as our own contact databases built up over many years working in book marketing, I also use Vuelio, a national media database, which opens doors when dealing with niche topics or very specialist subjects,’ she adds
Our third and final article charting the story of the winning entry to the
Writing Magazine and Matador novel competition
Arriving at the
END POINT
PUBLISHING BEHIND THE SCENES
Sarah will also be working with local booksellers to arrange signing events for
End Point – while keeping her eye on other
opportunities for marketing the book
The Matador team working with Peter was able to link up with him at the London Book Fair in April Matador takes a stand
at this important publishing event each year and Peter accepted the offer of a free ticket to come up, meet the team and explore the fair at the same time While there, he reiterated to Matador’s managing director, Jeremy Thompson, who was one
of the competition judges, his surprise at his competition win: ‘I was more than surprised
to receive a phone call from Jonathan (WM
editor) letting me know that my novel had been chosen as the winner It still feels unreal.’ As the book hits the printing presses, the day Peter can hold the finished product
in his hands is now incredibly close
End Point, once printed, will be shipped
to our warehouse Once the book has arrived, our warehouse manager, Sam Copson, will check the book and log the stock into the royalty and stock system – thereby releasing the book for sale We handle Amazon sales, direct-to-customer sales and indie bookshop orders from our own warehouse, while our distributor in Poole will handle all national book chain sales and orders from other wholesalers and distributors
While we have reached the end point for physical production, the book is only just
at the start point in its journey to readers
We look forward to seeing how the book
is received by its audience as it is released for sale
• Read our author profile on Peter in next
month’s Writing Magazine
End Point by Peter Breakspear won the WM/
Matador Novel Competition in December
2015 It will be published on 28 August, but the paperback is now available for
pre-order from http://writ.rs/breakspear
at an exclusive pre-order price for Writing
Magazine readers of £6.99 Just enter the
code: WRITINGMAG
Trang 33Away fr om your desk
Get out of your garret for some upcoming activities and places to visit
On 15 July
DAVID MITCHELL, NED BEAUMAN and JENN ASHWORTH will be
talking about time, death and mortality in a salon event to celebrate the 30th anniversary
of Sceptre, Hodder &
Stoughton’s literary imprint
Website:
www.foyles.co.uk
Back soon!
STORY FIRST! is an informal, fun-filled creative
writing holiday with novelist Sarah Harrison that will help you find the tools to write a novel It takes place at the Mill of Dess Lodge at Aboyne in Scotland from 18 to 23 July
Website: http://writ.rs/sarahharrisonstoryfirst
MAKING IT FUNNY is a comedy writing
retreat in Spain with writer and actor Nigel
Planer, who will be covering every aspect of
comedy writing (creating characters, structure
plotting, word order and dialogue) except
jokes Actress Sally Phillips will join him to
teach the art of making things funny from 30
July to 6 August at Casa Ana writers’ retreat
in the Alpujarras Mountains in Andalucia
Website: www.casa-ana.com
Story time
Past times
The Daily Mail Chalke Valley History Festival takes place between
27 June and 3 July, with a packed programme of speakers including
MELVYN BRAGG, NIALL FERGUSON, JONATHAN
DIMBLEBY, CHARLIE HIGSON AND TERRY WAITE There’s
also a living history show with WW2 tank battles, Vikings, Romans,
an authentic replica of a WW1 trench and a 1940s blitz party.
Website: www.cvhf.org.uk
THE YOUNG CHEKHOV TRILOGY
(Platonov, Ivanov and The
Seagull), in a new version by
David Hare, which opened at Chichester Festival Theatre last year, is at the National Theatre from 14 to 30 July
Website: www.
nationaltheatre.org.uk
This summer’s blockbuster
art show is GEORGIA O’KEEFE
AT TATE MODERN, from
6 July to 30 October The great
US modernist was a prolific writer
as well as an artist
Website: www.tate.org.uk
Georgia O’Keeffe - Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1, 1932 Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Arkansas, USA Photography by Edward C Robison III
© 2016 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/DACS, London
Trang 34JULY 2016
Follow Liz Gregory’s tips to stop the stress of
writing getting you hot under the collar
Ask the right questions
If someone does find fault with your work, always try to find out why they’ve responded in that way and what you can do
to improve your writing in the future Editors and publishers are very busy people and are increasingly handling more work with fewer resources at their disposal, so sadly the days are gone where a rejected submission would spark a dialogue between writer and publisher over where it fell down However, there are still plenty of opportunities for dialogue when a piece hasn’t met with full approval; at a writing group or on social media, for example If you ask the right questions – how could the work be improved, which areas are most and least successful, how can the voice be adapted to better fit genre, audience and purpose, and so on – then the answers might just put you on the road to future perfection
Build positive relationships
As discussed above, it’s easy to react badly when we don’t get our own way first time It’s vital, though, to build strong relationships with others if you want to succeed
in the writing business These might be with a particular publisher or editor – if you have been a reliable contributor
in the past, who submits accurate copy on time and who doesn’t sulk when an idea gets rejected, then they are far more likely to use your work again in the future If you’re a member of a writing group or online writing community, try not to fall out with any of the others,
no matter what you might think of their work or their personality It’s difficult to be productive in the midst of
a negative atmosphere, plus you never know when their particular skills or expertise might come in useful in the future
Keeping your cool
as a writer
Summer’s finally on its way, and (hopefully) temperatures
are on the rise But writing can be a stressful business –
here a few ways to make sure you keep your cool, both
literally and metaphorically
Respond positively to constructive criticism
Always a thorny issue this one – we know full well that if we
want our work to be considered for publication or performance,
we need to expose ourselves to the views of others Even if we’re
not aiming to be published, then advice from others is one
of the very best ways to improve the standard of our writing
Trouble is, writing is such a personal business that it’s hard not
to take it to heart if someone isn’t entirely complimentary about
the project we have lovingly slaved over and feel as affronted as
if someone had criticised a favourite child If there is some truth
in the criticism, and especially if it’s of the constructive, helpful
kind, then it pays to listen The trick is to remember that the
comments relate to the piece of writing under discussion, not
ourselves as individuals
Do your research
You’ve had a rejection, and the temptation is to tear it up and throw it on the floor or delete it in a childish fit of temper
How dare they – they clearly have no idea what they’re
talking about and wouldn’t recognise good writing if
they fell over it, and you certainly won’t be reading
their magazine or website again Hang on a minute
though – how carefully did you actually read it before
you submitted your article? Did you even read it at all?
A huge number of pieces are rejected simply because
the writer hasn’t done their research and submits
something entirely unsuitable as a result – does
your short story meet their word count, and fit
their house style? Did they publish an article
on this same subject just last month?
Do ask yourself honestly whether,
sometimes, that rejection is down
to the fact you didn’t do your homework properly
JULY 2016
Trang 35JULY 2016
Ignore the jealousy
It’s a fact of human nature that some people find itdesperately hard to be pleased for others and embrace theirsuccess with generosity of spirit – instead, someone’s else triumph becomes a source of bitterness or jealousy It’s hard not to take this personally, but if you achieve some success(publication, perhaps, or a shortlisting in a competition, oreven just a really satisfyingly good piece of writing) then justaccept that not everyone will be pleased for you and thatsome might indulge in a little bitching and back-stabbing
at your expense There will be plenty of others who will begenuinely glad for you And, of course, if you’re the one feeling a bit green with envy at someone else’s achievement, then just remember that success breeds success and thatthere’s plenty of opportunities out there for everyone.
Make a fresh start
One of the very best things about being a writer is the variety of genres
available for exploration and experiment, and it’s good practice to have a
number of different writing projects on the go at any one time Ultimately,
if a piece of writing is making you feel angry or frustrated then the best
thing to do is to close it down and work on something else for a while – or
even permanently If something just isn’t working then hit delete and send
all those negative feelings with it into the recycle bin (trust me, this feels
pretty good when you’re at the end of your tether)
Adapt your writing den
No matter where you write, a few tweaks to the environment can go a long way
to both upping your productivity and maintaining your equilibrium On a literal level, if we’re lucky enough to have a hot summer (ever hopeful) then you can
keep your cool by working in a well-ventilated space – fling the windows open
wide and invest in a desk fan if the air still feels a bit stale O
n a more figurative level, a well-ordered work space can have a significant impact on your temper – there’s nothing more frustrating than wasting precious writing time looking for
something that’s buried amongst the chaos on your desk Even if your writing
space is a tiny corner of the living room, squeeze in a desk or even a small side
table and keep it in order using box files or a similar form of storage The same
goes for your laptop – clear out some of the old files that ar
e no longer any use
to you and life immediately becomes that little bit mor
e steam-lined
Learn from your mistakes
Try not to get embarrassed if you do something wrong or if
something you’ve tried doesn’t work out – it might be a cliché, but
we really do learn by our mistakes, and a writer who hasn’t lived a
little has nothing to draw upon in the future Even the very greatest
writers are not masters of all styles and genres, and if you don’t
experiment with your writing then you’ll never really know where
your skills lie And anyone who mocks you for your mistakes simply
isn’t worth listening to – luckily, you’re already avoiding the Mean
Girls thanks to the previous tips, so hopefully you’re surrounded by
positivity rather than negativity
Know when to walk away
This is sound advice for all aspects of life, not just writing – there sometimes comes a point where
no more can be achieved in a communication with aparticular individual on a particular topic This might feellike admitting defeat, but whilst there’s much to be said fordetermination and resilience (and, indeed, these qualitiesare pretty essential for anyone hoping to be a publishedwriter) there’s no point in letting a negative situationdrag on any longer than it needs to – you’ll onlyend up causing yourself unnecessary stress
Whilst it might not always be easy, writing is an enjoyable pursuit that should never get you hot under the collar for the wrong reasons
Don’t get sucked into negativity on social media
Twitter, Facebook et al
are a truly wonderful
way of communicating
with others and keeping
up with what’s going
on in the writing world
They can also act as nasty,
unpleasant forums for
unkind individuals to vent
their negative opinions in
an extremely public way
Worse still, sometimes people don’t mean to be unkind, but thanks to the
truncated, impersonal nature of social media – where communication is
not face-to-face and often has a limit on characters – it still comes across
that way It’s also quite easy to fall into a ‘pack mentality’, and thus fairly
blameless individuals can find themselves being picked on in a way they
thought they’d left behind them with high school Never get involved –
you wouldn’t like it if you were the victim and you certainly won’t feel
good about yourself if you do it to someone else
Just don’t blame me if it’s raining outside as you’re reading this.
35
JULY 2016
Trang 36TRAIN YOUR BRAIN
PEN PUSHERS
Setting is important in fiction If a reader doesn’t know where the
action is taking place, they’ll feel disorientated But that does not
mean you have to spend pages recounting every last detail of a
place It can be as simple as two people having a conversation sitting at
a table Depending on the type of fiction you’re writing, a setting can be
a simple background to the story or elaborate and as much a part of the
story as the main characters (think George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones
or Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels)
The extent to which you need to describe your setting also depends
on your characters’ knowledge of the place Do they know it so well they
barely notice it? Or are their surroundings novel enough for them to react?
The following exercises are designed to get you thinking about setting
from a character’s point of view
!?
Exercise one: Writing a f amiliar setting
Take a character doing something fairly routine, eg going to buy bread or milk, in a setting which is very familiar to them
• Describe them walking down the street to the shops buttry to put yourself in their shoes If someone asked them todescribe where they were, how much detail would they giv
out-of-Exercises to inspire creative use of setting,
Sett ing the scene
Play around with these notions and be aware that some settings will be ones your character passes through without giving them much thought, whereas others will cause them to stop and take them in
Exercise three:
Writing the iconic setting
These days, given the reach of film, TV and the internet, places, which we have never actually been to can often be very familiar to us Maybe eighty or ninety years ago if you’d washed up in New York it would have seemed wholly alien, but now, you know what to expect; the tall buildings, grid layout of Manhattan, yellow taxis, Central Park, etc
In the final part of this exercise I want you to try to reflect this through the eyes
of your character
• Take them to Paris, New York, Rome or anywhere that is familiar to people who have not necessarily been there
• Walk them down a street they will have seen portrayed and describe their reaction to it
• Again, give them an incident or sighting to react to How does the way they react compare to that in the previous two exercises?
Exercise two: Writing the unfamiliar setting.
I’ve just come back Zakopane in Poland, a place I was totally
unfamiliar with We’ve all experienced that kind of alien
environment and the way it makes a simple everyday action,
such as going to buy bread, take on extra significance We
notice our surroundings more, because they are new and
interesting and sometimes disconcerting too
• Google somewhere you have never been to and look up
images You could even use Google Maps’ Street View to
virtually visit
• Now describe your character walking down the street in this
totally unfamiliar setting? What do they notice? How much of
the detail do they take in? How does the unfamiliarity affect
their behaviour?
• Describe how they might react to the same
out-of-the-ordinary event Does a minor altercation seem more alarming
to them, because they are not familiar with the place and the
way people behave here? Does a newly installed sculpture go
unnoticed because everything is new to them?
Trang 37TRAIN YOUR BRAIN
Each month, we give you a few sentences which would all benefi t from some
careful use of your red editing pen As writers, and regular readers of Writing
Magazine , you should not fi nd any of these too diffi cult But if you would welcome
a little help, you can always check out Richard Bell’s suggested solutions below.
Edward looked backward to the heady success he had with his fi rst novel,
but his now unreadable handwriting perhaps refl ected the problems he
was having with the follow-up So far his manuscript included no more
than fi ve chapters.
Compared to his fi rst novel, the follow-up lacked the same depth of
characterisation that partially accounted for his earlier success He clearly
needed to practice his character-writing skills a little more.
The one good thing about the shape his follow-up novel was taking was
that it covered unchartered territory that he had not formally explored.
The only problem is that ‘backward’ is usually
employed as an adjective, where here we are using it as
an adverb (to qualify the verb ‘looked’) The norm is to use
‘backwards’ as the adverb (as in: he looked backwards)
Next, we come to the use of the word ‘unreadable’,
which is often incorrectly used as a synonym for
‘illegible’ The two words, however, do not have the same
meaning If a manuscript is illegible then the writing is
so badly executed that it cannot be deciphered But when
we say that it is unreadable we mean that the author has
done such a poor job that the work is tedious, boring and
uninteresting; you just cannot be bothered to read it
However, in sentence one, the adverb unreadable
is being applied to the writing as it appeared on the
manuscript, and that illegible should therefore be the
correct word
Finally in this sentence we talk about a manuscript
including five chapters Normally we would use include
when we a referring to a thing (or things) that are
contained within a greater number of things But where
(as in this sentence) we are referring to things that
compose the entirety of something, it would be better to
say that the manuscript comprised five chapters
compared to in order to point up similarities but use
compared with to point up differences.
In sentence two we are making a comparison between two novels which have different levels of characterisation – and that difference is the basis of the comparison,
which should therefore be expressed as compared with not (as we have done in the sentence) compared to.
We do need to be aware of the difference between
the two words partially (which occurs in our sentence) and partly The word partially is usually employed to mean not entirely, whereas partly is used to mean to some extent So we could say that a book was partially
complete, but we should say that some quality was partly accountable for its success.
Finally, we should always remember the difference
between spelling words with a c as opposed to an s
Usually the c is used when spelling the noun as in licence and practice, and the s spelling denotes the verb, as in
to license and to practise Clearly we should be using the
s version (practise) when we talk about exercising his
writing skills
mapped out, which we should describe as uncharted
territory, not unchartered which has to do with granting
of charters A second error here is the use of the word
formally which means strictly in accordance with
convention What we should be using is formerly, a word
which has the same pronunciation but which refers to
Red Editing Pen
Trang 3838 JULY 2016
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email: loisbm@outlook.com www.malagaworkshops.co.uk
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'Writing True Crime' Heroes Villains & Victims - with Stephen Wade
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Malaga Workshop July.indd 1 12/05/2016 10:05
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CREATIVE WRITING COURSE advert.indd 1 19/05/2016 09:16
Trang 39OPEN SHORT STORY COMPETITION OPEN SHORT STORY COMPETITION
TAP HERE
TO ENTER
IN CASH PRIZES
1,000-word Short Story Competition
£250
TO BE WON
With its 14 July deadline, there is still time to enter last month’s competition for stories for children on the theme ‘Coming to terms with ’
Length and prizes are as above.
See p107 for more details
STILL TIME
TO BE WON
WIN!
A 1,000-word limit for a story is short enough
to require tight, well-paced writing, but long enough to encompass a classic beginning/
middle/end So here is your chance to try this
‘ideal’ length – and your story can be on any
subject or theme.
Your upper limit is 1,000 words
and the closing date is 15 August
The winner will receive £200, with £50 for the runner-up, and both stories will be published
in Writing Magazine.
See p107 for entry details, full rules
and entry forms
Trang 4040 JULY 2016 www.writers-online.co.uk
‘What are you doing there?’
Well, quite What was
I doing there? It was a fair question Apposite, even It was certainly a question to which if I
were to provide an accurate answer, it would
have unfortunate consequences for me
‘What are any of us doing here, my dear
fellow?’ I tried
He kept staring at me It was evident that
here was a chap unlikely to be distracted by
existential debate and requiring rather more
specific an answer But what to tell him?
I could tell him that I was a successful if
faintly anachronistic gentleman thief in an
exquisitely-cut suit and MCC tie who had
slipped into this private side room at the
museum with a view to purloining a priceless
set of Ancient Greek coins known as the
Syracuse Horde
I could tell him that I knew they were in
here awaiting cataloguing and that the largest
and finest of the coins, the Aclydian Drachma,
was valued at two million pounds
I could tell him that I had lurked by the
Etruscan pottery waiting for a member of staff
to forget to properly close the door to the side
room and then had slipped in unobserved
I could tell him that, before he had so rudely
interrupted me, what I was doing here was
stealing the blasted Syracuse Horde! Indeed, I
was holding the box in which they nestled This
would have been, as they say, the truth, the
whole truth and nothing but the truth
However, as my stocky new friend was
wearing the uniform, peaked cap and fussy
little moustache of a security guard and was
blocking my exit, I decided this explanation
would be detrimental to my desire to remain
at large Clearly an alternative explanation
was required
The guard still awaited his answer, a
suspicious look furrowing the prominent
brow common to his class I had observed
the security staff in my preparations and
knew their routines, but this chap must have
been new, thereby allowing him to gain this quite frankly un-sporting advantage
I was his superior
in breeding and in learning Nonetheless, he was blocking the exit, he had a radio and he had caught me if not red-handed then distinctly pink-handed
Still, if I could not prevail against my proletarian friend despite these practical concerns then what sort of a faintly anachronistic gentleman-thief was I? Now he had seen me, getting away with loot would
be inadvisable because he could identify me
No, discretion being the better part of valour and so forth, simply escaping without further raising suspicion was the ticket There would
be other treasures Time to bluff it out
‘What are you doing here?’ I demanded jutting my chin haughtily and chucking in an arched eyebrow for good measure
The guard frowned and went to speak but I continued…
‘Because I insist on being alone while I work Absolutely alone I haven’t seen you before so I expect you’re new and perhaps no-one told you, nevertheless this intrusion is intolerable Intolerable.’ I gave an even more vigorous chin-jut
My working-class adversary looked aback For all the authority bestowed upon him by the uniform, a man brought up in a
taken-world of oven chips, tinned lager and Top Gear
could never be a match for the natural authority bestowed by a thousand years of feudalism
He may have had cropped hair, but I fancied I would have him tugging at a phantom forelock before I was finished Then it would be a simple matter of making good my escape
‘You work here?’ He had a provincial accent
This would be easy
‘Evidently!’ I gestured expansively, giving him a flash of my cufflinks These, I fancied would be further notice to this George-at-Asda
type that I was of an altogether different stripe and not to be trifled with
‘I was told that no-one’s allowed to be alone with the Syracuse Horde.’
Old Hovis-advert still seemed unconvinced, but I think on my feet
‘What are you talking about, man?’
‘The new Roman coins They’re worth a few bob and so I were told that no-one were
to be with them on their own, like…’ He seemed uncertain now Good
‘Of course! I understand you would be suspicious about the breach of procedure had the Syracuse Horde been here but it isn’t, you see It’s away being cleaned.’
‘Aye? Then what’s that?’
I looked down at the box
‘My word, what do they teach you in those comprehensives? Disgraceful… look, come and see.’
The guard paused then lumbered towards
me, leaned in a little too close (he smelled of Lynx and pickled onions) and stared at the coins in the box
‘Firstly, although the Syracuse Horde were found in what is now Italy, Sicily to be precise, they are in fact Greek coins Secondly, these coins, whilst also Greek coins, are quite different to the trained eye Now, I don’t know how much Ancient Greek you have but if you look at the inscription on this one…’
I picked out the Aclydian Drachma and held it in my palm for the guard to look at
Right under his nose
‘…you can see that these are from the reign of Aclydes and name him as ‘Emperor’, not ‘King’.’ Here I pointed to the word that actually did say ‘King’
The guard watched me with the expression one would expect of a dog having the
David Woodfi ne has been writing
short stories in various genres for two years and has been shortlisted
previously in WM competitions, but
this is his fi rst competition win He lives and works in Leeds.
Outclassed
p40 first line winner.indd 40 23/05/2016 12:27