Author Tips

Sarah’s tips for fiction writers

1. Sort out your grammar and spelling. Do not send anything, and I mean anything, to an agent, another author or even a friend with basic grammar and/or spelling mistakes. They will think you don’t know your onions and bin it before they’ve reached the end of the first page. Imagine they are in a shop buying an outfit – why would they bother buying something with a broken zip? They get so much sent through, don’t waste their time. Ditto typos. I was advised this by an editor at Longman, when I sent out the first few chapters of The Other Half in 1999. She said typos ‘stop a reader trusting you’.  I realise it is not always easy to avoid (I can’t even swear this website is free of them!), so get someone else to read your story or novel to ensure there are none.
   
   
2. Show don’t tell. This is fundamental. Rather than use lots of back story or description, create dramatic scenes that illustrate what you’re trying to say. That will keep your narrative moving at a pace, plus it credits your readers with intelligence.
   
   
3. Which brings me onto… people are cleverer than we think they are. As an ex-copywriter, overstating is something I have been very susceptible to at times –because in advertising it went with the territory. But in a novel I have learnt it is better to be subtle.
   
   
4. Equally, you don’t need to rush to say everything right at the beginning, or indeed, anywhere. That’s something else I found when I shifted from copywriting to fiction – initially I delivered everything too fast.  In a novel, you can gradually reveal things, something that is very different than when you write an article, piece of ad copy or an essay or paper. That said, your introduction is crucial as you need it to hook people in.
   
   
5. Learn to hone your writing. I’m sure a lot of writers will say nice encouraging things like ‘try, try again’ and ‘it took so and so 30 rejections before their work was accepted and now she’s a best seller’. I’d retort that it’s more important to edit and re-edit your own work so you avoid repetition and clichés. I get asked to read a lot of stuff – I can’t imagine how much more agents and editors get – and a vast amount is lazily written. Would be novelists should learn to be tough on themselves before showing their writing to anyone. Keep your viewpoints consistent, check your tenses don’t jump about, and take a hatchet to superfluous passages when need be. Don’t overuse adverbs – ‘He said sullenly’; ‘She said grumpily’ etc. Instead let what your characters say communicate their mood.
   
   
6. Plan your novel or story. Every writer does this differently but regardless of how you proceed, you need to know where you are headed. Otherwise you’ll get muddled and so will your readers. I speak here from experience – when I’ve not had a clear idea in my head of the plot and the themes, I have then ended up floundering and having to discard vast quantities of writing. A nice analogy is this: it’s like decorating a room without doing adequate prep work. In the long run it’s better to fill the holes and cracks and sand them down up front, boring though this may seem, as otherwise your bumpy walls will show through and your painting will look shoddy.
   
   
7. Make sure your story has a beginning, middle and end.  Think of a novel or short story as like an arrow flying from a bow. It should arch up, full of energy (maybe started by an inciting incident) then carry itself on through what is often the most difficult-to-write middle section before coming down to rest with an ending that feels ‘right’.
   
   
8. You also need to work out what it is you are trying to say that is fresh and different. In this day and age it’s important to have a ‘hook’, I’m afraid. Marketing books is like marketing everything else – you can’t enter the market place without a USP. Think of it as your ‘three minute elevator pitch’ and when you write to agents, use it.
   
   
9. Start with short stories. Someone advised me to do this and I did. I had a dozen or so short stories published before I started a full-length novel. Otherwise it’s a bit like trying to run a marathon when you’ve never even run a mile - you are far more likely to fail. You can learn all about writing something with a beginning, middle and end, get that cracked and then move on to something longer. It will help your confidence and improve your skills.
   
   
10. Write what you know. Clichéd for a reason: it’s true.
    
    
11. Write about something you believe in. This is a personal one – I know I write much better when I feel strongly about the subject matter. I don’t mean you have to make a political point or anything, just find something that matters to you to focus on (more true of novels than short stories, I suspect.) You need a lot of energy to sustain 100,000 words; much of this has to come from deep inside.
    
    
12. Make your readers care about your characters. To do that, you need to care about them yourself.
    
    
13. Read. I read a lot in the intervening years between my first two novels and the third, and I think that really helped with One Moment, One Morning. I learnt from other writers and was determined to push myself style wise to a ‘higher’ level, improving my metaphors, sharpening up my characterisation and killing clichés. Though I know some of these still slipped through!
    
    
14. Finding an agent is crucial, but don’t do it till you’re ready. You’ll just get knocked back and depressed. Each agent gets - literally - hundreds of manuscripts a year, so don’t waste their time. My agent is wonderful – she gives me creative input and endless support as well as financial and contractual advice, and she pushed me to write something deeper and better, in the form of One Moment. She is adamant it’s better to write something good, when you’re ready, than something mediocre, before you’re ready (that’s why she was happy to wait several years between my second and third novels). Without an agent, your odds of getting a manuscript read by the people who matter at a publisher are very slim.
    
    When you write to an agent, a good, punchy covering letter is essential. Check the agent accepts unsolicited manuscripts (many don’t as their lists are full), that they are right for your genre (don’t send an agent who represents crime novelists a romance) and if they prefer to see a couple of chapters and a synopsis or the full manuscript. I don’t pass on my agent’s details to anyone however, lest it confuse my relationship with her, so please don’t ask for them.
    
    
15. To help you find an agent it is well worth investing in a copy of The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook. This guide to all areas of the media, which is revised and updated every year, gives practical information on a huge range of topics including copyright, finance, submitting a manuscript and e-publishing, as well as being a comprehensive up-to-date directory of media contacts. You can get some of the information online (www.writersandartists.co.uk) but the book itself is worth buying.
    
    
16. Don’t expect to make much money. That’s the biggest myth about being a writer. Most budding novelists never make it into print, but if and when you do, you still need to sell an awful lot of books to make a reasonable living. I once read the average income for a published author in the UK is £10,000 a year from their books. So it pays to be pragmatic if you are to meet ongoing financial commitments. Even when you’re published, as my agent said ‘don’t give up the day job’ as most of the authors on her list teach or do something else too. Depressing but true. Many authors improve their income if their agents’ sell foreign and/or film/TV rights, but still, it pays to be pragmatic if you are to meet ongoing financial commitments. That said…
    
    
17. Make time to write. I gave up full time work in an advertising agency back in 1998 to write fiction, and my other friends who have been published have done similar. Personally, I found it was very hard to write fiction and work full time, as writing fiction takes exceptional focus. So you either need to be very disciplined and carve out space to write, or rethink the nature of the work you do to earn money. Going freelance worked for me but I appreciate that is not an option for everyone.
    
    
18. My penultimate tip is the one I find hardest. It’s: learn to take criticism.  As an author there are very few ‘buffers’ between you and feedback. The irony is you need to be very open and in touch with feelings to write, then you need to be hard and resilient to take the feedback. And take it from me, it won’t get any less even if you write best seller. Then it’s open season for everyone, as Joe Public can post reviews on Amazon, so be prepared!
    
    
19. Finally, believe in yourself, which directly relates to the point above. The maxim ‘if at first you don’t succeed’ is as pertinent to fiction writing as it is elsewhere. And here is another personal anecdote. Even though I’d had two novels published already, One Moment One Morning was rejected by several publishers (including the publisher of my first two), and the feedback was pretty consistent. It was ‘we like this, but we don’t know how to market it’. As about four of the letters arrived on the same morning, I went to bed for the rest of the day in a massive gloom. I felt then (and still do) it was marketable precisely because it was a different, yet that people would connect with it on a wide scale. Anyway, luckily (and lots of this comes down to luck) eventually it was bought by Picador. The rest is happy history.

In short: keep at it.

 Sarah Rayner