NICOLA MORGAN, SELF-STYLED AS ‘CRABBIT’, IS AN AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR of around 90 books. Here she offers writing advice in the first of a series of articles.
The orginal post can be found on Nicola’s blog: Help! I Need a Publisher!
In my absurd desire to pander to your every whim and propel you towards publication at no financial gain to myself, I have written a series of free guidelines for writers, called CRABBIT’S FREE TIPS FOR WRITERS.
This series will consist of:
1. CRABBIT’S TIPS FOR WRITING FICTION
2. CRABBIT’S TIPS FOR GETTING PUBLISHED
3. CRABBIT’S TIPS FOR SUBMITTING TO AGENTS AND PUBLISHERS
4. CRABBIT’S TIPS FOR PUBLISHING YOURSELF
5. CRABBIT’S INGREDIENTS OF POOR WRITING
6. CRABBIT’S TIPS FOR SYNOPSES
7. CRABBIT’S TIPS FOR NON-FICTION PROPOSALS
8. CRABBIT’S TIPS FOR AUTHOR EVENTS
9. CRABBIT’S TIPS FOR TEENAGE WRITING
10. CRABBIT’S TIPS FOR CHILDREN’S WRITING
And maybe more!
I will publish them one at a time, starting today, both on the blog [see credit below - Ed.] and as a downloadable document. Today’s download is here, where you can print it or email it to anyone, or you can read it below. (I sometimes have trouble with these download links so please tell me if this one doesn’t work.)
Remember: I explain and expand on all of this advice elsewhere, elegantly and succinctly in Write to be Published and with gayer abandon on the blog. Please spread the word about this advice – too many agents and publishers are still receiving crap submissions. They are a bit cross with me that I haven’t managed to reach more people. Also, some of them keep sending me examples of eel vomitish submissions and I have had enough. Enough, I say.
CRABBIT’S TIPS FOR WRITING FICTION
1. Never break a rule you don’t understand. When you fully understand it, you can do what the hell you like with it.
2. Here are the main things you must control in a novel (and often in a short story): structure/shape, character and character development, dialogue, point(s) of view, voice, pace, tension/suspense, believability, sentence rhythm, grammar and syntax (which includes punctuation), subject-matter and themes. All should be appropriate to genre.
3. Therefore, know your genre. Read, critically. Note that some genres are more tolerant of certain errors – and less tolerant of others.
4. Think carefully about what a reader needs to know and when. Don’t over-explain.
5. From the start, we need to know: who has the problem, what is the problem and why should we care?
6. Trail hints of future conflict or tension early in the book.
7. Give as little back-story as possible at the beginning. Drip-feed it and only as needed.
8. You do not have to start each scene at the beginning. Leap into the middle and leave before the reader’s had enough.
9. Beware saggy middles. Create an enormous setback in the middle and make us CARE. Spread obstacles judiciously, for greatest impact.
10. Know far more about your characters than you will ever need to say.
11. Manipulate pace by treating chapters like breaths. If you end a chapter at the end of an episode, you finish on out-breath – relaxing, complete. If you end midway through an episode, you finish on in-breath – tense, exciting, desperate for air. Control where your readers rest.
12. If in doubt, leave it out – sub-plot, character, scene, paragraph, sentence, word.
13. Avoid everything in my List of Ingredients of Poor Writing. (Coming soonish.)
14. Read your work aloud, imagining that your audience consists of appropriately-aged reluctant readers with ADHD. If you hear them fidgeting, delete or rewrite.
15. Read it aloud again, noticing rhythm and clunky sentences.
16. Read it aloud again, this time as though you have a rapt and attentive audience. Listen to the applause: you deserve it. But don’t let it go to your head. Someone didn’t like it but was too polite to say so. Trust me.
17. Of course your mother thinks your book is utterly fabulous. She’s your mother.
GOOD LUCK AND WRITE WELL!
– Nicola Morgan
This article has been reproduced by kind permission of the author. Nicola’s writing can be found via Help! I Need a Publisher! and this article in particular is sourced from here.
About Nicola Morgan
Nicola Morgan is author of around 90 books, blogger at Help! I Need a Publisher!, and author of Write to be Published and Tweet Right – The Sensible Person’s Guide to Twitter.
