DOES YOUR MS TICK THESE BOXES?

Of course, writing novels isn't about (and mustn't feel like) ticking boxes. However, when it comes to teaching writers how to write better or how to write a novel that a publisher will want, it's less helpful to say, "Write better, engagingly, tightly, originally, dynamically, wonderfully," and more helpful to say, "OK, now that you've got your idea/outline/first draft, please make sure it has these ingredients." Or even better, "Collect your ingredients before you start cooking the book."

So I have some lists for you. Several. I should perhaps make a list of them.

I have my own Checklist for Publication in Write to be Published. Mine is quite general because I'd spent the previous almost-200 pages explaining the details of what publishers want! But here's my list:

What publishers want:

• A great idea, a hook which can be powerfully pitched in one or two sentences.
• A voice which engages the reader, is consistent and either feels wonderfully fresh, or is perfect for its genre.
• A book they can’t put down – “unputdownable” is a cliché but we all want it.
• Something which booksellers will find easy to sell, because of the clear hook or because it sits nicely in its pigeon-hole.
• A manuscript which displays great competence in all the elements that I've been talking about (ie in the previous almost-200 pages...).
• A manuscript which is not too far from being ready for publication.
• A writer who seems professional, sane and clued-up.
• A fascinating personal story or platform is an advantage but will not over-ride the quality of the book. Unless you are a plastic celebrity, in which case all bets are off.

Interestingly, my one-to-one sessions for the York Festival of Writing this coming weekend ask me to pose three questions:

• Is the concept of your MS well-designed for the market?
• Is your prose style strong enough to sustain an agent's interest?
• Does your opening chapter compel further reading?

(And then I have to give recommendations for the way forward.)

Bear in mind that those questions are to be answered only from reading the pitch and Chapter One. When considering your whole manuscript, I'd add two more questions:

• What is at stake for the character and why should we care about it?
• How are the goals and obstacles structured so as to keep as reading - ideally reading faster and faster?

Then there's this wonderful checklist of Seventeen Questions to Ask Your Novel, from Emma Darwin. 

Bearing all this in mind, during my What's Wrong With Your Manuscript? workshop in Edinburgh TODAY (hooray!), I'll be picking out aspects of both Emma's and my lists and focusing on them in detail, under the overall structure of those three York Festival questions and my extra two.

Lots of ingredients go to make up those questions, though - sub-questions. The ones I will focus on in the workshop are those which, in my experience, almost all unpublished writers forget. They are crucial because if they are not tackled properly you may have a story but you will not have one worth reading. Or publishing.

Since only twelve people in the whole world can come to my workshop tomorrow, I thought I'd give the rest of you a potted version of what we'll look at. Free! (But you don't get chocolate, wine, food and a glorious goody bag. Sorry.)

THE CORE QUESTIONS

The questions all really boil down to three: a) what are the goals and obstacles? b) why should we care whether the character achieves / overcomes them. I blogged about this the other day and I'll be using the points made there, as well as referring to some of the questions on Emma Darwin's list. And c) how good are you at choosing the right words? In other words, how good a writer are you?

Perhaps the most common reason for rejection, apart from an inability to write, is this: the writer has over-estimated completely how much the reader cares about this story. You must make the reader care because otherwise that reader will go and do one of the very many other much more fun things than reading your story.

And if that reader is an agent...

So, here's my list of topics the workshop will cover and which you can use to examine your own MS:

THE STORY
Concept

• Elevator pitch design - no wild, vague statements; no exaggerated description of brilliance; states core conflict
• Defines genre
• Has fellow pigeons

Goals and obstacles

• What is the big conflict or problem posed at the start? Is it strong enough?
• Do we care about the MC - why?
• What does MC need? How difficult will it be to achieve? What will happen if she fails?
• What obstacles get in the way?
• How are obstacles structured to create increasing tension?

Story shape - does it work to create tension?
Character

• Likeability.
• Development.
• Consistency and believability.
• Point of view - whose? 
• Appropriate age for reader.

Pace - how to control
POV

• Who is telling the story and why? Where and when are they telling it?
• Whose characters' minds are they in?

Credibility

• Of central premise
• Of characters' motivation
• Voice slippages

Voice

• (What is it?)
• Whose voice?
• Mixed or single?
• Defined and controlled?

LANGUAGE - this will form the second half of the evening and we will look at these common faults:

• Telling too much instead of showing more.
• "Over-writing" - trying too hard to sound like a writer. This involves:

1. Pointless similes.
2. Too many adjectives, especially in the adj+noun pattern.
3. Ditto with adverbs.
4. Overdoing the action / loud verbs - too much skipping, hurling, striding, retorting, speed-walking.

• Tautology.
• Not thinking about precise meaning and therefore being either unclear or not saying what you intend.
• Wrong order of action within a sentence.
• Unnecessary details which disrupt flow, meaning and action.
• Clunky sentences which need re-ordering.
• Clichés.
• Poor dialogue - and dialogue tags.
• Monotonous sentence structure.

Right, that's enough checklists now and if "what's wrong with your manuscript" isn't somewhere on one of those lists, I'll eat my hat. Or something.

Think of us all workshopping hard this evening, won't you? I'll raise a glass to you.

GOALS AND OBSTACLES DRIVING YOUR PLOT

Every novel needs goals and obstacles. Or, rather, the main character does. So, I thought I'd offer you a practical lesson in this, in case it's something you haven't properly thought through. It may not just be the main character who needs goals and obstacles - there may be a secondary (and tertiary) character to focus on, too, though it's fair to say that minor characters don't have to have major goals and obstacles, or not obviously.

Ask yourself some questions:

1. Is my MC's goal interesting and important enough for this genre and for the readers I aim to snare? For example, the MC being desperate to own a dog might be sufficient goal for a gentle book for six-year-olds but not for most other readers. (Though it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that a good writer could create an exciting story out of this premise, by adding a great deal of extra interest.)
2. Have I put sufficient obstacles in the way of this goal? Have I paced them well, increasing suspense? Do the obstacles hang together within the story, rather than being completely random-seeming?
3. Do my readers care sufficiently about my MC that they are desperate for him or her to achieve the goal? The creation of a rounded character who we have strong feelings about is essential to keeping us reading. We must care and believe.
4. Have I created enough complexity by having more than one goal, and perhaps by running a sub-plot which will conflict and even become part of the obstacles? Secondary characters can be very useful in this. 

Let's look at different types of obstacle. They can be:

• caused by the MC's own mistake
• caused by the MC's enemy
• caused by a secondary character accidentally getting in the way
• caused by external influences
• caused completely by accident - don't overdo these or you'll end up with a mishmash of things and the reader will think you're just making it up as you go along. Which of course you are, but not in a good way. 

Obstacles should be:

• interesting
• relevant
• congruous
• sometimes seeming insurmountable
• frustrating for the reader but not too frustrating - you don't want the reader screaming at you. Much.
• generally increasing as the MC reaches the goal
• overcome at just the right speed, generating the amount of suspense you want. Too quick and it's a let-down; too slow and it can become frustrating.

One of the problems I most often see in aspiring writers' work is lack of focus on the goal and the obstacles, lack of real effort to ensure that this goal is genuinely interesting and exciting for the reader. You must define and sharpen the goal and obstacles otherwise your story becomes a walk in the park instead of the gripping adventure it usually needs to be.

So, leap out at your MC and give him the shock of his life. But make the readers suspect you're going to leap out, so that the reader hangs around, fingers over his eyes, hardly daring to read on and yet being unable to stop.

Get the goals and obstacles right and you end up with a novel that is likely also to have suspense, pace and narrative thrust. And most novels benefit from an awful lot more narrative thrust than I see in most unpublished (and some published) work. In fact, it's one of the main things I'll be talking about in my workshops and talks over the next months - including at the York Festival of Writing.

Talking of workshops, there are no spaces left at my What's Wrong With your Manuscript evening in Edinburgh but there ARE spaces on the Secrets of Writing for Children and Teenagers one. If you come to that, you will get an invitation to the launch party!

CONFLICT – WHY SHOULD WE CARE?

Because readers care and publishers care. So, if you want readers and a publisher - or even just one of those - you must create conflict for us to care about.

Without conflict, there’s no story. That’s not quite true. I’ll rephrase: without conflict there’s no story that anyone would actually bother to read. Therefore, lack of sufficient conflict is a very important and common reason why publishers reject books. Conflict is the thing we care about, that threatens the main character, that the character struggles against. So, whether it’s unrequited love, unrevenged hatred, unatoned remorse, or unattained zen, conflict is central to your book and must be central when you pitch the book. Multiple conflicts (within reason) are also a good idea, because you can solve one fairly early on, giving the reader some pleasure, but keep the others till later, ratcheting up the tension.

Conflict is not literally a conflict between two people. Two characters hating each other does not make a conflict, in the context of a novel. Conflict is what carries and drives the story forward: who will win? Will the MC discover she's being stalked before the stalker kills her? Will the detective find the murderer before he strikes again? Will the woman manage to find strength to leave her abusive partner? Will the boy die of leukaemia or not? Will the girl find the strength to stand up to the bullies / stop taking drugs / speak out about her rape? Will the estranged son find peace with his father before it's too late? Conflict is the struggle in the reader's mind as he desperately wants a particular thing to happen but fears that it won't.

Think of conflict as the obstacle(s) in the way of your hero. The more daunting the obstacle, the greater the struggle, and therefore the greater the excitement and pleasure when the conflict is overcome.

Make sure your conflict is one the reader will believe in and care about. Set problems in the way of the conflict and don't deviate from the path as your characters work around those problems. New plot strand? Is it relevant to the conflict? It must be. Everything in your story should focus on either moving towards or slipping back from resolution of the conflict. The reader needs to worry all the time about whether resolution is goign to happen. Readers should be on the edge of their seats, rooting for the MC all the time, desperate for everything to work out. We do not want to be diverted by loads of irrelevancies. Or even any irrelevancies.


Don’t only think about conflicts in connection with your MC, though. You can also have bigger conflicts: for example, conflicts between races and religions; between good and evil, male and female, emotion and logic, luck and talent, superstition and science, Aristotle and Plato, red wine or white – anything that’s right for your story and your theme.

The conflicts must progress in a controlled fashion. Not in a straight line and not always in the same direction – setbacks will increase tension. But you must be absolutely in control of how quickly, slowly, smoothly or bumpily your conflict develops.

The conflict should worry the reader but also create ambivalence. For example, if the girl needs to break away from the control of her parents, don’t make those parents too starkly awful: paint some different shades so that the reader can see both sides. Things and people are rarely all good or all bad; things wished for rarely bring unadulterated joy; events feared are rarely exactly as expected; death is rarely entirely sad or survival entirely marvellous. Be subtle in the strength of your conflict and in subtlety will be your strength.

But the most important thing about conflict is, as I said at the top, that the reader should care. Different readers will care about different things. An eight-year-old child might care very much about whether she’ll be able to save up for a new Barbie; a grown man won’t. This sounds obvious, but too often writers pitch novels where I question whether anyone would care enough or whether this conflict is anything other than run-of-the-mill. Yes, in real life I care very much whether my family appreciate the casserole I am making this afternoon, and we could well have some major conflict if they don’t, but that doesn’t mean that it’s sufficient conflict for a reader.


Different genres have different needs for conflict, both in terms of level and type of conflict. In a romance, for example, a personal conflict will suffice; whereas in a high-concept thriller, you'd usually need something which threatened or affected a wider population. In a crime novel, you'd expect high conflict, because if a major or violent crime is committed there would need to be not only major motivation but also dramatic fall-out.

So, take a look at your book now. Is strong conflict central to it AND have you made it central to your pitch to publishers? If so, hooray – you’re on your way. If not, back to the drawing board.