Mo Fanning's Blog, page 20

Marketing notes from my editor

Ready to look at marketing your finished book. Maybe I can help?

Last time round, I talked about how editorial feedback made me think again about something as basic as the character names and elements of setting. How the current market expects certain things.

She went further and gave me helpful tips to help pitch the finished product – and I thought I’d share them with you – even if you might be direct competition. That’s how wonderful I am.

Does your title fit?

My working title (and the one I’ve used on this site) is ‘Since you’ve been gone’ – it’s a story of how a life changes after someone moves out. In terms of marketing this book as a commercial proposition, she suggests a rethink. ‘Since you’ve been gone’ fits with a sad story: an emotional family drama. My story is more hopeful and uplifting. She suggests titles that reference the central setting of a café or food. Ora title that evokes the setting of Brighton, or being by the sea or a summer romance.

Practical considerations

Word count of 72k is perfect for this area of the market. And let’s face it, we all still wonder if people have attention spans. Ten years back, anything under 80k was madness. But the golden rule remains. Take as many words as you need to tell the story well. That said, I can’t see rom-com publishers welcoming a 140k word saga.

When submitting, she suggested I include a short book blurb of approx. 300 words or less. Essentially boiling down the copy into a concise, snappy overview of the story, bringing out the central themes of the book. A shoutline, that would sit nicely on the front cover of the book is also recommended. Do some of the marketing for whoever you want to win over.

Your influences

Some editors warn against this, but mine reckons it’s always useful to say which books or authors you feel your writing is comparable to in a covering letter to help place you in the market. And that can work both ways, some publishers might not need ‘the next Marian Keyes’ – in which case it’s best you make sure they know that’s what you are (before everyone ends up disappointed a year down the line).

I hope these tips help you as much as they have me.

The post Marketing notes from my editor appeared first on Mo Fanning.

Notes from my editor

Monday was one of those nail-biting days. An email arrived with the first thoughts from my editor. She’s quite a big deal name in commercial fiction, so I’d been ready for a mauling. I expected her to brand my efforts as a mismatched jumble of bad ideas and inept delivery.

Thankfully the broadside was gentle, but much of what came back gave me reason to think. And it’s stuff I want to share, as if you’re writing commercial fiction, it might save you a lot of ‘find and replace’.

As much as we tell ourselves this is our story, that we have total freedom over what we write, if we ever plan to publish (self or otherwise), we’ll want someone to read what we write.

Market trends matter. If what we publish doesn’t fit, it goes unread. Everything can influence reader attraction – even down to the names you give your characters.

‘Think about your main character’s name,’ my editor said – I’d opted for Sally. ‘Of course, you can name your character whatever you feels suits them best, but I would suggest looking at some alternatives to help the character feel more contemporary. It would also be good to aim for a memorable name, which is easy to spell. This will go a long way to ensuring that readers remember her.’

She went on to suggest currently in-vogue names and share a tip that when writing commercial fiction, surnames that include colours or flowers do well.

Because my character’s family is Italian, I was limited, but after much thought Sally Cotelli became Evie DeRosa.

Her next naming change concerned the central setting. I’ve based the story in Brighton, in a tumble-down cafe. It’s name was one I never quite liked, it was a placeholder until forced to find something better – The Purple Pig. I thought this felt a bit out of date, suitably crass. I hoped that she’d see I used this name to indicate its failure. She didn’t.

‘A name inspired by the seaside would lend itself nicely,’ she said, and the Beachcomber Café was born.

So two easy changes later and she’s right, things already feel better.

She also offered valuable tips around how to pitch the finished work, and I’ll share those in my next blog.

The post Notes from my editor appeared first on Mo Fanning.

An unprecedented level of calls

‘You’re getting very dark again. You need to see a doctor.’ That’s how the other half censored me as I launched into yet another tirade about how Theresa May had basically prostituted herself to the DUP to avoid having to move house just when she’d got on top of her geraniums.

And so I tried to work out for myself what might be behind this darkness. Is it the Trumps, the Mays, the lying two-faced bastards of this world? Is it the fact that nobody ever told me that self cleaning ovens leave your kitchen smelling like you had a bonfire? Two days before important relatives are due to pay a visit.

I found myself working through my inbox and came upon one of those ‘tell us how we did surveys’. I’d no axe to grind – in fact, I liked the company in question – and so I thought why not. It unleashed a chain of events that saw me glimpse behind the doors of hell. Well not really, but you know how it is when you’ve been told you’re getting ‘very dark’.

To all those companies who send out surveys that ask how they’re doing. Test them first. If your form stalls mid-way, throws up an error or worse gives me a dead link, every little bit of goodwill goes. Chances are that my ‘how likely are you to recommend us’ score will plummet. Chances are I’ll take to Twitter and like Tiny Hands on an early morning rant say something spiteful and unhelpful. Unlike him, I’ll feel bad about it later, but I have a reflection, so no surprise there.

I feel for those voiceover artists who get asked to put feeling into the phrase ‘we’re experiencing an unprecedented level of calls, so you’re on hold’. And for the poor souls who have to answer those calls, knowing that the next voice they hear has listened to unwanted music for eleven minutes.

So I went to see a doctor. Not my own, of course, because heaven forbid I try to get an appointment any time within the next ten days. If I want to see one of the six ever-changing GPs assigned to my cause, I’ve to call at 8am each day and beg for a cancellation. 8am being the time when they experience an “unprecedented level of calls”.

This spendy doctor chap was lovely. He asked the sort of questions I’d been asking myself – including why the heck are you paying me a fortune when you could just as easily get this for free? – and handed me a sheet of paper where he’d listed out the tablets I should take to make me less dark.

I’m holding off on them for a while, because I’m in the middle of a rewrite and darkness feels vital. There are scenes where you can’t see your hand in front of your face. But I want to give my characters a sort of happy ending. If I’ve been reading romcom, I’d feel tricked if the leads didn’t at least snog. They don’t need to waltz down the aisle and start planning a family, but maybe suggest that there’s hope.

And that’s where I am now. Suggesting hope. Because no matter how dark you’ve been getting, I hope you’ll find a shaft of light to get you through – and if not, go online and order better lamps. Just don’t phone. You might end up behind an unprecedented level of calls.

The post An unprecedented level of calls appeared first on Mo Fanning.

An unexpected gift

The tree is up, the cupboards groan with food, but Josie can’t bring herself to feel it. The thought of Christmas fills her with dread.

Everyone at work was full of cheer. And she joined in. She wore a reindeer jumper and helped out at the bake sale. But behind the fixed smile lay sadness. It’s three weeks to the day that she took her best friend for his final walk. Tomorrow will be the first Christmas in sixteen years without Bertie.

She’s downloaded A Wonderful Life. Of course it will make her cry, but Josie hopes it might kick-start the Christmas gene. She’ll watch it with the lights off and a box of mince pies. If she keeps the room dark, she could pretend Bertie is still here. Fast asleep in his basket that she’s not yet managed to move from in front of the fire.

The weather has been typically Christmas. Rainy and dull, but as the afternoon wore on, the sun broke through. It bathed the garden in a beautiful light. Josie glanced at Bertie’s lead, still hanging on the back of the door. Around about now, she’d rattle her keys and he’d leap from his basket to dance a jig at her feet.

She missed the walks. Almost as much as she missed Bertie. Even though Josie lived alone and didn’t hang out much with the people from work, she had dog walking friends. They’ll have noticed her absence. Did they guess that Bertie had gone?

Why shouldn’t she still go out?

Josie heads through the woods, and smiles as she pictures Bertie snuffling his way along the path. She nods hello to Schnauzer Elaine and Labrador Bill. She can’t bring herself to stop and chat, because they’ll want to know about Bertie. Up ahead, there’s someone sitting on a bench. No dog at their side. As she gets closer she realises that it’s Poodle Pete.

‘Hello lovely lady,’ he says, and shuffles over for her to sit.

Josie isn’t sure. Any minute Stinker will come rushing through the bushes, haa-haa-ing his way across the grass, chasing a squirrel. She’s not sure she can cope with pretending there’s nothing wrong.

‘Are you all sorted for Christmas Day?’ she says and he nods.

‘My Maureen has bankrupted us, and for what? It’s only a big dinner.’

They sit in silence for a while, and when there’s no sign of Stinker, she’s forced to ask.

‘Are you alone?’

He nods and Josie’s heart bursts. How could two of the loveliest boys leave this world at the same time?

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, and overwhelmed by sadness gets to her feet. ‘I best head home, it’ll be dark soon.’

‘Three girls and a boy,’ Pete says. ‘I don’t suppose you fancy seeing them?’

Stinker is the most attentive father. He fusses around Molly like he knows she’s unsure where the four little hungry balls of fluff came from.

‘They’re beautiful,’ Josie says.

‘That little black one,’ Pete says. ‘I bet he reminds you of someone.’

Of course he does, and Josie has been doing her best not to say anything. She’s only got the one picture of Bertie as a pup. He grew up so fast after he left the dog’s home.

‘We can’t keep them,’ Pete says. ‘So I suppose come the new year, it’s adoption time.’

All at once, Josie knows that she’s feeling Christmas. She looks around Pete’s front room, taking in the tree, the twinkling lights, the crackling logs on the open fire. The smell of something lovely wafting from the kitchen.

‘I could take him,’ she says, and then quickly adds. ‘That’s if you don’t mind.’

Josie smiles and sips her sherry in the flickering light of the television screen. She smiles over at Bertie’s empty basket.

‘You don’t mind, lad?’ she says.

And somewhere, far away she hears him barking.

Or maybe it was the wind.

She just can’t be sure.

‘Merry Christmas, old boy.’

The post An unexpected gift appeared first on Mo Fanning.

Pale, stale and male … and invisible

I’m a middle-aged, white man, who cares deeply about ingrained social and economic inequality. I give more than a single shit about climate change, and hang my head in shame as other middle-aged white men dictate Britain’s place in Europe and encourage Americans to worship the buck over the book.

My ‘lot’ have all the power. And yet, I feel invisible.

At a time when I happen to have a few spare quid, advertisers no longer care. With Christmas around the corner, luxury brands take out TV ads that blend sophisticated visuals with edgy music. Most advertisers don’t know how to grab the attention without pretty young things.

As a middle-aged white man, I’m not allowed to suggest that this makes me feel undervalued. After all, I’m not in any way disadvantaged. If I add in ‘gay’ I guess I could score a few points, but still, by and large society looks after me. I have all I could need.

Simon Jenkins was widely derided for a Guardian piece in which he complained of the discrimination suffered by Pale Stale Men (PSMs). After all, said fellow PSM Richard Osman, ‘it’s not like they have a voice’. And to be fair Jenkins did make Britain in 2016 sound like it was geared up for a remake of ‘Logan’s Run’.

It’s all too easy to hold up a photo of those Supreme Court judges considering Brexit. Nobody can deny that the people we place in ‘power’ are mostly white, mostly male, and mostly lacking in imagination. But they don’t represent every pale stale man. Just as having a black man in the White House didn’t suddenly make everything tickety-boo for every black man in America.

Even as I write this, I’m sure that others will hear only the voice of privilege. How dare a man who earns a good living, and who writes novels in his spare time complain?

When the non-male, non-white and young need someone to blame for things not being perfect, the PSMs get it.

Perhaps the feeling of becoming invisible is made worse because until now society had largely been on my side. Apart from the odd hairy moment, when I was gay-bashed with a baseball bat in Salford or spat at in broad daylight London, I’ve not experienced much in the way of discrimination. Nobody paid me less or told I couldn’t do something because of my gender or skin tone.

And yet, middle-age white people now account for a third of all US suicides. Men in the UK aged 20 to 49 are now more likely to die from suicide than any other cause of death.

75 per cent of people who take their own lives have no diagnosis of a mental health problem. Only five per cent of people who suffer from depression go on to take their own lives.

My next book will tackle how it feels to sleepwalk your way into middle age. To find that when faced with a big decision (as a pale stale male), you’re on your own. That because society conditions men to hide their emotions, they don’t nurture friendships that accept and support weakness. And if all this sounds like too radical a change of style, don’t worry. I’ll still tackle the other big issues like genital stubble, unredeemable hair and male spanx.

Ding dong merrily on high.

The post Pale, stale and male … and invisible appeared first on Mo Fanning.

The pure hell of writing a synopsis

Who enjoys writing a plot summary – better known in publishing circles as a synopsis?

Nobody, right?

To any non-writer, this aversion probably sounds weird. Indulgent even. Like now you’ve written all those words, and it’s an insult to reduce your art to a few paragraphs. Like it or not, at some stage – if you’re serious about being published – someone will ask for a synopsis.

As documents go, it serves a key purpose. It proves you know how to tell a story. You could turn in 5000 perfectly polished words with great characters and dripping with intrigue. What happens after that?

A synopsis proves that you’re no flash in the pan. It demonstrates that the story that follows delivers on early promise. If you can write 5000 words and show that you also have a story to tell, you’re worth a look.

Frustrated writers like to pick apart the work of best-selling authors (JK Rowling anyone?). They ask how did he or she get published, let alone sell so many books? The answer lies not (just) in the writing – which can always be fixed by a decent edit. It lies in the ability to tell a story. Nobody really recommends that beautifully written book that they never quite finished.

But like I say, nobody likes writing a synopsis. How about if I told you it could actually help you create a better book?

Using a synopsis to guide your edit

When you finally type ‘the end’, that’s when you should start work on a synopsis. Used right, it’s a tool that helps edit your work.

There are two types of edit. The copy edit and the structural edit.

Copy editing is easy. In theory. You read through and fix the typos, smooth the dialogue, wipe out your writing tics.

A structural edit is harder. Good editors charge big money to do this. It’s a task that what most beginning writers neglect.

This is when you should ask key questions. Do events flow? Does a person age six years between chapters? Is it spring one minute, winter the next?

Writing a synopsis is a great way to tackle this crucial edit.

Instead of agonising over every sentence , read your work in progress. Work through each chapter, and write one or two sentences that sum up what happened in each. When you’re done, you have the bones of your book. That’s when you can ask yourself if the story works. Is it worth telling? Are there gaps? Could you flesh stuff out? Could you lose a sub plot? Is it the story you thought you were telling?

Fix your story and update the rough synopsis. And then – just as you should with the novel itself – close the file. Don’t even peep at it again for a few weeks.

When you come back to this rough synopsis, treat it like you’re correcting someone else’s work. Make it read better. Distill the story, cut out any talk of sub plots or minor characters.

Before you know it, you have a killer synopsis for a tightly plotted novel – and that awful task is behind you.

The post The pure hell of writing a synopsis appeared first on Mo Fanning.

When leopards change their spots

What happens when you decide to change the personality of a supporting character midway through writing? We’ve all done it – on purpose or – let’s be honest – accidentally. Soaps do it all the time. One minute the buff, blonde actor turns heads. The next he’s bald and skinny with a drink problem.

In the story I’m trying to tell right now, I decided the disapproving social climbing mother was too obvious. Sure, there’s humour to find in someone who twitches net curtains and social climbs at the golf club. It also means appropriating Hyacinth Bouquet. My character had become a trope. And so, I decided to take her in a different direction. She became a one-time hippy, once arrested and still determined to rebel. I’ll be the first to admit that she’s still a trope. The thing is, I needed her to stand out among others who spend their lives trying to fit in.

It meant my work in progress needed radical surgery. It wouldn’t be enough to rewrite her lines and turn her from hanger-on to maverick. A major personality change would influence those who spin in her orbit. Her daughter, her husband, her immediate family, her friends.

This change presented an opportunity to rewrite whole chapters and skew the humour differently. I’ve been able to talk about how ideals get compromised as our lives change. It also helped me explain better why the main character allowed herself to hold so much in for so long. Why did the meltdown happen so late? When a child has to play the parent, it builds defences.

And then there’s the language – should my character speak differently? I wanted to keep the polite aspirations of middle class in her Waitrose-fuelled life, but expose the past. Of course there’s the temptation to cram back story into dialogue. This is a Bad Thing ™. Nobody says: ‘I know you disagree, darling, but when I was hanging out with communists in the 1980s, we saw things very differently.’ It’s far easier to have my narrator fill in the gaps and keep the dialogue authentic.

Finally, what about the surroundings – the home she helped build built. I thought long and hard about people I know who once considered themselves distinctly left wing. Myself included. As we grew older, lives changed. Souvenirs of rebellion gathered dust in cupboards and drawers, but we still want people to know we’re different. We have an edge.

As an exercise in unblocking the flow of my story, it had massive impact, and I’d go so far as recommending this, should you find your writing blocked.

Have you ever changed someone midway through? Have you ever dared recast your main character?

The post When leopards change their spots appeared first on Mo Fanning.

Putting the rom into com

At some point soon, I’ll need to write something that convinces my readers that a failed corporate advertising executive could fall in love with a guy who sells the Big Issue. Fair enough, that’s the stuff that rom-com is made of – bonding against the odds and often because of them. But when I first asked my beta readers what they thought of a (very) early draft, it was this concept that they flagged as hardest to accept.

“Can you make it clear he isn’t a tramp sipping meths and living in a box?” one of them said. She added that she hoped that didn’t sound in any way dismissive of Big Issue sellers. After merciless mocking of such overt political correctness, I took the feedback on board.

No matter how wrong this may be, the phrase homeless comes with certain preconceptions. And I probably should mention that my Big Issue is a reformed alcoholic, so my beta reader did sort of have a point.

It got me pondering how soon I could spin up the rom in the com.

Too much, too soon

How many films have I started to watch, and then stopped, just because an unlikely pairing gets flagged up too soon? A misty eyed exchange across the boardroom table between sworn enemies, the (hot when he has a make-over) homeless guy who helps when the ditzy lead drops her shopping in the street.

At the same time, stuff like this can’t come out of nowhere. Sparks need to smoulder before they burst into flame.

This morning, I looked back over my plot outline. This is the writerly thing some of us pretend to stick to for every work in progress. Have I featured him enough? Has he had enough lines? Are they lines that suggest hidden depths (and soap)? Does the other romantic lead have space in her heart and her head to jump on board?

Beyond belief?

Obviously the very idea of their getting together must be both credible and absurd, or where’s the reader interest? But how absurd before credible goes? In a book like the one I’m trying to complete, it feels like every (non-romantic) exchange must be sprinkled with a hint of the possible.

I’m about 30,000 words in, a third of the way through my plot outline and this feels like the right time to step the romance up a gear. The pages I write today will matter, and they need to convince me as much as anyone.

This isn’t a Hollywood movie where the character gets sent away for a makeover to meet some absurd plot twist (she gets dumped at the last minute before an important company event and needs a plus one).

I need ‘Danny’ to drift into focus in ‘Sally’s’ life. He’s already there as someone she knows. He’s already moved from nodding acquaintance to friend. The next steps matter.

As a writer, how do you handle this? Flag it from page one, or wait for the moment? Should romance come out of the blue or do you lay down clues?

The post Putting the rom into com appeared first on Mo Fanning.

It’s all about me – writing in the first person

It’s all about me, or at least that’s how things might appear to a casual reader of my writing. I’ve written so much in first person that no matter how hard I try to present the story from another point of view, I drift back.

I start in the abstract third person, smugly enjoying how this ever-present voice lets me talk about other characters behind their backs. By the third page, one voice has taken over, and even if he or she isn’t yet talking directly to the reader, it’s pretty clear they need to.

It seems I need someone tell the tale for me. Perversely, I enjoy the restriction of only having the narrator know what they can know. The lack of insight into what others are seeing and doing creates tension. It lets me set up scenes without pages of explanation.

First person head hopping

Staying in that voice is the problem. When I first started to write, I found myself making the rookie mistake of ‘head hopping’. Early drafts are peppered with lines like, ‘She nodded as I spoke, knowing she’d ignore every word.’

As if first person isn’t enough, I’ve developed a love of present tense. Something that most writers hate. It puts me in the driving seat. Things happen in real time. Of course, linear timelines can become dull for the reader, and that’s where the tricks of the trade creep in. Reflection and the plain art of a character giving themselves ‘a damn good talking to’ help vary the pace. One thing to watch for is that you don’t let your characters wallow in self pity – it’s a huge turn off.

Stage directions are my next big sin. Things have to flow. The first draft may say, ‘I walk across the room to the widow as he speaks, stopping and looking back, gasping at how tired he looks sitting on a chair.’

The second draft better not.

What’s wrong with, ‘I stare through the window, as he speaks. He sounds so tired.’ Who needed to know about me walking, turning, staring and gasping, or him sitting?

As I reach the mid-point of a fifth draft of my next novel, I realise it has little resemblance to the first. But this isn’t a bad thing. I’ve uncovered the head hops, the wallowing meditations and detailed choreography. Next stop typos.

The post It’s all about me – writing in the first person appeared first on Mo Fanning.