On Writing: My Journey with The Airshipmen. Part Three
In setting up 'The Airshipmen' and all its characters, I struggled with the ‘point of view’ (POV) question. Since it had so many characters, the reader could not see what they were all doing unless the story was told from more than one point of view. I decided to tell the tale from the POV of the four main characters—Lou Remington, a young American marine, Lord Thomson of Cardington as well as their love interests; a Romanian princess, and Yorkshire lass. But switching between these four characters began to worry me. Had I messed up? This question was answered for me when I read an excellent book by Albert Zuckerman, one of the great New York literary agents, 'Writing the Blockbuster Novel'. He is Ken Follett’s agent. For me, that turned out to be a godsend.
Rather than telling you how to write a big best seller, as the title suggests, Zuckerman gives advice on how to write a story of epic proportions (as historical fiction often is). He says in such stories it’s necessary to write from as many as four points of view. To illustrate his point, Zuckerman carefully analyzes, among others, Ken Follett’s books. Naturally, I was more than pleased to hear that—quite by accident, or instinct, I’d got it right.
I should also mention two other books which I found enormously helpful as a new writer. The first was 'The First Five Pages' by Noah Lukeman. The second was 'Self-Editing for Fiction Writers' by Renni Browne and Dave King.
Once the first draft of the novel was finished and after carrying out extensive research, I found a highly experienced and gifted editor, Steven Bauer. Steven had been the Director of Creative Writing at Miami University, Oxford, OH. He now owns and runs Hollow Tree Literary Services. He read the manuscript and gave me some wonderful suggestions on how to make it more powerful and alive. Steven totally ‘gets it’. His encouragement was invaluable. I would urge any writer to engage a talented editor such as Steven—as it will truly bring your work up to the next level. Initially, upon hearing how long the book was, he said it was too long and would be hard to market. I therefore immediately cut out one of the longest chapters. After he’d read it, he said, ‘You need to add more to this book, it’s not quite long enough and ends too abruptly.’ He also said, ‘historical fiction is traditionally longer than regular fiction—it’s not an issue’. So, I added the chapter back in and I think it works much better. Steven's attitude is ‘follow your instincts, they are usually right.’
I had a book cover professionally designed very early on, and it proved very useful and gave the book credibility when sending it out to agents and also looked good on email flyers.
The next phase was seeking out an agent who would read it and sign up a publisher who would carry out editing and marketing. I sent out 160 query letters to literary agents in the US and Great Britain.
No luck.
From there, I realized self-publishing was the only way to go. Luckily, by this time self-publishing was a completely respectable business. The book publishing world had been turned on its head. Now there were more steps to be taken and new processes to be learned!
The first was to decide what platform to use. Out of all of them, I decided on Amazon (the biggest)—CreateSpace for the paperback and Kindle for ebooks. To accomplish this, I read a few books on publishing on Amazon. There are a few good ones out there on the subject.
Rather than telling you how to write a big best seller, as the title suggests, Zuckerman gives advice on how to write a story of epic proportions (as historical fiction often is). He says in such stories it’s necessary to write from as many as four points of view. To illustrate his point, Zuckerman carefully analyzes, among others, Ken Follett’s books. Naturally, I was more than pleased to hear that—quite by accident, or instinct, I’d got it right.
I should also mention two other books which I found enormously helpful as a new writer. The first was 'The First Five Pages' by Noah Lukeman. The second was 'Self-Editing for Fiction Writers' by Renni Browne and Dave King.
Once the first draft of the novel was finished and after carrying out extensive research, I found a highly experienced and gifted editor, Steven Bauer. Steven had been the Director of Creative Writing at Miami University, Oxford, OH. He now owns and runs Hollow Tree Literary Services. He read the manuscript and gave me some wonderful suggestions on how to make it more powerful and alive. Steven totally ‘gets it’. His encouragement was invaluable. I would urge any writer to engage a talented editor such as Steven—as it will truly bring your work up to the next level. Initially, upon hearing how long the book was, he said it was too long and would be hard to market. I therefore immediately cut out one of the longest chapters. After he’d read it, he said, ‘You need to add more to this book, it’s not quite long enough and ends too abruptly.’ He also said, ‘historical fiction is traditionally longer than regular fiction—it’s not an issue’. So, I added the chapter back in and I think it works much better. Steven's attitude is ‘follow your instincts, they are usually right.’
I had a book cover professionally designed very early on, and it proved very useful and gave the book credibility when sending it out to agents and also looked good on email flyers.
The next phase was seeking out an agent who would read it and sign up a publisher who would carry out editing and marketing. I sent out 160 query letters to literary agents in the US and Great Britain.
No luck.
From there, I realized self-publishing was the only way to go. Luckily, by this time self-publishing was a completely respectable business. The book publishing world had been turned on its head. Now there were more steps to be taken and new processes to be learned!
The first was to decide what platform to use. Out of all of them, I decided on Amazon (the biggest)—CreateSpace for the paperback and Kindle for ebooks. To accomplish this, I read a few books on publishing on Amazon. There are a few good ones out there on the subject.
No comments have been added yet.
