Sixty second writing tips: getting entitled

One of the biggest challenges an author faces these days is the title. Those words are often the first thing a buyer knows about the book.

That’s why publishing contracts give the right to select title to the publisher – and their marketing departments. They’re up with the play on what’s selling, and usually way more experienced than the author at picking the words.

But self-publishers face the same issue. It’s an art as much as technique.

These days the wording is more crucial than ever. The title has to be snappy, up to the minute and filled with verve. It has to be informative – to sum up the book in one or two punchy words. My tips:

1. Be brief. One to three words are best.

2. But phrases can work, if they’re cool, obvious and grabby. A book I’m reading now – ‘How to think like a Neanderthal’ – is sheer genius.

3. Avoid transient fashion words. Nothing dates faster than today’s slang.

4. Get other opinions.

How do you develop titles for your books? I’d love to hear from you.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Write it now, part 15: the rise and rise of the genre monster

One of the big literary inventions of the nineteenth century was one that transformed the novel-writing scene. Genre.

When novels first emerged in the early part of the century they were, as often as not, social commentaries. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was typical. So were Charles Dickens’ various stories. They were joined by others that we might , indeed, call ‘genre’ – notably Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. But for a long while these things were few and far between.

Jules Verne, public domain from Wikimedia.

That changed with the commercialisation of novel writing – with the advent of the steam driven printing press, with the advent of mechanisms for mass-producing and mass-selling novels to the rising urban middle classes of the developing world who had the leisure time – and the spare cash – to buy books and then read them.

One of the earliest genres was science fiction, a device for social commentary. Jules Verne introduced the world to it, using his ‘science fiction’ stories –really, travel romances – to lampoon national cliches; German stern-ness and order (Professor Lidenbrock/Journey To The Centre of The Earth), American go-getting (From the Earth to the Moon) and British reserve (Phileas Fogg/Around The World In Eighty Days) among them.

H. G. Wells used science fiction for social commentary towards the end of the century. When five British Maxim gun crews slaughtered 1500 spear-wielding Matabele at the Battle of the Shangani river in October 1893 – and another 2500 a week or so later at Bembese - the world was horrified.  ‘Whatever happens/we have got/the Maxim gun/and they have not,’ Hilaire Belloc intoned in The Modern Traveller, a little later. From that also emerged Wells’s The War Of The Worlds, a remarkably slim book pivoting on one question; how would the British feel if a superior technology descended upon London?

Detective stories flourished. Conan Doyle effectively popularised and defined the ‘short story’ format for them at the end of the nineteenth century – giving the world one of its most iconic and enduring literary characters in the process.

And on the other side of the Atlantic, Americans thrilled to their own genre – westernsl, celebrating the myths of frontier. A form epitomised by Zane Grey, who spent periods big-game fishing in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands.

The point was that popular genres changed as society changed. Cowboy stories went in and out, detective stories rose and fell. Science fiction, which began life for social satire and comment, retained that function into the twentieth century – but became a way of popularising tech-wonders.

If anything, genre change is moving at hyper-speed on the back of the web revolution.  We have to keep up with – and ahead of – the trend if we’re to succeed.

Urban fantasy, anyone?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Write it now, part 14: what a Dickens about novels

As we saw last time, the modern novel had its genesis in the late eighteenth century as a literary form designed to carry the reader on an emotional journey.

During the nineteenth century writers refined that and took it in new directions. But perhaps the biggest change came with the way writers published.

Charles Dickens, 1858. Public domain, from Wikimedia commons.

It was the culmination of a 200-year evolution. For a long time, publishing was ‘self-publishing’, and those who wrote needed to be independently wealthy. That changed during the seventeenth century, when it became possible for writers to earn a living by being paid to write. At first this was frowned upon; paid authors – mostly, it seems, working for newspapers in London’s Grub Street – were known as ‘Hackney’ or ‘Hack’ writers, a term that remains today as a derogatory moniker for a bad journalist, or a writer who appears to write for the money, not the dream. Pretty much the meaning it started with.

Those with a yen to write books still had to self-publish. Publishing houses would take money in return for producing the title. Or they might accept a title and buy it from the author, who earned nothing more. That changed with the emerging rights of authors under copyright law, but it was a slow process. The road effectively began in Britain in 1714 with the Statute of Anne. Other developments followed in Germany.

Authors did not begin to assert real rights over their work until the nineteenth century, though copyright was still far from ‘modern’ form. But from this emerged the royalty system. By this the author licensed somebody to use (publish) their intellectual property. In return they received a fee – a ’royalty’, which was a percentage of the returns on the sales. The publisher took on producing and marketing the work.

This was entrenched by the late nineteenth century and remains a keystone of mainstream writing today.  (I’ll post on the transactability of these rights and ‘moral right’ soon).

The popularity of reading -  hence opportunities for writers – grew as society changed. The rising middle classes of the nineteenth century Britain, in particular, had the leisure time to read. Many of them were also educated enough to be able to read - also new. Into this burgeoning market exploded something else – the steam driven press. Suddenly readers could get newspapers and books relatively cheaply and in bulk.

Writers had a good deal to say by this time; the nineteenth century was an age of ideological ferment as the world shook down from the trauma of the industrial revolution. Some of the world’s greatest literature emerged from the mix, and the doyen of them all was Charles Dickens, whose novels were serialised and who became the hero writer of his day. The public couldn’t get enough of his stories, at once serious, funny, sad, happy and always imbued with a razor sharp social commentary.

But behind people such as Dickens – or for that matter, Jules Verne, Charles Dodgson and Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) were a host of lesser novelists, authors of the ‘penny dreadfuls’ – stories that appeared, serialised, in news-stands. Stories to be read once and disposed of.

And then something else emerged; genre. Stories of a particular type written to meet a specific market – something possible only as the audience for books exploded into life

Next time.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Sixty second writing tips: a plan a day keeps the panic away

Ever been overwhelmed by the enormity of your writing? By the sheer scale of the task? Its complexity – especially as you start getting out to book length?

It’s something every writer slams into sooner or later. Especially if you’ve got a publishing deadline – one agreed with a publisher, or one you’ve created yourself to release a book.

There’s the writing, the revising, the proof-editing, the line-editing, the typesetting, the production process, the marketing plan the – aaaargh! You get the picture.

To me the answer’s in the planning – in identifying what has to be done, setting out the dependencies, identifying the critical time-constraints, then systematically working through them.

The twist I put on it – which I’m sure I’m not the only one to envisage – is that this works to any scale. Not just the big-ticket project of a book, but even figuring out how a writing session is going to proceed, before plunging into it.

It means I can figure out when and how I’m going to deal with correspondence, social networking, revisions, editing, the writing itself, and so on.

At that level, fifteen minutes sorting out what has to be done that day can save hours of floundering later.

Even ten minutes, actually. Time well spent. I find it’s handy. Do you?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Sixty second writing tips: being professional

I’ve always said that professionalism counts for writers. Publishing is a business, so is writing, and professionalism gives an edge. To me it is:

1. Competence – understanding the field, what’s needed to write well, and being able to do it (a lot of my recent blog posts are about how to do this part).

2. Reliability and committment – honouring the spirit of agreements.

3. Accepting responsibility. If you’ve made a mistake, admit to it.  Understand how it happened – so you know not to repeat it next time.

4. Abstraction – I’ve said it before, and it deserves repeating. You are not your writing. It does not define your self-worth. If you get criticised or knocked back – don’t take it personally.

5. Modesty. You do what’s needed, get stuff done – and maybe some amazing stuff. But don’t let it give you airs. There is no room for a sense of self-superiority in this field.

Do these work for you? Do you have a definition of professionalism?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Sixty second writing tips: coining the right name

Some time after The Lord of The Rings was published, J. R. R. Tolkien fielded a letter from Sam Gamgee. A real Sam Gamgee.

It wasn’t surprising. Tolkien – a philologist –  mined English convention for his Shire and Hobbit names. Another was Peregrin Took – the first name is known, though Steve Peregrin Took wasn’t born with it – his real name was Stephen Ross Porter.

A few authors deliberately use real names. I’m thinking George McDonald Fraser, whose Flashman stories were riddled with real historical figures doing real things. Fun stuff.

Occasionally authors add a real name for other purposes, like the time Michael Crichton included a critic as one of his incidental bad-guys.

My tips? I think that…

1. If you’re writing fantasy, it’s important to have names that sound ‘real’ together – not random collections of syllables kludged up on the spot. Make lists before you start.

2. If the story is set in the present, it has to be a name that won’t leave anybody with the same name offended. One book I read included an unlikeable US Secretary of State named (wait for it…) ”Trachea”. Little risk of lawsuit there. Lawsuit? Sure. Your bad guy turns out to have the same name as a genuine individual you weren’t aware of. It’s happened.

3. Coined names that reflect characteristics can work if done judiciously. J K Rowling is a master of it.

Do these tips work for you? Have you ever had trouble creating names for characters? And how have you got around it?

 Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Coming up this weekend: ‘write it now’ – pantsing vs structure; and fun with comets.

Sixty second writing tips: getting the right title

Earlier this week I emailed a book off to Penguin. It was contracted in 2004. It’s taken a while to actually finish, for various reasons.

I supplied it with a working title – the final selection is the publisher’s prerogative, by contract. The marketing departments usually have the most input, when all’s said and done. It’s not easy. A good title has to:

1. Sum up the whole book in two or three words – maybe with a subtitle, if it’s non-fiction, to qualify the snappy phrase.

2. Capture the reader’s imagination instantly.

3. Be memorable.

The point being that in this day and age, when it ‘s possible to self-publish, the burden of meeting those criteria falls squarely on the author.

My tips for doing it are:

1. Derive it from the log-line – er, you DO have a logline…don’t you?

2. Try two or three combinations – let them sit for a few days before finalising.

3. Don’t be afraid to get advice from beta-readers.

Something usually floats in. Usually. Do you ever have trouble finding titles for your material?

 Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Coming up this weekend: ‘Write it Now – part 8′ – and watch for my take on Russell Crowe’s UFO.

Write it now, part 4: beware the death trap of illusory competence

So far in this series on the A-Z of writing, we’ve looked at why people write. Now we’re moving on to what it takes to be a writer – what does learning to write actually entail?

As I’ve mentioned before, writing is a skill like any other. The usual time it takes to master a skill is 10,000 hours. About 1,000,000 words, for a writer. Yeah, lots of zeroes – but as I said last time, it’s a passion. It’s going to be fun. The learning never stops. Not ever. If you think you’ve ‘learned’ how to write, guess again. True writers are always learning, even the experienced ones. I’ve been in the business for 30 years – and I make sure I push the edges all the time.

There is a four-stage psychological model for learning, invented by GTI employee Noel Birch, nearly half a century ago. A journey from ‘unconscious incompetence’ through ‘conscious incompetence’ to ‘conscious competence’ – and, finally, ‘unconscious competence’.

It makes a lot of sense, but to me it’s not an exact fit for writing; writing encompasses many skills, all separately learned, and the skills may be at different stages. Writers not only have to learn the ‘craft’ of writing, they also have to be skilled in the subject they are writing about. Writing also has a hidden pitfall right at the start – the ‘death trap of illusory competence’.

1. The death trap of illusory competence.
Some of the basics of writing – grammar, especially - are taught as life skills at school and often get extended in the workplace. Good stuff. But it’s not the whole skill writers need – a trap, later, for those wanting to go further. I’ve found people who have an interest and want to write about it, thinking they already know the writing part. Or they’ll decide to ‘become’ a novelist as a fun retirement activity.  ’How hard can it be? I did High School English…right?’ Or they may think ‘I read a lot, therefore I know how to write’. To me, that’s like ‘I listen to Beethoven a lot, therefore I know how to play his piano concertos’- see what I mean?

The results are often awful – but the writer isn’t informed enough to know. In fact, they may well think they are very good. The technical name for this, I believe, is the ‘Dunning-Kruger’ effect.

I got my first writing gig when I was 18 – working for the university newspaper. Like most of my fellow students, I thought I knew what I was doing. So I thought. Actually? No, I didn’t.

2. Scrambling up from the pit of doom.
Some people plunge down that death trap and don’t even know it. But a lot of writers do escape – or even avoid it altogether. One of the tools for it is self-critique. There can be an epithany, or it can happen slowly; but one way or another, the writer realises how much they have to learn. And maybe gets frustrated. But  thinking your own writing is terrible is the first step to improvement. And a honed sense of self-critique is a sign of a potentially great writer.

I remember being at this point. There was a day when I made a specific decision. ‘My stuff’s no good. I’d better figure out how to get good.’

3. A view of the sunny uplands of writing joy.
After a while, the elements are there, but the author has to consciously think through them. (‘I need to add a metaphor here…done. Now I have to add an adjective. Done.’) The styling can be wooden, or the writing process itself very slow. Thing is, learning to write is a LOT more than simply knowing the techniques. The key to it is doing the hard yards – to applying those techniques, writing a lot – as in, every single day, even if it’s only for 15 minutes – and making them part of your soul.

4. Confident and competent writer.
This is the 10,000-hour, million word point. Suddenly all the skills become part of your soul; they become automatic. Usually this happens first with the mechanics of style. You think of an idea, and the words emerge. Your writing sings. That lets the author focus on content – and one day, hey presto, that all clicks together too. Writing becomes fast – and good at the same time.

5. ’How did you know that?’
There is a further step that comes only from experience. Pride goeth before a fall. Do not think you have learned everything. You haven’t.The process of learning never stops. It can mean learning from someone else, or attending specialist courses-  but it also means being able to self-analyse, to figure out what’s needed. To discover – to move forward and to be abstract. The writer learns not to define self-worth by what they write, even while pouring emotion into the work.

So how do writers go down this road? Every individual journey is different. It’s also do-able and not daunting at all, if it’s approached step-wise. This series is designed to help you along the way, whatever stage your writing may be at.

But I’ll share one of the secrets now. Actually, it isn’t really a secret. It’s OK to make mistakes – providing you figure out how they happened and what to do about it. That’s how you learn things.

Actually, that’s true of everyday life.

Any thoughts?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Write it now, part 3: passion and learning – the writers’ toolbox

I thought I’d start today’s post with a story about someone – not me – who attended a course on writing childrens’ books.

The average age of the audience was about 60. Most, it seemed, had retired and decided to ‘become’ childrens’ writers, mostly by picking up a pen for the first time and writing. After all, childrens’ books don’t have many words. They’d written letters, diaries, corporate reports and so forth. How hard could it be? So they were asking questions about whether to have the publisher contract read by a solicitor, and how much advance to negotiate.

‘No no’, the facilitator said. ‘Before you can sell anything, you have to learn how to write.’

Fact is that writing is a learned skill like any other. It takes as much time to become fully competent as to become a concert pianist, or a surgeon, or engineer. By this I mean, ‘make it part of your soul’ – unconscious competence. Doing the mechanics of it without thinking – allowing you to focus on the quality. The typical estimate to get there for any skill is about 10,000 hours. Writing is no exception. It includes time spent receiving formal instruction, even if you pick up self-learning after that (most writers do). Most of it is time spent on your own, writing.

Typically, a writer will push out about a million words to get unconsciously competent. Often these are exercises. Usually the process is completed as they swing into their publishing career -  two or three books in, even.

Now this is a typewriter I didn’t wear out – my trusty Adler Gabriele 25, bought new in 1983. It survived. Partly because it is built like the proverbial. But mainly because I switched to computer. I still typed around a million words on it, many of these exercises that weren’t published, but which did teach me to write.

I did that. I wore out two typewriters along the way. But wait, I can hear you saying. What about passion? The satisfaction of writing – the pleasure? Sure, absolutely. Passion is essential. And you have to find it satisfying, too. The feel-good factor. That’s certainly why I write.

I think passion translates to a drive to get that competence. To do the hard yards. To be prepared to take lessons. To write. And then throw away what you’ve just written. And write some more.

What’s more, today’s market demands more than just competence as a writer. It’s a crowded world and authors need a whole toolbox of skills. That applies whether you’re self-publishing or going the traditional route. It includes – but is not limited to:

1. Learned and practised writing skills including style, structure, content and ability to write to a specified length.
2. An expertise in the topic they’re writing on (be it fiction or non-fiction).
3. An understanding of the market – how crowded is it, what will work, what won’t, the likely audience. And how to sell the book into it.
4. An understanding of proofing processes, systems and publishing mechanisms.
5. A professional approach – meaning the written material isn’t used to define your sense of self-worth.

It sounds daunting. But it isn’t. Not when fuelled by passion.

I’m going to cover the items above as we go along.

Passion and learning. And that begs a question. Are writers born or made? I think it’s ‘both’. People are born with the aptitude – they want to write; they have to write. But they still have to learn, if they want to succeed. And that learning never stops.

 What do you figure?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Coming up this week: Summer inspirations, more on kindness, and sixty-second writing tips.

Write it now, part 2: do you write because you have to?

Welcome to part 2 of this series on the A-Z of writing. In these initial posts I’m exploring the foundations of the art – what writing’s about (emotion), why we write, and what’s needed to learn about it. In a few weeks I’ll be moving on to some of the tips and tricks that writers use – some how-to posts, and a lot more.

Today – why do writers write? It’s not an idle question. Do writers write because they’ve chosen it as a hobby – a pastime, or entertainment? Or something more serious?  I figure there will be as many answers to this question as there are people who write.

To me, writing is about doing. It is more than a pastime, though I do pass the time with it – and enjoy doing so. And for most people who write, I think, it is the doing that counts. Writing – practising, learning, doing – is the priority. Committed writers push at it, barrel out text, push projects to completion – make it happen. They will keep pushing – looking for agents, looking for publishers. Some even make a living from it – if they’re lucky.

They write because they have to.

I think that applies to most writers who make a career of it, whether they write fiction or non-fiction, whether they freelance as journalists or focus on books.

The pertinent question is why. Why is writing a compulsion?

Personally I don’t identify myself as ‘a historian’ or ’a writer’, or anything else. Writing is what I do, not what I am. I think writing is an expression. It is a way of sharing. It is also, I think, a way of understanding the world, and for expressing that understanding in ways that cannot be conveyed in speech. It is a way of communicating concepts – often flawed, maybe, but a way. To some extent, too, I think writing acts as a way of recharging the batteries. Know what I mean? Writing suits, I think, people who are more introverted than not.  Sometimes.

Everybody has their own reasons why they write – what pushes them. Why they have to write. But there is,  I think, always going to be a commonality. Maybe a surprising commonality.

Why do you write? Do tell. I figure we’re going to find a lot of like-minded people.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Coming up: Inspirations – the city rising from the wreckage; more on kindness; sixty second writing tips, and more.