This is a guide to practical craft not cerebral art. It is aimed at the ambitious budding author more interested in finishing a book than allowing it to linger in the purgatory of a never-ending work in progress. Success and failure in any writing project frequently depend upon matters deemed too mundane to be worthy of discussion in authorial circles. Yet the real-world challenges – how to approach a manuscript, to manage research, to fix the right point of view – represent important and recurring obstacles every writer, novice or professional, must overcome.
All too often students and teachers alike focus almost exclusively on the intellectual question of ‘what to write’ and ignore the more immediate yet equally pressing one – ‘how?’ As my title suggests, this book is designed to be a manual offering some plain-language insights into the everyday mechanics of creating a book from hazy idea to finished manuscript. Sound working habits and an understanding of the technical structure of fiction are no substitute for creative talent. But the right tools and approaches can free the imagination to work on the most difficult task of all: telling a compelling story. Years of talking to students at writing schools around the world have shown me that projects frequently fail not because of some lack of inspiration but through the more humdrum issues of poor time management, faulty working habits and plain ignorance of some of the basic tenets of the writing craft. These are the principal issues I intend to approach here.
Art is fundamental in the development of characters and themes and the creation of a compelling story sufficiently gripping to hold the attention of the reader. I have doubts about how much these elusive talents can be taught beyond the obvious. The best tutors for the subtle skills of narrative have been around us since we were children, on bookshelves, in libraries, alive in our own minds. They’re the stories we’ve come to love ourselves and usually the reason we want to write in the first place. Every creative aspect of fiction is laid bare in the pages of the books we have absorbed as readers over the years. Better to study the work of the masters in their original form and work out for yourself what makes them great than to have someone else try to explain their achievements for you.
What can be learnt is the ability to think about writing, to understand how to control the various processes that go into the making of a book, from planning to story development, research to revision and, finally, delivery in a form which will catch the eye of an agent or publisher.
A first-time author may not be a professional in name, but there’s no reason why he or she cannot be proficient in execution. Nothing guarantees failure more than tardy delivery, shoddy presentation and badly proofed manuscripts betraying the most basic of structural and textual errors. Those who come to judge your work will be looking for motives to reject it more readily than reasons to set another hopeful on the long and expensive path to publication. They will receive no better justification than the obvious whiff of amateurism. Authors, new and old, make mistakes. It is the inexcusable and the avoidable that those judging your efforts will find hard to overlook.
Budding author or professional, you should endeavour to adopt the unsung virtues of the practical side of the craft and seek to maximise your time, energies and skills in order to get a fighting chance of reaching the goal: a finished book of publishable quality. An organised writer, in control of his or her fate as much as any author can be, will negotiate the rocks ahead more competently than one who simply sets sail on the first gust of wind. He or she is also far better prepared to rescue a project from the wreckage, a prospect few busy authors will manage to avoid at least once in their career.
A significant part of the battle to become a writer lies in discovering and adopting the combination of working methods that suits your own temperament, personal circumstances and ambitions. Books make harsh taskmasters. An author has few chances for success and many for failure. It’s important to maximise the former and minimise the latter.
Producing a successful novel shares much in common with architecture. While the public may see nothing more than the glorious dome of St Peter’s in the Vatican, Michelangelo, who designed it, needed also to be familiar with the hidden structural issues and foundations beneath his work in order to ensure that glorious vision did not – like the bell tower of his successor Bernini – come tumbling to the ground. You must pay the same attention to these unseen yet essential aspects of your book, adopting skills and strategies that may be invisible to the reader but shore up the story, giving it the confidence, depth and resonance that are the hallmarks of the polished narrator.
This book is divided into what I regard as the three principal phases involved in producing a book: planning, writing and finally the essential task of refining a raw manuscript for delivery to an agent or publisher, or as a self-published book. I have provided examples of how the techniques I outline here might be used to develop an imaginary story called Charlie and the Mermaid. From time to time I cite some of the techniques I use in some of my own work, in particular for the series of novels I write around four figures in a fictional police station in contemporary Rome. You don’t need to know those books in order to make use of this one, but anyone hoping to start a series should be aware that this route does require some special consideration.
Finally I should emphasise that none of the advice that follows is intended to represent that dread object, a ‘rule of writing’. Fiction is too rich and flexible an art to be defined by rigid strictures invented largely for the convenience of those who concoct them. The guidance I offer here is personal and partial, based on nothing more than my own experiences from thirty years of trying to write the best fiction I can. During that time I moved from being a reporter on a small newspaper in the north of England first to national newspapers in London, then to writing fiction in my spare hours, and finally to becoming a full-time author, with more than sixteen books in print in twenty or so languages, a movie of one and now the entire Costa series in development for TV in Rome. It’s been a long and interesting ride, one I could never have achieved without focusing at times on unexciting matters other authors may think are irrelevant or beneath them.
They could be right. You should question every aspect of the advice I offer here, ask yourself whether these ideas ring true for you, then cherry-pick and reject each element as you see fit. And after that … break your own standard practices from time to time, as I’ve done on many occasions. Which is another way of saying – if you read some of the million or more words I’ve written in my career you’ll find I’ve contradicted some of the ideas I’ve outlined here time and time again.
Writing’s like that: a hazy, insubstantial craft that you grasp at through a mist. Only you can define your own path to becoming a successful author, through your own creativity and a disciplined and imaginative approach to your work. I hope these suggestions help with the latter, and allow you, in turn, the freedom to devote more of your time and energy to writing a very good book.