 A recurring theme amongst would-be writers is “How do you start a story?”. For some people this is no problem. An idea pops into their head, they sit down at the place they do their writing and off they go. 80k to 100k words later they have the first draft of their book completed. But for others it doesn’t work that way. For others, getting started is the difficult bit. Sometimes they have an idea in their head, but sometimes they don’t. They just want to write, but how do they get going? Which is what this week’s blog is about. How to start your writing when you haven’t had that spark of inspiration to set you on your way.  Even I need somewhere to start, so I’m going to start with “prompt phrases”. This is simply taking a few words that already exist and then continuing on from where they leave off. I’ll give you an example. “The door opened and …” continue writing from there. Where the writer goes from there is entirely up to them. It may end up as a short paragraph that leads nowhere, or it may end up on the shortlist for the Booker prize. Who knows? But great work always has a starting point and that could be it. So, here are a few more prompts for you to think about.
 It may be that by the time you stop writing, you will actually be able to remove those prompt words and you will still be left with something that stands up on its own. The great thing is that you can use the same prompts over and over again but just continuing with a slightly different set of words to create something entirely new. You can even create your own prompts or take the opening words from favourite books and use those to inspire your own work. “Call me Ishmael” may have started Moby Dick, but it didn’t have to. There could have been a million different stories that emanated from those three words. And, providing you remove “Call me Ismael” from the starting sentence, no one will ever know you used it. If you search “writing prompts” on the internet you will come up with hundreds of articles with thousands more suggestions, some of which may be better than mine.  The important thing about writing prompts is that they actually get you writing, and once you have started, it is easier to keep going. The point about those prompts isn’t that they will lead the writer directly to a story. But they may give the writer a character, a location, a time, an incident or something else that then takes the writer to a story. It’s a bit like wanting to get to a certain street, but you don’t know where that street is. So you stop someone and ask for directions, or you go into a shop to do the same. That then gets you to the street where you want to be. The prompt phrase is the person you ask for directions. (For younger readers, people used to do that before we all had Google Maps). Then there is the “I remember” technique.  Write the words “I remember” then follow it with three sentences. For example: I remember I went to the pub last week. Harry was there. We talked about football for a long time.” At the end of that you can remove “I remember” and you’ll be left with “I went to the pub last week. Harry was there” etc. Where you then take that is where the story will lead you. It may not lead anywhere, and you may abandon it. But there are many exciting and unexpected prospects that can emerge from a trip to the pub. One writer I know gets her inspiration from her favourite songs. She uses them to tap into her memories and emotions and they then give her a starting point for a story.  Pick out a favourite song and listen to it. But while you are listening, ask yourself some questions and jot the answers down.
You might want to listen to the song several times to get more answers or to trigger fresh memories. Once you have that, you can start to assemble the words into sentences. Some words you may use several times and some you may not use at all. They’re your words, do with them what you please. But when you’ve written those sentences, don’t stop. Keep writing, perhaps taking one sentence and writing a second, related sentence, much as you did with the “I remember” technique discussed above.  You can do that with other media as well. A painting, a sculpture, a book, a poem, a TV show, a film, or a play. All of them have etched themselves into your memory for a reason and those reasons can be your source of inspiration. Photographs, like music, are another good source of inspiration. We all have favourite photos, but you might want to dig out your albums and start looking at the ones you took years ago. Or, for our younger readers, access your cloud storage to find your old photos. Use the same techniques as suggested for listening to music. Museums have archives of photographs, many of which are available on the internet. Browse those photos and pick out the ones that call out to you and use them to stimulate questions for which you can provide written answer. Remember Kipling's 6 friends: Who, what, where, when, why and how. Do remember that you can’t use the photos in your book, unless you have the copyright owner’s permission, which often requires you to buy a licence.  Then there’s TV, radio or your news feed on the internet. The basic idea is the same for all three. Turn on your TV or radio or select your news feed on the internet (you might also use social media channels). Make a note of the first thing you see, hear or read. Don’t go searching for ones that may be more interesting. That becomes artificial and removes the spontaneity that is crucial to creativity. It doesn’t matter what it is. It could be a news story, it could be an advert, it could be someone discussing buying a house or selling an antique. Just write it down. Then, using the techniques discussed earlier, elaborate on what you have written. Try to reach around 500 words before you stop. Then imagine a character who is involved in whatever you have written and start to describe them. Some of the things you might want to include are: 
Combining the first 500 words with the character description should allow you to build even more. For example, the character may have friends, an enemy, a lover, a helper and so on. How do these characters know each other? How did they meet? How is each one connected to the original 500 words?  The final suggestion I have for getting started with your writing is the “what if” question. Viewers of “The Big Bang Theory” may remember the episode in which the character of Sheldon Cooper imagines what The Hulk would be like if he was made for different materials, eg what if The Hulk was made of sponge? This is the same sort of thing. So, what if the old lady I saw on the bus yesterday is actually a serial poisoner?” So, you start writing “I saw an old lady on the bus today. She looked so sweet and innocent, but she had a deadly secret?  To change it into a third person narrative the sentence is started with “The old lady was sitting on a bus. She looked so sweet and innocent ….” So, here are some more “what if” ideas for you to play around with.
If you have particular concerns (poverty, social justice, climate change, animal welfare, health, wealth etc), they could be turned into some excellent “what ifs”.  Turning what you have written into a story is just a matter of technique. Short story writer E M Forster describes a story as “‘a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence’ and a plot as ‘also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality.’ To put that into context “The puppy howled piteously.” is a story. “The puppy howled piteously because it was hungry” is a plot. Turning that simple line about the puppy into a longer story is matter of asking some questions and then answering them, but again focusing on causality.
You may be able to think of more questions. None of the ideas discussed here are a universal panacea. Whatever you start out with may not lead anywhere. But it doesn’t have to lead anywhere every time. All it needs to do is get you writing.  Hold onto whatever you have created (I still have a box file from the days when I still used pen and paper) and go back and revisit these jottings from time to time. Perhaps they’ll provide fresh inspiration.
But, importantly, just because one prompt didn’t lead anywhere, it doesn’t mean that the next one won’t. Ultimately writing is about imagination and these prompts are designed to stimulate your imagination. The rest is down to perseverance. And if you have neither an imagination nor perseverance, you aren’t a writer. You may be thinking “That’s all fine, but this is all about the here and now. I write fantasy/sci-fi/horror/westerns etc and those prompts don’t help me. Wrong. There is nothing that those prompts produce that can’t be transposed into any genre. Those genres are just a set of tropes that tell the reader what sort of book they are reading. The rest of it can exist in any time period or location – real or imagined. To think otherwise is to reveal a lack of imagination. To use the example of the puppy, discussed above, it could live in Middle Earth, on the planet Gargelfarch or in a Native American tipi in 1879. It doesn’t even have to be the young produced by a dog. It could be a baby that has turned into a werewolf puppy and it’s howling because it can’t get out of its cradle to find a leg on which to chew. (Editor’s note: That idea is now copyright, Selfishgenie Publishing 2025). All writing should be fun and fun comes from playing. Anyone who has ever studied the processes involved in creativity and innovation will know that “play” is a big part of it. What this blog is about, really, is playing with words. It serves two purposes. The first is you learn by doing it. The second is that the ideas generated through this sort of play can be turned into something useable. It won’t happen every time, but it will happen. If you have enjoyed this blog or found it interesting, be sure to sign up to our newsletter by clicking the button below, so you don’t miss future posts. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.
0 Comments
 I once made a claim to the effect that there were only seven basic plots for books. It appears that I was right. Experts think that there are seven basic plots for books. I would throw in an 8th, but I’ll get to that later. The idea was developed by someone called Christopher Booker, who carried out research across a wide selection of books and then published his results in a book (what else) entitled “The Seven Basic Plots: Why We tell Stories”, published in 2004. This was no passing fancy. It took him 34 years to write. Amongst his other credits is that he was one of the founders of Private Eye magazine. He has nothing to do with the Man-Booker Prize which is awarded for literature. As well as the 7 basic plots, Booker came up with the idea of the meta plot, that is the basic structure which the majority of books follow. This breaks down into four distinct phases.  Phase one is the call to action, in which the protagonist is drawn into the adventure to come. Some go willingly, like James Bond, while others, like both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, go less willingly. Phase two is the frustration stage, where the protagonist struggles against the forces arrayed against him (or her) in order to resolve the problems he is faced with and win the day. During this stage they discover their weaknesses, which they must overcome and also, usually, unexpected strengths. In the nightmare phase all hope is lost and all seems to be doomed. The protagonist may come close to death and is certainly in despair, though quite how this works for plot type 5 (see below) I’m not sure. Finally, we reach the resolution stage, where the protagonist, against all odds, wins the day and earns the title of hero. Again I’m not so sure that this works for plot type 6 (also see below). Readers of Jessica Brodie’s “Save The Cat Writes A Novel” (recommended) may recognise those four phases, though she breaks them down into 15 “beats”.  It doesn’t matter how many other characters there are in the book, it is with the protagonist that the reader’s thoughts and emotions ride. If he or she doesn’t succeed, then the story doesn’t succeed. Even if the protagonist dies at the end, their death must be a sacrifice to gain their success. Do you recognise those four phases (or 15 beats) from the books you read or write? I must admit that I find it hard to think of any book that doesn’t conform to that pattern So, what are the 7 basic plots that Booker identified?  Plot 1. Overcoming the monster. This might be a real monster, such as the Minotaur favoured in Ancient Greek literature, or it may be a figurative one: Big Business, Corrupt Government, Rogue CIA agent, etc. It can also include internal demons. A lot of Greek literature focuses on battling monsters, but it has stood the test of time. H G Wells used it in War Of The Worlds and Michael Crichton in Jurassic Park. And British readers can't overlook the story of St George and the Dragon. The ‘monster’ is also present in stories such as George Orwell’s 1984 and the Jason Bourne and Jack Reacher books. Just because it doesn’t have horns or a tail it doesn’t prevent it being a monster. Plot type 1 is, of course, a staple of the horror story genre: Frankenstein, Dracula, Halloween, Friday The Thirteenth. However, our author Robert Cubitt uses it in his World War II series, Carter’s Commandos, where the monster is the Nazi regime in Germany.  Plot 2. Rags to riches. The most obvious (for me) examples are Cinderella, Dicken’s Great Expectations. Aladdin, The Prince And The Pauper etc. First of all, the protagonist comes into great wealth before losing it all and then having their fortunes restored after they have learnt a significant lesson. Plot 3. The quest. This is much loved by the writers of fantasy novels, and Robert Cubitt used it in his Sci-Fi series. With the search for the magic sword, or whatever, also comes personal growth. The protagonist never comes out of a quest unchanged in some way. Its origins are as distant as Homer’s Iliad and progress through history with A Pilgrim’s Progress, Lord Of The Rings, Watership Down, etc.  Plot 4. Voyage and Return. Similar, in some ways, to the quest, the protagonist must leave his home (or comfort zone) in order to achieve something and, again, returns changed in some way. One of oldest versions of this is Homer’s Odyssey, but perhaps the best known of these is the Lord Of The Rings prequel The Hobbit. Other examples include Gulliver’s Travels and The Wizard of Oz. It is the principal feature of this genre that the protagonist isn’t (necessarily) financially enriched by the journey but is spiritually enriched.  Plot 5. Comedy. Is this really a plot in its own right, I wonder? Comedy can be inserted into almost any plot, even a tragedy if it’s handled correctly. That’s why we refer to “black comedies”. The protagonist is usually a light, cheerful character to whom life frequently hands the dirty end of the stick: a good person to whom bad things happen. However, they stumble along and emerge triumphant at the end, often through luck rather than judgement. Mr Bean or any Norman Wisdom film provides examples. Plot 6. Tragedy. In Ancient Greek theatre this was the partner of comedy as the Greeks only did two types of theatre. Again, I would dispute this being a plot in its own right. Most stories can include a tragedy or two. The protagonist either has a major character flaw which they are unable to identify in themselves or they commit an act for personal gain which has unforeseen consequences, and which spirals out of control. Either way it doesn’t end happily. There are many stories that fit this genre: King Lear, Macbeth, Bonnie and Clyde, Anna Karenina. This isn’t so popular in modern fiction and film as the public prefers a happy ending, so nowadays the inherent tragedy turns to success in the final chapter. While it was always normal for the protagonist to die at the end of a tragedy it is far more normal, now, for them to live. Not only will they live, they will also get the girl (or boy).  Plot 7. Rebirth. This is the plot for any story in which a villain or an unlikeable character ends up as the hero. It involves the protagonist going through an experience that changes them radically in some way, making them a “new” person. There can also be an element of this in some of the other plots, particularly 3 and 4. Here we find A Christmas Carol (not our alternative version), Beauty And The Beast and Despicable Me. Now we come to my additional plot, Plot 8: Romance. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl for some reason (OK, girl can also lose boy), boy and girl either struggle to get back together, or fight against the inevitable attraction, and finally get back together again at the end of the book (and, of course, there are LGBTQ+ equivalents). This is the territory of Mills and Boon and Barbara Cartland, but has been used by many other authors. In which other genre would Pride And Prejudice fit?  Here is the challenge. Can you think of any book that doesn’t fit into one of those 7 (or 8) categories? I have tried and I can’t think of any. If you are an author, have you ever written a book that doesn’t fit into any one of those categories? Would you even try? An interesting thought is that we might each be living our lives in one of those ways. In other words, there are only 8 life stories. That sounds a bit scary, as we all consider ourselves to be unique in some way. However, much as that idea both scares and appeals to me, I have no evidence to back it up so I’ll leave it there. What is of considerable interest to me is this idea of change. All those plot lines require some form of change to be undergone, in order for there to be a happy ending. This is where the story and real life part company. As a species we aren’t good at changing. If we were we wouldn’t keep repeating the mistakes of the past that lead us into all sorts of messes, up to and including war.  So, if there are only 7 (or 8) basic plots for books, why do we keep buying books? After all, once we have read one book from each plot type we have read them all, haven’t we?
This is where the skill of the author comes in. He or she makes us believe that their story is both unique and original. Firstly, they will mix and match the plot types to give variation to them. As I suggest above, a quest can also be a journey, and frequently is. Sling in a romance and a bit of personal growth and you tick the boxes of another two types. However, that still limits the number of stories available (Just over 40,000 by my calculation). Yet literally millions of books have been written. It is the author that makes the difference. The skilful author makes you believe, through his or her mix of character and plot, that their story is unique. All the great authors have done this. It is called “finding one’s voice”, in other words saying something different. It is hard to say which authors will find their voice and which will never be heard, because this is down to the reader to judge. But what is clear is that if the reader wishes to find a new voice to listen to they won’t find it by reading what everyone else is reading. A new voice can only come from a new author. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  It is a worrying trend being seen on social media, for people to ask questions about how motivation to write is achieved, or how people make time for writing. Part of the reason it is worrying is that it is obvious that the person asking the question hasn’t done the slightest bit of research into what being a writer actually involves. They seem to think that you just sit down, start to write and a short while later you have a finished book to sell. Which means they are really looking for a quick way to make a buck and think that writing may be that way. Poor deluded fools. However, it is the questions around motivation that really puzzle me. The questioner seems to think that motivation comes from without and not from within.  Now, we know that part of the job of a leader is to motivate their team. Having attended (and tutored) numerous leadership courses in my time, I’m quite familiar with the concepts of leadership in terms of motivation within a workplace. For writers, however, there is no leader to provide motivation. It appears to me that the concept of people motivating themselves to do things is an idea that is dying out. Not completely, of course. Talk to any sports star and you will find self-motivation very high on their list of personal qualities. But in the wider world, where people work for vast corporations, it seems to be expected that motivation is something that will be provided by the company, just like they provide toilet facilities. But that is where the world of the Indie author is so different from so many other professions.  There are many types of writer and, for some of them, if they don’t write they don’t get paid. That is probably motivation enough. Some may also lose their jobs if they don’t produce high enough quality writing. Again, it’s a strong motivation to perform well. But for the Indie author, if they don’t write then nothing happens. They don’t get paid, but they weren’t getting paid anyway, at least, not for writing. They can’t be sacked because no one employs them as an author. But the one sure sign that you are an author is that you can’t NOT write. You have to tell the story. You don’t need any other motivation. A real author would never ask on social media “I write a couple of hundred words, then I run out of motivation. How do you keep going?” If you have ever said that, or thought that, then you are not an author. At best you are a wannabe who wants the “glory” of being an author but doesn’t want to actually do any writing.  The same applies to the question of time management, which is really a sub-set of motivation. A real writer always finds time to write, be it formally at a desk, or on the fly while waiting for a bus. They could plan their time better, so they could get more writing done, but they find the time anyway. But the most fundamental thing about time management for Indie authors is being prepared to sacrifice something else in order to make time for writing. Let me use an analogy. If someone wants to be a footballer, their coach will expect them to put in a number of hours each week at practice, honing and developing their skills. If they aren’t prepared to put in the time, their coach will be very blunt with them and tell them they’ll never make it as a footballer because they aren’t prepared to put in the time.  If the footballer says they don’t have time to attend practice, their coach will tell they have to make time, otherwise they are out of the team. And any real footballer would understand that. If you want to make it big, you have to be prepared to focus your whole life around what you want to do. But writers don’t have coaches, in that sense. No one is standing over them telling them they have to practice their writing for the next two hours or they’re going to be dropped from the writing team. But if they are really a writer, they don’t need to be told that anyway, because there is nothing they would rather be doing than writing. So, if you can’t think of a single thing that you would be prepared to drop from your life so that you have more time to write, then you probably aren’t a writer. And yes, that may mean not seeing friends so often, or not watching so much TV or not going to the movies. It may even mean not playing football. But a real writer won’t notice the sacrifice they are making because what they really want to do is write.  So, to summarise. If you have to ask “How do you make time for writing?” you may not be a writer. If you have to ask “How do you maintain your motivation for writing?” you almost certainly aren’t really a writer. But, if you are sat at a bus stop hoping that the bus will be delayed for a few more minutes so you can complete the paragraph you are working on, then you may be a writer, because you are both motivated and you have made time for your writing. However, for those of you that may still be having doubts, I’ve devised this short Q & A to help you decide.  Q1. You are working on a tricky bit of dialogue for your book and your baby starts crying. Do you
a. Stop what you are doing and go and see to the baby, or b. Go to the coffee shop so you can work undisturbed? Q2. You have had a long hard day at work, when you get home do you a. Open a bottle of wine/beer/whisky, and sit down in front of the TV while you drink a glass, or b. Sit down and start working on your book? Q3. Your favourite music act is appearing in town, and you have been offered tickets to their show. Do you a. Take the tickets and go to see the show, or b. Turn down the tickets because you want to get started on the next chapter of your book? Q4. Your grandmother’s funeral has been scheduled for the only day that week when you can devote some time to your writing. Do you a. Go to the funeral, or b. Go to the funeral but take your laptop and hope you can sit at the back and do some writing at the same time? Q5. Your partner has won a holiday for 2 at your dream destination, but the dates are for the same week that you were going to attend a writers’ retreat. Do you a. Go on holiday with your partner, or b. Go on the writers’ retreat? ANSWERS 5 b’s. There is no point in fighting it, you are a writer. 4 b’s. You are probably a writer, but you are easily distracted. 3 b’s or less. Sorry, you’re just a wannabe writer. Note: The above questions and answers are not to be taken too seriously, but if you found yourself seriously considering answering b to all the questions, then you really are a writer. We certainly don’t advocate leaving your baby to cry while you go to the coffee shop to write. No, really, that is not a good thing to do. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are those of our guest blogger, author Chris Graham, and not necessarily those of Selfishgenie Publishing. Making a Name for Yourself… from a novelist’s point of view  Names, where do we get them from? They usually come from our families, both the surnames we get automatically, and the forenames that can be reliant on a number of factors. Sometimes a kid gets lucky, and is given a nice normal everyday name, often from the annals of his or her family’s history. “Oh look… she’s got old uncle Samuel’s eyes. Let’s call her Samantha.” Of course this can backfire. We can all think of a celebrity cook whose father was a famous politician. Doubling the ‘l’ and bunging an ‘a’ on the end of her dad’s name could have gone so badly wrong, but our favourite middle aged man’s fantasy kitchen goddess seems to have done OK out of it (Yes, I do know that ‘Nigella’ is also the name of a herb - case of nominative determination perhaps?).  The Emperor Justinian - who gave his name to all the little Justins in the world. Sometimes it’s the time of the kid’s birth that lumbers them with a name. How many little girls born in the eighties answer to ‘Kylie’, or from more recent years, ‘Beyonce’? I’m sure there are young Bieber fans pushing buggies carrying little ‘Justins’ around the supermarket aisles too, although Justin has been a forename for many centuries. There was a Roman Emperor called Justinian back in 527 AD. Of course, there’s those who simply want to be different, whether famous or not, just for the sake of being being different. Those who, without a thought about when their offspring goes to school and gets the mickey taken out of them, give their little ones names more suited to a pet, a dessert recipe, or an address in downtown New York.  ‘Fifi Trixibelle’ or ‘Strawberry Shortcake’ are not what a strapping thirteen year old lad wants to be known as. Even for a girl they’re a bit on the bizarre side. ‘Brooklyn’ doesn’t sound too bad, though like ‘Lourdes’, and ’Chelsea’, it sounds more at home on a girl. I worry that this is setting a trend. Are we going to see classrooms filled with young ‘Shepherds Bushes’ or ‘Neasdens’ in the future? Perhaps for a transatlantic equivalent they’d be ‘Yonkers’, “Bronxes’ or ‘Haight Ashburys’. But I’m not really talking about our own names, or our children’s names. I’m talking about the names we writers choose for our characters. Where do we get those from? Do they work? Can our readers identify with them? Can our readers even remember which one is which as they make their way through our novels? I was reminded of this when a former publisher asked me to look at a few pages of a submitted manuscript. There were a number of characters introduced within the first couple of pages, of which there were several with the same forename, and others who, because they were related, had the same surname.  Now I know that in the potluck world that we live our real lives in, this kind of thing isn’t uncommon. The crowd I hung around with (and still know most of) had a surfeit of ‘Ians’ at one point. Fortunately, as was the spirit of the time, they all acquired nicknames, and so became ‘Ahmed’, ‘Abdul’, ‘Fang’, ‘Screwy Lewie’, ‘Mr Magoo’ and ‘Ian Mac’. However, to help our readers, we need to have ‘real’ names for our characters that define them. During the narrative, and particularly as markers in dialogue, we may call a character by his forename - full or shortened - his surname, his nickname, his rank - as in ‘the Sergeant said’ - or some other descriptive title, such as ‘the older man’ or something similar. One of my police characters, Detective Chief Inspector Nick Wilson, is known as ‘Nick’, ‘Wilson’, ‘The Guvnor’, ‘Guv’, ‘the DCI’, ‘The Chief Inspector’, (or just plain ‘Inspector’) throughout periods of dialogue and narrative to avoid too much word repetition. Others have similar selections to identify them. So… How do we deal with this? How do we populate our novels with names which are individual?  Every writer needs to compile a list, and keep topping it up: a pool of names for their characters, but how do we come up with these characters’ names in the first place? Where do we find them? Do they grow on trees for us to just go out and pick? Well the answer to that is ‘almost’. In fact trees are as good a place as any to start, as are any other interests that you might have. Trees? Well there’s ‘Beech’ and ‘Birch’, ‘Sycamore’, ‘Redwood’, ‘Ash’, ‘Pine’, ‘Maple’, just for a start. All of them perfectly believable surnames, or they can be with suitable modification like ‘Ashwood’, ‘Oakley’, ‘Elmsleigh’, etc.  I’m into motorcycles, so I’ve gleaned names from that world like ‘James Villiers’ - most post war James motorcycles used Villiers engines - ‘Frances (Frankie) Barnett’ (though she prefers ‘B’ as a nickname) - my first bike was a Francis-Barnett, or ‘Fanny B’ as they were known. Another is ‘Lucas Bright’, and I’ve used ‘Plug Champion’, ‘Tillotson’, ’Douglas’, ‘Benelli’, ‘Blackburn’, ’Henderson’, and ‘Ancilotti’ with appropriate forenames. If these aren’t familiar words to you, Google them. It’ll be a fun game looking for the motorcycle connections. From an interest in pioneer aviation comes names like ‘Saulnier’, ‘Anson’, ‘Guynemer’, ‘Voisin’ and ‘Fonck’. Then there’s towns and counties, with ‘Georgia Didcot’, ‘Noel Caversham’, and ‘Adrian Kent’… more Googling games for you to play. A fellow author published by Selfishgenie litters his books with the names of well-known rugby players from both the present and the past. They say, ‘Write what you know’ ...  Turn your friends into characters Most productive of all, though, is that rich vein of people we know, or have met, that we can mine for suitable character names, though when putting these in my pool, I have a certain convention that I try to follow. I’ll almost always mix the names up, rarely using both forename and surname from the same person as a character’s name. Usually I’ll only use full matches in the case of people who were either long deceased acquaintances, family, or friends, of my late parents’ generation, or are just names I’ve heard. There’s no point in upsetting your mates by using their names in print, then describing 'them’ as someone they may not like to be, though there is one old friend who actually asked me to use his name and physical description as a character in a novel. It was on his bucket list. As he’s a cat lover, and tireless worker for local animal charities he, of course, became a corrupt vet in one of my novels. Sometimes it’s particularly satisfying to name a nasty piece of work as an old boss or other bad memory from your past, but there’s one thing to beware of. When you do choose a name for a really nasty villain, it’s a good idea to Google that name to make sure that he or she isn’t someone really famous, even if you’ve never heard of them, and particularly if your character falls within a similar field. It might not look too good if your mad wheelchair bound evil genius was called Stephen Hawking, would it? Remember history  A lot of names fall out of favour over time (You won’t find many Germans called Adolf born after 1945), so you can add a flavour of authenticity to your historical work by including period names. Archibald isn’t a name you hear much these days (If at all), but right up until the 1960s there were plenty of them about. One was even a ventriloquist’s dummy on a radio show (No, I kid you not). Similarly, Ernest, Stanley, Norman, and others all had their day in the Sun then fell out of favour. A friend of mine said she could tell the age of a woman by her name, with gemstones (Beryl, Pearl, Amethyst and others) all denoting pre-war births, alongside Mavis, Agnes, Agatha, Cecilia and a whole lot more. Flowers were also popular as names until the late 60s but now are hardly used at all (Though I do know a Primrose who is under 30 and there's also the singer Lily Allen). After World War II, many boys were given the name Winston in honour of Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, but you won’t find many with that name these days. Helpfully, there are lists of names popular in different decades available on websites. The “Gender Construction Kit” website provides popular names for decades between the 1950s and the 2000s, for example. And, of course, the national census provides lots of historical names for you to conjure with and you can access that in the UK through the Office of National Statistics website. Get it right… Do the research, then save for a rainy day  Even fictional character names have to be believable, so for foreign characters, or those from different ethnic backgrounds, it’s worthwhile to Google ‘common names’ for a nationality or culture for names, or to mix and match the names of well known people from that nation’s culture or history. But be aware that some cultures alter names to suit a gender, even surnames. For example, in Icelandic culture, a surname ending in ‘son’ may denote its bearer to be the son of the first part of the name… e.g. Erikson as ‘son of Erik’… However the female offspring of ‘Erik’ in Iceland won’t take her father’s surname, but instead will have the surname ‘Eriksdóttir’ (Erik’s daughter). Thanks to a change in Icelandic law, parents can now use the mother's name instead and children can switch to their preferred parent's name when they grow up, if they wish. Yes, I found this confusing too. Likewise, even in English speaking cultures, some forenames that are considered female in one country will be more commonly male in another. In the UK, ‘Tracy’ is usually a girl’s name and ‘Robin’ a boy’s name, but in the US these are more likely to be the other way around. Keep your ears and eyes open. If something comes into your sights, whether in the local curry house, or on the TV news, remember to put it into the pool, even if you’ve no use in your current work in progress. These things will always be useful one day. Add all these names into your list. Don’t bother with putting them in any order as they’re as random as the opportunities to use them but keep adding to the list as new ones come to mind. Don’t forget that there are forenames that can be surnames, and vice-versa. In Scotland the likes of Fraser, Cameron, Donald and others can be either a forename or a surname.  Finally, if you are really stuck, there are lists of gender appropriate baby names published for almost every country in the world.
Many of those lists also provide a “meaning” (real or imagined) for the name, so if you want to indicate that a character has the strength of a lion, you can find which name might be appropriate; Leona for a girl, perhaps, or Leonard for a boy, but there’s also Aerial, Braylen, Dillon and others. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so. We are turning this week's blog over to one of our authors, Robin Saint, posting on the subject of Robin Hood. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of Selfishgenie Publishing.  Actor Richard Greene as Robin Hood. As a youngster I was brought up on stories of Robin Hood. There were the movies of course, with Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn, that used to pop up on Sunday afternoon TV. Even Disney gave us a cartoon version. But the big influence was the ITV series starring Richard Greene that ran between 1955 and 1959 (though it seemed to run for much longer). There were other series that came later, some better, some worse, but the 1950s version was the one that shaped my memories. Once I started to read for entertainment, rather than just to learn to read, Robin Hood books were high on my reading list. There were many written for children, and I probably read them all. As a naïve child I loved the idea that someone would exercise justice on behalf of the “little people” and right the wrongs that the rich and powerful perpetrated. How the persecuted sub-postmasters of the UK could have done with a Robin Hood to fight their corner for the last 20 odd years. But then I grew up and realised that while we would love people like Robin Hood to have existed, they probably didn’t. At least not in the form the stories say they did.  The Kray Twins, scourge of London's East End Many criminals have been compared to Robin Hood in their actions. I can remember the notorious London gangsters the Kray Twins* being given a favourable comparison in some quarters because they “loved their mum” and also because no crime was allowed to be committed in their “manor” without their permission, which made it a “safe place to live”. There are two things wrong with that comparison. Firstly, just because someone loves their mother it doesn’t make them a good person. All criminals have mothers and on the basis of statistical probability alone, some of them will love their mothers. The second thing is that if the Krays stopped other criminals from operating in their neighbourhood, it was only so that they could keep it all to themselves. They operated protection rackets and other criminal enterprises that preyed on their neighbours and if anyone crossed them, they would soon find out how unsafe the East End of London could become. It was, perhaps, the arrest and prosecution of the Kray Twins in the late 1960s that made me start to re-think the story of Robin Hood.  By now I knew that there had probably never been a real Robin Hood. There may have been a few real people (petty criminals in the main) who provided the basis for the stories, but the man himself never existed. One such story originated in Barnsdale Forest in Yorkshire, where a Robin Hood type figure used to stop travellers on the road and demand they pay a “tax” to continue their travels unmolested. Another way of describing that is as a protection racket, aka extortion. But what changed for me was the idea that just because a person loves their mum or looks after their neighbours, it doesn’t mean they can’t be a violent criminal as well. For example, if you need an alibi, then it helps to have a friendly neighbour who can provide it. If someone has knowledge of your actions or whereabouts, then it is probably a good idea to make sure that they are looked after. A small favour here, a bribe there and they’ll keep your secrets. And if they don’t, an underlying threat of violence will keep flapping lips closed.  Robin Hood (if he existed) robbed from the rich, because that’s what criminals do, but he didn’t give to the poor – he bribed them. The poor peasants of Sherwood Forest would keep his whereabouts a secret so long as he was paying them more than the measly reward being offered by the Sheriff of Nottingham. And if the Sheriff of Nottingham increased the reward money, there was always the threat of violence to ensure the peasants’ continued silence. At the time these thoughts started to form I didn’t have much time to do anything with them. I had a full and busy life (I still have) and the idea of writing a book just didn’t seem feasible at the time. It was many years later when I started to write the odd paragraph that laid out my thoughts on the subject. The thoughts turned into characters and once I had those I could create the conflicts that would turn into a plot. So, what of the other characters? I won’t bother with the other outlaws. Criminals often work in gangs so we can assume that if Robin Hood is a bad guy, then his pals will be bad guys too. I gave some of them back stories, but ones that would lead them into a life of crime.  King John We have Prince John (as he was at that time). Well, he was the fourth son of a King and in those days the sons of kings pretty much took what they wanted. Historically, John didn’t have any land to draw an income from. His father had granted him rule over Ireland, but first he had to conquer it and that didn’t work out too well. When his big brother Richard became King he gave John the rights to the taxes from Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire so that he would have some form of income. John gave orders to squeeze aa much in taxes from those counties as was possible, but that was the Sheriff’s job regardless of whether the taxes went to Richard or to John. John wasn’t a great Prince or King, but history tends to paint him as being worse than he really was for the period. Trust me when I say we have had worse kings (and queens) than John. The Sheriff of Nottingham was just doing his job, really. His job was to keep the peace and to collect the taxes on behalf of the King (or in this case, Prince John). Nobody likes tax collectors and if you were a criminal in Nottinghamshire you had other reasons not to like the Sheriff very much. In modern terms many people don’t like or trust the police, but they are the first ones to call 999 when their houses are burgled. So, I decided that the Sheriff of Nottingham was probably nothing out of the ordinary for the period, but he did have a boss that wanted more money, so he was probably a bit zealous when it came to collecting the taxes.  Maid Marion, a really foxy lady. Maid Marion was probably the hardest character for me to create. At first I made her a “bad girl” who was attracted to Robin because of his nasty character (according to my version of him). It is a familiar trope and one that exists in real life (Bonnie and Clyde, Rose and Fred West, Myra Hindley and Liam Brady et al). But I realised I needed a nice character to contrast all the bad ones, so that became part of her role in the story. She’s a bit of a “goody two shoes” but that just helps to contrast with Robin’s darkness. Robin himself was easy to create.  I followed some of the mythology and had him serving with King Richard’s crusaders, but rather than being a heroic figure coming home to reclaim his land and titles, I decided that he had used his time the Middle East to line his own pockets (the real purpose of the crusades was to grab land and wealth anyway. The re-conquering of Jerusalem for Christianity just provided an excuse.) and that had led to him crossing the wrong person. He fled King Richard’s army and returned to England. As he had been declared an outlaw for what he had done he had to live by his wits which, in those days, meant robbing and stealing. But even if Robin hadn’t been declared an outlaw, he would probably have followed a criminal path, because he wasn’t the type to earn an honest living. At least, my version of him wasn’t. That left me needing a hero, so I used a popular trope, which is the wrongly accused man. My hero, Erlich, is falsely accused of killing his own father and has to go on the run or face a noose. He finds a relatively safe haven with Robin Hood and his gang but hates the life they lead. All he really wants to do is clear his name and go back to his old life..  So, with a cast of characters all I needed was a plot to carry them and there were plenty of tropes to call on for that. Readers may recognise some of them. That is how I created Robin Hood the bad guy and turned him into my novel “Outlaw”. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments section below and I’ll be happy to answer them. To find out more about “Outlaw” by Robin Saint, click this link. * Editor's note: Little known fact: The Kray Twins were the last prisoners to be held in the Tower of London. Ask in the comments section if you want to know why. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.
This week we hand our blog over to our most prolific author, Robert Cubitt. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are those of the blog's author and are not necessarily those of Selfishgenie Publishing.  Author Robert Cubitt Authors get asked a lot of questions. Some of them sensible and others not so. Having been given the freedom of this blog I’d like to answer some of the sensible ones from my own perspective. One of the most common questions an author gets is “How did you get into writing?”. Well, it goes back all the way to my childhood. I loved reading. My local library, when I was about 13, would only allow me to take out one book at a time, but on at least one occasion I visited 3 times in one day because I read my single book so quickly. It was a 4 mile roundtrip and I had to walk, which says a lot about my reading addiction. It was only later that I worked out that it would have been a lot more efficient for me to sit in the library to read my book, which says a lot about my ability to think logically at the age of 13.  At the same time, I loved essay writing at school. “What I did on my holidays” (and other such topics) gave me the opportunity to create all sorts of adventures. I was once punished for writing a less than true account of whatever the teacher had asked us to write about that day and my mother went to the school and protested on the grounds that they were stifling my creativity. The objective, she pointed out, was to produce a piece of well written work, not to provide evidence for use at a trial. My mother’s intervention made no difference. For future assignments I was warned not to stray from the truth. What I actually did was tone down the drama in my fiction to make it more believable. Perhaps my first lesson in plot creation! I made my first attempt to write an actual book when I was about 14. I had no idea what I was doing, of course. My characters were shallow, and the plot made no sense. But everything we do provides us with lessons and the lesson I learnt from that was that writing a novel wasn’t as easy as I had imagined. But it didn’t put me off writing.  An apprenticeship in some arcane craft. The school I went to when I was between the ages of 14 and 16 wasn’t the sort of school that produced writers. Pupils were expected to “learn a trade”. It was an all-boys school which meant apprenticeships in some arcane craft, motor mechanics, the building trade and so on. I assume that at the girls’ school across the road they were being taught to type, to cook and to raise babies. Our horizons weren’t even stretched as far as working in an office, at least, not without staying on for 6th form, which the families of most of the boys couldn’t afford for them to do. Regardless of academic ability. the vast majority left school at 16 to start earning a living so they could contribute financially at home.  So that’s what I did. However, having been raised on the works of Captain W. E. Johns, author of the “Biggles” books, I decided to learn my trade in the RAF. But I didn’t stop writing. Almost every RAF station I served on had a station magazine and they were always looking for “content”, as we would call it today. I was happy to oblige them, though not everything I wrote was published. Apparently, parodying the domestic lives of the senior officers is frowned upon. Who knew? At the end of my 23 year stint, I suddenly found myself unemployed. I threw my efforts into finding a job, of course, but we were in a recession at the time and job hunting was an uphill struggle. To preserve my sanity in that dark time I decided to have another go at writing a book.  Learn from the best. Having, to a certain extent, honed my skills in writing for magazines, what I produced was far better. I won’t go as far as to say it was good, as evidenced by the fact that I have never attempted to get the book published. But it was a start. It also served its purpose in keeping my mind occupied. More than that, it was a learning exercise. The most important lesson I learnt was that it is the characters who must take centre stage. A plot without good actors will never work. Instead of reading for pleasure, I started to read to learn how to write. Firstly, I read the books of successful novelists and analysed them to discover why they were so good. It always came down to the characters. The plots could be laughable in the way they were contrived, but having good characters, ones I came to care about, meant that the clunky plot was ignored, and I enjoyed what I was reading because of my emotional engagement with the characters. It was probably the most valuable lesson in writing I have ever learnt.  I eventually got another job and 17 years later switched jobs again. That final job was actually 20 hours of work squeezed into a 35 hour week, so I had a lot of time on my hands. I used the extra time to start writing again. I spent so much time writing that on one of my performance reviews my boss commented on how busy I always was, constantly beavering away. Little did he know! (BTW, I always did my real job first and to the best of my ability and was commended for my achievements). But the writing spark had turned into a forest fire, and I wasn’t dishonest enough to keep allowing my employers to continue paying me to be writer, so I took early retirement and started writing full time. Here I am, 12 years later and with 31 books published (including non-fiction) and I’m still writing like there’s no tomorrow.  The next question I would like to answer is “where do you get your ideas from?” Well, they are all around us, all the time. Let’s start with world news. Every bulletin has the potential to produce ideas that can be turned into a book. All human life is there, in graphic detail. The politics, the hardship, the heartache, the trauma, the drama and blessedly, sometimes, the humour. Turn on the TV or radio news, pick up a printed newspaper or go onto the internet and there are myriad news stories just waiting to be fictionalised. Real authors can spot those and turn them into a full length novel.  History is a great source of ideas for stories. So many kings, queens, politicians, rogues, heroes, vagabonds, explorers, adventurers etc. Each has their own story and those can be borrowed and turned into fiction. I’m a great fan of this genre myself. Then there is everyday life. Some people call it “people watching”, but the world around us can provide the author with a thousand stories if they have the imagination. A young woman running for a bus, almost losing a shoe, can provide a hundred questions as to how she came to be there and what may become of her. If the author can imagine good answers, they can turn them into a book. Finally, there are our own “lived” experiences. Life rarely runs smoothly for anyone, and the speed bumps and car crashes all provide us with stories we can tell. In reality we do tell them, to friends and family, or maybe to our therapists. All an author does is write the same stories down and pad them out to a length that will make them a book rather than an anecdote. Of course, they have to be amplified to make them more dramatic/romantic/funny but that comes down, once again, to imagination.  What about sci-fi and fantasy? They don’t come from day to day life. Wrong. For the most part, sci-fi and fantasy novels are made up of the same plots as the stories we set on Earth. They just have bits added on to make them appear different. Star Wars, for example, is just the story of good vs evil transported to a galaxy far, far away. All the author does is to use their imagination to create worlds where the stories can be told, as they do with fantasy. “Luke, I am your father” is a trope that can be found in many an Earthbound story, as can the twins separated at birth. Shakespeare’s “Comedy Of Errors” and “Twelfth Night” both use the basic separated twins trope. The final question I want to answer is “Is it difficult to become a writer?”  If writing is ever this boring, you aren't a writer. My answer would be “no”. But there are many caveats to that. Anything you enjoy doing is never a chore. I enjoy writing, so I don’t find it difficult. If someone sits down and starts to write and they have become bored after a couple of thousand words, they will never become a writer. Not because they can’t write well, but because they clearly don’t enjoy writing. The more you study and practice a subject, the easier it gets. That is what I have done as a writer. But I find chess hard. Chess Grandmasters will tell you that playing chess is easy and for them it is. Because they have practiced for thousands of hours playing hundreds of thousands of games to get to where they are. Of course it’s easy for them. I play one game every ten years, so for me it’s always going to be hard. So it is with writing. The more you learn and the more you practice what you have learnt, the easier it gets. If your idea of writing is doing the weekly shopping list, you will struggle if you start to write a book.  Finally, you have to believe you can write. Like many other creative professions, authors are plagued by insecurities.
Imposter Syndrome stalks us like a hungry tiger. It sucks all the enjoyment out of writing which, as previously mentioned, is an essential part of being a writer. Overcoming that barrier of lack of self-belief has curtailed many a potentially successful writing career. So, when the whispers of self-doubt start to be heard in your brain, you have to shout back very loudly “I am a writer!” I shout it out loud, which is very disturbing for my wife. But if I didn’t, I would have given up 31 books ago. So don’t give up. Most authors take years to become an overnight success. Some never will become a success, but that doesn’t spoil their enjoyment of writing. To find out more about my books, see the "Books" page of this website. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so. Selfishgenie Publishing are pleased to hand over our blog this week to one of our poets, AngieD, who is writing about how she became a poet and how she is inspired to write her poetry. Disclaimer: All views expressed in this blog are those of the author and aren't necessarily those of Selfishgenie Publishing  Poet AngieD I’d like to say that writing poetry was something I was good at in school, though in between Romeo and Juliet, Hard Times et al, there didn’t appear to be much time devoted to this category of English Literature; what little poetry we children were exposed to I could barely understand since, to my mind, it was in adult language and highly cryptic; too cryptic for my little ears. I therefore had very little knowledge of what poetry was about, except for limericks and nursery rhymes. And so, if I said it was something I’ve always wanted to do and that each time I read a ditty it had me thinking “Gosh! I wish I could write a verse” and piqued any great interest, I would be lying! It wasn’t something that ignited any spark of excitement or great interest at all, quite different from hearing someone with extraordinary musical abilities, which aroused feelings more of jealousy that I couldn’t, and probably would never, play like that.  I didn't get excited about poetry. So, besides reading limericks and silly nursery rhymes, I didn’t really give poetry much thought. In fact, the first I really knew about any ability to write a verse was quite a few years ago, lying in bed one weekend morning in my very small and humble-in-great-need-of-decoration second floor London flat and being disturbed by the neighbours occupying the one below. They were making an awful racket but, instead of getting highly irritated (well, not strictly true – I was a little irritated at first!) my mind just seemed to speak in rhyme. It was quite a startling and frightening revelation to me.  Gracula religiosa intermedia (Common Hill Myna) At first I heard myself say “who’s that talking?” not realising it was my mind. Nevertheless, I went with the flow, chuckling as I wrote down the words of this verse about a Myna bird. I had never had an encounter with one; I’d never even seen one. I even had to look it up. What connection had this with the noise I was hearing? I have no clue, but my first ever verse was written and, being a PA Secretary (and previously in the “be prepared” Girl Guides and Girls’ Brigade), I always had pen and paper by my bedside. And that was the start!  From then on it was, as they say, all systems go, like a dam had burst and that part of my mind which had laid dormant had suddenly woken up, its contents released, and there was now no turning back. Things I’d never noticed before would quickly come into my mind’s eye and words or lines would pop up. Voices would say “hurry up there’s another waiting to be written down”. It could be frantic at times since I couldn’t write quickly enough to get everything down! Now, was this the reason I learned shorthand?* Even if it wasn’t, it was now coming to the fore, since it enabled me to write at breakneck speed. This doesn’t bode well for wrists and hands since even before I arrived to start a day’s work, I was already weary from an hour or more of writing while on my train journey.  The lightbulb of inspiration. I found nothing in particular inspired me. In fact, everything inspired me. Finding a window seat on the train was my most important early morning mission so I could write while observing the scenery and how it changed from morning to morning. It was beautiful. How had I never noticed this before? So much to see and appreciate; now that was exciting! Scenery, people and animals were looked at in a different light. Do you ever notice the habits of people: feet on seats where others have to sit. Leaving their rubbish on seats and floor. Grownups picking their noses, biting their nails, coughing or sneezing without covering their mouths, speaking so loudly one can hear every word (and me itching to join in!). That annoying clicking on laptops or ‘phones as they type away as if the train is their office! My mind would just rhyme away; I could have sat on the train all day just writing.  Inspiration can come from anywhere. I’m finding writing poetry is a 24/7 thing. Everything I look at, see, or hear becomes a subject. Although I have written now for quite a few years, I have only recently succumbed and accepted the fact that writing is a part of me. It happens anywhere at any time, in any place (church, supermarkets, the aforementioned trains), I’m not really conscious of it happening, it just happens; commuting on my way to work when I had to commute; walking from the railway station to the office; in a restaurant (and often I would be asked if I was a reporter!). Whatever popped up in my mind would have to be written down. I find writing takes no prisoners if it’s in your mind it has to exit somewhere and if one doesn’t comply pretty sharpish, it fades away and is forgotten. Work produced ample opportunities to write fun little personal verses. If a colleague was having a bad day, I could write something to make them smile. Business acquaintances too would engage and respond to my verse, in verse. Which made work all the more fun and, sometimes, they would even apologise for not replying in the same vein!  Everything seemed now to be about writing verses, not just writing a memo in prose, but some notification of meetings or cancellations were rhyme written and, again, replies would come back in verse! See, everyone can rhyme! Earlier years would see me go to bed with a pencil and notebook and practically never sleep! I am learning to control it a little more than in past years. I won’t say I’m completely successful, that would be impossible. If that which is filling my mind is not written down then it is lost forever. This has been tested; I’ve had a verse(s) in my mind and thought that chanting it over and over during the night would ensure it would be remembered in the morning. Not so, I couldn’t even remember the subject, so that much I’ve learned. Even though I now leave the pencil and paper on a cabinet three steps away from the bed, verses still often, come in the middle of night and I have to write them down but, thankfully, it’s much easier doing it via the recording app on my phone!  The queue of ideas is never ending At times it feels like a tap that never switches off. Each new day brings a different set of subjects and so the writing continues, and you tend to become at one with whatever you’re writing about. It never occurred to me that I would be writing for so many years. Did I ever think I’d write so many? No. I thought one day I’d run out of things to write about, maybe about the 50th verse and that one day the verses will dry up. Touch wood, thousands of verses later it hasn’t happened yet. I am aware of the saying all good things come to an end, but my end has not yet come! Do I get tired of writing? Well actually, physically, yes I do. It’s a never-ending task to which most poets and authors of books can probably attest. There is always an idea in your head and before you can write it down another one is waiting in the wings eager to be noted. The unavoidable task of writing is logging all that is written!  The one about the loo rolls! I write to empty my mind of words to make room for the words I can see pushing past those I’m writing, so I think so there’s no time to enjoy. I do often sit while watching TV reading some of the verses and often wonder what the blazes was I thinking to write that (like the one about loo rolls!). But what I enjoy most and the best reason to write is seeing those who hear my readings, and knowing those who read my book smile and/or comment that they can relate to whatever they’ve heard, whether it’s romance or why toenails grow much faster than fingernails. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if it makes people smile or gives food for thought then it’s been worth writing!  Poetry seems to be within me for the foreseeable future, so I have (happily) learned to live with it and the constant buying and sharpening of pencils!. Poetry is my world along with music, spinach, dancing and cheese. To find out more about AngieD’s poetry, see her collections on our “Books” page. Two more volumes are scheduled for publication during Spring 2024. * For younger readers, shorthand was a system of speed writing. The modern versions can be traced to 1720, but it is known to have existed as far back as the 4th century BC. It is a way of writing that allowed secretaries, journalists etc to record the spoken word at the same pace as it was uttered, without missing any of it. Modern technology has rendered it obsolete. To find out more about AngieD’s poetry collections, click here. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.
 It is a sad fact that around 80% of people who start to write a book, never finish writing it. Why such a high dropout rate? It’s not easy to say as those that don’t finish don’t tend to talk about why they didn’t finish, but we can make a few assumptions which may not be too far off the mark. First there is the time factor. Writing a book is a very time consuming activity and when someone has competing priorities, such as work or family, something has to give and the thing that is easiest to abandon is writing.  Secondly, some people don’t actually realise that writing a book is quite difficult. They assume that the words will simply flow from their brains to their keyboard of their own volition and in no time at all there will be a 90k manuscript that is all ready to go to the publishers. That is down to a lack of research, of course. Anyone who spends even the smallest amount of time on social media groups dedicated to writing would soon see the posts from frustrated writers and would realise that writing isn’t anything like as easy as it seems. Then comes the realisation that writing the book is only a fraction of the work that is involved in producing a book. Once it is written it has to be edited, market tested (beta readers), edited again, proofread and then the biggest mountain is still ahead: either finding an agent or going self-published. That is enough to put the less motivated off the idea of finishing their book.  Which brings us to the biggest barrier of all for finishing the writing of a book: a lack of basic motivation. It is very easy to come up with an idea for a book. We can be inspired in all sorts of ways, including the “I’m pretty sure I could write a better book than this myself” we have all probably felt after reading a mediocre book. But the world is full of half-finished projects for which the explanation is that the person who started the project didn’t have enough motivation to finish it. Real writers are highly motivated. There can be no doubt about that. There are many reasons they are motivated, and we can take a look at some of them.  The most obvious is that they have a story to tell and writing it down is the best way of telling it, other than pinning someone in a corner and telling it to their face while they try to escape. I’m one of those sorts of writers. Once I have an idea for a story there is no way I can rest until it is written. Sometimes I’m halfway through writing one story when a second comes along and demands attention. It can be a real problem finishing the first story while the second one jumps around in my head trying to get my attention. I think that many real authors suffer from that problem, which is why they produce so many books at frequent intervals. They just can’t stop the stories from flooding out.  The second motivation is that people do it for money. If you are just starting out on your journey as an author, and the possibility of making a lot of money is what is motivating you, then brace yourself, because I have some bad news for you. 70% of all the books ever written never sell more than 100 copies. How motivated do you feel now? There are many reasons why they never sell more copies, and a lack of marketing is one of them, but it shows you what a tough industry you have chosen to enter. Of the remaining 30%, 70% of those will never sell more than 1,000 copies. To put that into context, you have to sell around 30,000 copies to make the equivalent of the “living wage” in the UK, which is about £20k p.a. at time of writing (about $25k or €23k).  Only the smallest percentage of authors will ever make more than the living wage from writing books and the mega rich authors are the ones that get their books turned into movies or TV series. Yes – that could be you. But before you give up your day job, ask yourself what the probability is. The vast majority of authors are the equivalent to the Sunday-morning-in-the-park footballers comparing themselves to Lionel Messi (or Joe Burrow if you are American).  For many authors writing starts out as a hobby; something they like to do to pass the time. The thought of actually publishing a book often doesn’t cross their mind. It is something suggested by someone who has read their “scribblings” as they self-effacingly describe them. Those people tend to be some of the ones in the 70% who never sell more than 100 copies, because they don’t understand that the writing is the easy part. It is the marketing that sells books and that is the difficult part. Thos sorts of people would much rather just keep on with the writing part, so their books never sell. Which is a great pity because they might be potential best-sellers, but no one will ever know.  For some people writing is cathartic. Writing allows people to express their emotions, especially negative ones. Getting things down on the page is a form of release. It can also provide insights into why people feel the way they do, so it is good for their mental health. I have met many authors who have told me that this is why they write. Many of those sorts of books become best sellers, because the emotions expressed are so authentic.  I have described just 4 examples of motivation for writing in this blog, one of which is actually built on a false premise. There are many more I am sure. Why not tell us what motivates you to write? Use the comments section below to share your story. So, if you are just starting out on your writing journey, ask yourself how you are going to keep yourself motivated for weeks, maybe months, on end while you work on your book. Then ask yourself how you are going to keep yourself motivated during the seemingly endless querying process. And, if the querying process doesn’t pay off and you end up self-publishing, ask yourself how you are going to keep yourself motivated while you market your book yourself.  I’d love to be able to answer those questions for you, but in the writing world there is no boss or team to help you stay motivated.
There is only you, the device you are writing on and, if you are lucky, a loved one who will keep you supplied with cups of tea and comforting words. But you aren’t really alone. There are thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of people in the world just like you. Join a writers’ group either in the real world or the virtual world, because they, too, can provide you with encouraging words. But it will still be down to you to do the rest and there is no one to motivate you to do it except you. If you happen to have some good motivational tips, please feel free to share them in the comments below. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  Having a great idea for a story is one thing, turning that idea into a book that people want to read all the way to the end is something else. Countless books end up as DNF (did not finish) and attract poor reviews because the author couldn’t keep their readers interested enough in what was happening for them to stay the course and finish the book. And a book that ends up as DNF means that its reader won’t buy the author’s next book. Then you have the books that readers did finish but didn't like, which also attract poor reviews. So, 10 simple tips to make sure your book doesn’t share that DNF fate and attracts good reviews. They aren’t complicated, but they do need to be at the forefront of the author’s mind as they write.  1. Invest time in your character building People engage with characters, not plots, so the characters are the most important part of writing. A good protagonist (or MC if you prefer) isn’t what is visible from the outside. It is what is on the inside that counts. We may be attracted to a person by their looks and style, but we fall in love with them because of who they really are, even making allowances for their flaws. In real life we don't fall in love with shallow people, so why would we do it in books? Create a pen picture for all your major characters. Start by giving you character a back story, beginning with their family and home life, through their education, their peer groups and their life experiences. These things shape their values and beliefs and those are the things that direct their behaviour. Your character has to behave consistently, in accordance with their values and beliefs. They may be forced by circumstances to “act out of character” at times, but that always creates a dilemma for them and is a source of internal conflict (see below). Above all give them emotions, so that readers feel those emotions and reflect them in their reading experience. If your character is moved to tears, your readers should be moved to tears too. If your character is laughing, your reader should also be laughing. You may not use a lot of the material that you generate in your pen pictures, but knowing how characters will behave in any particular set of circumstance means they can behave consistently over a lengthy story.  2. Create a meaningful conflict. Character + conflict = plot. The conflict that faces your protagonist is what the story is all about. No matter what the conflict is, they have to resolve it by the final page in order to complete the story and fulfil the destiny you create for them. Conflicts come in many different disguises and will depend very much on the genre in which you write. It can be the character’s internal struggle to overcome their own demons, or it can be an external struggle to overcome actual demons. Every story, even a comedy, is about overcoming conflict. But whatever the conflict is, it has to be of interest to the reader, so it has to be larger than life and something that readers are unlikely to experience for themselves, which makes it interesting for them  3. Create a meaningful consequence Failure to resolve the conflict has to have consequences, otherwise it is hard to inject drama into the story. The more severe the conflict, the greater must be the consequences of failure. In romance, failure may end with a broken heart. In a court room drama failure may end in imprisonment or financial ruin. In action adventure the consequence of failure is almost always death and/or destruction. Whatever the consequence, it has to match up with the reader’s own fears because that is what will keep the reader turning the page. Even though the reader knows the story will probably have a good outcome for the protagonist, that element of doubt is what keeps them reading, because they have to know how the protagonist avoids the consequences.  4. Motivate your character. In a story, as in real life, the protagonist has a choice whether or not to get involved with the conflict. A hero isn’t a hero because they are brave. A hero is a hero because they choose to run towards trouble when other people are running away from it. This means that the protagonist has to have a reason to get involved and this is where their values and beliefs come in. On the other hand they can’t get involved because they are compelled to by some outside agency. In other words, it can’t be just about the job they do. There must be an opportunity to walk away early in the story and even later in the story when things get difficult. Take a typical private investigator story. The PI gets involved initially because they have been hired to do so, but they can also turn the case away if they wish. They don’t know at that stage that their life may be threatened. Later, however, they find that their life is on the line if they continue the investigation, so they can choose to walk away. Why they don’t walk away is because of their motivation, not because they are being paid. The motivation has to be believable, and it must fit in with the character you described in your pen picture.  5. Invest time in creating your villain Authors often spend a lot of time building good protagonists, only to let themselves down with their antagonist. Nobody is born bad, so there must be a reason for them becoming the person they are. It doesn’t matter the genre, your villain has to have his or her own back story which explains their behaviour. Just as with your protagonist, you may not use all the material you generate in developing your antagonist, but if you understand them it will add depth to your plot and your readers will understand them.  6. Create smaller conflicts to add complexity and drama. Sub plots are what turns a short story into a full length novel and those sub-plots are created with small conflicts that get in the way of your protagonist dealing with the big conflict. Imagine our PI, mentioned above, who owes money to a loan shark, who wants his money back. The PI spends time during the story dodging the loan shark, trying to raise the money to pay him back etc then, just as the PI is about to solve the case and confront the villain, they are snatched off the street by the loan shark and are threatened with dire consequences if the money isn’t forthcoming within the hour. There is several chapters worth of drama available in that short paragraph. Sub-plots are also a great way to put your minor characters centre stage for a while as they try to help the protagonist deal with the minor conflicts so the protagonist can get on with dealing with the major conflict. This is what injects "pace" into a story; the peaks and troughs in the action that keep the reader turning the page to find out what happens next. However, the sub-plots and the main plot must interact with each other. If the sub-plot has no impact on the outcome of the main conflict it is redundant, and the reader ends up saying “what was that all about?”, which is not a good thing.  7. Do your research This applies to any genre but is particularly important when it comes to specialist settings such as police, medical or legal dramas and historical fiction. Readers of that sort of fiction know their stuff and they expect their authors to know their stuff as well. I’ll give you a real life example. I recently read a book set during World War II. The first third of the book was set against the backdrop of an RAF Lancaster bomber squadron. It became quite clear that the author knew nothing about the RAF. He had researched the Lancaster bomber and knew quite a bit about that (but not as much as he should have known), but he was clueless about the RAF in general. As I’m a former member of the RAF he had me wanting to throw my Kindle at the wall in frustration at the gaffs he committed, and he completely undermined his credibility as an author writing about that period. Needless to say, the book ended up as DNF. What made it worse was that most of what he needed to know he could have found on the internet and the rest from one of the several standard works about the RAF during WW2. The golden rule is always “write what you know”. As that is a bit limiting the next best thing is to work out what you don’t know and learn about it. Learn everything about it. Like character development, you may not use everything you learn, but at least you won’t make the sorts of gaffs the above author made, your credibility will be retained and your story will be more authentic. It’s easy to say “Readers probably won’t know that, so I won’t bother researching it” – but some readers will know it and they are the ones who will write the bad reviews of your book.  8. Don’t show off. This includes using multi-syllable words when single syllable words will do and using technical, scientific or jargon words that readers won’t understand, or including unnecessary detail just to prove you’ve done your research. Your readers don’t want to have to read your book while holding a dictionary in one hand and an encyclopaedia in the other. So, use language that the average reader will understand, even if you know all the technical or scientific terms yourself. There will be times when you need to use those terms, in context, but make sure that you provide your readers with an explanation so that they will understand it too. You can have the protagonist or another character acting in place of the reader and have the “expert” explain what they mean in simple language, for that character’s (and the reader’s) benefit. This is often done in cop shows where the Forensic Medical Examiner has to explain post-mortem results in terms the lay person (the viewer) will understand.  9. Know the ending before you start. If you know how your story is going to end, you can construct a “road map” that will take your protagonist to their destination. One of the biggest problem for “pantsers”, as some authors are called, is that in not having a map to follow, they get side-tracked, which is confusing for the reader and it is hard for the author to get the plot back on track because they have confused themselves. It is OK to deviate from the map, but if you don’t have a map to start with you won’t know if you are deviating from it.  10. Write for your readers. Many authors are advised to “Write for yourself first” and that is OK if all you want to do is write. But if you want to write a best-seller, you have to write for your readers. You have to know what they want and what they expect, and you have to fulfil their wants and expectations. If you do that your book will get good reviews, which will mean it sells more copies. But if you don’t meet those wants and expectations, you can only expect bad reviews, which will stop sales in their tracks. What the readers want and expect will vary from genre to genre, so you have to understand your genre inside out, and that means reading books in that genre. Read the best-selling authors in that genre to learn from the best. Once you have established yourself as a best-selling author, you can then “write for yourself” in the certain knowledge that your name will sell the book. But you have to cross that bridge when you reach it, not when you are just starting your journey.  And Finally
Nobody can guarantee that your book will be a best-seller. But if you follow the advice above, you will stand a better chance than those authors that don’t follow the advice. But if there is a key to success it is in the first three tips. Character, conflict and consequences. They are what make up the vital elements of the story. At least get those right and you are well on your way to writing a best-selling novel. Now that you have read this blog, why not take a look at our books to see if our authors have followed the advice that we have offered? Just click on the “Books” tab to see their work. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  In last week’s blog we focused on some of the positives of being an Indie author, so it is only fair that we now look at some of the negatives. But we here at Selfishgenie are positive sorts of people, so we really want to turn the negatives into positives too. It isn’t always possible, but we have racked our brains and we think we have found a few ways of doing that. We’re not going to go all “turn that frown upside down” cliché on you. But we do want you to know that there is nothing about the negatives of being an Indie author that you should ever feel you can’t do something about. So, here we go with the negatives of being an Indie author.  1. You have to edit your own work. Some people love editing, some people hate it. But it is an essential part of being an author. If you want your book to be the best version of itself that it can be, you are going to have to do some editing, because the first draft of any novel is never going to be perfect. The first step to editing your draft is to put it out to beta readers. Many Indie authors think this is the final step because they want approval for their finished product. It must therefore be quite demoralising when their beta readers tell them that the book still needs work. So, go to the beta readers first, get their feedback, fix what needs fixing, then go back to a different set of beta readers for a fresh perspective. The feedback should be less damning and more complimentary, but you can still expect some suggestions for improvement. Rinse and repeat until the beta readers have no more suggestions for improvement, or until you think the suggestions are no more than nit-picking. There is no point in putting a book out there and hoping it is good enough. This process provides a degree of certainty. If all else fails, you can find editors on-line and pay them to edit your book. Be very sure of what you are paying for, however. Particularly make sure you understand the difference between editing the text and editing the narrative.  2. You have to do your own formatting. True, but if you set up a template so that from the first word of your book it is already formatted correctly, you will save yourself a lot of time. You may want two formats, a draft version that’s double spaced for later editing, and a final version, but word processing packages allow for speedy conversion from one to the other. We encourage authors to compose in the final format, because we edit using word processors too, which means double spacing isn’t required. We even publish a formatting guide so that potential authors can impress us by showing that they have researched us and know what we are looking for from them. There really is no witchcraft to formatting:
These aren’t hard and fast rules but take a look at the books you love the most and see how they are formatted. Copy them and you won’t go far wrong.  3. You have to upload your books onto self-publishing sites yourself. This can be time consuming the first time you have to do it, but after that you can upload an ebook and a paperback in less than an hour. Some sites are more difficult to work with than others, but if you do anything they don’t like they will tell you why, so you can correct it before publication. If you get the formatting right in the first place, the problems will be reduced. Covers are most tricky, especially for paperbacks, because they have to take into account the thickness of the book when it has been printed. Investing in a package such as Book Brush and learning how to use it is well worth the money and the time.  4. You have to market the book yourself. There can be no doubt that this is the hardest part of self-publishing, and it is also the part that Indie authors spend the least time and money on. Sorry, but if you think people are going to stumble across your book by accident, you are fooling yourself. If you think that “word of mouth” will sell your book, you are fooling yourself. If you think that plugging your book on social media will sell your book, you are fooling yourself. Yes, both word of mouth and social media have a part to play in book marketing, but it isn’t as big a part as some people make out. Book marketing requires knowledge of how to do it if it is going to work. Unless you want to spend money getting other people to do it, it is far better to spend money on learning to do it for yourself. Actually, you don’t have to spend money on learning. There are free on-line courses on marketing that will teach you the basics. But you have to invest the time and the effort if you want it to work. Investment in yourself is an investment that always pays back – so do it. But at some point you will have to pay for marketing services, especially advertising. We have posted several blogs on this subject and you can find them all in our archive. But the golden rule is caveat emptor – buyer beware. There are lots of “businesses” out there that promise a lot but deliver little. Look for recommendations from other authors and check their sales rankings - because they don't lie. That’s one of the best ways you can use social media when it comes to marketing.  5. Readers don’t take self-published authors seriously. Unfortunately, there is little we can do about that sort of prejudice. Also unfortunately, there are a lot of poorly written self-published books that would seem to confirm this bias (though not yours, obvs). There are a couple of things you can do to try to change the minds of readers when you encounter this bias. The first thing to do is to challenge this view. There are a limited number of agents and an even more limited number of publishers, so author supply outstrips publisher demand. Just because an author can’t find a publisher it doesn’t mean their book isn’t worthy. It just means there is no space for them at the table right now. The other thing you can do is to point out the growing list of bestselling self-published authors. We gave some names in last week’s blog, so you can scroll down and see them. Saying something like “How do you account for the success of L J Ross, who is self-published and has sold over 7 million books?” will leave the prejudiced person looking for a way out of the conversation. If they reply with “they got lucky” then start reeling off a few more names and asking if they all “got lucky”. Or maybe they sell so many books because they are real authors who tell stories that people want to read. I can’t promise that you will change a lot of minds, but it is only by challenging prejudices that we eventually eradicate them. If all else fails, offer them a free copy of your book so they judge you on merit instead of pre-judging you.  6. You feel so isolated and/or you feel like an imposter.
Having a publisher comes with a support network that affirms your ability as a writer. And there is always someone available at the end of a telephone who understands what you are going through and is there with words or comfort. But just because you are self-published, it doesn’t mean you are alone. Join a writer’s group. Even if you live in an isolated community you can join virtually. Zoom has become a great boon when it comes to meeting other writers and discussing your problems with them – and being there for them to discuss their problems with you. Join on-line writers forums, for the same reason – but don’t try to use them to plug your books! I don’t recommend social media as your first port of call for support. While the vast majority of authors on it are supportive, it only needs one troll to start on you and it can ruin your day. Find the safe spaces and stick to them. But always remember – you are not alone. If the worst comes to the worst, you can always email us, even if you aren’t one of our authors. We support every Indie author, regardless. See our “contact” page for our email address. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so. |
AuthorThis blog is compiled and curated by the Selfishgenie publishing team. Archives
March 2025
|
RSS Feed
Copyright Selfishgenie Publishing 2023
Web Hosting by iPage