by Dave Haslett
Use the minimum number of characters you can get away with. Don’t spend time creating new characters, and preparing their background histories, motivations, goals, hopes, fears, and so on, if you can avoid it.
If one character can perform several functions, do it that way rather than having lots of separate characters with minor roles.
Think of a bodyguard who also works as a doorman at night, coaches the school football team, delivers the church service on Sundays, and cuts people’s hair for a hobby.
You could have given those roles to five separate characters. Instead, you now have one very interesting character who can play a much bigger part in your story. And you’ve saved yourself a whole heap of time and effort.
Naming your characters
You can give your characters any old names to get your story started. Give them their actual names later when you know them better. You could even call them by their roles for now: Hero, Lover, Best Friend, Villain, Boss, and so on. Or use their descriptions: Lonely Co-worker, Hunky Friend, Gossipy Hairdresser, Nosy Neighbour. Or you might like to think about the film adaptation of your novel and use the names of the actors you’d choose to play each role – but don’t forget to change them before your book is published.
The novelist Robert Rankin sometimes gives one of his characters the same name as a celebrity. But he says something like “not the famous one” or “not the one you’re thinking of” throughout the story.
Other methods include picking names at random from telephone directories, books of baby names, gravestones, and film credits – which are particularly good for foreign names.
A good way of picking surnames is to use street names from the London A–Z street guide.
Passion
Here’s a quote from the writer Ray Bradbury that captures what this section – and indeed this whole book – is about. It also re-emphasises what we discussed earlier about never editing your work until the whole thing is finished:
I do a first draft as passionately and quickly as I can. I believe a story is only valid when it is immediate and passionate; when it dances out of your subconscious. If you interfere with it in any way, you destroy it.”
One point I’d add to this would be to put an equal or greater amount of passion into creating your outline. But you’ll still need plenty of passion when you write your novel, of course, otherwise it will come across as dull and lifeless.
I’ve found that when I write a novel, it goes through four passionate stages:
The passionate idea – which you coolly evaluate and expand upon. This is what drives you to write the book in the first place.
The passionate outline – which you coolly revise and hone before writing the first draft.
The passionate first draft – which you coolly revise and edit to fix all the problems and create the second draft.
The passionate third draft, where you add extra levels of energy, emotion, excitement, conflict, tension, humour – and, of course, passion.
No need to rush
If you think writing a novel in a month is challenging, spare a thought for the hundreds of brave – or foolhardy – people who enter the International 3-Day Novel Contest each year. The contest runs from the 1st to the 3rd of September.
Is it even possible to write a masterwork of fiction in just 72 hours? Well, yes, it is … kind of. But they cheat a bit:
they’re allowed to prepare an outline in advance
they don’t have to produce a polished piece of writing, just a rough first draft
they’re allowed to work in pairs or groups
the average word count of each entry is less than 25,000, whereas a commercially published novel would be a minimum of 60,000 words.
You could use these cheats too – and a whole lot more. In fact, I positively encourage it. Chapters 14 and 15 are all about cheating.
The next step
In the next chapter we’ll look the fastest ways to write non-fiction books. Feel free to skip ahead to Chapter 13 if you’re only planning to write novels. But if you stick around, you might learn a thing or two and pick up some extra tips.
12. Fast non-fiction
In a non-fiction book, the quality of the information is what really counts. It helps if it’s well written and fun to read too, of course. But your book is worthless without complete accuracy, meticulous research, and at least some information that can’t be found in any competing titles.
Sell it first
If you’re seeking a publisher, don’t write a word of your book until you’ve secured a contract. Focus on researching the market, coming up with great ideas for lots of books, preparing outlines and synopses for them, and submitting query letters and proposals to publishers.
Some people recommend writing one or two complete chapters to give potential publishers an idea of what the finished book might look like. But I wouldn’t even do that yet. Wait until a publisher says he sees some potential in your idea and would like to see the sample chapters. Then write them. Don’t worry that you haven’t written them yet; he won’t expect you to have. In fact, he’ll probably have his own ideas about how the book should look and what should be in each chapter. If you’d written any of it before contacting him, you’d have to write most of it again to meet his requirements. If he eventually turned you down and another publisher expressed an interest – and had different requirements – you’d have to write it all again. That’s a massive waste of time and energy that you could have put towards other projects.
Getting a publisher is no easy task anyway. Even if you’re a brilliant writer, they might accept just one out of every twenty proposals you send them. And, of course, it all depends on your experience and qualifications; the market and demand for the subject; the quality of your ideas, query letters and proposals; your writing style; and so on. And you need a huge amount of luck too.
If you’d written twenty complete books and then found that no publisher would take them, you might have wasted years of your life – perhaps even your entire writing career – and not made a penny.
If you’ve already written your book, don’t worry; you can bypass the traditional publishers and publish it yourself. But even if you’re planning to self-publish your book, it’s still important to research the market for it first.
Who is it aimed at?
How many people are likely to be interested in it?
How will you let those people know about it?
How many people are likely to buy it?
Do they buy a lot of books on that subject?
How much do the other books cost?
How will your book be different and better than the others?
There’s a lot of work to be done before you write a single word of your book. The most important part is to make sure there’s a big enough market for your work and that you’re able to reach it.
If you’re absolutely sure this is the case, go ahead and write the whole book. We’ll look at the fastest ways of publishing and selling it in the companion book The Fastest Ways to Edit, Publish and Sell Your Book.
Are you an expert?
If you know enough about a subject that you could teach it as an evening class or workshop then you could certainly write a book on it. If not, then you still have some learning to do.
There’s nothing wrong with needing to learn more about your subject. It increases your expertise and marketability as a writer, and it gives you more material for your book. If you’re particularly interested in the subject, you’ll be keen to learn as much as you can anyway. And the more you know about it, the more books you can write.
If your expert knowledge comes across in your writing, you should also sell a lot more books.
What if you aren’t an expert?
Let’s say you’ve spotted a gap in the market. People are looking for a book on a subject you know a little about, but not enough to be able to write a book on it. You know it would sell really well, but it would take you far too long
to learn everything you need to know.
In this case, the fastest and most sensible option would be to find someone who’s already an expert on the subject, and see if you can persuade him to work with you.
Start by looking for people who currently teach the subject. Check the evening class schedules at your local college, and ask the teachers at local schools and colleges, as well as those at other schools and colleges in the wider area. They might not be interested in working with you themselves, but there’s a good chance they’ll know other people who might be. You could also try the lecturers and professors at your nearest university – or any university in the world that teaches that subject. Or look for someone who works in that industry.
If they edit or write for the industry’s trade paper, journal or magazine, they’re more likely to be interested in working with you.
Ask your friends, family and colleagues to help you with your search. If there are magazines that cover the subject, get hold of some copies and see if any of their writers would be a good match for the book you’re proposing.
Take your search online too. Whatever the subject, you’ll find plenty of websites, forums, blogs, podcasts and Facebook pages and groups dedicated to it. You should be able to find plenty of experts, teachers and enthusiasts through these.
Look out for gatherings of experts and enthusiasts: seminars, exhibitions, conferences, conventions, fairs, festivals or trade shows, for example. A day at one of these might provide you with all the knowledge and material you need to complete your book, as well as plenty of contacts.
Once you’ve found your expert and persuaded him to work with you, there are a few more issues to deal with.
You’ll need to discuss :
how you’ll work together
whose name(s) will go on the cover
how disputes will be settled
how the royalties or profits will be split
who will pay for the costs, including the cover, editing, printing, marketing materials, advertising
how you’ll promote the book
and so on
You should agree all of this, put it in writing, and both sign it before you start working together. It will save a huge amount of time, frustration and heartache if anything goes wrong.
Broad or narrow?
As we saw earlier, some subjects – such as world history – are far too large and wide-ranging to fit into a single book. You could write a one-volume overview or an introduction for beginners. But if you want to cover the subject in depth, you’ll need to split it into sub-topics and make each one a separate book.
Let’s consider gardening as an example. You could start by writing a beginner’s guide aimed at first-time gardeners. That sort of information would fill a book nicely.
But then you might decide to write a more comprehensive version for experienced gardeners. While that’s a great idea, you’ll soon realise that it would take thousands of pages to cover everything you want to say.
Fortunately, gardening is an easy subject to divide into separate topics, and writing a book about each of them should be straightforward. The topics might include:
Garden tools and their use, maintenance and repair
Trees and hedges
Shrubs and borders
Fences, gates, decking, and other woodwork
Patios, paving, walls, barbecues and other stonework
Lawns
Flowers
Vegetables
Ponds and water features
Pests and diseases
and so on
Your extensive knowledge of gardening could easily fill an entire bookshelf. And if you use the techniques in this book, you should be able to write the whole lot within a year or two.
So, what’s your specialist subject? How big is it? How many different topics are there? Could you come up with enough material on each topic to fill an entire book? If not, could you combine several smaller topics to fill a book? Would those topics sit nicely alongside each other?
Non-fiction books don’t have to be big. Many single-topic books are basically just booklets with 24, 36, 48 or 64 pages. They don’t have spines, just staples through the centre. They can still sell really well though. There’s a also huge market for short e-books that cover single topics without any filler and fluff.
It’s worth spending a day finding out what books are currently available on your chosen subject.
Are some topics already well-covered?
Are any of them not covered, or badly covered?
Could you write a better book, or a more up-to-date one, or add new information?
Could you bring together information that’s spread between multiple sources and difficult to access?
Could you approach the topic from a different angle?
Could you aim it at a different audience or market – such as Gardening for Girls, Gardening for the Disabled, or Gardening on a Tight Budget? (And don’t forget its companion title Big Budget Gardening.)
Remember that you don’t need to be an expert on every topic. You can collaborate with experts who specialise in areas where your knowledge is weaker.
Adding value to your book
It’s worth discussing your book with other experts even if you know the subject well. For example, you could ask them what they’ve learnt about their subject that books, courses and training manuals never mention; things they wish they’d known when they were starting out; and things that would have saved them a great deal of time and heartache if only they’d known them sooner.
This will provide you with lots of fantastic material for your book, much of which won’t be available anywhere else. Hopefully you’ll also hear some lively and amusing anecdotes that you can include too. After all, if you’re going to write a book, you want it to be the best on the market.
Consider putting a resources section at the end of your book. They’re quick and easy to produce, and add significant value. Some of your readers will find them the most useful part of your book.
The resources section could include:
A bibliography.
A list of the books, magazines, newspaper articles and web pages that you found most useful when you were researching your book. You could also include the books and other publications that you mention in the book’s text. Books: give the title, author, publisher and year of publication.
Articles: give the title and author; the name of the newspaper, magazine or website where it was published; and the date of publication.
A recommended reading list.
Books, magazines, websites and information leaflets that will help your readers learn more about the topics you’ve covered.
Useful contacts.
People, organisations and groups readers can contact or join.
Product recommendations.
Give more details about any products you mentioned in your book, including contact details for suppliers or manufacturers.
Software recommendations.
Tell your readers where to get it, and perhaps include a simple tutorial to help them install it and get started.
Adding value to your book like this will make it easier to sell, especially if you can show potential readers how much more they’re getting for their money.
Non-fiction books should always have a table of contents and an index so your readers can find the information they need quickly.
Give your readers what they want
When people buy a non-fiction book, they’re usually trying to find out how to achieve their goals with little or no effort on their part. This is especially true for self-help books.
Someone with poor drawing skills, for example, hopes to become a brilliant artist just by reading your book – without doing any of the practical exercises in it.
These readers may be somewhat deluded, but they’ll still buy your book if you tell them it includes things like:
amazing short-cuts
time- and money-saving hints
inside secrets and tips of the trade
zero-maintenance solutions
Include as many of these as you can come up with … but not too many, otherwise your readers will feel overwhelmed. It’s a fine balance!
Some readers “complained” that there were too many tips and techniques in the first edition of this book. Perhaps I should have removed some of them this time around. But no – I’ve added even more.
It might hurt my sales, but it’s a much better book (in my opinion).
What those readers really meant was there was too much new information in it – or at least it was new to them.
Most readers only want a small percentage of new information. I would aim to make just five to ten percent of your book new material. The rest of it can simply remind them of things they already know. This reassures them that they’re on the right path. They’ll learn something new, so your book is worth buying, but you won’t take them too far out of their comfort zones. Those who are new to the subject will also find it a gentler and more enjoyable read.
The biggest advantage of this from our perspective is that it reduces the amount of research and innovation you have to do. But there must always be something new in your book, so even the most experienced readers gain something from it.
It’s up to you – and the subject – whether you concentrate the new material in a single chapter or spread it throughout the book, interweaving it with the more familiar material.