by Dave Haslett
Side panels and boxes
Another good way of breaking up solid blocks of text is to highlight (i.e. duplicate) key points in side panels and boxes. Make the text larger and bolder than the regular text. Again, these make your book more visually appealing. And, of course, they fill up space, so your book seems longer than it really is.
This is a useful trick if your book is a few pages too short.
A better approach is to make the boxed text different from the main text. It still breaks up the text – and takes up space – but it now adds value too. You could use the boxed text to give:
extra or related tips
examples
explanations
historical facts
statistics
meanings of technical terms and jargon words
anecdotes
quotes
suggestions for further reading
details of relevant organisations
product information
mini biographies of people mentioned in the text
and anything else you can think of
And did you see what else I just did there? Bullet points! I used them here because I felt it was the best way of presenting the information. But, again, they take up more room than regular text, break up solid blocks of text, and create a sense of space on the page, making the book more visually appealing and easier to read.
Guaranteed plots
This technique is definitely cheating, but plenty of professional writers use it so there’s no harm in giving it a try.
If you want to write a bestselling novel, where better to find a plot than in another bestselling novel? Don’t go for the latest novels, of course; pick something that was a bestseller a few years ago. Look for something that topped the charts for several weeks and made the author a lot of money, but wasn’t a massive blockbuster that everyone still remembers today. It’s even better if no one remembers the author now.
You should be able to find plenty of these in your local library, or you can pick them up cheaply from second-hand bookshops or online.
Once you’ve chosen your former bestseller, strip out the characters, dialogue and description, leaving just the plot. Change the setting, but keep the structure of the story as intact as possible.
If you’re borrowing the plot from a novel about horse racing at Ascot, you could make your book about greyhound racing in Walthamstow, elephant racing in Kenya, tortoise racing in Texas, or any other kind of racing you fancy writing about and think will sell.
The subject or theme needs to be similar to the original, but not identical, and the locations should be completely different. Remember to pick subjects and locations you know well, as it reduces the amount of research you need to do.
Now that you have your plot, subject, theme and locations, add your own characters and dialogue, and replace the descriptions. You can reuse characters from your other stories if you like. Your book should be finished in a matter of days, and you’ll have written a fantastic new novel based on a plot that has already proven successful.
Some reviewers might compare your book with the one you based it on, perhaps saying it has a familiar feel to it that they like. They won’t know your secret, of course. They might even say yours is better. And there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be.
Quick, a clone!
In a similar vein, you could clone a current bestseller. If a recent book has proven hugely successful, publishers will be looking for more of the same as quickly as they can get their hands on them. You can use the techniques in this book to write what they’re looking for in double-quick time, beating other writers who might be thinking of doing the same thing.
Don’t waste time deliberating over the characters and setting; that just gives everyone else the chance to catch up. They should be instantly recognisable to anyone who’s read the other book anyway. Change enough of the details so you can’t get sued for plagiarism, but make sure everyone knows who the characters are meant to be. Then dive straight in and write a new story – that’s very similar to the last one.
You’ll probably be writing this book for the money alone. If that’s the case, I suggest you write it under a pen name so no one will accuse you of cheating if you become famous under your real name. (On the other hand, a little bit of controversy can be great for sales!)
Characters reunited
If you don’t have the time or inclination to invent a new set of characters, why not reuse some from your previous books and short stories?
Many writers use the same characters in every book. Series featuring the same characters tend to sell better than standalone titles anyway.
If you enjoy creating characters, you could introduce a new one from time to time – perhaps one or two in each book – while maintaining your core set of main characters. Perhaps your group of crime-fighting heroes encounters a different villain in each book.
If you’re more interested in creating heroes than villains, you could stick with one villain for the entire series and have different heroes try to take him down – a new one in every story. The heroes might succeed at the end of each book – or at least they’ll think they have. But somehow the irrepressible villain will bounce back at the start of the next book, and a new hero will have to save the day.
Perhaps the bullet didn’t actually kill him.
Perhaps he busts himself out of jail or someone breaks him out.
Perhaps a steel beam saves him from being crushed when the building collapsed on him.
Perhaps he wasn’t in the building when it burst into flames, or he was able to shelter in the basement.
If you don’t like creating new characters – or can’t be bothered – have the same hero take on the same villain in every book in the series.
You could even plot the whole series in advance, working out the different problems the villain causes, the different tactics the hero and his crew use to take him down and put things right, and how the villain escapes or survives each time.
You could kill off one of your core characters occasionally. Or you could lead your readers to think he’s dead for a book or two, then bring him back. Or perhaps you could send him on a special mission and bring in a replacement to cover him in the main series while he’s away.
Don’t permanently kill your main character.
The character that goes off on a special mission could feature in a spin-off series. He might return to the main series from time to time with new scars, new skills, and amazing stories to tell. But only those who’ve read both series will know exactly what he’s been up to.
The replacement character who joins your main series to cover for the absent one could become permanent if he proves popular. If he isn’t popular, he can leave when the other character returns. Or you could replace him with someone more likable.
As well as reusing characters, you could reuse settings and locations from your previous books and short stories too.
If you get bored of writing about the same places all the time, perhaps the main character in your spin-off series could visit interesting and exotic places during his special missions.
Write a series (or not)
As we’ve just seen, many novelists write series of books featuring the same characters. Their readers delight in following the characters through various adventures – and they’d be horrified if their favourite novelist wrote anything else.
The good thing about this is that you only need to come up with the basic idea for each story. Each novel should pretty much write itself – and come together really quickly – because you already know the characters and the sorts of things they’ll do and say in any situation. If you always set the stories in the same place, you’ll also know the locations inside out, which will save you heaps of time too.
If you don’t want to write a series, here’s a slightly different approach that still uses the same set of characters. The main character in the first book doesn’t have to be the main character
in the next one. He can still feature in the story somewhere, but this time he might be the main character’s friend, boss, neighbour, informant, personal assistant, landlord, lodger, lover … or just a minor character in the background. One of the other characters from the first book can take over the leading role this time. And a different character can take the lead next time around.
Another way of avoiding writing a series, but still reusing the same characters and locations, is to make each book a self-contained unit. The story doesn’t follow on from one book to the next. You’ll need to resolve all the issues by the end of each book, and never mention any of the events in that book in any of the other books. Each book stands alone, and the “series” can be read in any order.
You’ll need to give this careful thought though, because it means your characters can’t change in any way. They can’t move house, change their cars, change their jobs, change their hairstyles, get married, separate from their partners, develop any long-term illnesses or disabilities, or die. If any of those things happen in one of the stories, you’ll have to find a way to undo it by the end of that story so that everything is back to normal in time for the next one.
Some TV series such as The Simpsons do this in every episode – although they occasionally break this rule and mention one of Homer Simpson’s past jobs.
If you write a “proper” series, you won’t have any of these restrictions. The characters and settings can change and evolve from one book to the next. But your readers will have to read the books in the right order for everything to make sense.
Recycle your waste
You could go a lot further than just reusing your old characters and locations.
Most writers have a stock of unpublished work: half-finished books, short stories, articles, poems, and so on. You might have these things too. If you belong to a writing group, or if you’ve ever taken a writing course, you probably have pages of practice exercises, character studies, descriptions, short stories, articles and fillers. If you do warm-up exercises before you start a long writing session, you might have pages and pages of writing you could reuse.
Dig them out and read through them. Remind yourself which scenes you were proud of at the time, and which characters you loved or hated. Look for settings you described so well that you can still picture yourself there. Look for work that has stood the test of time. And look for work that could be reused or adapted with just a few tweaks.
You might have given up all hope of ever selling these things – or of even finishing some of them. But you can rescue the best bits and put them into your new book.
Panning for gold, strip mining and weeding
Sometimes you’ll read a novel and think to yourself: what a brilliant story. You might like to use that idea – or a similar one – in a story of your own. The good news is there’s nothing to stop you from doing this: ideas can’t be copyrighted. The big question is: what exactly is the idea? What is that one piece of sheer brilliance you have to have in your book?
Ideas can’t be copyrighted, but their implementation can. You need to be careful about how much of the other writer’s story you reuse. If several elements are recognisably the same, you could get into trouble.
To find out what the idea is, you’ll need to strip away the original story layer by layer. Some writers compare this to weeding a garden. I call it panning for gold or strip mining. You keep taking out all the things that are definitely not the big idea, until the only thing that’s left is the single golden nugget that made the original story so brilliant.
You could start by thinking about the story’s overall theme or genre. Perhaps it was a bit too romantic for your liking. Maybe the jokes didn’t work for you. And you’d have liked it more if it hadn’t had all those clowns and circus freaks in it. So strip out the romance, the bad comedy and the circus setting. They obviously aren’t what you’re looking for.
Perhaps the original story was set in Germany, but you think it could have worked just as well anywhere else. So you can discount the location.
What about the characters? Think about how each of them affected you and what impact he had on the story. Discount any that didn’t do anything for you, or where someone else would have worked just as well.
Eventually, you’ll be left with the one thing that made you tingle when you read it. You’ll know when you’ve found it – mainly because it’ll be the only thing left.
It might be a concept, a theme, the quality of the descriptions, the sense of rhythm, the style of writing, or something else. It could be absolutely anything.
Once you’ve found your golden nugget, it’s up to you to decide what you’ll do with it. You could reuse it exactly as it is, change it to make it work in a slightly different way, or turn it around and give it a new twist. If you change it, make sure it still makes you tingle in its new form. And then start adding back the layers you stripped away. But this time use your own characters, plot, theme, setting, dialogue, and so on. Or, as we saw earlier, you could reuse those things from your earlier pieces of writing.
Public domain and copyrighted works
Seventy years after an author’s death, the copyright on his work expires and it usually falls into the public domain. This means you can do whatever you like with it. You’re free to reuse his ideas, characters, plots, settings, descriptions, dialogue, themes, or anything else – even his actual words.
Copyright usually expires on 1st January after the 70-year copyright period has expired.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930, so the copyright on his work expired on 1st January 2001. Other writers have published heaps of new Sherlock Holmes stories since then. They all feature Holmes and Dr Watson, complete with their characteristic mannerisms, and the stories are written in the same style as the originals. Most of them include an authentic recreation of life in Victorian Britain, where the characters in the original series lived. I’ve read several of these stories, and most of them are just as good as the originals.
If you’re going to do this sort of thing yourself, check that the work you’re borrowing from is definitely in the public domain. Occasionally, an author’s descendants will find a loophole in the law that lets them extend the copyright – especially if they’re still making money from them.
If you want to reuse work where the copyright has not yet expired, you’ll need to get permission from the author, his agent, his publisher, or the administrators of his estate. Some will happily give their permission, some will refuse outright, and some might ask for a fee or a percentage of your book sales – it’s entirely their decision.
Tracking down the copyright holder can be tricky. But you must never publish your book without their permission, as you might find yourself in court and saddled with a hefty fine.
If you can’t find the copyright holder or you receive no response to your enquiries, you’ll have to wait until the copyright expires. Or you could base your book on a different author’s work, or change the parts you were intending to borrow so they can no longer be recognised as coming from his book.
If the copyright has expired, you don’t need to seek permission. The previous copyright holder can no longer refuse permission or demand a fee.
ideas4writers books
This definitely isn’t cheating, but it will give you a significant advantage over other writers. I’ve published thirty-five volumes of ready-made ideas you can use in your novels, short stories, screenplays, non-fiction books, magazine articles, and more.
There are plots, characters, settings, and even complete storylines covering the most popular genres. Many of the ideas come with examples and variations, as well as suggestions for quick and easy ways to come up with your own.
There are also tips and inside secrets on writing, publishing and selling your book, avoiding and overcoming rejection by agents and publishers, and all sorts of other things – more than 5,000 ideas in total.
You can see the full list of books at ideas4writers.com, and bu
y them in PDF e-book format.
You can also buy them from Amazon – they’re all available in the Kindle Store and a few are also available in paperback. The intention is that they’ll all be released in paperback eventually.
There’s also another companion book to this one, called The Fastest Way to Get Ideas: 4,400 Essential What Ifs for Writers. It’s stuffed with story starters and prompts designed to get your creative juices flowing.
The next step
Is it cheating if you get other people to help you write your book? No, of course not. We’ve already seen a few examples. But you can go a lot further than that – as we’ll see in the next chapter.
15. Cheating (part 2) using other people
It’s good to let other people get involved in your writing. They like to help. They like to feel that they’ve contributed to your success. Most importantly, as far as this book is concerned, it reduces the amount of work you have to do, so you can write your book faster.
This chapter is all about getting other people to help you with your book. You might need help with your initial idea, brainstorming, planning and organising, research, writing, editing, publishing, marketing, artwork, or something else. Perhaps you just need someone to talk to when you get stuck. Whatever the case, plenty of people will be happy to help you. All you have to do is ask them.
So if someone offers to check your facts for you, or do some research while he’s in town, or put you in touch with an expert he knows, or do a spot of proofreading, make sure you take him up on it. After all, many hands make light work.