CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS

Three problems then: 1. As writers, we deal in intangibles - strange, emotional, illogical fabrications which even we don’t completely understand. It’s hard to quantify such things, so we agree, as a society, to pay a more or less nominal fee for the experience beforehand and we ‘take the plunge’ as readers, buying a book or movie ticket and journeying into the unknown world that has been created for us by someone who will probably forever remain a total stranger, the autho

How do authors get published? To acquire some sort of answer to that all-important query, we have to dig into the question a little. What do we mean when we say ‘published’? Traditionally, and in most of our imaginations still, that meant somehow obtaining enough attention from one of the big publishing conglomerates who would then take our much-loved manuscript off our hands and set about the business of getting it into the hands of readers. To our great relief, we imagi

Apart from the level of vocabulary - whether a set of words is too simple, average or too advanced for a corresponding set of readers - there is another approach to vocabulary which is important for writers. This is the range of the words used, by which I mean the lexicon of a particular genre or type of book. Tolkien was particularly careful in his choice of words, being a philologist by profession. His most famous work, The Lord of the Rings, contains several sub-lexico

There’s another potential obstacle that arises between the writer and the reader which is occasionally so obvious that it is overlooked, and that is vocabulary. The word ‘vocabulary’ stems from a late Middle English word which traces back to the Latin vocabulum, from vocare ‘call’, perhaps indicating a teaching method whereby students had to call out words and their meanings in order to learn them. General vocabulary has declined over recent decades, most would agree, but

Lots of telling, rather than showing, pushes the reader out of the story and slows things right down; showing, rather than telling, pulls the reader into the story - in fact, right into the characters’ heads - and speeds things up. That’s one way to control the pace of the story. Both ways are means to ends. At some points in Leo Tolstoy’s classic novel War and Peace, the author ‘tells’ to the degree that he departs entirely from relating a tale featuring characters having

You have probably heard the maxim ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ when it comes to writing fiction. I’m reading a book at the moment (which shall remain nameless) that tends to violate that piece of advice. I’m about a third of the way in, and by far the largest part of the narrative so far has been describing events almost like a historical chronicle, with very little dialogue or character interaction. It gets away with it to some extent because the ideas are intriguing, and also because

There was once an ad, a social media group, an online magazine and a book. The ad’s main advantage was that it travelled far and wide, but its disadvantage was that, as it moved very quickly, and didn’t stay in one place for more than a second or two, not many people noticed it and it didn’t get much feedback. It also cost money. The social media group, on the other hand, tended to linger in places a little longer, getting to know a few of the locals, and encouraging them

What does a marketing campaign need in order to accomplish its goals? Well, the first thing it needs is goals. These have to be defined and realistic. Many writers, setting out to market their books, have only the vaguest notion of how they would define ‘success’ in marketing. Do they want overnight stardom? Or a slowly building fanbase? Or notoriety? Or prize-winning recognition? But sitting down and working out what goals one wants to achieve brings to the fore several fa