CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS

I thought I’d put together a guide as to how to I operate as an editor. Not everyone works this way, and there will be some editors who will protest my approach, but I’ve been working this way now for about 35 years in one way or another, and have always had amazing results, so chances are this is the way I’ll continue to work.   1. I try not to tell the writer a better way of achieving the effect he or she is attempting to create or tell him what he or she should think about

In the process of maturing as a writer, an individual will progress through certain distinct stages.   At first, a writer may be frustrated to feel that all of his or her writing is largely derivative: ideas depend very much for their power on the ideas of others; characters can be almost like clones of another author’s; plots can drift into being carbon-copies of plots that have been well done elsewhere. Even a writing style, when examined coldly in retrospect, can be seen t

There may be things we can learn from the wonderful world of comics when it comes to putting a story together. Comics obviously use both a plotter and an artist - though sometimes these are the same person - but the way that these two aspects of a story can work together can serve to illustrate certain things about a piece of fiction which we might not be able to grasp in any other way.   The classic method of producing a comic book story, as used by DC Comics for decades, st

There used to be a short segment on Australian television in the 1960s and 70s called ‘Why Is It So?’ It featured an eccentric scientist, Professor Julius Sumner Miller, presenting simple physics experiments to a live audience of children. I didn’t pay that much attention, except to Sumner Miller’s sometimes odd remarks or caustic wit, but the question contained in the programme’s title stayed with me: why wasn’t it phrased as ‘Why It Is So’ - a statement? Why did we have to

I recently had some correspondence with a wannabe writer who was discouraged, to say the least, by some feedback that he’d received from an editor. ‘Dazed and confused’ might be closer to the mark.   He had sent off a manuscript that he’d been working on for some time and which was approaching, he thought, the stage at which he might dare to send it off to possible publishers. But, like many writers in his position, he had yet to receive any kind of input from anyone other th

Where do your fellow writers hang out?   It’s much easier these days to establish communication with other writers. I remember back in the 90s, before the internet, when I was a member of a writers’ group in London. There were about eight of us, usually. We met once a fortnight, for a while at a central location, and then for a further period in each others’ homes. In either case, we had to travel, determinedly, no matter what the weather or how tired we were, usually using p

Each individual author probably needs a particular kind of beta reader, or more than one.   In broad terms, you probably need at least one beta who is familiar with your genre, and at least one who isn’t. The first will be able to point out genre-specific things (like your misuse of cannonballs in an Anglo-Saxon tale, for example) while the second may be able to indicate your overuse of adverbs, for example.   Here are some other characteristics to look for in beta readers. N

So you’ve written a book and you want to get it published.   Chances are, if you are like 90% of writers, no one has read your finished draft at all - except perhaps a close relative or friend. So the leap from that quiet and private world of the writer to the world of the agent or publisher is quite a large one, over an almighty abyss: how on earth do you judge whether or not your book is in any sense ‘ready to publish’? And how do you summon up the courage to launch it into

Here’s a paradox: I have a reputation for being a fabulous public speaker - but I loathe speaking in public.   If any circumstance arises where it looks as though I will be required to speak in front of even a small group, or if I am invited or obliged to address a larger group, I immediately break out in a cold sweat: my heart begins to beat faster, I feel slightly nauseous, and (most prominently in all of these symptoms) the palms of my hands begin to perspire profusely. (T