 Drafting my latest query letter, I did a little exercise. No, not twenty press-ups on the floor, but one prompted by this particular agency’s submission guidelines. As part of the marketing approach, I was asked to thinking of two to three (i.e. three) comparable books. That wasn’t a problem, but it started me thinking about what books I liked, the ones I returned to or was impressed, exhilarated or moved by so I drew up a list and put them into genres.
The results:
History
Historical fantasy
Romance (All of Georgette Heyer, Austen)
Urban fantasy
Literary fiction
Crime
Espionage
Thrillers/suspense
Modern/general fiction
Sci-Fi (all types)
Several combined genres, such as Lindsey Davis’ Roman detective, Falco, or JD Robb’s 2057 detective Eve Dallas, many contained a strong romantic theme e.g. Diana Gabaldon’s Highlander series as well as their core genre of historical fantasy adventure and some were European literary fiction with a fantasy element such as Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind.
So the answer seems to be a base of history, the next layer thriller/crime, a large dollop of fantasy, and flavoured throughout with romance.
Which is quite a relief as that’s what I write.
What does your reading history point towards? And are you surprised by it?
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 Two years ago, I wrote a post on research, setting out five steps to getting a best result. During the past two weeks, I’ve been following that same methodology to assess service suppliers and have narrowed my search to two possibilities.
I googled then sifted the results, gathered reports, opinions, financial data (from the sycophantic to the ranting) and filed the source URLs of the most valuable. (Note to self and others: never, ever fail to copy the URL to somewhere safe. You will forget the site name and you won’t be able to find it again. And you’ll kick yourself raw. Emailing it you yourself is pretty solid.)
But then you have to get down to the dirty stuff.
I used the net to dig out clients of the two suppliers and then wrote to them in confidence. If you do this, you have to keep that promise. Whatever the temptation. You cannot blat out what you have been told all over the web. Well, you could, but you mustn’t.
Why? Because one day, when you have become the Great Wise One, somebody might do it to you.
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 Now I’ve finished the first run through of edits on book3, I’ve finished my heroine’s story. I’ll leave her for 6-8 weeks at least until I even glance at her again.
So, book4. Yes, I’m acquainted with the main character and I want to tell her story. But that’s it. I need to let her run around in my head a bit, to have some adventures, get into trouble, struggle to get out, land in more – you know the rest. More than anything, I have to get to know her, to find out what she wants, what’s stopping her, what she has to do, or GMC, as creative writing tutors call it.*
My way of doing this is to write down 30 lines of plot. Less an outline, more of a wireframe as I like the 3D analogy better.
Line 1: The beginning – the initiating incident
Line 2: Impact and realisation
Line 3: The plan
Line 6: First enormous set-back (turning point 1)
Line 15: First glimmer of light (turning point 2)
Line 21: Gritting on in face of terrible odds and sacrifice (turning point 3)
Line 25: Despite developments, we might be getting there – the false dawn
Line 28: Catastrophe/black moment – do or die
Line 30: The end – the resolution and loose-end-tying-up
Not all there, but you get the idea.
Off now to fill in the missing lines and to release the muse…
Picture: My photo taken in the Naples Archeological Museum. More here
*Goal, Motivation, Conflict
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Drafting my latest query letter, I did a little exercise. No, not twenty press-ups on the floor, but one prompted by this particular agency’s submission guidelines. As part of the marketing approach, I was asked to thinking of two to three (i.e. three) comparable books. That wasn’t a problem, but it started me thinking about what books I liked, the ones I returned to or was impressed, exhilarated or moved by so I drew up a list and put them into genres.
