Guidelines For Plotting A Novel

Elizabeth Weld

Coordinator at Poisoned Pen Press , located in Scottsdale. Arizona, where she has accumulated firsthand experience with the steps leading up to book publication. While her advice in this interview arises from her specific position at PPP and may not be representative of conventions followed by others in the publishing industry, her unique "insider" perspective sheds informative light on the ins and outs of submitting a novel for publication, a process many novice writers find mysterious. A:   I'm the Submissions Coordinator. This means that I read every query that comes into the press and decide which ones fit our guidelines and might have promise as a book for us. Then I communicate with the authors and let them know whether or not we're accepting their query. When we accept their query, they send me their entire manuscript as an attachment along with a synopsis. I look at the synopsis and up to about 30 pages of the manuscript and either reject the manuscript or pass it on to our readers. That's basically my role in the process. Incest of any kind. Murder of children; child abuse. Abuse when it's a pivotal point or supplied motivation all by itself. Serial killers when their point-of-view is part of the narrative. Serial killings or psychopathologies that depend on exceptional gore or weird twists to work. Drugs, including drug abuse and/or smuggling of illegal substances. Thrillers, which we define as a duel or escalating contest between two characters or groups. Thrillers usually include global stakes and a world stage of conspiracies, espionage, and intelligence such as CIA, MI5, NSA, presidents and high government officials, military force or technologies, international drug rings, terrorists, or mafia. A "soft thriller" may interest us if the story is tightly contained and local, not political or global; for example, a jewel robbery, theft of a painting, or action packed into a small location among its residents. Vampires, witches, werewolves, paranormals, aliens, future realities, and New Age psychics as protagonists do not fit. Those are all themes that don't interest us, except of course when the book is written so well we don't care about the themes anymore. In terms of practical guidelines, we seldom work with writers outside the US because of expenses, we don't look at simultaneous submissions, and we don't consider writers who have self-published. We really look for debut authors. A:   The press does a lot of historical mysteries and a lot of female sleuths. Our guidelines say we're looking for: Excellence in writing. Originality. Plotting. Voice. Setting. Character. Dialogue. We publish a wide variety of mysteries, actually. Personally, I look for good characters, protagonists who I can get into a relationship with. A lot of submissions have protagonists who have no business investigating a murder. Those bug me. But I look for voice. I can usually tell in the first five pages if the voice isn't going to work for me. The number of queries accepted also varies from day to day. Out of five queries, I will weed out three for very basic reasons: they don't follow our guidelines, they don't fit with our list, or they are written so poorly that I don't trust the writer's command of the language. There are also occasional queries that I would qualify as insane, which I also reject.

Evolution of an Ongoing Series Part 2: Lessons Learned | GENREALITY

Last week in Part 1 , I talked specifically about the Kitty books, and how they evolved from the first book that I pessimistically assumed would be the only one, to the nine-volume series, with several more on deck, that it is today.  (The ninth book, Kitty’s Big Trouble , is out tomorrow!)

This week, I’m talking about general lessons I’ve learned over the course of writing the series.  Keep in mind, I’m specifically addressing ongoing, open-ended series here, which is different than a series that tells a story over multiple volumes.

I think the most important thing to remember about writing an ongoing series:  the guidelines for how to write a good book don’t change.  Each novel needs to be a novel, with a plot, characters who grow and change, interesting writing, and a cohesive narrative.  You don’t get a free pass just because you’ve written about these characters eight or ten previous times.  You can’t assume your readers will be sympathetic and let you get away with sloppy writing, plotting, characterization, etc., just because they love you and your characters.  Some of them might.  But the chances are too good that this eighth or tenth book will be someone’s first introduction to your world — to your writing, period.  What then?  Do what we all should be striving to do, all the time:  write a good book.

I consistently get two questions about writing series, and both of those I think are critical issues to consider:  how to make sure each book has a stand-alone story, and how to deliver backstory.  As I mentioned, I’m working on the 11th Kitty novel.  How do I bring new readers up to speed, or remind old readers of what came before? (Since not everyone can do what the really obsessive fans do, which is reread every book when the new one comes out.)  And how do I make each book interesting in its own right?

This one’s very important to me, because I’m sensitive to the plight of the person who habitually picks up a series in the middle.  Because I’m one of them.  Plus, I really want readers to feel like each book is a satisfying experience.  How to do this:  I pull in stories from outside the characters or ongoing storylines.  I’m always, always looking for new ideas to bring in.  I can’t keep going over the same internal and relationship plots over and over again.  It’s one of the things that drives me crazy with other series, and I try not to do things that drive me crazy.  Love triangles, endless on-again off-again relationships — I get bored.  I get to a point where I just want the characters to get over themselves.  This doesn’t mean neglecting the characters’ personal stories and arcs entirely.  I have to stay true to the characters, no matter what happens.  But I can explore the personal stories through a variety of external conflicts.

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