Your Novel: How to Get Started
BY Discoveries
7th Dec 2023
CBC and Curtis Brown are proud to be partnering with the Women’s Prize Trust and Audible to run Discoveries for a fourth year. This unique writing development prize and programme offers practical support and encouragement to aspiring female novelists of all ages and backgrounds, from across the UK and Ireland.
We’re delighted to share these highlights from our special Discoveries 2024 webinar, featuring novel-writing insights from author and founder of the Women's Prize Kate Mosse (chair of judges for Discoveries 2024), winner of Discoveries 2023 Paige Cowan-Hall, author and Discoveries judge Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, CBC’s founder and Discoveries judge Anna Davis and Curtis Brown literary agent Ciara Finan. Plus, we’ve included a link to watch the full event recording for free – available for a limited time only.
Read on for advice on how to plan and write the opening 10,000 words of a novel, how to enter Discoveries 2024, and the importance of persevering even when you're faced with rejection.
PAIGE COWAN-HALL ON WRITING HER WINNING DISCOVERIES ENTRY…
I think like most people who end up writing, I'd written on and off from childhood. But I hadn't seriously considered writing properly again until I was about 26, I started to think about it again and I did end up submitting some writing pieces. I did Spread the Word and I was longlisted for Penguin’s Write Now. And after Spread the Word in 2020, I decided to take time off to finish my novel. And I lost all confidence. I suddenly self-doubted every single word I wrote. And so I took a step back from it because it really threw me. And then a friend of mine suggested Discoveries.
I didn't submit until the last minute because I wasn't sure and I'm so glad I did.
THE PANEL ON PLANNING & THE FIRST DRAFT …
Anna: Some books may need a lot more planning for you to feel confident to work on them. And others may be books where you can follow your nose a lot more. Some people will plan absolutely everything before they write and that's what they need to do. And then other people will barely plan at all.
My approach is to build up some things that you need to know. Maybe you know where you are going to end and maybe you know a lot of things about your protagonist and your main characters. You should hopefully know what it is that you want to write about. Think about the things that you need to know before you start out. It’s useful to know what kind of voice and tense you are writing in, because if that has to change in a redraft, that is a massive change.
Figure out some of the things about your book that will help you to make progress. A plan is not something that you have to have entirely before you start. A plan is something you can move in and out of. You can make a plan which is a bit sketchy and then you can start to fill in more information.
Rowan: My biggest piece of advice is to make it manageable whether you do time or words. For me, when I'm writing a first draft, I have to write a minimum of 250 words a day. And if my mind is flying and I want to write more and I can, I let myself, but because it's 250 words (which is half a page), if I'm not inspired, it's fine. If I think it's terrible, it's fine – it's not that much to delete.
Equally, if my life is becoming overwhelming, it's hard to argue I couldn't sit down and still write 250 words.
And that means that A, those add up, eventually I got a book out of it… I got three books out of it.
But B, I succeed at my goal. Whereas if I told myself I'm going to write 5,000 words a day, I might write 5,000 words, but a lot of days I wouldn't and I'd be left with the residue of the feeling of having failed. It would be the same if I promised to write for five hours, it would be unlikely.
I would say it's much better to have a small goal that you are actually going to get to, if not a hundred percent of the time, 99% of the time, 95% of the time, than something that sounds great but is actually going to trip you up after a week.
Kate: There are many wonderful ideas out there and there are actually many wonderful writers, but you've got to actually write it and it's very easy to get tangled up in the first three chapters and never get any further. I always use the example of, it's like starting to decorate your house before you've got four walls and a roof. You need to build the whole house, which is your first draft, before you know really what you are working with in editing.
Ciara: I think sometimes when you have an idea first and you get all consumed with it, that can sometimes be the most romantic part of the process. The stuff we read for Discoveries doesn't have to be perfectly polished. We're looking for things that are promising. Have fun with it and let yourself experiment a bit because what's the worst thing that can happen if you enter?
Be consistent and even getting a few hundred words down a day or 20 words down a day, by putting something down consistently up until 8 January you’ll have a substantial amount that you can enter.
ON GENRE & WRITING WHAT YOU KNOW
Rowan: I don't think you have to write what you know, but I think you have to write what you want to know. It could be something that you have a lot of knowledge and information on. It could be something you're really excited to research and find out more about. That research might be reading books, but it might be speaking to people who have a certain lived experience and spending real time with them and listening to them.
And so that by the time you've written the book, you do know it, not necessarily because you've lived it, but because you've taken the time to build out that knowledge. It might be that knowing it is immersing yourself in the world of reading fantasy and getting to know what the world of the literature you're writing into is.
There are lots of different ways to know something.
Ciara: If you are writing a book that is clearly crime thriller or fantasy, the readers of those genres are going to be like experts in their fields, so they will pick up on say, worldbuilding that is sparse or overdone compared to a reader of another genre picking their one book a year in that they normally read.
The genre question comes up a lot when it comes to writing cover letters. I think having a vague idea of where you see it going is good. And if you're writing in a particular genre, say that, but I wouldn't get bogged down at this early stage. Let the story come out and figure out genre when you've got something to work with.
Right now, when you're at the planning stage or you're a few thousand words in, let the story progress on its own without the where it sits on the bookshelf question looming over you, because that's quite intimidating to think of when you're just trying to be creative.
ON THE SYNOPSIS
Anna: When it comes to the synopsis you submit for Discoveries 2024, we don't want you breaking into a cold sweat over it. We know that you are at an early stage of your writing. We want a page that gives us a bit of a sense of where it's going. Because sometimes when you start to read something and then you read the synopsis, it's actually going in a completely different direction than maybe we assume from what we begin to read. It is helpful for us to know where it's headed
If you are struggling with it, we have a blog, which has got a whole load of tips on how to write a synopsis, what to put in, what to leave out, etc.
But do remember we are not judging you on the slickness of your synopsis.
ON REJECTION
Rowan: I want to say I've had my fair share of rejection. You know what? I remember most of the things I've won, I've forgotten most of the things I've been rejected from. I know it happened and if I can sit here, I can try to pull them up in my head. I know I felt really terrible, but I've now forgotten, it's fine.
And the things that have helped me – whether that's because I've won them or just because I edited something and thus it became better and ended up somewhere else – have stayed with me and stayed part of my life.
There's absolutely nothing to be afraid of submitting.
You can tell your best friend and commiserate if you don't to get in, or you can tell no one and no one will ever know, and it will be fine.
Kate: Since Discoveries started some people have entered every year, and then some went on to be longlisted in the third year. This is part of process; we all work on our writing over and over and over again to make it better. Try not to see this as your one chance, but as a chance to help you invest in your own writing and take it seriously, that is the most important thing that you can do.
And resilience is incredibly important because even if you are then taken on by an agent, even if that book is then sold to a publisher, it might fulfil everything you want from it, and it might not.
All we can do as writers is to be proud of our work and not lose the joy of writing because of what happens to it afterwards.
This is a lesson that we all have to learn, whether it's for Discoveries or anything else.
Best of luck preparing your submission to Discoveries 2024. We’re so excited to read your work!
Do you have questions about Discoveries 2024, the writing process or what agents are looking for? Discoveries 2024 judges Anna Davis and Jess Molloy will answer your questions during a special Instagram Live on Thurs 14 Dec, 1.00-2.00pm (GMT). Make sure you're following us on Instagram (@curtisbrowncreative). Plus, you can send in one question in advance using the form below.