Your Novel: How to Get Started
BY Discoveries
27th Nov 2025
CBC and Curtis Brown are proud to be partnering with the Women’s Prize Trust and Audible to run Discoveries for a sixth 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 2026 webinar, featuring novel-writing insights from international bestselling author and Discoveries judge Dorothy Koomson, bestselling author Laura Barnett, Curtis Brown agent Jess Molloy, and her client Rosie Rowell (winner of Discoveries 2025).
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 2026, and the importance of silencing your inner critic when you’re in the early stages of a first draft.
ROSIE ROWELL ON WRITING HER WINNING DISCOVERIES ENTRY...
Rosie: As most people who write will say, I wrote a huge amount as a young person, and then life just got in the way! Last year, I just decided to do a Curtis Brown Creative course. It was the three-month Writing Your Novel course. And I just thought to myself ‘I've got some time. I love having a creative outlet. I’ll just write something.’
So I wrote a first draft of a book, and I just couldn't let it go. And that’s when I came across Discoveries and decided to use it as a deadline for myself. I often find that the publishing industry can feel extremely impenetrable from the outside, and I think that Discoveries is an amazing way of getting some advice and just having people to share the process with.
ON WRITING YOUR OPENING
Dorothy: I think that the most important part of your book is the first three pages. Finish your 10,000 words, get them to the best shape you can, and then go back and rewrite the first three pages. Your job with the first three pages is to make sure that whoever picks it up, doesn’t want to put it down. This is why I like a prologue. You can put something in from further in the book at the very beginning to draw people in, and then you go back and explain who’s who and what’s going on.
ON KNOWING WHEN TO PURSUE AN IDEA
Dorothy: When I have an idea, it’s usually something completely random. I like to ask myself ‘What if?’ questions about the story, and when I get to about five ‘What if?’ questions, I realise that could become a book.
Laura: I think the central question is definitely a good fracture test for any novel. For me, it’s more about a kind of seduction that the idea performs. I want it to feel heady and exciting and like meeting a friend or a lover or just someone who really gets you. As with getting to know someone in real life, it takes time to get under the skin of an idea. But when you feel that frisson of excitement about an idea, I would take that seriously.
ON SILENCING YOUR INNER CRITIC & NAVIGATING IMPOSTER SYNDROME
Jess: I think that a lot of fear and imposter syndrome around writing comes when you're thinking too much about the end product. If you were someone who loved to write as a kid, think about the fact that there was never that critic. You were writing because you love to write. And that's a really nice thing to go back to when you're struggling. The process should be enjoyable, and it shouldn't always be about that end goal.
ON WRITING AUTHENTIC DIALOGUE
Laura: When you’ve written a scene that is fairly dialogue-heavy, go back over it and rough it up around the edges. By which I mean, make sure that nobody is speaking too often in complete, grammatically perfect sentences with no long errs and no ellipses. That just isn’t realistic in real-life conversations.
Jess: My number one tip is to always read out loud, because you immediately find all of those moments that should be contractions. I would also say, give yourself permission to be a really good eavesdropper! The more observations you can make about real-life conversations, the better.
ON WRITING A SYNOPSIS
Jess: It’s not so much about your themes, it’s about your plot. We’re only seeing the first 10,000 words, we want to know that you’ve got the ability to keep the story going and to bring it to a satisfying conclusion. That’s not to say that what goes into the synopsis has to stay there, but it’s helpful for us to see that structure and to see the outcomes for each character.
If you start from a place of distilling your novel down to one or two lines that really sum up what is at the heart of the novel, and then make that bigger and bigger, that can be really useful. Hopefully then, you’ve got everything that needs to go in there, but not the extra baggage which is going to weigh it down.
ON SUBMITTING TO DISCOVERIES 2026
Dorothy: My biggest piece of advice would be just tell the story in the best way that you can, and be authentic. Be true to yourself. Think of the 10,000 words as your playground. Don’t be scared about the synopsis, the ‘About Me’ box, anything else, just focus on telling your story in the best way that you can.
Laura: Make the most of the time available to you. If you only have 20 minutes when you’re sitting on the bus on the way to work, use those 20 minutes. I never ever write for a 12-hour luxurious stint. Make the most of whatever pocket of time you have, and then be consistent with it.
Jess: Be brave in your writing. We have so many wonderful entries and the shortlist is a finite number. And if you don’t get onto it, continue to be brave and continue to write. Even just entering your work into the world of Discoveries is super nerve-wracking. But without stories, we don’t get books and we don’t get to connect with one another.
Best of luck preparing your submission to Discoveries 2026. We’re so excited to read your work!