How to Write a Book | 1. IDEA (Part 1)

Hello, I'm Elizabeth Day, author and podcaster and executive producer of How to Write a Book. You might know me from my other podcast How to Fail or from reading one of my books, but this podcast isn't actually about me. It's about you. How to write a book is a podcast masterclass, a podclass, in fact, and over the next 12 weeks we'll take you from developing characters to experimenting with your voice and getting your finished manuscript ready for publication. We want you to think of us as your on-hand writing community, giving you the push you need to get started on that novel, memoir or piece of nonfiction you've always dreamed of writing. And even if you've no intention of writing anything, this is also a podcast that allows you to draw the curtain back on the world of books. Every week, you'll get an exclusive insight into how and why our most celebrated writers wrote the books they did, and what it really means to create unforgettable stories. Because we all have a story in us. But how do we get it out there? To guide you through the process I've brought together three amazing women. You're here from Best Selling Novelists, Screenwriter and 2024 Booker Prize judge, Sarah Collins. I think it's quite that we start with a moment of failure as well, because for me, accepting that failure is built into the whole process of writing a novelist is step number one. And we fail to fail to start. But now we shall start to fail. Former agent of the year at the British Book Awards, now Andrew, we get to take our collective wisdom, hopefully, and a lot of our sass and translate it into something that I hope will be actually really practical and help people create better books and have the confidence to tell their stories in the first place. And you'll hear from Charmaine Lovegrove, co-founder and MD of Dialogue, an inclusive division at Major Publisher Hashtag. I really am just so excited to talk about the craft and art of how to write a book. Our three hosts are absolute powerhouses. These are the voices you need to hear if you want to know anything and everything about books. They're also really good friends with each other and with me. So the idea is yes, we might be teaching you a new skillset, but you'll also get a seat at our friendship table. We hope very much you'll stay for the conversation and the laughs along the way. So now, without further ado, let me hand over to Sarah, Nell and Charmaine. Right, go on. Sarah and Charmaine, please introduce yourselves and bring in your silky voices to this podcast episode. Go, go, go. I don't know if my voice can be as silky as yours, but I'm going to try it. So I'm Sarah Collins. I'm the author of the Confessions of Franny Langton. I am very, very happy to be represented by Nell Andrew and friends with Charmaine Lovegrove and Elizabeth Day to powerhouses of publishing and really, really happy to be here to keep you company in the writing trenches because I've got personal experience, which I will keep banging on about how terrible they can be. I'm Charmaine Lovegrove. I am the managing director of Dialogue. It's the 12th Division of Passchette. We focus on inspiration, inclusion and innovation, bringing voices to the mainstream for readers across our society. And I love talking about literature, how it's created. I'm absolutely obsessed with my job and how we get books to readers and how we cheer on and support writers on their journey. Also, I'm really loving this idea of having that agent's perspective, having that author's perspective and then having that publisher's perspective because ultimately we're on different sides of this, but we're all coming together to make sure that the book is the very, very best that it can be. I'm Nell Andrew. I'm a literary agent at RML and I was agent of the year in 2021 and with me are an incredible array of these two brilliant women. I'm literally having a nerd gasm about how this is going to go. With the three of us. I'm talking about that. And nerd gasm. Absolutely. We're the girls who are sat at the front of the bus with our note pads ready to go. Oh, yeah. The typies. Oh, come on. Totally. And I never think of myself as a typie. I'm sorry. I just think that managing director dialogue and you don't think of yourself as a typie. At the top, what? Types star. Come on now. No. I'm always teasing Elizabeth at about our sort of collective head girl energy. I mean, we just have to order it. Exactly. And actually, we're going to be owning it left by and central in this episode. So how are we kicking this off? So today we're going to be discussing the very first part of this entire process, which is ideas where they come from how to have one. When is it good? When is it bad? What to do with it? The thing you need to do first, which is have an idea that's going to work. So let's get down to it, girlies. Let's start with a round table question, which is guys, where do you think the best ideas come from? I like the fact that the agent is taking charge already. I love it. Sit back and relax. I've got you. I feel comfortable. I need to be guided by you now. You know this. As an agent, I'm always incredibly interested in the inspiration for an idea. And what I find really fascinating is that so many different authors describe that moment in very, very different ways. You've got the Elizabeth Gilbert School of Thought. I think, ages ago, she was describing how ideas and stories come to you like standing in a cornfield and they're like news is on the wind and that the news either hits you because you happen to be in the right place at the right time. Or it goes and hits someone else because they're like 20 feet west or 30 feet south. And I thought that was quite a generous interpretation in the sense that not all ideas are going to come to you and not all ideas are meant for you. And on the other side, you've got Alice Walker, who I think wants to talk about writing the colour purple. And she talked about how she was sitting in a house and she heard the voices of Ceeley and Mr and Shug. And again, it was that notion that they came to her and she received it. And I think the notion of inspiration is that urge to act. It's an animus like I have to do this. It can't just be catering for something, servicing something. You have to be in a space to receive it, which means you have to be able to ingest what's happening in your cultural moment and create something unique out of it for something. But at the same time, it has to come from within you. What all writers talk about is the sort of living with characters and how the voices come to them. And I find that so fascinating how you not just have an idea, but the full formation and how you're almost sort of seeing them in this like full space. Because they're not real. They're not in front of you. You can't go and have a conversation with them. They are entirely from your imagination. And then you have to render that imagination as belief-formed people that are doing multiple things at the same time. And how they interact with each other. You can't just come up with an idea. You have to be utterly inspired. And then you have to do the research. You have to do the work. When the book The Confessions of Franny Langton really came to life for me. It was a combination of research and magic. So the research bit was that I had been reading a book about Francis Barber, reflecting on the fact that there was this deep, rich, black cultural life in Britain during the Regency. I had been this obsessive Jane Austin bookworm. But the black characters are ghosts and that aren't there. They're never in the center always in the margins. So reading that book triggered something in me. The story about how Francis Barber had essentially been brought from Jamaica as an 11-year-old boy, given to Samuel Johnson, the great philosopher and dictionary writer, and raised by him and become, quote unquote, beloved by him so much so that when Barber ran off to join the Navy, Johnson called on all of his contacts high up and got him brought back. And I just thought, what a wonderful little capsule of emotional entanglement right there to be in that house with this very wealthy, very intelligent Englishman, the kind of symbol of the power that has kept you on educated and to try to fight against that. And I thought, I'm going to do that with a woman. So that was the research bit of it. But then the magic bit of it came when I was starting to write. And I think, again, this is my manifesto for this pod class. I'm going to let people know that the writing is shit. Like, you know, I tried so many different hammy, derivative, like schlocky, awful, awful, false starts for this book. But Nell, of course, never saw. But then there was a moment where the thing that became the first line of my manuscript jumped out at me. And I saw, we talk about seeing and hearing characters. I saw my woman. And she was standing on the steps of this grand mafer mansion. And there was a fog. And everyone was against her. She was being arrested. And she wanted to say something. And the thing she wanted to say was, but I never would have done what they say I've done because I loved her. And that was the line that gave me Franny's voice. And so I made it the opening line of my novel. And guess what happened? Now, do you remember when our editor got hold of it? She said, I think you should chop this whole bit. If you read the book, you'll see that I actually put it in as a kind of little fake epigraph because I'm like, fucking hell, that line is staying in. This line means something to me. She said, well, you can put it in, but no one's going to read it. I'm like, I don't care. It's staying in. So it's actually not the first line of the novel, but it is a little sort of epigraph. That's when the whole book just presented itself to me, which brings me to my point, I think, which is that having the idea is not the problem. The world abounds with ideas. It's judging the idea. And from me, there are two aspects to that. One is technical and one is mystical. So the technical part of judging it is, does this have the kind of DNA of a novel in it? It does the premise have conflict? Do you have a protagonist or protagonist who wants something that is interesting and taps into something universal and they're going to have trouble on the way to getting it? But then there's that mystical thing. It's like that feeling when you're on a great first date. You've met this idea on Hinge and you're like, oh my god, this idea is making something happen in my stomach. But you've got to filter your own ideas and decide, has this really grabbed me? Does it have the ingredients of a story in it? And can I live with writing this for six months, a year or two years and day in and day out spending time with these people in this concept? So we've heard about how ideas can come to you, sometimes in unexpected and inexplicable ways. But how do we know if it's an idea worth pursuing? We pick up again with Sarah. Could I ask you both because people will want to know this as well. When in the process, do you know when you're looking at something that's on submission to you? If it's a good idea, if it's one of those ideas that you're going to fall in love with and you think you can sell? Is it with the pitch? Is it with the first chapter? Is it something else? How long does it take you to make that call? So maybe you should start. Obviously, I've been thinking about this quite a lot as a publisher and as someone who runs a publishing division because people come to me with their own ideas all the time and there's just this instinct where you're like, oh, tell me more, or you're like, oh, don't tell me any more, please stop talking. And it's so awkward when that happens, but also interesting to see how you feel about something in that moment. I would say that for me, I think that you can almost say anything, but it depends on how it lands. If it lands in a way that is intriguing and you have that moment, tell me more moment, then it's obviously a good idea. If someone's recoiling from your idea, it's not a good idea. Yeah, I love this idea about recoiling because I tell you, one of the things you have to develop as a novelist is an ability to recoil from all the ideas that people are constantly foisting on you without looking like you're recoiling because as soon as people know you're a writer, at least half of them will say, oh my god, I'm going to have to tell you my life story because there's such a great book in this and it's like being forced to sit listening to people's dreams. I'm going to be real. I'm going to be really real. I judge things based on the back of a bit. When you walk into a workshop and you pick up the book and you'd look at the back of it and you read the back and you put it down, that's them going, not for me. When the pitch comes in, I will pick it up, I will read the pitch and I will go, not for me. People might be literally gasping and horror at this point, but that's how people read. You read the back of the book. You look at the synopsis and you go, does this sound compelling to me? No. And in part, that's also because of how people write their pitches. I am always very much like, if you can't write a submission letter, I do not believe you'll be able to write a novel. If you cannot condense your notion of what this is down, in this one moment, when you, of all people who spent time on this, should know what this is. If you can't do it, then no. And the minute I saw your entry in the Lucy Cavendish prize, Sarah, and I saw your pitch for Fanny Lankton. I was like, absolutely 100%. Yes. 100%. It was a yes from me as well. That is so interesting. I mean, please keep feeding my inbuilt arrogance. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's what we're here to do. I'm going to say something kind of controversial here, but we love controversial. Yeah. We love that. I think you've got to be really deep you fucking arrogant. Do you? Yes. Yes. Yes. Hell no. Wait, what are you saying that writers are deeply fucked? Well, okay. I agree. It's not controversial. I think honesty is important. I'm going to, again, be real. I think this is kind of a controversy that I find in a lot of female writers more than non-female writers, but I think because I do, I think there's a level of I need permission to move forward with this. I need to outsource and make sure am I allowed to do this? I think you just have to be really arrogant because I'm sorry, I think our industry is based on a little level of arrogance. Oh, because in a way, writing is a very arrogant thing to do if you think about it. Like, it's very nature. Let's be real. Let's be real. You have an idea. It comes to your inspired by something, whether that be a painting, whether that be an experience, whether that be a conversation, whether that be an article, you could be inspired by anything, whether it's just anything that's happening. And then you're just like, from that kernel of an idea that flicker of a thought, you are then like characters come and then their voices and you only you can hear them and you're like, I can hear them and then I'm going to write it down, I'm going to write it down on a page and that is really, really difficult, but you're like, I'm going to do this and I'm going to take myself away from all the other things that I was doing before in my life, from my friends and my family and my work and all the other things and you take myself away and I'm just, because these things in my head, I can't stop hearing them. These people, their personalities, their drive, their ambition, all of that, which point most people would say this is a mental illness. But this arrogant has been not being an asshole, arrogance is an act of faith. Arrogance is an act of faith that what you have to say someone needs to hear and the problem we're going to have to dive into a little bit is when is the idea shit and you need to not be so arrogant and receive information that this is not for you. And when it you have to keep going, this whole industry is based on a level of arrogance of being like, I like this. I think you'll like it too. Based on what? We don't have any data. My husband finds it insane. He's like, how do you guys know? And I was like, what do you mean? No, because I know, because we know, I'm not a tourist. I'm a native. I'm enmeshed in this world. We don't just read the books that are published. We read the books that don't get published. I spoke to Ned today. It's like, I spend a lot of time basically reading bad books to find the good books. And it's true. That's kind of what we do. So I think you do have to be a little bit arrogant, but an idea is a promise. It's a promise. It's, I am asking a question and I'm setting up a level of expectation. And then the reader decides, have you fulfilled the promise and have you lived up to the expectation? And that's where things move on. And then it's my job to tailor what you've done to make it as attractive as possible when I send it on to Charmaine. But I mean, how many times do agents probably call you up and go, "I've got this book and they start pitching." And your eyes just go, "Jesus Christ." Especially with a division and an imprint like mine, it's very clear. Like, our messaging is very clear of what we want. I'm very vocal in the industry about what I want. And part of that is because there's a specificity to what I'm looking for. So for example, I really love multi-generational narratives. I love family dramas. I'm really into, and I think I publish really well books that have that sweet spot between the crossover of literary and commercial. The vanishing half by Britt Bennett is a really good example of that. I want to give that book a shout out because it's one of the best books you've ever published in my opinion. I just, it's such a good example of that. Exactly. Exactly. And that's my kind of book. It just has all of the elements. And we'll go through those elements in later episode. By the time it gets to me, then the agents know me, they know my team, they know all the editors in the industry, and they're making a list of all the people that they think would like these books. So I'm not really getting that many books that I just think know immediately. And I know that they've taken the time to think about me as a reader. So I'm doing the same thing that Nell's described, which is reading the synopsis. And the synopsis has just got to hit me. It's just got to hit me. Like that pitch letter has got hit me. And sometimes I write to agents. And I'm like, this pitch letter is so incredible. I cannot wait to read this. And I'm going to clear some space. But then I think the thing that happens is the living up to the promise. Did those characters do what you said? Did that world building work in the way that you allude to when I was reading the synopsis? Bring me in and keep me there. And then I'm home. You know, it's like, I just want to be lost in that story. Nothing counts matters. What I really loved about being a bookseller when I was 16 and then owning a bookshop later was the fact that you were taking people into a different world for kind of eight to 12 hours of their lives. And I just felt that was such a huge responsibility. I think all my friends are going off and doing sort of big jobs and earning lots of money. And I was like, I just want to work in a bookshop and I just want to help people find a different way into a different world and books the best way of doing that. When you think about those eight to 12 hours, then you have to be quite confident that this story is going to keep you there and that these characters are going to keep you there. And the world is going to keep you there. I take that experience from being a bookseller and use it in my practice as a publisher and as an MD. And the focus of all of that is that kernel of an idea that you are going to be illuminated by the world that's on offer on promise from that blurb. And when the writer gets that right, it's magic. Absolutely magic. And then when that happens on the page, we all has to be woven together. There's a lot going on. When you read a synopsis and you're like, it's very clear to me what this writer wants to do. I've got goose bumps just talking about it right now, like so intoxicating. When you're just like, I am in. What are they going to do next? What are they going to say next? Tell me more, tell me more, tell me more, tell me more, tell me more. We've spoken about how an idea not only needs to have promise, but it needs to live up to that promise in the execution. And we've also chatted about how authors need to have a little arrogance to keep going. Just a little mind. So now we're going to look at which ideas are for you and whether some ideas are best left for other people to pursue. Here's now. Can I ask a controversial question? Another controversial question. Ms. Controversy. We're trying to help people wrap their stories and you're like, and chills, viola. That's what she's saying. Please God, when I go, let that be part of my eulogy. Please God. And it depends on whether or not it's true, but it's depends on whether or not it's true. I feel like for most women, most days, it is true with we show it or not. But I'm going to ask a question about the moral quandary around ideas because I've been thinking about this a lot since maybe you're going to do this podcast. I loved memoirs of a geisha when it first came out. I loved that novel. I adored that novel. I still love that novel. Yes. I know where you're going with this. Of course he did. Basically. Oh my God. She's she's going. But I'm going to go there. But at the time, it's written by Arthur Golden. And he was sued by a geisha who said that he had used events from her life. To put an insert in chapters in the book. And he paid her an undisclosed amount of money. It's hard because I still think that book is a fantastic book. And it opened me up through an entire world and culture. I had no idea about. I was like 15 years old when I first came to it. It was thoroughly illuminating and everywhere she performed to me. Now my question is when an idea is meant for you or not meant for you. And there will be people out there who will think, okay, I've got this idea, can I write it? Should I write it? And I guess that's the question. When is it can and should and when is the answer? No. When is there a moral center where it's like you should not touch that idea? Yeah. This is a question that writers talk about a lot amongst themselves. And I've actually noticed through hearing from some of my writer friends about this that agents and editors will stare people away from ideas as well, which is interesting to me that there is this sense that when you're being advised about the sort of market, I know Charmaine doesn't like that word, but you know, will this sell that part of the decision making processes are people going to accept you as the teller of this story. And I guess I have two answers. As a writer first and then as a human being second and they are different answers as a writer, of course I believe anyone should be able to tell any story because that's what I want. When you were talking about memoirs of a Gaysha, I was thinking about Sacred Hunger by Barry Hansworth, which I absolutely love. And it was one of the most sort of illuminating books about the experience of enslaved people that I had read at the time. I think I read it in my 20s, maybe early 30s written by a white man. There are examples of this being done well and it is essential for people to be free to write what they want. That's my writer answer. But my answer as a human being is more complicated because nothing can be separated from the question of power. And I think that the question of power really affects how people respond to who is writing what. It's just this imposition of power, including power in relation to storytelling because let's be honest about this now. I am a black writer and it has been a thorn in my side since the day I tip told into the publishing industry that there are these narrow expectations about what I can write. You know, everyone expects me to write about race with a capital R, but then white men write about everything. And that for me is a kind of metaphor for who dominates everything in the world, who has got dominion over not just the animals and everything else, but the words as well. And if you choose to use that power to then inhabit historical suffering, I do think that's a bit difficult. If you choose to do it, you've got to examine your motives for doing it. And you have to be prepared for I think engaging in people who respond to what you have done with your notions of their suffering. I think that is the very minimum sort of moral contract. If you can't do that, then I think you've got no business writing in that vein. Kit DeVol, who's a writer, I really admire, I think wrote about this and she said something like don't dip your pen in someone else's blood. That's a sort of golden rule. Me reading a white person on the topic of being black, then there are all kinds of things that come to that scenario that have to do with the question of power. That's a very long way of saying there is no straightforward answer to it. For me, it's different in my job again because my focus for the division is around inclusion. I'm not getting submissions from people who don't have a history or culture or lived experience that is shared with the protagonists or narrative or that, but but this idea of who gets to tell the story is my big thing coming from the Caribbean, for example, we come from 450 years of slavery and then we come from 250 years of colonialism and for all of that and before that as African peoples, we have been telling stories and those stories were passed through enslaved peoples, through colonized peoples and then to the shores of Britain when we came here as part of my grandparents' generation in the 50s as part of the Empire Windrush and the call to rebuild post-war Britain from the Queen. And the idea that the only way that you can tell a story is through this very narrow understanding of the 17th, 18th century European novel is really, really reductive. Bernadini Veresto talks incredibly eloquently on this, saying that when people say to how are you still going to write stories about race? But they're so much to say. They're so much to say, how do you even heard it? It's all about that. It reminds me of that interview who asked Tony Morris in that question. It's just such a misguided question. To the question was why do you just write about black people? Yeah, something like that or are you going to write about white characters next time? It's so misguided and just to finish on that, I think for me, the point is, is whilst we're making these shifts in the industry to ensure that we have this inclusion behind the scenes, then what we want is for people to be coming with their ideas and really digging deep and really getting those narratives on the page and telling us about what we haven't yet heard. It's really important that we're even doing this pod class. And I hope empowering people that your ideas are valid, your ideas are valid, but what's required is the vulnerability to understand that it might not be right. And that doesn't mean that you can't write what it means is that it might not be what can sell. It might not have as big an audience as you might have imagined, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't keep trying and keep writing. That brings me to my favourite, one of my favourite quotes ever, which is by Ellie Viesel, and he said God made man because he loves stories. And I love that quote so much. I think that is it in a nutshell. We are the stories that we build for ourselves, the stories that we tell other people and then the stories that we see cultivated in a mass cultural platform. And we're going to leave it there for part one. What better place to pause than on that quote? God made man because he loved stories. And there are so many stories to tell that we're making this into a two part episode. In part two, you'll hear about whether there's any such thing as an original idea, how you know when an idea is ready to share with others. And there'll be a listener exercise to help you get your creative juices flowing. Plus the perils of perfectionism and Sarah's orgasm at a fall. Join us next time. Until then, goodbye. Thank you so much for listening and please do remember to like and subscribe and share a link with everyone you know. This is a Daylight Productions and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast.