Advice

HOW TO WRITE GENRE FICTION

By Chaz Brenchley

To begin at the beginning, we do I suppose need to define our terms. There is a case – and it’s a strong case – for saying that all fiction is genre fiction, in that it all occupies a slot in the writer’s mind, a place in the literary landscape defined by those books that it resembles or draws upon or seeks to displace. “In the great tradition of...” is a label not limited to the popular or commercial shelves; self-consciously literary publishers use it as much, if not more.

It’s an interesting debate, and we may revisit it later, but let’s not go there now. For the purposes of this piece, ‘genre fiction’ shall be taken to mean the interesting end of literature, all those varieties of fiction that are shelved separately under their own generic brands, crime and science fiction and fantasy and horror and so forth. The stuff that’s quarantined to the gloomy bays at the back of the shop, or else shifted wholesale to another floor; the stuff that spawns its own separate shops and independent dealers, that breeds such enthusiasm among its fanbase that they cluster at conventions and give their own awards and publish their own fanzines and overload the internet with reviews and analysis and argument. The best genre fiction is all about passion, engagement, experiment, risk; Anita Brookner it ain’t.

You could of course leave the word ‘genre’ out of that previous sentence, and still have a statement that was wholly true. The qualities that distinguish good writing are universal; they are neither exclusive to nor exclusive of any type of genre fiction. I once heard Marghanita Laski divide all fiction into ‘literature’ and ‘trash’, but that’s simply ignorance. Myself, I cling to Sturgeon’s Law in rebuttal. Theodore Sturgeon was an American science fiction writer (and fantasy, and horror, and westerns – but he’s mostly known for his SF, which was hugely influential on the genre through the fifties, sixties, seventies), and his Law states that sure, ninety per cent of science fiction is crud – but then, ninety per cent of everything is crud.

So then – the argument runs – if there is no clear literary distinction between mainstream and genre, if these measures of quality and crud are universals, why do we need a separate guide to writing genre fiction? Why help to ghettoise work that may transcend its ghetto, that may well deserve wider exposure than those gloomy bays at the back of the shop? Again, it’s an interesting question, and it does deserve an answer. My sense is this: that there are absolutes, storytelling values that apply to all fiction, unmindful of its category; and there are also specifics, traditions and expectations that have arisen out of a hundred years or so of conscious writing for a particular and selective readership. Like attracts like: genre readers tend towards communities, and any community develops customs that acquire the weight of law. While I’m all in favour of iconoclasm, you do have to know the rules before you can break them effectively. So while much of what I say here will apply to all forms of writing, my intention is to focus on those areas that distinguish genre from the mainstream, and sometimes that distinguish one genre from another.

What are my qualifications for holding forth as if I knew it all? Largely the exhaustion of experience: I’ve spent the better part of thirty years as a professional writer, working almost exclusively within the borders of genre fiction. I’ve written romance, crime, thrillers, horror and fantasy; I’ve written for children, teenagers and adults; I’ve written short stories, short novels, long novels, poetry and plays. Genre tends to be cyclical, in both quality and popularity, and I’ve been around long enough to watch all my favourite genres through at least one complete cycle, from massive to unsaleable and back. Ten years ago, no one would publish historical fiction; right now it’s in a really exciting phase. But historicals breach my first rule, my working definition of genre, in that they’re not commonly winnowed out of mainstream fiction to be shelved separately. In part, this is because of that same cyclical nature. History was already in decline as a genre in the early eighties, when Waterstone’s and Dillons were revolutionising British bookselling. There wasn’t enough around – or it wasn’t selling well enough – to justify its own section, so it was subsumed into general fiction. This is perhaps easier anyway where you can argue that it’s more a mode than a self-sufficient genre; ‘historical fiction’ not only covers a range from Booker-winning literature to unashamed commercialism (see above, under ‘Sturgeon’s Law’), but it also runs cross-genre. There is historical romance, historical crime, historical science fiction and historical fantasy; you could go on subdividing for ever, and you have to stop somewhere. On the other hand, from the bookseller’s point of view, the only point of genre is to help people find books they’re likely to buy. People who read historical fiction tend to behave just as other genre fans do, they go in looking for more of what they like, and they find it easier if the kind of thing they like is all shelved together. Under that rough-and-ready definition, then, historical fiction counts.

Or in other words – for the length and breadth of this article, and no further – genre is what I say it is. Categories are sometimes confusing, often frustrating; it has been said of my own work that my crime books are really horror, my horror books are really supernatural thrillers and my fantasies are historical fiction written with a twist of weird and a crime sensibility. Fun though it is, I don’t encourage anyone to emulate me in this. It’s rarely a good idea to move from one genre to another; it’s a worse one to blur the boundaries within a single book. Of course there are exceptions, and of course the boundaries shift as the genres grow and develop, but best not to push the envelope until you’re safely inside it. The boldest and most experimental of contemporary writers tended to set their first books securely at the heart of their preferred genre. Conversely, I have a friend whose manuscript was widely admired by half a dozen senior editors, but bought by none of them because it fitted no known label. They didn’t know where to put it or how to pitch it, so they felt they couldn’t sell it. That was ten years ago, and the situation is far worse now. It used to be the editors at any publishing house who decided what books they took on; these days the marketing department has at least as loud a voice, if not louder. If I say nothing else that’s useful to you, this is fundamental: focus, and know your market.

A genre is never built around a single coherent formula, “spaceships = science fiction, therefore science fiction = spaceships”. Rather it’s a composite, many individual writers whose work accretes around a few core themes, then reaches to absorb others, grows in an unexpected direction, subdivides internally – it’s more biological than mechanical. Bookshops categorise to make things easy both for the staff and the customers; increasingly, publishers categorise to make things easy for their sales force, and hence for the bookshops; those of us who work within genre and those who write about it, those who read it, all of us who love it have far looser definitions. Many of the books on my science fiction shelves would be found among the classics in Waterstone’s, or the general fiction. Or of course they wouldn’t be found at all. Bookshops are increasingly focused on core stock, selling more copies of fewer titles. Frank Muir told me twenty-five years ago that only bestsellers sell; it was true then, but it is so much more true now. Every new book has to fight for its place, and its hopes of success lie in your hands. There is nothing more common or more pointless than an unpublished writer cursing the short sight and prejudice of the entire publishing industry. Not that you have to be unpublished. We all do it. Those of us who are published but not commercially successful, those who are published and hugely successful: we all still mutter about the narrow-minded ignorance, the banality, the twisted priorities of those who take our beautiful books out into the world and fail to look after them properly. It’s still pointless. We have to work with these people, because they are still our access to the reading public. In fact, most of them care about books as much as we do, and spend an equivalent amount of time cursing the blind pig-headed arrogance of writers who keep wanting to interfere in matters they know nothing about.

It’s our responsibility, then, to know as much as possible, not only about what’s selling right now but where the genre’s going. Publishers follow trends, as much as leading them; new directions are often established in magazines and small presses before they reach the bookshops. Genre fiction is the last safe haven for the short story; the form lends itself uniquely well to the medium (or possibly the other way around – I don’t think anyone’s ever figured out quite why it should be the case, given that crime and SF and horror interest themselves in such distinct subject matters with such different themes beneath, but they all do work very well in the shorter form), and many leading writers cut their teeth with magazine work before they moved on to the full-length novel. Small-press publishing is a labour of love, and it can keep a whole genre ticking over in troubled times; horror’s been in decline in the bookshops for the last five or six years, and no major publisher will touch it at the moment, but new writing is still thriving in the small press and magazine market. There’s often no money involved, or none worth mentioning, but that’s not the point. For writers it’s about learning your craft, improving your practice, telling your stories. And it’s also about getting noticed, having your name around. They don’t sell thousands of copies – that’s why it’s called the small press – but those copies they do sell are read by the people who matter. No editor with an interest in genre can afford to ignore what’s happening in the core communities. Nor can any writer. I’m not saying that you have to join your local SF group and attend crime conventions at the other end of the country – but you should certainly think about it. If you want to write science fiction, why wouldn’t you join your local group? If you want to write in any particular genre, why not spend a weekend at a convention? That’s the heart of the community. You’d meet other writers, published and (in the quaint American term) pre-published; you’d see books and magazines that don’t turn up on the high street, hear all the buzz about the next big thing; you’d meet editors from the magazines and the small presses and the major publishers too, and hear what they’re looking for from the lions’ mouths. Not every writer is a social animal, but you don’t actually have to get drunk and fall over; and it may be a crying shame and a disgrace, but there is still nothing more useful to a writer’s career than actually meeting the people you sell to, agents and editors and readers too.

BRENCHLEY’S THREE Rs FOR AUTHORS

It is a fundamental truth that if you ask three different writers for advice, you’ll come away with four different suggestions. At least. But this isn’t advice, it’s legislation. These are the laws of the publishing jungle, the three rules that you really truly do need to follow:

Read
Research
Write

Not necessarily in that order, but we’ll come to that.

READ Does this really need saying? Well, yes. Bizarrely, it does; and particularly so to anyone who wants to write within genre, it needs to be said twice over. I tutor students on a creative writing MA in Newcastle, and every year we have one or two who try their hands at a crime novel or science fiction or a children’s book. And every year I wind up having the same conversation with them, because no, they don’t read crime or SF or whatever. They’re not interested in genre for its own sake, only in using the form of it – they say – to explore some deeper truth. Which just exposes their ignorance, twice over. Because they don’t read, they don’t know that what they want to do has been done already, done better, probably done half a dozen times in the last fifty or eighty or a hundred years; and because they don’t read, they don’t understand how the genre works, its particular grammars and vocabularies (I’m speaking metaphorically here, talking about the way genre novels are put together, how action is intersliced with information, but actually it works also in a literal sense: crime readers know what a SOCO is, SF readers don’t need to have an ansible explained to them, but neither term is in my current dictionary). So their writing is commonplace in its ideas and shoddy in its execution, simply because they’re not familiar with the milieu. This is not a mistake that’s unique to students; well-established writers have played with genre, particularly with science fiction – Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, PD James – and their work suffers exactly the same flaws, for exactly the same reason. Essentially they don’t know what they’re doing, so it’s no surprise that they do it badly. You cannot write successfully within a genre unless or until you are immersed in it.

RESEARCH I used to be a heretic on this one, and one of those stroppy, difficult heretics who make a noise about it. I was writing contemporary crime novels, and research is the holy grail if not the actual god of crime writing. All my colleagues were interviewing forensic pathologists and spending nights in squad cars to get the echt experience, while I just sat at home and made things up. My argument was – and still is – that you don’t have to be accurate, so long as you’re convincing; the story matters more than the facts. I did have the advantage of knowing a lot of people in a lot of useful jobs though, so I used to write the book first and then show it to my lawyer friends, my medical friends, my social workers and my tame police. Anything they actually laughed at, I was prepared to change, so long as it didn’t spoil the story.

But then I was on a conference panel talking about research, saying just this, and I found myself comparing Molotov cocktails with the guy sitting next to me. We’d both needed them, to write about riots. He had gone to the fire brigade and asked questions; I’d gone for a walk and bumped into this lad I knew because he used to burgle my flat quite regularly. We’d recently had a major riot in the city, and of course he’d been involved, so I asked him for his best recipe. So there I was on the panel saying, “I don’t do research” and Nick said “Chaz, that is research” and of course he was right. It’s research-by-serendipity, and I thought that would always be enough.

Until I started writing fantasy, and realised just how much I didn’t know. If I’m writing a contemporary crime story and my character has to travel from Newcastle to Carlisle, I know how to do that; I know the route, and I know how long it takes by car, by train, by bus. Comes the fantasy, and – well, just how far can eight strong men carry a teenage girl in a litter, in one day? Add another girl, and does that slow them down...? Suddenly I’m nose-deep in original Crusader writings, and scanning the web for historical-reconstruction societies. Just as science fiction demands rock-solid scientific understanding beneath the invention, so does fantasy demand a wholly credible world that would work from day to day, even after the story has moved on. World-building on that scale is a slow and demanding process. It’s not all scenery and magic. Agriculture, transport, industry, politics, biology: all of these have to be explored and understood, even if the details don’t make it into the book.

There are perhaps two kinds of research, the passive and the active. The passive involves reading, surfing the net, watching documentaries; the active is all about finding people and asking questions. You probably need to acquire skills in both, whatever genre you write. Always do the reading first; if nothing else, it’ll help you identify what questions you need to ask. One utterly serious and seriously useful tip: where possible, for a basic primer start your reading in the children’s section. If you want to know about how people actually lived in a mediaeval castle, or how to sail a yacht, or how the orbit of a comet is distinguished from the orbit of an asteroid, there’s nothing better than a kids’ book for clear, concise and accurate description. If your interests are in any way historical, see if there’s a private library you can join, such as the Lit & Phil here in Newcastle (details, details...); the old-fashioned narrative histories they tend to preserve may have been displaced academically, but they’re far more use to novelists than a contemporary sociological analysis. And when you do need to approach people or organisations, don’t be shy. Mostly they’re interested, often flattered, almost always keen to help.

WRITE Again this shouldn’t need saying, but again it does. People really do say “I’ve always wanted to be a writer, if I could only find the time.” If you’re serious, you will find the time. Whatever it costs (and it does: money, jobs, friendships, romance... The price is variable and individual, but there always is a price). You can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket; you can’t be a writer if you don’t get down to the writing. Get down, and stay down. Finished the first book? Excellent, congratulations. Print it out, post it off, start the second book. Now. The more you write, the better you get, and that’s an obligation, to be the best writer that you can. Use the back-button on your browser when you’ve finished reading this, go to ‘How to Write Literary Fiction’ and read that too; almost all the advice there applies here also. Genre fiction is also literary fiction, it’s just a more specialised form. It may perhaps be easier to find a publisher for crime or fantasy or SF, but it’s not easier to write. If anything, it’s harder: all the same demands, plus more. Truth and beauty in the language, strength and clarity in the narration and criminal psychology/the reality of magic/alien perspectives on top. Less isn’t always more, sometimes less is just less; genre is all about added value, extra creativity, a broader canvas or a longer point of view.

Don’t let anyone tell you that genre fiction is necessarily plot-driven, all about story. This used to be true; all the recognised genres spent their dodgy adolescence hanging out in pulp magazines, where crash-bang action was the only prerequisite and characters came straight out of Central Casting, lucky to have as many as two dimensions. Rampant hormones, frenetic energy, black-and-white perspectives, excess in everything; this is how we all grow up, and you wouldn’t want to miss it. Pulp was the perfect medium, at the perfect time. Genre fiction passed through it and matured, but still held on to what was valuable from that period; it may as a result become the last refuge of the well-told story, with all its traditional values intact. What that means, though, is that its stories are character-driven at heart. Plot is only what people do, situation is how they live. If you get the people right, then their lives will fill in around them and they will do what they do because they are who they are, and there you have it: character, setting and plot. If you find yourself stuck over what happens next, it’s often not because you haven’t thought your plot through well enough, it’s because you haven’t understood your characters.

People often talk about SF as a fiction of ideas, with the implication that it’s the ideas that are important, and that character and even plot are secondary interests. Again, this used perhaps to be true, but not for the last fifty years at least; besides, our understanding of what constitutes a sfnal idea has shifted radically in that time. Yes, the science behind a story is still important (and more so now, perhaps, than it used to be, in these days of TV docs and pop-science books that we all think we can follow; you need a rock-solid grounding in your subject before you can extrapolate into future developments), but it’s no longer enough to say ‘I want to write a story about a spaceship the size of a planet.’ That’s not an idea, it’s a notion. Once you know how it works – the biology, the chemistry, the physics and the engineering – then it’s a well-worked-out notion, but it’s still a notion. It’s not an idea until you know what you’re going to do with it, what it’s for, what is its role in your story: specifically, how it acts on the lives of your characters. It’s not the spaceship that you’re going to write about, it’s the people who built it or the people who live in it or the people who discover it. When you know what a spaceship the size of a planet does to someone’s head, then you’ve got an idea.

Whatever genre you’re working in, beware the info-dump. There is always information that you need to give your reader; the world you describe is not the world they live in, and they will need to know something of the way yours works, whether it’s the fine detail of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act or the detail of the Benedictine Rule, the physics of your faster-than-light drive or the theology of your Temple to the Lost God. The traditional info-dump is most easily identified in SF, where it comes as three pages of densely-argued science dropped into the story from a great height, but the phenomenon is universal. Try to find ways to pass on information gradually, and within the natural flow of narrative and dialogue. Readers will be patient; they quite like to be teased by things they don’t yet understand. Over-explanation is as much bad practice as leaving loose ends.

On the other hand, beware also the deus ex machina in all its forms. The great detective’s sudden leap of intuition that goes far beyond the reach of evidence; the scientist’s fortuitous discovery of an alien physics that works in opposition to our own; the quiet mage’s last-minute spell that undoes all the Dark Lord’s evil workings. (“Damn, why didn’t he do that in the first minute, and save us three long volumes?”) Basically, it’s cheating to reach outside the walls of your own story. The world that sets up the problem has also to contain the solution. Magic, science, inspiration: they all need to be controlled, to be reasonable, not to be the answer in themselves. Answers come from your characters, operating within their own limits. It’s not Gandalf’s magic that saves Middle-Earth, it’s Frodo’s trudging all the way to Mordor and just never quite giving up.

GETTING PUBLISHED

Publishing exists in a state of constant upheaval. At the moment, for the major players, that means consolidation and retrenchment: which means that they’re publishing fewer and fewer titles, while at the same time looking to expand by buying up their competitors. Ten years ago, there were perhaps a dozen significant commercial publishers with an interest in genre; now there are perhaps half that number.

On the other hand, there’s a new generation of small independents interested in both picking up those experienced writers dropped by the big players and discovering new talent. Keeping a publisher has probably never been harder, for anyone who’s been around a while; on the other hand, this is probably no bad time to be coming fresh to the market. Everyone’s looking for the Next Big Thing.

Assume that’s you, and aim high; big publishing houses will pay big money for a first novel that seizes their attention. It’s best not to approach them straight, though. From their point of view, a familiar and trusted agent commands far more serious attention than an unknown author; from your side, there is nothing more useful than an experienced negotiator who knows the people, the market and the intricacies of a contract. The author-agent relationship is probably more important and generally longer-lasting now than the author-publisher equivalent. These days editors and writers move from house to house as a matter of course; changing agents is much rarer, and consequently much harder. An agent is generally the first professional to say ‘yes, this work is good’; they are often your first editor as well, your closest working relationship, your most stable and your most trusted. I was with my first agent for fifteen years, while I went through nine or ten editors at three different publishers.

It follows then that finding the right agent is critical. This starts as a process of elimination, and agents are as keen as anyone not to waste their own time, so they do make it easy. Refer to the list in The Writer’s Handbook (ed Barry Turner, published annually by Macmillan) and you’ll find many who say ‘no science fiction, fantasy or horror’. They really, truly mean this, and they’re not going to make an exception even for the most brilliantly original book of the millennium, so just don’t bother asking. Very few if any say ‘no crime’ (crime being a much more general taste, easier to understand and easier to sell), but here too there are specialists. Those worth approaching first include:

Darley Anderson Literary Agency
Estelle House
11 Eustace Road
London
SW6 1JB
Tel: 020 7385 6652
Fax 020 7386 5571
Email: enquiries@darleyanderson.com
Website: www.darleyanderson.com
Particularly for crime/thrillers/women’s fiction, but not actually allergic to other genres; they are my agents, and their US associate has a science fiction/fantasy specialist.

Juliet Burton Literary Agency
2 Clifton Avenue
London
W12 9DR
Tel: 020 8762 0148
Fax: 020 8743 8765
Email: julietburton@virgin.net
For crime and women’s fiction.

Mic Cheetham Literary Agency
11-12 Dover St
London
W1S 4LJ
Tel: 020 7495 2002
Fax: 020 7495 5777
Website: www.miccheetham.com
Particularly for crime, science fiction and fantasy, but do ask about other genres.

Teresa Chris Literary Agency
43 Musard Road
London
W6 8NR
Tel: 020 7386 0633
For crime and women’s fiction.

Gregory & Company, Author’s Agents
3 Barb Mews
London
W6 7PA
Tel: 020 7610 4676
Fax: 020 7610 4686
Email: info@gregoryandcompany.co.uk
Website: www.gregoryand company.co.uk
Crime, thrillers and women’s fiction.

Antony Harwood Limited
405 Riverbank House
1 Putney Bridge Approach
London
SW6 3JD
Tel: 020 7384 9209
Fax: 020 7384 9206
Email: mail@antonyharwood.com
Try him with anything.

John Jarrold
Email: j.jarrold@btopenworld.com
Website: https://www.sff.net/people/john-jarrold/
SF and fantasy specialist, but might be tempted into other genres.

The Maggie Noach Literary Agency
22 Dorville Crescent
London
W6 0HJ
Tel: 020 8748 2926
Fax: 020 8748 8057
Email: m-noach@dircon.co.uk
Pronounced no-ack, and try her with anything, but she represents many of the UK’s best SF and fantasy writers.

On the other hand, agents are both fallible and over-busy. Like every publisher, every agent has stories of the one that got away, the bestseller they refused. So you go through the whole list of agents, and none of them takes you on. Do you give up? Nonsense! You start again from the beginning of the list with your second novel (that being how long it takes, to work your way through once; plenty of time to finish number two, while number one is going out and coming back), and meantime you start sending number one to appropriate publishers. Every publisher also has a story about the gem that they plucked from the slush pile, so why not?

Major publishers to try first include:

Hodder Headline Ltd
338 Euston Road
London
NW1 3BH
Tel: 020 7873 6000
Fax: 020 7873 6024
Website: www.hodderheadline.co.uk
Crime, thrillers, women’s fiction; no current SF/fantasy/horror list, but might be interested in something new.

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London
W6 8JB
Tel: 020 8741 7070
Fax: 020 8307 4440
Website: www.harpercollins.co.uk
For any genre, but if crime, contact Julia Wisdom; if SF/fantasy/horror, contact Jane Johnson at Voyager imprint.

Macmillan Publishers Ltd
The Macmillan Building
4 Crinan St
London
N1 9XW
Tel: 020 7833 4000
Fax: 020 7843 4640
Website: www.macmillan.com
Any genre, but if SF/fantasy/horror, contact Peter Lavery at Tor UK imprint.

Time Warner Books UK
Brettenham House
Lancaster Place
London
WC2E 7EN
Tel: 020 7911 8000
Fax: 020 7911 8100
Email: uk@timewarnerbooks.com
Website: www.timewarnerbooks.co.uk
Any genre, but if SF/fantasy/horror, contact Tim Holman at Orbit imprint.

Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper St Martin’s Lane
London
WC2H 9EA
Tel: 020 7240 3444
Fax 020 7240 4822
Website: www.orionbooks.co.uk/pub/index.htm
Any genre, but for SF/fantasy/horror, contact Simon Spanton or Jo Fletcher at Gollancz imprint.

Among smaller independent presses are:

Allison & Busby
Suite 111
Bon Marche Centre
241 Ferndale Road
London
SW9 8BJ
Tel: 020 7738 7888
Fax: 020 7733 4344
Email all@allisonbusby.co.uk
Website: www.allisonandbusby.co.uk
Crime only; contact David Shelley.

No Exit Press
Oldcastle Books Ltd
PO Box 394
Harpenden
Hertfordshire
AL5 1XJ
Tel: 01582 761264
Fax: 01582 761264
Email: info@noexit.co.uk
Website www.noexit.co.uk
Crime/noir only; contact Ion Mills.

PS Publishing
Grosvenor House
1 New Road
Hornsea
East Yorkshire
HU18 1PG
Tel: 01964 532666
Fax: 01964 537535
Email: pspublishing@btinternet.com
Website: www.pspublishing.co.uk
SF, fantasy, horror, noir crime; contact Peter Crowther.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

So a good agent takes you on, or else you start sending your manuscript out yourself. Time passes. This is publishing; lots of time passes. Then the agent phones, or a publisher does: you have a deal, hurrah!

Two things happen. The first is that – unless you’re one of the lucky few who land a six-figure deal for their first book – you realise that there is no question of giving up the day-job yetawhile. Bestsellers make megabucks, but most writers don’t earn a living. The second is that you are invited to lunch by your new editor. This will be a happy occasion. Your agent will come too (NB – if you sold the book off your own bat, then now is the time to phone round the agencies and tell them that you have a deal but you still want representation. Trust me, you do; and they’ll be so much more interested, with a deal in the bag...) and everyone will tell you how good your book is and how excited they are to be bringing it out into the world, and how hard they’re going to work to make it a success. This last is almost certainly a lie, most books get no promotion at all; but do get used to hearing this, and other falsehoods. Publishers lie to their authors as a matter of course, and they don’t mean anything by it. It’s just a part of the way they do business. The trick is to take all promises with a pinch of salt, and believe nothing that’s not actually written into the contract.

Apart from flattering your ego and getting to know each other, the point of this lunch is to talk about your next book; be prepared for that, and have ideas ready. They do want to be reassured that you’re a good investment, which means not a one-book wonder. And at some point, probably over coffee, your editor will mention that they do have a few notes on your text. Nothing drastic...

What this actually means is that they want a whole new draft, with cuts and new material and new perspectives, new plot-points, character changes, etc, etc. Don’t panic; this is standard practice, and everything is negotiable. They won’t tear the contract up if you’re stubborn and precious about the sanctity of your words; if they didn’t like the book as it stood, they wouldn’t have bought it. But do remember that they only want to make it better, and that while you have an intimate relationship with the text, they have an intimate relationship with the marketplace. They know your potential readership better than you do. Best advice is to be as cooperative as you can bear to, at this stage. Get yourself a reputation for being easy to work with; it’ll stand you in good stead later. And to make yourself feel better now, write this on the wall above your computer: ‘Editors always like the taste better after they’ve pissed in it.’

After this the book goes to a copy editor, usually a freelance, almost always a frustrated wannabe writer themselves; and now you can be as stubborn as you want to be. The copy editor’s job is to check for obvious errors and inconsistencies in the text: to make sure that the hero’s eyes are blue throughout, that Krakatoa really is west of Java, to challenge your random use of hyphens and generally prepare the text for printing. Mostly, they take this as licence to rewrite in their own words. Insist on your right to see their changes, and to undo them. This is also a last chance to rewrite on your own account – and you will still be seeing things you want to change.

The next time you see the book, it’s in proof. Changes at this stage are expensive, and you really must keep them to a minimum. On the other hand, simply seeing the text laid out differently, in a different font, can make problems leap out at you that your eye had simply slid across before. A sneaky way to circumvent this is to do it yourself with an earlier draft; change the font to one that you would never normally use, change the font size, alter all the margins of your pages and then print the book out and read it through. You’ll be surprised how different the experience is, and how useful.

Once you’ve corrected and returned the proofs, there is nothing more you can do to the book. Now you have to change hats and become a salesman, a marketer, a promotions manager. Technically your publisher has people to do all these jobs, but they’ll be constantly busy with other writers’ books; you need to do as much as possible yourself. Set up a website, cultivate local journalists, make yourself known in every bookshop you can reach; and, particularly, become a familiar name within your genre’s fanbase. Write letters and articles and short stories for their magazines, go to their meetings and conventions, be visible and approachable and there...

SOCIETIES AND EVENTS

Depending on your genre(s) of choice, you need to join:

The British Science Fiction Association: membership enquiries to Peter Wilkinson at bsfamembership@yahoo.co.uk, or see the website, www.bsfa.co.uk. They publish a regular newsletter, a critical journal and a magazine for writers (fiction, poetry and articles on the nature and business of writing); they give awards and help to run conventions.

The British Fantasy Society: membership enquiries to Robert Parkinson, 201 Reddish Road, Reddish, Stockport, SK5 7HR, or see the website, www.britishfantasysociety.org.uk. Also (some say predominantly, but that’s prejudice) for horror fans & writers. They publish regular newsletters and magazines, and occasional critical volumes; they have regular meetings in London and an annual convention (FantasyCon, see below), and present their own awards.

The bad news is that there isn’t an equivalent (that I know of) for crime writers in the UK, until you’ve actually been published. Once you’ve sold your first novel or a small number of short stories, you can join the Crime Writers’ Association (membership secretary Rebecca Tope, Crossways Cottage, Walterstone, Herefordshire, HR2 0DX, email author@rebeccatope.fsnet.co.uk, or see the website, www.thecwa.co.uk), which publishes a monthly newsletter and runs an annual conference as well as many regional events. The US equivalent does admit (in their own rather quaint phrase) ‘pre-published’ writers, but the CWA is strictly a professional association.

And (depending again on your genre of choice) you need to go to:

FantasyCon, for details of which see the BFS website;
EasterCon, for details of which see the BSFA website;
Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, for details of which see www.harrogate-festival.org.uk/crime/ or contact Festival Office, 1 Victoria Avenue, Harrogate, HG1 1EQ, tel: 01423 562303, fax: 01423 521264, email: crime@harrogate-festival.org.uk.

And don’t be afraid to mix-and-match. Fantasy writers are very welcome and expected at SF events; horror and fantasy and crime share a population both of writers and of readers. There is no sense of exclusivity within genre. Most of us have crossed the borders at least in short fiction, if not in novels; we tend to leave our labels at the door.

RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS

If you want to write genre fiction, of whatever description, the first address you need to memorise is TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambs, CB6 2LB. Andy Cox at TTA publishes what are currently the most important magazines in the country:

Interzone, for science fiction

Crimewave, for crime and noir

The Third Alternative, for hard-to-categorise ‘slipstream’ fiction – usually dark, perhaps surreal, often uncertain, somewhere in that hinterland between SF and fantasy and horror, where real stories dwell

The Fix, for writers of whatever genre: reviews of magazines worldwide, and articles on the business and practice of writing

And then, whether you write SF or fantasy or horror or noir crime, the other magazine to subscribe to, to read and to submit to (and don’t just submit: it really is important to buy and to read these magazines, both for your own development and for their survival) is Postscripts, a new venture launched this year (2004) by Peter Crowther (for contact details, see PS Publishing above).

WEBSITES

Just a handful of the many, many sites out there; there’s a natural affinity between genre and the internet. I’ve already mentioned the sites for the BFS, the BSFA and the CWA, all of which are useful resources; these others will take you further. Nothing now will ever bring you home.

Tangled Web: www.twbooks.co.uk
News and reviews with a heavy preponderance of crime, though they do also keep an eye on other genres.

DorothyL: www.dorothyl.com
Not really a website, it’s an e-conference, a constant discussion about crimewriting that will visit your inbox on a daily basis, if you sign up.

Shots: www.shotsmag.co.uk
An online crime magazine, featuring reviews, interviews, short stories and more.

January Magazine: www.januarymagazine.com
Reviews and interviews, not exclusively genre; check out their genre links lists.

The Alien Online: www.the alienonline.net
News and reviews of science fiction, fantasy and horror.

Locus: www.locusmag.com
News, reviews, interviews and critical commentary on SF, fantasy and horror.

SFF.net: www.sff.net/member/plans
More than a website, this is a community you join for constant discussion of issues around SF, fantasy and horror.

Emerald City: www.emcit.com
An individual but increasingly influential monthly e-zine, reviewing SF, fantasy and conventions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chaz Brenchley has been making a living as a writer since he was eighteen. He is the author of nine thrillers, most recently Shelter, and a major fantasy series, The Books of Outremer, based on the world of the Crusades. A winner of the British Fantasy Award, he has also published three books for children and more than 500 short stories in various genres. His time as Crimewriter-in-Residence at the St Peter's Riverside Sculpture Project in Sunderland resulted in the collection Blood Waters. He is a prizewinning ex-poet, and has been writer in residence at the University of Northumbria, as well as tutoring their MA in Creative Writing. His novel Dead of Light is currently in development with an independent film company; Shelter has been optioned by Granada TV. He was Northern Writer of the Year 2000, and lives in Newcastle upon Tyne with a left-handed cat and a famous teddy bear.