Network News South West Round-Up, 2013-14: To Bristol – And Beyond!

Lesley Moss

Into Wonderland –
photo by Jo Thomas

Trip to the
Oxford Story Museum

A distant rumble from the Bristol and Bath area last autumn (hmm, it HAS been a long time!) informed us of many members longing to get together. All that was needed was someone brilliant, talented and awfully well organised ...  and on the spot ... step forward Jo Thomas. Professional writer, editor and children’s author Jo had no sooner joined SCBWI than she was persuaded to arrange meet-ups for a mix of published and emerging writers and illustrators, which she has done with aplomb.

Jo says: 

Since starting the Bristol group last autumn (2013), we’ve had several get-togethers and we keep each other up-to-date with any interesting book-related events through regular group emails. There are over 30 members on the mailing list now and we’ve had a good turnout at each of our meetings, with people coming from further afield as well as from Bristol and Bath. 

We’ve met in a different venue each time and tried out different ways of sharing ideas and catching up. Our first meet-up was in a café in a yurt and we had a good time telling each other about what we write and what we’d like to get out of the group. In early 2014, we met up at the Folk House for a chat and lunch and some gentle goal setting! 

Another gathering was at the end of March at Bristol Museum, where we did a short sketch/scrawl around the weird and wonderful exhibits and then had a nice catch up over coffee and cake. This sparked a plan for an outdoor walk and talk sometime over the summer, and we had the idea to organise a trip to the new Story Museum in Oxford. 

SCBWI in Narnia – photo by Jo Thomas

Bristol and Oxford SCBWI’s met up in Oxford.

Oxford Story Museum

Elen tries costume and the Story Loom – photo by Jo Thomas

At the Oxford Story Museum

And the Road Trip took place – complete with car mints!

The late Richard Masson, Undiscovered Voices winner and published author of Boonie (Hot Key Books), came up from Cornwall for the first Bristol meet-up in the yurt cafe, and it was a delight to meet him and talk about his life’s journey and his books. We are sad to lose him, but were so glad to have had the opportunity to meet him – and that he was able to bring his writing to the world, via SCBWI, UV, and Hot Key.

Meanwhile, over in Exeter, we held our very first masterclass, From First Draft To Gold, with the very lovely and skilful author/editor Lil Chase (Secrets, Lies and Locker 32, and Boys For Beginners, published by Quercus).

Lil has a wide range of editing experience with different publishers, including Working Partners, which she shared generously with us. A year later, we’re still feeling inspired ... unfortunately, some of us are still clinging to our adjectives and haven’t quite managed to let go of that vital ten per cent in our edits! But we are definitely using both sides of our brains  ... now where did I put that plot outline ...

After a cocktail-filled December Seasonal Social, Amelia Mansfield kindly arranged our next batch of Exeter write-ins for 2014, and somehow managed to fight her way through the storms to be there to host them, despite all rail links being cut off.

Our write-ins have continued to be popular, including plot discussions, publishing gossip, advice on WIP’s and even agony aunts to proffer support over rejections as a side order to the main event: writing together while consuming coffee and cake.

Recently, we have begun more focused write-ins in a new venue – with set times for silent intensive writing interspersed with coffee breaks. This is a change from our usual cafe drop-in and chat/write sessions, and we’re aiming for a combination of the two, as both have their advantages.

It’s always exciting to hear of our members’ publications and contracts, such as:

Sandra Greaves The Skull In The Woods (Chickenhouse),
Cecilia Busby’s Deep Amber (Templar),
Ellen Renner’s Tribute (Hot Key Books),
Rowena House’s The Marshalling Of Angelique’s Geese, in the War Girls anthology (Anderson Press), and 
Clare Helen Welsh’s first picture book contract, following her second place in the Greenhouse Funny Prize! So do let us know your good news so we can celebrate!

With the imminent demise of our Ning Network group, we now have our own Facebook group, SCBWI SW Chat & Info, which is great for virtual meet-ups and getting to know each other - do join us there. It’s a useful way of organising informal get-togethers – for example several Exeter members arranged to meet recently at a local YA festival. 

We can also check out who else is going to national SCBWI events, such as the Conference or Masterclasses and arrange to meet there or travel together.

Newsflash: Another new group: a critique group has begun in Marlborough, Wiltshire, run by Wendy Allen. Contact us on the email below for information.

I think that is all for now – if you are a South West SCBWI_BI member, do get in touch at southwest@britishscbwi.org and let us know if you have any questions, or any news and events to be included in the next South West round-up! 

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Lesley Moss is the joint SW network organiser.

Jo Thomas, writer and editor,  is currently coordinating

meetings for Bristol and Bath

@jotwriting   

Lil Chase: crafting a great book is 70% editing

After an inspiring SCBWI South West workshop with author and Working Partners editor Lil Chase, Lesley Moss and Rowena House talked to her about her two novels - Boys for Beginners and Secrets, Lies and Locker 62 - and the importance of editing when crafting a great book.

 Can we start with Lil Chase the writer. When did you begin your writing journey?

I had a typewriter. I don’t know if typewriters even exist now, but I remember asking my Mum for a typewriter when I was ten and clacking away on it. But even before that I wrote Gwynnie Goes Girlie (the inspiration for Boys for Beginners, her first novel.) Gwynnie was all written in pencil and I did the drawings and everything.

As a writer, I suppose I am an ideas person, and they go down on the page and I don’t think they’re very good at first. They are getting better, though. I think that first-draft-to-final-draft journey is getting shorter with practice, but even now there’s no way anyone would read a first draft of my book and think it was anywhere near publishable.

You said you found the Gwynnie manuscript your Mum’s attic. That’s must have been a  great way of rediscovering your ten-year-old self.

Absolutely. I feel like I’ve plagiarised somebody, but luckily that person was myself. I always kept diaries at the time. This was before emails, so I have letters my friends sent me, and letters I’d written to my friends but clearly hadn’t sent. All my cares and worries are in those letters, and all my friends’ cares and worries are in them too. I can’t tell you how vital all that information was.

You write a lot about friendship. For what age group do you think that friendship is the most important thing?

Probably 8-13. I describe my books as books for girls who are thinking about thinking about boys. They’re not quite up for boyfriends yet, but they are thinking about them; they know that’s the next step. But some girls are fifteen when it happens and some are eight. So you can’t be that prescriptive about it. Middle-grade is a very, very broad church.

If friendship is the key to middle-grade, what’s the key to YA?

Romance. I don’t know if it’s the publishers who are saying that romance is key, but that’s probably what they’ve found from sales figures. So it’s romance and family, and maybe how romance affects your friendships.

What about coming-of-age stories, rites of passage?

They can be very different from romance. YA is also about making sense of the world, finding out who you are. I started a degree in psychology and went to see a neuroscientist talking about teenagers. He said the amount of change going on in their brains is the equivalent of a toddler’s development. They aren’t young adults and they aren’t old children; they’re a different species. You certainly don’t want to preach about this, but if you’re writing for teenagers it’s probably a good idea to know a bit about their psychology.

Talking of neuroscience, in your workshop you recommended that we use the creative right brain to write and our logical left brains to edit. Can you talk a bit more about that?

Neuroscience says early hominids just had one brain and it didn’t plan or imagine how life might be better if we did something in a different way. Then there was an evolutionary jump, and we got a second brain in the same head that was creative and imaginative. This creative right brain looks ahead and imagines different scenarios. The left brain is logical. So you write with you right brain and you edit with your left brain. The best way to do that is to separate the two. Get in the zone and write, write, write. Then, later on, come back with your logical left brain and edit.

How does that fit with your other advice that we should plan our stories and edit the concept before writing the book? Isn’t that sort of plotting essentially a logical, left-brain activity?

No, not really. When you first write your plan you’re free. You write the plot with your right brain, and then you edit it with your left brain. For example, if I’m about to go upstairs and start writing, I look at my plan and say, ‘Okay, I’m on Chapter 2 where she meets her best friend.’ And that’s all I need to know.

You said at the workshop that 70% of getting your book to a publishable state is editing. Is that true of the planning stage as well?

Yes. I do the creative process of planning the book, and that’s edited, and there’s a 70:30 split there. Then when I write the book there’s another 70:30 split. It’s very important that you’ve got an idea for a story, but you’ve got to tell it in a way that makes sense to the reader and they care about it. That’s where editing comes in. Being an editor has been invaluable to me.

So as an editor, can you edit your own books from start to finish?

No I don’t think so. I know that a fresh set of eyes will make it better. You can always, always, always improve your novel and I think you need somebody else to do that. I know that a lot of people who self-publish will employ editors and I think that’s a good way.

At what point in your story do you know the end?

As soon as I sort out the idea I know the end because I think of stories in terms of change. Your character will start one way, in one position, and will end in the opposite position. Therefore I already have the ending; I just have to work out how the ending should come about. It should probably happen in a dramatic way, at a prom or at a party or in a big dramatic scene. But as soon as I’ve got an idea I know the ending because it has to be the opposite.

For writers trying to sell their first novel to agents and editors, what would you say are the keys to a great pitch? 

An interesting character with an interesting goal and an interesting conflict. You’ve also got to look at your idea and find its hook, which is often in the title. For example, Downton Abbey is all about the setting. James Bond is about a very interesting character. So is Superman; he’s kick-ass, basically. I always talk about My Sister, The Vampire because it’s all there in the title. She’s got this lovely sister, but oh no, she’s a vampire! You’ve got conflict right there. So the pitch is all about finding the hook and emphasising it.

You don’t talk about ‘high concept’ much.

Any story you can describe in five sentences is high concept. The ultimate high concept title is Snakes on a Plane. It was actually a working title and they sent it to Samuel L. Jackson and he said, ‘I’ll do it but only if you don’t change the title!’ The conflict’s right there: there are snakes! And they’re on a plane! It just couldn’t get more terrible.

High concept is just as important for books. You’ve got the blurb on the back to sell your book, but people aren’t going to get that far unless they like the title and the cover. Then they’re going to flip it over and read those five sentences on the back. That’s what’s going to make them shell out their money to buy it. Okay, they might read the first few pages, but you really have to get the concept across in as few words as possible.

Would you say that if people can’t write a five-sentence pitch, they should seriously look at their story and edit their idea before going any further?

I think it’s the difference between commercial fiction and literary fiction. If you’re a poet and you can write beautiful, lyrical, wonderful words, then write literary fiction. This kind of fiction wins prizes, but sadly it doesn't usually sell very well. If you’re interested in commercial fiction then yes, you should aim to make it a High Concept book. The biggest selling books are the ones that focus on page-turning stories.

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Lil Chase is the author of two books; BOYS FOR BEGINNERS and SECRETS, LIES & LOCKER 62, both published by Quercus. Her latest series - THE BOYS' SCHOOL GIRLS - will be published in July 2014.

Lil also works as a commissioning editor at Working Partners Limited, creating fiction for children and adults.

Rowena House is a journalist by trade - an ex-Reuters foreign correspondent in Europe and Africa, now a sub-editor specialising in international affairs. She turned to writing fiction for young people to meet a deep desire to tell gritty stories that are true in an emotional sense, without being constrained by ‘the facts’. At the moment, she’s working on a love story for teens set in Africa as part of the MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa. Rowena lives in rural Devon with her remarkably tolerant family and their less tolerant dog, a grey-and-white sheep dog called Fletcher.

@anonymoss

 Lesley Moss joined SCBWI in 2003 and over several years has volunteered as an e-critique group moderator for Picturebook Too! and the original poetry e-critique group, and as SW Joint Co-ordinator. She is a member of www.thefuneverse.comand writes picture books, funny poetry and 8-12 fiction. She originally studied art and design and spent some years in community arts, including a spell as a mime animateur, working creatively with children of all ages, and much more. But her first love is writing.

Summer Scrawling and Socialising in the South West

Lesley Moss

It was a scorching day in Exeter when a few of us met for a Scrawl Crawl and Summer Social, organised by Yona Wiseman. We were grateful to get out of the heat and into the cool, quiet Royal Albert Memorial Museum. New members Jennifer Moore and Clare Welsh joined us with Clare’s lovely plus-one and his pet snake!

As usual the writers-talking-over-coffee part took longer than scheduled, but at last we set off round the museum, inspired by the strange artifacts and fabulous displays. Some of us were inspired with new ideas, others found a missing link for their WIP and some of us tried on strange headgear!

Amelia Mansfield admires Lesley's hat.

This was hungry work, so we moved on to an Italian cafe for a terrace lunch and of course, more chat, celebrating Jennifer’s upcoming ‘book birthday’ for her Space Pirate Panic series along the way!

Birds inspired some of us

Amelia Mansfield: It was such an inspiring day - wandering around the museum with a group of writers and a creative remit makes you see even little things (iridescent butterflies and historic shoes for example) in a totally new light. And finishing the afternoon with an al fresco lunch and writing chat was perfect! 

Coming soon in Exeter...

Our first Exeter masterclass with author/editor Lil Chase!

Lil says: Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the first draft was the final draft? Unfortunately, this never happens. As well as discussing the reasons why this could never happen, this workshop will look at ways of reducing the time spent on redrafting by going through some editing techniques. The workshop will consist of a number of practical exercises – from big picture editing, to detailed tweaking – which will help to develop your editing skills until your original draft is polished up into publishing gold.

Editing Alchemy

from first draft to gold

Saturday 19th October

2-5:30pm

Lesley says: I’m excited to welcome Lil to Exeter, where we have many keen writers, both experienced and just starting out, who are always eager to learn more about the editing process. As we all know, good editing is vital in rewriting, and useful in critiquing each others’ work. I’ve been to one of Lil’s workshops, read her work and had a one-to-one critique with her, so I can say she really knows her stuff and is a pleasure to work with.

 Please contact Lesley at southwest@britishscbwi.org with ‘EXETER MASTERCLASS’ in the subject line for details of how to book and pay in advance. The class costs £20. It is advisable but not mandatory to have at least one finished draft to gain most benefit. The venue is close to Exeter Central Station. Open to all SCBWI members, although priority will be given initially to the South West Network. If you’re keen to come along, please get in touch.

 All new for September in Bristol ...  

The tribes are gathering in Bristol this September. There will be an inaugural daytime Social on Saturday 14th September, organised with the help of lovely SCBWI member Jo Thomas, with input from Pippa Roberts and local members. It’s free, but buy your own refreshments – good food available.

Please contact Lesley southwestATbritishscbwi.org for details with ‘BRISTOL MEET-UP’ in the subject line. Those who have already expressed interest will be contacted and/or details posted on the Ning and Yahoo groups.

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@anonymoss

Lesley Moss joined SCBWI in 2003 and over several years has volunteered as an e-critique group moderator for Picturebook Too! and the original poetry e-critique group, and as SW Joint Co-ordinator. She is a member of www.thefuneverse.comand writes picture books, funny poetry and 8-12 fiction. She originally studied art and design and spent some years in community arts, including a spell as a mime animateur, working creatively with children of all ages, and much more. But her first love is writing. 

Network News: The Central West

by Julienne Durber

Julienne Durber

Juliet Clare Bell

Based in Birmingham, the Central West group was run for many years by Donna Vann and Juliet Clare Bell, but Donna Has recently handed her half of the reins to me, Julienne Durber (the one with the odd coloured face!).

We hold regular crit meetings every five to six weeks in Birmingham's towering Waterstones building, with Clare's group focusing on picture books, mine looking at novels and a satellite group organised by the fab Emma Greenwood into the grittier end of YA.

In the past we've held open critiqueniques to attract new 'critters' and entice them to join SCBWI, and these have been so successful that Clare and I are working on creating a crit-group match making service to create new groups, teach them how to best use their critting time and let them fly free (it's all very Yoda!)

Coming up we have a very special event open to members and non-members. 

Commercial Fiction:

Books that Sell and Sell Well

with

Lil Chase

Saturday 18th May, 11am-2pm 

please bring your own lunch. 

Cost
£5 for SCBWI members 
£7.50 for non-members 
Venue
167 Newhall Street, Birmingham, B3 1SW
(ten minutes’ walk from the cathedral)

Lil Chase

Lil will speak briefly about what she has learned from working for Mills and Boon and Working Partners Ltd - arguably two of the most commercial creative businesses in the publishing industry – and about her own experience in getting that first book deal.

The session will be very interactive, mainly focused on your concepts. We'll discuss the all-important pitch, honing your story so that agents and publishers will be battling each other to work with you. By looking at your concept in the way that publishers will look at it - how it fits in the marketplace - we will find the best way to make your book sell, and sell well.

Lil led a similar SCBWI workshop in Manchester, earlier this year. There are still places left but the event is fast approaching, so if you are interested please email: centralwestATbritishscbwiDOTorg

If you are interested in joining or setting up a crit group please get in touch. We're more than happy to help get you started, match up authors by geography and/or genre, and give any advice.

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@JulienneD

Julienne Durber writes YA and MG adventure stories and is represented by Gemma Cooper at The Bent Agency.