"How do I develop rules or a manifesto for my novel?"

I continue my new fall writing tips series; advice from an award-winning novelist

Hey dear friends,

Thank you for being here, reading my words. Someone kindly said to me recently, “Being a novelist sounds cool! But I assume it’s a hard job, too.” Frankly, I work hard but I don’t have anything bad to say about my job. I’m from Grimsby! My family background is literal poverty! I’m insanely lucky to have made a career, to have sold three novels, to be Arts Council Funded this year. I got the funding because I’m seeking to grow my writing and editing business so that I not only “get by” but start to live well again, after my years of baby loss with my ex-partner, and be able to build a happy life in my home, Hackney. Your free or paid subscriptions all help me achieve this. Please share this post, tell a friend, leave a comment, or purchase a paid subscription if you are inclined to do so. EVERYTHING helps ~ with the algo too 😉.

This fall I’ve been running an advice series for subscribers. Each post has answered a real question I’ve been asked recently, by a real person, about writing, like “I feel intimidated by, or unworthy of, writing a novel. Can you help me?”, and “Should I write my book in the first person? Third person? Historical tense? Present tense? There are so many options.” My third answer helped out readers in the middle of their project. My fourth essay spoke about editing, which I offer to private clients, publishing houses, and agents, and next week’s is about what to do once you’ve finished your novel. If you’d like to read all of my previous answers, sign up for a paid subscription below. Minimum sub is for one month at $5, and all are welcome!

I’m geeking out on today’s question. I loved thinking about book manifestos, and had one for all three of my published novels. I’ve left the first half of my answer free to read to all subscribers, so you can take part in some of the discussion and get the gist of what my advice might be like before you sign up for a paid subscription. Let’s get into it…

Love, AJ xo

Constraint.

There’s a lot to say about it, in terms of writing a novel.

the constraint of having a full time job, or kids, or—for whatever reason—not as much time to write as needed.

the constraint of commercialism, or making money

constraints we place on our own work…

I’ve often felt it was quite fun to have an assignment. I used to give myself writing exercises like… actually, let’s try one. This is something I used to do when I was starting out. It helps if you’re sitting in a cafe window, which I know is harder to do these days—my favourite place to write used to be the window seat at Climpsons on Broadway Market, but since covid you can’t sit inside. Okay, so sit inside a cafe, or in your own lounge, and stare out the window. wait until you find someone that intrigues you… okay, GO. Describe them, starting with an accurate take on their personal appearance, and then what they are doing, which you have to make up.

…

Done it? Okay, let’s keep talking.

I love thinking about rules and manifestos for my writing. I guess it’s what makes me a born novelist. To be deeply interested in developing a mini instructional booklet in my head of how I should write my next not-at-all-mini book.

so, constraints / rules / a manifesto can be based on a variety of things.

first off, let’s start with traditional storytelling. One of the rules in my manifesto is writing to a three act structure. ahhhh, didn’t think I was going to start there, did you? not really a hot take. but, then again, new writers so often want to reinvent the wheel and publishing folx can get so excited about an interesting structure.

Just personally (and you can think whatever you want, in terms of your own work), I don’t think this wheel needs reinventing. a beginning, middle, and end, seem necessary, even if one of the points at the end (like the endings of all my novels) is that life continues, that this isn’t a full stop, even if it’s the close of a certain chapter in our lives.

[abby, don’t use the word “chapter” in that way; you’ll use it in the literal, trade way later in this essay and confuse us all]

I also get really inventive with regards to other things, so I like to use a three-act structure to keep my writing from getting off track, and to hopefully retain commerciality alongside political themes in my novels. I’ve studied three act structure on a course in TV writing with Sundance, as well as read about it in various books on writing for screen.

I do think it’s really helpful to at least be familiar with three act structure beyond the “beginning, middle, end” thing—for instance, to know what typically happens to a man character at the break into two or at the midpoint. Look up “sequences” in a film—these can really help you understand your story. I believe we all know the arc of a story instinctively, so do write instinctively—but I use three act structure in editing and reading my work back and checking page counts to understand where I need to be when. I think three act structure is a very useful constraint.

so, this is where you can start to build your manifesto—structurally, what are your aims? what framework is going to contain your story?

here’s a little bit of my manifesto, then: “within a traditional 3 act structure”

my book is the first of a trilogy. I am attempting to make something commercially viable out of talking about the human journey—but not in terms of an epic, over land journey. i’m talking about the journey that all of us go on, where we become emotionally mature, learn to communicate that, the way we live our lives starts to reflect who we are, and we come to some peace because we know who we are.

because I’m trying to talk about life, I recognise that I can’t just entirely make things up. I’m a big reader and, obviously, i’ve also written a lot (3 published novels yes, but also lots of unpublished work!). sometimes I read things in books and think, hm, that scenario just doesn’t ring true to me. I do worry, in this age of anti-truth, or multi-truth, of pumping more untruths into the stratosphere.

I want my books to help people come to terms with the real horrors and heartbreaks in life. so, I decided early on, that I would stick as closely to the truth as I possibly could (without exposing myself to legal issues or hurting anyone unduly).

this is why I decided to write auto-fiction. what are you writing? maybe you’re intent on a novel because you want to “help people escape” — this could be a part of your manifesto, and it will help you while writing. You may have to make a choice and you can use this little mantra to remind yourself to make the choice that most helps people escape, be enchanted, get caught up in the story. This could affect for instance, the pace of your novel, the plot, where it happens (somewhere dreamy).

maybe you want to talk about a lived experience but you don’t want to reach only the smaller audience that might read an own-voices story. So perhaps auto fiction would work for you, pitched to a publisher as fiction based on a real life experience. My books are similar to this—I want to talk about experiencing baby loss, for instance, but I don’t want to reach only women who have. I want to be able to be there for women who are going to one day.

So, this is another part of my manifesto: “stick as closely to the truth as I can”

Another consideration you may have is earnings. Do you want to make enough money to work full-time? If you don’t mind which genre you write in, take a look at the bestsellers list—thrillers abound. So maybe you write a thriller. With GOLDEN BOY, I did want to earn money from it, so I wrote it with that in mind. At the time, nobody was talking about gender. That actually wasn’t the commercial thing about it. I made everybody in the book very, very attractive, and I put them in an aspirational area of the UK. Everybody likes a nice house, as my mum says.

for me, having had a period of time after GOLDEN BOY where so many people in industry now cared what I did, and wanted to tell me what they thought I should do, I realise listening to other people who don’t write or have your taste in books isn’t necessarily how you hack your way down your own path—even if they are industry pros who are a lot older than you.

Also, I’ve had a really rough time. Or, actually, life. I am destroyed every day by the idea that my kids won’t grow up. I really need strong reasons to be here, and one is to write what I want to write, to engage with a challenge I believe in, to say something I want to say, even if only five people are interested in it. Just an aside, that I really wish it were possible for everyone (including me) to do this financially; to live softly, to prioritise reasons, rather than bills (oh, and to be clear it’s not possible for me to do this so any support is appreciated — i.e. a paid sub. Only 5 dollars a month! And I don’t mind if you only subscribe for a month! All welcome.

So, for me, I said to myself to do this, “whether it makes 5k, 50k, or 500k”

Thinking of money, though, and I guess, not feeling too desperate about things taking a long time, I also decided, “I am giving myself this year to work on the book”

Sometimes setting a deadline just makes sure you chug along, picking it up, getting it down. Sometimes an idea will stay with you forever, but you move on in your life from the ability to write a story in a certain voice. I started a book after GOLDEN BOY I regret not finishing. I was told by an older person in publishing not to continue it—but then, my agent, another older person in publishing, told me not to write GOLDEN BOY. Sometimes, a little self-confidence and writing a book in secrecy pays off. Anyway, this other book was about Americans and I was writing in living in LA. Sadly, having not lived there for a while, I’m pretty sure I could never finish it.

Let’s talk length. I always write about 100,000 words. This happens almost no matter what, but I do kind of consider that each act is going to need about 30,000 words to be even, and I do occasionally check where I’m at. I do it by page count these days, so it’s weird that it keeps landing at 100,000, but my new manuscript is at 103,000, so clearly I can’t help it. Minimum I would say you need to be thinking about 60,000 words for an “average” length novel. But maybe you don’t want to make an average length novel! Think about books you enjoy, and figure something out.

Meanwhile, I wanted to write a novel, “roughly 100,000 words long”

Think about audience, if you want. What do you want to say to them? I was struck by how much I grew up in my early 30s. I felt I did so way more than I did as a late teenager or in my early 20s. I felt the 30s was when the lessons came together. and so,

“what I want the novel to do is to speak about growing up in our 30s and specifically as a woman.”

What do you want your book to do? How do you want it to move people? Write/scribble about this…

Lastly, let me say that I wanted to be brave enough not to rely on plot, but to trust that just talking about the life of a 30-year-old woman was important. Yes! Actually important! I know, I know, shit on the idea if you will. How much will your book rely on plot? will it be voice-driven? Will it take place over a day? What excites you? What challenges can you give yourself?

So, I said, Abby, “have confidence in writing the ordinary life of a 30-year-old woman and treat her life and feelings and interiority as important”

With GOLDEN BOY, my manifesto was something along the lines of, “write for people who wouldn’t be on board with a genderqueer or intersex narrator and who wouldn’t understand a non-binary perspective or why discussing gender and how it’s conceptualised in society today (2011) is so important, and convince them absolutely to be on Max’s side.” I wanted to make sure that would-be parents of intersex kids in deepest Alabama might pick up this book to read for pleasure, and find in it a way to not be frightened of having an intersex child and to understand they didn’t need medically “correcting”, unless for serious health reasons (like with CAH). This meant that my gender agenda was feathered through the book, but cunningly wrapped in an entertaining, pacy story about an aspirational, gorgeous set of people. How do you think I did?

With DEAD GIRLS, I wanted to keep people on Thera’s side and in her perspective, so we could see male gaze and rape culture from the point of view of the youngest women it concerns; I also wanted to write a book for those missing from society—the real dead girls who never made it home, a book in which their hero got to triumph. This made it necessary to sweep up the reader and run fast with them through the book—so, again, it’s a pacy book. It also contains a lot of humour that I think would have appealed to me at that age. A nod to the girls it was written for.

With FLICK, I wanted to write a book young men would read that truly reflected their lives. The chapters were short and punchy, to this end.

My manifesto for this new book works out something like this:

I want to write an auto fiction novel, roughly 100,000 words long, and with a three-act structure, about the ordinary life of a 30-year-old woman, that treats her life and feelings and interiority as important, in which I will stick as closely to the truth as I can. I am giving myself this year to work on the book, whether it makes 5k, 50k, or 500k, what I want it to do is to speak about growing up in our 30s and specifically as a woman.

Leave your manifestos in the comments? I’m excited to read them!

AJK Tarttelin November 2024