The river banks of story - Rowena House

I’ve a memo on my phone with a commercial pitch line for my work-in-progress which I edit regularly, often first thing in the morning or last thing at night, circling around twenty words or so which express the essence of what I think I’m writing.

According to some writing gurus, the pitch line is your lodestone, giving direction to your writing through the twists and turns of the plot. My latest version: ‘A young pamphleteer discovers why tyrants are hunting witches, a truth that threatens his life’ (15 words).

Unfortunately, it’s useless as a lodestone. It’s what happens in the plot, without any sense of the drivers of the narrative, either for me as the author or for my protagonist. If I engraved it on a fancy background and stick it up on a wall above the computer, it would achieve precisely zilch, which may be why this story is taking forever to write. [Another explanation for the slowness is, do I really want to finish it when getting publishing is a soul-suck? But that’s another blog.]

The current academic version of the pitch line – the WIP being the body of a creative writing PhD – is rather more useful in terms of a reminder about what I think I’m up to. That is, ‘The novel is an exploration of self-delusion and societal group-think grounded in the unreliable historical record of a witch trial’ (21 words).

It’s taken nearly three years collecting research material and writing two spiked drafts (neither completed) to get to this point – huzzah – but I now believe this academic pitch to be ‘true’ to my intention. It is an expression of why this subject – witch trials – appealed to my subconscious.

Essentially, I’m looking into the intersection between the psychology and the ‘sociology’ of how and why we lie to ourselves, using the historical record as a particular – and extreme – example.

Thus when I arrived at the latest Break into Act 2 scene, I both am but also am not writing about an impoverished, persecuted, long-dead boy who got beaten up in his cell – even if he is the most dramatically 'alive' character on those pages. Instead, I was (meant to be) writing about the protagonist’s reactions to evidence of torture, including his conformist, religious denial of empathy for someone accused of witchcraft. It is here in the psychology of everyday immorality that I hope to find the universal within the particular, that magical core we’re all meant to be writing about at some level.

Another way I'm trying to articulate the central driver of the story (mine and the protagonist's) is by adapting John Truby's concept of a central, defining, necessary action by the protagonist that unites the story. In Truby’s Anatomy of a Story, this one action - "Luke fighting the enemy" in Star Wars - creates a ‘cause and effect pathway’ that coheres the story. As an idea, it is well worth looking up, imho. 

I’m still coy about sharing my cause and effect pathway as a) it’s the USP of the WIP, and b) because I forgot to finish this post amid a bunch of life stuff this week and I’m writing this last bit on the morning of the 15th and don’t want to share stuff that later I'll wish hadn't. Silly, I know, but...

Anyhow, during last night’s insomnia, when I realised I hadn't posted this blog, I had a mini-epiphany about all this and came up with the following image which sort of explains my current framework for long-form storytelling. It is based on a bunch of stuff gleaned from various gurus over the years and my experience of analysing the writing process during the PhD and previously on the Bath Spa MA. 

This story-in-progress is a river, with the historical record one bank and the structural beats of a contemporary novel the other. The flow between them is the cause-and-effect pathway of the narrative. At the denouement, the protagonist will work out how and why their central action wounds themselves (the psychological self-revelation) and hurts others (the immoral consequences of their wrong behaviour). The final image is the flow of this one life entering the universal sea. That is, bringing their life lesson to humanity. This may be utter tosh, but it’s been a tough week. 

In any event, here’s hoping our stories bring us relief if no one else. 

@HouseRowena on X/Twitter where I can be found bringing reputational risk to something or other (see current ACE advice controversy)

Rowena House Author on Facebook where I blather (aka moan) about writing this C17th witchy WIP.

The psychology of book buyers. Have you thought of it? Moira Butterfield

I’d like to recommend a book and some TED talks that may inspire you to think about your book title and might also help with pitching an idea to agents and publishers.

The book is fun to read as well as being thought-provoking, and it’s written in short entertaining user-friendly chapters (with a great user-friendly internal reading design).

It’s called Alchemy. The surprising power of ideas that don’t make sense. (WH Allen)

It’s by Rory Sutherland, an urbane and entertaining elder statesman of the ad industry who wants us all to understand the power of irrational thinking in the behaviour of human beings. It could get you thinking about the psychology of humans (in this case publishers and customers). Why might they want or reject your book?

Rory Sutherland offers lots of examples of very successful marketing ideas that on the surface don’t make rational sense but make use of psychology. For example why is the drink Red Bull so popular when market research shows that everyone hates the taste? Why do we prefer stripy toothpaste? Why do we think coffee shops with chairs on the pavement are better than coffee shops without them? How can some words change the taste of biscuits?

Conversely, there are examples where seemingly rational marketing bombed – such as the reasons why hoverboards didn’t catch on.

Trying to be super-rational and not taking feelings into account - possibly irrational but very strong feelings - can easily lead to marketing disaster.

It can in publishing, I think. I am sure there are plenty of examples of books that everyone thought would do well but bombed because their titles inadvertently put people off or confused them about what the book actually contained. I know of a novel that’s just been re-jacketed by the publisher because booksellers took one look at it, made assumptions and put it in the wrong place. Then people who might have liked it just didn’t find it.

 Certainly there are books that many thought would do badly but became bestsellers. The most famous and costly example concerns the many publishers who turned down Harry Potter because apparently they had decided en masse to assume that children would no longer like wizards and magic in the modern world, when in fact it turned out that children were longing for fantasy adventures that would give them an escape from modern life.

When you pitch your idea it is surely worth showing that you have considered why people would be attracted to your book. If you explain that you have thought about this, then your case must surely be stronger. For example, you might want to point out that the themes you address are very current and are likely to chime with people’s thinking. 

Is that title that you are suggesting going to appeal to buyers or is it going to confuse them or put them off? Have you really muddied the waters with it? I know that titles often change later, but when you're pitching you’re trying to sell your idea so you don’t want to make a big psychological mistake – making your book sound like something in a very different genre, perhaps, or perhaps even making it sound really boring.

I’m making up this extreme – but let’s say you wrote a picture book for bedtime reading and called it ‘The Dark behind the Door’ or ‘The Invisible Hand’. As a publisher and also a parent buying a picture book, I’d run a mile from that scary-sounding title.

Another example – If I was creating a big format non-fiction book for children it’s likely to be bought as a gift – ie: by an adult. But if it had a weird title that nobody could quite fathom, it might put the gift-buyer off looking at it in the first place altogether because they simply couldn’t be sure what was inside and might not want to give it to a child.

There are a few short online TED talks by Rory Sutherland which are fun to watch (link to one at the bottom), and his book is a great read. It’s not about publishing but it could get you into the right mindset to help you avoid some thinking errors that could doom your pitch and perhaps even your sales.

Moira Butterfield writes for ages from 3 up to 12, both non-fiction and fiction. Her latest books are non-fiction - Welcome To Our World (Nosy Crow) and Home Sweet Home (Red Shed). Next year she has books coming out with the National Trust, Quarto and Templar.

Moira Butterfield

www.moirabutterfield.com

Twitter @moiraworld

Instagram @moirabutterfieldauthor 

https://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_an_ad_man