Mo Fanning - British writer and comic

Tips

How to Come Up with a Book Title (That Sticks)

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A title that sicks

When it comes to writing a novel, the title is one of the most important aspects. It’s what potential readers will see first, and it needs to be catchy enough to make them want to learn more. But coming up with a title that is both original and interesting can be difficult. In this blog post, I’ll discuss some tips for finding the perfect title for a book – and making sure it sticks!

First, think about what the book is about. Is it a mystery? Does it take place in space? What kind of characters are there?

Once you’ve decided on these things, then start looking at words that relate to them (or other similar topics). For example: if your character has two eyes but not one eye or three eyes – they might be called “One-Eyed Jacks.”

You could also chuck in an adjective like “spooky”.

A title with numbers

Other options include using numbers instead of letters such as ‘The Fifty Shades‘ trilogy by EL James. Or maybe even something from mythology which relates well with your story. Another option would be simply coming up with some cool sounding names for each chapter and adding those together until you create something that sounds right.

And then there’s the market. Certain titles work for certain sorts of book.

If you’re writing a book about dogs, you might come up with something like “How I Became A Dog Whisperer”. Or maybe even just call it ‘Whisper’. It all depends on who your target audience is.

Romance

Romance often needs to convey some hints about what is going to happen in the story. If you’re writing a story about an English girl who travels to America and ends up falling in love with a Native American, you might want something along the lines of “An English Girl Finds Love In The Wild West”.

Once you’ve got some ideas together, start playing around with different combinations until one particular combination feels right. Sometimes even just changing the order of words can make all the difference between sounding cool or like the kitchen-based nerd at your own party.

How do you come up with your titles? Tell me and share some tips.

The shape of a story

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STORY PLANNING TOOL

There are two types of story writer. Those who just go where the words take them (sometimes known as flying by the seat of their pants – pantsers) and those whose planning efforts make Covid vaccination deployment look like the Teddy Bear’s Picnic (planners). I was a pantser, now I’m a dedicated planner.

With NaNoWriMo just around the corner, why not take a minute to plan the story you plan to tell?

I’ve seen too many would-be books collapse at the 30,000 word mark as I either lost interest or found I couldn’t really work out how to get to the ending I had in mind because I’ve gone in every kind of weird direction. It’s all too easy to say ‘the characters made me do it’. They didn’t. You made you do it. Characters don’t suddenly take on a life of their own and do what they want. You decide to let them.

If the idea of planning has you feeling you’d lose creative control, ask yourself how many drafts you’ve done of that book you’re still working on and how many times you’ve edited those brilliant first three chapters knowing that what follows isn’t AS good. Or run a stock take on abandoned novels or those where everything happens at the start or end in a rush and there’s a saggy middle (like a saggy bottom, but harder to disguise with cream and a load of strawberries).

The three-act story structure

The three-act structure is a classic way to plan your story. Act one sets up the status quo – it tells the reader where they are and who does what and establishes motivations.

Act two kicks in after an inciting incident (a decision made or something that happens after which there is no going back to the status quo). This is the meat of your story and goes on a while. Because pace matters, you need to build in drama along the way, spacing it out, each time creating higher stakes for your main character. Each time, having something they do inspire what follows. Each time, creating a stage from which there is no easy return. And then … just as everything looks to be working out, grab the rug and pull. Bring things crashing down and let your character find a way through. It may not be to where they first wanted to go, but everything they learned along the way comes into play now as we start …

Act three – the resolution, where you might again feature a dramatic flourish, but your aim is to land that plane. To take the character to one side and ask “what did you want to do/achieve?” and then “What did you achieve?”. The story ends all neat and tidy and tied up in a pace-maintained bow.

Jack and Jill plot

Download my planning tool

Download in PowerpointI’ve created a FREE planning tool you can open in PowerPoint to use with your own screenplays or stories.

Let me know if it’s helpful.

Rebuilding Alexandra Small by Mo Fanning

 

Writing: How to decide on the story I want to tell

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In the middle of promoting my recent book – Rebuilding Alexandra Small – (99p for the month of July at most eBook sellers) I’m also writing something new. It’s the weird way of the writing world that you truly want to put all your energy into a new project, but need to set a decent chunk of time aside to sell something that’s over a year old in your head.

I’m midway through the third draft of what I hope to share either later this year or early next and the story continues to twist and turn and bend into all kinds of new shapes. I was sure I knew what I wanted to say with this next novel, but it turns out I want to say more thing. With rebuilding Alexandra Small, I wanted to address recovery and making amends – and what happens when someone you forgot about sticks their head up and says ‘what about me?’ The central storyline deals with paying the price for not saying sorry.

For my (as yet untitled) work in progress, I have three key storylines. An older couple, a younger couple. A gay couple, a straight couple. Something nefarious involving the church. And it’s all set on a Christmas cruise to the Bahamas. I started with the focus firmly on one of the key players, allowing others occasional goes at speaking to the reader. Then I switched in the second draft, dividing time equally. It’s just dawned on me in the third draft, that my previous favourite character is actually quite safe. She takes few risks. She could even be called dull (but only by a close friend). And I wanted to explore why. It’s helped me focus the theme for the new book. One of the other key characters suffers from the weight of meeting expectations and feeling inadequate. Another struggles to make good for an impulsive argument that split his family. I thought I might have many things to say with this one, but now I see I have just one: being true to yourself comes with a cost, but it’s worth paying.

Pitching your writing

As a writer, it’s vital to distil your story into one or two lines. This lets you stay focussed on the end-game and kill any non-helpful darlings in the edit – taking out each and every fabulously written chunk of prose that fails to advance the story. Having this essence bottled makes it so much easier to talk about your book when you reach the marketing or pitch stage. It’s a way to be sure of meeting the expectations of your genre, your readers and that demanding inner critic – the one who keeps bleating on about imposter syndrome. For me, everything starts with one (or more) character(s). You might work differently.

I’ll aim to share some pages with my mailing list subscribers in the coming weeks. In the meantime, enjoy the sun. If you’ve never tried placing a bottle of frozen water in front of a table fan, do it now. You’ll thank me.

And if you can spare a pound/buck/yoyo, please buy an e-book this month. It’ll help make paying my mortgage that little bit easier.

Low cost ebooks

Everybody loves an unreliable narrator … don’t they?

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Rebuilding Alexandra Small

I’ve owned an unreliable washing machine, an unreliable car, and worst of all roller-coaster results from a not entirely trustworthy recipe for spaghetti carbonara. And yet I persist. It’s the same with an unreliable narrator. Make the people who live on your pages too predictably perfect, and nobody cares.

I just picked up my first advance review for ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small‘. One thing the reader zoomed in on is the fact that Alexandra Fox is far from perfect.

“At times I felt sorry for Allie and at other times I blamed her. Allie is not perfect, hasn’t always made great decisions, and sometimes lashes out. She’s like one version of ourselves, the version we are always trying to hide. Yet even then, I envy her. Allie doesn’t suppress herself. She reacts. She says what she shouldn’t and acts on impulse… but not all the time. She is trying to pick up her pieces and move on with her life, except she’s been thrust into a state of limbo. Mo Fanning has cleverly crafted this complex environment for Allie and I was enthralled watching the ups and downs of her everyday life within this environment. I was forever guessing what she would do or say next. I couldn’t put the book down.”

Who invented the unreliable narrator?

An unreliable storyteller is a narrator whose credibility is compromised. Wayne C. Booth first coined the phrase in 1961 in The Rhetoric of Fiction. Sometimes unreliability is made immediately clear. Also, it’s better if a reader finds out about selective memory once they get to know them – just like in real life. Who hasn’t made a friend with hidden depths?

When writing Allie, I wanted to create someone readers engage with on a deeper level. First person narratives put the reader in the storyteller’s mind, and transmit their exclusive take on the world … but everyone has their less shining moments, and having Allie confront her past is my way of framing an up-down-up recovery. I didn’t want her unreliability to jump out of the first page, rather it should reveal itself in unexpected ways.

Quoting the rather lovely Rachel Barnard once more:

“Allie wasn’t always nice to others growing up, so perhaps the way people see her and treat her now might be some kind of karma, but she doesn’t deserve it.”

 

Rebuilding Alexandra Small by Mo FanningRebuilding Alexandra Small is available this month to request on NetGalley.

It’s also on sale for advance orders as both an eBook and Paperback at all good booksellers.

 

16 ways for writers to create a rounded character

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Character research

One thing I’ve come to accept with writing is the absolute need for character research. And by this, I don’t mean heading over to Google to find out about the town in which you plan to set your story, or looking up how likely it might be to die from a well-aimed gun shot. The single most vital bit of research any writer does relates to the people who populate their pages. Not knowing enough about the characters in your story is the biggest cause of writer’s block.

The obvious objection here is to say: How can I research a character I made up?

Soap writers access huge detailed fact files built up on each and every on-screen face so nobody acts out of character. As a writer, you need to do the same.

Each time I get an idea for a new project, I write the first few chapters (secure in the knowledge not one sentence will make the final draft). This is where I stop.

By then, I’ve created a handful of characters – or in my case, it’s more like twenty or thirty. This is where the initial character cull needs to happen. At least half need to go (or find themselves relegated to bit part roles – often without names).

What you’re aiming for is one or two lead characters and perhaps two (or three at most) supporting ones.

Character 16-point checklist

When you’ve agreed with yourself who gets to live, this is where research starts. My target is to write 2-4 pages on each. This is where you dig into your imagination, but also Google to understand who the character is, what drives them and what has happened to them in their life, where they come from and what sights, sounds and smells they recall and carry with them.

For each character, think about:

  • Their age
  • Where they live when the story starts
  • Background
  • Physical description
  • Typical clothing (here I like to create 5-10 outfits to copy and paste later)
  • Current and former occupation
  • Key relationships
  • What motivates them?
  • Describe their personality
  • Do they follow any hobbies?
  • Do they have habits or twitches/tics?
  • Why is their role in the story?
  • Does anything scare them?
  • What drives them on?
  • Describe their biggest secret
  • What do other people see when they look at this character?

I’m not going to say you must complete every single one of these for each character. Lesser ones don’t merit this level of depth, but having a place to check back and make sure you gave them the correct eye colour or the right hairstyle will save you hours of flicking through chapters. And avoids that horrible day when an editor (or worse a reader posting an Amazon review) points out your glaring error.

As a bonus, nine times out of ten, doing this exercise prompts storyline twists; knowing I’ve created something to reveal about any character is a brilliant motivator.

How do you build your characters? Share your tips.

Photo by Russ Ward on Unsplash