On a Cynical Plan to Make Money from Writing

Five Novels

In 1960, a man named John Anthony Burgess Wilson was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour. He decided that his best chance of providing for his wife, after his death, was to write five novels. For the money, the advances and royalties. But the diagnosis had been mistaken. Anthony Burgess lived, and became the noted author of Earthly Powers and A Clockwork Orange.

Would anyone nowadays think fiction was a good way of making a quick buck? Or even the basic minimum wage?

(I suspect Burgess wanted to write anyway, and took his death sentence for a liberation.)

As a thought experiment, let’s assume there is still a chance of us making a great deal of money from five completed posthumous novels.

How can we to go about it?

I think we have a model in Stieg Larsson (Men Who Hate Women, 2005, translated as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 2008).

His posthumous success is what we’re aiming for. Film and TV adaptations. Sequels and spin-offs written by other authors. The whole Virginia Andrews deal.

From my knowledge of Stieg, he did all of these five things — one way or another.

Here is my five step Cynical Plan to Make Money From Writing Five Novels.

1. Ditch the Cynicism

Although this was the start-point for our project, coming across as anything other than wholehearted will destroy our chances of gaining a big readership. And so, we need to make sure we are writing a story in a world we desperately care about, and are doing so in a way that is emotionally accessible through plot rather than attitude or fine style. In other words, we need to fall in love with our characters, even if what we’re really loving is how disgusted we are with them. We must raid our memories for a unique person to bring back to vivid life. We need to write from a deep hot core of energy, and make sure that energy is transferred through our sentences to our audience. But we can do this — we can — there’s lots we care about, there’s loads of amazing people we’ve met, and we only have an imaginary year to live. Forget fine style; write straight and true.

2. Write about Injustice

We don’t have to write a crime novel, or a cosy whodunnit, or a thriller, or an elaborate revenge fantasy — but we do need to go for the most powerful plot engine available. We hate what’s wrong with the world, and we always have. Readers, too, hate injustice, especially when it’s injustice suffered by a main character they have started to care about. An unsolved murder that rips a peaceful community apart is an injustice. (Community is precious.) So is the unsolved murder of an unknown victim about whom no-one really seems to care. (Everyone has worth.) But if we have a main character who tries to do good to and for others, but whose true worth is unknown, and yet who continues to try, then we may not need to go round killing off minor characters. All we’ll need to do is put them into a mobile world the reader wishes to inhabit — perhaps because it’s aspirational, like the seaside, or because it’s glamorously seedy, like the big city or the seaside.

3. Begin a Series with Recurring Characters

We have a far greater chance of making money if our future publishers know that investing in Book 1 may not pay off immediately, but will help build Books 2, 3 and 4. (By 5, they may have retired.) I remember speaking to Richard Thomas, who used to run a reading series at Filthy McNasty’s pub in Islington. The turnout for my reading was small. He said not to worry, he’d organised several events for the Scottish writer Ian Rankin (Rebus). For Rankin’s first reading, there had been a similar number as for mine. But the next one was busy. And the third was the final one, because Rankin was too big for the venue. This is how it can work for literary series. And although Rankin has tried to kill off Rebus once, he now knows that having a main character who is presented with an injustice and an investigation as a matter of course makes a writer’s life a lot easier. (First series of Ludwig, he’s solving crimes almost by accident; second series, the Police have put him on a retainer.)

4. Make It More than What’s Around Already

As well as writing furiously, in our imagined final year, we need to be furiously checking the competition. There is no point unwittingly rewriting what is already out there. We need to be producing something a little different or a lot better. So we need to be thoroughly across the bestsellers in our chosen genre. We have to take a hard look at what they’re doing, and then we either need to do that thing more violently, more whimsically, more aspirationally or just faster. (Alternatively, as George R R Martin did, we could do that thing more expansively and intricately, but we don’t have time for that.) Once we have understood their boundaries, and understood the reason for those boundaries, we need to find a place to go beyond.

5. Get Merciless Feedback and Take It

We’re not doing all of this by ourselves. Maybe we try flying solo to the end of that first novel, so we’re not asking friends, family, neighbours and chance acquaintances to read something unsatisfying. But as soon as we’ve got something to show, and we’re sure it’s as efficient a product as possible, we need to test it out. We need a small audience to help us toward a bigger one. This is going to be tricky. If we’re kind, we’ll print out paper copies, perhaps with an attractive cover, and we’ll give these to whoever we know that usually reads our kind of stuff. If this isn’t possible, we will pay for feedback. We’ll go to The London Lit Lab or The Literary Consultancy. We will ask them for their worse, and then we’ll do another full draft taking into account the most painful bits of what they say.

That’s it.

That’s all.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash