Guest post: Evolving your marketing plan by Rachel Abbott

Tonight’s guest blog post is brought to you by psychological thriller novelist, guest postee (also on marketing) and interviewee Rachel Abbott.

Evolving your marketing plan

Just over a year ago, I wrote a post for my own blog called “Using Twitter – are you a writer, a brand or a salesman?” and it received more responses than any other post I have ever written. I talked about how, as a writer, you have three choices: you either write books and don’t worry at all about marketing on the basis that if you publish enough books, they will take care of themselves; you are a brand, and you are trying to connect with people at a deeper level, so that readers remain faithful to you in the years to come; or you’re a salesman and all you care about right now is people buying your book!

There is absolutely no doubt that when I launched Only the Innocent, I was a salesman. I desperately needed to get people to notice my book, and I believed that, given most people’s Twitter streams zip by at a rate of knots, I had to tweet about my book at least every 15 minutes, or nobody would never get to see the tweet. I can almost hear people screaming in horror at the thought – but do you know what? It worked. I don’t regret it, and even though I know it turned some people off completely, I did sell a lot of books.

I am not quite naïve enough to believe that I sold them all because of Twitter. In reality, it probably had a relatively low impact once the book started to take off – but I did measure Twitter’s impact in the early days, and I do think that at a time when I was building the book’s visibility it was accounting for about ten sales per day. Not huge, but enough to get the book noticed and more visible on Amazon. Ultimately it was the positive reviews and the fact that people started to talk about it in forums that made it take off – two things that I had very little control over.

However… one year on, and it’s a different story. When I wrote Only the Innocent I had a target of selling about a thousand copies. That was what success looked like to me. I had a vague plan for another book, but I didn’t know when I was going to get the time to write it. I ended up being incredibly lucky, and my first novel has now sold over 150,000 copies. And nobody is more shocked than me. Because of this success, I have changed a few things in my life and I’ve found the time to write the next book.

So why is it a different marketing story this time around?

It’s because now I want to focus on the brand. I was lucky enough to get some terrific readers who have been very supportive of my writing. If these people follow me on Twitter or on Facebook, they’re not doing that to have my new book thrust down their throats every two minutes. I now plan to be a writer for the long haul, and I already have book three planned. So I would love to have these readers stick with me.

In many of my previous blog posts – both on my own site and as a guest blogger – I have talked about my marketing plan. For book one, it was seven pages long. My second book – The Back Road – was launched in the UK on the 18th March 2013, and in the US at the beginning of October 2013, and my marketing plan this time is twenty-eight pages long. And the big difference is that it’s all about reader engagement.

I haven’t got this right yet, so don’t check my Twitter stream and say “oh yeah” in a scathing tone, but the whole focus of my new plan is to create content online that my readers are interested in. That’s on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the various forums. I want my readers to continue to follow me, and continue to be interested in the future – so that they may (hopefully) decide to read book three, four, five.

The question that my marketing plan tries to identify is exactly how to go about this, and it’s not easy. Some authors seem to think that they must never mention their books – almost as if the title’s a dirty word (or words). They assume their readers are interested in their daily lives, and tweet about what they had for breakfast, or how much they spent at Tesco. That doesn’t interest me at all, so I’m going to assume that it doesn’t interest my readers either. Other writers are funny. I love the funny ones – but I know that I’m not very, so that’s never going to work. Then there’s the group that somehow believes that their tweets are invisible and they write snarky comments about people who have reviewed their books. I really don’t understand that.

To be clear, I am not going to stop talking about my books on social media, but I am going to look at innovative and fun ways of engaging my audience, in a bid to get to know more of them. When The Back Road was almost finished, I was able to approach readers who I had been chatting with on social media to ask if they would be early readers. The response was terrific, and they gave me honest comments about storylines and characters – all of which I was able to incorporate before it went to final edit. I’d love more of this engagement.

Getting a solid bank of people who are interested in my books to follow my tweets and engage on Facebook is now more important that striving to reach the number one spot – a nearly impossible feat given the plethora of 20p books. That level of pricing is beyond my control – it is a decision taken by Amazon to price match other retailers. But that’s okay. I have to focus on what really matters.

And if you’ve published a book, so do you. The decision in terms of marketing is exactly the same as it was a year ago, and each individual will have a different point of view. The question is – are you a writer, a brand or a salesman? If you go the salesman route, you won’t be alone. There was a post in The Guardian recently that demonstrates quite clearly that some big names have no compunction about self-promotion. But for now, I am going to try a somewhat gentler route.

I don’t deny that there will be some promotional tweets – but not one every fifteen minutes! I ‘m going to try to develop ideas for tweets and posts that readers will enjoy in the hope that they stay with me in the years to come. I’m still trying to figure it out, but I’ll get there, and I’m sure it’s going to be worth it.

*

That was great. Thank you, Rachel.

Rachel Abbott spent the majority of her working life running an interactive media company that designed and developed software and websites, mainly for education. Her company was sold in 2000, and although she continued working for another 5 years, she also fulfilled a lifelong ambition of buying and restoring a property in Italy, where she now lives with her husband and their two dogs. Her website is http://www.rachel-abbott.com and she blogs at http://rachelabbottwriter.wordpress.com.

Rachel’s new book, The Back Road, is available exclusively from Amazon UK until September, when it will be available in other formats.

The paperback will be published in the US in October.

Only the Innocent is available in Kindle format from Amazon UK, and in paperback, Kindle and audio formats from Amazon US.

For other ebook formats please visit http://www.rachel-abbott.com/how-to-buy.html.

***

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Guest post: The Importance of a Marketing Plan by Rachel Abbott

Tonight’s guest blog post, on the topic of marketing, is brought to you by thriller novelist, guest posted (on planning a novel) and interviewee Rachel Abbott.

The Importance of a Marketing Plan

If you are an indie author, you will probably by now have realised that you have a number of roles to fulfil – only one of which is writing your books! The question is, how successful do you want your book to be? Does this matter to you, or is your pleasure in the writing and knowing that a few people have read your work? Everybody is driven by something different.

When I wrote ‘Only the Innocent’, I had no real aspirations. I wrote it because the story had been in my head for years, and it was just a real pleasure to get it down in writing. I had no ambitions to get it published at all. But then a small number of people read it, and they encouraged me. Finally, I decided to upload it to KDP Amazon and other ebook sites, and just ‘have a go’. It wasn’t thought through any more than that. I did no preparation for a book launch, no marketing, and I had no sales platform.

But then something happened. I became bitten by the bug. In the first few weeks, I sold quite a few. I have a reasonably wide personal network and my friends and family were very supportive and bought my book. When the initial excitement passed, and the sales dried up, I found that I didn’t like that one little bit!

So I realised that if I wanted to sell some books, I was going to have to do some work. But I went about it in completely the wrong way to start with. I went into research mode. I spent weeks researching ways of getting my book noticed. And then I realised one very sad fact – I was doing lots and lots of reading of advice, but I wasn’t actually doing anything at all. It was just so easy to go from one author help site to the next thinking “Ooh, that’s a good idea” and bookmarking the page. My ‘ebook marketing’ bookmarks folder is enormous.

As somebody who used to run a business, I soon had to acknowledge that this was hopeless and I forced myself out of ‘writer mode’ and into ‘business mode’. I wrote myself a marketing plan – seven pages of single-spaced paragraphs. I have it open on the screen as I am writing this, and I thought I would share the first few paragraphs with you. Just remember that this was for my eyes only, so I wrote down what I was thinking – almost a conversation with myself. It wasn’t going to be submitted for board approval!

ONLY THE INNOCENT – MARKETING PLAN

Why do I need one?

Is it worth it? Without a marketing plan and a bit of effort, there is no doubt at all that ‘Only the Innocent’ will disappear from view in days. It has already slipped 5000 places in about 4 days. (note: this was after the initial flurry of friend activity)

Very few authors sell massive numbers of books – so the question is, do I expect to get rich, or do I just want to get people to read my book? The first option is highly unlikely, so I’m aiming for the second – and for this, I need to make sure my book is visible and easy for readers to find.

The next question is, how long do I try for?

Until the end of January to try to make the most of any Christmas sales. I have from now to Christmas to get noticed, so that the people who get Kindles for Christmas might reasonably consider purchasing the book. If there are no improvements by then, I will accept defeat and give up.

And that was it. I was going to give up at the end of January if I wasn’t getting anywhere. But I was – and on 18th February ‘Only the Innocent’ reached number 1 on Amazon UK and stayed there for an amazing four weeks.

There is no doubt in my mind that my marketing plan had a huge impact, but there is no blueprint for success. There are four questions that people constantly ask me when I talk about marketing plans, so let’s consider them in order of priority.

1. Why do I need a marketing plan?

A plan will give your days some structure, and define some clear objectives. You should end up with a list of actions that have focus, rather than a range of random activities, and a timetable so that you don’t spend too long on one activity at the expense of another.

Your plan should enable you to assess the effectiveness of each of the actions that you are taking. With a clear objective for each group of actions, and a timescale for checking how well they are working, you can avoid wasting endless hours on pointless tasks.

My plan was very long, because I looked at all the options that I had discovered in my research. But your plan could be just one side of scribbled A4, as long as you have some clearly stated objectives, and an action plan of how you are going to achieve them.

2. Where do I start?

The first thing is to identify your channels to market – where can people buy your book. Is it just available on Amazon, or are you making it available on other ebook readers as well (and if not, is that a rational decision, or is it because you’re not sure how to go about it?).

For most people, Amazon is probably going to be the most successful in terms of sales, so I will use it as an example. Ask yourself the question – what can Amazon do to help me sell my book? The answer to that is a lot. Amazon provides so many opportunities for increasing the visibility of your book, and you can explore them all. And visibility is the key – if nobody can find your book, nobody can buy it.

I will use one example:  “Customers who bought xxx also bought yyy”. I wanted my book to be linked to as many high profile books as possible. But my problem was that most of my early readers didn’t own Kindles, and had downloaded my book for their phones or computer, so I wasn’t linked to any books at all.

How could I influence this opportunity? How could I make sure my book was linked to other books? I realised that I needed people to buy ‘Only the Innocent’ who had previously bought books by authors in a similar genre. I identified two ways of doing this – by trying to build up a Twitter following of people who love thrillers, and by chatting in the Amazon forums to other thriller lovers.

Sales to start with were slow, but as the people buying my book were people who had bought other books, it gradually became more visible. And as an added bonus, most of these people were prepared to share their enjoyment of my book on both Twitter and in the forums.

This is just one visibility or ‘touch’ point for a single channel. For each of your channels you need to identify all of these points, and then think about a series of actions that you can take that will influence your book’s visibility.

3. How do I prioritise?

This is a huge issue. There are just so many opportunities for exposure, and so many different actions you can take. I have a list a mile long of ideas for the marketing plan for my next book, and I’m going to look at each one to identify the size of the commitment.

With my original plan, I identified six ways of increasing visibility on Amazon alone, and for each of those I had a number of proposed actions. Some of these were simple but essential – such as ensuring that if anybody did find my book, the product description was as good as I could get it, and my author details were up to date. One-off actions such as these are not too difficult to put in the priority queue. It’s the things that you have to do every day that are going to take up your time – social networking, maintaining a blog, requesting reviews, etc.  So when you have your long list, you have to prioritise.

I asked myself these questions:

1. what do I enjoy doing?

2. how big is the commitment?

3. can I automate any of it?

I chose my options according to those criteria. And then I gave a daily or weekly time limit to each of my chosen activities, plus a date for review. For example, I might chose to try a specific forum for two weeks, and see if anybody has shown interest. If I have had no feedback, I must be in the wrong place, and it’s time to move on.

The commitment question is really important. There is no point starting a blog if you are not prepared to update it regularly. It’s just a waste of your initial time and effort setting it up. I am very guilty of that with my Facebook page – and I know it! (Morgen: me too, Rachel!)

But in some cases, there are tools that will help you to automate tasks. With Twitter, for example, you can use software that will find your kind of readers – and automatically follow these people for you in the hope that they will follow you back. This is one area that you do need to research, because some of these tools are free but others have to be paid for.

4. Once it’s done, can I forget it?

A marketing plan isn’t a fixed document. You have to adapt to new sites and opportunities that are becoming available all the time. I learn new things every single day about marketing books. I am now back in writing mode, so I don’t actually do any of them at the moment, but I will.

I could write about this all day! I could explain in detail the options that I chose and my own preferences. I love Twitter and I love chatting to people on forums. I’ve made some great friends that way, and I will continue to do that. But some people I have spoken to have chosen to go out sticking leaflets on cars. Others contact book clubs and offer to give talks. Everybody has their own way. You just need to find yours. And if it’s not too late to say this, write your plan before you launch your book. I didn’t, but I certainly wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Make sure the choices you make are fun for you, and the best of luck!

###

As someone who left their job seven and a bit weeks ago, this was perfect timing, thank you, Rachel!

I’d also recommend an eNewspaper as a way to expand your presence on Twitter (see this blog’s MB Daily page).

What Rachel was too modest to mention was that when she wrote her marketing plan, she had sold c.100 copies. She’s now sold over 100,000 and is convinced that would never have happened if she hadn’t written her plan. I’m off to write mine now…

Rachel Abbott is the author of best selling novel ‘Only the Innocent’. She spent the majority of her working life running an interactive media company that designed and developed software and websites, mainly for education. Her company was sold in 2000, and although she continued working for another 5 years, she also fulfilled a lifelong ambition of buying and restoring a property in Italy, where she now lives with her husband and their two dogs. Her website is http://www.rachel-abbott.com and she blogs at http://rachelabbottwriter.wordpress.com. Her books are available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

If you would like to write a writing-related guest post for my blog then feel free to email me with an outline of what you would like to write about. If it’s writing-related then it’s highly likely I’d email back and say “yes please”.

The blog interviews return as normal tomorrow morning with another thriller novelist PT Dawkins – the three hundred and sixty-fourth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, bloggers, autobiographers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.

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Unfortunately, as I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t review books but I have a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me reading it / talking about and critiquing it (I send you the transcription afterwards so you can use the comments or ignore them)  on my ‘Bailey’s Writing Tips’ podcast, then do email me. They are weekly episodes, usually released Monday mornings UK time, interweaving the recordings between the red pen sessions with the hints & tips episodes. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

Author interview no.348 with thriller writer Rachel Abbott

Welcome to the three hundred and forty-eighth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with psychological thriller novelist and guest postee Rachel Abbott. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Rachel. Please tell us something about yourself, where you’re based, and how you came to be a writer.

Rachel: I’m Rachel Abbott, and I live in central Italy – in an old converted monastery. Not as huge as it sounds, because there were only ever four monks here, but it does have its own little chapel.

I was lucky enough to sell my business in the UK about 12 years ago, and that gave me the opportunity to give up work a lot earlier than I would have expected to, which in turn gave me the chance to write, something that I had been wanting to do for years.

Morgen: Your ‘house’ sounds wonderful and with your surname, the perfect place. I’ve just given up my job (20 years early) although I still do bits of work for them (and will probably have to for a while) but at home, which is wonderful. We’re living the dream, aren’t we? What genre do you generally write?

Rachel: I write psychological thrillers – I find people completely fascinating and I should really have been a psychologist. I tend to create scenarios in which people who appear on the surface to be completely normal are actually hiding dark secrets. I did toy with the idea of writing for young teens. I had a really good idea that I still love, but when I tried to write, it just wasn’t good. By trying to write for a younger age range, my writing became very stilted.

Morgen: I think I’d be the same, not helped by not having children. What have you had published to-date? Do you write under a pseudonym?

Rachel: My first novel – Only the Innocent – was published in November 2011 for the Kindle and other e-readers. I’m delighted to say that it reached Number 1 in the UK Amazon charts on 18th February.

Rachel Abbott is a pseudonym which I actually decided to use because I wasn’t sure I could handle publishing something in my own name if people didn’t like it. Fortunately, it appears that the majority of people do like it, so I needn’t have done that. However, I like the name Rachel Abbott much more than my real name!

Morgen: Do you have an agent? Do you think they’re vital to an author’s success?

Rachel: I do have an agent, but I didn’t until Only the Innocent had become successful. I don’t think that an agent would have had much impact on sales of the Kindle version of Only the Innocent, but I am confident that in the future my agent will have a huge impact on my writing. I have found her to be immensely helpful and supportive and whether we decide to go the traditional route or stick with self-publishing, I am confident that it was the right decision. If I am honest, I would still really like to see my book in a bookshop, and the best chance of that is with a good agent. I tend to read on my Kindle or iPad now, but I have a massive library at home with thousands of books. I just love them.

Morgen: I don’t have an agent and do feel that they earn their keep (in most cases) but I love being able to do our own thing, making our own choices. How much of the marketing do you do for your published works or indeed for yourself as a ‘brand’?

Rachel: To date, I have done all of my own marketing – with no budget at all. When I launched Only the Innocent, I had no sales platform – nobody knew I existed. So it was a very steep learning curve. I used Twitter extensively to start with – and although people say that you only perhaps pick up one or two sales a day with Twitter, the reality is that in the early days of selling a book, every individual sale is vitally important to the book’s visibility on Amazon.

Morgen: It is absolutely, and realistically even a book or two a day is good. Your cover is very striking, please tell us more about its design and how important do you think they are?

Rachel: A friend of mine designed the cover. We used to work together, and now he is the Creative Director of a large company. But when I told him what I was doing, he wouldn’t let me use anybody else and insisted on doing it as a favour.

I think the cover is really important. I’ve seen lots of discussion about this, and I’m sure that people don’t actually buy a book because of its cover, but I think it might make them decide to look twice. A poorly designed cover seems to somehow show a lack of commitment.

Morgen: I think it certainly makes them look twice. What are you working on at the moment / next?

Rachel: I’m working on another thriller. The detective will be the same, although his role in the investigation will be quite different. All the other characters are new. As with Only the Innocent, the new book is about people who appear on the surface to be ordinary people, with the ordinary flaws that everybody has. But at least one person is hiding a deadly secret. It is very different in setting and relationships to Only the Innocent, but I do hope that it will evoke the same reaction in readers.

Morgen: I went to a crime writing workshop (hosted by novelist Helen Black) at the fantastic (and unbelievably first!) Chipping Norton Literature Festival yesterday afternoon. I’ve been to a LOT of talks over the past seven years and although it’s was only an hour, including questions, it was one of the best I’ve been to. Perhaps because of the timescale, Helen packed in so much information that I felt I learned such a lot about writing generally, and I thought I knew so much already. It was pure nuts and bolts and has really fired me up to squeeze in writing new crime novels as well as editing the four (various genre) novels I’ve written already (plus everything else ). At her book signing one of the ladies who bought her book (there were men as well) said she struggled to write every day and I said I’d only worked out recently that 300 words a day equates to 100,000 words a year. Feasible really (I certainly plan to ). Do you manage to write every day? Do you ever suffer from writer’s block?

Rachel: I would love to write every day! At the moment, I am still marketing Only the Innocent – it was great to be at number 1 in the UK, but I would like to make more of an impact in the US, and I want to maintain the momentum. So I am writing a lot of guest blog posts, and posts for my own blog. But I am going to be strict and focus on my writing every afternoon.

I don’t suffer from writer’s block – I suffer from planner’s block! I plan my novels with absolute precision, and I have to completely understand the motives of each individual. In my novels, everybody has a story. There are really no spare parts or padding. Each and every person has something going on in their lives, and these lives are all intertwined. I have recently had a problem with my really “bad guy” because I couldn’t quite come to terms with what this person had done. It didn’t feel quite right, so I struggled for a couple of weeks to clarify in my mind how everything would fit together.

Morgen: Two thirds of the readers of this blog are from the US so hopefully this will have a dent (if not an impact) over the ‘pond’ (this interview comes out 7am on a Monday morning so should catch their late Sunday evening). Thrillers are one of the most complex to write, and you say you plan with absolute precision, how do you plot your stories?

Rachel: Massive plotting, planning, character sheets, flowcharts, timelines – I am obsessive about it. I need it to be 100% clear in my head before I start to write. That’s not to say that other ideas don’t pop up from time to time, and they get added. But the plot is everything in a thriller, so it has to be just right.

Morgen: The first talk of ChipLit was a women’s fiction panel (with Katie Fforde, Jill Mansell, Fiona Walker, Veronica Henry – hosted by the brilliant Jane Wenham Jones) and when the question of ‘how’ they write, Jill came out with an A5 folded timeline which was just landscape A4 sheets sellotaped together with post-it notes of the plot on them. By using post-its she could peel them off if they were in the wrong order as she was planning or writing the book. I’m going to use that process (Helen does something similar with A4 sheets with the scene number, characters, location, and summary, all in order on her dining room floor) instead of my Word document of notes as I’ve found one scene happening before something that’s already happened, so I’ve ended up dating each chapter but a more linear process does sound good. Do you do a lot of editing or do you find that as time goes on your writing is more fully-formed?

Rachel: I write very long – far too much detail. But I write very quickly so I just get on with it once the planning is done. I don’t check back over what I’ve written until I get to the end. Then I get a big red pen and chop out huge amounts.

Morgen: I write quickly too and perhaps with too much detail, currently too many cups of tea in the first novel so all but two or three will go! Do you have to do much research?

Rachel: I did for Only the Innocent. I had to find out when Rohypnol was first used in the UK, how Eastern European prostitutes get into the country and what they cost to ‘buy’ from their smugglers. I needed to find out how to kill a man without poison or blood. My husband was getting a bit concerned that the police would be round any minute if they were monitoring our Google activity.

Morgen: They’d arrest thousands of us writers if that were the case. One of my favourite aspects of writing (I’m a nice person really, but I do have a dark streak when it comes to fiction) is that we can kill people legally. If you could invite three people from any era to dinner, who would you choose and what would you cook (or hide the takeaway containers)?

Rachel: Daphne du Maurier because she must have been an amazing person, Stephen Fry because he’s just so bright and so funny, and David Beckham for my personal titillation!

I would cook spice crusted tuna and chicory salad, a fillet of beef in a soy honey glaze with Tuscan potatoes and green beans, fresh apricot sorbet with a raspberry coulis.

Morgen: Yum. I like your choice. I went to a talk by Alan Davies (who’s on QI with Stephen Fry) and some of the questions were about Stephen and you could tell Alan had a wonderful time recording the programme, even though he usually gets ‘picked on’. What do you do when you’re not writing?

Rachel: I love to cook. I have actually written a couple of cookery books – but only for friends and family. We did talk about publishing them – but I have no idea when I would have the time.

Morgen: But you have them, that’s the main thing, they’re there for when you have the time. Are you on any forums or networking sites? If so, how valuable do you find them?

Rachel: I chat to people on Amazon forums and on Goodreads. I love it. It’s great to discover other people’s perspectives, but I have found that everybody is unbelievably supportive. It has been a huge and pleasant surprise to me how people really seemed pleased about the success of others, and how ready they are to help those who are struggling.

Morgen: I was amazed when I started writing how friendly (mostly) the writing industry is. I think we all know how hard it is and, like learner drivers, we all empathise and help where we can. Where can we find out about you and your work?

Rachel: I have a website at http://www.rachel-abbott.com and a blog at http://rachelabbottwriter.wordpress.com. My books are available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

Morgen: Lovely, thank you, Rachel.

I then invited Rachel to include an extract of her writing…

Laura Fletcher indicated left, and swung her car abruptly from the main road onto the unlit lane which approached Ashbury Park. Slamming her foot hard on the brake, the car slowed to a crawl as she stared nervously at a strange white glow, lighting up the sky above the trees ahead. She cautiously turned the final bend towards the gates of her home, and was met with a shattering sight.

‘Oh, dear God’, she whispered.

There was no escape. The hordes of press, hearing the deep hum of her Mercedes coupé, rapidly whipped their cameras round towards her. The television teams swiftly adjusted their arc lights to point at her approaching car, the bright beams penetrating the interior of her car with their harsh glare, momentarily blinding her. It wasn’t unusual to see photographers at these gates, and she could practically taste their excitement. After all, Hugo’s fame and near celebrity status had virtually been built by these very same individuals, as he skilfully fed them just enough information about his work to maintain their interest.

But this was different. This was a feeding frenzy.

And there was only one way that she could gain access to her home. Hugo had insisted that the electric gates had a keypad opening system rather than a remote control. That way, he could change the code regularly. Remotes could be lost, or even sold to the highest bidder.

Rachel Abbott is the author of best selling novel Only the Innocent. She spent the majority of her working life running an interactive media company that designed and developed software and websites, mainly for education. Her company was sold in 2000, and although she continued working for another 5 years, she also fulfilled a lifelong ambition of buying and restoring a property in Italy, where she now lives with her husband and their two dogs.

***

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Guest post: Writing your novel – how important is a detailed plan? by Rachel Abbott

Tonight’s guest blog post, on the topic of novel planning is brought to you by psychological thriller novelist Rachel Abbott.

Writing your novel – how important is a detailed plan?

To plan, or not to plan? This is a contentious issue, I know. I have read several articles in which authors have said that for them, a plan is completely the wrong thing to do. They want to just go with the flow, and see where the story takes them. Fair enough – we all have our own ways of writing, and I would never claim to be an expert. I can only speak from my own experience of writing, and reading novels some novels in which it is apparent that there was no plan at all!

Much of the planning decision depends on two main issues:

• how complex is the plot?
• how good are you at holding lots of information in your head?

I love the freedom of being able to write without a plan, but in order to do that, I have to know every single detail of how the story fits together. In other words I need to write a plan in order to be able to write without one!

When I wrote Only the Innocent, I had an incredibly detailed plan. I had character profiles for everybody that contained a huge number of facts about their lives, and I had two timelines. One was a timeline of events, the other was a timeline of ‘secrets and clues’, stating when they were first mooted, and when they were revealed. The planning phase took as long, if not longer, than the actual writing (and the editing even longer – but that’s a different story!).

I created a sort of flowchart, showing what happened to each character before and during the action in the story, and I had a layout and images of all the key locations.

And then I started to write. By then, these characters were so firmly fixed in my head that I rarely had to refer back to my notes. I could see the house where Laura lived with her husband Hugo, and I knew exactly what was going to happen to her. So whilst maybe I didn’t actually write to a plan, it was the planning that had fixed every aspect of the story in my head, and continued to provide a check list for those times when I couldn’t remember precisely what month somebody got married or went to university.

Whether you write a plan or not, there are some mistakes in books that are unforgivable, and would be easily overcome by having a check list as a minimum. Without quoting a specific book, I was sent one to review recently. The author wrote well, and I found the characters interesting. It was chick lit (which I love when I want a break from thrillers) and not too complex on the plotting front. The main couple in the story were clearly having some problems. He was a control freak (and doomed to be dumped without a doubt). They were engaged in an activity – let’s say it was tennis. In the space of just ten pages we learned that the girl was concerned that her man had never seen her play tennis, and she hoped he would be impressed with her ability. We also learned that she had met him eighteen months previously. Then we learned that when he had last played tennis with her two years ago, he had been annoyed by how good she was (she beat him). I realise I don’t need to point out the flaws in this – but if she had just had a timeline showing when they met it would be obvious that this was nonsense. There were even discrepancies within a single day – they enjoyed an afternoon’s tennis and then they were having lunch. All of this is so easy to avoid.

What goes in the plan?

Everybody will inevitably have their own way of planning. Some people use post-its, some write out sheet after sheet of notes. I used a piece of software for my PC called Storylines for Only the Innocent. I loved the way I could write cards for individual characters and shuffle them around and the whole order of the story would change. But now that I’ve moved onto a Mac, I have bought Scrivener which is quite sophisticated, and up to now I love it. It doesn’t quite do everything I want, but it’s pretty close.

I am now in the planning phase of my next novel, and this is what I have in Scrivener at the moment:

Character profiles – these include the following sections:

• photo (just an idea of how they might look, using images that I have found on the web)
• name, gender, sexuality, age, date of birth
• job
• physical appearance
• personality
• likes and dislikes
• greatest strength and greatest weakness
• basic goal – what their goal is within the story
• desires
• past traumas
• character secret
• additional notes

Relationships

I think it is essential that the behaviour of one character in relation to another is consistent, and for this reason I create a grid of my characters. In this grid, I identify exactly what each of the characters thinks of each of the other characters. So if Ellie adores Max but thinks Charles is a pompous idiot, it is written down and I can make sure that my characters are consistent in their behaviour. When I am writing, I often refer to this if I am not sure how one character should respond to another.

Places

I have a page for each location, together with any images that I can find that show how the place looks – I currently have a stunning atrium dining room as a major focal point!

The notes to accompany the images might also include the season, sights, sounds, smells and unique features.

Research

All the research documents that I use are held within the planning software – either embedded or links. If I was planning in Word, I would add all of these as appendices.

Timeline

I employ two different methods of creating a timeline. The first of these uses a spreadsheet package. I create a row for each character and the timeline moves along the top of the sheet. First of all, I produce a timeline of their backstory – from when they were born to the current date. This shows the year (as a minimum) of all the major events in their life. Then I produce a timeline of the events within the story. I can write in the dates in which individual scenes occur, and I can play around with this so that it makes sense. It shows who is in each scene, and the date and time that it takes place. It also ensures that one person isn’t in two places at the same time.  I then transfer the scenes into my writing software, and I create a field for the date and time (if the software allows) or a note if I am just using a word processing package.

Plot points

Within each scene, several plot points will be revealed. These may just be hints “Ellie knew what Max was about to say, and gave him a sharp kick under the table.” Well Ellie might know what Max was going to say – but we don’t. I need to note this so that I can make sure that whatever blunder he was going to make is revealed at the appropriate point. Although a lot of these are pre-planned, I find that when I’m writing, things just spring into my head and so I need to keep a note. I usually keep these notes in a notebook, to be honest, because it is much easier to tick off each secret as it is revealed, and far simpler to check as I read through during the edit process.

Point of view

When I finished version one of Only the Innocent, I sent it off to be read by another author. It was a paid service, and she came back with a whole host of suggestions. One of these was in relation to point of view. She said that I was sometimes falling into the old ‘head hopping’ trap – ie looking at a scene from one person’s point of view, and then skipping to another. She gave me a tip, and that was to write at the top of each chapter (or scene within a chapter) whose point of view I was using so that I could never forget. I now make this part of the planning and not just the writing – so that I can make sure that if I am using several points of view within the book, there is some consistency.

This is just my way of planning. I would never claim that this is the right way, and I am open to any tips and suggestions. It wouldn’t work for everybody, but I have spent most of my working life with computers, and I need the equivalent of a flowchart to give me reassurance that there are no loose ends. I have been investigating flow chart programmes, but at the moment there is nothing with all the functionality that I would need (as far as I am aware).

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject, and good luck with your writing!

Sounds good to me. Thank you, Rachel!

Rachel Abbott is the author of bestselling thriller Only the Innocent available for all ebook formats. Visit her website for more details, or go to Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

If you would like to write a writing-related guest post for my blog then feel free to email me with an outline of what you would like to write about. If it’s writing-related then it’s highly likely I’d email back and say “yes please”.

The blog interviews return as normal tomorrow morning with young adult sci-fi and historical writer Richard Denning – the three hundred and thirty-first of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, bloggers, autobiographers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.

You can also read / download my eBooks and free eShorts at Smashwords, Sony Reader Store, Barnes & Noble, iTunes Bookstore and Kobo. My eBooks are now on Amazon, with more to follow, and I also have a quirky second-person viewpoint story in charity anthology Telling Tales.

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