The View from my Desk - Easter 2014

Beverley Birch is friend and mentor to many slushpilers and published authors alike. She was a senior commissioning editor for Hodder Children's Books and three times shortlisted for the Brandford Boase Award in recognition of the editor’s role in nurturing new talent. She is a writer of more than 40 books including novels, picture books, biographies and retellings of classic works and folk tales. Her novel, 'Rift' came out in 2006 and you know you are in the hands of a true storyteller when you read the very first page. Beverley now concentrates on her author life and mentoring new writers through Imogen Cooper's Golden Egg Academy. Follow Golden Egg Workshops for Children's Writers on Facebook

I’ve always viewed the publishing landscape half as an editor looking after a host of authors, half as an author, coloured by my personal author-editor-publisher relationships.

Now, fourteen months since leaving my in-house commissioning desk, I expected my view of the publishing landscape to have radically altered.

To my great surprise, it hasn’t.

I expected my advice for the author looking for an agent or publisher to have changed.

Again, it hasn’t.

So what are the contours I can see? Is anything sharper, more well-defined. Can any predictions be very firm?

Well, there’s one certainty - the continuing state of flux. Social media is awash with commentators, the reading of trends and predictions of outcomes. The truth is that no one knows how to publish successfully in the 21st century’s multiple currents, cross-currents and swirls – least of all publishers. They’re still struggling to come to terms with the consequences of the digital revolution and the birth of self-publishing as a serious player; booksellers likewise are struggling to find their place against the online environment.

Big guns may have more resources, but smaller publishers are more nimble, can react quicker. My bets are on the smaller publishers – and I detect that more of them think the current environment is one of opportunity rather than threat, and have the energy to ‘go for it’.

Jack (or Jill) be nimble ...

But in general both publishers and booksellers are obsessively risk averse. Agents are frustrated about projects enthusiastically liked by editors who can’t get them through acquisition meetings. Editors are frustrated by an inability to commit to books they love, or see their authors grow as their work deserves. Publishers are frustrated because books they believe in aren’t getting bookselling support, because not yet proven. And so it goes on …

It inevitably filters down the line, to risk-averse agents, and authors so obsessed with trying to read the runes that they can’t make up their mind what to write.

And of course it continues to squeeze the already narrow gate to traditional publishing, just as the stream of applicants is in fuller flood than ever before, fuelled by courses, conferences, networks, social media discussion about self-publishing, and the way it has opened the author-life and the writing process to scrutiny as never before. No wonder that people who might just have half-dabbled now begin to have serious ambitions, and dreams, and are prepared to put the work in to get there.

At the same time, the dream is flawed. For traditional publishing and bookselling, there is an incredibly short window of time for any author or book to be noticed and ‘break through’ (achieve commercial sales) If the breakthrough isn’t there, the machine simply moves on to the next project … and the hapless book (and author) is deemed not to have ‘worked’. Publication of any one book is only one step at the beginning … and thereafter everything may still be in flux.

Add to this the obsessive struggle for discoverability – for the traditional publisher and the indie authors alike: yet how can you possibly be heard amid the clamour and anyway, does being heard actually influence the fate of your book? The jury is still out …

It can all be a bit of a tightrope walk ...

Indie-publishing of course has an allure about it: the ease of just getting your book out there and finding your readership. But listen to any successful indie author and you need to listen too to the saga of time spent to find, nurture and hold that readership: much, much greater than writing the books in the first place.

So where does that leave the writer? What to write? How to assess what you’re writing? How to know whether to bother to keep going, or retire from the fray and just write for fun. Find an agent first? Or go straight for a publisher? Go the indie route immediately? Or try the traditional avenues first, and drop back to indie publishing if there are no traditional publishing options on offer. In this risk averse atmosphere, that may not mean you have written a bad book …

You’d think the answers might have changed over the last year or two. I don’t think they have. Here are mine:

Don’t write with the dream of publication as the goal.

Don’t write with your eye on what you hear the bookshops want, or what publishers say they want.

Listen to the voice inside you that’s telling you a story.

Write because you want to tell that story to others.

And (though I say it quietly) don’t have earning a living as the prime reason for writing.

Listen for your voice

Trends and fashions come and go, and one thing is clear, that what goes around comes around, that nothing is for ever, and that what is the rage today is just as likely to wane tomorrow, and what is not noticed today, will be all the rage tomorrow. And anyway, by the time you think you’ve caught up, the bandwagon will definitely have moved on …

In the end, whatever the shape of industry change, it is nothing without the thread that holds a reader, of any age, to the story, in whatever form. Story is still at the heart of it all, and the creators of those stories, and the readers who read them, hear them or watch them. You have to keep your focus on that.

The story is everything

Of course, when you’ve written the story that’s in you – get whatever professional objective guidance you can to help you hone and shape it to perfection: tapping in to the host of networks, conferences, and services now available, to give it the best chance of riding the currents and reaching its readership.

But don’t let that professional world befuddle you about what your story is and why you are writing. Don’t be clouded by the hullabaloo about the changing nature of publishing, and how much you need to understand that before embarking. When all is said and done, none if it is there, none of it works without story, and all that hullabaloo is only about form and the route to put the story in the reader’s hands.

So enter the fray with open eyes. Concentrate on storytelling. Everything else is a by-product.

And any route to the reader is good. And all routes may be different tomorrow.

What a wonderful Easter gift! So many thanks to Beverley for her wisdom and inspiration. Happy Easter, Slushies! Addy

12th Day of Christmas: Senior Commissioning Editor Beverley Birch

Wonderful Words of Wisdom from
Editor Beverley Birch

Finding your voice - a SCBWI masterclass with Beverley Birch

By Addy Farmer

The lovely Beverley Birch!

How do you make Beverley Birch sit up straight? How do make a senior commissioning editor for Hachette Children's books, three times nominated Brandford Boase editor listen? You sing. You find your voice and you sing to her. Simple, right? Pick your tune, put the notes in the right order and belt it out. Well, of course not. Finding your voice and the voice of the novel and your characters is the difference between the x-factor and the fat lady. One may have modicum of unworked talent while the other has full on grafted, crafted worked.

It takes guts to work at something and Beverley understands the pain and passion involved in honing stories.

Beverley is a passionate defender of the writer. She is a writer herself. 'Rift' came out in 2006 and you know you are in the hands of a storyteller when you read the first page.

Leaving aside the many established authors Beverley edits, she has launched some 15 authors on their publishing careers and through writing conferences and continuing mentoring and editorial discussion, encourages several hundreds towards, hopefully, their first publishing deal.

Marcus Sedgewick reviewed Rift in The Guardian and said of it,
"Rift is that delightful thing, a book which holds you from the first page."

Why books are rejected

Beverley wants writers to develop their voice, this is, 'the difficult bit'. Good stories are rejected all the time, she says, not because of the story but because the voice isn't working. You could build a dazzling fantasy world with every last detail worked out but unless the reader engages with the characters inside the world, responds to their voices, believes their voices then the story won't really suck them in.

Beverley finds herself sending out the same comments many times:

There's a good story in here, with potential. But I do feel you need to focus your telling a lot more. My overwhelming sense is that you are still narrating from a very external viewpoint - not allowing the reader to discover the story through the characters, their viewpoint, experiences, how they knock against other characters, the situation, the predicament they find themselves in. It's still all too narrator based - a young reader really needs to feel sucked into the story, imagining themselves part of it. Essentially, I think, you need to find the 'voice' of the telling.

Part of this problem is that it leads to a great deal of setting up and scene-setting before any action  or character perspectives, which means readers will drift away before they get there.  You need to ask yourself the question 'why would a reader be interested in this when they are not yet engrossed in the characters?' When you look at it from that point of view, it helps to distinguish between what you, the writer, want to put there because at some point it will be important, but not yet, and what the reader needs to know NOW. Hold information for when the reader needs it and don't pad out the story with it before.

Jump us in to the narrative at a high point, and then gallop us through, threading information as part of the action, not outside it.

So where do I find my Voice?

Ask yourself - why do I write for children? We came up with a few reasons for Beverley - adventure, escapism, to articulate inarticulate feelings. Of course what writers do for children is, in Beverley's words, "help them to try on other lives" and doing so in such a way that their readers can recognise the truth of what is portrayed.

You're tapping into a special time of change and uncertainty when readers want stories that reflect what they are going through. A writer articulates a reader's experiences or possible experiences. Obvious in theory but slippery in execution.

What is voice?

A clear Voice sings out when the writer has a profound sense of who they are writing for. The writer is not writing a book about childhood but a book with the child at its beating heart. The reader will be drawn into the telling and identify with what is happening.

The world inside the story becomes the reader's world. How?

• be clear who your narrator(s) is and their world view.
• watch that the authorial voice doesn't hijack the story and mask the character perspective
• maintain truthfulness/authenticity of the character's point of view

The narrator and their world view.

Spend time living with your hero. Character creation is not just what they look like; the inner self is as alive as the outer self. Dig deep and mine these people for everything they've got because it will make the telling so much more exciting. Your characters will make decisions based on who they are; their upbringing, experiences and outlook. Know them and you'll know your story.

Beverley told us of hearing Terry Pratchett describe his thrilling vision whenever he begins a new story. He compares it to standing on the rim of a misty valley and knowing that his character must journey to the other side. That he will walk his characters down into the unknown of the mists and he doesn't know how they will react until they're confronted with whatever dangers and adventures and characters are hidden there. It's an exploration alongside the characters - the outcome defined by the characters with all their faults and foibles

The misty valley - an open book

The authorial voice

A manuscipt may fail because the hero's voice is inconsistent and lacks authenticity. Beware the external authorial narrator unless there is a strong, purposeful role for them e.g. Lemony Snickett or Bartimeaus otherwise keep the external this voice firmly under control and allow your characters room to tell the story through action - their experiences, how they knock against each other or their environment, their dialogue and relationships.

The demon was close behind. Joshua barged through the doors of a Gothic church. Inside the pews were arranged in neat rows and pink and white roses were arranged around the altar.


Can you spot the problem? Course you can. No out-of-their-wits-scared-demon-chased child is going to stop and notice that the church is in the Gothic style, or even know this fact - let alone stop to smell the roses. There is, as Beverley said, no need for the guided tour. What would that child, in that moment with a demon on his tail, notice? I don't know because I don't know the boy; it's not my story.

Don't think I'd pause to notice much if this guy was after me...

Exploring point of view

Well, it's not all about point of view although that is part of it. It's not telling your story in the first person that gives it a voice. 

• You can achieve a sense of the first person marrative even with a third person voice.
• A badly done first person voice can be very dull - to make it work, be sure it is delivering the pov that feels authentic and is creating that sense of conversational connection with the reader that is one of the main strengths of the first person narrative angle

For a third person narrative angle it is important to keep the pov as close to the character as possible and that, as Beverley said, can be a 'technical battle'.

Think filmically. Put a camera up to your eye and decide on how you'll film. Will you be the only eyes or will you sit on your character's shoulder and tell us what's happening to them and others around them? Will your camera view whisk up to give a birds-eye or distant view. Will it swoop back in to the characters again? It will need to keep us with the characters' perspectives.

What's the story here?

The first person is more immediate but can be limited in terms of telling the whole story.  How to overcome this?

Older readers will enjoy some contemplative moments when more can be revealed. Retrospective memories can also be employed. The character can have a 'chat' with the reader. Or try introducing an older, experienced character who can provide essential plot nudges e.g teacher, grandparent and perspectives that a young narrator would not themselves have.

The writer MUST keep control of the voice because a breach will be obvious!

 The third person allows greater range over story-telling angles but can walk a dangerous line where the author can take over the telling. So be careful about the authenticity of your vocabulary and the characters' viewpoint/interaction with others. Don't invest them with your grownupness.

You might have to work harder to get the action to deliver the conclusions the author has about the situation - but that's far more effective story-telling than great wadges of authorial comment. Think about delivering direct thought to the reader e.g 'What was he thinking, she wondered,' becomes, 'what was he thinking?' -  a straight to camera technique that can give a first person feel to third person narration.

Ask yourself if you could help your story with supplementary pov.

Beverley offered us her experience when writing.


Siri tells the story of an English girl in the third person going to Africa and in the first person, a Portuguese historical character dying of the plague. As Beverley wrote she found that the girl's voice became odd, out of character. Why? Because it was the voice of another character - an African boy forcing its way through. Siri ended up being told by two characters in the third person and one in the first person! Then the technical battle is to differentiate them well.

THE RIGHT VOICE brings life to your story

It makes it stand out. It marks it as considered and worth considering. Don't feel you have to rush. Don't be spooked by the market and how difficult it is to get a book noticed. Do be true to your characters and make their story special.

Then you can make someone like Beverley sit up and listen.

Want to read some great examples of voice? Beverley advises to check out awards short lists. Here's the 2011 Brandford Boase which includes the fab 'I am the Blade' edited by the fab Beverley. Then there's the Carnegie shortlist and what about the Booktrust/Blue Peter Book awards? 

Write long and prosper.


You might also want to read:

Meg Rosoff on Finding Your Voice (The Guardian, 18 October 2011)