The launch of the Writers’ Toolkit

It turned into an amazing, busy event, exhausting and exhilarating all at the same time. We’d had 34 pieces in to critique and planned two mini tutorials. From there the event blossomed with discussions and comments threads springing up everywhere. I don’t know if there’s an official unit of measurement for Facebook events but our final timeline was ENORMOUS. This is a summary with links to most useful bits. Please browse. Please comment.

The links here are mostly to Facebook and require you to be logged in to a Facebook account.  

The mini-tutorials.

1. Creating a focused pitch: part 1, part 2 and part 3.
2. Writing believable dialogue: part 1, part 2 and part 3.

As luck would have it, writing coach Linda Acaster posted a review of the Writers’ Toolkit on Goodreads on the morning of day one, which was a great lead into the first tutorial because her review included the words, 'THE INSTRUCTIONS FOR PREPARING A TWO-SENTENCE PITCH ALONE WAS WORTH THE COST OF THE BOOK.' Thanks, Linda, that was perfect timing!

Some of the advice and tips that popped up during the two days

• The balance between intriguing and irritating a reader.
• Milking the action and emotion: never summarise the dramatic moments.
• A word about grammar.
• To plan or not to plan.

Some of the discussions

• The value of exchanging ideas.
• When is a manuscript ready to send out?
• The pros and cons of using different points of view.

Charity donation

Fantastic Books Publishing donated £1 to the World Cancer Research Fund for every book bought during the launch. Thanks, FBP. You Rock!

The critiques and the winning extracts

Each critique was posted in two parts with people commenting on the work, the critique and on writing in general. We worried beforehand about what we’d do if we had a completely dire extract – we certainly didn’t want to castigate a fellow writer on a public forum. However, we were determined to be both honest and constructive because otherwise what would be the point? And we dodged that particular bullet because everything we read had merit and potential. And some extracts were truly outstanding. We shortlisted six. You can see them on the results link below.

I’m afraid you’ll have to explore the timeline to get at all the critiques, but there are a few links below. And what an ‘interesting’ slant that FB timeline gave to the whole event! With people popping in and out from all over the world, early posts were being liked or commented hours after first posting. And as soon as someone commented, that post would shoot to the top of the timeline. It made finding things incredibly difficult. I resorted to ctrl+f and searching for key words, which is one of the reasons for this blog with its permalinks. I only learnt about FB permalinks through doing this event.

An open poll was held where people could vote for their favourite extract. In addition, Danuta Reah and I (as the Writers’ Toolkit authors) drew up a shortlist of extracts we thought the best and chose a winner from this list. The results were posted at the end of the launch.

• The winner of the poll was A Moment when the World was Silent by Kasie Whitener: extract and part 1 critique – part 2 critique.
• The piece chosen by us was BILLY by GK Parker: extract and part 1 critique – part 2 critique.

·     The Writers' Toolkit - available in paperback - ebook to come.

What's the best place for a novel to start?

What pulls a reader into one book over another?

What do you do if you can't get any tension into a scene that should be high-drama?

How do you lift a scene that seems to drag?

Are you fed up with staring at a blank page?

This is the book with the answers.