Writers At Work
This is the eighth in Ravenshead's series of interviews with writers.
Stewart Ferris
is the author of over 40 books, including the 5-star rated
The Key to The da Vinci Code
and
How to be a Writer.
There are free samples of each on Stewart's web-site.
He's also written for television, film,
radio and stage, and runs his own publishing company with an annual output of
70 new books, dozens of DVDs, eBooks and audiobooks. When not writing or publishing, he can be found pounding the streets in preparation for this year's New York marathon, which will be his first attempt at running for anything longer than a bus.
Stewart's web site is well worth visiting and has some great free downloads including a movie formula and a character questionnaire.
He is currently working on a DVD adaptation of How to be a Writer.
An Interview with Stewart Ferris
RH: Can you tell us a bit about your background?
SF: I've been writing for more than twenty years in many different formats, including television, film, stage and books. Along the way I've also set up my own publishing and DVD production company, and we're just starting to make our own audiobooks too.
RH: When did you start writing?
SF: I began writing my own comics at the age of seven, and used to give them away to other kids at school. There was always a blank 'letters to the editor' page at the back of each (hand-drawn) comic, and it made me angry that I never got any letters from the other kids to put in there. Throughout my school career I would hand in a 20 page story when everyone else handed in just 2 pages, but it wasn't until the age of fifteen that I attempted (and failed) to write my first full-length novel. I got about 15,000 words into it before I realised I had no idea where it was going. At university I wrote a play, Confession, which was performed by the drama society at the Dylan Thomas theatre in Swansea, and soon after that I completed my first book, The Busker's Guide to Europe, which was a guide to earning money through steet entertainment based on my own experiences busking around Europe several times.
RH: Where do you write?
SF: Anywhere. When I start a project it's incredibly hard and I need a space in which to write where everything is just right in terms of comfort, layout, quietness etc. But once I'm halfway into a project and the writing starts to flow more easily I can and do write literally anywhere. I once started a book, locked up in a small cottage in France for a few days with no TV, phone or Internet so that I could get momentum going without distraction, but once it was moving ahead I came home and managed to write at the office, in the cinema, in restaurants and in bed.
RH: What makes you write?
SF: I've always had a creative urge inside me which forces me to write. If a week goes by when I haven't written anything I get a deep feeling of guilt that I've wasted potential creative time. After all, if I had the discipline to write a novel one page every day, which is very little, I'd have a complete draft by the end of a year. But although I can write a page of fiction in less than half an hour if I've got momentum on my side, if I try to write it from a 'cold start' it would take a whole day.
RH: Where do you get ideas from?
SF: I always have far more ideas than I have time to write them all, so finding ideas has never been a problem. Since school I've kept a folder of ideas for writing projects, most of which will never get made. Maybe I should just publish a book about all my ideas! Recently I've become more commercial in my choices of what to write, and have based the decisions on potential sales rather than on the level of creative fun to be had.
RH: Which writers have influenced you?
SF: My first novel, The Sphinx Scrolls, is something I'm still working on, but it was inspired by the writings of non fiction authors like Graham Hancock, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince and Robert Bauval - writers who question the 'official' versions of history. They gave me the idea to fictionalise the concept of a long-extinct civilisation of which the first traces are only just being found: a civilisation which set something horrible in motion that will threaten us today. It's similar to the way Dan Brown took non fiction material contained in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and The Templar Revelation and turned it into a novel. Dan Brown isn't generally rated very highly as a writer, but I really admire his story-telling technique and his ability to structure a novel in such a way that you simply cannot stop reading it. Douglas Adams was a huge influence on my early writing career - I met him at a book fair in the early nineties, and it's sad that his later years were so unproductive for him.
RH: What's the easiest thing about writing? What's the hardest?
SF: The easiest thing about writing is, erm, well, actually there's nothing easy about writing. It makes my head hurt and spin after I've been working on a book for hours. It's like being hungover without having had the pleasure of drinking in the first place. The hardest thing about writing is getting started. Whether it's a book, a screenplay or anything else, the start of the project is the hardest. To me it's like pushing a car (as a young impoverished writer I had plenty of experience at that): getting it to move at all takes an enormous effort, but once it starts to roll forward you can maintain that movement much more easily.
RH: Have other people's comments affected your writing?
SF: I learned long ago not to show unfinished work to non writers. I'd written a draft of some chapters of a comic novel - it was rough and ready, but it was going in an interesting direction and I could see that it was a suitable foundation on which to write subsequent drafts. Then I showed it to someone who read it and burst my balloon with the simple comment 'it's not very good'. I lost all enthusiasm for the book and never finished it. The lesson is never to show an early draft to someone who has only ever read published books. It's like showing some mucky, muddy foundations to a friend and hoping they'll admire your new house. They won't, because they're not used to seeing something incomplete. Every book that gets published goes through multiple drafts and edits, and I take care to keep my writing to myself until I've had enough time to polish it sufficiently that other people can see the 'shape' it's meant to take.
RH: You have written a number of self-help books for writers. Is passing your knowledge on to others an important aspect of your life as a writer?
SF: I've read many writing guides over the years, and I came to the conclusion that a huge dose of reality-checking was missing from them because they were usually written by writers. Nothing wrong with that, you might think, but my perspective is slightly different, more rounded, because I'm a publisher and TV producer as well as a writer. I've written about 40 books, but I've published over 500. I've also rejected more than 10,000 manuscripts from would-be authors, so I know all the commercial realities that sway a publisher's decision to accept or reject a book. These reasons can sometimes have nothing at all to do with the quality of the author's writing. That's why I wanted to provide a fresh insight for writers, something that hasn't been available before. I get frequent positive feedback from writers who have read my writing guides, and it's lovely to think that I can help people to negotiate the minefield of the publishing industry with more knowledge than outsiders normally have.
RH: As well as your books, you've written for film, TV, radio and the stage. Why the variety? And which do you prefer?
SF: I write according to opportunities that arise, openings that I find out about, as well as writing speculatively. This can be different media, and it's refreshing to learn the craft of writing in a new format. Writing screenplays for feature films is the most satisfying type of writing I've yet done. It teaches economy of words, how to show instead of tell, and you get results more quickly than with novels because the total number of words is about a tenth as many as you'd have to write in a full-length book. I love giving characters their own vocabulary: the sign of a great screenplay is one where you could remove the names of the characters but still know who was saying which line because only that character could say those words.
RH: What are you currently working on?
SF: I'm writing a script adaptation of How to be a Writer which we'll make as a DVD soon, and when that's done I'm hoping to get my novel finished and ready to find a publisher.
RH: When is your next book published and what is it about?
SF: The next one to come out will be How to Publish Your Own Book, which I wrote last year, and which will be the third in my series of books for writers. It's particularly relevant for writers who want to write a book in a genre that is not greatly in demand from publishers, such as poetry, memoirs and some kinds of fiction.
RH: What made you want to found a publishing company? And which genres do you focus on?
SF: I started Summersdale Publishers in order to publish my own book, so it was a simple self-publishing decision. I realised I could, in theory, make more money by being the publisher and the author instead of just the author. Turned out not to be true, but I carried on regardless! Having set up the infrastructure needed to publish and sell books, I quickly started publishing other people's too, starting with books written by friends and then accepting manuscripts from the public. We publish non fiction, especially travel writing, humour, self-help and gift. We tried publishing fiction but it didn't work for us, so that's not something we do any more.
RH: What helps a manuscript stand out from the 'slush pile' and makes you want to publish it?
SF: Simple professionalism in a writer's approach can make all the difference. An author who has done their homework and chosen a topic to write about that is clearly of commercial value and is relevant to the kind of books we already publish will get their manuscript read enthusiastically. If the book's title and subtitle make me think 'wow, that's a great idea' then I'll be more forgiving about any problems in the work when reading it than if the concept is vague or of little appeal to most readers. I can make a provisional publishing decision based purely on a title: if it sounds like it could be a bestseller (perhaps because it's similar to existing bestsellers) then I want to publish it, provided it's competently written. I would only reject it with great reluctance if it was something that would require too much editing to knock it into shape.
RH: Do you have any advice for new writers?
SF: Read How to be a Writer or How to Get Published and understand the reality of writing and publishing as businesses. Don't think of them purely as artistic endeavours. Publishers have big bills to pay and will only sign up books they think will make a profit. Think about the commercial reality before you write something, not afterwards. If getting published is your goal, you might have an infinitely higher chance of success if you write a non fiction book rather than a novel. Or if you write 'chick-lit' instead of literary fiction. And use software to help keep track of characters, plots and timelines, because losing control of these elements will ensure rejection from publishers.
RH: Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions, and good luck with all your future ventures.
SF: Thank you.