I am Paul M.M. Cooper - my first historical novel was one of the largest literary book deals at the London Book Fair, and has just been published. AMA!

How much backstory do you think you wrote that never made it into the finished novel, if any?

Quite a large amount! A friend said to me recently that she thinks you have to write 200k words total to get a 100k novel out of it - so a lot of what could be considered backstory to your characters, settings etc ends up on the cutting floor. But I find it very useful to write character sketches and other kinds of material as I go, which I have no intention of including. It's all part of the huge constellation of work that invisibly orbits the final novel.

Some people advise 'getting coffee with your characters', which is usually a grandiose way of describing 1000 words or so of rambling monologue from your character's point of view, going into their backstory, their hopes and dreams and habits. I find this quite useful sometimes. If nothing else, it makes you take your own characters seriously as real individuals, which should translate into the reader feeling the same. And there's a strange effect with fictional characters that if you let them speak for themselves for long enough, eventually they'll tell you something you didn't know about them. Not to get too mystical about it, but characters can sometimes write their own backstory in this way...

I also find it so important to create the sense of a history extending back past the first page of the book, so your characters don't feel like they have just appeared on the first page. Writing a detailed life story for them can help with this effect.

Anyway if I had to put a number on it, I'd say about 20k words? Thanks for a great question!

Thank you for answering! Your reply was very interesting to read.

My pleasure. Was an interesting question, had to think about it!

Thank you. I always find it reassuring when other author's characters also develop lives of their own, as I call it. But did you also curse them sometimes, as they weren't doing as you wanted them to? My characters are misbehaving all the time...

Haha yes, this is a common complaint of other writers I speak to! Apparently Pushkin once said of two of his characters 'Do you know, my Tatiana has rejected my Eugene. I never expected it of her!' Nabokov has one character, Timofey Pnin, who eventually refuses to be pushed around by a bullying narrator!

Ultimately there is a balance, in which characters choose to some extent their next move, but all the external conditions are set by the author. If they're not making the right choices, perhaps the conditions influencing them aren't quite the right ones for the desired outcome? Ultimately this only becomes a problem if your characters start pushing the story in boring or dead-end directions. Otherwise, embrace the chaos - and remember: if they start ganging up on you, you can always kill some of them off. ;)

Haha, yes. Whenever my characters run into a direction I don't like, it often helps to go back some passages and just change a tiny detail (like not person A said something, but person B did). And it's a whole different story suddenly.

I really like that quote from G.R.R Martin: “I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.”

It summons up so well my way of writing.

I wish you all the best with your book. I might look to get it somewhere (will it be available in Germany?). I love historical novels.

That's a lovely quote - I hadn't heard it! Will have to seek out the interview where he said this. I will say I am a trellis-farmer maybe... ;) Good luck with your writing! I'm not sure who does distribution in Germany, but perhaps Amazon is the way to go

Have you kept all of the backstory notes, or have you rejected some of them as non-canon?

That's a good question! I have inevitably lost half of them due to my abysmal filing system, but I think you mean kept them in the novel. I think most of what you 'find out' about your characters tends to stay - although it changes often, and it's not necessarily visible! That is to say, only I know some things. But knowing a certain thing about a character's childhood for instance can help create the sense of a person with a rich and varied history, and effect the way they react to things, even if it doesn't necessarily make it into the text itself. If I think of a specific detail I considered for a character but removed, I'll come back and add it here, though.

Thanks for the answer.

My pleasure!

This is great to read! I'm in the process of editing my first novel now, to hopefully submit for publication, and I just deleted the entire first chapter because it was backstory. Good things for me to know about my character, I guess, but it doesn't add to the story for anyone else other than subtext.

That's very good practise, too! A tutor I had on one of my degrees said you should always delete your first 3 pages, as it's usually all set-up... Glad you've found it useful :)

Ah, good advice! The first chapter was originally the first ten pages or so (before I added a prologue when finished, which worked very well as a set-up, I think). So it sounds like the tutor was spot on!

As a side note, if you're ever coming to Canada, I'll get you to sign the book and/or buy you a drink!

Haha excellent. I haven't been to Canada yet, but I really want to. I'll make it a whole thing one day

Hi Paul, thanks for doing an AMA!
Do you have any tips on how a writer can get an agent?
I'm not a writer myself, but have a friend who is. After she sent a chapter to her preferred agent, the agent requested her full manuscript (which I'm told is a very good sign!). Sadly though, she has not heard anything back after many months. Are writers meant to follow up, or wait patiently until an agent responds? Thanks.

Hi Anne, sorry to hear about your friend's experience! Unfortunately many agents are swamped in submissions and forget how important each one is to the person who submitted. They can certainly take weeks to get to submissions, but months is too much. I think your friend could send a follow-up email saying politely that she'd like to submit elsewhere, and would like to let them know as a courtesy. They may well say 'hold on, we'll read it this weekend!' On the other hand, they may have turned it down but forgotten somehow to tell her - in which case it's important she gets it out there to new agents and keeps the momentum going!

In terms of getting an agent in general, there's a lot of advice out there about cover letters, synopses etc, and certainly setting yourself apart these days can just be about appearing sane and professional. But I'd advise your friend to build her network too. I met my agent face-to-face at a reading where I read a sample chapter of the book, and she was interested in seeing more. I don't want to perpetuate the kind of you-have-to-know-someone myth, but it can't be overstated how important it is to key yourself in to the life of publishing and writing in your area, attend events, meet people etc. An aspect of this is that it's assumed (perhaps mistakenly) that anyone who's serious is already doing this, so events and readings are sometimes where agents go to look for new clients. She could try Twitter also, where agents hang out a lot, dispensing advice, scouting new talent on hashtags like #pitchwars, for instance. The wider the network, the more opportunities will arise. Unfortunately for introverts like myself, the days of a writer sitting alone in a garret are over! Most importantly, polish up her one-sentence pitch and go and meet people in the business. And of course keep her head up, and keep editing!

PS. if she has any luck, come back and let me know!

Appreciate your insightful reply! Will send her a link your comment.

Hope it helps! It's a tough world out there for an aspiring writer, but if she loves it I hope she sticks with it.

Can you please tell us some random facts about you and your book? Also, how great is it to write historical novels?

Hmm random facts, random facts... well for instance I spent a lot of time exploring the ruins of Polonnaruwa, which is the ancient capital of Sri Lanka. (Some pictures here, here and here). At the time my book is set, some people think it was larger than London! I learnt to speak Sinhala, which is the majority language in Sri Lanka. I was nearly attacked by monkeys once because I left some food in my bag.

On the less intrepid side of things, the epic poem I have my poet character translating isn't available in an English translation, so I had to translate it for myself from a German version I found in the British Library. My German vocabulary is now peppered with words referring to the mating cycles of elephants. Hope those facts are random enough!

And it is very great, you're right! You write them too? What period do you work in?

Sorry but I don't write historical novels nor anything since I am still a G7 student. Was there a point in you life that you just wanted to quit? Can you please share it to us?

I think every project moves through the pit of despondency where you want to give up. What's encouraging is that this usually means you're getting kind of close to the end? The 9 months before I signed with an agent were the hardest part of writing this book, both from a professional and personal point of view. You begin to think you might be the guy who invented Bulletball!

What's more, a teacher who was a published novelist told me directly that I should stop working on it and write something new. I took his advice for a little while, but something about this novel really demanded that I saw it through to the end. When I started working after my degree I woke up at 6am to write before work, and with a stroke of luck mixed in it's led me here. I think it's best not to be absolutist about things: every writer has to write at least one bad book before they write a good one - I know I have a 100k book hidden in a drawer somewhere that will never see the light of day. It was a great learning experience, though. Part of learning a craft like writing is a cycle of striving and failure. It's not as easy as giving simple advice like 'never give up', but if you love something you should do it for the pleasure and try to take yourself seriously as a practitioner. That's usually the way to climb out of the pit of despondency. I went off on a bit of a tangent from your question, but I hope it makes sense!

If you weren't writing historical novels, what would you write and why?

That's a good question! I'd love to write sci-fi one day, but I think it is more of a pipe dream than anything. I come up with concepts I love, but then when I actually get down to the important things like mapping out characters and so on, and I just fall out of love with the whole idea. Deep down I also love the real world and history too much to spend so much of my time in a world of my own making. Some of my most intense early reading experiences were with young adult sci-fi fantasy crossovers like Garth Nix, Philip Reeve, Diana Wynne Jones etc, so I'd love to write for younger readers one day.

I should add that while it is my passion, I'm wary of being pigeon-holed as a historical novelist, and my next book will have both a modern and a historical element. There's a lot of fun to be had in both!

What do you say about other book authors like Rick Riordan, etc? Also, have you ever became a critic for another book? Why or why not?

I've never read the Percy Jackson series, but I used to work in a bookshop and people seem to love them!

I used to review books, but thankfully nothing I really hated. I love literature, but I don't really have the heart of a critic. After reading reviews of my own work I'm a little more aware of how much effect your words can have - and it makes me less inclined to slam something I don't like. There are other people out there who do great work protecting us from bad literature - it doesn't need to be me!

If you aren't writing, what do you do?

I started studying for a PhD in September, which mixes together literature and film and ruins(!) so that takes up a fair amount of my time. Otherwise I read of course and watch a lot of movies. I go for walks, and box for fun and fitness. Between that and keeping up with friends, most of my time is spoken for! I've been learning to juggle as well, for reasons I can't quite articulate to myself.

I've always found that historical fiction and sf have more in common than, say, sf and fantasy. In science fiction, our present is the past.

Yes, absolutely! And of course 'the future' soon becomes a thing of the past!

Have you ever been to India, did you like it? On the same note, there is so much mythology and history which could be picked up from there for a book, do you think it would be interesting to the western masses?

I hope so! My book is about a poet who translates a poem called the Shishupala Vadha, which is an episode from the Mahabharata.

I've been to India a couple of times - once just to Rajasthan, but last year I travelled the length of the country: from Chennai down to Kanniyakumari, and then north through Kerala, Karnataka etc up to Mumbai and Delhi. About 5,000 miles in all. Amazing country!

Visit kolkata once, i think you will like the city and the North Eastern states are beautiful as well.

What do you do when you get stuck at a certain point in the story? And any suggestions regarding books on writing for someone who has just started writing?

Ah yes, I want to go northeast one day for sure.

I'd try James Wood's How Fiction Works and Robert McKee's Story. They're two of my favourites!

Dayum! Are you single?

Haha presently yes. Between living abroad and moving around a fair amount, my lifestyle hasn't been that conducive to stable relationships!

Your AMA has been one of the more "real" and useful AMAs I've seen

My question is: is there a reason you went with historical fiction rather than making up your own world?

Thanks, that makes me feel really good! I was a bit worried it wouldn't go well, but it's been so fun :)

I've always loved historical fiction, but I love fantasy and sci-fi too. History has always been something of an amateur passion for me though. I suppose there's something about the lure of what once was as opposed to what could have been, if that makes sense? I think I have a vague belief that imagining the past can teach us something about living today, too. It felt so exciting at the time of writing to be wandering around a ruined city and imagining its streets filled with life and noise.

On top of that, historical fiction is a fun kind of game really: how vivid a story can you tell while still outfoxing the pedantic academic you imagine will one day read it. Hope that answers your question!

It does, thank you!

Those are actually the reasons I like historical fiction. I feel like I learn a ton of new things every time.

I'll definitely pick up your book. Thanks for your time!

Thanks for a great question! :)

Hello! Graphic designer here. It's fantastic that you got picked up by a "traditional" publisher, but how much creative control did you have over the entire publishing process? Graphically a lot goes into a book--the formatting, the cover, etc. Did you get to make suggestions, or did they basically just tell you to sit back and relax while they did everything?

Lastly, I just wanted to tell you that as a professional book cover designer, I adore your book's cover. :}

Thank you! I'd love to take credit for it. ;)

When it comes to the writing, my publisher gave me a lot of freedom. Of course your editor will tell you if they think something isn't working in the plot, characterisation or pacing for instance, but they never really tell you how they want it fixed, so you have to go away and work it out. In the end its a very collaborative experience, and the people there really love books and know the craft, so it was very enjoyable.

With the book cover your role is more that of a potential veto. So they showed me a rough design, and I could have turned it down outright - but I liked it with some reservations, and we went forward with different drafts. We went through three major edits of the cover. The first was mainly to use a more historically accurate writing stylus, and the second just to increase the amount of smoke and make some of the shapes inside a bit more indistinct. I was determined not to be too much of a diva about it, but you can drive yourself crazy flicking back and forth between drafts of an image, as I'm sure you know! So I'm pretty glad that at some point they just said, 'don't worry, this is the one'.

Do you think that the book cover plays an important part?

To the marketing of the book I think it makes a huge difference. There's no 'right way' to do it, of course - although the worst scenario is that people who won't like the book are attracted by the cover, and people who would like it are turned off. That's every designer's worst nightmare! They tend to work quite closely with the texts to make a cover that fits and will speak to the right audience. I've heard of designers making a cover without having read the book, but I think that's really bad practice.

What is your best advice for an aspiring young author?

To boil it down to a few things:

1. read everything, and not just the things you like
2. stay playful, and write the books you want to write, not what you think people expect or would respect you for writing
3. stay humble and learn your craft: read about writing
4. learn about good stories, not just about good prose
5. stay in for the long haul. it takes most people (myself included) at least 10 years to go from beginning writing seriously to getting published
6. almost all who try disqualify themselves by giving up
7. show your writing to people and develop a thick skin as soon as possible. people will help you if you're not sensitive about it
8. if you get bored with a project, it's probably because you wandered away from what you loved about it in the first place. it happens a lot
9. lots of people will tell you it will never happen
10. whatever project you eventually want to write, start right now!

Best of luck with your writing. Keep your head up!

Thanks for your response. I'm actually a practicing journalist, so I feel like it's not too much of a stretch to delve into fiction. I just always like to pose this question to any published author I meet, as I've been working on some fiction that I'd like to get published sometime.

Oh brilliant. I probably should have asked how young you meant! Good luck with your writing. I give some advice about getting agents etc a few questions back, in case you'd find that useful...

Congratulations on the publication. The premise of the book seems fascinating.

Would you say living in Sri Lanka influenced your writing and prose in any way? Could you have written the same book living in London?

Also, how did you avoid the dreaded "research blackhole" and develop a meaningful writing routine?

EDIT: And I have another question: what are your favorite historical fiction novels?

Thank you! I think when you're writing about a different setting to the one you grew up in, it's so important to spend time immersed in that place, make friends with the people who live there, learn their language and hear their stories. Much of the book was written when I returned from Sri Lanka to take up an MA place, but the time I spent there was invaluable - especially around the ruins of the city where the book is set. I was able to walk down the same streets that my character would have, through the ruined gateways and the shell of the old palace in Polonnaruwa. Whether it influenced the actual makeup of my prose is more difficult to say - but I suppose all of your experiences probably change the way you express things in writing. Sorry if that seems like a weasel answer!

As for the research blackhole, I'm not sure it exists. I research concurrently with writing, and I often find when I'm stuck with a particular story point, the answer is to return to the books. More often than not, learning a new aspect of your setting or subject matter will dislodge you from your rut. I think you perhaps need to read about 10 books before you start writing, but 100 books before you finish. Just keep it going the whole time and enjoy it! If you're having fun exploring the world, then your readers will have fun too. And even the most literary fiction should be about fun at its heart.

It's always hard to choose only a couple of books to mention, but I think my favourite historical fiction novels are Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red, Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, and Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

Thank you. I am looking forward to reading the book.

Hope you enjoy it!

What's up with the two middle initials?

I once found a facebook group called the Paul Cooper Group, and it had like 68 members, all called Paul Cooper. This is to say it is quite an un-Googleable name. Something had to be done. It stands for Michael McLaughlin, the latter being my mother's surname.

Yeah, wasn't Paul Cooper the friend from the wonder years?

Haha interesting, I've never seen it! There are also a couple of soccer players and a basketball player in Canada?

Great idea!

haha love it

Are agents truly necessary for publishing? I've been working on a collection of poetry and I dream of publishing one day.

I don't know about poetry so much I'm afraid - there are so many lovely small presses and so on, so I think it's much more common in that environment to go straight to the publisher. But for fiction it's basically unheard of for a writer to approach a publisher directly with any success. Sometimes when I've been waiting in my publisher's reception, I hear the receptionist telling people who call that they should get agents before approaching them. She seems to say it a lot throughout the day.

The thing is, agents are great if you find the right one! They're there to support you, and act as a buffer against the rough and tumble of the commercial world of publishing. Just for negotiating a contract they're pretty invaluable. Good luck with your writing!

Thank you for your reply!

My pleasure, hope it helps!

You've given some really great insight. Thanks! And your book is very intriguing. Seems like a worthwhile read!

Onto my question: what was your process from writing to getting your book published? Bit broad, but I've rarely been able to peek-behind-the-curtain, so to speak, for an author

Hmm well I met my agent at an event, and she asked to see more of the book. I then spent a few months frantically editing and polishing while they drummed their fingers. When they read the whole thing, they called me up and offered me representation. I worked with them to do some more edits, and come up with the title it has today. It was about 6 months between signing with them until we took the book to the London Book Fair, which is where a lot of publishers are looking to pick up new deals. I was working as a journalist at the time, and managed to convince my employers that there were sufficient stories to be reported on at the LBF, and they let me go along. There I met an editor at Bloomsbury who'd read some of the book , and it really went from there. It has been over a year since - publishing is quite a slow industry! Hope that gives you a sense of the process, but if you want any more specifics let me know.

Hello! Thanks for doing this, first off. You've answered a ton of questions and it seems like you've put in a ton of effort into every single answer.

Every author seems to have their own unique way of going about plotting, world-building, and otherwise prepping to begin writing their novels or stories. What is yours like?

Thanks, I'm glad you've found it useful! Every book is going to start in a different way, I think - but to begin with I'll just read everything I can get my hands on to do with my setting or subject matter. I'll usually have some kind of situation or conceit that I'm aiming towards. So then I begin with a character or two, and put them in my situation, see how it plays out. With River of Ink, I had the character of the poet and the king, so I read everything I could find about the history of the period, and looked at aerial photos of the area, google imaged to get a feel for the place. This was obviously very preliminary stuff, and no substitute for spending time in the actual environment, but it can get you started. The weird thing about characters is that they grow into themselves as you write, you discover who they are as you 'watch' them behave. I'll probably read about 10 books before I start writing anything past a scene or two. I think it's very useful to plot things out once you get to a certain point, but at the beginning you can just rely on your storytelling instincts. A strange character arrives in an enclosed community; a boy finds a magic necklace - whatever it is, just follow it and see what happens!

Your book sounds very interesting. How did you come up with the idea? Where does the factual history kind of fall off and where does the fiction begin in this book? I'll really need to pick up a copy.

I saw AS Byatt speak once, and she said that every one of her books began when she realised that two of the things she was obsessing about were actually the same thing! So the idea for my book was largely based on the historical character of Thomas Wyatt, who was a poet for King Henry VIII. At the time, I was also obsessing over some of the very beautiful epic poetry that comes from this part of the world, such as the Mahabharata - which is an incredible 1.8m words long, and contains so many stories. I just gradually felt like I wanted to reimagine the situation of the artist in thrall to a frightening state power and use it as a way of exploring how we tell stories across cultures, and the power relations involved in the act. Things really blossomed from there!

As a historical novelist you're always trying to work out what your duty is to the historical material. The standard I hold myself to is that a scholar working in the field would be unable to prove, with all the sources available, that my story didn't happen. So I can't make one of my historical king go somewhere if we know he was somewhere else at the time, for instance. My main characters, however, are examples of the more common people who never make it into the histories, so unless I have made a series of very lucky guesses, they are fictional!

Thank you so much for such a thoughtful response!

My pleasure, thanks for a great question!

Could you tell us more about your writing background?

Have you written other full novels as you've developed your writing?

Have you ventured into other genres of fiction?

Were you trained as a writer or were you just a night security guard that decided to write a book one day?

I've been writing seriously for about 10-11 years now, and I wrote a novel when I was between about 15-19. It was about 100k long and I hope no one ever reads it! I also write some short stories but I think of them as a kind of R&D department, and never really push that hard to publish them. They cross genres quite alarmingly, and are usually quite weird.

I studied English Lit with creative writing at the university of warwick - in practice this meant doing 3 modules of english lit and 1 of writing each year, which was a nice balance I think. A couple of years later I did an MA in the University of East Anglia (UEA) which has a good reputation as a creative writing hub. That was pure CW and involved a lot of workshops. After that I spent a few years doing journalism, worked in bookshops, moonlighted as an archivist and did some freelance editing and that kind of thing to pay the bills. Now I'm studying a PhD. Have never been a night security guard - I don't think I'd be very good at it.

Love Russell Hoban! Was looking at Kleinzeit just the other day.

Oh that's a good one. Riddley Walker is great of course, and I like Fremder for sheer weirdness...

Any good tips on developing plot? I have a number of connected but isolated ideas that I think can be fit together into something fun but I'm not sure where to start with that process.

I'd read Robert McKee's book Story, and possibly Blake Snyder's Save The Cat. McKee is a very deep exploration of how stories work, whereas Snyder breaks them down very practically for making basically Hollywood scripts. In fact, he's quite notorious these days for basically having turned every Hollywood movie into the same movie, beat for beat. Take him with a large pinch of salt, but he's a great starting point for thinking about how stories come together, and why readers/viewers care about them. And though it is very reductive, a lot of painters start out painting by numbers!

Other than that, I'd just say experiment, and don't let doubts hold you back. Pick a character or two and put them in the situation you've come up with. See what happens next.

I read the other day that most stories follow the pattern of: 'Once upon a time there was __. Every day, _. One day _. Because of that, _. Because of that, _. Until finally __.'

Hope that helps at least a bit! Good luck with your writing.

Paul,

Would you say that when playing Werewolf, David is always the werewolf, regardless of any argument he puts forward? And would you say it's almost certainly because he has a beard?

David is always the werewolf, regardless of whether playing Werewolf or not

Hello, I'm looking forward to reading your book! I was wondering what reference books you usually keep on or close to your desk whilst writing? Also in writing your novel did you have a strict writing routine or was it more fluid or changeable? Thank you!

Hey, that's a great question. I had to go to my desk to look. Currently I have James Wood's How Fiction Works, which is a little masterpiece, and Robert McKee's Story, which is also great. I have a reference book of English usage somewhere, but to be honest with the OED and so on available online it rarely gets opened.

As for the writing routine, it was really a case of fitting writing in when possible. When I lived in Sri Lanka, I would often go to the library to work on weekends and after school (I was a teacher). It was really nice there, and there was a canal outside for swimming when it got too hot during midday. While working full time I just wrote with what time I had, often getting up quite early to fit it in. I also had a second job at one point. It was quite an intense and unsustainable period. But now I have more time to write around university classes, so I can be a bit more planned about it. I often write for a few hours, read for a few hours, and I alternate days between uni work and fiction. I'm careful not to overwork, as I have a tendency to burn myself out if I'm too unforgiving of myself. I enforce one rest day a week, no excuses!

I have read the James Wood book- so essential! (For me at least!) Thank you for your reply. Writing when I can without getting burned out is something I struggle with. Is your University course related to writing?

Hmm yea, it's a constant struggle. You have to defend your writing time tooth and nail. It's good to fit in micro-bursts throughout the week and then have a good long period on Saturday morning or whatever where you consolidate what you've added and smooth it out properly. Good luck with your writing!

My PhD is a kind of creative-critical hybrid where part of it will be creative work - so yes!

Thank you so much! Good luck with your studies!

thanks :)

Can you recommend me a good book that you don't think I'll have read? (Preferably excluding River of Ink...)

Oh, you anticipated my first answer! ;) Since I don't know how much you read, I'm going to have to go way out there: I've been reading a bit of Iraqi fiction recently, and I can highly recommend The Corpse Washer and I'Jaam by Sinan Antoon. Some great historical fiction I found recently is Azazeel by Youssef Ziedan, amazing story about the early days of the Christian church. If you like short stories too, there's also an incredible collection I read recently called Wallflowers by Eliza Robertson. Very beautiful stuff, incredible prose. I'm on Open City by Teju Cole at the moment, it's lovely.

Who are your top 5 authors?

I will say Orhan Pamuk, Margaret Atwood, Arundhati Roy, Anne Michaels, Umberto Eco, Amit Chaudhuri (I think that's 6 sorry)

Hi Paul! One of my favorite books ever is a historical fiction epic set in St Petersburg right at the beginning of WWII. It's actually a trilogy, but the amount of effort the author went through to get everything historically accurate will never cease to amaze me. There were period correct street maps, tiny historic events, everything was so detailed I can't imagine how long it took to compile all the evidence.

My question is: how much research did you conduct to get everything somewhat historically accurate (even though it is fiction!)? What sources were you looking at? Wikipedia or actual history text? Any insight into the process of writing a historical fiction piece would be wonderful! I'll check our River of Ink! :)

You have to do so much research! Your ambition should be to read everything that anyone else has written in your field or about your subject matter, and do it while you write, not only before. I mention somewhere above that you have to read about 10 books before you start, but at least 100 before you finish.

Many of my sources were ancient chronicles known as the Mahavamsa and Chulavamsa, as well as a lot of contemporary sources and historical books. Sometimes the historical record can only take you so far, though, and you have to get creative. I got a lot of minute details from poetry written at the time: what kinds of plants mad people would wear in their hair, the kinds of tools used in kitchens, the decorations of houses. I'd advise a huge amount of situational research too - that is, exploring your setting and reimagining how it must have been in that period. I did a lot of exploring around the ruins of Polonnaruwa, the ancient Sri Lankan capital, for instance. In some ways you have to be your first reader - and if you don't believe in the story and setting first, your readers certainly won't. Hope that helps!

Any particular authors of historical fiction that really inspired you and influenced your style? If so, who?

I'm a big fan of Orhan Pamuk - his My Name is Red influenced me a lot, as well as his The White Castle. But unfortunately he doesn't write historical fiction anymore, it seems... I love Umberto Eco as well, Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian is brilliant, and I've enjoyed Ken Follett in the past too! Just a little selection. :)

Well, thank you for the nice list of books to look into...after I pick up yours, of course. Thanks for coming here, and congratulations on your success!

Thanks - my pleasure!

Could you describe your process in getting an agent? How long did it take, and after your got one, how did you and your agent go about getting your book published?

I'll just copy from another answer if you don't mind:

'I met my agent at an event, and she asked to see more of the book. I then spent a few months frantically editing and polishing while they drummed their fingers. When they read the whole thing, they called me up and offered me representation. I worked with them to do some more edits, and come up with the title it has today. It was about 6 months between signing with them until we took the book to the London Book Fair, which is where a lot of publishers are looking to pick up new deals. I was working as a journalist at the time, and managed to convince my employers that there were sufficient stories to be reported on at the LBF, and they let me go along. There I met an editor at Bloomsbury who'd read some of the book , and it really went from there. It has been over a year since - publishing is quite a slow industry!'

I will add I was turned down by one agent already, but to be fair to them, they saw an earlier draft and I don't grudge them at all. My agent is a small operation: they had only two employees then, and now they have three. At the time I agreed to sign with my agent, another agent from a big agency was urging me not to do anything until she'd read it. I dithered a little bit, because they are a huge agency with a lot of clout - however, I eventually went ahead and signed with the first people anyway. The way they spoke about my work, and the insights they gave me convinced me they were serious about helping me make it the best book it could be, not just get it out as quick as possible. I think being with a small agency was a great benefit to me. They gave me as much time with them as I needed, and when we went to the LBF, I was the author they were focusing all their energy on. In a bigger house you can get lost in amongst their portfolio - or at least that is the impression I get.

Hope that gives you some insight!

Thanks so much for replying. Its interesting to see how you met both editor and publishers in person, I wonder if thats the case for most writers? Congrats on the new book, I hope my wife (the writer in the family who is querying agents right now) will be able to say the same in a couple years time!

My pleasure! Certainly once they have offered to represent you, or are showing interest at least, agents and publishers will be very keen to meet you. People can forget sometimes that the submissions process is actually kind of a job interview, and industry people are looking as much for a potential future partner who will work well with them as they are for a literary talent. I would definitely recommend trying to meet anyone you want to work with, and if you seem like you know what you're talking about, they are going to be much more inclined to read your manuscript seriously. But it's not totally necessary to meet them in person, and people make it through the submissions pile all the time. Best of luck to your wife!

Does Sri Lanka have good food? Recommend anything unique?

The food is brilliant. They have something called egg hoppers, which is like a pancake bowl with an egg in it, and a personal favourite. They also have a kind of milk rice called kiribath for special occasions. And a really satisfying junk food called kottu that's made by slicing it up with these big knives on a heated table. Fish curries ftw also.

Thank you for the great recommendations! That kottu dish looks particularly tasty to me.

Haha it is great. The best kottu I've had is in a place called Ella, in the hills. Very beautiful there too!

What does the MM stand for and why isn't it miles marmaduke?

A friend of mine had a theory recently...

Hello there Paul, As a future writer this was extremely helpful. I want to thank you for making this. I have to questions do you read any light novels from japan, china or Korea?.Is there any summer course , seminar or online teaching that you recommend to improve writing?

Hi Javier! I'm so glad you've found it useful. I'm not very well-read in East Asian contemporary fiction, but I've enjoyed Kyung-sook Shin and Mo Yan in the past, and also Ogawa Yoko. the world is full of so many books, and life is so short!

I'm not sure about courses or online teaching. I think there's really no substitute for practise, and surrounding yourself with some kind of community. If there are any writing groups in your area, that's the best way to go. Otherwise, I hear online communities like DeviantArt and Wattpad can be useful - especially if you specifically ask people for feedback and critique. Hope that helps, and good luck with your writing!

I am from the state of Orissa, India. Kalinga was the ancient name of my state. So reading in the summary of your novel that a character from Kalinga was in Sri Lanka was a little surprising initially, till I remembered that during my visit to Angkor Vat (which shows influences from Orissa) last year I read about rulers from Kalinga being maritime powers during that time and colonizing parts of South East Asia. So I guess people from Kalinga went to Sri Lanka too.
My question is, did you find any sources about what was the character Kalinga Magha upto before he landed in Sri Lanka? Also any other good reference source to learn more about Kalinga, the state, in that period?

Hi Abhimir! Yes, at the point my novel is set, Kalinga was a very powerful trading empire, right across the Indian Ocean. I'm afraid the Kalinga king in River of Ink isn't a very good role model, but there was a very good king only a few years before him called Nissanka Malla - and he was from Kalinga too. He built this very beautiful audience hall and was known for his social projects and even for invading south india.

Very little is known about Kalinga Magha's background, other than what's written in the Chulavamsa, unfortunately. You might read about him there. There is a good overview book called Outline of the History of Kalinga by RC Majumdar as well!

Thanks for the reply and the recommendation. I just bought River of Ink on Kindle. I cannot wait to start it. The last novel I read was Cuckold by Kiran Nagarkar, another historical fiction, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Look forward to the River of Ink.

That looks really interesting! My pleasure - I hope you enjoy the book!

If you had to do away with an appendage, which would it be?

Hmm depends on your definition of appendage! Assuming you mean like whole limbs, I'd probably say goodbye to my left arm. If I can get away with smaller things, maybe one of my ears.

Hi there! I'm an aspiring writer, but between full-time student teaching and being a full-time student, I find that I don't have much time to sit down and write lately. I also find that i'll get SUPER excited about a new concept or idea, get half way through fleshing it out/writing it, and give up in favor of my next idea. Have you ever experienced this problem? If so, what have you done to overcome it?

Hi! There's no easy answer to this really. You have to defend your writing time and ration your motivation.

I think it's quite a common thing for writers to experience when they're between projects. Maybe think about why exactly a particular idea isn't capturing you enough to demand that you write it. I've given up a handful of projects at 10k words simply because I thought they had the legs to run, but definitely didn't - or else I simply got bored of the situation. Usually for me, this is because I haven't sufficiently rooted my concept or premise in the struggle of a character or characters. Once you've sketched out your main character with something missing in their life and put them in a situation where they feel uncomfortable and are forced to change, I think your ideas will demand that you write them. Keep your scenes short and don't let your character be passive! Hope that helps a little!

Great tips, thanks!

No problem!

What inspires you to write? Any literary influences?

Ah, that's a hard question! I think I write because something about storytelling makes me really happy. I've always loved books - they've been behind some of my best experiences, and the idea that I could make them myself was always very enchanting. I'm not sure if this was the question you were asking or not? Specific things that inspire me are usually ruins, ancient stories, and characters who are driven to do amazing things for people they love.

It's easy to say my biggest influences are probably Orhan Pamuk and Margaret Atwood, but in reality my influences are very broad and it's hard to answer very clearly. I try to take something away from every book I enjoy!

As the writing lasted 5 years was it more like a hobby that you did when you had time or was it your primary work?

It was never my primary work until I signed with Bloomsbury, so I full-time did work as a journalist, as an archivist, freelance editor etc. I fitted it around work, and wrote when I could - often in quite an unsustainable way with regards my personal energy and wellbeing... I did however study for a creative writing MA at the University of East Anglia (UEA), which meant I had a year to work almost solely on the project and develop it in a community of people who all took the craft very seriously. That helped a lot with finding the time to write, and it was a great privilege to do!

What advice do you have for writers on how to pay their bills if they don't currently have book deals? What's the best kind of day job to get and how do you balance making money and writing?

That's a good question, and quite close to a lot of people's hearts I think!

There's a really delicate balance here, and it depends on each person. I think I made a mistake in getting a job (journalism) that involved writing. Of course that's the temptation, since it's what you're good at, but I found that after 9-5.30 sitting at a computer screen typing, that was the last thing I wanted to do once I got home. I would often get up early and write for an hour before work for this reason. I'd say that a job that gets you outside, meeting people and talking, maybe something a little manual that gives you some exercise would be kind of ideal. Some people would suggest freelance work, and I've done some to supplement income in the past. In fact, the best work I've done has been reading other people's manuscripts, because it gets you thinking about plot and books as whole entities. Seeing the mistakes of other writers repeated over and over also helps you avoid the same mistakes.

But unfortunately there's no easy answer to this question! Hope that helps, and sorry to slightly ramble.

Hi Paul,

Huge congrats on your publication. It sounds interesting in an original setting and I'm going to pick up a copy later today.

It sounds like you had a great premise from your experiences in Sri Lanka. What steps did you go through to develop a plot from this premise? I've just written my first novel (currently at beta reader stage before later finding an agent) but it was a mix of ideas I developed over 10 years. I have lots of premises for other novels I'd like to write, but I struggle to take it from premise to plot.

Thanks, Dylan! I hope you don't mind me reposting this from above:

'I'd read Robert McKee's book Story, and possibly Blake Snyder's Save The Cat. McKee is a very deep exploration of how stories work, whereas Snyder breaks them down very practically for making basically Hollywood scripts. In fact, he's quite notorious these days for basically having turned every Hollywood movie into the same movie, beat for beat. Take him with a large pinch of salt, but he's a great starting point for thinking about how stories come together, and why readers/viewers care about them. And though it is very reductive, a lot of painters start out painting by numbers! Other than that, I'd just say experiment, and don't let doubts hold you back. Pick a character or two and put them in the situation you've come up with. See what happens next. I read the other day that most stories follow the pattern of: 'Once upon a time there was _. Every day, _. One day _. Because of that, _. Because of that, _. Until finally _.'

That is just general advice - from my own experience, your premise has to be strongly related to your characters before you'll feel you know how to take it forward. So if you have a character being put in a position that they are ill-suited for, and then throw things at them and force them to develop, that's usually the best way to go forward. Sometimes people say they have a premise for a novel, for instance a story set on a planet with no sun. But to me that's the setting of a novel, not a novel in itself. Now send in a character who's afraid of the dark but gets taken on a mission there anyway, and you've got a story.

I don't know if this is helpful for your situation, but I hope that helps at least a bit! Good luck with your writing.

Thanks for doing this AMA! And congrats on your novel!

Now that you've published your book do you know what the next story you want to tell is? Do you have backlog of ideas and stories you'd like to write someday or are you waiting until the next story finds you?

Thank you! Well JK Rowling says that the easiest way to kill a writing project is to talk about it - but that doesn't seem like the spirit of the AMA, so I'll talk a little bit. I'm essentially looking at art from the Assyrian Empire (you can see one of those books in the background of my photo actually), and how it relates to what is happening in places like Iraq and Syria today. It is also being mixed up with The Epic of Gilgamesh, which is maybe the world's first great epic poem, about a man who wanted to live forever. I hope people who liked River of Ink will get a lot out of it too!

Sounds super interesting! I like how your focus is not on western historical fiction. It's always a good read for me to learn about an entire world you really know nothing about.

Thanks! Me too. I feel like some areas of history have become saturated in our imaginations. I don't know why we return so constantly to the Victorians, the Tudors, the Romans, etc - it's been such a pleasure to explore a new place and bring a lost time back to life.

How deep is your research or how much do you know on the topic before writing a novel?

You have to know so much! I'd say you have to have at least the equivalent of a PhD's-worth of knowledge in your subject matter if you want to write convincingly about another time and place. Of course, if you go with the 'write what you know' maxim, you're going to have an easier time of it - but I've never found that particularly exciting!

I've spoken about the specifics of research elsewhere here, so I hope you don't me redirecting you to ctrl+f ;)

When developing characters, was it easier to base them on people you know? Are they generally based on a single person or multiple?

That's a really interesting question! Characters are often a kind of composite of real people I know or have met, and historical characters. My protagonist, for instance, finds himself in the situation of being an artist in the power of a cruel and tyrannical king, so I began looking at other characters in history in a similar position. I looked at people like Ovid, who was exiled from Rome by Emperor Augustus, the composer Shostakovich, who was in thrall to Stalin, and Russian poets such as Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam, among a bunch of others. Then if I know someone who exhibits certain aspects I want to imbue a character with, I'll try and imagine how they'd react in a certain situation. I'd find it too hard to base my character on a single person, I think - and I'd be worried that they'd find out!

That is intriguing and very insightful. Thank you. Was it difficult to not make your protagonist similar to you? When I write, my main challenge is to not put too much of myself and my situations or experiences into it. Do you feel the same?

Well it's inevitable that your personal experiences affect your writing - and it's a very good thing to do when you write scenes to ask yourself 'what have I experienced that lets me access this?'

However I think when people base their protagonists on themselves, they tend to write very poor protagonists. Its when they base their villains on themselves that things really get interesting!

Thanks for doing this. Can you tell us the physical process you used to write the book? Do you write it out on a word processor, and if so which one? Do you use any tools to keep the story organised and consistent? What form do you give it to the editors and/or publishers in?

I write on a laptop, on MS Word, because of sins I committed in a previous life. I used Scrivener for a little while once, but I kept having to undo its weird formatting and I found it distracting. In the last few iterations of Word, they've also worked in a sort of cool headings system that lets you navigate chapters in a scrivener-ish way, so I'm quite happy with that.

On the physical side, I fill endless cheap notebooks using cheap biro pens. When I worked as a journalist companies kept giving me moleskin notebooks, and I hate them. I like overleaf notebooks that lie flat naturally. I have used flashcards and the like for ordering chapters in the past, but I find the writing of them to be a bit time-consuming, and sort of busywork that distracts from getting real work done! I've always wanted a whiteboard easel, but I know deep down I'd never use it. I do write out story plans and synopses a lot, which I find very helpful.

I think I sent it out in pdf format, because I wanted it to look fancy and professional - but I don't think it matters. Most people in the industry print before they read I believe.

Hey Paul,

I'm very humbled by the amount of research you did for this book. In researching my own project, I'm struggling to find details of daily life from the time period (1860's), like where and what people ate, where they washd their clothes, what sort of living conditions the people of New York were in, what furniture they had in their houses... Where did you find information of that nature for your book? Do you have any advice on what types of sources to look for?

Hi! One of the best things you can do is read fiction set in this time (which I'm sure you do already), and pay attention to the objects characters are using, clothes etc. Don't plagiarise of course, but allowing other novelists to do some of your research for you is no bad thing in this regard.

The other thing is to take out books from the library, especially if you have a university library nearby that allows visitors. Start with the popular history, and then move up to the deeper stuff. When you reach dead ends, you may have to use some lateral thinking. Life in 1860s England, for instance, probably wasn't that much different to life in 1860s New York in terms of technology, objects used by people in daily lives and so on. So with some caution applied, expanding your research into other areas can have some very good results. I found one of my most useful sources for discovering my protagonist's sensibility and attitude wasn't Sri Lankan at all, but a slightly vain and gossipy courtly lady called Sei Shonagon in 10th century Japan. If you don't restrict your research, some amazing connections can spring up and surprise you! Hope that helps :)

Thank you!

Pleasure, hope it helps!

Your book sounds fascinating. You said it took you 5 years, was that research and writing included? Also I'm curious about your writing routine. How much time do you spend writing every day and do you have a daily word goal?

I hope you don't mind me duplicating two of my answers from above to answer the question about research. I think it's nice to have them together here anyway:

'I research concurrently with writing, and I often find when I'm stuck with a particular story point, the answer is to return to the books. More often than not, learning a new aspect of your setting or subject matter will dislodge you from your rut. I think you perhaps need to read about 10 books before you start writing, but 100 books before you finish.'

'Many of my sources were ancient chronicles known as the Mahavamsa and Chulavamsa, as well as a lot of contemporary sources and historical books. Sometimes the historical record can only take you so far, though, and you have to get creative. I got a lot of minute details from poetry written at the time: what kinds of plants mad people would wear in their hair, the kinds of tools used in kitchens, the decorations of houses. I'd advise a huge amount of situational research too - that is, exploring your setting and reimagining how it must have been in that period. I did a lot of exploring around the ruins of Polonnaruwa, the ancient Sri Lankan capital, for instance. In some ways you have to be your first reader - and if you don't believe in the story and setting first, your readers certainly won't.'

As for the writing routine, these days I have much more freedom to write, so I'm able to work to something like a proper routine. I alternate days between writing and doing PhD work, and spend a lot of time reading. I don't have word goals every day exactly, especially because so much of the work of writing is editing, and actually un-writing! You can have had a great day's work and end up with your total word count 2,000 words shorter. I lost 5,000 words the other day and it felt great. But when I'm ploughing forward, I tend to write fast but messily. A good day is 2,000 words or more, but I have lots of 300 word days and you shouldn't stress yourself out about things like that really!

Brief follow-up if you don't mind? When you "un-write" do you discard the work entirely, or do you have a repository to revisit it later? I have a problem of believing I may regret losing it and so I end up sort of hoarding ideas and passages that I've decided aren't working.

Oh yes, I have a 'deleted material' file. But I don't think anything has ever returned once it's got there. The file's only function is to reassure me that I can get things back if I want to. I can be too scared to delete things otherwise, and that holds back the progress of the work! Just enjoy watching the wordcount of your deleted material pile up...

Why do you have two middle initials?

Will post this from above if you don't mind: 'I once found a facebook group called the Paul Cooper Group, and it had like 68 members, all called Paul Cooper. This is to say it is quite an un-Googleable name. Something had to be done. It stands for Michael McLaughlin, the latter being my mother's surname.'

I think in some parts of the world it's an uncommon thing for people to have two middle names, but it's fairly common in the UK. For my parents I think it was a way of having my mother's surname in there, along with her Scottish heritage, without giving me a cumbersome double-barrel I'd spend the rest of my life spelling out to people.

How old are you?

Whoever (if anyone) advised you to put the M. M. in your print name made a good suggestion.

I am 26, November birthday. And thank you!

Any plans for an audiobook release?

Yes! I know there is one being recorded for Audible, but not sure about exact release dates or anything. I can find that out and let you know in fact, because I'd like to know myself.

This is certainly one of the better AMA I have ever seen. It legitimately feels like a conversation with well thought responses. Well done.

My question is in regards to your background. Did you have a background in historical research before you started this book? If so, what level of research had you been engaged in (undergraduate, graduate, professional, etc.)?

Thanks, and again, excellent job in this AMA.

Thank you so much, that's very nice to hear! I have no background in academic history, though I was very close to studying history at undergraduate level. In fact, the only application I made other than to do history was to do an english lit and creative writing degree, which was the one I ended up taking. It's just been an amateur passion since.

The barrier between English lit and history can be quite porous, though, and things like historiography and the historical context around certain texts brings in a lot of the study of the past. I wonder how doing history would have affected me, and whether I would find it harder to write about the past had I studied it formally!

My debut novel comes out in August. Any advice (in particular regarding self-promotion)?

Congratulations, that's so exciting! I'd advise getting on Twitter if you're not already, and Instagram too. I was always very dismissive of Instagram until the manager of Waterstones Piccadilly advised me to get it. I thought 'okay then', and found out there's this huge community of book-crazy people sharing photos of what they're reading, sharing snippets of text and generally discussing and appreciating books. It's where a lot of so-called booktubers hang out too, so get on there if you're not already. I think in general if you help promote other writers, they'll help promote you when the time comes. It really is a very friendly and reciprocal community!

Hi Paul, I'm very much looking forward to picking up a copy of Rivers of Ink.

What has been your favourite aspect of writing Rivers of Ink? Also, what is your 'Golden Rule' (either for writing or just life in general!).

Thanks! probably 'keep learning' for both...

I'm trying to get in the writing industry myself. I started off writing a historical fiction book but decided to temporarily call it off. I found comedy writing to be my calling (similar to Ant Farm by Simon Rich or This is a Book by Demetri Martin). I'm working on a joke book/quirky situations/witty sayings/ type of book at the moment and I'm wondering where is the best place to go to get people to review it, and where should I begin to go when I feel ready for publication? Any agents in particular famous for being receptive to this kind of writing? I'd show you a link to my writing myself but I doubt you have time/interest to look at it. Even if you aren't familiar with the comedy subcategory of books, some generic advice of getting published would also be helpful.

Hmm not sure how much help I can be in this regard. I'd say when you're ready to seek out an agent, get your hands on The Writers' & Artists' Yearbook for that year, and search through it for agents that deal with humour books and that kind of thing. There will definitely be plenty who specialise in this. I wouldn't worry about reviews at this stage - that will likely be the publisher's job at some point. The only other advice I can give is to know your field inside out, so that when you approach agents you can tell them how you're filling a gap in the market: 'my book will appeal to readers of X, but Y has never been done before' etc. Hope that helps, and good luck with your work!

Hi Paul! Thanks so much for doing this. It seems the more I write, the more my novel disappears! I began editing at 130,000 words before sanding it down to around 17,000. I couldn't be happier with the outcome but was wondering if you would recommend the same publication process for novella length manuscripts as you would for full length?

Thanks! Can't wait to read River of Ink.

Well that is the most dramatic editing I've ever heard of! I think you find yourself in a bit of an awkward position where you're a bit too long for a long story, but not quite up to novella length. I'm not sure what to advise you really: agents and publishers in general can be a little risk-averse when it comes to unconventional projects.

what inspired you to write the historical novel ?

The idea was largely based on the historical character of Thomas Wyatt, who was a poet for King Henry VIII. At the time, I was also obsessing over some of the very beautiful epic poetry that comes from this part of the world, such as the Mahabharata - which is an incredible 1.8m words long, and contains so many stories. I felt like I wanted to reimagine the situation of the artist in thrall to a frightening state power and use it as a way of exploring how we tell stories across cultures, and the power relations involved in the act. Things really blossomed from there!

What is it with authors and repeated middle initials? Tolkien, Martin, now Cooper?

I know! I'm glad it's not RR at least.

What's that thing in the corner?

Possibly you mean my lamp? Or the print of a painting called The Dream by AR Chugtai :)

I love lamp

It's not the best lamp, it is quite harsh light...