16 I WRITER’S DIGEST I October 2019way around it. As annoying as it is, I’m
always pleased when a character starts
acting out—for me, that’s how I can
tell they’re starting to feel real.What was your editing process
like for this book?
Phew, which stage?! I did about six
months of my own edits before I
sent the book to literary agents, and
then my amazing agent did a lot of
work with me on the book too—par-
ticularly on the fi rst 10 chapters or
so, which were much weaker than
the rest of the story. Once the book
sold to publishers, I worked with my
U.K. and U.S. editors, Emily Yau at
Quercus and Christine Kopprasch at
Flatiron, to tighten the novel much
further. It’s impossible to measure
how much the story benefi tted from
their input. I have so much admira-
tion for editors and what they do—it
really does seem magical to me. Th ey
saw the novel I wanted to have writ-
ten and helped me tease it out.You worked in children’s publish-
ing before becoming a full-time
novelist. Can you tell me about
the work you did? Were you
able to leverage the connec-
tions you made through work to
secure an agent and publisher
for The Flatshare? If not, how
did you fi nd your agent?
I worked in children’s licensing: I
made books to tie in to TV shows
like Peppa Pig and Doctor Who. It
was such a fun, creative job, but it’s
a very specifi c and unique area of
publishing—the more I work with
fi ction publishing teams now that I’m
an author, the more I realize what a
completely diff erent world it is!
I got my agent the regular way:
I sent out queries to agents who I
found online, and waited. (Ages. God,
that wait always feels so long!) Only
one agent got back to me to say she
wanted to read more than the fi rst
three chapters, and that was Tanera
Simons, who then went on to become
my agent and totally change my life.Were there any other ways that
your publishing job helped you
learn to write your own books?
What my job gave me was an under-
standing of the book world as some-
thing commercial. I knew that a sales
team needs a clear pitch for a story,
for instance, which then infl uenced
how I wrote my query letter. I tried
to summarize the story in a way that
would catch the reader’s interest, the
way I’d seen the sales team do at my
work. And I understood what a rights
team did, which was very helpful
when Th e Flatshare started selling all
over the world!I read The Flatshare in about
three days because I couldn’t
put it down. Do you have anymore tips on how to make a
book a page-turner?
I’m so glad Th e Flatshare had you
gripped! Something I fi nd help-
ful is asking what each scene is for.
Sometimes I tend to leave scenes
in because they’re funny, but then
they slow the pace down because
they’re not doing anything for the
story. (Usually there’s only one or two
jokes in there you can’t bear to lose,
and you can probably fi nd another
spot for them anyway.) Also, I fi nd
if I avoid the compulsion to explain
everything, that always helps with
pace. I oft en have to cut out chunks
of my fi rst draft that were really just
written for my benefi t rather than the
reader’s (Tiff y was feeling x and y
and thinking x and y ... ).
But probably the most helpful
thing is to read your story through
fast, and see where you feel like put-
ting it down and going to put the ket-
tle on. Th at’s the bit where you need
to tighten up the pace!Cassandra Lipp is associate managing
editor of WD. Follow her on Twitter
@Cassie000000.I feel most comfortable writing dialogue. If I’m creating a new character, I won’t
write down a description of them. I’ll stick them somewhere with somebody
else and let them chat until I’ve fi gured them out.