Article from Writers Forum

Proposals: the author's
SECRET WEAPON

Clifford Thurlow is a hugely successful ghost writer and says the main factor is the care he takes with his book proposals to publishers. Here he talks us through the process using personal examples

No part of the writing process is more important than the proposal. Editors have little time to read manuscripts and few books are published without one – a great proposal is the taster that promises the feast, the writer’s secret weapon.

What exactly is a proposal?

You will see from the example page below that a proposal is more than a sample of the writer’s work. A proposal tells us more about the writer and how he sees the book finding a niche in the market. The standard advice, ‘three chapters and a synopsis’, is out of date. The writer today is part of the package, integral to the PR, and must do more legwork – or brainwork – than ever before.

I work as a ghostwriter. In the last four years, I have collaborated on four books. Fatwa has sold into nine languages. Today I’m Alice received a six-figure advance. Escape from Baghdad came out in October this year, and is a second Iraq book with James Ashcroft after Virgin published Making A Killing in 2006.

What the four books have in common, apart from having done reasonably well, is the formula devised for the proposal, which I divide into six sections:

• Brief Outline
• The Story
• Chapter One
• Themes
• Similar Books
• Biographies

A proposal – like a movie pitch - leaves no questions unanswered and must excite the editor enough for it to be photocopied and passed out to the rest of the team at the publishing house. It should be no more than 20 pages; short enough to speed-read on the tube home, but long enough to reveal the writer’s style and the book’s potential. A proposal needs the wow factor, that eureka moment; it needs something that will lift it out of the slush pile and turn the manuscript like base metal into the gold of a published book.

When an editor is excited, the proposal will then be considered by the PR department, sales and marketing. Publishing is a business, and a new book is like putting a new brand of cornflakes on the shelves among all those familiar boxes of Kelloggs – James Patterson, Ian Rankin, Jodi Picoult. As many as eight different readers at the publishing house will consider the proposal. If the majority like it, the project will be dissected at a group discussion where, like generals planning a campaign, they will thrash out the potential – or lack of – before an offer is made to the writer.

Brief Outline

You will see from the list above that we start the proposal with a Brief Outline. This must encapsulate the story in one page. That page, about 300 words, is often all that you’ve got. Get it wrong, and busy editors will go on to the next proposal. And there is always a ‘next proposal’. Thousands of them flood in every day.

The one-pager should be written in the style of the book, in language that fits the story. It is usually written after the manuscript is complete and, with so many themes and subtleties running through the writer’s head, it seems impossible to précis them in one meagre page. But it has to be done. It is the essential tool of the trade. That secret weapon.

Once written, go through it again – and again, many times. All writing is rewriting. Oscar Wilde once told a friend: ‘All morning I worked on the proof of one of my poems, and took out a comma; in the afternoon I put it back.’ Easy reading, they say, is hard writing. For examples of good synopses study the book flaps of hardbacks and read the book and film reviews in listings magazines such as Time Out; they are crisp, dense and summarise complex issues usually in under 200 words.

The Story

This is an extension of the Brief Outline in 12 to 15 pages and should be divided into the chapters of the book. It should be written in the present tense in order to capture a sense of immediacy. Like a good short story, as the plot unfolds, the reader must be able to picture your characters, understand and identify with their flaws and foibles, their strengths and frailties. All stories are character driven. The successes and setbacks faced by the characters are merely devices to carry the narrative.

As in your finished manuscript, The Story must avoid 'telling' the reader snippets of information, but instead ‘show’ character through action. In the opening of A Christmas Carol, for example, we find Ebenezer Scrooge sitting in the cold with his clerk Bob Cratchit, the fi re unlit. When a gentleman comes seeking a donation for the poor, Scrooge says the workhouse is sufficient. We know Scrooge is a miser without Dickens needing to say so.

If a woman is beautiful describe how the other women in the room turn to study her movements as she enters. Find ways of showing us she is beautiful – and if the word appears in your proposal, rub it out.

Chapter One

This is your chance to captivate and persuade readers to ask for the rest of the manuscript. A first chapter should carry all the themes explored in the book, flares of match light that promise to light a fire. Keep that first chapter down to three or four pages. Make those page fly. Write them as if your very life depends on those words.

Themes

A love story may have one simple theme running through the book: the well-used recipe boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl. A mystery maybe more complex, taking in family relationships, greed, honour and so on.

This is an abbreviated list of the themes to be found in Escape From Baghdad:

Iraqification; The Surge; Shia nepotism in the security apparatus; Female suicide bombers – recruitment through fake marriages, gang-rape and dishonour; Hysterical religious intolerance and bloodthirsty faction leaders; 11 year old child brides, wife beating… the life of women under extremist Islam; US and UK withdrawal pressures; Plight of Iraqis who have worked for Coalition Forces and who are now endangered but are being refused immigration permission; More on Ashcroft's history and army stories.

The list should be thorough and must answer all the questions an editor might ask.

Similar Books

This section should also be thorough and answer all the editor’s questions. Unless your book is genuinely unique (Patrick Süskind’s Perfume, perhaps), it will fall into a genre and have rival works. What are they? How did they do? What were the reviews like? Editors do not have time to do the research. It’s your book. You have to do it yourself.

Biography

Finally, you need a biography – in the case of the ghostwriter, that’s plural. This comes from Escape From Baghdad:

James Ashcroft is a former British Infantry Captain who served in West Belfast and Yugoslavia, and trained with various elite US Army and Marine Units. He worked as a private contractor in Iraq from September 2003 until spring 2005, and is the author of Making A Killing, Virgin Books, 2006.

Clifford Thurlow’s latest book, Today I’m Alice, tells the story of a woman’s long struggle with Multiple Personality Disorder, and is due out with Sidgwick & Jackson, in May 2009. He is the co-author of Making A Killing and numerous memoirs.

Exclusive help

Proposals are devilishly hard to write and just as important as the book itself. If you would like to study the proposal for one of my recent books, write to me at info@cliffordthurlow.com