How It Works... Work In Progress

Maybe you have not completed your novel or script, your non-fiction idea, maybe you have only just started, but urgently need some help at this stage.

We are very happy to read work in progress, however early on, and offer full guidance. We recommend a course of four reports – an initial overview, followed by a series of three detailed reports on your most recent writing as you submit it to us.

For books you might initially submit the first 20,000 words, followed by three later sections. For scripts this might be an early/initial scene or dialogue sequence, and three subsequent scenes.

These progress reports, of up to a 1000 words each, to be supplied within one week, cover –

• Immediate impact and competence of execution
• Originality of idea, and effectiveness of style and tone
• Structure, plotting and characterisation, and where to next
• Dialogue and bringing characters to life
• What’s working and what isn’t, including a close look at narrative perspective – for example, third or first person?
• Creating narrative drive and suspense
• Research and believability
• Helping you bring out and shaping your voice to its best advantage
• How to tailor your work to the market, possibly by exploring genre avenues
• Setting targets and deadlines and methods to help move your project on

Our aim with our Work-In-Progress Service is to make sure you keep writing, to keep you focused, and for you to produce work to the best of your ability.

Alongside our written reports, an extra 30-minute tutorial (in person or by phone) can always be booked

“I found Henry’s extensive knowledge of contemporary fiction
and novelist’s ear for language extremely useful.
You know the industry both as a critic and as a writer
which gives a commercial but also an empathetic reading.”

                                                                                                                               Hilary Kirby