Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/20/the-big-idea-colin-brush/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58327

When writing a novel, a lot of people think of the process as sort of rigid. You have a specific story to tell and it needs to be an unchanging vision all the way through. Author Colin Brush, however, says in his Big Idea that flexibility is required when creating a story. Follow along to see how in the making of his newest novel, Exo, he made sure to be adaptable and listen to those around him.

COLIN BRUSH:

The budding novelist with some notes for a story is faced with one gargantuan problem: how to turn their few scribbled words into a compelling 100,000-word tale? Months, often years, will elapse before this conundrum is solved to their satisfaction.

But then comes a smaller but no less significant problem – the exact opposite of the first. Now you need to pitch your novel to an agent or publisher. You need to condense your 100,000 words into a succinct hundred or so that will persuasively sell your book.

This, of course, is the challenge publishers face every time they launch a new book. What’s the hookiest way of pitching the story? Both editor and author know the story backwards, but is that any help in persuading someone who hasn’t read the story that they’d want to read it? The multiple elements that draw a reader through a tale often aren’t the same elements that invite the uninitiated in.

For the last twenty-five years, I’ve been a copywriter at one of Britain’s largest trade publishers. Over that time, I’ve written the jacket copy (the blurb, in the UK) for over 5,000 books, both fiction and non-fiction. From classics that are hundreds of years old to the latest romantasy sensation.

It is my job to boil down that 100K story, those months or years of work, into fifty to two hundred words. (Frequently, even half a dozen words for a cover shout line.) Many authors and editors shudder at the prospect. It is not because they find it hard to write short, but rather it is because they are so close to the book. When you’ve been cutting a path through the dense trees of a story it can be difficult to remember why you went into the wood in the first place. From the wood’s farther side – bleeding, sore, exhausted but exaltant – it’s easy to lose sight of what from the outside made entering so appealing.

When it came to writing my own novel, I thought I knew what the process needed to be. Much-missed author Terry Pratchett once advised writers: ‘if you think you have a book evolving, now is the time to write the flap copy – the blurb. An author should never be too proud to write their own flap copy. Getting the heart and soul of a book into fewer than 100 words helps you focus.’

Well, I certainly wasn’t too proud. I had a novel idea: the last murder at the end of a world. I had a tough lead character: an uncompromising eighty-year-old former policewoman wandering a bleak, uninhabited planet. I had an adversary: the Caul, a mysterious multi-dimensional entity that had transformed the oceans into an annihilating liquid. And I had a plot: the truth about the murderous Caul had been discovered but someone was killing to keep it secret. I even had a title: Exo. 

I’d written half a million words of blurbs. Writing a couple hundred more about my own novel-to-be would have me up and running.

Reader, it didn’t quite work out that way.

It turns out writing a novel and writing a novel’s blurb are very different activities. When you write the blurb the story is set. You know how it works: beginning, middle and end. The path through the woods is clear. When you’re writing a novel, the story tends to evolve. New ideas inveigle their way into the narrative. Characters don’t behave as you expected. Your big denouement doesn’t land as you hoped. Beginning, middle and end – the path – meander and shift. Sometimes, even the woods go wandering!

Writing Exo’s blurb did not help me, unfortunately. I spent years, on and off, reworking the story to get it to come good.

But – and here’s the big idea – being a blurb writer did help me write and rewrite my story. Writing 5,000 blurbs means you encounter a lot of different stories. But you also have to pitch these stories in multiple ways. I was once asked to do the blurb for a schools edition of Albert Camus’ The Plague. What do teenagers prefer? Reading books that are metaphors for the human condition, or scaring themselves silly at the cinema? So I wrote it like a horror movie, beginning with rats vomiting blood . . .

As a blurb writer I’m constantly re-pitching stories in alternative ways to reach new audiences. You work with the story, knowing you mustn’t misrepresent it; that would please no one. A pitch is all about what you put in and what you leave out. Sometimes the author hates an approach and you have to start over. Or the editor likes the beginning but wants the ending to land differently. As a blurb writer, working to a brief, addressing multiple audiences, you have to be versatile. You never say no.

So when I was struggling with Exo – revisions from my agent, suggestions from interested publishers: ‘how about setting it on Earth?’ – I never once said no. I looked at what I had. I saw where changes could be made – elements added or taken away – and the path shifted. Exo was my novel, but it was also just a very long piece of copy. (Writer Randall Jarrell called the novel: ‘a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.’ Mine had plenty wrong with it.)

As someone who regularly writes five different versions of a blurb for a prospective bestseller, I know that there is no correct or incorrect copy. There are just different responses to a brief – different pathways. Some paths will seem more appealing than others. And the eye is always in the beholder.

It turned out my job as novelist was to find a way of telling my story that others wanted to read. That meant exploring many different routes. My day job, pitching stories in a variety of ways, reminded me that versatility and stick-to-itiveness – never saying no! – were the key to beating the best path through the story woods.

Exo: Amazon US|Barnes & Noble|Powell’s|Bookshop|Publisher|UK retailers

Author socials: Website|Instagram|Bluesky

Extracts: Read Day One here | Listen here (read by Gildart Jackson)

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/20/the-big-idea-colin-brush/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58327