The First Act is the first major section within story structure. It comprises the first quarter of the story and focuses primarily on setting up and introducing the plot. As the foundation for everything, a solid First Act ensures your plot can achieve solidity and depth in subsequent acts.

Within the First Act, we find three important structural beats:

• The Hook – 1%
• The Inciting Event – 12%
• The First Plot Point – 25%

From the book Structuring Your Novel: Revised and Expanded 2nd Edition (Amazon affiliate link)

The Hook, which we discussed in last week’s post, begins the story by introducing the first domino in the row of causality that will allow each scene to lead into the next. At that point, the protagonist will likely not yet be engaged in the main conflict. What happens at the Hook begins to set up the conflict, providing the first bit of foreshadowing and context.

The Inciting Event, which we will discuss next week, divides the First Act in half, providing the story’s first important turning point. It symbolically represents the Call to Adventure and invites the protagonist to engage with the primary conflict.

The First Plot Point does not discretely belong in either the First Act or the Second Act. Instead, it creates the “threshold” or Doorway of No Return between the Normal World of the First Act and the Adventure World of the Second Act. The First Plot Point is when your protagonist becomes fully engaged with the primary conflict. From here, the protagonist will not be able to turn back from the pursuit of the goal without consequences. We will discuss this all-important beat in more depth in a few weeks.

From this brief overview, you can see that the primary focus of the First Act is not the immersion of the protagonist in the story’s main conflict. Rather, the First Act is where the story develops the reasons the character will choose to engage with the antagonistic force later on. The story will go full-on in the Second Act. For that intensity to make sense, the First Act needs to provide context for what follows. You can think of the First Act as foreshadowing for the Second and Third Acts. It is the plant to the subsequent payoffs.

Setting Up the Story: Characters, Settings, and Stakes

After hooking readers, your main task in the First Act is to put your early chapters to work introducing your characters, settings, and stakes. Twenty-five percent of your book might seem a tremendous chunk of the story to devote to introductions. But if you expect readers to stick with you throughout the story, you must give them a reason to care. Mere curiosity can only carry readers so far. Once you’ve hooked their sense of curiosity, you must then deepen the pull by creating an emotional connection between them and your characters.

These “introductions” include far more than the moment of introducing the characters and settings or explaining the stakes. In themselves, the presentations of all the important characters probably won’t take more than a few scenes. After the actual introductions is when your task of deepening the characters and establishing the stakes really begins.

In one sense, the First Act is like a program for a play. Its primary purpose is to prepare readers for what’s in store. You’re using these early chapters to indicate which characters are important, what type of story readers can expect, and where the journey will take them.

The first quarter of the book is where you compile the necessary components for your story. Anton Chekhov’s famous advice that “if in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired” is just as pertinent in reverse: if a character fires a gun later in the book, that gun should be foreshadowed in the First Act. The story you create in the following acts can only be assembled from the parts you’ve shown or foreshadowed in the First Act.

Introducing Your Story’s Characters

Your first duty in the First Act is to allow readers the opportunity to learn about your characters. Who are these people? What is the essence of their personalities? What core beliefs will be challenged or strengthened throughout the book? If you introduced someone in a Characteristic Moment, as discussed last week, then you were already able to show readers who this person is. From there, the plot can build as you deepen the stakes and set up the conflict that will explode halfway through the First Act in the Inciting Event and later at the First Plot Point.

Every story spreads out the arrival of important cast members differently. Usually, prominent actors should all be on stage by the time the bell rings at the end of the First Act. You can find exceptions in which prominent characters don’t arrive until late in the story (e.g., Cynthia in Wives and Daughters), but these late arrivals must be well planned. An arbitrary new character is never a good idea.

Wives & Daughters (1999), BBC/WGBH Boston.

Try to introduce all the following players within the First Act:

• Protagonist

Introduce the protagonist as quickly as you can, in the first scene if possible (and it should almost always be possible). The early introduction of the main character signals to readers this is the person whose story they’re reading and therefore this is the person to whom they need to attach loyalty.

• Antagonist

You’ll usually introduce or at least foreshadow the antagonist early on, both to get the conflict rolling and to foreshadow the opposition to whatever your character cares about.

• Love Interest

Particularly if your story is a romance, but even if the love story is only a subplot, you will most likely bring your protagonist’s love interest on stage in the First Act. Although you don’t have to signal these two people will end up in love, you can at least signify the character’s importance with an early introduction.

• Sidekick

Minor characters come and go in a story. Some will be important, some won’t. Those who will be at your protagonist’s side for the majority of the book deserve at least a short intro sometime before the First Plot Point.

• Mentor

Writing Archetypal Character Arcs (affiliate link)

Mentor characters (which may or may not be Mentor archetypes) can enter a story just about anywhere in the first two acts, depending on their importance and the size of their roles. When possible, avoid convenient plot twists later on by introducing, or at least foreshadowing, a mentor character’s existence in the First Act.

Introducing Your Story’s Stakes

As your characters walk onto the stage, they will bring the stakes along with them. What they care about—and the antagonistic forces that threaten what they care about—must be shown or hinted at to foreshadow the deepening conflict of the Second Act.

Creating Character Arcs (Amazon affiliate link)

Keep in mind the arc you’re trying to create for your characters. Some characters may need to endure a nuclear holocaust to learn their lessons and change their ways. Other times, the catalyst a story needs (i.e., the “worst” thing that can happen) will be smaller and more intimate.

Whatever that worst thing ends up being, you must set it up in the First Act. If your character’s daughter is going to be kidnapped, the First Act is the place to show readers how much her daughter means to her. You can’t up the stakes later on without something first being at stake.

It’s not enough to merely mention whatever is at stake for your characters. You must also take the time to develop it. Don’t be in such a hurry to get to the action that you neglect this foundation in the First Act. You can explain the stakes outright (“I love my little girl,” the mother says. “I would do anything to make a better life for her.”), or you can prove them through action (the mother lovingly swings her daughter at the playground)—or both.

The more proof you supply of your character’s investment in something (i.e., family, job, honor, etc.), the higher the stakes will be when that thing is threatened. The First Act is your first and most important opportunity to supply this proof. Once the First Plot Point hits at the 25% mark, the story will move too quickly to fully establish these important aspects of your character.

Introducing Your Story’s Settings

Why is it important to introduce prominent settings in the First Act? Aside from the necessity of grounding readers in the story world, well-planned settings will empower your story with continuity and resonance. Your setting is the visual frame that unifies your story. If your book takes place in a prison, that’s the box in which readers will put your story when they think about it. Shawshank Redemption and The Great Escape? What do you think of when you hear those titles? The prison setting is what defines them and frames their plots.

Shawshank Redemption (1994), Columbia Pictures.

But what if you write your prison story so the character doesn’t land in jail until the First Plot Point at the 25% mark? What if the settings in the First Act won’t ever be seen again? Maybe your protagonist starts out as a loving father who is wrongly accused of murder and tossed into the pen. You spend the first quarter of your story establishing his Normal World with his suburbanite family, then bam! he’s in jail and he won’t return to the suburbs for the rest of the book.

Even if you introduce a new batch of settings later on, your early settings are crucial for establishing character and stakes. Early settings can also create contrast when your poor protagonist is dumped in the brig later. Setting is the foundation of verisimilitude. Make readers believe they’re in a real place, and you’ve won half your battle against their skepticism.

Setting should never be an arbitrary choice. Consider what settings the plot will require, then try to create a strong reading experience by eliminating extraneous settings. A limited number of settings gives both you and the readers less to keep track of and allows more opportunities for deepening existing settings. A handful of important settings will allow you to create thematic resonance when you return to them at key moments in the story, thus bringing their presence in the story full circle.

Let’s say your jailbird dad in the previous example is released from prison during the story’s Climax. If you stage your closing scene back home in the suburbs, you’ll bring the story full circle, neatly closing the frame you opened in the First Act. By the same token, if he doesn’t get to go home at the end of the story, you might want to question whether opening with the suburban setting was your best choice.

What if the protagonist is on a journey with no main setting? Journey stories present a different set of challenges. What you’ll need to create in this sort of story is a “transient setting.” Alert readers that the characters will be jumping from setting to setting, then ground readers with the details that will remain the same no matter where the characters are. If they’re with a camel caravan in Egypt or just driving cross-country in their Jeep 4×4, these, in essence, become the primary settings no matter where the characters go.

The hectic nature of journey stories, particularly adventure stories, creates a milieu in which their exoticness is the setting. When you open the story with an exotic setting and plant the expectation that the character won’t be staying long, you’re providing the same foreshadowing as you would by using a more domestic story’s First Act to accustom readers to one or two prominent settings.

Examples of the First Act From Film and Literature

Pride and Prejudice: Ten pages in, we’ve met all the major characters, learned about the setting, and seen what’s at stake for the Bennet daughters if one of them can’t ensnare the unwitting Mr. Bingley. By the time we reach the First Plot Point, we’ve gotten to know all the sisters. The beauty and sweetness that will eventually win Jane a husband, the independence and strong opinions with which Elizabeth drives the conflict, and the foreboding irresponsibility of the youngest daughter Lydia are all in place and ready to be developed later in the story. We’ve also been introduced to the Bingleys, Darcy, and Wickham. Before the First Act is over, Bingley is in love with Jane, and Elizabeth has made up her mind to dislike Darcy—the two factors that will drive the story to come.

Pride & Prejudice (2005), Focus Features.

It’s a Wonderful Life: Under the guise of explaining George Bailey to novice angel Clarence, the senior angels show us the prominent moments in George’s young life. We see him as a child, saving his little brother from drowning, going deaf in one ear, and preventing old Mr. Gower from accidentally poisoning a customer. We glimpse him as a young man, planning his escape from “crummy” Bedford Falls, even as he becomes smitten with the lovely Mary Hatch. By the time the Inciting Event strikes, we know George Bailey inside out. We’ve been introduced to Bedford Falls and its colorful array of denizens. And we’ve learned of the stakes from George’s father, who explains the importance of the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan in giving the people a financial haven from evil Old Man Potter.

It’s a Wonderful Life (1947), Liberty Films.

Ender’s Game: Card uses his First Act to establish his setting: the orbital Battle School, where brilliant young children train to stave off an alien invasion. We learn about this strange and brutal place through the eyes of the main character, Ender Wiggin, who is a new arrival. This also allows us to learn about Ender. We see his determination and his kindness, but also the underlying bedrock of his ruthlessness—around which the entire plot turns. Almost all the significant supporting characters are introduced. Readers are shown what is at stake, not only for the human race, but also for Ender if he does not overcome the handicap of his extreme youth in order to flourish in this place.

Ender’s Game (2013), Lionsgate.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World: After the initial onslaught of the furious opening battle, the movie slows considerably to allow viewers to get to know the main characters—the captain, the surgeon, and other featured crew members. The opening battle already demonstrated the high stakes, and the characters’ reactions (most notably the captain’s intense desire to refit the ship and reengage the enemy) help us understand why they’re fighting and what will happen if they fail. As the crew repairs the battle damage, we’re also given an inside view of the ship, the primary setting throughout the story.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), Miramax Films.

Top Things to Remember About the First Act

1. If the Hook has done its job, you can safely slow the action to thoughtfully introduce and deepen your characters.
2. The characters’ salient personality points, motivations, and beliefs should all be developed.
3. The pertinent points of the initial setting must be fleshed out. Readers should already be oriented by the time the First Plot Point arrives.
4. The readers’ bond with the characters helps raise the stakes. Make clear what the characters stand to lose in the coming conflict to drive the point home.
5. Every scene must matter. Each scene is a domino knocking into the next domino/scene, building inexorably to the First Plot Point.

Stay tuned: Next week, we’ll talk about the Inciting Event.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Do you take the time to introduce your characters, settings, and stakes in your First Act? Tell me in the comments

Related Posts:

Part 1: 5 Reasons Story Structure Is Important

Part 2: The Hook

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Spotify).

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When is it time to leave an unsuccessful series behind and pivot into something new? What is the process of writing to market? Anna Sayburn Lane explores these topics and more.

In the intro, help with Amazon KDP Account suspension [Kindlepreneur]; Selling direct to the EU? Thresholds coming in 2025; Some honest thoughts about the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival [Charlotte Duckworth]; OpenAI’s SearchGPT; and Signing Spearof Destiny pics.

Today’s show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Anna Sayburn Lane writes 1920s murder mysteries and contemporary thrillers, and is an award-winning short story writer.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Lessons learned from self-publishing your first book
• The mindset shift when deciding to pivot
• When the cost of production outweighs the profits — is it time to pivot?
• Assessing the financial potential of a genre
• How writing to market makes marketing easier
• Researching and changing your branding when pivoting genre
• Balancing research time with writing time
• Historical accuracy vs. believability

You can find Anna at AnnaSayburnLane.com.

Transcript of Interview with Anna Sayburn Lane

Joanna: Anna Sayburn Lane writes 1920s murder mysteries and contemporary thrillers and is an award-winning short story writer. So welcome to the show, Anna.

Anna: Hello, thank you very much for having me.

Joanna: Oh, it’s great to have you on the show. So first up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you originally got into writing and self-publishing.

Anna: I was the typical bookworm kid, which led me into an English and History degree. I didn’t really think at the time that writing stories for a living was an option. So I kind of went into journalism thinking, oh, that’s close. Turns out, it’s a completely different thing, but anyway, it kind of worked.

So I worked for local newspapers for five years. Then I moved into the health and medical field. I enjoyed work, I was quite happy doing what I was doing.

I’d always written a bit of fiction on the side, but I only really started taking it seriously about 15 years ago. I just got bitten with the idea for a novel, and it wouldn’t let me go.

So I spent about eight years writing my first novel, and then another two years trying to get it published. I went through all of the ups and downs, and near misses, and getting more and more frustrated with the process.

So eventually, I decided I’m going to find out about self-publishing. I went to London Book Fair, I joined ALLi (Alliance of Independent Authors), I did various online courses, and I found out as much about it as I possibly could. Then I eventually went on to publish Unlawful Things, which is the first novel, and that was back in 2018.

Joanna: That’s interesting. That’s quite a long journey then. Didn’t that book win some awards or something? I mean, it’s a very well-respected kind of book.

How did that experience go with traditional publishing?

Anna: Well, that was the thing. It kept getting shortlisted for stuff, it kept nearly winning things. Then I’d sort of get agents who were saying, “Oh, yes, we really love it,” and then they’d have a closer look and say, “The trouble is, we’re not sure that it’s commercial enough. Blah, blah, blah.”

So that was really the reason that I eventually went into self-publishing. I forget the exact ones now, but there were a couple of awards that it got onto the final roster for.

When I published it, it did pretty well. It got really well reviewed, people seemed to really like it. So I thought, oh, great, you know, better write the next one. Unfortunately, the next one to two years to write, and that was when I suppose things started slowing down a bit, really.

Well, let’s just stay a few years back because you and I first met as I arrived in Canterbury at the end of my pilgrimage in 2020. So we were literally just days before lockdown, I think, that time.

Joanna: Then you came on my Books and Travel Podcast in 2021, and we geeked out over Canterbury history. That was while you were still writing the Helen Oddfellow Mysteries. So first, tell us more about those books.

Why did you start out writing that series, in particular, Was it based on your history degree?

Anna: Well, actually, the Helen Oddfellow series really started when I walked from London to Canterbury back in 2010, which I just sort of did for fun. It gave me an idea for a story, which I like the idea of a story that started in London and led you all the way to Canterbury.

Taking in literary figures like Chaucer and Christopher Marlowe, who’s the playwright to was born in Canterbury, but actually died in Deptford, was murdered in Deptford. I liked the idea that it would touch on historical mysteries, like the murder in the cathedral and Archbishop Becket’s murder.

Then again, the mystery of what happened to Becket’s body after Henry the Eighth had the shrine destroyed. So I had all of these kinds of mad ideas going around in my head.

Then I came up with the idea of a literary detective looking into mysteries from the past. So my heroine, Helen Oddfellow, was a PhD literary researcher, but she was also a London tour guide.

That was because I actually have a friend who works as a London tour guide. It’s just fantastic going anywhere with her in London because she’s always pointing out things that you’d never notice normally. She just knows everything about London history.

So I thought that would make a really good sleuth, someone who notices things like that and who has such a good background in history.

So this series then, the first book was very much about Marlowe. I then went on to write about William Blake and then about Charles Dickens. So all writers who had really strong London and Kent links, because I live in London and Kent and that’s kind of the area that I know best.

So I really enjoyed the writing and the research, and I did absolutely stacks of research for each book. They were incredibly research heavy. I mean, for example, with the Charles Dickens book, it sort of started with, hmm, I should probably read all of Dickens.

Joanna: Wow, okay. That is interesting.

Anna: So perhaps not surprisingly, they took quite a long time to write. The first book did okay, the second did okay too, the third and the fourth didn’t really take off.

So I was very proud of the books. The people who read them did like them. I thought they were good books, but they kind of weren’t working commercially.

Joanna: Yes, and this is really interesting because you mentioned the agent who said it wasn’t commercial enough. You’ve got a character there who’s a PhD literary researcher and tour guide.

How much does that series cross over into literary fiction versus mystery genre fiction?

Anna: I think part of the problem was I didn’t really know where it should sit at all. I remember after writing the first one, showing it to someone, and she said, “Oh, so it’s a crime?” 

I said, “Oh, is it?” I hadn’t even thought to that point what sort of book I was writing. I had to explain it. It takes quite a long time to explain to someone that, well, it’s a contemporary thriller, but it’s got lots of historical stuff, and quite a lot of heavy literary history.

It just became really hard to market because it was quite a complicated thing.

I think when I described them as sort of literary thrillers, people thought they’re just going to be really heavy. Maybe they were quite heavy, but certainly, I think that for some people that was actually quite off putting that they sounded like they were going to be hard work.

I think probably they did ask quite a lot of the reader. I do remember reading one of the reviews where someone was saying, “Look, I’m sure this is a really good book, but there’s so much history in it.” I was like, yes, you’re right. There is a lot of history in it.

Joanna: It’s so funny, though, because I was thinking about this because, of course, you and I both love our research. It can be spice or seasoning instead of info dumps, and I think both of us are pretty good at that, to be honest.

It’s so interesting because I was thinking, look, my books are for people who love to also read the Author’s Note and love to say, “Oh, my goodness, that’s actually real. Oh, wow, I didn’t know about this.”

I get emails from people who say, “Oh, I had to go and google that stuff you were writing about,” or, “I had to go and visit this other website that you put an author’s note,” and stuff. So I do feel like there is an audience for those kinds of books.

I mean, Desecration, my first also kind of literary detective book, it’s similar. So staying with that series, so you mentioned that you didn’t know what genre it was, which is a classic first novel issue that many writers have. In fact, first book issue in general.

What else did you learn from self-publishing and writing those initial books?

Anna: I think one of the problems was how long it was taking me to write each book. So I realized that people will actually forget if you don’t publish a book for two years, especially if that’s the gap between your first and second book.

People will just forget about you, even if they really liked the first book. By the time you’re publishing the second one, they’ve way moved on. I mean, I think I did learn how to craft a really good thriller.

I think my fourth book in the series is by far my favorite. I think it was a really gripping story. It had the backstory, it had the Dickens backstory in it, but I don’t think it ever became sort of info dump. I don’t think it ever over-egged the history. I think it was actually a really good book.

Unfortunately, by that stage, the readers who’d read the first book had sort of forgotten about it, apart from a few diehards. It just wasn’t working. So it was sad.

I was really sad not to be able to make a success of it because I felt they are good books. I would very much like to have been able to carry on with them, but the time came to make that change.

Joanna: So let’s talk about that. Was it a purely financial reason to pivot away from that series? Why did you decide to pivot? How did it feel? I mean, you said it was sad there, but talk us through that process.

Anna: I just decided I wanted to make a living as a fiction writer, and those books were losing money. So I could have kept writing as a hobby, but that really wasn’t what I wanted to do.

So if I wanted to fulfill this dream of making a living as a fiction writer, then I had to find something that would actually sell. It was kind of heartbreaking because I loved writing my characters. I love those books.

I was actually midway through writing book five when I made the decision. That came from just looking really clearly at the sales for book four, and thinking, why are you doing this to yourself? Why are you carrying on putting all of this this effort and this huge amount of work into something that is not really giving you a return?

Once I’d made the decision, I actually felt a huge sense of relief. I think that they had become a bit of a burden in a way. I was kind of tired of feeling that I was failing.

I’d set myself up to be an author, and I felt that I was failing as an author because I wasn’t able to sell those books, even though I was pleased with the books themselves.

Joanna: Yes, so let’s just say to everyone listening, it is actually completely normal to not be a full-time fiction author and making enough money from books. That’s what you decided you wanted to do, so that’s why you made that decision, I guess. You said there, looking really clearly at the sales and the books.

How did you get enough distance from the books to make that decision, do you think?

Or are you an analytical person? Like, you could just download the sales spreadsheets and be like, no, this is not working.

Anna: I am fairly analytical, I think. I always have spreadsheets that show how much money I’m spending and how much I’m getting in. I’ve been running my own business for the past 10 years as a freelance journalist, so that was just part of my process.

It was kind of the end of the year, and I was looking at my end of year figures and realizing to what extent my journalism business was subsidizing the books. I knew that I wanted to do less journalism and more writing, and I thought, well, if that’s what I want to do, then something’s going to have to change.

So it was quite a struggle emotionally at first, but it was fairly straightforward once I looked at the figures and thought about what it was I actually wanted to do.

Joanna: You said they were costing you money, so were you paying for marketing things? I mean, obviously, editing and cover design are an outlay.

Were you paying for ongoing marketing?

Anna: I mean, I was, but I wasn’t even making back the cost of production. So editing and cover design wasn’t being covered by the income from the last couple of books. So at that point, it just wasn’t working for me anymore.

Joanna: I really appreciate your honesty, and I think people listening are as well. It’s so interesting, I’ve heard Craig Martelle from 20Booksto50k, he’s talked about this. You write, let’s say a five-book series like you have, or an eight-book series or however many you want, or even just a trilogy, and you see how it’s going.

If it’s not working, then you do another series because not every one is going to find an audience. So it might be at this point. So for example—

Have you considered bundling those books or doing some other things later on?

Or are you just going to let it go?

Anna: I’ve put them in a four-book box set. Funnily enough, since I started the new series, there’s a small but steady sale each month for those books. So I think some people are reading the new series, and then when they get to the end of it they’re thinking, oh, maybe I’ll try the others.

Joanna: Awesome. That’s great.

Anna: So that’s nice.

Joanna: That is nice. Well, you never know. I do want to encourage people around this too, because things can pop back up again at different points. Or you could just do a promotion. So you’ve got Chaucer, you’ve got Marlowe, you’ve got Dickens, you’ve got William Blake. I mean, these are people where festivals come up, don’t they, here in the UK.

Orna Ross is doing something on Maud Gonne at the moment and does stuff around Yeats’s anniversary and all of this. So we can tie these historical things into spike promotions now and then.

But that’s the old series, and the reason I get emotional about this is because I have probably gone on too long with my ARKANE series. It makes some money, but you know, I’m on book 13. I think if I had been honest like you have, around book five I might have pivoted earlier, but I do have other series. Let’s talk about your pivot. What was your process of—

After you decided you were going to do something different, what did you do next?

Anna: I think one of the keys was once I decided, just move on. Don’t sort of faff around thinking, oh what might existing readers think or try to explain it to anyone else, just get on with.

So I decided fairly quickly that I wanted to stay in the crime mystery thriller space. Then I started researching the genre in crime properly, in the sub genres.

I thought, well, what is non-negotiable? I realized, well, I definitely want to keep the historical aspects. I’d often thought about writing a historical novel. I knew that I didn’t want to write police procedural.

So I looked at the historical mystery area, and slightly to my surprise, I found this thriving sub-genre of 1920s murder mysteries. I love reading classic Golden Age mysteries by Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie, so that kind of helped. I just looked and thought, well, maybe I could do that.

I then started reading lots of books in that genre, and also started reading general histories about the 1920s. Especially social histories involving women because there was so much going on in the 20s for women, everything had changed since the First World War.

I just started to really fall in love with that kind of period and started to think, yes, actually, I can do this. I really want to get into this area. I actually started off by writing my reader magnet, which is Murder at the Ritz, which came from actually going and having tea at the Ritz with a friend.

We were sitting over afternoon tea and throwing ideas about, and I went home and wrote it and thought, well, it looks like I can actually write a murder mystery. So there was a bit of research to kind of prompt ideas.

There was a particular book that really helped me get started called Square Haunting by Francesca Wade, which is all about some amazing women who lived in Mecklenburg Square in Bloomsbury between the wars, including Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Alphaeus.

That was quite close to where I used to live and work myself. I really liked the Bloomsbury area of London. So that gave me quite a lot of inspiration for the first full novel in the series, which was Blackmail In Bloomsbury.

Joanna: So you found this subcategory, but did you assess the financial potential or did you check the rankings?

Did you use Publisher Rocket because you can find out money using that tool? Like, how did you look at that side?

Anna: Yes, I did. I use Publisher Rocket. I mean, what I did find was that I could probably find other genres or sub genres that would be more lucrative, that would probably have higher sales, but I was looking for something that I was excited about writing about.

I looked at, well, what are the best sellers in those genres? What are their sales? Okay, well, I’d be happy with that. If I could get into those sort of numbers, that will be fine.

So although it wasn’t that I’m going to make an absolute fortune necessarily, it was they’re clearly selling enough, and it’s something that I want to write. I think you really have to have that crossover. I knew that there were other genres that were selling more, but they weren’t the ones that really spoke to me.

Joanna: How did you write to that market?

Did you get lists of tropes? Or was it more organic?

Anna: I read a lot of books in that genre and kind of noted the tropes. So things like people are forever wanting to have afternoon tea and cake and things like that. So that’s fine, I can build that in.

The fashion is really important. Well, that’s good, because I like the fashion of the era very much myself. So I was kind of aware of the tropes.

What I realized I didn’t want was something that’s very common, is it’s an aristocratic sleuth. It’s always Lady so-and-so who’s investigating the murders. I decided, no, I don’t want that because I wanted something that felt a bit more personal to me. I don’t really have any sort of insight into the aristocratic mindset.

What I do have, my mother, grandmother, are all South London women who grew up in a particular sort of social class, kind of lower middle class. My mother went to the grammar school and did elocution lessons, and learned how to do shorthand and typing, and was expected to fit into a kind of secretarial role.

I thought, actually, I like that idea that this lady, my main sleuth Marjorie, who was named for my grandmother, is a secretary to a lady who is an American private detective. So she’s got the experience, she’s in her 50s, same age as I am. So she’s sort of that side of me. She’s kind of experienced at life.

Then Marjorie is quite a naive young woman, but she’s learning fast. She’s coming from that background that I feel that I understand quite well.

Joanna: Did you plan a trilogy, or five books?

How did you think about this next experiment in terms of a series?

Anna: I decided I wanted it to be a six-book series, but I also thought I will do three and see how it’s going. So I’ve got three out now, and they’re going pretty well.

I mean, they’ve sold so much better than the previous series, to the extent that I can see how they could become a living if I keep going in the series and maybe have some spin-offs and other series.

They’ve certainly given me hope that it’s possible to achieve that goal of being a full-time author.

So, yes, right from the beginning I was thinking they’re going to have an overriding theme. There’s a couple of themes for the two main characters that will go throughout the six-book series. I may well continue after six books, but I’ll kind of see how that’s going, and if I’ve got enough new ideas at the end of the six books.

So it was very much a planned series, whereas the Helen Oddfellow books were entirely unplanned. I wrote the first one without any idea what was going to come next. So it’s been a much more commercially minded project, I guess.

Joanna: On that, have you just gone with ebook and paperback?

How are you publishing? Are you in KU?

Anna: Yes, I’m publishing in KU. I’m doing paperback and ebook. I really want to do audiobooks, and that’s something that I’m going to be focusing on for the rest of this year is trying to get that underway.

So that’s a bit of investment, but I like the idea of doing that because I think there’s quite an untapped market for audiobooks. It’s probably a market that I haven’t reached because they don’t necessarily read paperback or ebook. So I’m quite excited about that.

Ideally, I would like to sell direct, but I think there’s not much point in doing that until I’ve got a few more books in this series under my belt. So that’s a project for next year, to look at maybe or maybe not taking them out of KU. Either way, being able to sell paperbacks direct and audio direct through my own website. So that’s definitely one for 2025.

Joanna: What I noticed as well, I mean, if you’re going to write to market, you have to cover to market. Your covers are fantastic for this series. They look exactly on brand, as far as I can tell. I don’t know much about that genre.

Tell us about how you did the research for the branding and the covers.

And how you’ve shifted it, because they obviously look quite different to the rest of your books.

Anna: Yes, completely. Well, I wanted something that would give a flavor of the art deco style of the 20s. So I was looking at some classic Dorothy L Sayers books, and I’ve got one that I particularly liked. I used that to do a little mock up for my reader magnet.

Then I started looking at cover designs in the genre, and I contacted a designer called Donna Rogers who had done quite a few of the books that I really liked. So I sent her a brief, including my mock up as one of various suggestions. She drew elements from that, the sort of geometric shapes and so on, and used that as a template.

So we’ve got a very strong branding on the series with this strong sort of art deco style template. Then we’re picking different colors for each of them in the series. They’re getting a lot of love. It’s really nice. Book reviewers and book bloggers nearly always comment on the covers, which is really nice.

Joanna: Oh, well, then that brings us to the marketing on it. So you said before that they’re selling a lot more.

How are you marketing these books differently?

Anna: I suppose my author branding has changed in the time. I’m foregrounding of the 20s style and my research into the 1920s. So I’m doing quite a lot of work with the newsletter. So that’s become a really important thing.

I thought a lot about what do people who read my type of book want from a newsletter. I realized that they probably want a bit of fun, a bit of glamour.

So I put in pictures of exotic places that I’ve managed to travel to, and I talk about other books that they might like, and some of the media that they might enjoy. So the new series of Bridgerton, or whatever. Things that kind of have that historical, but escapist, quite glamorous sort of style.

I suppose I didn’t make a big deal of the shift with my newsletter or my social channels because I kept the same pen name, but I did completely rebrand them. Then I just started posting about my new series.

I switched over to the new reader magnet so that new readers were going to be seeing consistent 1920s-style branding from the start. I’ve done a lot of newsletter swaps with other authors in the genre, which has been really nice.

I got in touch with them fairly soon in that journey. I was making contact with people, getting on their newsletter list. Then once my series had started, offering newsletter swaps, asking if they’re willing to do that, and everyone seems really up for it. So that’s worked really well.

I’ve done a few promotions as well. So Written Word Media type promotions and 99p for a week, that kind of thing. That has been quite good for promoting the first book in the series, and then hopefully hooking people into the series.

In terms of advertising, I’m doing a lot of experimenting with Facebook ads at the moment. I don’t know, I’m struggling. I haven’t cracked that yet is all I’m going to say.

Joanna: It keeps changing.

Anna: It does. There’s a lot going on with Facebook at the moment. It’s quite interesting to see certain vintage-style photos do well for a bit, and then they stop doing well. Then I’ve tried using AI imagery, and some people are fine with it, and then some people will just write, “This looks AI,” underneath. So I think, well, okay, it is.

Joanna: Yes, that’s common now, even if it’s not AI.

Anna: Exactly.

Joanna: So basically, you are doing everything, but you were doing everything before, right. So the big difference is—

You found a more vibrant niche where you have written something that those readers already want.

It’s like putting stuff before people, but if they actually want it, it becomes much easier to market.

Anna: Yes, completely. I know who I’m marketing for, too. I think that was probably the single big thing that made the difference was I know who to target. I didn’t know any of that stuff before. I kept looking, trying to find my readers, and there was no one who really fit it.

So I think that was part of the problem, was it wasn’t an easily marketable series. Whereas this, you know, if you say to somebody, “Oh, it’s a murder mystery set at the 1923 Chelsea Flower Show,” they know exactly what sort of thing they’re going to get. If that’s the sort of thing they’re into, then they’ll give it a go.

Joanna: Fantastic. So I mean, obviously, this is still 1920s. How have you done the research for this in a different way than the last series? Because you spent a lot more time researching those.

How are you balancing research with actually getting the books done?

Anna: Well, each book has kind of a new aspect of the 20s to explore. So for example, The Soho Jazz Murders, the second book, was all about nightclubs, jazz music, and a bit about the cocaine panic of the early 1920s.

So I often do a lot with the British Newspaper Archive. So I’ll literally just dive in, put in some keywords and dates, and see what comes up. It can be really interesting.

Then I’ll do some library-based research, so looking for things like memoirs. For example, Kate Meyrick was a nightclub hostess who wrote this fantastic memoir called Secrets of the 43 Club, which is really fascinating.

I will also go to places as much as I can. So I did a crime tour of the West End, I went to the Bow Street Police Museum, just spending time in those particular areas.

One thing that I realized is really different, because I write about London, and I write about it very much in a real way. So you sort of should be able to walk where I’ve walked. Of course, so much changed because of bombing and development after the Second World War.

So one of the resources that I use is the old online ordnance survey maps of London from 1918. So I can discover that, actually, the places that I thought they could all stroll down didn’t exist in 1918. That road used to be called something else. So that’s quite fun.

Things like local history blogs are really good as well. So I was setting one scene in Brixton, and I found these fantastic old photographs on a blog called Brixton Buzz all along the high street. So I could see which shops were where, and what people were wearing, and where the market was, and all that sort of stuff.

So that’s fantastic because what I’m looking for then is color to bring into the books so that you can feel that you’re there. So it’s rather than looking for particular kind of secrets from the past, which I was looking for when I was doing the Helen Oddfellow series.

A lot of it is, how will I make people feel that they’re in the 1920s? How can I add the color so that they feel that they’re actually in the place?

My fourth book, The Riviera Mystery, which I’m working on at the moment, I was lucky enough to go to Nice a couple of times last year. So I made the most of my research time there.

Also, YouTube actually is really helpful with vintage film. The film industry was very much in its infancy, but there are some fantastic short films. There’s a film called À propos de Nice from 1924 which shows everyone in all their fashions, kind of parading up and down the Promenade Andre. So there’s lots to really enjoy.

Joanna: This is hard, though, isn’t it, because a lot of historical fiction readers can be very particular about the exactness and veracity of the research. Have you found that in this niche, which I imagine is potentially more about the murder mystery than the exact history?

Are you getting different responses from readers?

Anna: Actually, yes. People don’t tend to pick up on—well, maybe I haven’t made an error yet—but people haven’t picked up on errors, so it seems unlikely.

One thing I was worried about getting wrong as the cars because I quite like having vintage cars. Fortunately, my husband’s a fan of vintage cars, too. So just last week, he read the first draft of my next book and pointed out that she can’t reverse her 3 Wheeler Morgan back up the street because they didn’t have reverse gears.

Joanna: There’s no reverse! That’s a good one.

Anna: So he saved me from that torture. I think what most people are looking for is a really cracking story. They also want it to sound right. So something that my beta readers will sometimes pick up on is phrases or words that they think don’t sound right.

Quite often when I’ve checked them out, actually, they are right. As in there were people called Brenda, for example, in 1920, but to them, that didn’t sound right. So I thought, well, okay, it’s about plausibility rather than accuracy.

So if someone called Brenda strikes my readers as being out of period, even though I know perfectly well from the online records that it’s true, that’s okay. I’ll change it to something that they will find more plausible. So there’s a bit of push and pull between that.

I’ve got a good beta reader team who will say, “Actually, I’m not sure whether this is true or not, but it doesn’t sound right.” So I think sounding right is really key.

Joanna: That’s a really good tip, actually. I mean, I was just thinking that as we record this, it’s July 2024, and the American election cycle is unbelievable. If you wrote it into a thriller, people would say, no, that’s too much. That’s just a bit much. It’s not believable.

That’s kind of the same thing. It’s like, what is true is sometimes not believable. Just coming back on beta readers.

How did you find your beta readers?

Because that’s a question that people send me quite a lot.

Anna: Through the newsletter list. I just ask people, did you want to be on the team?

Something that was quite unexpected when I started publishing this series was how many of my readers are from the US as opposed to the UK. It’s something like 70%/30%, US to UK.

So because historically I’ve been publishing with more success in England, or in Britain, for the first series, more of my newsletter list was from the UK. So more of my beta readers were.

I put out a call in last one saying, can I have some American beta readers, please? Because I won’t know what it is that will strike you as odd or that needs to be better explained or whatever. So trying to make sure that I’m accommodating readers from my biggest market, as well home readers.

Joanna: Yes, that is interesting.

Are you writing in British English?

Anna: I am. I think if I tried to write in US English, particularly because it’s set in the UK, the narrator is an English woman and it’s first person, I think it might come across as slightly weird.

Joanna: Weird, yes. First person, no, fair enough. Okay, I didn’t realize. Your first books were not in first person, right?

Anna: No, it’s the first time I’ve written first person. It’s really interesting.

Joanna: How is that? I’ve written some short stories in first person, but I’ve never written a full novel. That is actually quite different because you can’t—I guess you can write some chapters from other people’s perspectives, but they’d be in third person.

How have you managed writing from that first person perspective?

Anna: It all has to be from Marjorie’s perspective. It’s really interesting in terms of how it affects the structure because everything has to be either something that’s through her eyes or something that she’s told later, and particularly with a mystery.

I suppose one of my inspirations for having her as a first person narrator was I was thinking about Holmes and Watson, and how Watson is kind of usually several steps behind Holmes. So he’s telling you things, but he’s not necessarily understanding them.

I quite like that Marjorie will tell you what’s happened, and she’ll tell you something that her boss the detective has said or is doing, but she won’t necessarily get the input of that for another chapter or two. Then, also, things can then be explained to her, so she can explain them to us.

So it’s been really interesting, and I’ve enjoyed doing it. It’s not something that I thought I would do, but somehow this particular character seemed to want to be a first person character. I think it does work. It works because she’s got quite a strong persona, so her voice comes through.

Joanna: Is that common in that particular genre? Because again, when you’re writing to market, it is very much about writing to—you know, if you’re writing the romantasy at the moment, a lot of it is first person.

Is that common in that genre?

Anna: Yes, it is. I’m not sure what the proportions are, but a fair number of the series that are successful are written first person.

Joanna: Yes, definitely something for people to watch out for. In my sort of main thriller niche, like most of the books I read are in third person. So that’s kind of what I naturally write. So that’s a big shift.

We’re almost out of time, but I do want to just circle right back. So you have an English and History degree, your first character was like a PhD Literary. We’ve talked very much about that literary side. You’re a journalist.

We’re in the UK, right, and you and I both know how snobby it can be in this country. So I wondered like how have you dealt with any, or—

Are there any mindset changes or challenges around moving away from a more literary persuasion into this more commercial side?

Like, have you struggled with that? Or have you had any responses from anyone? How has that been?

Anna: I haven’t had any problems with it personally at all. I wanted to write books that sell. I wanted to write books that people would enjoy. I’m not snobbish about things like, you know, Agatha Christie, I think she’s fantastic. I’ve a few problematic issues with it in terms of the time period now, but I love a good murder mystery.

I think that’s the key to it, really. I’m writing for people to enjoy themselves. I don’t think that they have to work to enjoy themselves. There are books that that will do that and that’s fine, but that’s not really what I want to do.

I just want that someone can read my book maybe at a time when life is tough. Someone got in touch and said, “Oh, I read your first Helen Oddfellow book whilst I was in hospital having open heart surgery.”

I mean, blimey. If that can help someone through an experience like that, then that’s fantastic. That’s as much as I would want.

The only thing I can think of that’s at all kind of similar was one of my ads on Facebook recently put something like, “Experience a classic murder mystery,” and someone had responded underneath, “No, thank you. I prefer the proper classics.”

Joanna: There we go. It’s really good that you’ve made this decision, you stepped into it, it’s going well. So I guess the last question is—

Can you see a path now to making a living as a fiction writer?

Anna: Yes, but it’s a multi-year pathway. It’s not something that’s going to happen quickly. I think when I first started, like so many authors, I thought I’m going to be that one where I will release this book, and everyone will recognize its genius, and it will be The Davinci Code, and suddenly I’ll be a millionaire or something.

I know now that’s not really how it happens. So I’m happy to sort of project forward, okay, well, I’m going to have five books out by the end of this year, and then I want X number by the end of next year. By that time, I should be getting revenues around this or that.

So looking a couple of years into the future, I’m very much hoping that I will be where I want to be in terms of my goal of being full time.

Joanna: Brilliant.

Where can people find you and your books online?

Anna: So my website is AnnaSayburnLane.com, and if you sign up at the website, you can get a free copy of Murder at the Ritz.

I’m also looking at doing a research blog, so a blog that’s about historical research for writers, which I think would be interesting for both writers and hopefully for readers. So AnnaSayburnLane.com/research gives people the chance to sign up to the Substack, which I will start just as soon as I’ve got time to start it.

Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Anna, that was great.

Anna: You’re very welcome.

The post Pivoting Genres And Writing Historical Fiction With Anna Sayburn Lane first appeared on The Creative Penn.