I'm starting a new book proposal this week. I've been kind of floundering around trying to get my second (all important) novel together and it's been a chore. The one I started has stalled but that's okay. I can put it away and come back to it later. The next one, an adaptation, is great but I'm thinking 'this is old ground, EVERYONE'S done this'. So that too has gone away. Which leaves me with my latest project. I've been sitting on this idea for months and months but finally, now my life is settling back down into its old routine (long story...) I can finally get it out of  my head and onto paper.

So, I'm using a tried and tested method. The book proposal. 

Originally I got it from the wonderful Lucy V Hay and her page. Check it out, she's full of amazing helpful information for writers of both novels and scripts.

So, here is the template and below is how I used it for Since You've Been Gone

1.    WORKING TITLE:       

2.    GENRE:             

3.    LENGTH:                       

4.    TARGET AUDIENCE:

5.    PITCH:

6.    STATEMENT OF INTENT:

7.    BACKSTORY/ SYNOPSIS AND/OR EXTENDED PITCH:

8.    CHARACTER BIOGRAPHIES (fiction only):

SWOT ANALYSIS

STRENGTHS

WEAKNESSES

OPPORTUNITIES

THREATS 

First Page: 

1. Working Title. My title was picked by my agent, Julian Friedmann as BUT WHAT NEXT? This came from the manuscript itself. When they bought it, the publisher Rowohlt retitled it, GUT DECISION, which I love.

2. Genre. GUT DECISION is a Young Adult (YA) novel, aimed at females aged 14-20 years. Yes, be this specific. Agents and Editors hate it when writers say “suitable for all”!

3. Length. YA is typically in the region of 50-75,000 words, so I put this here. The novel came in at just over 62,000 words. Make sure you know what has “gone before” in the genre you’re writing in, don’t just pick a number out of thin air!

4. Target Audience (short paragraph, 100 words max): I wrote a short paragraph here in more detail about those 14-20 year old females. I wrote about what types of book, plus TV shows and movies they would like (thus cementing *why* they would like my novel).

5. Pitch (25-50 words): Here I put a logline-style summary of the story as a whole, along with a “What if …?” question, which was: “What if you could play out everything that *could* happen next in your life?”

Page Two: 

6. Statement of Intent (1 page max). Think of this as the reason why you’re writing – like my last post. Remember: if you don’t believe in the message behind your writing, the readers won’t either. So work out what it is and why you’re writing this book.

Page Three: 

7. Synopsis (half a page maximum). Here is where you write the premise behind your book and iron out any potential issues with the “story world” in advance. In GUT DECISION’s case, Lizzie is presented with ALL the possible scenarios of how her decision (“have the baby/don’t have the baby”) could play out, one per chapter.

Pages Four – Seven: 

8. Extended Pitch (2-3 pages). Here I gave a summary of each chapter: what happens; who’s in it; how it ends. There are five “main” chapters, plus a prologue and epilogue in GUT DECISION. This provides the “framework” for your novel, if you like.

Pages Eight-Nine: 

9. Character biographies. I gave the protagonist, Lizzie, the top of the page – then listed her “significant others”: what they were like, who they were to Lizzie and how they figured in the story. Lizzie is 17, so her Mum and Dad, sisters, best friend and boyfriend are all in there. That’s about ten “main” characters, so I took up two pages for this, but you can take less if you have fewer in your novel. Don’t go on for longer than two pages and don’t note peripheral characters, only those that are really important.

Page Ten:

10. SWOT Analysis. SWOT stands for “Strengths – Weaknesses – Opportunities – Threats” and is often used in business to assess various projects and ventures. Here is a free handout as a Word document. SWOT is a useful tool to look at the development of your novel as well as “selling it off the page” to agents and publishers. For example, one of the Strengths of GUT DECISION was its female bias and the fact that unlike many contemporary YA novels it does not deal with the supernatural or an abusive relationship at its heart; a Weakness could also be its female bias! The fact I have such a large following online is an Opportunity in terms of marketing and so on.

WORKING TITLE:              SINCE YOU'VE BEEN GONE

GENRE:                    SINCE YOU'VE BEEN GONE is a General Fiction   novel aimed at women 30+ and written in the third person using multiple narrators although the main emphasis is on the character of Hal Bartlett.

LENGTH:                  55,206/167pp – Times New Roman, double spaced.

TARGET AUDIENCE: SINCE YOU'VE BEEN GONE has a male protagonist but covers universal themes of love, loss, friendship, and desire and therefore I consider that it would be more appealing to women. I have deliberately set it in 1998 so that when Hal reminisces he goes back to the late 70s/early 80s. I wanted to aim it at people in my demographic who enjoy watching old Top of the Pops and talk about the old days before computers and modern technology, who recall the original Bill and Ben or Andy Pandy and who went to Butlins on holiday or had those first package holidays to Majorca. It is also deliberately set in Dover and will appeal to my hometown contemporaries as Hal's memories are my memories of growing up there and thus, will not be wildly different to most of my generation's memories of the town. The appeal of having a novel set in their home town could also be a draw for buying the book.

PITCH: When Hal left town he left behind some unfinished business. Now, after fifteen years he’s returned to face his past but the past is about to catch up with him and turn his world upside down.

STATEMENT OF INTENT:

In some ways this is a very personal story for me as it explores themes and emotions that I have experienced to a lesser degree than Hal. As someone who left my home town of Dover and who sometimes goes years without visiting, I wanted to channel the sometimes need I have to go home (even though I am stuck where I am for now) into a ‘coming home’ story. To that end I used a lot of my memories to fuel Hal’s rediscovery of his roots and I believe this will resonant with readers especially in Dover who are both loyal to their town and despairing of what it has become over the years. However, I hasten to add that the characters are purely fictional. A Facebook group dedicated to recalling the town in its heyday has over a thousand members who truly mourn the time I talk about in  my story and therefore I believe that there is an audience for this story there alone.

Since You’ve Been Gone started out as an award winning script with a place in the Prequel to Cannes contest and was one of only 25 scripts picked annually by the prestigious BAFTA/Rocliffe New Writers Forum.  

SYNOPSIS:

Just before leaving for university Hal Bartlett suffered a loss, the loss of his one true love. She dumped him. He was devastated. So devastated, that he came home less and less in order to never have to face her and find out the truth as to why. He hurt a lot of people in order to not hurt himself. Then he married Julienne, a lady from a social background so far removed from his council house upbringing as he could get and he spent the rest of the time until now trying to please her. But all the while, the nagging doubt of why he was dumped flickered in his mind and in his heart of hearts he knew that his marriage had been a mistake. A sticking plaster to blot out the memory of Abigail Markham.

As a successful man with his own veterinarian practice and a best mate and business partner who regularly puts him right on his life and the world in general, Hal should’ve got past it all. Finally, after the slow decay of the marriage had brought Julienne and Hal into a war of attrition, matters reached a head and Hal packs his bag and decamps to the flat above the surgery. Here, he makes the decision that will change his life forever; he takes a few days out and goes back home to his family and friends.

Sadly for Hal, whilst in his mind his friends from his youth had remained eternally young, they had, in fact, like him, grown up, got jobs, got wives, got tattoos and beer bellies and got past it. Setting them in aspic was always dangerous.

The trip home brings Hal’s world crashing around his ears when he firstly finds that his mother hasn’t preserved his bedroom in the manner in which he left it and secondly that Abigail, the women who'd broken his heart, wasn’t about to put him out of his misery.

Meeting up again at the school reunion he had no intention of going to before his explosive exit from his marriage, Abigail and Hal begin the task of unravelling their lives back to the summer of ’83, when Hal left for university and his new life not knowing that Abigail was pregnant with his child. Abigail married another with his full knowledge of her condition and raised the baby as his.

Wounds open up and are picked over as the truths about those final summer days reveal themselves. And all the while the ghosts of the past are pulling Hal back in and away from Julienne and the false life he had created but could never sustain because here was his life and the people he truly loved.

Things don't work out the way Hal thought they might and he finds himself cut off from the daughter he never knew he had but the experience allows him the chance to re-evaluate who he is and what he has become and to move forward, to leave behind those ghosts from the past who have haunted him and to begin to look towards a new life – post marriage, post revelation and to find out where his heart truly belongs and with whom.

EXTENDED PITCH: SINCE YOU’VE BEEN GONE has fourteen chapters plus the prologue.

Prologue -  A two page introduction which sets the backstory for the relationship between Hal Bartlett and Abigail Markham and how it ended, much to everyone’s surprise after he accepted a place at Cambridge to study veterinarian medicine in 1983.

Chapter One – picks up the story fifteen years later in 1998 and introduces the three main characters in full and finds out what has happened to Hal and Abigail in the intervening fifteen years since their separation. Abigail is now a single-parent with two children and managing on her wage from the hairdressers and the money her ex gives her. Hal has married into the extremely wealthy Hunter-Shaw family but is unhappy and isolated. Michael Bayliss, Hal’s best friend and business partner in their veterinarian practice, is a down to earth Yorkshire bloke who is Hal’s voice of conscience and reason. This chapter also sets up the premise that Hal never got over Abigail and has deliberately distanced himself from his old life in order never to have to confront the reason why she dumped him and married another man so quickly. It is also the reason why his marriage is failing and has descended into open hostility. The chapter ends with Michael tackling the subject of Hal’s marriage and advising him to sort it out.

Chapter Two - here the reader meets Julienne’s family, the excessively wealthy Hunter-Shaw’s. Olivia, Julienne’s mother, is a comedy character in the vein of Hyacinth Bucket although she has pedigree is she is a crashing snob who is planning the society wedding of the year – her youngest daughter Verity to the dim-witted Hugo Stanley. This is the background to the tension between Hal and Julienne, whom the reader also meets at this point. She is not a ‘hate’ character and as much the victim of their marriage as he but she is more barbed in her obviousness of her plight.

Chapter Three - The reader is introduced to the obnoxious Felix, Hal’s brother in law, who has a slightly unnatural love for his sister and the lovely Meg, Felix’s wife, who fell hopelessly in love with Hal at university only to see him marry Julienne. The second half of the chapter explores the close relationship and backstory between Hal and Felix’s wife Meg. It is clear that whilst they are both reluctant to act upon it, they have very deep feelings for one another, a fact that will become important to the story later on.

Chapter Four - centres on an explosive dinner party where Hal is the post-dinner entertainment. To begin with Hal is content to spend time with Meg, his ally against their overbearing in-laws. The reader also gains insight into Julienne’s mind and her plan to seek a divorce much to the delight of Felix who coverts his sister despite their familial ties. The reader meets the Stanley’s – George and Sybilla - Hugo’s parents - and the simmering resentment of Sybilla towards Olivia fuels the baiting that Hal has to endure as to his own origins. Sybilla is out to humiliate Olivia at Hal’s expense and for a while Hal holds his own but eventually he snaps. The chapter ends with Hal standing up to his tormentors and excusing himself from the party.

Chapter Five – Hal cool remains for as long as it takes him to leave the room. Despite Julienne’s protest that they should keep up appearances for the sake of her sister’s wedding, he packs his bags and leaves his in-laws house. He decamps to the empty flat above the practice. Michael is swiftly onto him, demanding the details which Hal can’t give but his confusion is added to with the arrival of an invite to his school reunion. Hal’s solitude in the flat allows him to make choices about his immediate situation and he begins with the decision to go back to his home town to build bridges with his family and friends but more importantly to explore his lingering and destructive attachment to Abigail.

Chapter Six – This is where the reader really begins to find out more about Hal as they follow him on his voyage of rediscovery. Having abandoned his family and friends, at first because he couldn’t face the fact of losing Abigail and then under the influence of Julienne, he begins the journey back to them from now on. It begins with his parents, Diana and Trevor, who bore his abandonment with resigned hearts. It ends with an invite by his father to join him for his regular Friday nights darts match down at the local Working Men’s Club, an invite Michael agrees to on both their behalf.

Chapter Seven – focuses on Hal coming to terms with his prolonged absence and reconnecting with his past and accepting that this town and these people are what made him the person he is, not the fancy clothes or the smart house he came to through his fortuitous marriage. He meets up with one of his old school mates at the Workies – Phil and in conversation it is brought home to Hal just how detached he’s become from his past but there is also recognition from him that it was his doing and he has to own the current situation. As he becomes swamped with memories that reconnection begins to take hold.  The chapter ends with Phil trying to persuade Hal to attend the school reunion, which Hal has been reluctant to do.

Chapter Eight – is a short chapter that sees Hal with Michael in support, pitch up at the school reunion. He meets up with his old mates – Dave known as Ferret, a wiry character with ‘ants in his pants’, Phil, Mick, and Dean Banks who goes by his pet name of Banksy, the nominal leader of their old group. The meeting is awkward but rewarding for Hal, who knows he must face them and deal with any hurt he caused. At the end of the chapter Abigail arrives and for Hal the evening is just beginning.

Chapter Nine - here the story begins to get to the nub of the situation. Abigail has to deal with the fact that Hal has turned up at the reunion and is petrified in case the secret of her daughter’s parentage somehow gets out. Hal and Abigail’s reunion is awkward and snappish – each taking subtle pot shots at each other, like two angry cats circling around looking for a weakness. This is more from Abigail than Hal who takes most of it on the chin in order not to be confronted with the truth about why she dumped – based on his own belief that it was something terrible he’d done. Round one is a bruising encounter but the evening is still young.

Chapter Ten - Round two – and after a brief respite with Michael outside, Hal and Abigail come back together and the atmosphere, after the initial encounter is quieter. They walk and talk, dragging memories back from the past and ever inching closer to the truth. Hal knows now that he never stopped loving her but she has grown away from him, that he has kept her in stasis and that the woman with him is not the girl he left behind. The lessons are fast and hard. Truths begin to unravel as Hal thinks more clearly about past events and as he gets to close for comfort Abigail begins to build the walls back up to prevent him getting to the truth about Ellie. Meanwhile, Michael is making inroads of his own with Abigail’s sister, Marina, an emotional damaged lady who puts up a tough exterior to protect herself. The chapter ends with Abigail walking away from Hal, after an emotional conversation about an event in their past. Hal is left devastated as he finally comes to terms with the fact that he lost the woman he loved all his life a long time ago.

Chapter Eleven – Hal’s journey enters calmer waters at the beginning of the tenth chapter as he becomes more reconciled to his past mistakes. However, an invitation to join the old crowd at the summer Sunday evening staple – the skittles match – produces an ending he could never conceive. After sticking around for ten minutes or so and realising that everyone has moved on and that, they may be friends all their lives, they are no longer the same people he left behind, Hal, with a heavy heart and on Michael’s instigation, decides he’s done enough atoning for walking away and without saying goodbye, leaves his old friends to their game. On the way out he meets Ellie and it becomes immediately obvious due to her absolute likeness of him, that Abigail had been keeping one massive big secret from him. Shocked and angry, it takes all of Michael’s powers of persuasion for Hal not to go back into the pub garden and create a scene. A quick phone call to Diana confirms Abigail had been telling people that Ellie was premature and he knows…now he has to find a way of dealing with it.

Chapter Twelve – this chapter focuses entirely on Hal and Abigail having the most difficult conversation of their lives. Hal goes to Abigail’s house to confront her with what he believes he knows and the whole story comes out. She realised she was pregnant and decided to go it alone – for heroic reasons, or because she liked the idea of the drama – Abigail doesn’t want to explore her true motives. Hal is perplexed and distressed in equal measure, believing, with the gift of hindsight that they could have worked through the situation. Emotions are brought to a head and unknown to either, Ellie has arrived home and hears Hal ask Abigail if she didn’t think Ellie should know. The shock propels Abigail into a rage beyond measure and Hal is unceremoniously pushed out of the house and the door slammed in his face. He is saved from embarrassment by Phil who happens to arrive at that time but little is said as Phil is dragged into the house by a distressed Ellie and younger brother Ryan.

Chapter Thirteen – Michael troubled by Hal’s frame of mind and unable to get an answer from him, finally tracks him down to the seafront and gives him a lecture on what he thinks he’s been doing.  Hal’s been doing some solid thinking and knows now that he has to let the past go even if it means never knowing his child, if that’s what Abigail wishes. Hal returns to his own home and has a big showdown with Julienne who, with cool disdain for her husband, is more infuriated that he has grown a back bone than that he is leaving her. Hal collects the rest of his belongings and leaves the marriage for good.

Chapter Fourteen - ties up all the characters stories and what happened after the divorce. Hal, after an initial knee-jerk reaction in wishing to return home to Dover, settles down in the flat above the practice as all around him the lives of those he has come into contact with evolve and change. Abigail marries Phil. Verity and Hugo split up after a brief marriage and she gets in with a ‘of the moment’ rapper. Meg finally plucks up the courage to leave Felix after years in an abusive, soul-destroying marriage and lands on Hal’s doorstep some two years after he walked out of his own marriage. Their friendship, during the dark days of his divorce and his coming to terms with his paternity of Ellie, has developed into something beyond love of good friend. After the journey he has been through, Hal finds that what he desired all along has been closer than he thought.

CHARACTER BIOGRAPHIES:

HAL BARTLETT is 32 and a vet in partnership with MICHAEL BAYLISS. Hal is a good man, a bit of a wimp but essentially a good bloke. He left his home town of Dover in the September of 1983 without ever realising how life expanding university would be. Slowly, so slowly even he didn’t notice it happening, Hal shed his old life, old friends who never left the town into which they were born and, sadly, he shed his parents. Hal married well, too well, to out of his league and he knew it. His wife’s family have money, have never been on the type of rough council estate Hal grew up on let alone been in a council house and they glossed over Hal’s working class roots and remade him in their image and Hal, for a quiet life, goes along with it. He’s an adaptor but never comfortable in his new role and always guilty of what he’s done to his parents in order to keep the charmed life he now has. In the back of his mind though, he knows he’s making a big mistake and his marriage is cracking under the strain of two people from different ends of the social spectrum trying to make it work. Hal needs to man up and get out but he’s loyal and steady and really he’s looking for an excuse. 

MICHAEL BAYLISS is 32 and from an undisclosed location in Yorkshire. He  never, ever considers himself to be anything other than 100% ‘the man’. His confidence overflows and he has an opinion on absolutely everything, even if he hasn’t got a clue what he’s talking about. He’s a slob about town, dodging marriage and he thinks he’s a bit of a lady magnet and a bit of a rebel. He’s loyal to Hal but not so keen on Hal’s in-laws. Despite his own reticence to get married and his misgivings about the long-term future of Hal’s, he’s a steadying force when Hal goes on his soul-searching visit back to his home town. Deep down, Michael just wants someone to love him but he also wants a challenge and the two don’t always mix.

ABIGAIL MARKHAM is the girl Hal left behind. She’s bright but never achieved her potential because when Hal left for university he left behind a pregnant Abigail. He just didn’t know it because she chose not to spoil both their futures by telling him. She didn’t abort the baby and has struggled to make ends meet ever since. Early on in the pregnancy she married another classmate, Adam, who was aware of her condition, married her regardless and brought up the child as his own. The marriage ultimately failed and Abigail brings up the child and another on her income from hairdressing and the money Adam gives her. Her life, though, is far from a depressing story – she is surrounded by the friends her and Hal had at school and they see her right. She made a difficult choice and she stuck by it and, despite not having the luxuries in life she feels blessed with her kids and her friends. Hal’s return after 15 years throws a spanner in the works and she hopes that he won’t work it out. She is panicked by the idea of her life, which she has worked for, unravelling. Deep down she hopes it will work out for the best but she daren’t let that hope come to the surface. She is guarded, sometimes spiteful to Hal but as their time together moves on, she softens her stance but never completely opens up.

JULIENNE BARTLETT (nee HUNTER-SHAW) isn’t the villain of the story by any means. She fell for Hal and thought she could gloss over their differences but soon came to learn that sexual attraction didn’t make up for the lack of things in common. As a practicing lawyer, Julienne displays a calm exterior to the situation but often allows what’s going on inside to escape in barbed comments. Quite why neither of them has the stomach for a divorce is unclear but that’s true in life and they buzz around each other without sufficient resolution.  To a certain degree there is sadness in Julienne that she married the wrong man.

SWOT ANALYSIS

STRENGTHS : written in third person using multiple narrators allows the reader to understand all the sides to the story even though the bias is Hal. Universal story of lost love.

WEAKNESSES : Possibly being set from the male point of view even though it is directed at a female audience.

Hal is a passive protagonist but he does end up taking control of his life.

OPPORTUNITIES : the setting of Dover given that there are practically no novels set in Dover, thus will have local interest plus using my memories strengthens that bond and other readers from Dover will have the same kind of memories which will create a ‘feel good’ factor.

I would utilise friendships to spread the word about the novel. Dover is a small town and so ‘word of mouth’ recommendations spread very quickly.

THREATS : Hal’s passivity may be off putting as he lets the world around him happen however I feel that this makes him more ‘true to life’.