Anyone Reading This Can Be a Writer: Tips and Insights You Might Not Know, a guest post by Nathanael Lessore

When I was a teenager, I wanted to impress a girl I had just bagged a date with. I knew my friends were playing soccer in a local park, so my plan was to walk past them, act surprised, and she would swoon at my athletic prowess. The plan half worked. I walked past my pals. They invited me to join. I turned to the girl, pretending to be embarrassed. This would only a take a moment. I strolled out onto the pitch, and with my first touch of the ball, I kicked it into my own face. Then I did a little scream and dropped to the floor, bleeding from my nose and mouth. Everyone crowded around me to check I was OK, as I rolled around on the floor in pain. It was the least athletic moment of my life.

Twenty years later, I was writing Dropping Beats. I was thinking of embarrassing scenes for my bumbling main character, and my failed football date immediately came to mind.

Dropping Beats is littered with incidents like this. There’s a scene where the main character takes a tub of yogurt on a date to the cinema. That actually happened. Even some of the throwaway lines, including, “I ain’t felt this pathetic since a cockroach fell out my pocket.” The true story behind that unfortunately happened much more recently. Four years ago, I moved into my first apartment where I was living alone. I didn’t know what cockroaches looked like; I thought they were big friendly beetles. A couple weeks after I moved in, I went to the doctors as I had the flu. In the doctor’s office, I pulled a tissue out of my pocket to blow my nose, and a cockroach fell on the floor between us. Disgusted, he said, “Eugh! Is that a cockroach?” and then the thing started scurrying around his office. He stood on a chair and gave me a plastic cup to trap it under. After crawling around on my hands and knees under his desk, I finally caught the thing. Then I had to do the walk of shame past reception, throw it out, and come back inside like nothing happened.

Why did I include these scenes in the book? The honest answer, and possibly hopeful answer for any aspiring authors, is that I’m personally not creative. I didn’t invent the scenarios listed above, they simply happened, and I retold them. Before I was published, I had this image in my head of writers in silk scarves or woolly cardigans posing in front of a bookshelf. I’d always assumed there was an aesthetic that came with creativity. I was wrong.

I truly, firmly, believe that anyone can write a book. The thing that stops most people, isn’t talent, it’s time. If you are reading this blog post, you are probably a human being. And you’re probably over the age of ten. Which means you’ve lived enough life to have a million stories and anecdotes, things that have happened to yourself or people you know.

To do this for a living, you should know that it takes tons of people to publish a book, which for me took the pressure off. Book editors have been doing this for a while, it’s literally their job. And then you have copyeditors, and their editors, a team of people whose job it is to make my writing look good.

Outside of the team element, there are little tricks to crafting a great story. Things we probably already know but need reminders. Show don’t tell. Plan out your narrative structure. Remember to incorporate the five senses. Another one that I do is I interview my characters, as if they’re applying for a job. I ask questions in my head like, what do they sound like, what are their fears, strengths, weaknesses, and so on.

Writing is as formulaic as maths. If you learn these equations, you can write a book. I’m not saying creativity plays zero part, I’m saying it’s probably the least important thing.

To summarize. If you remember the formulas to writing, if you pay attention to the stories that happen to and around you every day, and if you have trusted editors (including friends and family who’ll give honest feedback), then you yourself can do this. The main obstacle, I’ve found, is time. Adults be busy. I was lucky enough to have survived Covid and spent my abundance of free time in lockdown to write my first manuscript.

These lessons are also important to impart on the next generation of writers. I am fortunate enough to do school visits, where I talk to teens about writing. I always ask early on, if anyone thinks they can be a writer. Not many hands go up. By the end of the talk, I ask the question again and double the number of kids raise their hands. My point to them is this. “You are not boring. You are unique, and therefore your story is unique”.

But if people don’t believe me when I say that anyone can be a writer, I would flip it back. I’d ask, who can’t be a writer? And hopefully that proves my point. Although I’m not a philosopher of literature, and I’m not on a debate team, I’m just some guy who once kicked a ball into his own face and now makes a living writing about it.

Meet the author

Nathanael Lessore was born in Camberwell, South East London, as one of eight children to French and Madagascan parents. Despite spending most of his life in Peckham, Nathanael has also lived in Paris, Strasbourg, and Singapore. Nathanael became a marketing executive after graduating from the University of East London, believing at the time that a creative writing degree destined him for a career in marketing. Dropping Beats is his debut and writing it gave him the opportunity to show his South East London childhood as the funny, warm, adventurous world that wasn’t always represented as such.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/natelessore/

About Dropping Beats

“Funny, bursting with heart, goofy, wise, and did I mention– wildly wonderfully funny.”
—Jon Scieszka, First National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature and Founder of Guys Read

A hilarious and heartfelt young YA comedy about the misadventures of an aspiring young rapper as he navigates school, family, and friendship.

Thirteen-year-old Growls (aka Shaun) is an aspiring (awful) rapper who hopes to enter this year’s Raptology competition with his best friend, Shanks (aka Zachariah). After all, what better way to land his crush (Tanisha) and get the respect he finally deserves than winning the contest and going viral? 

But when a livestream practice goes epically wrong, the two friends do go viral– and not in the way they’d hoped.  

Now the laughingstock of the school, Growls is sure he’ll never have another chance to date Tanisha. Even worse, Shanks has gone MIA, leaving him terribly alone. 

But when Growls meets the new girl on the block (Siobhan), things don’t seem so terrible after all. And with some patience, a little luck, and a whole lot of practice, he just might win the Raptology competition and be a hero to both Siobhan and Shanks.

Either way, he’s ready for this. He’s steady for this. It’s comeback season and they call him comeback king for a reason.

ISBN-13: 9780316581516
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication date: 02/11/2025
Age Range: 12 – 18 Years

Filed under: Guest Post