Writing the Author’s Note for a Novel

Photo by Cup of Couple

Today’s post is by author Jennie Liu.

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As writers, the happiness and relief are huge when we type THE END to our manuscripts. With each novel I’ve written, this has certainly been the case for me, but with my fourth manuscript, the sensation was slightly diminished because I knew by then what still lay ahead: writing the author’s note.

Now I love a good author’s note. I’m always eager to hear what writers say about their work. I find reading the note is a bit like chatting with the author. But for me, crafting the author’s note is an arduous task. For my historical YA novel, I spent close to thirty hours shaping and trimming down to a two-page piece.

So, what’s included in an author’s note?

The inspiration or your personal connection to the story

This piece is likely the most interesting to the reader. It can be as straightforward as sharing the spark for your story. You might also discuss your reason or goal for writing the story, the writing process, what you discovered, or how the story changed from your original idea. You can also touch on the theme and how it relates to you personally. 

Example: I started writing The Red Car to Hollywood in the spring of 2020 in response to my mounting dread and anger over the call to anti-Asian hate.

Historical context and the intersection of modern issues

Although readers are certainly not looking for a history lesson, some further insights into related historical information can be of interest, particularly if a story is built around a little-known event. Other material or resources can be acknowledged or referenced for further reading. Or you may want to address your research process. If your novel is historical, you may want to highlight or allude to the social issues that make the novel relevant to the modern day.

Example: … systemic racism also infected Hollywood, and for Asian actors this meant navigating stories with themes of “yellow peril” (the depiction of Asians as threatening to Westerners and Western values)

Disclaimers

This is the opportunity to set the record straight. If you’ve deviated from historical facts or compressed timelines, explanations can be made for what liberties were taken and why. Here is the chance to remind readers that a novel is a work of fiction and ask forgiveness for changes or possible errors to the historical record made in the interest of art.

Example: Although my depictions of Anna May Wong and her father in this novel draw on documentary evidence, they are fictionalized characters.

Acknowledgments

The acknowledgments to those who have helped you along the way are sometimes rolled into the author’s note or you may choose to give them their own pages. Sources or a selected bibliography of resources might also be included in the note or placed under its own heading.

Example: A great many books and articles served as resources for The Red Car to Hollywood. For further reading I’d recommend the following…

General advice for the author’s note

There are no firm format or rules for the notes other than to be engaging and connect with your reader. Write in the first person. Not only is the information you’re providing referencing your process and point of view, but it’s nice to turn the page and hear the voice of the author, which is often very different from the style of the novel. Be concise and keep it brief. This is why I struggle with writing notes. Deciding what needs to be shared and paring it down can be difficult. I’ve seen notes that are half a page and others that are eight pages. Again, no set rules here, but the prevailing advice is to be brief. I suppose if you want to go long, the reader can simply choose not to read it. When you start a manuscript, create a document where you can toss in relevant material that you may want to address in your note. In my manuscript, I was juggling several themes and a historical context that’s not widely known. People were helping me with research. I was taking liberties with historical figures, compressing timelines, and guessing at minutiae that I couldn’t verify. All of this was causing me a lot of anxiety and mental clutter, so early on I found that by jotting down these notes and putting links to my sources in a document, I could kick the thoughts and worries away to process later. When it came time to write the author’s note, it was wonderful to have nine pages of material as a starting point.

Is it necessary to write an author’s note?

No, but some genres and categories naturally lend themselves to further discussion. From a marketing perspective, the author’s note can help agents, editors, and the publicity and marketing teams with context, finding comparable titles, and sourcing media and publicity hooks. With my novels, the author’s note has been the most concise and direct way to communicate the themes and social relevance to my editor, librarians, and teachers, who are often the gatekeepers to my readers. In children’s and upmarket historical literature, the current social context goes a long way in getting your novel acquired and selling copies.

From beginning to end, writing and publishing a novel is all about telling a story and connecting to readers. As a greedy reader myself, I say a well fleshed out author’s note draws me in more deeply and makes a satisfying afterword to the experience of reading a novel.