By 2025 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize Shortlisted Authors
Every story is a journey, and the craft of writing lies in shaping its beginning, middle and end to carry the reader all the way through. Each stage has its own challenges. From capturing a reader’s attention on the first page, to keeping momentum through the heart of the narrative, to delivering a conclusion that resonates long after the book is closed.
In this Mini Masterclass, three authors shortlisted for the 2025 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize share their insights on mastering these three stages. Samantha Sotto Yambao reflects on the craft of beginnings and how to build a world and set the tone for what follows, Costanza Casati explores the role of the middle, the heart of the novel where characters and stakes deepen, and Jack Jordan considers endings, and how to bring a story to a satisfying close.
Whether you’re at the start of your writing journey or wrestling with the final chapters, we hope you’ll find these practical tips and personal reflections a source of inspiration.
Samantha Sotto Yambao: Beginnings
Beginnings are promises. Here, we make a promise to the reader about the adventure that lies ahead, about who they will meet along the way, and about why going on this journey with them matters. It’s not a promise a story declares from a mountaintop. Instead, it’s woven into every scene and word; each a pact and an invitation.
Come. Take my hand. You won’t regret it.
The beginning of a novel may not be the flashiest, most jaw-dropping, or most action-packed part of a story, but it’s certainly the foundation on which everything else is built. It’s where the invisible work of worldbuilding is done, the way a dream ever so gently whispers in your ear and leads you away so you don’t notice you’re falling asleep. As in a dream, the magic of a story ends the instant you realise you’re awake and it’s up to the beginning of the story to make the reader fall into the deepest trance possible with their eyes wide open.
The beginning of Water Moon was the most challenging one I ever had to write, because it had the task my previous novels didn’t require, to the extent that Water Moon did. As a portal fantasy, Water Moon’s opening chapters needed to do the work of both grounding the readers in the familiar, while introducing a world that was different from our own in the strangest of ways.
I was asking my readers to make the biggest leap of faith I’d ever asked of them and this meant giving them ground that was solid enough to jump off from while enticing them with a glimpse of the magic waiting on the other side. The smell of ramen wafting through the restaurant’s door needed to make mouths water so that the magical, nameless pawnshop that appeared on the other side of the door could feel real too.
Providing this peek and promise of adventure is where I find myself needing to consciously exercise strategic restraint. When I begin a new story, it feels as though all the ideas and thoughts I had while brainstorming the book are about to burst free and it’s very tempting to let them flood the page. I need to remind myself that the reader, at this point in the book, has not lived in the world for as long as I have and that rushing them into it would be a disservice to them and the story.
When worldbuilding, I prefer to leave a trail of breadcrumbs that takes readers deeper into the story without feeling like I’ve thrown them into an ice bath with an encyclopedia they need to read while getting used to the cold. Hopefully, if I’ve done this part right, they can tumble into the rabbit hole between the covers of my book without once waking up, until they reach the end of the adventure I gave my word to take them on.
Costanza Casati: Middles
While beginnings come easily to me and I always know where I want my story to end before I start writing it, the ‘middle’ part of a novel is what I always have to work the most on.
Middles are where the relationships become more complicated, where the characters start revealing themselves in a different light and where their choices become morally questionable, making them more human. As a result, if you don’t know your characters as well as you know yourself, middles are impossible to write.
In one of my favourite books, Half Of A Yellow Sun, the middle of the novel is dedicated to the main characters’ betrayals – the moment the glass shatters and they realise they can’t put back the pieces. Though the novel is epic in scope, depicting the horror of Nigeria’s civil war, it’s also heartbreakingly intimate, never losing sight of the people who are pulled apart then thrown back together.
The middle of Babylonia is the most action-packed part of the novel. It starts with a focus on the political intrigue unfolding in the capital, then moves to the battlefield as Semiramis joins her husband and the king on a campaign against the city of Balkh. According to the myth, Semiramis was the one who came up with the winning strategy to make the city surrender and, because of her cunning, the king, Ninus, fell in love with her, creating the tragic love triangle that eventually made her queen: a pivotal moment for my story. What I was interested in wasn’t only the shifting relationships between my main characters, but also the bigger backdrop of war and how it affects them. “The mind is the last thing that heals,” Ninus tells Semiramis when they are back in the capital.
When writing action sequences for my novels, I’m often inspired by big moments from cinema and television. The climb and attack on Balkh is the result of my research into the war tactics and campaigns of the Assyrian empire but, structurally, it is also loosely inspired by the infamous Game Of Thrones episode, The Bells, when Daenerys burns King’s Landing with her dragon, killing thousands of civilians and leaving devastation in her wake. Despite how the episode was criticised, I was struck by how director Miguel Sapochnik decided to show the chaos of war: the focus on the devastation and brutality, not on any heroes or moments of grandeur.
Similarly, in the battle of Balkh, I wanted to fix the readers’ attention on moments of loss and devastation. Two daughters refusing to leave their mother behind, Semiramis and Ninus hiding under the corpses of their own men, the temple of a sun god on fire. I wanted to highlight the tragedy of war: the desperate attachment to life, the senseless deaths; the opposite side of what we see in most Assyrian bas-reliefs.
As act III of Babylonia – the middle of the novel – ends, our main characters are alive, but they’re not the same people they were before. This sets the stage for the aftermath of war and the ways in which they will push each other away, or hold on to each other, to survive.
Jack Jordan: Endings
When we think of writing a novel, we often focus intently on the opening of the story. After all, it’s where we have to start if we are to begin at all. But thinking of the ending in the early stages of crafting your story is a wise investment. Yes, ‘The End’ is the conclusion of the story but, most importantly, it’s the conclusion of your protagonist’s character arc (for now, if you’re writing a series); not just the plot-driven task they’re faced with, but the emotional, deeply personal revelations and lessons that come with it.
“But how do I know the ending when I haven’t even written the story yet?” I hear many cry. What I’m suggesting here is less of a clear view of the final scenes – they may well change by the time you reach them. Instead, I’m referring to your main character’s arc (and the arcs of those around them) and what they need to learn to face on this journey you’re sending them on. These are factors you can realise before you’ve begun writing chapter one.
For example, my novel Redemption has three main characters: Evelyn, a mother hellbent on avenging her son’s death by slaying the man who killed him, Tobias, her husband who must go against his every instinct and try to stop her in order to save her from herself and Aaron, the man who caused the hit and run that killed their child and who isn’t as evil as he may initially appear through the eyes of our two grieving parents.
I knew before I began writing Redemption that these characters had to change in transformative ways by the end of the novel. Evelyn couldn’t simply go on a vengeful tirade through the Nevada desert without costs to her soul, Tobias couldn’t stand up to his wife without facing his own insecurities and fears of standing on his own two feet, Aaron couldn’t end the novel with the same inability to stand up for himself and instead learn to feel worthy of redemption. These transformations were aspects of my characters that dictated the direction of the story from the very beginning.
A good ending isn’t a finale to the story forever. Like life, we’re giving our characters an ending to a profound chapter in their lives. The ending, then, is very much a new beginning beyond the life of the book; we create characters who go on living in our readers’ hearts long after the novel has come to an end. But to give our characters (and readers) this gift, we must help the characters to change, otherwise it’s simply a continuation of the same story.
“But how do I discover what my characters need to learn?” you may ask. Think of the plot and character arcs as siblings: they’re individual from one another, they may even be polar opposites, but they’re always connected. In fact, this connection relies heavily on the plot and the character arcs being in deep conflict with one another. Your protagonist’s task might be to climb the tallest mountain to save someone they love (plot). The only problem is, they’re terrified of heights because their father went missing in a mountain climb many years ago and never returned (character arc). Your protagonist must be presented with a task in the plot that often makes them confront their deepest, darkest fears or pain. Once you know what they are, you will know how their bravery (or avoidance) of facing these fears needs to conclude.
Ask yourself: who do you want your protagonist to be after they’ve embarked on the journey you’ve sent them on? Like life, who your protagonist is at the end of the novel should be starkly different from who they were at the beginning. And it’s this transformation that rings true and is satisfying to readers, because it’s most akin to real life. Once you have this nailed, you can rest assured you’ve found the perfect ending to your story before you’ve even begun writing it.
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Samantha Sotto Yambao is a professional daydreamer, aspiring time traveller, and speculative fiction writer based in Manila. She’s the author of Before Ever After, Love And Gravity, A Dream Of Trees, and The Beginning Of Always. Water Moon is her latest novel and UK debut.
Costanza Casati was born in Texas and grew up in a village in Northern Italy, where she studied Ancient Greek, and Ancient Greek literature, under one of the country’s most rigorous academic programmes. She’s a graduate of the prestigious Warwick Writing MA in the UK, and has worked as a screenwriter and journalist. Her debut novel, Clytemnestra, has sold into 20 territories worldwide, was the winner of the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award and was shortlisted for the Historical Writers Association Debut Crown Award. Babylonia, her second novel, was an instant Sunday Times bestseller.
Jack Jordan is the global bestselling author of Redemption, Conviction, Do No Harm, Anything For Her, My Girl, A Woman Scorned, Before Her Eyes and Night By Night, and an Amazon #1 bestseller in the UK, Canada and Australia. Jack’s novel Do No Harm was an instant Sunday Times bestseller on first publication and a Waterstones ‘Thriller Of The Month’ pick. His novel, Conviction, was longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier ‘Crime Novel Of The Year’ Award in 2024.
Samantha, Costanza and Jack are shortlisted for the £10,000 2025 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. Find out more here.
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