The First Step: Write a Great Story. Part 2

As mentioned in my previous post, a key part of preparing your novel for publication is to go through an in-depth developmental edit with a professional editor. If you’re like me, you will receive pages of notes back from your editor with suggestions on how to strengthen your story, as well as specific annotations in your manuscript. It’s a tedious and unnerving process going through a developmental edit, but it’s well worth it when it yields a better, more publishable product. 

Here are some of the comments/suggestions from my developmental editor on my manuscript:

·     Character voices. Some character voices are too similar to tell who is speaking without dialogue tags. This can be confusing to the reader, but also a lost opportunity to portray more character and depth. To fix: do individual passes of the novel, picking out the dialogue of one main character at time and really immerse yourself in how they articulate and view the world. It builds personality and helps them come alive.

·     Use telling detail. Putting in more detail means saying more than the actual words are saying to add insight about characters, setting, situation, mood, subtext or theme. Provides more depth to the story.

·     Avoid passive tense. Replace as many “is”, “was”, and “feels” as possible with more dynamic verbs.

·     Cut down on longer sentences or break them in two. It’s usually better to cut down to essential elements in a sentence than cutting a sentence in two. Also, keep paragraphs short to help the maintain reader momentum.

·     After the first 50 pages in a book, you should hardly ever have to explain the world to the reader. Make a spreadsheet of all explained elements, read through the entire manuscript and mark every page where those things are explained. The explanation should only come once, usually on the first mention. Choose details of explanations wisely to create mood, tension, and reader emotional connection. Overall: watch out for over-explaining!

·     Add sensory data. Emotional connection to characters comes through the character’s sensory data: what does she hear, smell, feel, or taste in the situation and how do they feel about it? Smell and taste seldom described enough.

·     Make powerful setting descriptions and how characters move through and react to their settings.

·     Less telling, more showing. 

·     Add interest techniques to scenes, such as suspense, a twist, a surprise, interesting settings, misleads and reveals, dramatic irony (the reader knowing something the character doesn’t), uncertainty, hope, fear, intrigue, cliffhangers, dilemmas. Dialogue techniques includes a hook (someone says something strange, unusual, or compelling), predictions, foreseeing potential consequences, anticipatory dialogue like threats, warnings, etc.

·      Avoid cliches. Seemed to be a problem with my book towards the end. Specifically, my editor counseled, “Have your characters try things you haven’t seen done in movies or books before. Usually your first idea in having a character solve a problem isa cliché because we pick the idea that’s easiest—which is the thing we’ve seen other characters do in similar situations in other books or movies. But if you don’t stop at thinking of one or two solutions to a problem a character may face, and keep going until you have five or ten, then you’re getting into unique territory. This was the toughest note for me to address, and one I don’t think I was totally successful in implementing, though in a couple of cases I did.

There were many, many specific comments in the manuscript itself, making for a rather uncomfortable few weeks of massive editing. But the result of a lot of hard work is a manuscript that I feel is ready for the world. Or at least ready for submission to agents and editors. And that’s a process that I’ll move on to in my next post.

The First Step: Write a Great Story. Part 1

That sounds obvious, but obvious things tend to be true. I’ve learned that you don’t stand a ghost of a chance of being commercially published if your novel doesn’t have tight plotting, fascinating characters, and impeccable execution. The competition out there is ridiculous. Agents and publishers receive thousands of queries every year by eager authors, so our only chance to break through is to offer something brilliant. Something bulletproof. Something impossible to turn down.

But people don’t seem to get it. Many writers think if they have a great idea, all they have to do is dash off a draft or two and then send it out in a half-baked condition. They're hoping that a publisher will recognize their genius and then work with them to develop and polish their baby to a lustrous, publishable shine.

It doesn’t work that way. There are too many great writers out there with wonderful stories to tell and who have gone through the trouble of countless rewrites and editorial input until their submissions are shimmering gems. Those are the books that get picked up by agents and publishers because they stand out from the typical dross.

I have some experience in that respect. I’ve participated in groups that review drafts of each other’s books, most of which are destined to be self-published. I’d say about 80 percent of the books I’ve reviewed are essentially unpublishable due to faulty plotting, clichéd characters, poor grammar and syntax, and other amateur shortcomings. Some offer fine stories but are poorly executed, a sure sign that the writer hasn’t done enough self-editing. I sympathize with agents who have to sort through such dross before landing on the occasional manuscript gem that deserves representation.

How do you know when your manuscript is ready?

I’m not sure there’s a definitive answer to that question. Here’s what I go by. I won’t show my manuscript to anyone until I’ve done at least seven drafts. That may seem like a lot, but I recently went to a writer’s conference in which Amy Tan was the key note speaker. She said that she goes through her manuscripts at least 100 times! Well, works for her. Then there’s guys like Jonathan Franzen who does a single draft, but he’s a freak.

Once I’m happy with the draft, I try to round up people I respect to read it. I haven’t been very successful in joining/starting a reading group, but I’ve picked up some good advice in the past by vetting my work with review groups on Goodreads. 

When my book is in very good shape, I then send it out to a professional editor for a “developmental edit.” According to the website Reedsy, a developmental edit is a “thorough and in-depth edit of your entire manuscript. It is an examination of all the elements of your writing, from single words and the phrasing of individual sentences, to overall structure and style. It can address plot holes or gaps, problematic characterization and all other existing material.”

I went through a very intense professional developmental edit with my book, COME THE HARPIES, which substantially improved my manuscript and I hope made it more marketable. I paid a little more than $600 for the services of my very talented editor, and she earned every cent!

Once you’ve incorporated the changes suggested by the editor, which can be an extremely difficult process, you’re ready for your next series of rewrites, which I’ll cover in my next post. Once you think you’re all done with your content edit, enlist the services of a professional copy editor, who will comb through your manuscript and point out grammar, spelling, and inconsistencies that pop up. That will run you another $600 or so. You can find developmental and copy editors on the Reedsy website.

At that point, you should let your manuscript rest for a few weeks, after which you can go back and make sure that it’s as polished and professional as you can make it. Then maybe, just maybe, you’re ready to submit. After three years and following the process I’ve describe, that is the stage that COME THE HARPIES has finally reached, I think! I'm probably on draft 11, but I’ve lost count. 

Since writing a brilliant manuscript is so ridiculously important to seeking representation, my next post will address that topic again with some valuable guidance that my editor gave me as I journeyed through my last three rewrites.

A HOUSEHOLD MATTER: I WELCOME YOUR COMMENTS ON THIS BLOG. HOWEVER, I’VE BEEN UNABLE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET THE REPLY FUNCTION TO WORK WITH THE COMMENTS. ANY SUGGESTIONS? UNTIL I GET IT WORKING, I WILL REPLY TO COMMENTS ON FOLLOW-UP POSTS.

Follow My Adventure

I’m trying to get my book published. For those of you who have tried getting a book published and even those who have succeeded in placing your darling with a publisher, that simple statement may sound naïve. 

Hmmph! Join the crowd! 

Getting a book published by a commercial trade publisher is akin to an actor trying to break into the movies or Broadway. The odds are infinitesimal, even if what you’ve written is worthy, which is a much smaller subset than those who have only written. 

Take it from one who knows. COME THE HARPIES is my sixth book, and the third novel that I’m trying to publish. Two of my books, MEDICUS and RACE RIOT, though getting a few positive sniffs from a couple of agents, ended up being self-published. But that’s not good enough for COME THE HARPIES, my best book. This one IMHO is worthy of commercial publication, and I’m going to systematically go about trying to make that happen.

And that is the point of this blog. Figuring out how to make that happen!

Because I’ve done the research, made an investment, and will do what the experts suggest. I’m using as my guide THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO GETTING YOUR BOOK PUBLISHED by Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry, as well as what I’ve learned from WRITER’S DIGEST, the Writer’s Digest Bootcamp, and the Rutgers Writers’ Conference as a well as a plethora of articles and author interviews. 

In fact, this blog represents an implementation of a widely echoed suggestion from all my sources. It’s called “building a platform.” This blog is part of my platform—to get my name out in the ether. This blog is connected to pre-existing nodes of my platform on Goodreads and Amazon. 

I intend to update this blog at least once a week, preferably more often, because I’ve been informed that it’s the only way a blog can succeed. So come back frequently. Comment frequently. Follow my journey, especially if you’re an unknown writer like myself, and maybe we can learn how to do this thing together. 

So, let’s begin!