The Book Isn't Ready

by Kasie Whitener

 

Last week I had the longest conversation I’ve had with my agent since she said she wanted to sign me. We spoke for nearly two hours about the first 100 pages of my manuscript. After reading them for the second time, she wanted to share her thoughts.

 

I took four pages of notes in a separate Google document while we spoke. Everything she said was spot on. She had questions I couldn’t answer about the world I’ve built. She found contradictions and inconsistencies. She found confusing motivations and no motivations and inconsistent motivations.

 

She found out the book isn’t ready.

 

And this creates a lot of work for both of us. Me on revision, her on reminding herself that I will make her money someday. Just not today.

 

I knew Being Blue wasn’t ready for an agent or a publisher. I knew it even as I sent it to her. But I also didn’t know exactly what to fix. The exchange went like this:

 

Me: You rep vampire novels? I have one of those.

Her: Send it to me.

Me: It’s not ready. I’m not sure what’s wrong with it.

Her: Send it to me.

 

And here we are, eight months later, talking about what it needs to make it ready. To make it irresistible to any editor she shares it with. She didn’t drop me. She told me to revise it.

 

I’m not discouraged. In fact, Amy was so supportive of the work – and continually said she loves it – that I felt excited to jump back in. I felt like I stood in front of Gordon Ramsey while he tasted my dish and he said, while rubbing his lips together, “So savory. For anyone else, this would be great. But it’s not your best.”

 

Fresh eyes on your work can be transformational. Being Blue has been workshopped through Columbia II for years. I mean, years. Every scene has been in front of other writers. But Amy isn’t looking at this like a writer. She’s a reader. Even better, she’s a salesperson. She knows what readers buy.

 

I’ve been given painful feedback before. Everything from dismissing vampires as a misdiagnosis of rabies to being accused of being a Twilight wannabe. My vampire pages have been in front of readers who wanted to love it but didn’t and readers who wanted to hate it but couldn’t.

 

“It’s well written,” some reluctant readers say, not liking the sex, the cussing, or the killing. “But vampires aren’t really my thing.”

 

I’ve received painful feedback before, but Amy’s was like the day after a 120-squat workout. It’s a good hurt. You know it took effort. You know it built muscle. You know it’s the next stage that will get you to the next stage.

 

And since Tuesday, I’ve been working on the key fixes she identified for me so that the next time we talk, we can address a different set of fixes. Again and again. Until it’s ready.

How to Get an Agent

By Belise Butler

As I retired from my second career and entered a third, I also re-entered the field of writing. I had success in most things I pursued and had experienced life from many points of view; I assumed writing fiction would be a breeze. (Not)

I had written non-fiction manuals for law enforcement, taught classes on bullying in the workplace. A few years back I was voted one of the top speakers for my workshop entitled “Who do You Think You Are.”

I lived and taught in three countries. Surely I could write a novel. Yeah, RIGHT! What an eye-opener.

As a professional speaker I could ‘tell’ stories that would inspire so I started writing. I wrote short stories putting each one in a ‘maybe’ file. Then I threw them all out and wrote a 400-page novel. The novel sold.

However, I must confess my writing did not sell the MS. The content did. I hired a highly recommended editor who read my material and then charged me for an additional two days where she bruised my ego many times over, changed my focus and reduced my bank account greatly.

I want to share her words; maybe they will help someone else.

Most writers believe they have a story that only they can tell and the world will love it. It’s not true. It’s never true. Even an excellent story in the hands of an unprepared and/or unequipped writer will almost never be picked up by an agent; furthermore, few people can write and publish without the help of an excellent editor who KNOWS THE ROPES.

Learn the skill of showing not telling and remove this thought from your brain. ‘If I write it, agents will fight over it.’ Forget the ego, millions of people write, few sell their work. Learn the ABC’s of writing or your MS will never get you an agent.

A. Always understand that what you write about might not have an audience. You may like it …but no one else may. Family and friends won’t tell you the truth.
B. Before you write … learn HOW to write.
C. Cut the crap out and write the REAL story.

Accepting my check, she boldly said: “Your content is unusual and exciting. Your writing needs an overhaul.”

Now I realize that just because I could ‘say things’ which could change lives, I knew nothing about writing fiction. I also realize that a writer doesn’t ‘get an agent.’ New and exciting material that is well presented creates a reason for an ‘agent to get you.’

The Writer's Platform, Part II

By Michelle Gwynn Jones

For a writer, getting accepted in the publishing industry today means having a presence in the literary world before you are published. If you are famous in your field, are a household word or a serial killer you can consider yourself known. For the rest of us, it’s not so easy.

The first step for most is a web presence, unfortunately the problem many writers face is that they don’t believe they have anything to say. They ask themselves, “Have I published anything substantial, no, so why would or should someone listen to my expertise? Everything I have to say is second, third or fifty-eighth hand. The last thing needed on the net is more information by people who are just regurgitating something that may have been said by someone even less qualified than I.”

The number of websites offering writing advice is too high to count, the number of websites by those with no expertise in the field is nearly as high. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t write about writing, but write about your writing. Tell the reader how you approach your work. Do you outline like crazy (as I do) or do you just sit down at the computer letting the words flow from your fingers and see what comes out? Do you plan your characters out in advance or is your character formed as your story develops? Have you any idea how the story will end before you start or do you like to be surprised like the reader? Get personal, tell your story.

When I say tell your story, I mean the story of how you write, be very careful in sharing the story you are writing. There are many writers who rush to build their platform before they have the necessary experience and knowledge of their craft. They place work of poor quality on the net, only drawing attention to an inability to write well. This often occurs when a section of the novel or a short story is posted that is not ready for public display. Unfortunately the website does not have the intended results. Instead of drawing in a loyal reader who will return to read you again, the chances are you will turn off your target, or worse, get many unwanted hits when the first reader refers your site to others for a good chuckle. My advice: before you post a portion of your manuscript, make sure it has been edited and edited and edited to death.

My was-were-had-as-ing-ly Edit, Part II

By John May

In this continuation, we’ll look at some other words and word types often worthy of slaughter.

As and ing: Two problems. One, hack writers love ‘em and sprinkle ‘em out with abandon—not exactly great company. Two, they weaken action. In Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, another widely acclaimed book on craft, Renni Browne and Dave King state, “…both of these constructions take a bit of action (She pulled off her gloves) and tuck it away in a dependent clause (Pulling off her gloves…). This tends to place your action at one remove from your reader, to make the action seem incidental, unimportant. And so if you use these constructions often, you weaken your writing.” They admit that some usage of ing and as are occasionally necessary to allow more structure variety and, sometimes, to avoid overly complex constructs but say, “… avoid the hack’s favorite construction unless you have a good reason for using them.”

While I sparingly use as and ing for variety or reduced complexity, I try to make sure they relate to the less important action in the sentence and use an active construct for the more important action. Example: As they made their way back to the helicopter, she ignored the deputy’s calls. The fact that she was ignoring the deputy is much more important and revealing of her state of mind than the simple act of returning somewhere.

Ly adverbs: The worst of the adverbs—as in: he said grimly. Again, from Browne and King, “Ly adverbs almost always catch the author in the act of explaining dialogue—smuggling emotions into speaker attributions that belong in the dialogue itself. If your dialogue doesn’t need props, putting the props in will make it seem weak even though it isn’t. There are a few exceptions to the principle—almost all of them adverbs that modify the verb 'said' such as he said softly or she said clearly. After all, you don’t say something grimly in the same sense as you say something softly. The grimness comes across by what you say and do—through word choice, body language, context—not by how you say it.”

I try to avoid as many adverbs (not just ly) and adjectives as possible. A noun that has a needed adjective built in is more vivid and reads faster than an adjective-noun combo (e.g., hovel vs. small, wretched home). This holds true for verbs with built-in adverbs (e.g., hurled vs. threw it hard). A wonderful tool for finding vivid words is Choose the Right Word by S.I. Hayakawa. A thesaurus on steroids. It doesn’t just provide a list of synonyms, it discusses in some depth the connotations and emotional and/or physical implications of each synonym—in essence, what are the built-in adverbs or adjectives?

Summary: It’s easier to write using lots of was-were-had-as-ing-ly words. Replacing them requires better writing—which is harder—and a larger vocabulary. Personally, I feel the edit is worth the effort.

My was-were-had-as-ing-ly Edit, Part I

By John May

Whenever I finish a chapter, I hunt for certain words and types of words with my word processor and then try to kill as many of the varmints as I can. In this installment, we’ll look at the first three, was, were, and had:

Was and were: In Techniques of the Selling Writer, one of the most acclaimed and bestselling books on craft ever, Dwight Swain holds that to be verbs, which describe a static state of existence, rob a story of vividness and action. “Your story stands still in any sentence that hangs on such a verb. Nothing happens. The situation just is, and, for its duration your reader must in effect mark time, shifting wearily from one foot to the other while he waits for the story to get back under way. ‘She was unhappy’ may be true enough but where does it go? What’s ‘she’ doing? Active verbs are what you need, verbs that show something happening.”

Had: Again from Swain, “Worst of all the to be’s forms is the past perfect tense. You can recognize it by the word had—a red flag of danger in your story every time. For had describes not just a static state, but a static state in the past. Each had makes your story jerk, because it jars your reader out of the present action and throws him into past history. …eliminate as many as possible, within the bounds of common sense.”

I agree wholeheartedly with Swain that to be verbs suck the life out of passages that involve immediate action or dialogue. I once hired a professional editor to look a couple of chapters in a much earlier version of my novel. She claims extensive use of passive voice is an excellent way to get a manuscript rejected. I know I invariably like my action and dialogue scenes better after I round up the to be varmints and slaughter them.

However, when writing introspection, scene setting, or historical exposition, I believe to be’s, while mostly undesirable, are not always life suckers. In this group, to be verbs are a bit less intrusive (there’s no immediate action to interrupt) and, since the purpose can be to give history, sometimes even necessary. So, while I try hard to avoid to be verbs wherever possible, when writing a passage that involves any kind of immediate action or dialogue, I really really really really really try hard to avoid them.

Of course, if some reason, you want your story or a particular passage to feel sleepy and meandering, then passive verbs are the ones of choice (note how much faster and stronger the last clause reads in the active form: “then choose passive verbs”). As I’m currently writing a work of commercial fiction I hope to publish, I can’t afford to sound sleepy and meandering very often.
In the next installment, we’ll look at some other less than desirable words or word types.

Boot Camp

By Suzanne Gwinner

In April, I attended a weekend boot camp. A writers' boot camp. A children’s writers’ boot camp to be exact. When I got the invitation in the mail, it sounded perfect for someone like me – a writer struggling with revisions on my first children’s book. It meant giving up an entire weekend, the weekend of our annual neighborhood soiree, but that would be a small price to pay in exchange for a dose of inspiration. On the designated Friday evening, I tossed my suitcase in the car and headed up I-77 to Charlotte. I know from experience that workshops don’t always meet expectations, but I had high hopes for this one.

Early Saturday morning I entered the conference room and established my territory. With coffee, bagel, notebook, and workshop materials spread before me, I perused the agenda. In two days we would cover:

• Generating story ideas
• Developing unique believable characters
• Creating internal and external conflict
• Developing plot
• Making a plot point outline
• Writing dialogue
• Exploring point of view
• Writing description and setting
• Opening sentences and paragraphs
• Revising
• Formatting manuscripts
• Writing query letters
• Writing a synopsis
• Marketing

Time was built in for group discussions, class exercises, and questions were invited.

“Whew!” I thought to myself, “This is going to be intense.”

It was. Our knowledgeable speakers, Laura Backus and Linda Arms White (Children’s Book Insider, WeMakeWriters.com) packed each hour with valuable material. The well-planned writing exercises were professionally evaluated. Laura and Linda, while warm and sincere, exhibited some drill sergeant-like qualities. The no-nonsense tone of the workshop meant we stuck to the schedule, we accomplished all of the goals, and we had time for questions. We analyzed the handful of books we had been assigned to read prior to coming to camp. Their organization and preparation allowed for a workshop packed with quality learning.

At 5:00 P.M. on Sunday afternoon, I drove back to Columbia with that fabulous fried brain feeling. This workshop had met all of my expectations and more. Ideas for revisions were already dancing in my head. As I drove, a simple thought occurred to me. Good writing is good writing, no matter the audience. The agenda from boot camp could have been the agenda for any number of adult writing workshops I have attended. We all strive for a moving story, characters that connect, clever dialogue, a setting that grabs. In some ways, a children’s author has a more difficult job as he/she must convey all this using fewer words and, often, a less sophisticated vocabulary.

Anxious to get a reaction from my writing companions at workshop, I read the new rendition of my book. My cohorts insist they don’t know anything about children’s literature, but they do. They know plot, character, setting, dialogue. Many of them have children and grandchildren whose reading habits they have helped to develop. In my opinion they’re experts. I cherish their comments.

“Children’s Authors’ Bootcamp” was the spark I needed to finish my revisions. Have you been to a workshop lately? An outsider’s view, a fresh idea, a different perspective might just be the answer if your muse has gone on vacation.

Find the Manuscript Editing Service of Your Dreams

By Mayowa Atte

You:
A swashbuckling western; a memoir ferrying readers down the rapids of memory; a lush romance; a knock-your-readers-on-the-side-of-the-head mystery; a save-the-world-while-wearing-no-pants thriller; an amalgamation of fiery words. You are a manuscript in varying stages of completion, a bound revolution in Courier New 12pt.

Interested In:
An experienced, affordable and compatible editing service to spend long nights of literary delight, to search your soul and show you where you are most beautiful, where the light illuminates your depths best. An editing service to firmly but gently expose the cracks in your structure and/or the irregularities in your pace; measure the heat of your conflict; discover the shallow ponds of your characters; and brave the terrors of your punctuation. An editing service to make you better before the hurried scrutiny of a publisher’s eyes.

What to Do:
Date online.
The majority of reputable editing/literary services have a web presence. Typing keywords such as “Manuscript Evaluation Service,” “Manuscript Editing Service,” and “Manuscript Critique Service” into a search engine produces innumerable suitors. Visit as many websites as you can. Here is how to pick the right one (or many if you are not a monogamous manuscript).

• Services Provided: Different manuscripts need different things at different times. Do you need a critique, a developmental edit, a line edit, the whole shebang?
• Experience: The editors should be published authors, former or current publishing industry professionals, or have academic qualifications. In all cases, it is preferable that they have existing clients.
• Cost: Most editing services have tiered price structures depending on the service you buy. However, there can be large price differences between editing services providing the same service so shop around. Most services charge by the page. If you are a lengthy manuscript, you may prefer services that offer flat fees.
• Professionalism: Pay attention to the promptness of replies and callbacks, to methods of payment, etc. Professionalism can be a good indicator of competence and experience.
• Samples and Negotiation: Most services provide a written report at the end of their evaluations/critiques/edits. Ask for a sample to see if it fits your needs. Don’t be shy about explaining your needs and requesting that they provide feedback on specific areas you desire. You are in charge.

Having said all that, it is very possible that you will be sitting in a park somewhere one day, letting the wind caress your ink and ruffle your pages; then your dream editing service will run into the picture with a cute Labrador. This service may not have everything in yonder list, but it will feel great. Don’t be afraid to trust your gut feeling and give this editing service your number.

Here are some of the suitors I considered in my search for literary bliss.
• Michael Larocca at www.chinarice.org
• Allen Jones at www.manuscriptmedics.com
• John Tallmadge over at www.johntallmadge.com
• www.firstediting.com

Good luck.