How are you editing?

 

I have been talking to a lot of authors lately about their editing and sure enough, many are simply missing the mark when it comes to how they are "fixing" their manuscripts. I do believe that this is part of the reason that so many are also getting the rejections from editors and agents. 

We have to remember that there are different levels of editing. Each step of the editing process serves a different role in making your manuscript better. Unfortunately, many authors are spending their time editing the later stages of the editing process instead of the earlier phases. Let me explain by going backwards.

The last step in editing is really the COPY EDITING step. This is where the your manuscript is really examined for all of those small details. Punctuation in the right place, use of proper pronouns, and all of those great grammar issues. You need to understand that by this point, your story has already been looked at by A LOT of people and the story should be in really good shape.

The step before that is LINE EDITING. This is where you would be doing what we call word smithing. I like to call this "making the story pretty." At this point, you are really looking at paragraphs and scenes. For so many authors, this is really the fun part of editing. You spend the time reading the passages out loud and just enjoying the "sound of the words." 

Line editing is also where you might be looking at accuracy of small details. 

Now, the biggest part of editing, and the one where so many people do not spend enough time on is DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING. This is the MASSIVE EDITING time. This is where you should be looking at the entire story. 

You should be focusing on how the entire story works together. If you have done this properly, you may have caught the fact that you have just piled on too many plot lines, or your characters are just doing too many things. If you have done this right, you would have seen that you have characters just being unnatural.

If all you were doing was line editing, you would have just loved those great smaller scenes but not seen how each of those pieces fit together. 

The key is you have to do it all to make your story work!

Why Agents and Editors Are Simply Not Responding You You Anymore

As you know, this is a pet peeve of mine, not only in the publishing world but in the world of communication in general. I am a firm believer that if you email someone, that person deserves a response back. I also believe that response should be a timely response and not a "Oh, my bad, I just missed it" response. 

However, I do want to address this and talk about one of the biggest reasons why so many editors and agents are simply not responding to authors anymore. I want to deal with the ugly reason first.

It is due to the authors out there who simply cannot read submission guidelines, cannot keep track of their own submissions, believe if they bombard the system with submissions something will stick, or just argue with us. In other words, the bad seeds of the group.

Yes, there are those people out there. 

This weekend, I answered countless emails just like that. For example, as you know, my submission guidelines clearly stated that I accept only traditional romance and women's fiction, AND YET, I was getting memoirs, science fiction novels (and novellas), self-help books, cookbooks and... Good lord people, can't you read? So, I send my response of telling them this is not what I represent, and sure enough I will get one of the three responses:

1) My bad, I didn't read your guidelines. 

2) I just thought you would be more open to accepting things that were well written

3) Getting slammed on the internet for sending a form response stating that their "form query letter" was not a genre I represent. 

We also get people who think that if they just submit the same project, change the name and "pretend" it is something different, things will change. I get if you revise the book, but tell us that. But come on...sending the same query and project? We aren't idiots!

So, what is the easiest approach to this? Editors and agents simply use the statement, "Due to the high volume of submissions we receive, we will respond to authors if we believe your project is something we would like to move forward with." In other words, "we are going to ignore some of you. 

Now, it is that part that personally I am not a big fan of. If you want to skip on the project, then send that darn form letter at least acknowledging receipt of the project and a decision to pass. Authors at least know. 

But for now, please know that your lack of hearing from so many of us (not necessarily me) is due to your fellow writers who cannot seem to do the right thing. 

More Is Not Always Better

I was reading submissions this weekend and once again, I was seeing a common trend among writers. In an attempt to make their stories interesting, authors are just adding sub-plot upon sub-plot to what could have been an outstanding story.

And this is a problem!

I want you to think of it this way. Why is it that we often laugh at (although we might be addicted to them) soap operas? Consider the plots. For those of you who are old school, consider everything Ericka Kane went though in all of her years on All My Children!

Can we say "OMG!!!!!!" How many marriages? How many times was she in a crisis or in a hospital or in the middle of who knows what was going on. If there was a problem happening in the town or in anyone's life, you could guarantee, Ericka was either involved, or it was going to have an effect on her emotionally, physically, mentally or who knows how else. 

And it was simply too much!

Well, the same is true with your stories. The reality is that we, meaning the readers, have to connect with the characters in the stories. We can often relate to one (maybe two) of the emotions or problems, but when you pile on too much, we simply cannot handle it.

I would also add that trying to keep track of all of the plots in our heads is often difficult. Come on authors, you know you struggled to keep the stories straight when writing it. How do you think the readers are feeling?

The better approach is to pick one and add depth to it. Take us INTO the story and INTO the characters. Immerse us in story and not overwhelm us with an avalanche of plot!

My First Story Ended Up Going No Where After I Published It

This was an overheard statement from the conference this last weekend. Now, you will need a lot for context for this statement for it to really make sense. But before I dive into this, let me just say that this is a cautionary tale of "learn how to do something before you dive in head first."

As I have said before, there are a ton of writers who self-publish and fail horribly (note my comment I ALWAYS make. People can succeed in self-publishing so this is in no way a negative slam against this approach). These authors fail because they have not gotten what they want from sending things to editors or agents OR, when they get on sites such as Query Manager or read books with lists of editors and agents, the come up with no one representing their work. Clearly, these people are not open to creativity, they will say.  So they self publish.

You have heard me talk about this before.

OK, so back to our author. When the author sat down at a table with another author, they were talking about what each wrote. This author state, "I write a mix of Cyber-punk, mystery, thriller, sci-fi and fantasy all rolled into one story." Hmmm, intriguing. This alone should start to tell you a lot. 

But wait, there is more. 

During the conversation, the author stated "I have a character that was only supposed to be there for one chapter. In the end, that character ended up being the main character." Um what?

In both of these situations, it came down to the author not planning ahead. Not knowing what to do. Not knowing the business. And simply put, running blindly into brick walls!

So why did this author fail? I think you can see it!