Today Angela James posted a list of top 10 reasons why manuscripts are rejected. i think it’s a really good look at the actual comments on the editors’ ends and if you’re out there slogging the slush pile you want to read it. I want to add a few thing too, though.
1. The story starts at the wrong place.
This cover Angela’s #1, 2, 3, 4 & 6. Starting the story at the wrong place eliminates forward momentum, mutes conflict, and leads to a huge amount of info dumping. Stories start with a dramatic statement or moment (pick up Nick Mamatas’ Starve Better and read the essay “Don’t Throw the Hook”) but then the author proceeds to explain who these people are, where they are, why they feel the way they do and why they are where they are.
All this info is great for an author to have, but useless to readers. In fact this is why I stopped doing character files and answer those questionnaires about my books, plots, etc. It’s like seeing chicken nugget mechanically separated and formed. It’s a damn useful process which makes the whole thing possible, but it kills any customer interest in the final product.
If you start the story as close to the climax as possible you take a huge step toward not allowing yourself the space for this kind of info dumping and you’ll immediately see the difference, particularly when it comes to showing versus telling.
If your conflict is that there’s a goat-demon running rampant in the woods and only your character knows about it the starting point should be (probably) the moment he or she finds the resolve to break out of the asylum to help others no matter what it costs, not twenty years ago when she maybe did, maybe didn’t see it for the first time as a kid.
If your conflict is alien vampires are laying siege to a peaceful planet of shape shifter clones then the story starts with the appearance of the alien vampires, not with two kids climbing a tree to show they have magical powers.
If you’ve started in the wrong place, that’s okay, that’s what editing is for. “Did I start this story at the right place” should be one of the first questions you ask yourself on revision.
2. It’s just not original.
This also isn’t completely bad because clearly being a genre fan inspires people to create on their own. And things like writing fan fiction can be really useful when learning to write. But once you get to the submission process fan fiction and your George R.R. Martin on Pandora story has to be more than that to get accepted.
I adore fans. I am one. I squee and debate and gibber on about the books, movies and TV shows I love. But when you send me a story about an aloof mind reader who falls for a supernatural creature my first thought is going to be “How is this not Sookie Stackhouse?”
If I can’t answer that after reading your story then you’re not doing a good job of standing out, just imitating. Imitating is a good place to start working on writing skills, but there comes a point where you have to say, “Okay I’ve got it, now I want to do something that’s MINE”.
Over at Carina the lack of originality covers #1-6. Yes, there’s overlap. Much of it comes from readers feeling like they’ve read or seen this story before, the author spends a lot of time describing the people and the world, but those descriptions just make them generic fantasy or sf settings and characters. I’ve always tried to follow through on “Start with what people know, then focus on describing how your world/characters/etc are different from what people know.”
3. You’re trying to force readers to believe you/connect with the story/engage.
Carina #1, 3, 5-10. Well of course you’re there to try to force the reader to engage with the characters…except you’re not. “Force” comes through in the manuscript and reader/editors always react with resistance, even when they don’t realize it. You cannot force a reader to connect. You have to convince them to.
The reaction to this one is often doing things like dumping in back stories of abuse to try to play on the inborn impulse of people to want to protect kids and women. Horror writers I’m especially calling you out here, because I literally cannot count the number of stories, published and not, I’ve read that’s thrown in a single mom and her kid who must be saved from the antagonist to amp up tension. I HATE this, sometimes even more when it’s done by a good writer, because they should be good enough to not resort to this, or do something else with it.
After I saw the movie The Ring I was FURIOUS. The movie has some great tension and creepiness, but in the end the entire conflict is because a little boy is in danger or dying. It’s nasty manipulative character shorthand because in the end you care about the characters almost entirely because it’s a kid and we’re wired to do so. There’s not enough character building to actually care about the kid other than that.
It’s hard to switch your mentality as a writer away from this, but I’m going to try to help. As the writer you’re the tour guide for the reader, leading them through the story. As such if you start grabbing people’s heads and shoving them into scenes and saying “You give a damn because this kid was molested, see he’s sympathetic!” or “You care, despite this character being a deplorable person because he’s the protagonist and you’re supposed to care about the protagonist” or even “See, the whole earth will explode, and since that’s where you keep your stuff you have to care!”
Instead you have to be the charming guide who casually mentions “You’ll notice that in this scene there’s an alien monster walking down the street eating people. But what’s really striking is that the white guy with the three inch mohawk and the swastika tattoo and the black guy whose been defending his kids from racial slurs at school in the previous scene have the same expression on their face. They’re both deciding right this moment that they have to save the people on the street from getting eaten.”
Not only that, but you have to be the clever tour guide who knows what the next exhibit is and can set people up to feel what you want them to before they walk in the door. If the next scene shows the two guys coming together to beat the alien despite their differences, it helps to toss in a choice of words and a somber tone that suggests that they won’t be able to do it. That perhaps the guy with kids will toss the other to the monster in order to get to his kids instead. Or neither will make it.
And if the next scene is old Mrs. Peabody spraying the bad alien with water and it melting Wicked Witch style then it’s to a better benefit to keep the tone light.
It’s not about forcing people through the story, it’s about leading them to feel what you want them to feel at certain points in the book. As a writer you get to do this in a huge number of ways (some that movies simply cannot). You get to do this through character building (which makes readers expect certain things), world building (again, makes readers expect certain things) and even your word choice itself. How telling is it when a person calls something a davenport instead of a sofa, or a loveseat, or a couch? Or when they say they’re a die-hard goth…who loves pink lace panties?
4. You don’t think the rules of spelling/grammar apply to you (or just don’t care enough to polish up your manuscript).
A year or so ago I read a book for review that included an author’s note acknowledging there were typos in the story, and saying that readers should consider them “easter eggs”. Instead of bringing any levity to my reading it immediately made me angry because to me this said that the author KNEW there were mistakes that could be fixed in the book and chose not to try to fix them to make the best reading experience for the reader. It could have been that they were rushed or inexperienced. But to acknowledge them but not bother to fix them reeks of laziness to me.
It’s the same reading for submission or critique. I assume that the product I get is YOUR BEST WORK. If what I get is rife with spelling and grammar errors I know that you’re not giving me your best work, which means you don’t give a damn about the time I’m spending reading your work when I could be [working on my own/cuddling with my kids/watching a movie or reading a book from someone who does care].
Furthermore it can lead to some really weird situations. In the first draft for Private Lessons I missed an r and ended up with the hero of the romance story “peeing” into the heroine’s kitchen through a screen door. Recently I’ve seen people “deluging” themselves when they should be deluding themselves and “preforming” magic instead of “performing” it. While none of these words are spelled wrong, they do all dramatically change the meaning of a sentence, and even a scene.
So between feeling disrespected while reading your book or seeing a lack of attention seriously changing aspects of the book, editing is really important and should not be ignored.
These are just the big things I see writers doing wrong. Next week Angela promises to post some editorial comments about what people are doing right. I can’t wait to see those!