What ELSE Not To Do In Your Novel

Last week I talked about some things fiction writers should NOT do if they want to see their work published.  Since then several fellow authors have mentioned some other crimes that writers need to avoid, enough to warrant a follow-up blog.  For example…

Don’t write a classic.  Thomas Hardy’s “Return of the Native” opens with an entire chapter describing the setting.  That may have made readers swoon in the 1870s but it will simply put today’s readers to sleep.  Keep your book focused on the story, and give us no more detail in setting or background than we really need.  The easiest way to avoid being wordy is to seek out and delete all adverbs and most adjectives.  Nouns and verbs make the story.  

The only thing worse than being overly wordy is being overly scholarly, especially in your dialog.  Atlas Shrugged was a big hit in the 1950s, but you won’t be able to sell a manuscript with a 70 page monolog today.  Dialog needs to imitate the way people converse, and none of us is going to let our friend go on for even a fraction of that time without chiming in.  Also, dialog doesn’t need to follow the same rules of grammar your prose sticks to.  People speak in fragments, use contractions, and sometimes just misuse words.

In the same vein, don’t focus too much on detail in general.  Tom Clancy is a very successful writer, but he had brought any of his manuscripts to Intrigue Publishing we would have passed unless he cut about a quarter of the book.  We just don’t think our readers need to know much more about a particular weapons system than its name and what it can do.  The same applies to day-to-day activities.  Unless something exciting happens during the trip I don’t really need to see our hero sitting in his car going from here to there.  We will assume that your characters do brush their teeth, shower, go to the bathroom, get dressed, etc.  Unless something happens that moves the plot forward or deepens characterization, let it all happen off camera.

Don’t make me work to follow your story.  I’m not against flashbacks, but non-linear storytelling (the TV show Lost comes to mind) will prompt me to put the book down.  Flashing forward and back is not necessary if you have a good story anyway.  Using literary techniques just to show off does not impress me, or most acquisition editors.  The last writer I read who I thought got away with being cute with a story was O. Henry.

If you have more ideas for things that writers should NOT do if they want to get published, share with us!

Editor Recommendations? I'll name names

Recently I've been trying to respond to some of the most frequently asked questions, on the theory that if one new author asked, a dozen more want to know the same thing. Here's one that's typical of a type I get frequently:


We just got a new member in our Writers Group. He has a draft of a novel completed, doesn’t know how good it is, but is pretty sure it needs some work. Bringing it in to us for comments a chapter or two at a time will not only take forever, it won’t answer his main question: does it hold together structurally? He’d like an editor to look at it for him, let him know where the problems might lie. Can you recommend someone for him?


At least this fellow understands that you don’t hire a good editor to check your spelling and grammar or hunt for typos. We all need a real pro to look at structure, pacing, continuity and all those basics of the forest that we writers can’t see because we’re busy looking at the trees.

I’m pretty picky about editors – they have to have a sharp eye AND a good attitude. There’s an art to encouraging a writer while at the same time being honest about his or her work. Over the years I’ve only met three that I think enough of to recommend. Which might be better for you would depend on your personality and writing genre, and because they are all my friends I present them in alphabetical order:

Ally Peltier - http://www.ambitiousenterprises.com/ - has a decade of experience, including several years acquiring and editing books for Simon & Schuster. Ally edited “New Lines From the Old Line State,” an anthology published by the Maryland Writers Association. She worked with the short story I and several others submitted to that volume and found the true potential in each.

Melanie Rigney - http://editorforyou.com/ has more than 25 years in the business including nearly five years as editor of Writer's Digest, the leading magazine for writers. She was my choice to edit my last couple of novels and I soon came to rely on her storytelling instincts. She knows how to direct important improvements without losing my vision.

Beth Rubin - http://www.onthewritepage.com/whoweare.html - has been at it… well… longer than her photo would suggest. Beth has been there and done that, with an award-winning novel in print, as well as travel books and essays. Beth worked on one of my manuscripts at a writers conference, and I’ve watched her share wisdom with dozens of others in intensive 15 minute sessions.

Aside from depth and breadth of experience and a death grip on the basics of craft, these ladies all come to their work with insight, empathy and a gentle sense of humor. They know agents and editors who work for major publishers and they know what those people are looking for. They’ve all presented at writers' conferences and they all love writers.

If you’re looking for an editor for your writing, check their web sites before making contact. Try to see who might be a good fit for you. And be prepared for possible rejection. These ladies are also looking for a good fit and you might not be the author they want to work with. Also, they are all very busy and won’t take on more clients than they can take good care of.

And if you decide to contact one of them, be sure to point out that you got their name from me.