When Is My Manuscript Ready? Part 2

"My advice to writers would be to aggressively seek the truth--forget about your ego--and do one more draft than your agent tells you to."

          --Jonathan Karp, EVP and Publisher for Simon & Shuster 

If you don't believe writing a book is both hard work and hard to do right, see if this post doesn't enlighten you. Why? Because there is more to getting a manuscript ready than meets the eye and so much to think about. In this continuation of getting a MS ready to submit or query, the focus is on content.

Agent Lara Perkins shared at writeoncon what she looks for in new manuscripts:
A good, interesting Hook includes: 1) Unique and Compelling World-building, or complexity, originality, a sense of fun and wonder. 2) Great Voice, or confident, clean writing,with personality and a unique perspective. 3) A Page-turning Pace, or an engaging plot and tight pacing--high stakes, believable obstacles, unexpected but earned twists and turns. 4) A New Twist, or how the book fits in the market and is different enough from what is out there, freshness.
High-level Work. "An agent-ready manuscript does not have to be perfect, but the story, the voice, and the characters need to be very strong and compelling. So what I mean by 'working on a high level' is that all of the important, big-picture elements are there and are developed, unique, and gripping.  . . . it does need to be a manuscript that an agent-reader will not be able to put down (because of the characters, story, and pacing)."
Finally, Perkins asked good questions that can be used in both plotting and revising. She says, "Have I asked myself the following Big-Picture Questions about my manuscript--and revised if the answer is no?" Here's a content checklist:
                      Does my story have a clear beginning, middle, and end?
                       Do my characters have interesting and relatable goals in which a reader can invest?

·                                 Are the stakes high?

·                                 Are my characters unique and differentiated from one another—in the way they speak, in the way they act, in the choices they make, in their goals/hopes/dreams?

·                                 Do my characters change throughout the story? Do they have character arcs, with definite beginnings, middles, and endings?

·                                 Are the obstacles that keep my characters from achieving their goals believable and interesting?

·                                 Are all the scenes and characters necessary to the story?

·                                 Is the action moving at a page-turning pace?

·                                 Do my chapter endings and beginnings fit together in a way that propels the reader into the next part of the story?

·                                 Am I the only person who can tell this story and is that reflected in the voice?

·                                 Is the voice consistent and well-matched for this story?

·                                 Is my story different from what’s out there? (Hopefully, this is the easiest question to answer because you’ve been reading constantly in your genre and age group…right?)

Lara Perkins is an Assistant Agent and Digital Manager at Andrea Brown Literary. Lara jointly represents select clients together with Senior Agent Laura Rennert, with a focus on picture book, middle grade, and young adult children’s fiction. Lara has a B.A. in English and Fine Arts from Amherst College and an M.A. in English Literature from Columbia University. She has been on faculty at various California writers’ conferences, including Book Passage and the Big Sur Writers’ Conference.

When Is My Manuscript Ready? Part 1

I’m getting ready to submit mt YA LDS historical fiction, The Seventh City. So close I can taste it. Like playing Hide and Seek and announcing “Ready or not, here I come!” Am I as ready as I think I am? Nobody wants to be obsessive, yet we don't want to submit too early. I've already made that mistake.

Revisions are a must and can be overdone, but I’m not talking about revision lists today. I’ve done those, blogged about those. We’re talking content here. Perhaps the most important readiness test comes from letting others read it, someone besides your mother. This takes courage for some, but I've always enjoyed letting others find and point out what may be hard for me to see. It makes my work easier. Through experience we learn to find trouble spots on our own.

Agent Lara Perkins wrote on this subject for the 2012 WriteOn Con. She says, “Have I shown my manuscript to at least 3 people and seriously considered their feedback?” She goes on to highly recommend joining a critique group. Check. My group helped me scene by scene, and I am indebted to them. Since that doesn’t allow for one’s memory to connect all the dots and tie the lose ends, it was important for me to seek beta readers who could read through a fairly polished MS in a short time. Again, I would suggest at least another 3 people. 

I have found a variety of depth in the feedback and am grateful for those who questioned everything they noticed. A writer has more in her head about what is going on than the reader and one reader will notice something different than another. Cherish and consider all feedback. Don't feel locked into it but make sure you have sound reasoning not to follow it. Occasionally you might get negative feedback that is not constructive. Not everyone states it in diplomatic, helpful ways. If one person has made you feel badly, consider the source and compare it against other feedback. We improve with practice and education. For those writers finding multiple layers of problems in their MS, hiring a content editor might be the way to go. 

Ms. Perkins also wants to see a hook, if the story works on a high level, and have her big-picture questions answered. We’ll take a look at what this means next week. For now, I’ll be waiting for what those final readers have to say. 

So how do you know when your MS is ready to submit to an agent or publisher?

(Sub)mission Accomplished!

It's in! I submitted my LDS Adult Book of Mormon Fiction, The Seventh City. This was November's goal. No, the whole year's goal. But today I can check that goal off. I'd love to tell you a little about my book:

A death. A secret. A spirited, sixteen-year-old widow.  For the young, Mayan princess it was either kill or be killed. Then a Nephite missionary comes to preach about repentance. Can Karlinah gain acceptance and remarry without revealing her secret?

As soon as I pushed SEND, I did the happy dance. Then came the second guessing. Why do we do that to ourselves? I'm going to quit thinking about who else should have read it first, etc. It doesn't have to be perfect. That's what an editor is for. It just has to be my best effort. I worte it to be read and that's what pushing SEND will hopefully do. Now comes the waiting game. For the next few months, no news is good news. Wish me luck!

Well, back to writing the sequel ( the second generation of King Lamoni's family).