Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Why was Your Manuscript Rejected?



As writers, we all want to see our works published. We want to prove that we have something important to say and some readers enjoy reading our words. It is our readers who make breathing worthwhile. Most importantly they make the pain of rejection bearable. Most of us go unpublished and unrecognized from fear of trying to publish or from an overabundance of rejection slips.

Most published writers know rejection letters are impersonal and trivial. They are merely messages to move on. Find someplace else for your work. For the beginning author or the author whose heart is exposed to the world 24/7, a rejection is a rapier cut across the heart. It is highly personal and brutal. It is psychological rape, and its damage is forever.
While there are numerous types of rejection letters, almost all of them fall under four categories. The first category is broad, encompassing nearly half of all rejections, and is entirely due to the carelessness of the writer.


 Rejection by Incorrect Genre 


Imagine you write as well as Dean Koontz. Your grasp of plot and character development are impeccable. Your story will scare your reader into a tizzy of fear and breathlessness as they turn every page. There is no doubt both Netflix and Amazon Prime will be calling you to arrange serialization rights. This literary gem will not only ensure your acceptance into the hall of Successful Writers, but it will make you rich. You submit this well-written scary tale to the editorial staff of Modern Romance, and it is immediately rejected.   Impossible though it might seem, your rejection email is cold and heartless, making no reference to its quality or value. You got what you deserved. Why did you submit a well-crafted, scary tale to a romance publication? There is a rule to be found here. No matter how well written the work, if it is outside the genre of the publication, it is not wanted and utterly worthless to that publication. 

Take the time to determine your manuscripts’ genre. Use tools such as Writer’s Digest and Google to find those publishing houses and publications that handle that genre. Remember, Dean Koontz and Steven King probably never sell to the Romance Industry.

Rejection Because Your Work is   Implausible or Patently Absurd


These are three far too common errors that seem to accrue to writers who write by the seat of their pants. To whit, they have an idea, and they just start writing, and no matter what, they keep on writing. The resulting rejection usually can be attributed to the following reasons.

Fallacies of Plot

What is happening is not plausible. 


Writing by the seat of your pants, while creative and enjoyable, often fosters errors that even minimal organization will eliminate. In the first third of your book, your main character has blond hair and green eyes. In the second third of your book, that character has blond eyes and black hair. Even worse, your hero who grew up in the corn belt now sports a scar gotten while attending the Heidelberg school of dueling.

All these errors are easily seen and easily corrected. Be sure you read your manuscript at least twice with a critical eye.

Using Deus ex Machina


In the year 384 BCE, Aristotle used what became known as Deus ex Machina. No one else has done it as well, and you shouldn’t even try. If you box your hero inside of an impossible situation, do not rely on some god or another to get him out. You put him there, you write a plausible escape. If you can’t do that, rewrite the trap or kill him.

Lack of Character Development and Story Movement is Too Slow.


These two fallacies go hand in hand. Remember you will usually have two or three main characters. The hero, the villain, and perhaps the hero’s sidekick, either a girlfriend, good buddy or someone more than just a peripheral personage but not overly critical to the storyline. You have to build the first two carefully spending the time to make them very real for the reader. Usually, each carries sub stories and incidents which help make them real and fixate them in the reader's mind. Building characters by sub-stories, and simultaneous plotting is fun. Some excellent writers a century or two ago made some really great novels like this. Dickens, Tolstoy, and Conrad come to mind. Keep in mind you are competing with movies, computers, and television. Until your reputation as a writer is secure, you do not want to develop a twelve hundred page novel. Most people no longer have the patience to read such a work.

Remember to build your characters in segments. As you create them, interweave their stories with the lives of your other primary characters, especially the antagonist. Above all, keep your plot moving to points of conflict and dramatic change.

The two remaining serious reasons for rejection are Rejection by Ignoring Rules of Craft and Rejection from Cover Letter Errors.* Both will be covered in my next post.


Saturday, October 13, 2018

Journaling for the Writer


If you write, if you read about writing,  or if writing is only a dream not yet realized, you have heard about keeping a journal. Some writers swear by it and other writers swear at it. Just a few months ago I was entrenched in the camp of the naysayers. Keeping a journal demanded my time,  pulled me from my current writing project, and it threatened to take on a life of its own. But, I kept reading excerpts from journals and diaries of writers I like, and I decided to try to understand journaling in terms of value. The apparent deterrents I have already mentioned. 


 The most rewarding Benefit of Journaling


One of the most powerful and compelling reasons to keep a journal is that it allows you to explore your own emotions, mainly how they apply to what you are engaged in doing and thinking. As a very concrete example, I am writing a short story whose main character is a witch who has been caught, tried, and convicted. She is wearing only a jute sack soaked in coal oil, and the smell has invaded not only her body but her hair, and it is all she can feel, smell, and taste. She is tied to a stake, and her feet are on the top of what is obviously a pyre. She is being taunted by her one guard who enjoys telling her death is quickly approaching. I was able to write how I felt waiting to be burned to bone long after the fat melted past the tallow. How I would smell like burnt mutton. Writing and feeling from different points of view hidden from your audience is a benefit both exhilarating and satisfying.


 Two Secondary Benefits of Journaling


1) Journaling allows you to write anything and know that unless you permit, nothing in that journal will ever be read by anyone else. This gives you a blank slate to examine your deepest fears, desires and wants. Before you scoff and accuse me of crossing the bounds into madness, it is ok to write thoughts of madness, twisted things and poisoned lollipops. Everyone nurtures a secret side, and that is how we develop really deep and sometimes even hilarious storylines.
Consider for a moment Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Peter Shaffer’s Equus. Both plays are deeply twisted tales of deviant behavior ringing true in the human comedy. Neither writer could have pulled these ideas from reading Harry Potter. You have to write and feel from something that burns and pains your very soul. If you wish, think of journaling as the poor man's psychoanalysis. Go for it. Plum your depths.

2) Journaling will vanquish writer’s block forever. If you have explored the emotions and the feelings of your plots and your dreams you have a wealth of ideas to pick from. You will never stare at your keyboard cursing your failed muse. You don’t need a muse. You have a journal. Take one of your thoughts, your feelings from your journal, and start writing.

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

The Habit and Ritual of Writing (Part 2)




Part Two: Making Writing a Ritual


We can expect to write easier, and perhaps even better, as we write by habit rather than by inspiration. What role does ritual play in the development of good writing habits and how do we use ritual to drive our writing forward?
Writing rituals serve as safe havens against the goblins that plague us as we strive to share our thoughts. Boundaries of place and time are very comfortable security blankets. One person has converted what was a closet for winter coats into a writers studio. Into the closet, she has wedged a computer desk.  A small bar stool serves as her chair. One might think that would be a claustrophobic nightmare, but, think a bit more. It is almost like a thunder blanket. It acts as a surrounding for your ideas. You are in extreme proximity to your thoughts and the tools you use to transfer your thoughts from mind to page. There is both comfort and desire to accomplish a goal working like this. Obviously, this approach is not for everyone. What is important is the realization that as writers we need a familiar and comfortable place to write.
Inherent to our rituals is the time component. It is much easier to drive the writing habit if it is under the control of time. We can ritualize three hours a day, or fifteen hundred words a day; whatever you decide, it is the ritual of limits that makes our productivity much more comfortable to accept and comply with. 
Writers need the irrational magic of control as the final and most encouraging ritual to support their habit of writing. There is magic looking forward to the suspension of reality inherent in the act of writing. It is almost hypnotic in effect. This is something you share with a group of extraordinary people. In your range of acquaintances how many of you write?  You may be one of two. How powerful you are to step into a separate divergent reality. You create. You build edifices in your mind and transport them, stone by stone, into the real world. You have a talent possessed by very few. You control how you write through the process of habit and ritual.