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Authors Tool Kit: Tips for getting your manuscript Fit to Print
Every book begins as a mass of shapeless material and a wonderful idea or inspiration, and it’s the writer’s job to mold that material into the perfect realization of that inspiration, glazed, fired, graceful in form–a work of art that will satisfy the public craving for a well-crafted, well-written story. So get out that notebook and begin the writing journey to polish your masterpiece – moving from observing the outside world to critiquing your own work. It is Jot Down time.
Then when you think it is time to submit your manuscript to a publisher make sure your masterpiece has been vetted by others: your writers group, your writing teacher, or a friend who is an avid reader. Most rejections are based on the manuscript that is NOT in its final stage ready for publication. Given the publishing companies other commitments, the publisher can’t double as a creative writing teacher.
To polish your manuscript for Print Ready Form, consider these rules of thumb:
Weave a good yarn.
Storytelling is as old as the human race. Our need to share experiences, real or imagined propels communication and intimacy from person to person and generation to generation. Once your story idea goes from imagination to paper or computer, be sure it has the ingredients to capture an audience. There are as many types of stories to tell as there are individuals willing to tell them. And once you discover the genre that is right for you and decide your story, it is important to spend time with it either in your head or writing it down. Analyze your story’s appeal. Who is the perfect audience for your story? Conduct the appropriate research needed to support your story line. Once you decide on your characters, live in their heads and get to know how they think, make their decisions, ask and answer questions. Decide on what they would wear, when, and why. Most importantly visualize your story: the sites, sounds, smells, colors of where your story takes place. When you can visualize your story, your audience will be able to see and feel it as well.
Grab your audience.
The art of narrative is as much about psychological strategy—timing, managing tension, stimulating curiosity, and compassion in a reader—as it is about theme–politics and philosophy.
In early drafts, it’s not unusual to ignore your audience—when you are essentially telling yourself the story—seeing what you have to say, laying out your raw materials. As you work on later drafts, your focus changes.
Novelist Elizabeth Strout explains the writer’s responsibility to the reader, who become like children when they open a book. They need to feel someone in charge.
Playwright and teacher Gary Garrison likens the reader’s experience to getting on a train. She expects the ride will have a definite destination and needs to catch glimpses of reassuring station signs out the window in order to keep track of where she is. The traveler bought a ticket for a journey, not a meandering who knows where, no matter how lovely or interesting the scenery.
Analyze the draft of your manuscript with detachment, as if reading it for the first time.
Once you have your first draft, you need to look at it with analytical eyes. What do you have here? What is your story about? Where are the gaps? What seems to be the through-line? Are the character’s believable? Do their actions spring from who they are and where they’ve been? Ask these questions of a trusted reader as well as yourself, someone who won’t pull punches. The answers may be surprising. What you have written in a first draft might be asking to be developed in a direction you didn’t quite intend. In other words, it may be time to adjust the story’s track.
To help you figure out where to go with a draft, put together a synopsis. You can build your synopsis from several key elements.
Sweet spot. In your own writing, do you tend to gravitate toward certain situations? Some writers are inspired by injustice, some by the idea of escaping from a trap. Some by revenge. Some by overcoming obstacles to love.
What are the issues that map your sweet spot. How do they relate to the writing you’re working on right now? Could you define the theme of your manuscript in terms of your sweet spot?
Momentum
For a story to have momentum, it must begin with a disturbance to a pattern–a big bang that will generate the energy to propel it forward.
Think about your point of entry into your material. Does it enable such a disturbance, that inciting incident that will shake up the protagonist’s world? It should be dramatic, a hook. It’s the discovery of the dead body in a murder mystery. In another sort of narrative, it’s a “first”—first meeting with someone, first arrival in a new place. Already the old is being pushed to change. Is the event that propels everything into motion dramatized in a well-developed scene? It should be.
Then thanks to this disturbance, the protagonist is going to be pushed to do something. S/he will be called to action. That’s what heroes/heroines do: take action.
Rude awakening
The protagonist begins to realize what s/he is up against: external obstacles, enemies, double binds.
Fatal flaw
It may take the protagonist a while to realize that she’s up against internal obstacles as well. The reader might understand this before the protagonist does. For in the course of acting, the protagonist reveals a “fatal flaw”—a key character trait or habit of thought that will interfere with success.
When you the writer identify with your protagonist, you may tend to forget that she is also a character, not just a reporter, or the person to whom things happen. She needs to be developed as a character. What’s protagonist’s problem? Lack of direction? Inability to form deep connections with others? Indecision? Fear? Dissatisfaction with life as we know it? Idealism? Something that happened during her earlier years? It could be a combination of several of these, but the key is, it will make progress difficult. If the story ends “happily,” the protagonist will change. S/he will correct the flaw. If the protagonist fails to change, the story will take a dive towards tragedy.
Epiphany
By the end of the narrative, something important has become clear. There can be many of these along the way, but one main aha! moment will lead to transformation, when the protagonist is pushed to overcome her fatal flaw.
Now based on all these elements, see if you can construct a synopsis (fill in the blanks):
This is a story about SWEET SPOT. When A PATTERN IS DISTURBED, PROTAGONIST has to DO SOMETHING. To take action s/he must fight an EXTERNAL OBSTACLE and overcome an INTERNAL WEAKNESS. In the end s/he realizes XXX and manages to YYY.
Check the relationship of texture to structure in your narrative.
All of the points above have to do with building a strong structure. The art of texture is important too—knowing when sensory detail is necessary, and when it’s bogging things down, knowing what just the right detail is to nail a character, a room, a landscape. When you rewrite, you’re involved in too opposing processes: fleshing out certain “thin” spots and trimming unnecessary flab from others. Ideally, every piece of texture (sensory description) should serve a structural purpose (extend character, plot, theme).
Remember, by the way, chronology is not the same thing as structure.
In other words, a train is more than a timetable. To the passenger, it’s all about fears and hopes, surprises and pleasures. It’s about many changes along the way.
Two important last tips:
Remember tension is your magnet.
Follow intensity. If everyone’s getting along at a particular moment, go on to the next scene. You have no responsibility to cover every moment of the day/week/year. You have a big responsibility to keep reader riveted.
Keep your boots on the ground.
Try to project yourself into the “real time” of your narrative. In other words, write it as if you were living it, moment by moment, not as if you already know what’s going to happen. Rely on scene for the important moments rather than summary. Show don’t tell.
Meg Tinsley, Director of Marketing and Public Relations
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