Diamonds in the Rough Draft

You walk into a jewelry store to check out the ice, a certain budget in mind. The jeweler puts a tray of diamond rings on the glass. They sparkle under the intense light -- all but one, that is. "Oh," the jeweler explains. "That's a diamond in the rough. When it's cut and polished, it'll gleam just as brightly as the others."

"Okay," you reply. "Who's gonna do the cutting and polishing?"

"Well, you."

"And how much of a discount do I get?"

The jeweler smiles. "There's no discount. We want to make the same money on this one as we do on all the others."

Question: How likely are you to put down money for the rough, uncut rock? Not very. For one thing, you're looking for finished stones, and there are plenty out there to choose from. Why would you bother with one that needs so much work -- especially when the seller expects you to pay top dollar? As a consumer, you don't expect to have the jeweler's work thrown into your lap. What you're looking for is a stone ready to wear.

That's common sense. But you'd be surprised how many aspiring authors neglect common sense when it comes to shopping around manuscripts. 

Wearing one of my various hats, I've read a fair share of submissions. I'm always surprised just how bad many of them are. Needlessly bad, I mean, not in this state because the author couldn't do any better, but because she chose not to.

A book proposal needs to prove two things: that you can tell a good story, and that your story is worth telling. The excerpt accomplishes the first task, the synopsis the second. Realistically speaking, if your chapters are strong, a weak synopsis might get a pass -- but never the other way around. Like the jeweler, it's in your interest to deliver a cut and polished piece of work. In fact, considering how many people aren't bothering to do even that, this professionalism gives you a bigger advantage than it should. 

I can't list everything that needs to be done before the proposal goes out, but I'll mention a few. In each case, these are things that have nothing to do with talent. Anyone can get them done, regardless of gifting, assuming there's a commitment to do the work.

Let's start with the synopsis, because it's the most misunderstood. Since an editor can't judge the overall structure of a book by reading the first couple of chapters, the synopsis bridges the gap. To write a good synopsis, you have to remember two things the synopsis is not:

(1) A blow-by-blow summary. A synopsis should be more condensed that a chapter-by-chapter summary, focusing on your protagonist's story arc (i.e., what she does, what happens, how she responds, the big catastrophe, her saving choice). You don't have to include every plot point or mention every character. Give enough of the essentials to put the story arc in context. Your goal is to convince the editor there is a well-developed rising action that carries the novel through. Most of the flawed summaries I've seen lose the story arc in too much blow-by-blow. The result is confusing, and gives the impression the novel is just a string of episodes hastily clipped together.

(2) A "back cover" style blurb. My least favorite type of flawed synopsis is the breathless movie trailer voiceover. "In a world of deception, one man must choose between the woman he loves and a terrible secret that threatens to destroy him." Two problems: (a) Although it's meant to hold your attention, more often than not the effect is comic, and (b) even if it sounds good, it doesn't reassure me that the story hangs together. Often the only plot substance to the blurb-style synopsis comes from the opening chapters, so I'm not learning anything I won't pick up anyway in the reading. If you're going to leave the essential questions unanswered, you might as well skip the synopsis and just put a big question mark in its place.

If you can put together concise summary of the story arc, emphasizing the protagonist's actions -- making it clear that what she does is essential to the narrative's movement -- then you're doing just fine. Have a friend read your synopsis and then tell you what the book is about. If she can't, keep working.

Moving on to the opening, let me repeat something I've just said: your protagonist's actions should be what moves the plot forward. I've read plenty of synopses (and chapters) in which things happen around the hero, prompting him to think about his past, the coming conflict, or whatever. If he isn't in a situation where action is required, then you're not really doing characterization. The action doesn't have to be high stakes, but he should be doing something that makes a difference to the narrative. If your opening doesn't include this kind of decisive action, you're probably starting in the wrong place. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The thing that makes a bad proposal bad, in my limited experience, isn't that the protagonist doesn't take an active enough role in the opening situation. That's a problem, but often we never get far enough in the evaluation to hit on that. Instead, the big killer is a fundamental lack of ... punctuation.

Here's the thing. Some of us go through school thinking punctuation, spelling, and all that good stuff are about as useless to everyday life as math. So we don't pay attention. If we decide later, though, that we want to write novels, some remedial work is essential. It may seem petty, but when I read an author who doesn't put commas where they belong and puts them where they don't, who doesn't seem to have read through the draft before submitting it, an impression forms: this person can't write.

Perhaps it's not fair. Oh well. You don't go to a job interview in flip-flops, and you shouldn't submit a proposal full of grammatical errors, bad spelling, and iffy punctuation. You have an interest in turning in material that looks ready for publication. It's not that hard to do. The fact that you haven't made the effort -- or worse, don't seem to realize there's a problem -- sticks a thumbtack in the balloon of confidence you're trying to fill. That popping sound is your hope of publication. It isn't pretty.

Generally speaking, what makes for a good opening? That's a topic all its own. But here are a few tips based on my own frustrations reading proposals that aren't up to snuff:

(1) Make sure you've worked the language. One of the the things your opening chapters need to prove is that you can write well, and that means choosing interesting, vivid words over dull, interchangeable ones. Don't overwork the language -- that's annoying -- but take time to create a word picture or two. Put punch into descriptions and metaphors. Make sure the reader can see and feel your story world.

(2) Dialogue is your friend, but you need more than one friend. Good dialogue is important, but it's not enough to make a bald sketch of two people and then throw them together on the page, letting their conversation do all the work. You're not writing an Elizabethan stage drama, after all. Having said that, you need good dialogue in your opening. What's good? Nicely turned phrases that reveal something about the people who speak them.

(3) Exposition is fine, if you bother to write it well. The best way to write a thin, uninteresting narrative is not to fill in any of the gaps. Many authors are afraid of exposition, because they've been told it's a sin to tell instead of showing. Well, guess what? Some things are too tedious or difficult to show. I'd rather you tell me that some spoke with vehemence than to give a bunch of cryptic stage business about his eyebrows twitching or his mouth curling. You can tell us anything you want, so long as you don't bore us. So don't overdo exposition, but don't be afraid of it either. The key is to only tell us what we need to know, and to do it with verve.

(4) Don't assume I have an endless supply of pennies. "A penny for your thoughts?" In most cases, that's a good rate of exchange. Plunging the reader into the thought life of your character is a tricky thing. Too much of it, and you lose forward motion, especially in the opening when you're still trying to earn the reader's confidence. When you're inside a point-of-view character's head, there's no need to supply a comprehensive transcript. Keep the focus external. The only reason to go inside is to share necessary information we can't get through external action. Whenever you can find a way to move the focus from your character's head to the outside world, seize it.

In the same way that you don't want to buy a diamond that needs cutting and polishing before you can present it to your girl, an editor doesn't want manuscripts that need cutting and polishing before she can take them to the committee. Give her something smooth and sparkly to show off instead.

As I wrote two weeks ago, it's all a question of time. You can do this if you pay attention and invest the requisite hours. I'm not an acquisitions editor, so my good opinion gets you nowhere, but when I read proposals that make these fundamental mistakes, two words flash in my mind. Not ready. An editor is looking for work that's ready. So it's best to do your cutting and polishing up front.

* * *

J. Mark Bertrand is the author of Rethinking Worldview: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in This World (Crossway 2007). He lectures on worldview and cultural engagement at Worldview Academy, and hosts BibleDesignBlog.com, a site dedicated to the physical form of the Good Book. His debut novel, The Suicide Cop, will be published in 2010. He uses fine-grit sandpaper on his manuscripts before sending them out.

Comments

[Heather]

Not too long ago I received an email from an aspiring writer. He told me he'd written a novel but his grammar was weak (which he demonstrated for me in the email). Would I mind editing it?
I directed him to a few books.
You can't call yourself a musician if you can't sing (with some understanding of where the tune should be) or play an instrument.

[sally apokedak]

Wow, great stuff, Mark. True and witty, as I've come to expect from you.

Made me cringe, though. I mess my commas up all the time. Put them in around a parenthetical statement, revise the statement out, and forget to take the second comma out.

Ugh.

So if you think I can't write, that's cool. I just don't want people to think I can't think. My problem is I'm thinking so fast I leave words out, or I can't slow down to take errant commas out. (There, how's that for justifying my sins?)

And, after starting off slamming my inferior grasp of punctuation, the rest of the post made me squirm as well. You should be a preacher, glaring down from the pulpit upon the poor, sweating congregants.

Only you're too witty. You're such a great nonfiction writing. I can't wait to check out the fiction. Is any of it out yet?

sally

PS I went back to read this over before posting, just to check the commas, and I found myself questioning every one and wondering which manual of style I am supposed to go by for blog comments. This is nonfiction. How do you punctuate nonfiction?

I almost decided not to post. And then I decided, "Pfft on him. I'm not submitting to him, and he's not the god of the blogosphere, and frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn what he thinks of my ill usage of punctuation marks."

The bottom line is that I do submit imperfect stuff all the time. I have to. It's the only kind of work I can produce.

Now for your next post can we please have some encouragement and affirmation, Reverend Bertrand?

[Nicole]

Your advice is strong, Mark, and actual.

However, Sally makes a good point, too, especially in light of the rather constant errors in the proofing of the professionally published novels. The majority of them have at the very least one typo, added/repeated words, or words which shouldn't be there. Yet I doubt even one typo is overlooked in a proposal. Not that I cast blame for that because anything submitted should be without error. It's just the hypocrisy of producing a "professionally" published book with errors in it after the rigid elimination process . . . If I tossed every novel I've read when I spotted the first mistake, I'd have nothing to read.

[J. Mark Bertrand]

Come on, Sally! :) This is very encouraging: "In each case, these are things that have nothing to do with talent. Anyone can get them done, regardless of gifting, assuming there's a commitment to do the work." Affirmation helps people feel better, but information helps them do better -- and doing better is the key. Nobody forces us to submit a rough draft. That's a choice. We could take time to read through the manuscript, correcting the obvious errors, saving readers the trouble. It's not about perfection so much as it is avoiding negligence.

I've just read Irvine Welsh's CRIME and David Benioff's CITY OF THIEVES, finding typos in both, and last night I found a missing word in Richard Price's LUSH LIFE. So you're absolutely right, Nicole. I've accepted manuscripts with typos for publication, scored them highly in contests, and so on. But these were exceptional faults, not characteristic. The latter is what I have in mind -- and it's all too common.

Heather, your anecdote reminds me of the way a vocal performance can be manufactured in the studio. Those performers don't want to be singers, they want to be famous. The aspirational motive overrides good sense. To a lesser extent, the same thing happens with writing. As National Novel Writing Month attests!

[Mary E. DeMuth]

Hey Mark. Can I post this on my wannabepublished blog? Good stuff.

[J. Mark Bertrand]

Sure thing, Mary. Fire away.

[Avily Jerome]

Great advice, J. Mark!

Is it annoying if people call you that? I assume that you go by Mark because you don't like whatever J. stands for.... Not that I'm intentionally being annoying, but if you have the J. there, I have just enough OCD in me to feel the need to use it.

I digress.

Great advice!

Sally, you will never be free of all typos and mistakes, and you will never catch everything yourself, no matter how many times you go over it. That's why it's important to have a critique partner/group to help you go over things BEFORE you submit them.

Although they won't necessarily catch everything either, at least they'll catch the glaring stuff- like missing words, bad commas, misspellings, etc.

The point is not to make you feel like you have to be perfect in order to get someone's attention, but to encourage you to put in the hours, sweat the blood, and prove that you're willing to give it all you've got.

[Kristi Holl]

I love this! Great comparison with the diamond in the rough. Last week, in a paid critique I did for someone, I got called harsh for mentioning a few of things you said. It amazes me when people will spend money for a critique but get upset when told they need to punctuate correctly. Like Mary, this is too good not to link to!
www.kristiholl.com
www.institutechildrenslit.net/Writers-First-Aid-blog

[J. Mark Bertrand]

Thanks, Kristi. Sadly, "harsh" is just a synonym for rigorous these days. In one of my first writing workshops, we had to read our stories out loud in front of twenty people. The professor interrupted one guy a page and a half in, saying: "Thanks. I think we've heard enough. Class, what's wrong with this?" That was harsh. Getting a story back with the typos marked was all sweetness in comparison.

[sally apokedak]

OUCH!! That hurt. The "that's enough" comment, I mean.

Now, Mark, I really did love the post. Truly.

I was just saying I was squirming, that's all.

Were you really a preacher you would have said, "Thank you, Lord, for using your humble servant to convict this hardened sinner of her egregious sin."

[J. Mark Bertrand]

I know you did, Sally. My "come on, now" was tongue in cheek. The workshop story was true. The first time I read for the guy, I was pleased just to make it to the end of my story before the criticism began!

[jen]

I like the penny explanation...sometimes I tire of literary fiction's love of chronicling every hazy flit of consciousness...Did you have enough pennies for Annie Dillard's The Maytrees? I confess I didn't. I know I am probably not supposed to admit that about Annie Dillard, since she is touted out and about with as much veneration as a Medieval reliquary. Is there literary absolution out there for me? I have read some other things by her that were lovely. Anyhow, just throwing MY two pennies out there.