J.P. Jackson

I’m going to sound like the High School Mean Girl, but…Um, no, no your book is not ready. Unless…

1.) You wrote your manuscript for yourself and finished it.
2.) You went back and edited each chapter diligently, fought, cried, struggled and sweat blood and tears trying to perfect it.
3.) Sent your tale off to a group of beta-readers who you knew would lovingly rip it apart, eat it up like ravenous wolves while shredding it to pieces…and then tell you they liked it but, yeah, lots of changes were needed.
4.) You spent the next week, every night, crying over the comments from the wolves, who you now hate, but you still gave them some credit and made all most of the changes they suggested.
4.) (If possible) Sent to an editor who meticulously combed through the tale and picked out every nit and lice egg, making suggestions on how to improve your story.
5.) You went back and made those changes to the best of your ability, and most likely ended up reading that book several times and made sure you caught everything you possibly could.
6.) You spent nights reading the book aloud to yourself making sure it rolled off your tongue and nothing sounded utterly stupid.

Did you do all that? Really?

This article gets thrown into the pile called “Cheap Advice”. Really, this is my opinion, and mine alone. But I’d like to think that I’m coming at this with some experience. Partly from age and life experience, and partly because I have published two books, a couple of short stories and there’s more coming on the immediate horizon (so, you know, SOME experience, certainly not a lot, but at least SOME). And I read. A lot. Not as much as I’d like. Why? Because reading is research. It’s a means for me as a writer to see fantastic examples of great writing. It’s also a way to discover the worst possible way to spin a tale. You see both. You experience both.

I also try to involve myself in the writing community. That includes being a judge for different awards competitions. This year I’ve been completely horrified with the books I’ve been assigned.

I’ve read stories that wandered aimlessly, never reaching a pleasing or satisfying conclusion. I’ve read novellas that were to be judged alongside full-length novels. Not quite sure that’s fair.  I read one tale that promised me a world of darkness only to turn 180 degrees and give me nothing but sugar and frosted cupcakes. Talk about being deceived? I felt totally cheated.

I’ve encountered missing, extra, misused, and misspelled words which we all know happen in every project. You have to give some amount to street cred to the typo that makes it through all the various levels of edits and beta readers, only to be published anyway.  To these, I say “Cheers!” You’ve earned your spot in my book.

But there’d best only be one, maybe two in the entire damn project.

But not in the award submissions I’ve read this year. Nope.  There were editorial missteps in every single chapter. Hey, I’m completely willing to forgive the odd flub. It happens. But not every chapter, and if I can spot an “oops” that often, here’s your first piece of cheap advice: Get an editor, or beta readers, or join an online writers group (Or you know, ALL THREE). You need to put your story through its rigors. Look, I get it, editors are expensive. But they are worth it. How about beta readers? Did you use any? Did your editor and beta readers make suggestions? Did you listen to them? Not everyone can afford an editor – good ones are worth their weight in gold, great ones sit next to gods, in my opinion – but there are so many other ways to get your manuscript polished up! Get some beta readers. Join online writing forums and ask for help. Trust me, if you wrote your manuscript and then hit the publish button, you didn’t do the work and guess what? That’s right, your book wasn’t ready to be submitted for an awards competition.

I was assigned one book that was right around 150 pages. The content and premise were interesting. But the number of ideas and situations that needed resolution required far more than the short novella length could adequately resolve within the story.  More than once we were treated to statements like “Well I don’t know why. It just was the way it was.” Or, “That’s just the way it’s always been, no one knows why.” Or the best, “Surprisingly, everything just worked out.” I hate this. With. A. Passion. If you’re creating a world, then create it. You had best have history on every character. You’d best know the reasons behind everything that happens. You may not need to explain in gory detail all those tidbits of knowledge to your reader, but if you as the author don’t have all of it figured out – the reader picks up on it really quickly. And it kills your story. It immediately makes the whole world unbelievable. And in short, it’s lazy.

Cheap advice number two: Do your homework and create your backstories. That means for your characters, your mythos, your magic system…whatever. If you don’t have a fully developed idea of what it all means in your head, then you can’t possibly explain it to your reader. And guess what? Your readers want to know. What was that? You didn’t do all that? Guess what? Your book wasn’t ready to be submitted to an awards competition.

I have several other things I could mention, but seeing as how this is just a blog article, we want to keep it relatively short, so I’ll only add one more item.

Cheap Advice number three: Consistency.

If the theme for your book is “Dark with a little twist of humor”, great. I’m going to expect some gritty environments, morally gray characters, dank and rotten atmospheres interjected with a few laughs along the way.  Brooding with a few chuckles. And I’m going to expect that all the way throughout your tale.

What’s that? You wanted to write a dark story but it’s the first time you’ve ever done it and you ended up writing a sweet romance in the end? Guess what? You just cheated your reader. If your blurb promises chaos and destruction, but it only happens once – you’ve led me down a garden path I didn’t want to go down.  If I pick up a book and everything about it screams Mystery, yet everything I read is a Crime Procedure, man oh man am I gonna be pissed off.

Does your blurb adequately reflect what happens in the entire book? Is your advertising surrounding the project reflective of the themes within your tale? Are the themes, atmosphere, and feel of the story consistent throughout the entire book? No? Guess what? That’s right – your book wasn’t ready to be submitted for an awards competition.

This is a harder concept to wrangle in, but one that a content editor can help you with.  It means that the characters are unfailing in their motives and actions, even with growth and development. My beta readers and editors regularly make notes on my work, “Would this character really use that word? Seems odd.” That’s a content editor. Or “This chapter really deviates from the entire feel of the book. Maybe it should be rewritten?” Hey – that’s a tough one – but I’ve had that happen too. When I get notes like this it usually means my headspace wasn’t in the right mood to be writing. I missed. And I need to fix it.

Writing is hard. It’s work. It sometimes requires struggle, and more than one attempt to write the best story/chapter/paragraph/sentence you possibly can. And if you don’t do the work, you probably shouldn’t be entering your manuscript into a competition.

But you know, here’s another thought. If you’re putting in the hard work and late nights, guess what’s going to happen? You’ll end up with a quality project. When readers get their paws on quality material, you know what happens next? You’ll pick up a fan.  If you’re consistent at producing good quality work, you’ll get lots of fans, and then you end up making a name for yourself as someone who cares about their work and takes readers on a joyous ride. It should be about quality, not quantity.

Do the work. Then enter the competition.

Just some cheap advice.