Samhain Publishing Ltd. Weblog

Got Rhythm?

Sometimes I get a submission with a premise that excites me and a synopsis that reveals a well-plotted story, but I don’t fall in love with the voice. One aspect of voice that is important to me is the cadence of the prose. While I love the rhythms of skillful writing, choppiness will prevent an author’s prose from engaging me.

When the meter of an author’s prose sings, it’s a beautiful thing. I certainly don’t expect (or want) a romance ms submission to be written in iambic pentameter, but meter is not just for poetry. Rhythm in prose is difficult for me to describe, since it’s one of those I’ll-know-it-when-I-hear it things. But, as in music, some authors have perfect pitch, while others may be naturally tone deaf.

Let This be the Start of a Beautiful Relationship

New authors often wonder what editors expect from them, and what they can do to ensure a productive editor/author relationship. It’s quite simple, really. It’s all about communication and professionalism.

When you receive your first round of edits, be prepared for your precious words to be criticized and dissected nine ways to Sunday. After all, an editor is supposed to point out things that could be improved. We’re looking for inconsistencies, faulty logic, impossible timelines, ambiguities, outdated content, point-of-view slips, weak transitions, misplaced modifiers, repeated information, insufficiently developed characterizations, unbelievable motivation, jarring speeches, noticeable patterns, junk words, punctuation errors and opportunities to deepen the reader’s level of emotional engagement. So, yeah, chances are we’ll find a few things that we’ll ask to be changed.

Serious about Series?

We all have our pet peeves. Many readers detest books written in first person, others hate secret baby plots. I won’t watch a movie or even a TV episode unless I can see it from the beginning. (And DH is a channel surfer…yeah, we won’t go there.)

So when I’m reading submissions, one thing that gets me is feeling like I’ve missed the beginning of the story. Sometimes I suspect I’m reading a sequel only to discover that the author has simply provided too much backstory upfront. When authors devote long passages to the characters’ pasts at the expense of present action, it irritates grumpy editors like me (hmm, not the best way to impress an acquiring editor). Other times of course I’m reading the nth episode in a series.

Submitting a sequel to an editor who hasn’t worked on book one presents a challenge. There are good reasons why an author may choose to do this—the original publisher may have gone out of business, the author may have issues with her publisher, or her editor may have left the house. So when an author submits a ms to an editor who is unfamiliar with the series, she has to meet the additional burden of hooking the editor’s interest in midstream. And the acquiring editor might be as anal and grumpy as I am.

Lost in Pace

I’ve been reading submissions all week, so the topic of pacing has been on my mind. Why? Pacing problems are a frequent reason why I set a manuscript aside and reach for the next one in the pile. If a book lacks a well-paced story, readers are just as likely to set it aside. I run into pacing issues with SP authors’ submissions as well as slush-pile subs, so these offenses against good storytelling are committed by published authors as well as newbies.

Here’s a list of the usual suspects (with apologies for the mixed metaphors):

• The empty tank has no juice. It opens with the protagonist doing something boring-waking up or driving a car or staring at the sky/ocean/page while navel-gazing. It immediately dumps the character’s backstory on us-pages about the previous crappy relationship (the heroine waited eons for her ex to pop the question but instead her ex slept with her best friend and now she’s been fired from her job ad nauseam). It bores me, because I want to stay in the present moment. I want to know about what’s happening now, and get to know the heroine while she’s doing something interesting…like fighting with the hero.