Learning the Writing Business from Book Agents and Editors :: English Literature Essays

Learning the Writing Business from Book Agents and EditorsSo, you just wrote your first science fiction novel. Your friend read it and told you that you were the next Ray Bradbury or agent Roddenberry. Your fertile mind fantasizes your name up there on a Borders wall poster right next to images of Isaac Azimov and Jules Verne. Before going off the duncical end and equating yourself with Hemingway and Steinbeck, give your ego a stiff reality check. Few of us mortals are literary Mozarts that can plop down in front of a computer screen and author a perfect manuscript the first time around.. Lets get one function straight right now. You wrote a manuscript and not a book. After an author takes the time and care to read, edit and rewrite the manuscript at least five times, the work has finally evolved into a publishable book manuscript.Literary agents have represented my books. Truthfully, I never learned too untold from literary agents except that they will show a strong interest in you and your work only if publishers and film producers do. If the power brokers in the literary world animadvert your work is marketable, then you are a viable commodity. If you have no track record in the publishing industry, then forget all close your friends praise and about your inflated ego. Youre going to have to accept criticism from your agencys editors, compromise ideas and plots in your delicate masterpiece, rewrite paragraphs, sentences and pages to conform to editorial evaluations, admit making errors, learn from these mistakes and avoid them when constructing future manuscripts.Although I never learned too much from my literary agents, I absorbed plenty from editors I had worked with. It took me three years to finally master what the editors considered the mechanics of the writing craft. I reluctantly learned that good writing involves much more than the demonstration of grammar, spelling and punctuation skills. I picked up a hundred or so suggestions from my litera ry editors, and I will share whatever of them now.To facilitate good transitions and chapter integrity, dont begin sentences and/or paragraphs with pronouns (when writing in the third person). Stay away from lazy sentence patterns such as starting out with There are or There is. And above all else, if you plan to be original and creative, stay away from using uninspired cliches and hackneyed idioms.A good sci-fi novel or any other genre novel should first be a love story at its core construction with the genre decoration adroitly wrapped around that core.