Revising and Critiquing

Here are some more useful links to help you revise your manuscript or get and give useful critiques of other people's manuscripts.

These articles are on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America website:

Murder Your Darlings
by James Patrick Kelly

Writerisms and other Sins: A Writer's Shortcut to Stronger Writing
by C.J. Cherryh

Hardcore Critique Guidelines
by Amy Sterling Casil


And these posts are from the Deep Genre website:

From First to Final Draft: A Case Study
by David Louis Edelman

Stupid Writer Tricks: 10 Writing Tricks to Avoid
by David Louis Edelman


And a bit of related advice from Evil Editor's website: Does it pay to use an editing service?

Word Building

This post is geared a bit more towards those who write speculative fiction. Below are some links of articles written by authors about world building.

Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions
by Patricia C. Wrede

The Devil in the Details
Devil in the Details Redux: China Dolls and Chandlers
Gates of Damascus chili--the spice trade and worldbuilding
by Kevin Andrew Murphy

Where’s the Latrine?
by Madeleine Robins

Uses and Abuses of Multiple Languages in SF/F Worldbuilding
by Kate Elliott

Pen Names

I've found a variety of links about whether or not you should use a pen name.

From one author's viewpoint, Using a pen name: myths and realities.

What Agent Miss Snark thinks of them: A Rose is a Rose.

What author and agent-assistant, The Rejecter, thinks is that it's a thinking too far ahead syndrome.

Everyone seems to have their own slant on this, so I'll let you read the posts for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

Publishing Terms -- Pre-Empts

If you've read Publishers Marketplace book deals, you're probably heard of books being sold on pre-empts to publishers. So what is a pre-empt? To quote Miss Snark,

A pre-empt is when a publisher coughs up enough dough to keep all the other players off the field. They say I'll give you x gazillion dollars and you tell everyone else drooling onto your doorstep that the project is sold.

It's ALSO when you hold an auction and only get one bid. We call those preempts rather than "ooops".

On Jonathan Lyons blog at Lyons Literary LLC, he defines it a little more formally as:

A "pre-empt" is a preemptive offer. A publisher conveys this offer in advance of an auction or an expected auction in an attempt to preempt other publishers from getting the book. Typically this offer is conveyed for a short period of time (24 to 48 hours) before it's pulled from the table.

The biggest issue is whether the offer is good enough in order to preclude going to auction. Problems also arise when the offer is for more rights than the author and the agent want to grant.

In case you don't know what an auction is, Jonathan Lyons defines that as:

An auction is a process which allows multiple publishers to bid on your work. Auctions can vary in shape and type, depending on the number of editors interested, the type of book, and the agent involved.

He then goes on to talk about the details of how various auctions can work, so follow the link to read the rest of his informative blog post.

Books on Writing

Here are some of the books that I found very helpful in learning how to write better. Some of these books I own, others I picked up at the library.

Self Editing for Fiction Writers, 2nd Edition
by Renni Browne and Dave King

This is a great book to help you improve your writing, but make sure to keep in mind that this advice should be taken in moderation! This is one place where the oft-cited "don't use adverbs" advice comes from. (What they actually say is don't use adverbs with a verb when you can replace them with one stronger verb that does the job of both.) That said, I highly recommend this book and have read it many times.


Beginnings, Middles, and Ends
by Nancy Kress

Agents and editors say that they often read short stories and novels that start with one idea/focus, then, part way through, it suddenly turns into a different story and the end "wraps up" a completely different story. I've come across stories like this when I've done critiques. I'm not talking about twist ends. The author apparently started writing one story but then had a great idea and took off on another track partway through but never bothered to go back to revise the beginning to make it fit the new story. This book helps you stay on track by helping you identify the questions you raise at the beginning that need to be answered by the end. It also helps you improve whatever stage of writing (beginning, middle, or end) that's the most difficult for you to write well.

I've read most of the other books in the Elements of Fiction Writing series by Writer's Digest, but this is the one I own because I found it so useful.


The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing
complied by Meg Leder, Jack Heffron, and the Editors of Writer's Digest

This book has articles by published authors on writing a variety of different genres. It really helped me bring my work from a generic "we've all seen that before" story to a story that really comes alive.


Writing Great Screenplays for Film and TV, 2nd Edition
by Dona Cooper

This is one of those books I got from the library and took several pages of notes on. No, I don't write screenplays, but this really helped me view my writing from a different perspective. I talks about different types of heros and how to increase tension as well as many other things.


If you're interested in writing Sci-Fi/Fantasy, then I'd recommend:

How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy
by Orson Scott Card

He gives a lot of good ideas on how to build unique worlds as well as some good, basic writing advice.


Author Kathleen Dalton Woodbury recommended a book for those who want to improve their short story writing.

Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular
by L Rust Hills

I've never read it, though, so I can't describe it further.


If you have a favorite book about writing that you'd like to tell other writers about, feel free to post about them in the comments section.

Running the Numbers Update

Jennifer Jackson updated her requested partial and new client statistics today. To quote her blog post:

Well, this morning I asked for another partial, so that's 50 for this year. And I also signed a new client -- so that's 6. Which I think is a higher number than ususal.

She also said:

Two of the partials that I upgraded to full manuscript readings became clients. Of the other four, I read three of them in full right off, and signed one on a partial.

According to these stats, my query to partial percentage was .6% -- the number I see batted around most often for requests is usally more like 1-2% so I was a bit on the low side this year.... My partial to full percentage was also on the low side for me this year. But the number of clients signed is higher than usual. I believe in 2006 I only signed up 3. That's probably around typical for an agent with a client list my size and with my experience. Younger, hungrier agents will sometimes sign up more -- but the turnover on their lists also tends to be higher as well.

The 1-2% query-to-partial requests statistic is one of the statistics I've now heard tossed several times. Either the truth is that it's actually lower than 1-2% or the two agents I've quoted (see the previous post on this subject) were on the low end for requests this year. In any case, it seems to vary from agent to agent and from year to year.

In the comments section of her post, Jennifer also said that of the six people she signed as clients:

3 of them had short story credits, but nothing novel-length

2 of them had previously published novels (1 of those was branching out into a new genre)

1 of them had no short story credits, but novels forthcoming that I did not sell

By the way, with these updated statistics, someone querying Jennifer had a 0.075% chance of becoming a client in 2007 and had a 0.0375% chance of becoming a client in 2006. Obviously, having some sort of valid publishing credits helped, though those credits also indicate that their writing was already better than average.

Running the Numbers

Agent Jennifer Jackson listed her 2007 query statistics on her blog. They were:

Queries this year: Approximately 8,000

Partials requested: 49 (4 of which I have not yet received)

Full manuscripts requested: 18 (2 if which were requested after reading the partials)

Number of new clients signed: 5

This means that someone querying her has a 0.8% chance of having material requested and a 0.06% chance of becoming a client. Generally, 95-99% of all queried material is sent to an agent who doesn't handle that genre or is unpublishable due to grammar, poor story mechanics, or an over-used story idea. Using a hopeful 5%-is-well-written rate, then there were 400 queries that came to Jennifer that were well written and potentially publishable. Of those 400 queries, she requested partials or fulls on 16.24% and signed 1.25% as clients.

This helps illustrate that your manuscript may be well-written, but it may still be rejected if it doesn't match the personal preferences of the agent queried. Here's another example using Kristin Nelson's query statistics:

Estimated number of queries: 30,000

Full manuscripts requested: 74

New clients: 8

This means that someone querying her has a 0.03% chance of becoming a client. Assuming that 5% of all the queried material was well-written, then there were 1,500 queries that came to Kristin that were well-written and potentially publishable. Of those 1,500 queries, she requested fulls on 4.9% and signed 0.5% as clients.

I can see why Miss Snark recommended that you query at least 100 agents before giving up. That seems like a realistic number in the face of the above statistics.

Books on Grammar and Spelling

I know that I need to use good grammar and spelling to effectively communicate my stories. I've collected several books that I regularly consult when I have a question about grammar or basic writing.


The Elements of Style
by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

I have a feeling I'd be lynched if I didn't start with this old favorite. It's a slim book that's a great place to start to learn more about basic grammar and effective writing.


Errors in English and Ways to Correct Them
by Harry Shaw

I received this book through the Institute of Children's Literature course I took. It's a good book on (to quote the subtitle) "correct word usage, sentence structure, and grammar." It's also easy to understand.


The Chicago Manual of Style
by the University of Chicago Press

I got this book because I read that the book publishers I was most interested in probably used it as their standard for grammar and such. I only recently bought it and am still slowly working my way through it. I find it interesting, and it's certainly informative and thorough.


If anyone else would like to talk about their favorite grammar books or give links to online sources, feel free to talk about them in the comments section of this post. (By the way, my favorite online source for easy-to-understand grammar is the Blue Book, and the link is also in the sidebar of this blog.)

Industry Statistics for 2006

I found some interesting industry statistics on the Romance Writers of America website. To quote a portion of the article:

Simba Information reports U.S. book sales (net revenue from retail sources) at $6.31 billion for 2006...

• Romance: $1.37 billion
• Religion/inspirational: $1.68 billion
• Science fiction/fantasy: $495 million
• Classic literary fiction: $448 million
• Mystery: $422 million
• Graphic novels: $128 million

I thought it was interesting to see what books people are spending their money on.

Agency Contracts -- A Writer's Beware Note

Victoria Strauss on her Writer's Beware blog has written an important post on The Interminable Agency Clause. As usual, I recommend that you read the whole thing.

To quote Victoria:

An "interminable agency clause" (sometimes called an "interminable rights clause" or a "perpetual agency clause") is language inserted into an author-agency agreement whereby the agency claims the right to remain the agency of record not just for the duration of any contracts it negotiates, but for the life of copyright. In other words, once the agency sells your book, it has the right to represent that book for as long as the book is in copyright (currently your life plus 70 years).

She explains why this could be a problem. The short version of the post is:

Many professional writers' groups warn against interminable agency clauses....

Trouble is, the language can be subtle enough that it's easy to overlook or misunderstand. Several of the authors who sent me contracts were aware of the warnings against interminable agency language, but still failed to spot it.

She gives several examples of different ways this clause might be stated. As always, thanks to Victoria for pointing these problems out.