Drew Wagar

In the course of my work, both professional and voluntary, I do have the huge benefit of meeting a large number of diverse people. I’ve been privileged to meet nobel prize winners, astronauts, olympic athletes, celebrities and even – that rarest of things – professional astronomers. I’m always fascinated by the tales they tell, particularly if they have a talent for showcasing their life’s work. (which most do, if they live in the public eye).

I was privileged to meet a reasonably well known writer recently (requested to be anonymous – fair enough!) who after she (oops, narrowed it down a bit there!) discovered I was writing a book asked me at length about it, dissecting plot, characters, motivations and structure.

Needless to say it was interesting for me. She thought the idea behind the book was intriguing and that she didn’t think anything like it had been done before. She liked the emotion arcs the characters go through and the contemporary situations I’d used.

On the negative she wondered who my audience was going to be. This is the third time I’ve heard this question, so I really need to think hard about this and adjust the manuscript if necessary. I’ve already deleted some of the stronger language (originally thought it would add authenticity, but decided it was enough of a turn off to warrent its exclusion).

She also disliked the ending in some respects. She told me I was doing my heroine a disservice, and women in particular would feel short changed with the result. On reflection I think she’s absolutely right, so I’ve already modified accordingly.

Then she gave me lots of advice for prepping the manuscript:

• Edit the first three chapters to death, literally! These have to sell the rest of the book on their own. They almost have to be self contained. If agents don’t like the the quality of them, the rest of the book is irrelevant.
• Don’t stick the word ‘Copyright’ on your front cover. Apparently, nothing screams AMATEUR! more than this… (swiftly deletes!). You own copyright by the mere fact of writing the story
• Double line spacing and Times Roman 12 point – Already did that!
• Adhere to the punctuation rules and other formatting guidelines – already did that!
• Go back, proof read, edit, proof read, edit, proof read, edit until you’re utterly sick of the story and never want to see it again. Then you’re ready to submit!

It was very interesting and enlightening. She seemed to think I had 50/50 odds of getting published, though that might have been her just letting me down gently. Still, if you don’t try, you’ll never know!

Clearly I still have a lot of work to do.

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Having finished the formatting and had a look through the book using Adobe Acrobat, I’ve got used to the double line spacing. It looked like an awful lot of wasted space initially, but I can see the advantage of being able to scribble notes and amendments in between each line.

Weird punctuation rules have been followed, job done. All that’s left is to incorporate some final feedback and then do a little more intensive proof-reading. Oh, the joy!

The length of the book is interesting. It’s just shy of 145,000 words, which I believe makes it medium-to-long in book terms. Considering that I’ve cut quite a lot out of it, it still seems a high on the word count. I’ll have to see what the response is. Hopefully there is enough ‘narrative drive’ to pull readers along.

In PDF, on A4 with double line spacing, Times Roman 12 pt and the default margins, the book is 585 pages long! I’ve hesitated in printing that out as: a) my printer can’t do doubled sided printing, and b) that’s a lot of paper!

Assuming I get a nibble from an agent, are they going to want chapters submitted electronically or on paper? Perhaps it varies by agent. I’ll have to have paper and ink budget on standby!

I’ve also reviewed the first three chapters to ensure they give sufficient outline to the rest of the story – apparently a common request is to have the first 3 chapters sent across for review.

Chapter 1 introduces Rebecca and her problems, Chapter two the same for Benjamin, along with the sense that the ‘Happy-Clappy’ church is doing something unusual. Chapter 3 gives the clear indication that they (Rebecca and Ben) are going to meet in my fictional village of ‘Wealdbrook’ and will have rather different opinions. I’m wondering if I need a bit more of a hook at the end of chapter 3, in fact the whole chapter may need a bit more ‘oomph’…

In other news, everything else is ready. Website is up and running, facebook and twitter are primed and all my other work (the Oolite stories) have been refreshed to pick up the style guidelines I’ve adopted for ‘Torn’, so my work looks consistent. I’ll also do a google-blast to ensure my website gets picked up against certain search criteria.

As promised, I will keep you all updated – make sure you follow me on twitter! You can subscribe to my rss feed too if you like, the big diamond shaped button next to the twitter birdie! Spoilt for choice!

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Coming into the home straight with the book now. I’m polishing it up.

Most of this is straight forward; Times Roman 12 pt font, double spacing, page numbers, grammar checks (again? Yes, again), indenting paragraphs and the list goes on.

Some of it strikes me as a bit odd though. Take this piece of dialogue pinched from the very helpful Writers’ Workshop site…

‘This manuscript is nicely presented,’ said the agent.

‘Indeed it is,’ said the publisher. She paused briefly, to strike off a few zeros from an author’s royalty statement. ‘It is well presented. And intelligent. And beautifully written.’

‘But Richard & Judy won’t like it.’

‘No, indeed. Nor the Chief Buyer at Tescos.’

‘So we’ll reject it!’ they chorused, laughing wildly.

Their limousine swept on through the rainy streets, leaving a faint aroma of cigar smoke and Chanel no. 5 lingering on the mild springtime air.

Having checked out a selection of random paperbacks from my bookshelf, I notice they all adhere to what appear to be some slightly odd rules.

1. Speech marks for dialogue are single ’s rather than the more obvious 66s and 99s  - ”

Why is this? No idea. “s seem much more appropriate, allowing you to distinguish from apostrophes more clearly.

‘Does this look daft?’ queried the author. ‘It’s peculiar.’

2. It’s quite all right to use an ‘And’ to start a sentence, despite what I was told time and again at primary school.

3. You have to use a lowercase proposition after an opening piece of dialogue, even if you finish the dialogue with a ! or a ? (e.g.)

‘This is a daft rule!’ exclaimed the author.

Apparently, an agent will chuck my manuscript in the circular file immediately if I don’t adhere to these slightly odd rules, so I don’t have much choice. Thus, yet another trawl though nearly 150,000 words is underway…

Please note, this doesn’t apply to US authors, apparently you have a completely different set of nonsensical rules!

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