Blogs, books and articles often tout the “best” ways to write, but I am sorry to tell you there are no rules for writing—no easy short cuts. There is grammar, which is essential. There are the various elements of craft. And there are some axioms that hold true, which, while I won’t go so far as to call them rules, are great guidelines.
These are what I want to share today—the Axioms of Writing:
Rewrite to cut 10% of total.
This is a great rule of thumb for writers. Naturally, it depends on your word count and the word count range publishers will accept for your specific genre. If you have written 150,000 words for a category romance, you will need to cut more than 50% of your manuscript; but if you are writing a fantasy novel, the 10% figure is probably accurate. So if the number is flexible, why recommend losing 10%? Because most writing, at least most initial drafts, tend to be long and wordy. The 10% is an easy way to urge writers to tighten their writing on subsequent drafts. Lose the extraneous, keep the essence. Exchange weak sentences with strong verbs and nouns. Dump the roundabout description and get to the essential details. The 10% is arbitrary. The urge to cut is not.
Rejection is often a rejection of a query, not the work itself.
While writers need to be comfortable with rejection, or at least professional enough to grudgingly accept it, a rejection of your work is not a rejection of you. Since rejection happens often, it helps to consider it carefully and determine what exactly is being rejected. There is a silver lining and lesson in being turned down. If you find agents rejecting you before requesting your entire manuscript, focus more effort on your pitches and queries. If you haven’t sent your entire manuscript to an agent, then you know that is not the primary issue, at least not at this juncture. They are rejecting your pitch package. This happens to a lot of writers, who spend so much time trying to get attention, but can’t get beyond the first pitch hurdle. Dissect your rejections and focus on the elements that are preventing you from moving forward. Then keep doing that as you move through the stages to signing a contract.
If you feel badly about being rejected, keep in mind that J.K. Rowling was turned down anywhere from 19 to 22 times when pitching Harry Potter—the series that changed how children read and the fantasy genre itself! It can happen to anyone. But the question is: Did she submit the entire manuscript or just a pitch package? What exactly was being rejected?
Pitches matter. Spend as much time on drafting your query and summary as you would a chapter in your book. Make sure it has structure, story and a hook.
Structure can save it most of the time.
When I’m hired as a script/speech doctor, editor or manuscript consultant, I often find structure is the biggest issue. Every article, novel, story, speech, script needs structure. It’s an essential foundation to story. It is what provides the story logic that pulls the reader from one point to another. It is the backbone of your throughline. Without structure, stories sag. It’s like building a boat without a keel. The entire deck would sag and the boat would drift. That’s your story with a weak or nonexistent structure. Unfortunately, structure is best created with forethought and a plan, which means plotting and outlining and all of those things some of you “pantsers” abhor.
If you can’t bear the thought of working out your structure ahead of time, then analyze what you’ve written carefully and draft the outline after the fact. It will help you see where the structure is weak and needs reinforcing. It also will help you direct your revisions.
To be continued….The next set of axioms will appear in next week’s blog. Until then, happy writing.