Mysterious Matters: Mystery Publishing Demystified

Mistakes You Don't Know You're Making

As I get through another couple of weeks' worth of submissions, I think: Someone needs to tell these writers what they are doing wrong as they seek commercial publication on the road to popular success. Here's a list of the mistakes you may be making: I've been seeing them a lot lately.

1. You can't describe your book in two provocative sentences. You have limited time to grab a reader's (editor's, agent's) attention. If I can't get excited about reading your book from your brief description of it, you're sunk. 

Bad: The Feverel Inheritance is a story of family betrayal, revenge, and the country estate that people are willing to kill for.

Better: The Feverel Inheritance, a story of family betrayal and revenge, is told by identical twin narrators with very different personalities, each putting her own spin on the story.

Best: The Feveral Inheritance, set in the incestuous, material world of the Hamptons, features identical twin narrators engaging in a game of psychological warfare in their quest to grab hold of the family estate - and each other's husbands.

See what I mean?

2. You're not considering a national readership. Certainly there is a market for regional books: city-type books for urban women, for example. But most publishers are looking for books that can hit everywhere. I'm finding that a lot of manuscripts have a polarizing element to them that will limit acceptance. A good example: the demonization of city living or country living. I can't tell you how many times I see this phenomenon: Urban writer presents the city as the bastion of culture and diversity, while presenting the country or the suburbs as lifeless, dead places populated by idiots and inbred wackos. There are lots of readers in this country who don't live in cities, and they don't want to be insulted by a novelist. The same holds true in reverse: Country-based writers portray the country as a haven of fresh air and morals, while presenting the city as a filthy, immoral place. Again, do city readers really want to have their lifestyle choice insulted?

3. You're not balancing plot and character.  I say it all the time: Genre fiction is the intersection of plot and character. These should be in 50-50 equilibrium, though I'd say you can get away with 60-40 on one side or the other. But if you're not telling a good story, and if you don't have at least a few likable characters, you've sunk your manuscript.

4. You haven't thought through readers' reactions to what your characters do and the choices they make. Readers can and do have visceral reactions to characters' actions and choices, and they can be really unforgiving. Suppose, for example, you have your male protagonist cheat on his wife early in the book. That is going to be a very, very hard thing for many people to get past. And yet I see this type of mistake all the time. 

Another good example comes from one of the worst books I've ever read - a book I love to hate and gleefully place in my "Ten Worst Mysteries Ever Published" list. This particular book had a pregnant protagonist who constantly put herself in danger. As I read, I kept thinking, "Does this woman care not one ounce for unborn child?" Then I went to look up the reviews and saw this same reaction throughout the many, many 1-star reviews. Readers didn't see the protagonist as brave or intrepid - they saw her as hateful and self-absorbed. Not exactly a prescription for a best-seller.

 

What Not to Write

In catching up on submissions, I'm noticing a few trends I thought I'd share. While I read all query letters with the hope that a jewel will be attached, I don't always read all the sample materials sent me. If the query letter is particularly well written, I'll usually give the manuscript a chance, even if the query has made it clear that the book isn't for me.  

But there are plenty of books that aren't making the cut.  Here's what isn't doing it for me, these days. In other words, things I'd suggest writers NOT write. Well, maybe WRITE, but not submit, because I think the chances of anyone buying it will be slim.

1. VAMPIRE STUFF. It's on its way out. By the time a manuscript goes through the agenting and submission process, it's going to be completely out.  

2. RUSSIA/SOVIET UNION STUFF. I'm afraid Cold War-era thrillers are out. They just don't seem immediate any longer. There are new world threats: Al Qaeda, dangerous policies in China, global climate crises. The Russian stuff feels passe and reads like something quaintly historical.

3. PARANORMAL THRILLERS. This is the genre everyone loves to say No to. The reason is simple - We don't know how to edit it or where to sell it. I think the genre is going to end up flourishing in the ebook format; and, honestly, I think there is probably a niche for a forward-thinking publisher of print books to specialize in high-quality paranormal books. (The ones I've read haven't been too impressive from a writing point of view; but surely there are good writers in the genre.) I almost wish we could start an imprint, just to see how it does; but the challenges are so massive, and none of us really has that much passion for this type of book, and passion would be required to make it work.

4. "EROTIC" MYSTERIES. What a slew of these I've seen over the last six months. Fifty Shades of Grey notwithstanding, there's really no market (or at least not one that would be easy to reach; I imagine soft-core porn is pretty easy to find on the Web, though I'm afraid to go looking for it, for fear of having my computer destroyed by a virus).

QUICK TAKES:

Advice of the Week: I've read some quite poor published work lately. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I reject much better manuscripts than some of the published books I've read lately. What do all of these poor books have in common? They are agented.  So, the advice I'm giving this week is - Do whatever you can to get an agent. Make the rounds, go to conventions, pay astronomical fees for pitch sessions - anything to get yourself out there. This business is small and unfair, so you might as well play by the rules and play the same game everyone else is playing. I've seen some manuscripts that I outright rejected end up with decent agencies and good publishers. Whether those manuscripts evolved into good books after I saw them is perhaps open to question; but the fact remains that there they are, published, and sitting on someone's shelf.

Submissions: I am currently open to submissions. Of course, I cannot tell you who I am, as that would ruin all the fun of doing this blog, and I'm not ready to give it up, quite yet. (I like the nice emails, as well as the snarky ones.) But let me say this: We are listed in LMP as a publisher that accepts unagented queries. So, if you have a good manuscript and are tired of bumping up against brick walls everywhere you turn, check out the LMP listings and try submitting to an independent press. Most serious writers understand the pros and cons of the big houses vs. the indies, so I won't list them here. But I can say that I'm proud of the work we do, and we're funded by some really wonderful people who want me to keep finding fabulous books by new writers.  So, think about submitting to us.

UPDATE since original post: LMP is Literary Market Place. It has a high price tag, but you can likely find a copy at your local library, or can sort through the listings at a Barnes & Noble. Another place (online) to find publishers that are accepting submissions is Duotrope.

Random House and Penguin: The Random House/Penguin merger is of course the big news of the week. Wow. Two superb, superb publishers coming together... it's almost a little intimidating, and I can only imagine the in-fighting that is going to reign supreme over the coming months. I'll be watching this situation with interest.The conventional wisdom is that the two houses are merging in an attempt to gain some more market power. Now, this is not something that I generally approve of - I think as a society we've become much, much too lax about allowing these massive mergers. But I also think the average person on the street cannot even begin to understand the power that Amazon wields and how it affects everything we do, every single day. The RH/Penguin merger is an attempt, it seems to me, to re-balance the power between a predatory company that gets away with far too much and the people who actually publish books. I recently read a very perceptive article talking about the way Wall Street does not really expect Amazon to turn a profit; and that business model is truly frightening, because that will allow it to keep undercutting its competitors and driving them out of business with impunity. I'm glad to see some people fighting back; I just hope it works. Given what happened with the DOJ suit against "price fixing" of ebooks a while back, I'm not hopeful.  

Things Readers Hate

The editor/publisher's raison d'etre, at most publishing companies, is to bring revenue into the company. That may sound a little bloodless and corporate, but the way we generate revenue is by signing up promising new writers while also trying to make a buck on writers whose work has a proven history of selling. Bankrupt publishers don't do the world any good, and I've never apologized for being a businessman as well as an editor.

But things get a little tricky in the editor's head. On the one hand, we are looking for manuscripts that, in our opinion, will be purchased by a reading public with literally hundreds of thousands of other options. On the other hand, though, there's a part of us that sees ourselves as opinion leaders. This is where we get into that slippery phrase, "love a manuscript." The sentence "I didn't love this manuscript as much as I need to" usually means "This manuscript may or may not sell when published, but overall it wasn't to my taste, so I'm going to pass." This probably comes as no great epiphany to writers who've heard it time and time again from agents, editors, publishers.

Still, many of us make our decisions based on what we perceive as commercial acceptability. So, over the years, I have been compiling a list (in my head) of the things readers hate. If a manuscript does any of these things, it becomes less and less likely that it will be accepted for publication any a major house (or at an independent house that is market-centric). I've culled these ideas from reviews, from librarians, and even from some reader-response forums at conventions. In many of these cases, "what readers hate" is diametrically opposed to what I personally enjoy in a manuscript. This is where professional judgment has to take over; and usually Readers win.

1. An ambiguous ending. Lord, do readers hate an unresolved ending. Even when a new series is getting started, each book has to be a complete whole. Minor threads can be left unresolved (to be picked up in future books), but most readers can't stand being left at the edge of a cliff. They get even more frustrated when they feel that the author or publisher is sending them the message, "If you want to find out what happens, you'll have to buy the next book." (See point #5 below.)

What this means, ultimately, is that writers have to separate character from plot in series books. The immediate plot has to be resolved, while uber-arcs can continue from book to book. Most devoted readers of series read to follow the lives of the characters, not to be left hanging at the end of each installment. 

2. An unhappy ending. Here's one way in which books and movies are similar. Readers hate an unhappy ending - where the protagonist dies, the guy doesn't get the girl, where one is left with a bleak feeling upon closing the book. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "The good end happily, the bad end unhappily. That is what fiction means." People who read to escape want a boost, not a downer, upon finishing a book. 

I think in most books we know, just know, that the guy and the gal will end up together. What keeps us reading is the possibility that they might not pull it together, even as we know that, because we're reading popular fiction, they will.

3. Too much detail.  I can't tell you how many times I've heard readers say, "I can't stand pages and pages of description. And all those historical details - endless details - I just skip over it." I think many readers perceive too much detail as self-indulgence on the writer's part. Are you listening, Jean Auel?

Earlier in my career, I had the great fortune of editing one of the great ladies of historical fiction. (Absolutely loved her, except she always fought me on breaking up huge chunks of narrative into chapters. Didn't matter, though - her public adored her.) What made her so successful, I think, was that she got the level of detail just right. The political element of the time; the way people lived in their daily lives; the architecture of the period - She drew it all with such economy that readers felt they were living it rather than being educated about it. Occasionally during a nostalgic moment I'll look up reviews of her on Amazon and elsewhere... she is still gaining new fans, and her work still resonates. She taught me early on about what makes fiction good and readable - and I have taken these lessons into other fiction genres.

4. Stupidity. Readers lose patience when books become too "unrealistic."  The whole reality thing, and how far people will suspend disbelief, could be the subject of an entire book, so I won't get too deeply into the weeds on it here. But there's one area where readers simply can't stand too much reality, and that has to do with the intelligence of the main characters. Despite the fact that we're surrounded by stupidity in the real world, readers simply can't accept stupid main characters, or main characters acting in stupid ways. I think most editors are aware of this, which is why so few stupid characters make it into print for the first time. However, once a series is established, it seems that characters can get as stupid as they like.

Many moons ago I found a terrific manuscript. Its lead was a beautiful, hard-working - but alas, not very intelligent - woman. The way the story unfolded was based on other characters' taking advantage of her lack of intelligence. It was superbly done, but when I took it to the editorial board, I got shot down. Oh, how eloquent I was on my soapbox, arguing "But the writer made this character unintelligent intentionally - it's what drives the plot. It's not a case of writerly incompetence, having a character do something stupid because s/he's too lazy to think the plot through." The editorial director looked me straight in the eye and said "Agatho, Readers can't tell the difference."  Lesson learned.

5. Financial Manipulation by Author or Publisher. The most horrific example of this phenomenon, in recent years, was James Patterson going on national TV to say, "If you don't read this book, I'll kill Alex Cross" (or words to that effect). My first reaction was - Go ahead and kill him; see if I care. I thought, "That's it - Patterson just killed his own career." Of course that hasn't happened (I'm not always right, sadly), but the backlash was pretty intense. (As most people know, Patterson built a career in public relations, so he knows more about consumer behavior than I do. I wouldn't even think about trying to manipulate my market that way, but he had no such qualms.) My daughter, God love her, is a big fan of the Twilight series, but she got really annoyed by the fact that Hollywood decided to make two films out of the last book in the series, just to milk some bucks out of the American public. This is why I think all those writers hawking their own work on DorothyL and other public forums probably experience an unseen backlash; folks have become pretty savvy about the way the Internet can be "gamed" (see recent NYT article about phony reviews) and have become skeptical/leery.

 

 

 

 

The FIRST Thing You Must Fix

This week's completely obvious, often-repeated shibboleth: "The best writers are good editors." In other words, good writers know how to edit their own work.

This self-editing process is bifurcated, however. First, a novelist has to go back and look at the manuscript - and revise, and revise, and revise, before ever submitting. Second, a novelist has to be able to take an agent's and an editor's suggestions and do something with them.

I'm not sure that these skills can be taught, or easily summarized in a blog post. But there's one thing that I can emphasize, and it'll apply to almost everyone who submits their first manuscript to an agent or publisher:

CUT YOUR MANUSCRIPT BY AT LEAST 10,000 WORDS. OR MORE. MAKE IT SHORTER. THEN SHORTEN IT AGAIN.

The vast majority of manuscripts are too long. This isn't to say that they're necessarily "self-indulgent," though some of them are. Rather, length comes from being too focused on what you're doing as a writer and not concerned enough with the reader's experience. You may think, "Oh, I'm setting this up - I'm setting that up - I'm giving necessary background - I'm building character." If it causes the editor's eyes to glaze over, it needs to go. Not just in the early pages of the manuscript, but throughout the book.

A lot of writers are loath to give up a scene in which the description is particularly affecting, or characters engage in witty conversation, or the author philosophizes about a contemporary issue. But these passages will be ripe for the red pencil if it ever gets to the "I'm serious about possibly publishing this book" stage of the game. Why not increase your chances and get rid of all this extraneous "stuff" right from the beginning? 

I know this industry beats up on people. Just when a writer's skin has been thickened a layer or two, out comes a cat o' nine tails to strip another few layers off. First, the pain of working the writing into your schedule. Then, the travails of a critique group in which people may or may not have any idea of what they're talking about. Then one-sentence dismissals from agents, or much-too-honest feedback from those agents who might be interested - IF you can fix things to their satisfaction. Then the pain of rejections when the agent submits - and THEN the editorial process at the publishing house, where the editor (if s/he's the type to pick up a pencil) starts excising favorite paragraphs, pages, or even chapters. And then the torture of sales and marketing... and the worry about whether you'll get a contract for your next book. It's like getting to the seventh circle of hell and then having to start all over again at the first circle.

So - why not avoid (or at least greatly lessen) all those slashing red marks by being proactive about it? You'll save yourself some emotional pain later in the process - and you're more likely to get people interested in your manuscript to begin with.

 

Action - Camera - Lights!

I haven't been blogging as much as I'd like to lately because it's been a good season for manuscripts. (I wonder if this has anything to do with NaNoWriMo.) As always, there are many submissions, few contracts. The submissions tell me that, despite all the dire prognostications, as well as the pomposities of the self/vanity-published, there are still a good many aspiring writers who understand that a publisher can do many things that the average person can't - and that the publisher will actually pay to have all of this done because it believes in their work! Imagine that - a world in which writers don't have to pay for editors, pay for typesetting, pay for ISBN numbers, pay for cover design, pay for publicists, etc. Oh, right: That's the world I've been working in for decades now. 

But I digress. I'm seeing a common problem in recent submissions. It's not that this problem is NEW (in fact, it's always been a problem, for at least as long as I can remember), but since I've just set side about the 20th manuscript that has this problem, I thought I'd talk a little about it here.

In a nutshell: Writers, please make sure something HAPPENS in your first chapter. Not just anything, please, but SOMETHING INTERESTING, WEIRD, PUZZLING, ODD, or MYSTERIOUS. This spark of action is what readers need to get involved in your story. There's that old literary concept of in medias res - of starting a narrative in the middle of something, then going back and filling in details about the past as you move the story forward. It's as relevant to genre fiction as it is to Beowulf, and I can't stress that enough. A protagonist is not a baby just out of the womb: We should not hear the protagonist's life story, in sequence, starting X number of years ago, in the first chapter. We need STORY in the first chapter, with hints about what is to come and strange things about the characters that need explanation. 

This is why I suggest the Action- Camera - Lights! approach to writing your first chapter.

ACTION - Have something happen. Your doorbell rings, you answer the door, and a stranger drops dead in front of you. You run to pick up the phone and as you're doing so, you hear someone smashing the back window of your house. You're running through Central Park at night, chased by God knows who, protecting that little package (with CONTENTS UNKNOWN TO THE READER) as if your life depends on it, because it probably does.

CAMERA - Make that first chapter visual. Picture it as the opening sequence of a film, or the trailer that makes you want to plunk down ten bucks to see the movie before it's released on DVD two weeks from now. I'm not saying to describe every last thing or person in detail, but make that opening chapter visceral. Something important has to be at stake, and you can "swing the camera" to other viewpoints (if you're doing a third-person narrative) to increase the mystery of what's going on.

Then, finally...

LIGHTS! - In your second chapter, or later, begin to illuminate what has happened in the first chapter. How did your protagonist get to where he or she is? Please note: I'm NOT saying that Chapter 2 is the place to then begin a longwinded backstory about your character's entire life history. I'm saying that in Chapter 2, you can let just a little bit of light onto your scene, dropping a couple of delicious tidbits or hints for your readier. The police have identified that man who dropped dead on your doorstep - It was your wife's lover, whose awareness you'd been blissfully unaware of. You find safety in a little-known hidewaway in Central Park and notice the feet of your attacker running past - he's wearing orange running shoes of the type favored by your boss. When you go to investigate the broken window at the back of your house, you find that your favorite pen has been stolen. But it was a Bic pen that you bought at Walmart for 29 cents. What gives?

You see my point... I don't want to read an autobiography or a biography. I want to read CRIME FICTION. So do the tens of thousands of other devoted mystery fans who are willing to try a new writer who does things right.

Top 5 List: The Mystery Novelist's Challenges

Most of the time, I blog about the editing and publishing of mysteries/crime fiction, rather than the writing thereof. But over the last few months I've been having conversations with writers from my list, and the talk has sometimes steered toward writing process, revision, audience considerations, and so forth. So, based on those discussions, I thought I might list what I see as writers' (or at least MY writers') top challenges as they write.

1. How do I balance plot and character?  I find that many writers worry about finding this balance. Given length constraints, how do they tell a story while also giving characters room to grow and evolve? And I do think the balance is a tricky one to pull off. I often get manuscripts that are too character-centric, with only the sketchiest of plots; and I also get fast-paced books with paper-thin characters. If you're writing a series, having a strong protagonist (as well as a strong supporting cast) is essential. At the same time, you want to draw readers into your story. How do you accomplish all of this in 70-80,000 words?  It's not easy.

2. How do I make the language do what I want it to do?  All of my authors write in English. It's a nuanced and versatile language, but I hear a lot of writers say they feel they must wrestle it to the ground to make it do what they want it to do. It's not just a matter of word choice; language is essential in planting clues/hints/doubts. A lot of writers have been telling me they struggle as much with what they do not say as they do with what they do say. I think that's an important point: In mystery fiction, what you don't say is as important as what you do.

3. How do I find enjoyment as a writer while meeting my readers' expectations?  We can all give examples of writers who are on auto-pilot, who've written the same book a dozen times. There's a place for that; formula can be comforting and enjoyable for readers. But a lot of my authors try to expand their horizons, and they find themselves asking the question: How do I write a book that people will want to read, but one that will be a challenge for me to write? As a writer, how do I hone my craft while not straying too far from the commercial realm of a book that the mass market will want to buy and read?

4. How do I develop a readership among all the competition?  Interestingly, some authors worry about this question more than others. I have some authors who are masters of promotion, never missing a publicity opportunity. And I have others who just don't have it in them. That's not how they think or who they are. They're happy to do anything our publicist asks them to do (usually), but they're more introverted, less "out there." From where I sit, I'm not sure how much incessant self-promotion really impacts the bottom line. We have books with introverted authors that take off with a life of their own, and books by extroverted authors that sit in the warehouse. I wish I had the magic formula; my retirement fund would be a lot bigger.

5. How do I motivate myself to write, to stay in the game?  A majority of writers (I'd go so far as to say a large majority) can't pay the bills by writing fiction. So there's the constant question of how much time they can spend on their writing, when they often have a full-time job, and/or a family, and/or other demands on their time. This isn't an endeavor for the weak or faint of heart; it takes time, tenacity, a thick skin, and a lot of patience - often without significant financial reward. When my authors miss deadlines because they have to work overtime at their day job (the one that pays the rent or mortgage), how mad can I really get? I can't pay them large advances, can't really give them the financial incentive to take six months to do nothing but write, revise, polish, and submit. 

Next week: The Mystery Editor's Top 5 Challenges.

Beautiful, Lovely, Gorgeous, Et Al.

I recently finished a freshman effort - a historical mystery. Didn't love it. 

First let me say that I think historical fiction is probably the toughest subgrene to carry off well. (Well, maybe not THE toughest. Humor's difficult, too. And there can be a fine line between hard-boiled and perverted.)  When not done well, historical fiction can be turgid (and this one was). There's also the heavy challenge of making conversation sound somehow "real" for the period while not making it tough for the reader to follow. (Crichton's TIMELINE solved that with technology; when all those folks got transported back in time to the medieval days, they were equipped with in-ear technology that converted Middle English to Modern English. Convenient!) Some (many?) of the historicals (especially in manuscript) read like textbooks on the period because the author has felt the need to include every interesting detail unearthed in the research.

But the challenges of writing historical fiction aren't the reason for today's post. I don't usually get too much into the weeds of the craft of writing - you know, whether it's OK to say "There is" and "There are" or whether "data" is singular or plural. However, this particular book had a problem that I realized I see not infrequently in manuscripts: The repetition of the same word in a sentence or paragraph.

Here's my advice: Don't do that.

In the course of one not-very-long paragraph, the author in question used the word "beautiful" three times. One might argue that the copy editor should be fired, but a manuscript with that kind of repetition shouldn't have been turned in to begin with. As writers, you're expected to have more facility with the language, to have a good grasp of synonyms. For beautiful, this author could have substituted lovely, gorgeous, stunning, dazzling, breathtaking ... the list goes on and on.

There is something lazy about a writer who can't be bothered to find different ways to express the finer gradations of a concept. I think this deficit registers with readers (and it certainly registers with this editor). Interestingly, I think this problem is symptomatic of this particular writer's issues - s/he described everything in a sort of freshman-essay style. I have no doubt she got the period details correct, but much of the description (and there was A LOT of it) felt lifted from an art history textbook. This was the primary reason the book didn't work for me; it didn't help that the mystery wasn't particularly good, either.

So, for the aspiring authors out there, do check for word variety before you submit to anyone.

[Maybe I'll do another post on some picayune grammar points I have noticed of late. Point #2 would be: Don't use semicolons. No one knows what they mean.]

 

Top 10 List for the Unpublished

I know that readers of Mysterious Matters like my occasional "Top 10" lists (I'm reminded of the old Book of List series by Irving Wallace et al., quite big in the 80s, if memory serves. They were fun). Today I feel inspired to offer Agatho's Top 10 Tips for the Unpublished (a/k/a Top 10 Tips for Aspiring Mystery Writers).

10. Take yourself seriously, but not too seriously.  It's one thing to be devoted to honing your craft and getting published, quite another to set yourself up as the World's Greatest Mystery Novelist. 

9. Have something in your life besides your writing. It's really tough to make a living at this game. Enjoy it as a hobby, but do other things besides write and network. If all you do is eat, drink, and breathe your manuscript, you'll drive yourself (and everyone around you) crazy.

8. Go easy on the BSP.  BSP standards for blatant self-promotion, the type of promotion that one often sees at work on the Internet. There's a fine line between getting your work out there and making a pest of yourself. I've seen many a writer cross this line. In the early days of the Internet, it worked. Now I think it just turns a lot of people off.

7. Keep learning. Learn from your agent, your editor, other writers, best selling authors...anyone who has something to teach you. Be wary of anyone who professes to know it all. None of us do. And be especially wary of anyone who wants to charge you.

6. Understand basic economics.  You'll be a lot happier as a writer, with much more realistic expectations, if you understand how a business works and how business owners have to protect their bottom line. It's also important for you to understand the product you are selling - a book that has literally tens of thousands of competitors. (For those who know a little economics, established writers are working in a "monopolistically competitive" market, while new writers are working in a "perfectly competitive" market.)

5. Be patient. This whole process takes a long time, much longer than it should. That's just the way it is, and I don't see it changing any time soon. if you have other things in your life (see #9 above), you should be able to focus on other things while you wait.

4. Talk to librarians. Your local librarians have an excellent sense of the local market, of who's reading what and why. Ask them about your book, about its potential. If they're less than enthusiastic, take a giant deep breath, go home, and analyze what you're doing wrong.

3. Understand what happens when you go the self-publishing route. Many frustrated writers are turning to self-publishing (often in electronic formats), a few of them (but still a tiny percentage) to great success. Know that your work will not be reviewed by the most respected review magazines and will have no bookstore presence. The industry as a whole just looks askance at self-publishing as an outlet for the Deluded. (Whether this is a fair judgment, or pure snobbery, is a topic I've vowed never to get into.) Never, ever query an agent or editor by talking about your self-publishing activities. 

2. Treat your editor and agent as the professionals they are. Everyone who works in this industry has one common goal: to publish wildly successful books. Throwing accusations at your editor, publicist, or anyone that your book isn't being "supported" properly won't endear you to anyone and may cause your book to get even less support, because (as human beings) we respond in kind to those who treat us well.

And, finally...

1. Don't do it for the money. Do it because you love it. Whether you're published by one of the big publishing houses or a smaller independent press, the likelihood of you becoming wealthy from your writing is quite small indeed. And I think we see what has happened to a number of writers who do it for the money, who keep series going when the characters, plots, and general authorial involvement in the process have long since passed their expiration dates. If you do it for pleasure - and accept the pains that come with it - you'll meet some great some people along the way and have some fun. You'll meet plenty of jerks, too; but hey, the same thing would happen if you went to a grocery store.

Character Development: Does Perception Equal Reality?

I think I might have commented in the past that no two editors do their job exactly the same way. Our primary job, of course, is to bring money in for the house that hires us - and there are many ways to go about that.  Yes, we are businesses that must cover costs and turn a profit, lest we go under, so I never apologize to for making business decisions that keep us in the black.  

Another part of the job that we can't get away from - and that most of us would never want to get away from - is author development. A good review for our authors is a good review for us; great sales for an author are great sales for us.  Their success is ours.  We thus find ourselves often in the role of coach. We aren't writing the books, just the way the coaches aren't playing the game, but we do think our advice can make the difference between success and failure.

The advice I've been offering a lot of writers lately, I've realized, has to do with protagonist development in the early pages of the manuscript. Because I am a very reader-centric editor, I try to calibrate my reading to a high level of sensitivity regarding the reader's perception of the protagonist and some of the supporting cast, especially in those first 30-40 pages.  

In a post from a few weeks back, I asked of aspiring writers "What are you trying to accomplish?" and this questions applies not only to themes and plot but also to character. I think many commercially-oriented writers would say that they are trying to make their hero/ine likable - that they want the reader to become very fond of the protagonist.  And while I do have an issue or two with trying too hard to make characters likable (sometimes doing so makes them treacly or nauseating), having a likable protagonist is definitely a good idea in a genre that lives on series characters.

For all these reasons, I encourage writers to look closely at what their protags say, think, and do in their first couple of chapters. Even a protagonist with some sort of grudge needs to be perceived as being somehow "above" the other characters for us to root for him.  But spite, malice, sarcasm ... these are often the traits I see exhibited in the early chapters of manuscripts, and they set me against the protag.  So even if their cause is just, I perceive them as unlikable or childish - and I don't necessarily want to read further.

An example from my own life: Decades ago, one of my older brothers had a sort of rivalry going with another guy in our primary school. The rival decided to expand his vendetta to other members of the family, and I distinctly remember the following sequence of events: I was in the schoolyard at lunchtime, playing with friends, when this guy hurled a baseball with intense malice at my private parts. It was 50 years ago, but I can still remember doubling over in pain, along with the embarrassment and rage I felt.  (For those who are interested in how the story ends - my brother beat the guy within an inch of his life, got arrested, but was let off by someone who agreed that the guy deserved everything he got.)  I tell this story because I still think about it occasionally all these years later - but if I was a protagonist in a crime novel, looking to get revenge on this guy for something that happened half a century earlier - I think most readers would think, "OK, that was pretty bad.  But it happened 50 years ago. Shouldn't you get a life?  In the last half century, shouldn't you have done a few other things to occupy your time?"

The idea of perception being reality is one of the reasons I am so sensitive to the use of humor in manuscripts. A character who is trying too hard to be funny comes across as desperate - and I cringe. A character who shoots one snappy comeback after another reminds me of those people in "real life" who are impossible to talk to, who see you not as a conversational partner but rather as someone to impress with their wit and/or repartee.  A protagonist who acts in a spiteful or malicious way early in the manuscript is someone I have a hard time wanting to spend the next 300 pages with.  

I'm not trying to imply that protags should be milquetoast, or all sweetness and light. But I do think that those early chapters are the basis on which many an agent and editor make decisions, so it's worth taking a look at the early pages of your work in progress and ask yourself how your character is coming across.  For mainstream genre mysteries (even for hardboiled) I would save the deeper, darker things for a bit later (of course, there can be hints early on).  

And I'm not suggesting that this balance is easy for a writer to pull off.  I don't know that there's a set of rules anywhere outlining "What a good protagonist does or doesn't do."  We all know how to establish villainy - have your bad guy hurt an animal or a child, and that's the end of it - you'll never get the reader back. This is one of the things that made Stephen King's The Shining so interesting: We know that Jack Torrance "accidentally" (?) hurt his young son as a result of alcohol and anger issues; it's precisely these sort of issues that the Overlook Hotel uses and magnifies, which makes the book nice and creepy. However, that is horror - not mainstream mystery fiction - and I doubt anyone would argue that Jack Torrance should have been a series character.

Any writers out there care to comment on their DO's and DON'Ts for establishing a reader's connection with your protagonist?  This post is getting a little long (feeling rather pensive this evening), so maybe I'll try to come up with a Top 10 list for my next posting.

What Are You Trying to Accomplish?

A question I often asking aspiring novelists, directly or indirectly,is "What are you trying to accomplish?" The response is often, "I want to get published."

Wrong answer!

I know we are dealing with genre fiction here, but many people probably remember their college writing classes and those boring dictates of the five-paragraph essay. Young writers are encouraged to consider their audience and their purpose. Without these considerations, the conventional wisdom goes, the piece of writing will lack focus and interest.

True or untrue?  Very, very true, I would say.

Audience is a topic for another post (at a later date, if I remember to write it) but for today I wanted to opine about the importance of knowing what your manuscript's purpose is. What, exactly, are you trying to do?  The answer can be simple or more complicated, but I believe that the books that get bought are usually the books whose authors can answer this question succinctly and provocatively.  Here's a range of responses, some real, some made up, all good:

• I want to take people away to another world, where they can escape the stresses of their lives with characters they care about.
• I want to explore women's roles in law enforcement and some of the contradictions of feminism.
• I want people to race through my book in one sitting.
• I want to explore the difference between the way children perceive one another versus the way adults perceive those same children.

Do you see what I'm getting at here?  At the heart of crime fiction we have, of course, a crime to be solved (in most cases), a set of characters, a setting, a protagonist. These make up the skeleton on which all writers build their novels. But for a novel to work (for me, at least) I have to have a sense of its deeper or underlying purpose--what the author was hoping to accomplish in the work. This need not be a "serious" purpose a la Vachss or Connelly, but I want to know (and I usually see very quickly) what authorial intent lurks behind these 70,000 words.

If you're writing a book or preparing to submit to agents, you might ask yourself this question, then answer it in your query letter.  A good sentence or two on this could open a lot of doors.

GOOD: My plot's over the top, even a little outlandish, but if the National Enquirer has taught us anything, it's that sensationalism sells.  My book is sensationalistic and gossipy, and while it's meant as a fast, juicy read, I like to think it will also make people think a bit about the excesses of celebrity culture and how we buy into it.

BAD: My 70,000 word mystery takes place in Wyoming on a sheep ranch.  Why is someone killing Farmer Brown's sheep?  Is there a crazed serial sheep killer out there?  

GOOD: My protagonist, Mary Smith, is a Brownie Den Mother who turns Sleuth when someone steals her troop's shipment of Thin Mints.  My audience will be primarily cozy lovers, but I'll also give some insight into the unseen, often-insane world of the contest to sell Girl Scout Cookies, and the lengths people will go to, to make sure their daughter wins that cheap plastic $5 prize.

BAD: John Franklin is a cop with an alcohol problem.  He's considering suicide when a phone call from a former girlfriend gets him enmeshed in a bad situation.  I have completed the manuscript and have it available to send at your request.