A: The short answer is “Yes, absolutely!”

That’s the truth, despite the fear that agents and publishers will avoid a book that falls into more than one genre.

But since this question comes up so often, let’s take a close look at the importance of genre in the book business today.

A long-standing practice

“What’s your genre?” is a question every author gets, right? Authors in classes I’ve taught recently and others who have consulted me as a developmental editor have been seriously concerned about crossing forbidden boundaries that might offend the gatekeepers who stand in their way.

Categorizing a book by genre is a long-standing practice in the book business. It’s a convenient label for agents to slap on a book ahead of pitching the project to an acquisitions editor. It’s also the way bookstore clerks decide where merchandise goes in the store. And it’s how buyers browse and find books.

Categories are breaking down

The hegemony of genre categories, however, is gradually eroding. A book may well wind up on more than one shelf. Popular young adult books, for example, may also be shelved in adult fiction. And now that so many buyers research and purchase books online, they may not know or care about what genre the publisher labeled the book.

Not only that, many very successful bestselling books clearly cross the boundary from one genre to another, with terrific results.

Bestselling cross-genre books

From the New York Times bestseller lists, Stephen King’s 11/22/63 is a science-fiction political thriller that takes its hero back in time to prevent the assassination of JFK. Also on the list is Death Comes to Penderley by P.D. James, which merges a murder mystery with a sequel to Jane Austen’s literary masterpiece Pride and Prejudice. A classic example is the Fahrenheit 451, one of Ray Bradbury’s most famous and bestselling works that crosses from science fiction to a political diatribe on literary censorship.

Similarly, Judy Blume has been crossing highly literary fiction with young adult books about serious stuff from racism (Iggie’s House) to teen sex (Forever) since 1970. She paved the way for many other current cross-genre YA writers like Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games, which takes place in a post-apocalyptic future with romance, violence and politics.

And of course there’s the humungous success of Harry Potter, which includes several genres, including fantasy, YA coming of age, mystery, thriller, adventure and romance. Not to mention Stephanie Meyer’s vampire romance Twilight Saga and Amanda Hocking’s My Blood Approves paranormal romance series.

So why not write a literary coming-of-age novel about a young girl who just happens to be a wood fairy? Or a mystery where the killer is found through past life regression. It’s been done and if this is where you’re headed, you can do it, too, no matter what you’ve heard.

How to cross genre boundaries successfully

Here are some suggestions that I recommend to my author clients who are intending to mix genres.

Pick the alpha element as a tag

After you’ve established a successful track record your brand will be you, your name. That’s one of the reasons Suzanne Collins, Stephen King or Amanda Hocking can combine and meander through more than one genre at a time with impunity. But when starting out, choose a label that’s easy to understand and sell. Pick the alpha element in your story — romance, mystery, paranormal — and give your book that tag to provide the marketplace with an initial perspective on where you’re coming from. The other elements in the story, whatever they may be, will remain evident and eventually create the context of your brand identity.

Build your own bandwagon

Any mixed genre story needs to come from your heart rather than from strategic calculation. Avoid the distraction of trendy fashions like Micro, the posthumous cross-genre technoscience adventure bestseller by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston, where the half-inch tall grad students get carried off by sadistic beetles. Shades of Gulliver’s Travels and Fantastic Voyage.

Be consistent

Sustain the integrity of the world you’ve created, however unique and unusual it may be, without jumping into any off-the-wall devices. Don’t pile one genre on another for the sake of cliff-hanging thrills or bravura embellishment. If your romance has elements of the supernatural, don’t unnecessarily slip in a murder just for good measure. Use the style and elements of more than one genre only in service of the story and its authentic characters.

Never take no for an answer

Don’t quit if the door is slammed in your face. Try another way to get that agent’s attention, like in a blind date or pitch session at a writers conference, or through a mutual friend. Be sympathetic to the agent, publisher, or retailer’s plight. From their perspective, genre purity makes a book faster and easier to sell.  Be persistant and convince them that you’ve got a great story.  That’s your best ammunition.

Don’t worry

Genre is a convenience, a traditional device that the conventional process of commercial publication has been using awkwardly for centuries.  But it didn’t stop cross-genre authors Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles Dickens all the way up to Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones) and Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler’s Wife).

We all have to live with this outdated artifact.  At least for now.

What about you?

Are you working on a book that crosses genre lines? Are you concerned about it? Have you met up with opposition from agents or editors? Has it been resolved? We welcome hearing about your experience, and I’ll watch for any questions here in comments.

A well-written book requires some kind of symphonic climax that resonates in our heads and hearts like the famous 40-second E major chord at the end of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band. Our response may be filled with joy, hope, and happiness, or it may lead us to feel uncomfortable, to frown, scratch our heads, and worry about the unknown mysteries of life.

I’ve worked with many fiction and narrative nonfiction authors to achieve such closure for plot-driven thrillers, mysteries, romances, literary novels, memoirs, and young adult books, but also histories, biographies, travel books, and other stories. I don’t believe there’s a predictable formula for every ending, far from it. But nevertheless, it’s essential to provide an emotional landing place, so the reader can put down the book with a sense that “Yes, it may not have happened to me actually, but my life is richer for having read this. I know more about the world, people, relationships, the way things happen.”

This kind of emotionally satisfying ending is by no means easy to write. Here are some tips to remember.

Endings are about change

It’s disappointing for a reader to reach the end of the book only to realize that the characters and continuing events are basically at the same point as the beginning. I’ve seen this with many early drafts: not enough has happened.

Endings are about change. Fiction and narrative nonfiction stories are about overcoming major obstacles, quests, and transformations. The changes may not be all good. The story may be upsetting or depressing. But if none of the book’s characters has learned anything and the challenges faced at the outset remain static and identical to those at the end, the story can seem pointless, unsatisfying, and without universal significance.

All writers can look to the Young Adult category for great examples of overcoming difficult problems with courageous changes that lead to fully evolved endings. Judy Blume pioneered realistic stories about sex, racism, and divorce in a teenager’s life with such books as Are You There God? It’s me, Margaret and It’s Not the End of the World. New generations of YA authors have continued this gritty approach to the real lives of preteens, teens, and young adults, from S.E. Hinton (The Outsiders) to Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games).

Find the right moment to end

It’s crucial to realize when it’s time to stop. Authors often send me a draft ending that repeats and churns over previous action, or goes off on a new and irrelevant digression. This kind of treading water can indicate the fear of not having demonstrated or explained everything enough.

I worked recently on an ambitious and complex novel that took four or five drafts to produce an ending that tied up a painful family relationship which had been interrupted for thirty years by historical disasters and personal wrong turns. The trick was to acknowledge mistakes and calamities without reiteration or blame, while at the same time avoiding any saccharine projections into the future. Ultimately the author succeeded in writing just a few short paragraphs with words chosen as carefully as a haiku or sonnet. It’s not always easy to write such a good ending, but in this case the end was exceptionally well crafted.

But don’t end prematurely!

Sometimes the curtain falls with a surprising thud. Beware of premature endings that leave too many threads still unraveled. Most mystery and thriller readers will agree that crimes should be solved and the world saved from political or corporate terrorists and other heinous villains. I’ve worked with several writers to develop mysteries with a strong suspect that turns out to be innocent, or a cumulative gathering of clues leading to one of many potential suspects. Similarly I’ve edited global thrillers (i.e. Robert Ludlum’s The Scarlatti Inheritance) that leave the reader nervous and uncomfortable, but with a sense of some hope for the future. John le Carre is the master of such ambiguous endings, as in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Constant Gardener.

Another frequent cause of a premature ending is the hope this book will launch a series. I’ve learned first hand while working with authors like Clive Cussler on his Dirk Pitt thriller Night Probe, and Ernest Tidyman’s Shaft that a continuing hero or heroine may age and develop in new ways over several titles, but each story needs to be complete on its own. It isn’t fair to demand the reader buy a second or third book to find out what happens.

Romances demand the same respect when avoiding a premature ending. The curtain can descend on either a happy or unhappy couple, but it can’t just fall out of the blue. Even after Rhett said he didn’t “give a damn” about what happened to Scarlett O’Hara, Margaret Mitchell kept going until her plucky heroine declared with signature fortitude: After all, tomorrow is another day.

Similarly, a successful memoir can’t either go on unnecessarily or stop precipitously. Memoirs focus on a discreet thread of the author’s life that makes a point, has a theme, and therefore requires an enlightened ending, even though the life itself isn’t over. Again, it doesn’t have to be happy, successful or inspiring, though that can help. What’s more important is a coming-of-age or the resolution of obstacles overcome, with experience and wisdom for anything that might follow.

In The Glass Castle, for example, Jeanette Walls takes pains to tell the story of her profoundly dysfunctional family in a sober and straightforward manner. Walls keeps her focus steadily, without judgment but rather compassion for her parents and siblings, and ends the story with a message of survival and redemption, leavened with affection and good humor.

Outlier endings

Not all endings are neat or tidy.

I’ve also worked with several writers whose last page leaves various threads of the story still tangled. The inimitable Tom Robbins comes to mind, since Jitterbug Perfume can hardly be described as having a tidy ending but rather drifts off into thin air: The lesson of the beet, then, is this: hold on to your divine blush, your innate rosy magic, or end up brown. Once you’re brown, you’ll find that you’re blue. As blue as indigo. And you know what that means: Indigo. Indigoing. Indigone.”

Or the late Hunter S. Thompson, whose Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ended in a frustrated rant, brought up short in order to make our overdue deadline: I hung up and drank some more gin. Then I put a Dolly Parton album on the tape machine and watched the trees outside my balcony getting lashed around in the wind. Around midnight, when the rain stopped, I put on my special Miami Beach nightshirt and walked several blocks down La Cienga Boulevard to the Losers Club.

The last pages of Toni Morrison’s first book The Bluest Eye are also disturbing and uncomfortable to say the least, and I remember when Toni first brought me her manuscript, how shaken I was by the ending: The soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live. We are wrong, of course, but it doesn’t matter. It’s too late. At least on the edge of my town, among the garbage and the sunflowers of my town, it’s much, much, much too late.

Dozens of conservative school and community libraries disapproved of the book and it was banned in many places. But it launched a career that led ultimately to the Nobel Prize for Literature.

What about you?

Are you working on the ending of a book?  I’ll watch for any questions here in comments.

Are you a writer

You’re not alone

If so, you’re not the only one. One writer put it this way recently on an online forum: “I worry that an editor will erase my voice.” Another said, “I fear I’ll end up with a book I no longer recognize as my own.”

At the same time, authors are discovering that agents and publishers now insist on a polished manuscript that’s ready for production, and won’t accept a draft that still needs work. And since most big-company acquisition editors don’t edit these days, that leaves the author without any editor at all, whether going the traditional route or self-publishing.

So it’s vital for authors to have realistic expectations about hiring and working one-on-one with their own professional book editor.

How a good editor-author relationship works

I’d like to address some of these concerns and perceptions, and what I see as the reality of the editor-author relationship from my point of view as a book editor who has worked closely with writers for many decades.  And later, if there are any questions about all this, I’ll be very happy to answer them in comments.

Perception: I’ll lose control of my own creation.

Reality: The writer is always the boss. Good editors subsume their own egos and enter the consciousness of the author. Any editor who insists on big changes that compromise your core intentions, who demands deletions, additions and new material – or else – isn’t doing a good job. A good editor can’t be a frustrated writer or have a didactic professorial approach to the work.

Perception: I’ll be intimidated, and won’t be able to resist making changes that I think are wrong.  I worry that the book will lose my voice.

Reality: Good editors are sensitive to an author’s literary style, basic story, and core motivation. They appreciate that an author’s voice is essential and precious to preserve, for both the writer’s artistic integrity and unique point of view. They know how vulnerable an author may feel when exposing their unfinished work to an outside reader.

Perception: I can’t tell if an editor is any good or not since there’s no rating system, license, or industry standard.

Reality: An editor’s track record is the best way to judge competence. Have they edited successful books you recognize or may have read? If a prospective editor can’t produce such a list of prior work, either on their own website or by request, you should probably seek elsewhere.

Perception: Agents won’t take on my book if I’ve worked with a private editor.

Reality: Most agents are happy to hear that you’ve worked with a good developmental editor. It means you’ve cared enough to make the investment in making the book as good as it can be, and have had the benefit of professional feedback. They know that virtually every successful writer, from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Kathryn Stockett, has worked with an editor.  Agents do, however, worry about freelance editors who are not accomplished or have a negative impact, and rightly so.  So once again, choose carefully.

Perception: If I do get an agent or publisher, I won’t be able to produce another book as good as the first one without help.

Reality: Authors are usually pleased to establish a long-term relationship with an editor they like. Agents, publishers and ultimately readers are also happy about the results.

Perception: An editor will produce a new manuscript and I won’t be able to restore the original if that’s what I decide to do.

Reality: Editors today work with Tracked Changes in Word documents which allow an author to see what’s recommended to be deleted, added or revised and permits them to accept or reject each edit, one by one.

Perception: I’m already in a writer’s critique group and don’t need any other help.

Reality: Members of writers groups are unlikely to have the experience or objectivity you need for professional and candid feedback. Developmental editing is not usually a good job for friends or family.

Perception: I won’t be able to have a close working relationship with an editor since I haven’t found one who lives nearby.

Reality: Most developmental editing is done through email and phone calls. Skype is also a very effective way to communicate these days. Many long-standing editorial relationships – examples like Hemingway with Maxwell Perkins, Raymond Carver with Gordon Lish – weren’t based on close proximity, but on other forms of continuing communication.

Perception: Developmental editing is expensive. Is it really worth the investment?

Reality: The cost of editing varies depending on what you need and who’s doing it. The decision on your best choice and what you can afford is a personal judgment based on your own priorities. But there’s no doubt that the better your book is, the more successful you’ll be in the long run.

What about you?

Have you worked with a developmental editor?  What were your concerns?  Were you able to resolve them to your satisfaction?  Were you pleased with the outcome?  Any suggestions for fellow writers?

For more detail on how to evaluate an editor’s professional status, track record, compatibility and accessibility, take a look at this earlier post, Choosing a freelance editor: What you need to know

Writers often ask me

I’ve heard that literary agents and commercial publishers don’t want to see a book until it’s already edited and ready for production. And if I decide to self-publish, I’m out on a limb by myself. So when during the process of writing a book do I need an editor?

Three phases of writing

There are three distinct phases of the writing process when a developmental editor can make a big difference in the outcome of your book: In the planning stage, while you’re writing, and once you’re done.

Professional feedback and developmental editing are important at each of these three stages.  However, when and how this collaboration occurs can vary, depending on the individual creative process and collaborative relationships. Most successful fiction and non-fiction writers work with developmental editors, with very few exceptions. Here’s how it works:

1. Before writing the first draft

Many authors consult me as they begin their creative process, at a point when there may be only a germ of an idea, a few pages of a preliminary draft, or perhaps a rough outline. We both take careful notes and authors are welcome to record the consultation. Lately, several authors have recorded our Skype video consultations.

We discuss core questions like:

• What’s this book about? In the case of fiction, like a mystery, thriller, romance, sci-fi, or YA, could this be the first of a series? In a memoir, on which part of your life do you want to focus? In nonfiction, what’s the premise, the main take-away, the point of the book?

• Who are the main characters? Who are the essential secondary characters?

• Is this book a work of passion or a deliberate attempt to craft something for the commercial market?  Or is this book intended to enhance a business, individual career, or academic position? How should that impact the focus and organization?

• Deciding on the point of view. Should the narrative voice be an “I” first person or omniscient third person?

• Where to begin, how to incorporate the backstory? Is it essential to have some strategic flashbacks?

• How should it end?

We resolve these issues and put together a working plan, a penultimate outline that usually evolves as the work progresses, but most importantly provides a useful blueprint for launching the writing.

2. While you’re writing

Authors often want and need feedback while producing the first few chapters of their book, since these pages are frequently the hardest to write and require the most revision. It’s like clearing your throat, getting into a groove, finding the right tone, pitch, and pacing. I encourage writers to take the time to be sure they’re on the right track before going any further, since these preliminary problems don’t self-correct and shouldn’t be left unresolved.

Another big reason for consulting a developmental editor while writing the book is if the writer is getting stuck. The original impulse, or even an outline, can go off the track. You may lose interest or passion for a character or element of the plot. You may wonder if more backstory is needed and if so, how and where to bring it in. The ending may no longer make sense.

Help! Call 911! This is when rapid response and a creative partnership with an editor can be invaluable.

3. When the manuscript is finished

There are two distinct circumstances when I see a finished manuscript.

An author may send me a book that we’ve been working on together from the outset for one final read through, since it may need some additional polish to make it as good as it can be.

Or, authors submit completed manuscripts which I see for the first time, seeking assistance before sending to a literary agent or in preparation for self-publishing. If I see fundamental flaws, such as a core problem in the structure, a wrong turn in the plot, characters that require a radical makeover, or the need to change the narrative voice, I’ll usually suggest a consultation rather than a developmental edit. In such a consultation, I offer specific constructive solutions to incorporate in a new draft before the manuscript can be ready for a full edit.

The good news is that it’s never too late to make a book better.

In a full developmental edit, I go through the entire manuscript several times, offering specific page-by-page recommendations, alterations in the plot, concept, character development and visual descriptions, small and large structural shifts, fine tuning the pacing and literary style. I insert tracked changes that indicate deletions within the sentence, or entire paragraphs, sections or chapters. I suggest new language for polish and clarity. And in cases of historical fiction and non-fiction, I do my own research to become more familiar with the background and context.

When completed, I return the manuscript with its tracked changes, along with a lengthy letter that both summarizes and explains the editorial work. I include a subsequent hour consultation with the author by phone or in person to go over remaining questions and brainstorm any new options that may arise. Authors may disagree with or modify the recommendations I’ve made, which usually leads to an even more creative solution.

Finding your own editor

What happens when you first send your work to a prospective developmental editor? Keeping in mind that all editors have individual styles, here’s how I handle submissions: First I request the entire manuscript, which I read start-to-finish without charge. I evaluate the complexity and level of work required, the time it would take, and whether we’re a good fit. Only then do I provide an accurate estimate of cost.

I believe this initial assessment of the whole book, rather than reading only a chapter or two, is the best way to see how the author sustains the narrative arc — creates the premise, develops the action, resolves the problem – and brings the reader to some kind of satisfying personal experience, an emotional landing place, whether it’s inspiring, happy, tragic or just plain informative. I’m essentially previewing the experience any reader will have, and that gives me valuable information about the book’s weaknesses and strengths.

A good editor brings to the relationship both literary skills and human sensitivity. An editor watches your back and anticipates when there’s trouble ahead. But the author is the boss, in the driver’s seat. It’s not the editor’s book, so my job is always to enter the creative world of the author and help fulfill this vision.

I also advise that before investing in an editor, be sure you’re working with someone experienced with a track record of producing books that have succeeded. You should also expect the editor to be available and to complete the edit within an agreed-upon schedule. For more detail, here’s an earlier post with my advice on how to evaluate the best editor for your book.

What about you?

Have you worked with a developmental editor?  Anything you’d care to share about the process?  I’ll watch for any questions, so fire away!

Here’s a situation that

But after a little while the scenes become repetitious, the characters and their machinations turn formulaic — and reading becomes a chore.

Books that keep readers awake

A good book, whether it’s a novel, memoir, biography, history, or narrative non-fiction, must take readers somewhere new and end up far from where they started. Readers want to identify, engage, and be inspired by what happens to people they can care about.

Scroll down for DIY tips to thicken a plot

Story as transformative journey

The idea of story content as a transformative journey goes back to the earliest Greek and Roman classical literature. In Homer’s Odyssey, written around 850 BC, Odysseus, also known as Ulysses, has to win the Trojan War, escape the Lotus Eaters, defeat the Cyclops, avoid the Sirens and overcome many other deathly metaphorical temptations to return home to his faithful wife, a wiser and better man.

Similarly, in the third century BC, Apollonius of Rhodes wrote about Jason and his Argonauts, who had to defeat Amazons, the Harpies, the Clashing Rocks, and then harness the fire-breathing Oxen to win the Golden Fleece.

George Lucas told the same basic story in his six Star Wars films.

The names and places are always new, but the core story line doesn’t change. The hero or heroine of any good story, whether it’s a novel, memoir, or narrative non-fiction, must endure a series of symbolic events that precipitate a life changing degree of development and change.

How an editor can help

When I’m working with a promising but incomplete story, I suggest specific line-by-line additions for new plot development that add depth, pacing, and flesh out the details that accelerate big changes in the lives of the major characters.

I may also suggest deletions when dialog or an action is repetitious or digressive. This can be painful. “It was like drowning your kittens,” one writer said mournfully. “But it was the right thing to do.”

An editor shouldn’t advise you to sweeten up a Hollywood climax. An unhappy ending is OK, if the reader can say “yes, that’s life” and put the book down at the end with emotional satisfaction.

If you’re interested in working with a developmental editor, here’s my advice on finding a good one.

If your book is getting rejected

If your manuscript has been receiving rejections accompanied by vacant stares and long yawns, check out these red flags and solutions.

Remember:  Readers need plot!  Or they doze off.

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DIY plot thickening

Red flag #1: No compelling leading character

You need characters with whom the reader can get involved. Don’t give readers only big losers or unattractive predators. They need to feel either joy or empathic sorrow at what happens to the person they carry around in their head for days.

Take care not to introduce too many characters. Diluting the reader’s focus of engagement is one of the biggest problems I see in early drafts. Pick a couple of core characters to expand and reduce the rest to essential supporting roles.

Red flag #2: Repetition

Circling around the same behaviors and actions again and again is the bane, the curse, the kiss of death for any story.

We need variety: not just the same experience or emotional desire over and over, but progressive challenges, successes and failures, gradual changes, and ultimate maturity or at least hope for the future. Or not. Again, failure and tragedy works too, if it’s honest, credible and moving.

So make your points and move on. Get out the red ink and prune down to just what moves the plot toward a meaningful ending.

Red flag #3: No change

The main characters should develop dramatically for better or worse, winding up in quite a different situation than they were at the beginning regarding their identities, relationship, thoughts and feelings. This substantial transformation is what the story is about. It’s the promise, the takeaway for your reader.

Be ready to add substantial new scenes that introduce difficult challenges that alter the characters’ lives, and provoke their evolution.

Red flag #4: No ending

The ending must represent the climax of a series of events, each of which show incremental change, step-by-step, with significant action and interaction reaching a meaningful conclusion. This is the kind of ultimate engagement, identification, information and inspiration that a reader wants and deserves.

Before you start writing or revising an existing draft, figure out the end. You can revise and modify this as you go along but it’s extremely helpful to have a good sense of what happens to each chapter that is moving the characters towards their big change.

Avoid an ending that relies on an abrupt stop action, interrupted dialogue, or cliffhanger. These may work for an occasional chapter ending but will not ultimately give the reader a satisfying close to the book.

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What about you?

Are you working on a story that isn’t quite there yet?  Try some of the troubleshooting tips here, and see what happens. Any questions?  Fire away!  And please weigh in with your thoughts and ideas here in comments.

A: Authors need to respect their readers and allow them their own reactions to the narrative.

This issue comes up frequently for authors at the early stages of writing a novel, memoir, or non-fiction narrative. The writer wonders: “How present should I be in the story?”

What’s wrong with explaining?

The original motivation for an author is usually to illuminate a story that the reader can easily identify with and care about. So what’s wrong with underlining an idea or focusing on the intentional meaning of what’s going on?

What’s wrong is what I see frequently as a developmental editor. Authors who insert themselves intrusively into the story in a misguided effort to explain the meaning of what’s happening and control how the reader responds to the characters and action.

A guiding principle

Have you ever been to a movie where there’s an annoying voiceover narration that keeps commenting without adding anything to what you’re seeing on the screen?

That’s equivalent to an excessive explanation that an author inserts unnecessarily.

Far better to let the story tell itself.

Don’t do this

“’Goodbye forever, you creep!’ Emily screamed hysterically, slamming the door. George was devastated, coiling a strand of his hair around his finger desperately and pulling on it violently in an act of existential anguish until it tore a raw, blood-seeping chunk out of his poor and innocent scalp.”

Do we need all those adjectives and adverbs to help us understand what’s happening here? Not really. We get it. Emily left him. George is upset.

Don’t do this either

At the other extreme, I sometimes see prose stripped down to terse action and minimalist dialogue, like “Emily walked out. George pulled his hair.”

It’s a style that can be so self-consciously diminished it becomes annoying. As a developmental editor, I might suggest new language to add a bit of color, attitude, and a sense of human feelings.

How much should writers reveal themselves?

Should writers reveal themselves as the omniscient puppeteers behind the curtain, or remain completely in the background, totally invisible?

My view has always been that less is better. Let your readers have their own experiences with your book. As readers ourselves, we know that we bring to the book our own perspective, our own unique response to the characters and their stories.

In the first sample above, for example, some readers may resent the author’s apparent intention to make us feel sorry for George, preferring Emily’s point of view. Others may feel otherwise. That’s what is wonderful about reading a book — or experiencing any work of art, including music, painting, film — our own emotional and psychological backstories and personal, intimate temperaments influence profoundly how we respond to what’s written.

Mistrust is at the heart of the question

Consequently, I believe all writers should avoid the mistrust at the heart of engineering artificially authorized feelings. Instead I recommend an author include only what’s necessary to achieve a proper balance between the quick and the dead, the hollow shell of rapid surface events and the overwrought laboring of an author preaching from a soapbox.

Here’s a good example of such a subtle balance from a very good short story by Tessa Hadley called Clever Girl that recently appeared in the New Yorker magazine:

“Our new garden, which my window overlooked in blind indifference, was only a rectangle of clay, marked off with fence posts and wire from the clay rectangle belonging to the other houses.”

Hardly any explicit emotional direction here. “Blind indifference” is the only clue of where the author might be coming from, but the author hasn’t chosen the words: It’s a first-person narrative.

Meanwhile, the bare description and repeating appearance of the clay rectangle again and again sent a shudder down my spine, evoking, for me at least, desolation, dread, isolation, vulnerability and fear. All very powerful in this story, which is narrated by an unhappy ten-year-old girl who has just moved to the suburbs with her mother and unwelcome new stepfather.

The  debate between too much and too little

There are no sure-fire formulas for great writing, however. The debate continues.

For example, Aine Greaney an Irish-born author and essayist wrote a piece on the website Gently Read Literature which addresses this problem entitled The Ghost Behind the Page.

“In my author-school days, Rule Number 1 was to never insert yourself between the story and the reader. Yet, I believe that too many modern fiction authors eclipse themselves completely from the work. As we read their books, we cannot sense the presence of an author-ghost behind the pages. While the story is clever or exciting or readable, the narrative provides no window into that author’s sensibilities or philosophies or attitudes. Quite simply, there’s no author there.”

Here’s a different approach from best-selling author Abraham Verghese, who sets out explicit meaning and explanation for the story that he’s going to tell at the opening of his novel Cutting for Stone.

“We come unbidden into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which, lest we forget, is the common lot. I grew up and found my purpose and it was to become a physician. My intent wasn’t to save the world as much to heal myself.”

Very nice. Well written. Pretty much tells us what the book is going to be about. Not every author, however, has the literary skill or story-telling ability of Verghese.

What about you?

What kind of balance between explaining and trusting the readers are you choosing? Send in your examples and thoughts on these subtle but critical literary choices.

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Feeling boxed in by

If so, this post is for you.

Ordinarily, I’m a staunch believer in the basics of linear story structure: keep it simple, show don’t tell, and leave the audience happy.

You can read more about my advice on constructing and strengthening the traditional narrative arc in this earlier post.

Blowing apart conventional structure

But for now, let’s consider some unorthodox ways to break out of the box and take some risks that just might distinguish your book from other more formulaic efforts.

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An action plan

1. Make a list of what you have so far, including events in the underlying story, important facts, ideas, context, and potential characters.

2. Now cut it in half. Leave out anything that is repetitious, digressive, ultimately irrelevant and not contributing to the basic vision, mission, and motivation for writing the book in the first place.

3. Translate ideas into actions. Every critical juncture, turning point, new idea or development needs to be transformed into a scene with characters, movement, vigorous pace, quoted dialogue and visual description. This is equally true whether for a non-fiction book, a coming of age memoir, or an ambitiously literary young adult vampire novel.

4. Start anywhere. Not necessarily at the beginning. Not at the end. Not even at the most logical turning point or critical juncture. It’s like being a stunt man, diving into the window of a moving car. Free yourself, follow your instincts, toss everything at the proverbial wall and see what sticks.

5. Don’t explain. This means don’t write a prologue or jump to explanatory flashbacks. Be playful, mischievous, counter to all expectations.

6. Add stitches when necessary. Feather in a few words between scenes with a very delicate touch and without an obvious transition. This requires surgical precision and the fewest words possible. For example, without going back in time, try inserting dialogue where one character questions or comments on another in quotes that reveal the background and context of their relationship. Or, with a first person narrator, set up recollections triggered by something happening or being said.

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When the going gets weird the weird turn pro

That legendary anthem from the late Hunter Thompson is especially true when constructing an unconventional narrative arc. Remain coherent at all times. Resist any temptation to be unorthodox or scattershot just for the sake of being different or cool or gonzo.

Is it working? Are you making sense?  Or possibly leaving your reader bewildered and confused?  You may have lost your objectivity and might not be the best judge.

Getting expert feedback

This kind of rule breaking may benefit from the help of a developmental editor who won’t try to homogenize the structure back to standard norms.

Look for an experienced hand who appreciates what you’re trying to do and can delete, add, shuffle and shift so the story holds together but still has the flavor and style you started with.  Here’s some advice on finding your own developmental editor.

There are many examples of writers and artists who broke all the rules and made it work.  Here are just a few.

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Get inspired!

Read:

These classics of modern American literature were all bestsellers, with nary a conventional structure in the lot:

1. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. Acknowledged as one of the greatest American novels of all time, this World War II narrative is emphatically non-chronological and told from several different character’s POV, circling back so alternate perspectives and interpretations are juxtaposed and the ultimate time line emerges only gradually as you keep reading, unable to put it down.

2. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, has an exceptionally complex and widely praised structure and huge historical canvas. The author shifts from an unreliable first person narrator who presents key elements of the story in a manner that is retold with contradictions by an omniscient third-person voice. It begins with a historical epic of Greece, digresses to an essay in a medical journal of a “recessive mutation that polluted” the family’s genetic pool and eventually caused the narrator to be born a hermaphrodite. The story shifts continuously back and forth in time from the secret incest of the grandparents generation to the present life of the narrator in Berlin.

3. Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, a famously surrealistic epic of fabulously twisted and tangled plots and counterplots, dense with psychology, statistics, expert information on chemical engineering, rocket propulsion, the cultural and political history of World War I and World War II, pop songs and show tunes.

4. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, with its highly unpredictable narrative structure that’s full of twists, turns, reversals, and surprises. The story begins with what appears to be an omniscent third person but is gradually revealed as the heroine’s first person narrative of her story to an investigative psychiatrist. Later, much of what she says is retold and contradicted from several other characters’ point of view, as in Eugenides, but in this case from reliable members of her family. Franzen has written that one of his rules of writing is “Fiction that isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn’t worth writing for anything but money.”

Look:

Get reacquainted with the work of painter Jackson Pollock. Remember how he splattered wild colors all over huge canvases? When you stepped back, it made sense.

Also watch a few films like Ground Hog Day, which starts over from the very beginning several times until ultimately reaching a satisfying emotional climax, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Momento – both films which present fast-moving elements of a story with reversals, leaps ahead, and other deliberate confusion that dramatizes the protagonists’ loss of memory.

Listen:

Get lost in the Rites of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. Talk about wild and crazy stuff that breaks all the rules!

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Breaking rules can be liberating!

When this approach succeeds, it can be very liberating. And even if it creaks and groans and doesn’t completely gel, step back and reconsider your original ideas for the book and see if any of the techniques you’ve tried with your rule-breaking draft can be retained for another pass through. Perhaps that odd leap in organization can provide a wonderfully unexpected wrinkle in the next and more conventional structure.

What about your narrative arc?

Does the arc in your story need some shaking up?  Or is the conventional approach working just fine, thank you very much?

If you’ve tried something different, what kind of feedback are you getting?

All good editors love

To us, writers are special people, compelled to put words together as they look at the world.  They can’t stop, must return to whatever is in their heads, what they’re thinking and feeling, making sense of their lives, to explain, to teach, so write they must.

I spend every day with at least one author’s ongoing story in my head, puzzling over the issues and needs of this particular work and figuring out how to help develop the manuscript from rough draft to the point of publication.

For me, it doesn’t get any better. I’ve been an acquisitions and developmental book editor since 1962, and yet it’s fresh and new every time, like a spiritual retreat, a transformative adventure to another world, since each author’s book is different and unique. It’s my personal passion, and I feel privileged and often honored to have a job like this.

A writer’s best friend and secret weapon

Every author is different. But each writer I work with becomes the most important person in my work life as we go back and forth in the intimate and challenging process of producing a successful book that’s ready for prime time.

I’ve found that most writers appreciate working with an objective helping professional. When we can hammer out a solid relationship of trust and mutual commitment, an author can be quite relieved to have a creative partner who subsumes his own feelings and intellect to their own.

What I’ve learned from working with writers

Writers are brave. It takes courage to write, to expose oneself without compromising either the need to express sometimes painful feelings, or the demands of impatient readers who are distracted by a desire for rapid gratification. As a faithful ally in this struggle, a good editor can work shoulder-to-shoulder to defeat unexpected roadblocks, wrong turns, and internal self-censorship.

Writers are often insecure. Even the best and most successful authors I’ve worked with can be troubled at times by self-doubt. They’re not always satisfied with what they’ve done, worrying that they’ve failed to fulfill their deepest intentions, haven’t explained themselves adequately, missed the high water mark of their last or best work. My job is to be both honest about what they need to do but also encouraging, firm in my belief that they can in fact do it.

Writers are sometimes lonely. I know how facing that blank screen or empty page can be terrifying. There’s no one else who can extricate and put down those words, at least until someone like me can read them and offer new choices, changes, cuts, and other constructive suggestions.

Writers can be defensive. Who wants to hear negative criticism? The trick for me has always been to frame my changes and requests in a way that grows organically from the author’s original intentions.

Writers are always stimulating. What original ideas! Such intelligence, humor, romance, mystery, amazing twists and turns of the plot, new research and instruction, prescriptive, inspiring, emotionally satisfying, disturbing – writers can help us understand our lives and create meaning out of random chaos and otherwise inexplicable events. My job has always been to sort through the working drafts of manuscript as a typical reader and make sure it’s clear and understandable, sometimes needing to deconstruct and put back together the pieces from the creative jig saw.

Finding your own editor

Given the attrition in commercial publishing houses, you can search online and choose among professional editors with experience bringing books to publication. It’s great if you can meet in person at first, since trust and personal chemistry are important. It’s not essential, however, and email exchanges or an explorative phone call can also work. I’ve worked with writers from Australia, England, Canada, South Africa, Thailand, Brazil and other points near and far.

The author-editor dynamic is a personal relationship – often close, intense,  time limited and usually fun, in my experience. But before choosing your own editor, be sure to check out experience, past books edited and published. Are these authors you’ve heard of? Are their books ones that you personally respect or admire? Have they sold well? Seen any of them on the best-seller lists? That’s the acid test.

You should also ask a prospective developmental editor for references. Many clients of mine have done that and other authors I’ve worked with have obliged, mentioning warts and all.

Choosing a developmental editor can require some initiative and intuitive judgment. Ask authors you might know to recommend their editors. Go to bookstore readings and lectures where writers, agents, and publishers appear. Seek them out at writers conference to ask for references for a good editor. Trust your instincts to evaluate this advice and where it came from – that’s what smart sensitive writers can do.

For more on evaluating prospects and avoiding potential problems, take a look at this earlier post, Choosing a freelance editor: What you need to know

A: You might have too much action and not enough content. If that’s the problem, you need to punctuate any rapid fire twists and turns with dialogue, description, and the kind of pacing that’s easier to understand and more meaningful.

Dan Brown Syndrome

You’re not the only writer struggling with an over-plotted story. I’ve noticed a trend lately in submissions suffering from Dan Brown Syndrome.

Dan Brown is of course a highly regarded and hugely successful author, whose stories hold readers rapt through dozens of fast-speed fabulous surprises and a large cast of amazing characters who can evoke our cheers or catcalls.

But in his wake, we see too many authors producing stories with bewildering upsets and spins, a cast of characters larger than Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and dense, confusing plots that stumble back and forth in time and point of view. There’s often not a moment’s pause so we poor readers can catch our breath to figure out who’s who and what’s going on.

What Dan knows and so should you

It’s not a good idea to rush through the plot, chewing and churning up more and more material. Your story needs pacing and literary punctuation, breathing room, a space to interrupt and set off the action.

How an editor can help

When I find myself re-reading or tracing back a deluge of bewildering actions to figure out what’s going on, it’s time to suggest specific spots in the text for editorial intervention.

An author working with an experienced editor on detangling a plot should expect line-by-line recommendations for surgical pruning, and adding new dialogue and description in order to slow down the action so it’s understandable and more readable.

That’s what I provide my writer clients.

Best practices for storytelling

To engage readers in a story you need to limit the number of characters they identify with and care about enough to find out what happens to them. Pick two or three. We also want a discernable goal to the story, but not more than one, please, so we can follow the narrative arc from problem to development to solution. These aren’t rules set in stone, but general principles or best practices for storytelling.

So for example, if your heroine finds a dead body in the first scene, then suddenly another in scene two, and two more with no connection or explanation in scene three, yikes, please, take a break.

Tell us more about her, where she is, what she looks like. Let her speak to someone in words we can understand. Feather in some of her backstory and personality. Give us enough of a portrait so she becomes real and sympathetic; we’ll begin to worry about her safety. Even if she’s a villainess, we need to be fascinated, curious, to engage with her on some level.

A story needs focus and depth

This kind of dense, breathless pacing is not an uncommon phenomenon. I’ve worked on some very serious books that skittered across too many intentions and themes – political, historical, biographical, personal memoir – without resting enough to provide the details needed to make the book readable or meaningful.

In such cases, it often turns out to be a case of the writer not being able to decide which way to go, and plunging ahead in several directions at once without enough focus or depth.

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DIY plot pruning

If your latest draft feels stuck or has been having no luck getting an agent or publisher, read it through and check out the following symptoms and suggested solutions:

Symptom #1:  Dense movement from crisis to crisis

Solution: Slow down the pace and pause between actions. Breathe some air into the plot. Add space for dialogue, visual description, other ways of making the story come alive like small elements of character development and back story, plus random odors, surprising sounds, the grit or polish of how an object or person feels when touched by another.

Symptom #2: Constant flashes back and forth in time

Solution: Stay in one time zone for a while. Try a whole chapter. Now consider limiting the number of basic periods of time in the entire story.

Symptom #3:  Rapid accumulation of dead bodies

Solution: Reduce the number in the first chapter to just one. Then stop to expand context, describe either the killer or whomever discovers the body . Have at least two more scenes of non-violent activity before another body turns up.

Symptom #4: Multiple narrative voices

Solution: Stick to one or two at the most. My favorite is first person, but you can shift to another first person or omniscient third person that focuses on one other character’s perspective. That’s my preference.

Symptom #5: Different story threads leading to various separate endings

Solution: Prune to one. Keep it simple. Find the Holy Grail, the true love, the lethal killer.

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Develop your rhythm

Ultimately you need to develop a good rhythm, a beat, a balance between the quick and the still, the action and the time for absorbing, observing the details, ruminating. If you have too much going on at once, you’ll burn out the reader and lose your audience.

Do you have a tangled plot?

Do you recognize any of the issues here?  I’ll do my best to answer questions, so fire away!