How to Get Published

A Rerun

by Al Kalar

A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits. -Lazarus Long

Setting

Every story takes place somewhere and some-when.

If you’re dealing with real places and real periods in the present or history, you’d best know everything you can about the topography, plant life, seasons, maps, and what is/was going on at that place/time. Research can be boring, but if you stumble here, hundreds of readers will take great delight in correcting you for your blunder.

Harry Turtledove is a history major and the publisher of several fine alternate history novels. He researches his stories meticulously. In spite of that, every now and then, his fans enjoy pointing out some small error he made in a book. Since he’s so careful, these incidents are not common, but they do happen.

Now, if Turtledove has this problem in spite of the fact that this is his area of expertise, how much more will you suffer if you mess up? You will, but do your best to create as few errors as possible. (more…)

By James Scott Bell

The opening page of your novel is your big introduction. It’s what an agent will read with most interest, to see if you can write (which is why page 1 is often the first thing read in your proposal. You may have spent 100 hours on a killer synopsis, 50 on an irresistible query, but if the writing itself is not up to snuff, the busy agent can save time by tossing the whole thing aside without reading the rest of the proposal).

Think of it this way. You are at a party and the man or woman of your dreams is across the room. The host offers to introduce you. You walk over. There is great anticipation, even from Dreamboat, who is there to meet people, too. So Dreamboat extends a hand, you take it, and say, “Nice to meet you.”

Only you have a horrendous case of garlic breath. Dreamboat winces, whips out a phone and walks quickly away, muttering, “I have to take this.”

Well, that’s what it’s like for an agent reading your first page. He or she wants to like you, but if you’ve got garlic breath, it’s all over. Bad first impression. See you later. (more…)

by Al Kalar

Keep the action going. I know we’ve discussed this before, but it bears repeating because we still receive manuscripts with “info dumps” scattered throughout the story. Worse, many start out with an info-dump that is the author’s lame attempt to bring the reader up to speed. I’m not referring to recaps of previous books in a series designed to remind the reader of what s/he read six months ago.

Any time you stop the flow of the story to tell the reader something, you risk losing that reader. You yank him out of the story itself. The action stops with an arrow frozen in mid-air while some “off-screen” voice describes the developmental history of the bow and the flight characteristics of various types of arrows. By the time the arrow starts flying again, the reader has forgotten why it was shot and is certainly “sitting in her chair” rather than “swinging a sword on a rain-soaked crag in 10^th century Scotland”. (more…)