(How to Give Gentle and Helpful Feedback to Writers.)

Once I discovered a huge lack of books in contemporary, young adult fiction that feature Black American Muslim teens, it became my calling. I’m committed to providing these types of stories so going forward, young adults who share my dual marginalization and that of my three daughters never have to ask why they don’t see themselves and their lived experiences on the printed page.

To date, I’ve found less than five titles in this specific genre. Both my upcoming 2025 sophomore novel, My Perfect Family, and my 2023 debut, Fatima Tate Takes The Cake, are included in that total.

Part of my resistance to drafting probably stems from the fact that I have an undergraduate degree in accounting and not creative writing. As a life-long lover of books, I never imagined writing them.

For me, getting through my first draft of any novel is almost an organized attack. Revising is part of the process that I love, so getting the story down is essential. I’ve found sneaky ways to ease myself into completing my first draft.

Getting to know my protagonist and solidifying the impossible choice she faces is key.

I complete an extensive list that delves into the main character’s and any major secondary characters’ information (i.e. name, birthday, physical characteristics, temperament, etc.). Next, using my favorite craft book, Story Genius, I work through what the protagonist wants and what obstacles are in the way to achieve the desired end. Creating a scene card for every scene in my manuscript is time consuming and labor-intensive but helps me figure out my three-act structure.

And if I’m drafting under a deadline, I give myself a daily word count goal. It’s typically very reasonable, with scheduled breaks and days off. To protect myself from being distracted, I normally complete any needed research before starting chapter one.

Revision is my strongest muscle but I have to be careful not to over edit. My underlying, unrealistic desire for my works to be perfect will sometimes push me to spend hours on sections of my books unnecessarily.

Some authors will give themselves little rewards for finishing writing tasks they find difficult. Whatever is meaningful to them. Sometimes, after I’ve completed a draft, especially a first one, I’ll treat myself to one of my favorite meals or spend time reading something from my large TBR pile of novels.

Works for me.

Every author is different but my best advice for getting through the parts of the writing process you dread is to find methods and a system to get through the harder parts. Find what works best for you. Please remember that nothing is set in stone and what works for one book may need to be adjusted for another.

Stay strong and keep writing.

Check out Khadijah VanBrakle’s My Perfect Family here:

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The post Drafting & Revising: Do Authors Have to Love Both? appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Beta readers may do a lot of things for authors, but aside from pointing out confusion in a manuscript and revealing aspects that are lacking in the story, the most important task they perform is to bolster the writer’s self-confidence. 
  
If you’re not using beta readers as part of your writing process, the reasons you should are many. I can’t imagine surviving the road to publication without them. But before I get to that, let’s talk a little bit about these people and where they fit in the editorial process. 
 
At their most basic, beta readers are the first responders to your manuscript. After you’ve toiled over your novel-in-progress for weeks or months or years, and you’ve deemed it ready for another reader’s eyes, betas step up to the plate. 
  
Anyone who likes to read and vows to be gently honest—emphasis on gently—about how they feel about your work will do: friend, relative, complete stranger. Writers in general make better betas than nonwriters do because they usually have a greater level of understanding of story structure. The more detailed a beta reader can be when giving feedback, the better.  

I have beta readers who provide very few in-line notes and instead respond to the book as a whole in an overview, and I have other betas who give me notes all the way through the manuscript. There is value in both methods, though I feel it’s imperative to obtain at least one detailed reading with many in-line notes. In my “pool” of beta readers (I use at least six per book), I make sure I have two who will provide comprehensive feedback.  

The best betas are amateur developmental editors in that they concentrate their suggestions on the larger parts of the story: the content and characters, and not the commas. They comment on plot, pacing, characterization, and setting, letting you know where you’ve gone astray. They tell you where a scene falls flat and where they’re confused.  

Why are they crucial to your process? 

As writers, we all do things in our writing that we think are just fine but that don’t, for whatever reason, work for readers. If no one points out these blunders for us, they remain in the story, potentially rubbing readers the wrong way. These may be small issues or large ones. 
  
The problem with self-editing is that our brain glides right over most of what we’ve written because it understands what we’ve meant to say (even if what we mean to say doesn’t exactly appear on the page). 
 
Our mind can visualize our characters and what they’re doing, so it may not think to raise an alarm and shout, “Hey, this isn’t working,” or “Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”  

The beta reader can guide our focus to these problem areas so that we can fix them before we spend a lot of money on a developmental editor (the next step in the editorial process), who will help fine-tune the deeper, harder-to-grasp issues that may linger below the surface—those a beta reader doesn’t likely have the skills to pick up.  

Beta readers clear away the lower-hanging fruit so the pro can more easily reach, and comment on, a deeper level.  

How do betas create self-confidence? 

If you ask your beta readers to, they will also tell you when you’ve impressed them with your storytelling or wordsmithing—and who doesn’t love that? The brain is equally oblivious to the “good” that we’ve done as it is to the bad.  

Pointing out the impressive parts of our novel—the lines that sing, the twists that blow them away, the delightful quirks you’ve given your character and how they bring those characters to life—may actually be the betas’ most valuable role. No one will comment more precisely on your book than those you enlist in the beta-reading task. In other words, it’s likely that you’ll never hear more from readers than you will during this phase.  
 
It’s gratifying to learn that what we’ve written moved a beta reader emotionally or made them stop and highlight our painterly turn of phrase. Of course, we want to know all that’s missing or wrong with our story—we rely on others to point out our missteps—but our beta readers’ happy or intrigued or thrilled notes build us up and remind us that we’ve made a lot of solid choices in our story in addition to making a few mistakes.  

Seeing what we’ve done right reminds us that we are good writers. That we have what it takes to impress a reader with our skills. That plenty of the scenes we wrote do work, and that the climax is both brutal and amazing.  
  
Betas are the first to let us know they’ve understood our jokes and humorous circumstances (which either made them LOL or grimace), our tragic love stories (which either made them cringe or cry), and our tender moments of reflection (which hit the nail on the head or missed the mark). 
  
The comments and compliments they provide are the gold that keeps us going through each manuscript revision, through every edit, through countless rounds of proofreading and fixes. Yes, we’ve made mistakes, and the manuscript has its weaknesses that we aim to work out, but the writing is worthy, moving, has potential. There is strong work here, and because you’re in the beta-reading phase there’s time to transform what needs help into something wonderful (or at least better).  

Your betas have reassured you of that.  

Down the road, when a reviewer leaves a few words about how disappointed they were with the story (every book gets a few of these), when they sum up your hard work with a couple of thoughtlessly scrawled phrases, they probably won’t add, “But, wow, this metaphor she wrote made my head spin in the best of ways!” There won’t be any specifics at all. The wonderful details that make up your book will not enter their critique.  

But thanks to the gold your beta readers gave you, you can remind yourself that you know your work is of value. Even if it didn’t resonate with this particular reader, it did resonate with others.  

No one can take that from you. Whenever you need it, it will be there, bolstering you up, protecting you from the damage those inevitable harsh words that come flying out of the blue can do to a writer. 

When you send your manuscript to your beta pool, give them a short list of tasks to keep in mind.  

1. Focus on the content: the story, not the commas.
2. Point out any confusion.
3. Make a note in any place that moves too slowly or any detail that seems wrong or off.
4. Feel free to mention anything you particularly like! 

With their “here’s what works, here’s what doesn’t” critique, betas are on your side. Think of them as the light—and the confidence—that shines a way to a better novel than the one you’ve written all by yourself.  

Where can I find beta readers? 

The best way to find a good beta reader is old-fashioned word of mouth. Aside from that, you can reach out and take your chances. All feedback that you receive has the potential to be valuable. It also has the potential to be damaging. If the comments are harsh or overwhelming, feel free to set them aside. What you want is helpful, constructive criticism that makes sense to you. If it doesn’t resonate, do not feel obligated to follow through.  

The post Beyond Feedback: Beta Readers Give Us Gold appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(Find more Killer Writers conversations here.)

“Writing has changed a great deal since you started.”

 “I wrote my first eight books on a 1958 manual, portable Olympia—solid steel. I started out in the newspaper business in the 70s, tapping away on a typewriter. We had copy paper and carbon paper. We had paste pots with a little brush stuck down the middle—cut and paste. It’s all different.”

“There’s something to be said for that tactile experience.”

“When I was doing magazine stories, I’d have pages all over the floor of my apartment living room, and I’d be on my hands and knees trying to figure out where everything went. To this day, when I’m working on a book, I have chapters laid out on the floor because I’m trying to find if I’ve duplicated something or if I should move something. I still print and edit. I print it out every day. I just finished yesterday hand-editing the draft that I’m doing. For some reason, I can’t really edit on the computer. I have to hold the manuscript in my hands and duplicate the reading experience. I see things when I’m reading the manuscript that I don’t see on the screen, including typos. I think it was on Facebook, a young writer was asking the other day, ‘What are you supposed to do, print out the whole book? And then you have this giant stack of pages?’ And I was like, ‘Well, you kind of do it chapter by chapter.’ I felt like I was from another era.”

“Or another planet. You started as a newspaperman?”

“Yeah, I was doing paid summer internships in Southern California for the Santa Monica Evening Outlook chain, covering city council meetings when I was 19. I’ve just always been a writer. I’ve been a writer in lots of different formats—magazines, television sitcoms, screenplays—and my ultimate goal was books. It took me a long time to work my way to getting my first novel published.”

“And it did well, your first novel.”

“Yeah, it did. Not as well as Hoagy did, but my first novel was actually a coming-of-age novel called Kiddo. It got a rave review in the Sunday Times Book Review. I got my own page with my picture and the whole thing, but I didn’t marry a movie star, and I didn’t become a millionaire. My first murder mystery, The Man Who Died Laughing, was based on an experience I had. One of the things I did along the way was ghostwrite a memoir of a real-life murder in the late 70s that took place in New York. It was a major tabloid murder. I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember this, but it was Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“He allegedly killed her in Room 100 of the Chelsea Hotel, knifed her in the bathroom. It was her mother’s story. I learned a lot from that experience. That’s how I got the idea of a young novelist who had achieved great success, married a movie star, and then got writer’s block, fell on his ass, snorted everything away—his marriage, his career—and as a last-ditch fallback, his agent talked him into ghostwriting a memoir of a famous comic from the 1950s. It was called The Man Who Died Laughing, and it was nominated for an Anthony Award.”

“That was your first mystery.”

“Yep. My editor, Kate Miciak, called me up, and I said, ‘What’s an Anthony Award?’ And she said, ‘It’s awarded every year at Bouchercon,’ and I said, ‘What’s Bouchercon?’ I didn’t know anything. I wasn’t part of the mystery community at all. It didn’t win, but my third one, The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald, did win an Edgar Award and an American Mystery Award. At that point in my career—this was the late 80s—I would sit down every day, and I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was doing. I really didn’t. After I won the Edgar, I realized that I actually did know what I was doing. I just didn’t realize it.”

Check out David Handler’s The Man Who Swore He’d Never Go Home Again here:

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“Let me ask you a couple of questions, then, about knowing what you’re doing. A lot of our readers are writers-to-be, and they want to avoid plot dumping—which you don’t do. You’ve got snappy dialogue moving the story forward. When you first sit down to write a scene, do you start with what needs to be said, or with who’s saying it?”

“It varies from book to book. I try not to crowd too much. I’ll try to keep the pacing going, and whatever will keep that going and move the story along.”

“You carry a lot of the story in the dialogue.”

“I do. I write pretty good descriptions. My prose is good, particularly in the Hoagy series, but my strength has always been dialogue. That’s why I got paid a lot of money to write TV—because I wrote good comic dialogue. But in a weird sort of way, I feel like a bit of an impostor as a mystery writer, because I don’t really consider myself a crime writer. I consider myself a writer of character fiction. I create interesting, smart characters—people I’d want to know more about, or people who have a lot of secrets. I create this ensemble. It’s a story about these people, and somebody ends up dying. I don’t start with the murder. I start with the characters.”

“You start with ensemble first.”

“That’s the most important thing for me—coming up with my ensemble of characters. What is going to happen? I don’t quite know how I’m going to get there, but I have a basic thumbnail idea. I know pretty much who’s going to die and why and who did it, but the fun part is creating all of the different characters and their interlocking relationships, interlocking pasts, their motives—and making them all plausible.”

“In your dialogue, there’s a lot of emotional subtext. How do you say what needs to be said between the lines without beating the reader over the head?”

“I do a lot of trimming. I just try to be as low-key about that sort of thing as possible. When I first started out, I used to try a lot harder to be funny. I was coming out of TV, where you were used to doing five jokes to a page. My dialogue now tends to be a little more reflective.”

Click to continue.

“And you accomplish multiple things at once.”

“You have to. One of the things you have to learn how to do is to accomplish more than one thing with your dialogue and your description. You’ve got to get heart in there, in addition to humor and information. If you’re not moving the story forward, then the scene has no purpose.”

“And you use yours to plant clues, give misdirection, suspicion.”

“Without hitting people over the head. I worked with some amazing people when I was doing movies. I wrote two projects with William Goldman, and one of the things he taught me is that if you’re not moving the story forward in each scene, then the scene has no purpose.”

“Even the funny scenes?”

“We used to get into arguments. Remember L.A. Confidential? One of the most famous scenes is the Lana Turner scene. Kevin Spacey and Guy Pearce are at Formosa Café, and Pearce thinks the woman is a hooker pretending to be Lana Turner. Turns out she’s really Lana Turner. She throws a drink in his face. Hilarious. Bill said that scene should have been cut because it didn’t move the story forward. And I said, ‘But everybody loves that scene!’ He didn’t care. He was a purist.”

“Something that struck me in The Man Who Swore He’d Never Go Home Again is how distinct your characters’ voices are.”

“I make notes about each character before I start writing the book.”

“You don’t even need dialogue attributes. The voices are that clear.”

“It’s really important to write good characters. That’s what I try to focus on—making them individual.”

“And you make them sympathetic—even the murderer.”

“Yeah, I don’t write monsters. I think we’re weak and greedy and want things we can’t have, or think we should have, or carry a grudge. I try to make the murder an outgrowth of a character’s flaws and weaknesses. Over the drafts, I work on making them as fleshed out as possible.”

“This is book sixteen in the Hoagy series. What was different this time?”

“I went all the way back to the beginning—before the before, in a way. When Hoagy walks into the Blue Mill Restaurant in Greenwich Village and sees Merilee. They lock eyes, and their lives change. Lulu the basset hound isn’t even in the picture yet. Merilee’s about to pick her up in a few days.”

“So even after all these books, you’re still discovering new ground.”

“I got to explore Hoagy’s childhood. We knew almost nothing about it before. His family had operated a brass mill in Connecticut for five generations. But we didn’t know why he and his father hadn’t spoken since high school. I also brought in his childhood friend and high school sweetheart, Maggie McKenna. She calls to tell him the town librarian—who really saw his gift early on—has died. That librarian was a big figure in his life.”

“Sometimes writers turn dialogue into soliloquies. How do you know when to divide it up?”

“I’ve written like 34 books. At this point, it’s instinct. I just know when something needs to be broken up—or when we don’t even need it.”

“Do you ever break the William Goldman rule and keep a line just because you love it?”

“Yeah. I’ve got running gags and Lulu things I can’t resist. But I’ve learned to pare them down. A little bit goes a long way. That took me a long time to learn.”

_____________________________

David Handler is the Edgar Award-winning author of several bestselling mystery series. He began his career as a New York City reporter. In 1988, he published The Man Who Died Laughing, the first of his long-running series starring ghostwriter Stuart Hoag and his faithful basset hound Lulu. http://davidhandlerbooks.com/

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(5 Things to Know When Writing With Friends.)

Don’t be that person who makes them nervous. Here are five tips to help you give feedback that is both compassionate and useful.

1. Be specific.

The most helpful feedback points to specific things in the text. Instead of saying, “I found it boring,” highlight exactly where your attention started to drift. Instead of “This character is unbelievable,” try something like, “I’m finding it hard to understand Brenda’s motivation for quitting their job.” This technique also helps you discuss the writing through a less emotional lens. It’s about the writer and their writing, not your own feelings.

2. Include positive comments.

Some people think “critique” means identifying all the bad parts or revealing all the flaws. The word “critique” comes from French, where it means “examining the merits” of something, usually art. It’s only when “critique” migrated to English that it took on these judgy overtones. Part of your job as giver-of-feedback is to say what the writer has done well. Again, be specific. Congratulate them on finishing the piece. That’s already an achievement.

3. Offer questions and suggestions.

It can be tempting to show your writer buddy how to do it better. Avoid this temptation. Just ask questions and offer your commentary. Don’t rewrite the text in your own voice. Every writer has a style. Rewriting the text makes it yours, not theirs. If you want to modify the text, use Track Changes or another method that retains the original version. But don’t just make changes. Say why you think the change improves the text. Be sure to state clearly that these changes are only suggestions. It’s up to the writer to decide what works for them.

4. Focus on a few big things.

It’s most helpful to focus on a few areas for improvement. Too much feedback can lead to information overload—or, in the worst case, despair. You don’t want the other writer to give up on the piece just because it needs a polish. Pick a few points to focus on. Big-picture stuff like plot holes or inconsistent characterization. Never proofread or “fix” grammar mistakes, unless they’ve explicitly asked you to. That stuff comes at the very end, once the final draft is nailed down. There’s no point in fixing stuff that might be cut out or rewritten, and it leads the writer’s attention in the wrong direction. It can also come off as pedantic or teacher-y, even if you mean well.

5. Thank them for trusting you with their words.

We writers care about our writing. Sometimes to the extent that any negative comment feels like a knife to the chest. Death by a thousand cuts. Putting our work out there, even showing it to one other person, takes courage. Keep that in mind, always. Acknowledge their trust in you. Doing so can alleviate some anxiety around getting feedback. Almost any piece of writing can be improved. An early reader always has thoughts on how to do that. But start out by recognizing that they have just handed you a piece of their heart. Handle with care.

The post How to Give Gentle and Helpful Feedback to Writers appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(Taming the Synopsis.)

Try writing a synopsis of your draft, in no more than 500 words. While this word count may feel limiting, squeezing those hundreds of pages into one or two forces you to distill your narrative and discover the heart of your novel. This synopsis is your compass, and it’s for your eyes only, the storyteller. It’s not slick sales copy. It’s not a query letter written to persuade a literary agent your novel is brilliant, or a punchy logline designed to entice readers. This synopsis is written to reveal the scope of your novel and provide you direction in a second draft. It is for you, the creator of this novel.

Prepare

Before you write your synopsis, identify four elements in your draft: characters, conflict, setting, and narrative arc.

Characters: Identify the protagonist(s) and secondary characters. How do you decide which characters to include in your synopsis? Mention only those characters who influence the protagonist or alter the direction of the story. Then ask yourself: What does the protagonist yearn for? Does she long to run the family business? Climb Mt. Everest? Colonize Mars? Save her son from addiction?

Conflict: Now that you know what the protagonist yearns for, what internal and external obstacles stand in her way? It’s crucial to be clear about this main conflict—and the protagonist’s motivations—before you write your synopsis. And because you’re seeking the heart of your novel and not just listing a string of incidents that happen to characters, include the emotional reactions that accompany the protagonist’s and other characters’ actions: fear of abandonment, hope for reconciliation, frustration, heartbreak, elation.

Setting: The time and place in which your story occurs is vital, as characters are products of place and culture. Locale, geography, weather, historical period, all create a sense of place. Is your setting—a colony on Mars, a yacht, present day Manhattan, a medieval castle, the Great Depression—vivid and crucial to the story?

Narrative arc: The narrative arc arises from the protagonist’s yearnings, motivations, obstacles, and how the characters react to these conflicts. Once you know what the protagonist longs for, the obstacles in her way, and her emotional twists and turns, you’ll find you have a bare-boned scaffolding, perhaps even a tentative map of events and incidents. You may not know the final plot, but you may have a sense of the inciting event, the climax, and resolution.

Check out Mindy Friddle’s Her Best Self here:

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Practice

Condensing your draft into a 500-word synopsis is no easy feat. You may find it helpful to practice by drafting a synopsis of a novel you’ve recently read. Write the synopsis from memory to see if you can identify the protagonist’s conflicts, his yearnings, the role of the setting, and how the story was resolved. Then compare your synopsis with the book jacket copy. While this sort of sales copy for a novel is designed to build excitement by withholding revelations and hinting at plot twists, book jacket copy often artfully compresses key information about the protagonist, obstacles, and narrative arc. For example, consider this brief description from my novel Her Best Self (Regal House, 2024):

Janelle Wolf longs to be the woman she once was—an adored wife, a loving mother, a career woman, a force in her community—before a car accident steals her memories, ruins her reputation, and upends her life. Her only solace is found in Lana, her psychic healer, but Lana’s motives are questionable at best. As Janelle’s memories are coaxed to the surface, the ugly truth behind her accident is revealed, and what she learns will unravel her marriage, disrupt her family, and turn her small Southern town upside down.

In just three sentences, this truncated summary reveals the novel’s characters, conflict, setting, and a hint of the novel’s narrative arc.

Characters: Janelle, the protagonist, who yearns to be the successful, admired woman she once was before an accident changed her life, and a main character, Lana, a shady psychic healer.

Conflict: Janelle blindly trusts her friend Lana, a manipulative grifter on the take, who claims she can help Janelle recover her memories, restore her reputation, and reclaim her sense of self.

Setting: A small Southern town where Janelle, once a pillar in the community, grew up and raised her family.

Narrative arc: Lana urges Janelle to discover memories that reveal an “ugly truth” that will disrupt her life, her family, and her community.

Here’s another example from Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory (Simon & Schuster, 2023), a gripping, page-turner of a novel set in the Deep South. The first paragraph of the jacket copy does a masterful job of capturing what’s at stake:

Gracetown, Florida, June 1950.

Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.

The next paragraph tells us that Robbie “has a talent for seeing ghosts,” an eerie ability that may imperil or save him. Meanwhile, Robbie’s sister, Gloria, is frantically contacting relatives and connections in Florida “to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.”

Notice how this brief passage relates a wealth of information about the novel.

Characters: Robbie, the protagonist, a 12-year-old victim of injustice, who sees ghosts, and a main character, his older, devoted sister Gloria.

Conflict, obstacles, and emotions: Robbie is trying to survive the horror of a cruel and dangerous reformatory school and yearns to escape. As a Black adolescent in the Jim Crow South, he is terrified and powerless when he is unjustly accused of a crime. His sister is desperate to save her beloved little brother but finds the judicial system cruel and intractable.

Setting: June, 1950, Florida, Jim Crow South. An atmospheric, haunted reformatory school.

Narrative arc: The ticking clock here is rescuing Robbie before “it’s too late.” Robbie is petrified and a target of violence, but determined to survive, as he hones his talent for seeing ghosts. His sister longs to save him before he is assaulted or killed.

Begin

Write your synopsis in third person, present tense (even if your novel is written in first person). You’re seeking clarity, so keep your sentences straightforward and precise, and boil down descriptions of events. Here’s an example of how you might tighten your synopsis:

Flabby: On vacation in Las Vegas, Darla searches the bar and hotel lobby for Brad and finally finds him in the casino where she tells him she resents that he has once again broken his promise to never gamble again and swears she will book a flight and leave.

Tight: On vacation, Darla confronts Brad about his gambling problem. Heartbroken, she swears she will leave him.

Don’t mention every event or include every scene. Your synopsis is not just a plot summary; you’re conveying events that specifically affect the protagonist’s decisions. When you use your synopsis to revise the manuscript, this will force you to pare away your narrative. You may have to jettison characters, kill subplots, and that’s a good thing. Do mention the characters’ emotional reactions to events. And include spoilers, plot twists, and resolved secrets.

Commit to writing a synopsis every day for a week. The process of wringing out your draft informs the subconscious and sharpens your creative instincts. Read over your synopsis to pinpoint realistic motivations, link events, and discover connections. This will drive tension and pacing in your novel.

With this winnowed version as your guide, you are ready for the next leg of your journey: writing the second draft. Referring to your synopsis will keep you on track and may provide an organic unity to your draft. Now you can add scenes that reinforce your character’s motivations and conflicts, and prune subplots that don’t. You’re clear on the role of the setting, and you have a narrative arc. 

After a dozen chapters or so, try writing another synopsis to see if you’ve strayed off course, or to explore changes you want to make. Your synopsis is not binding, but malleable, and you may alter it as characters develop, as they are revealed through their actions. The synopsis is a tool to provide you with a bird’s eye view of your novel, a compass that reveals the lay of the land, to guide you through the topography of your novel.

The post The Synopsis Is Your Compass appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Millions of amazing stories never make it through the editing phase, languishing forever in drawers, unfinished and unshared. Others make it onto Amazon only to end up with disappointing sales and one-star reviews.

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After 15 years of freelancing and working smoothly with dozens and dozens of editors, it was finally the day of the dromedary. I pitched an article to a great outlet I wanted to write for … and my luck ran out.

Now, I should add up front that having worked as both a writer and magazine editor, I love the editorial process and the value of a solid collaboration. If anything, I let too much slide. I hate conflict and am largely a wimp. I’m overly polite. I’ve been mistaken for being a kindly Canadian.

But as a career writer, your byline is all you’ve got—and so you better defend its honor when you’re chosen for trial by editorial combat.

What do you do when an editor takes your piece and nukes it, rewrites chunks of it in a different voice, introduces facts that are incorrect, makes use of personal pronouns on your behalf, and publishes it without giving you a glimpse?

After trying (and failing) to convince yourself that “you’ll laugh about this someday!” you get to work.

Here’s a guide—for both nonfiction and fiction writers—to corralling that fateful camel, should it ever come marauding into your literary livelihood.

1. Process the Process

First things first: It’s key to understand the essential editorial process so you can discern between basic edits and their more vexing counterparts. In a nutshell, for a print or website article, after you flesh out the idea with your editor and turn in a draft, the editor will assess the copy and offer suggestions, questions readers may be wondering, and so on, which they’ll then kick back to you. After you address the revisions, you’ll send it back to the editor, who may do additional rounds of said back and forth until you both arrive at the final copy, with the editor cleaning up routine surface-level things like grammatical errors, awkward phrasing, and similar items in the process. Book publishers can vary in their approach but tend to follow a similar method.

The heavy-handedness of any given editor varies by person. I’ve known editors who put on a butcher’s apron, turn Track Changes and heavy metal on, and leave words screaming in horror-movie fashion. I’ve known others who prefer not to touch anything outside of objective grammatical fixes, leaving it to the writer to make any requested tweaks (even the comically minute). If an editor does any substantial overhauling, rearranging, or rephrasing, they’ll usually give the writer a look at the result to avoid factual errors.

Usually, the process is symbiotic. After all, the writer and editor have the same goal: a great story. When I was a full-time editor, I was asked on a panel at a writing conference if I had an editorial philosophy, a guiding principle. I went full Hippocrates: Do no harm. Most editors would agree.

2. Watch for the Warning Signs

If my guard had been up, I’d have heard the camels grunting in the distance as they made a beeline for my Google Doc. First, the editor proposed a completely different concept than I had pitched. Which is fine! I’ve asked countless writers to adjust their pitches to fit a particular audience or thematic issue. Problem was, the editor wanted this entire article to be based on a one-sentence headline he had written and I had slightly tweaked … which leaves room for a gulf of miscommunication and misinterpretation. Next, the examples he sent were all over the map … and didn’t seem to provide a logical guide for what the piece should be. Third, responses to emails were days, and sometimes weeks, apart—not uncommon for a busy editor. But also indicative of an editor who doesn’t have a wealth of time to spend on any given article, and maybe hasn’t truly thought this piece through.

Do what I didn’t: Solidify and clarify everything up front in writing. Ask every question. And don’t be afraid to take the piece elsewhere if you don’t like the answers you’re getting back—or if you’re not getting answers. Mind your intuition—and don’t throw caution to the wind simply because you want a new byline in your bio (guilty as charged!).

3. Melt Down

I waited for further communiques from my editor … and then I noticed a Google Alert for my name. A surprise: The piece was live! Confused but excited, I hopped online … and discovered the issues mentioned above, and then some.

This exact scenario likely won’t ever happen to you, but this advice applies to any edit at any stage of the process: This is the part where you’re allowed to spiral. Belt out a few expletives. Have a day drink! If you have the luxury of doing so, indulge in some retail therapy or blow off work for the rest of the afternoon and go for an expansive dog walk. It’s cathartic—and it’s also critical to getting to the next step. The most important thing: Do not impulsively reach out to your editor at this moment. The key is to first drain the emotion from the conversation.

4. Write It Out

We’re all writers here. So, write it out! Deconstruct what’s wrong with the piece. Write down every single thing that bothers you about it, without paying attention to the veracity or egregiousness of any given item—yet. When you have your list compiled, ranging from grammatical errors that have accidentally been introduced to verbiage that simply does not align with your voice, begin to organize your grievances. I structured mine into four buckets: Factual Errors, Stylistic/Phrasing Issues, Personal Preference Quirks, Me Being a Diva—with the level of urgency following those tiers. Since there was an array of issues in the first two columns, I decided to focus on addressing those and let the more nitpicky items go. Seeing everything laid out on paper will give you objectivity and perspective.

5. Pencil in Another Writer

As you’re going about this process (especially if you have an infusion of Catholic guilt and the Midwestern people-pleasing gene, as I do), you’ll likely begin to wonder if the edit is really as bad as you think it is, or if you’ve just gotten too far into your own head. It’s a fair question—so confidentially consult a trusted writer friend. If they want to help you out, give them a recap of the correspondence, the comments and notes on the draft of the piece, and the final result. Ask them to be candid with you and provide a reality check.

Most importantly: As you’re going through all of this, do not feel bad. You’re advocating for yourself and your work. Our words live forever on the web—and we must empower ourselves to fight for them.

6. Choose Your Adventure

As a writer, I absolutely hate talking on the phone—but freely acknowledge that most people are better at it than me. On the page is where I feel most in control, and that is a huge asset here (you also have the boon of a paper trail). So, select the communication method that will allow you to be your most effective, then draft the talking points or your email. Be explicit and clear about what changes you’re requesting.

Before hitting send or making the call, think through different scenarios. Again: You don’t want to be reactionary. When it comes down to it, the editing world is a small place, and most editors are well-connected. I thought through my reaction for: a) a measured response; b) an angry response; and c) a nonresponse.

I’d decided that if he would make the targeted tweaks I had requested to make the piece factually correct and better overall, I could live with it. If he wouldn’t, I’d move on to more aggressive options (more on that in a moment).

7. Don’t Get Greedy

When I sent my email requesting tweaks, I got an immediate reply … though it was one I had not prepped for: a vacation out-of-office. After I collected the pieces of my exploded head from various points around the house, I regrouped and again recentered.

Ultimately, to my immense relief, the publication was open to the tweaks. I considered getting greedy and venturing into more changes … but decided to stop while I was ahead. As a former editor, I know how writers can take a thread and keep pulling and pulling until it spins into a living document. So with the goals I’d outlined fulfilled, I called it a day.

8. Consider the Nuclear Option (Carefully)

Had things not worked out, I was prepared for the nuclear option: asking them to either take my name off the piece, or to take it down. I’ve never had to go to such an extreme in my career. The most important thing to consider: Can you live with a prospective future editor discovering the piece and judging your work based on it? Had I pursued the nuclear option, I’d have done so as professionally as any other interaction. And that’s key: It’s business. Edits are rarely malicious. In all likelihood, my editor was probably rushing to get pieces scheduled before he headed out on vacation.

9. Foolproof Yourself for the Future

The biggest takeaway: As writers, we shouldn’t take any part of the editorial process for granted. For example: If I really ripped into someone’s piece at a magazine (and I have, many times!), I’d send them a galley for review—mainly because I didn’t want to blindside them, but also to make sure I hadn’t damaged anything. Going forward, I’m going to ask, in writing, for a cursory glimpse of the piece before publication—which would have prevented this entire episode from happening.

*****

Editing is a painfully subjective game, and there is no Standardized Operating Procedure or code of conduct. My editor likely believed he was making the piece better. In an ideal world, the key to solving a clash of opinions with an editor is often a matter of mindset—calmly working with them to split the difference, and knowing when to shake hands and call it a day. Some editors you’ll get along with marvelously. Others, the best thing you can do is bid thanks and well-wishes, hop on your camel, and go your separate way (deploying your middle finger only if it’s part of a peace sign).

In the end, I may have only been able to iron out the humps of my camel a tiny bit—but hey, I’ve been chuckling the whole time I’ve been writing this. As it turns out, I would indeed laugh about it someday.

Click to continue. 

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(When Is My Novel Ready to Read?)

The honeymoon phase lasts around 48 hours. Then that sinking feeling in your chest kicks in. As you revisit your draft, you realize the hard part has only just begun. Rewriting is where real writers emerge. It’s the time to dig deep, pull out the tools and techniques you’ve gathered over the years. It’s when you revisit the novels of your favorite authors, hoping they’ll drop some hints on how to navigate the rocky road of rewriting.

The rewrite is when you pore over each sentence, ensuring it’s the exact right word. It’s when every character gets a critical once-over to ensure they earn their keep in the story. You’ve got to decide if each chapter contributes to the narrative. And yes, even your beloved snippets of dialogue have to earn their spot on the page.

I learned this the hard way while creating my novel, Karma Under Fire. If you were to tally up all the pages I rewrote, you might question my sanity. The rewriting process haunted me, and I grappled to refine the story into something readers would enjoy.

One night, as the clock neared two a.m., after an exhausting editing session, I considered throwing in the towel. I wondered if Karma Under Fire was worth all the work, or if I should just toss the story into a drawer and start again with a new idea? I felt the weight of uncertainty, not sure what direction to pursue.

That’s when I stumbled upon the 2011 flick In Time, starring Justin Timberlake. In this futuristic dystopia, time is wealth, and the rich can seemingly live forever. Justin’s character stumbles into a race against the relentless clock, striving to reach his goals while facing numerous obstacles.

The film shined a spotlight on my deepest fear: the time invested in completing my novel. I felt a twinge of shame for the snail’s pace progress. I wondered if I was up to the task, if my story was engaging enough, if I could cross the finish line.

In that moment, I struck a deal with myself. I decided to halt the self-flagellation and recapture the joy and enthusiasm that initially fueled my writing. I committed to tackling the story one page at a time, asking myself a simple question: Do I love it? If the answer was no, I ruthlessly replaced it. This method allowed me to break down the process into a series of manageable steps and brought me to the finish line, confident I’d crafted the best story I had in me.

Check out Love Hudson-Maggio’s Karma Under Fire here:

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Now, here’s the advice I wish someone had offered me that night when I nearly abandoned Karma Under Fire. If you are grappling with your novel’s final draft, ensnared in the rewriting labyrinth, here’s an incentive to keep you moving forward: Simply begin at the beginning.

Here are 2 steps to get you started:

1. Rekindle the passion. Rediscover the enthusiasm and motivation that ignited your writing. Why did you embark on this story? What message did you intend for readers to carry away?
2. Evaluate your work page by page. Scrutinize your work one page at a time, asking yourself if you genuinely love it. Does it make your heart sing?

Writing constitutes an ongoing journey, and the rewriting phase serves as the bridge between inspiration and a gratifying finished work. It’s no cakewalk, but remember the sage words of Mark Twain: the “right word” is the key to achieving excellence.

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(Using Beats to Improve Dialogue and Action in Scenes.)

Some writers think in binary terms of “rough draft” and “final draft” when it comes to process. However, writing is more nuanced than that. Additionally, making one “rough” pass through a project followed by one “final” pass does not necessarily result in the best outcome.

Instead, writers may benefit from approaching projects with a three-part process. This is an approach I teach my college students in their first-year writing courses, though the method can be applied to writers at all stages and across genres.

The three-part process is this: prewriting, writing, and rewriting. Let’s learn more about each stage and how writers can adapt this to their individual methods and goals.

Part One: Prewriting. 

The prefix “pre” means “before,” so this is a good way to remember that there are things that may need to happen “before” you get started writing. Some of those might be environmental—like having a quiet workspace or the right kind of pen in hand—and some might be more personal—like carving out enough time in the day to write or learning to brainstorm. 

Some writers compose by outlines; some compose more spontaneously. In this prewriting stage, think about what makes you most comfortable as a writer, and work to cultivate that environment. 

Additionally, consider “before” tasks that you can complete that may make your project smoother once you start it. Do you need to perform research? Schedule an interview? Have certain books handy? Building in time for these tasks that need completion prior to a project can help you feel more confident and organized when you actually begin.

Part Two: Writing. 

This is where you put pen to paper (or pencil to paper … or fingers to the keyboard … or dictate your words … writers write in lots of different ways, after all!). 

In the writing stage, you are an inventor. You are inventing new sentences that have never been written. You are creating lines that no one has ever read. You are producing something brand new, and the process of doing that can be exhilarating. Enjoy the ride! 

As you do so, take pride in the decisions you are making. What’s the best title? How many paragraphs do you need? What kind of transition do you want to add? How do you want to conclude your project? These choices are yours to make as the author, so take time in this stage to explore all aspects of your project as those decisions take form.

Part Three: Rewriting. 

The prefix “re” means “again,” so this is a good way to remember that there are things that may need to happen “again,” after you have completed the writing stage. Editing and proofreading are important, but so are structural issues. 

Is your writing clearly organized? Does a certain part of it feel different than other parts? Might a new section need to be added? What about fact-checking and copyright permissions? As you look at your writing “again,” you may re-see things in a new way that prompts you to try a fresh approach.

Once you spend some time rewriting, you may also be led back to the prewriting stage. Perhaps you wish to include something new, or maybe there is a major overhaul of a certain part of your project that you want to address. This three-step process can be recursive, so you can complete the steps again as many times as you like.

So how do you know when to stop the process?

A project may be complete if you feel that any additional attempts at prewriting, writing, and rewriting will not yield productive changes. For instance, sometimes my college students complete this process once for a short essay, but they may go through the process multiple times for a more substantial project. Every writing situation is different, just like every writer is unique.

When writers take time to consider a process-based approach, they can help ensure that their final drafts are the very best that they can be. 

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Originally from Australia, she is a Professor of Performing Arts at Georgetown University, and lives in Washington, DC. Visit her at www.christineevanswriter.com. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

In this post, Christine shares how her writing process works, when she knew her book would live (after not being sure earlier in the drafting process), and more.

Name: Christine Evans
Literary agent: Jennifer Thompson
Book title: Nadia
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Release date: September 19, 2023
Genre/category: Literary Fiction; Historical Fiction
Previous titles: Cloudless, a novella in verse; Trojan Barbie, a play
Elevator pitch for the book: Nadia just wants to fit into her boring 1990s London office job—until one day, a man she suspects is a sniper from the Sarajevo siege she fled turns up to work at the desk next to hers. Tense, suspenseful, and mordantly funny, Nadia spans countries and times to track the complex ways in which past political violence can shadow and disrupt the present.

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What prompted you to write this book?

It started with a ghost. I was working in New York on my play, You Are Dead. You Are Here., about the traumatic aftermath of the Iraq war for both US veterans and Iraqi civilians. The play had a minor character called Nadia, a temp secretary haunting a therapy office. She came from the (fictional) agency Temp Angels. Their slogan was: Short Term Solutions When You Need Them Most!

I became fascinated by this ghostly, secretive temp worker. Temps slip in and out between worlds; it would be a great job for a spy, or someone who wanted to disappear. I started wondering if my Nadia needed “short term solutions” of her own.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

It was a very, very long process! Over a decade, in between other projects.

I didn’t really have an “idea” that changed as I wrote. My process is more intuition-driven than that. It’s more like being a detective: I follow a hunch, a voice. The Australian writer, Ross Gibson, says that your attention is a magnet you swing over your material. It attracts metal filings that start to form shapes. That’s what happened: The shapes formed as I wrote.

The 1990s Balkan wars context to the novel came later, as my two main characters started to come to life. I have a long connection with the region, first as a traveling musician when it was still Yugoslavia and later, through theater connections and friendships. Once I had a draft, the notes I got (on war details, music, queer culture, London refugee life) from friends and from professional readers from former Yugoslavia also changed the book in large and small ways.

I did so many drafts of this book. So. Many. Images and character come quickly for me; plot, however, is laborious. I almost gave up many times. Luckily, Nadia won the Threepenny Editor’s prize for an unfinished novel: The prize was a first-draft edit. Editor Sarah Cypher, herself a novelist (The Skin and Its Girl), helped me see my way through to the end of the first draft.

Then one day, I saw the ending image of my story. Once I had that, I knew the book would live.

The last significant change came in response to an editorial note by Jim McCoy, director of University of Iowa Press (UIP). He observed that the story of Iggy, the suspected sniper, had a story that petered out once he and Nadia were both in London. Jim challenged me to give that character a full arc as well, and to expand the role of music in the book (Iggy’s a wannabe punk musician). So, after picking myself off the floor at having to face yet another draft, I’m so happy that I did that last revision. It revealed an essential turning point to me and transformed the book.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

I think as a playwright, I had this naïve idea that the book world was simpler to navigate than the theater. Wrong! And I had no idea how utterly deluged publishers are—now I do. Everything was even harder than usual, because we were pitching the book during the first two years of the pandemic. There was a lot of anxiety and general glue in the works during that time.

Eventually, I had meetings with editors. It became clear that Jim McCoy at UIP was the right publisher: His vision of the work aligned with mine, and his notes made sense. It’s been a real joy to work with UIP. The whole team is highly professional, collaborative, and communicative, and they are clearly passionate about making beautiful literary books. For a small press, they punch above their weight.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

I hadn’t intended Iggy to have his own entire thread in the book, but as with Nadia, once I heard his voice, he insisted on a role. I was surprised that Iggy’s voice came to me from a second-person point of view, but that’s how it came to life.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope they miss their train stop because they can’t put it down. I hope the story will be both strange and familiar. I hope they laugh and cry and see the world a bit differently after reading it. I hope it haunts them for months. I hope they love it so much they tell all their friends. Those are my own hopes as a reader when I pick up a new book.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

E. L. Doctorow famously wrote: “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

My advice: Follow those headlights. Don’t give up ‘til you get to the end. Ideas come from writing, not the other way around. 

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