Why Your Submissions are Rejected

Here are the top fifteen reasons agents and publishers reject our submissions. Provided by Anne Mini, from the 2006 Surrey, B.C. writers conference. Check her blog for more reasons and explanations.

1. An opening image that did not work.

2.Opened with rhetorical question(s).

3. The first line is about setting, not about story.

4. The first line’s hook did not work, because it was not tied to the plot or the conflict of the opening scene.

5. The first line’s hook did not work, because it was an image, rather than something that was happening in the scene.

6. Took too long for anything to happen (a critique, incidentally, leveled several times at a submission after only the first paragraph had been read); the story taking time to warm up.

7. Not enough happens on page 1

8. The opening sounded like an ad for the book or a recap of the pitch, rather than getting the reader into the story.

9. The opening contained the phrases, “My name is…” and/or “My age is..."

10. The opening contained the phrase, “This can’t be happening.”

11. The opening contained the phrase or implication, “And then I woke up.”

12. The opening paragraph contained too much jargon

13. The opening contained one or more clichéd phrases.

14. The opening contained one or more clichéd pieces of material. (The most I counted in a single submission was 5.) Specifically singled out: a character’s long red or blonde hair.

15. The opening had a character do something that characters only do in books, not real life. Specifically singled out: a character who shakes her head to clear an image, “He shook his head to clear the cobwebs.”

Have any of you received anything similar or different reasons? 

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A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in Northwest Washington. Her first novel, Cowgirl Dreams, is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, has recently won the national WILLA Award. Heidi has a degree in journalism, a certificate in fiction writing, and is a member of Northwest Independent Editors Guild. She teaches writing and edits, blogs, and is working on the next books in her “Dare to Dream” series.  

Small Towns

 Small Towns

One of my favorite things about the 4^th of July in the USA is small town parades.  Everyone has a part, everyone has a chance to feel special, and everyone’s gifts are appreciated.  

 One year I went with a friend to a parade in her hometown.  Old vehicles lead the way with mustangs, corvettes, model Ts, farm tractors and vintage fire trucks.  There were mostly men driving and they smiled and waved and gunned their engines.  The parade continued with school bands, VWF groups, Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, SPCA dogs, and truck drawn floats.  Bringing up the rear of the parade was a horse contingency, which was a good place to put the horses.  As I waved to the men riding the horses, I did a double take; they were the same men that were driving the cars at the beginning of the parade.  I smiled and waved all the harder. 

 I learned some things that day: sometime in life we have more than one role to play and each role is important; in big events, it is the little people that make things happen; and when you smile and wave there is a good chance those around you will smile and wave back.

 What do you enjoy about about your hometown? Can you fashion a story around it? Can it be your setting? The people your characters?

 Martha Swirzinski, M. A.

www.MovementPlus.com

www.WholeChildPublishing.com

How Much is Too Much in YA Books

So who doesn’t swear or cuss on occasion? Right? It’s part of our current culture. Everyone does it—increasingly so and harsher as we go along. Swearing has increased in movies, television shows but especially books. When I was a teen reading Lord of the Rings or anything written by Ray Bradbury there wasn’t a single cuss word anywhere. Teens then were cussing up a storm when gathered in groups and such. 

But it wasn’t in our literature nearly to the extent it is today.

This begs the question: Is all of that cussing really necessary?

Sarah Coyne, professor of family life at Brigham Young University analyzed the use of profanity in forty young adult books on the best seller list. Thirty-five of them had at least one swear word. On the average there were thirty-eight instances of cussing, with one book containing nearly five hundred uses of foul language.

Is that really necessary to become a best seller with teens? The argument is the author is reaching for authenticity and grit. But there are plenty of books with grit and reality that don’t make us feel like we need a shower to rinse off the stench after reading them. Look at The Hunger Games Series. Could a story get any grittier or more realistic? How much cussing did you hear from Katniss or Peta? During the final battle with Lord Voldemort, did Harry Potter let loose a stream of expletives?

In my humble opinion, cussing is a cheap way out of finding a creative way to express oneself. And it cheapens the book as well.

Here's something interesting Professor Coyne discovered:

The characters doing the swearing tended to be of higher social status, better looking and have more money than their non-swearing counterparts.

So what does that say to the preteens who are forming their ideas of who they are and who they will become as adults? Everyone knows kids who read, tend to do so about three to five years above their age level. I’ve seen Fourth Graders reading the Twilight series. None of MY children would ever have read something like that at age nine, but I saw it when I was teaching. And the kids who were allowed to read material years ahead of their maturational level, refused to read age-appropriate, excellent literature, thereby missing out of a whole world of good books. 

The problem with today’s young adult books is a reader doesn’t know what they’re getting into until they’re knee deep in the mire. This goes for swearing, sex and violence. Ever try to stop a teen from 'enjoying' something which contains sex, foul language or gore? Of course an allowance is made for the genre bridging the innocence of middle grade books and adult-level reading. But how much is too much? How do we protect the sanctity of innocence until a young adult is ready to become an adult if what they’re reading reveals all?

As an author of Picture Books up through Young Adult, I feel the need to protect my young readers from what they’re seeing in movies and television, hearing in the lyrics of their music and experiencing while playing their video games. Teens aren’t allowed to remain innocent and naiive anymore…and I think it’s a shame on our society.

Great Marketing, Networking, and The Gift of Surprise

This post is as much about giving as it is about writing. And, yes, I equate giving with great marketing. This review appeared in a Google Alert. I didn't send a review copy. There was no query involved. It just happened. Thus, it was a surprise and very heartwarming. Regardless of what you've been told in the past about networking and marketing, that's what it's really about. Making friends. From the heart.

A review of an author's book is about the best gift you can possibly give him or her. This review is my Kathryn M. Weiland and I hope you'll take her example and review a book you've read lately. Post it on your blog and on Amazon. And then let him or her know about it--just in case they haven't tuned into the magic of Google Alerts yet! (-:

Review of Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips for Writers by Kathryn M. Weiland

Carolyn Howard-Johnson is well known among writers for her helpful book The Frugal Book Promoter, and she continues to encourage and guide writers through her many other projects, including this fast read (56 pages), which she advertises as a supplement to her book The Frugal Book Editor. After opening with an intro, reminding authors of the importance of crossing our T’s and dotting our I’s in both our queries and our published works, she launches into the meat of the book: page after page of handy references for spotting and fixing tricky word pairs.

Organized alphabetically with word pairs separated by slashes (e.g., “bereft / bereaved”), the book makes it easy to look up definitions and identify which word should be used in specific circumstances. Although the book’s diminutive length prevents it from anywhere close to exhaustive, it’s a good starting place and can easily be backed up with the more complete list in The Frugal Book Editor.

Priced reasonably (especially the Kindle version) and packed with lots of writerly wit and humor, the book makes for both an enjoyable read and a worthwhile reference manual. To find it go to www.budurl.com/WordtrippersPB

~K.M. Weiland is the author of the historical western A Man Called Outlaw and the medieval epic Behold the Dawn. She enjoys mentoring other authors through her writing tips, her book Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success, and her instructional CD Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration.

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Fear of Formatting

I have a novel forthcoming from MuseItUp publishing, a science fiction novel for tweens/young adults, and as part of the novel, I created a poet and wrote thirty-one of his poems. Eight of the poems appear in the novel, and I wanted to publish the whole collection to go along with the book. I dragged my feet - first about obtaining permission to use the poems that appear in the book, and second, when I had permission, about putting the book together.

Fear of formatting held me back, but at last, with the deadline approaching, I jumped in.


I created the cover on the above using my image and a CreateSpace template.

Covers: This was my first sticking point. But fear not, designing one's own book cover is easy with CreateSpace, as they have cover templates and images you can use. Or you can use your own photo, or go to one of the many websites that offer photographs and buy one. I went to Bigshotphoto to purchase the image for the cover of "Sand in the Desert." It cost me $2.99 for the small size.

For the cover of SandInTheDesert, see Karen Cioffi's post: http://margaretfieland.com/blog1/2012/05/26/design-your-own-ebook-cover/


For the formatting, alas, there was no cure but to jump in. CreateSpace does have templates you can download and use for the various size finished documents. They have predefined layouts, page styles, and the like, and you fill in the blanks (or sometimes, generic text) with your own.

I downloaded and used one.  And now, many hours later, I have just ordered my second proof copy - the first had problems with both formatting and content -- and I know a lot more about formats.

I use OpenOffice rather than Ms Word, so the menus will be slightly different, but here are some of the things I learned to watch out for:

Page setup options as to the distance from the top and bottom and from the sides.
Whether the format is MIRRORED or not. 

Header and Footer: Do you have them? Do they have the same contents left and right?

What format follows this one? I got hung up on this because the LEFT page format had LEFT as the next format instead of the RIGHT page format. The RIGHT page format had the same problem - RIGHT was the next format instead of LEFT. This screwed up my page numbers.

Paragraph: Line spacing and distance between paragraphs.

Fonts: This one is pretty straightforward in your document, but CreateSpace wants the fonts embedded in the document. OpenOffice doesn't appear to have an option to put them in a .doc file, so I had to select "export to PDF" and check the  option to include the fonts in the PDF.

Size of your finished book:  The page formats include the page size, which will, of course, affect how much space you have for text. The CreateSpace templates will give you a guide as to how much space to leave for the margins - the INNER is the critical one, as you will need to leave enough room for the binding.

Proof Reading: There's no substitute for proof reading. Proof read for formatting, and again for content. I read through for the formatting, then again for the order of my poems, and once again for the poems' content.

My personal criteria for passing something out of a proof phase is that I read it through twice without finding any errors. Sad experience has shown me that I can overlook an error once through, but the chance I will overlook the same error on another reading is small.  Yes, this is tedious. Yes, it's saved my ass more than once.

Here are some references:

For OpenOffice:

http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/office_guides/openoffice_3_writer_user_guide/openoffice_writer_Book_chapter_sequence.html

http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/ooo-help/r2.1/en-US/WIN/writer/guide/header_pagestyles


Here are some for MS Word:

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Microsoft-Word-1058/2009/6/Mirror-margins-headers.htm 

http://www.ehow.com/how_4488436_lay-out-book-manuscript-microsoft.html


I just ordered my second proof copy. The first had both formatting and content issues, ones I didn't spot using the digital proof copy.  I'll be examining this copy carefully, both for formatting and for content. For each, if I can go through it twice without finding any errors, then I'll declare it good to go.

Related articles

• APA Headers in Open Office

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• How to Make an Interior Book File for CreateSpace (AKA Formatting Your Paperback Interior Book File)

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• How to convert .doc and ODF files to clean and lean HTML

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• Report On OpenOffice

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3 Writing Maxims to Ignore or Tweak

Today, Writers on the Move has a wonderful guest article from freelance writer Melissa Miller.

3 Writing Maxims to Ignore or Tweak

If you've undertaken any formal education in creative writing – say, more than one workshop – you probably know that much of the same advice is recycled by your teachers and peers, time and time again.

This is not necessarily a bad thing: the collective knowledge of people who have devoted their lives to this craft is an invaluable asset to draw on, especially when you're first setting out on the journey of finding your own way as a writer.

That said, some of the clichés are as stale as day-old bread (see what I did there?) and you should take them with a grain of salt (mm-hmm). Remember: in writing, there are no hard and fast rules. Anyone who tells you otherwise has been brainwashed, and is not to be resented so much as pitied. They will forever be confined by the non-existent rules, and their writing will seem as though you've read it too many times before, because it's been streamlined by groupthink, too many heuristic words of wisdom they've unquestioningly absorbed.

Here are a few old chestnuts that you should always question, and not even because they're necessarily wrong, but because they could stand to be examined more deeply:

1.    "Write what you know."

The way you interpret this is what matters. Should all your writing be autobiographical? Not necessarily. Is research off-limits? Certainly not.

But the emotional truth of your writing can only come from felt experience. This is what Stanislavski preached for actors, and was later embraced as "the Method" by such luminaries as Marlon Brando and Dustin Hoffman, but it's also true for writers.

So you can write about others with wildly different backgrounds from your own, but probe into yourself spiritually and try to empathize with how a given moment must have felt.

2.    "Show, don’t tell."

The problem here is that this is literally (or literarily) impossible. Writing only tells, by definition, unless you're writing in hieroglyphics, and even then, as the Rosetta Stone taught us, they were usually not representational, but conventionalized symbols.

Anyway, that's a tangent, but the point stands. What they really mean by this cliché is, "simulate showing, not telling," but that's not nearly as pithy.

It is true, though, that the level and diversity of sensory detail in a piece of writing has a profound, immersive effect on the reader. In this way, literature is sort of like virtual reality, but invented 10,000 years before any goofy 3D headsets.

3.    Always remember your audience.

Okay, this one is particularly well-intentioned. It's like "the customer's always right." The idea is that you should respect your eventual reader, and anticipate what they'll want, how to hook them, how to keep their interest, etc.

It's a good maxim, like these other two…as far as it goes. The problem comes when your audience is always in your head, psyching you out, from the first draft onward. This can censor or even paralyze your natural flow as a writer.

Sure, it's important not to waste the time of others. But the best way you can make sure to write something worth their reading is to, in another famous platitude, coined by Joseph Campbell, "follow your bliss." Don't forget to write for yourself too.

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Melissa Miller is a freelance writer. Throw your questions to melissamiller831@gmail.com.

Blog Posting, Keywords, Anchor Text, Tags, and Website Statistics Part 2

In Part 1 of  Blog Posting, Keywords, Anchor Text, Tags, and Website Statistics we talked about Keywords and their importance on driving traffic. Today, in Part 2, we discuss Anchor Text and Tags.

Anchor Text

Another interesting fact in regard to the statistics’ referring sites is that the KCWM site itself is listed as a source. This is accomplished by creating anchor text within the post content and/or at the bottom of the post as “Additional Reading” or other worded lead-in.  The anchor text (article titles) under this section leads the reader to another page/post within your site.

According to Wikipedia, “anchor text is weighted (ranked) highly in the search engine algorithms, because the linked text is usually relevant to the landing page.”

Is there a difference between an anchor text leading to another post and simply putting the url itself? YES.

Anchor text allows search engines to easily find and index your content and they value this strategy; the url address doesn’t have the same ‘word power.’ Wikipedia says, “The objective of search engines is to provide highly relevant search results; this is where anchor text helps.” This is part of SEO.

Tags

Next on my ‘to do’ list when posting an article on my site is to put relevant tags.

In the article “Using Categories and Tags Effectively on Your Blog” on
ProBlogger.net, it explains that tags should be thought of “as the colorful little page markers you might use to flick back to your favorite pages in a book. The tags don’t describe the book as a whole, instead they describe individual sections of the book.”

Two important factors to consider:

•    Tags complement categories. If you use Wordpress you’ll be able to and should use categories. Blogger does not offer this feature, so it’s even more important to use tags.

•    Tags should be focused and use the same ones for each specific topic. This means if you are writing about book marketing, use the same specific tags: book marketing, book promotion, etc.

 Don’t switch them up. Be consistent because it is this consistency that search engines will use to index your site and establish you as an authority on that keyword. This means a higher ranking in the search engines.


Promote your Blog Posts

If you want to enhance your visibility, you need to SHARE each article/post. Wordpress and Blogger both have plugins or gadgets to provide easy ‘sharing’  to Facebook, GooglePlus, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Linkedin. Make use of the ‘sharing’ feature.

Then of course there are your other social networks, your groups. Don’t forget to post a message in your groups letting them know you have a new post up.

Use these three blog posting elements for each of your posts and your traffic/views are sure to increase.

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MORE ON ONLINE MARKETING

Widen Your Reach Know Your Audience
Small Business Marketing – Know What Consumers Buy

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To keep up with writing and marketing information, along with Free webinars, join us in The Writing World (top right top sidebar).
Karen Cioffi
Award-Winning Author, Freelance/Ghostwriter
Author Online Presence Instructor

Create and Build Your Author/Writer/Home Business Online Presence
http://www.karencioffi.com/author-online-presence-ecourse/

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http://karencioffifreelancewriter.com/karen-cioffi-writing-services/



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