O'Neill: Probably the best piece of advice I can give an aspiring writer is to pay as much attention to your setting as to your plot, characters, and prose.
When I'm reading an unsolicited manuscript, I'm reading to reject....So you've got a few precious minutes to grab my attention, and you better use them.
It's hard do with plot. If your plot is simple enough to communicate in the first two pages, I've probably seen it a hundred times. It's hard to do with character, for similar reasons.
It's easy to do with setting. Two pages is more than enough space to paint a picture of your world that grabs my attention, if it's fresh and intriguing. You can't compete with [other things demanding my attention] when all you have to offer is yet another version of the tale of King Arthur, or a generic medieval setting, or a tavern filled with rangers, dwarves, and a half-orc with a dungeon map.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Settings are Important
From this article about SF/F:
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5 comments:
Hi Deborah,
You have a lot of rather interesting information here and some good tips. Well worth the read, so thank you. One day the letter you open wil say.... YES please..so keep on submitting!
Best wishes,
MM
Miss Mapp, thank you so much. I needed that right now. (I just got another rejection on "Pixie Savior.")
Blast them! and chin up. I'ts so easy to think it's personal and that you personally are useless - well thats' how it gets me - but it's simply NOT true, you are valuable, special and a fine writer, AND, one day, when all that refining is done and you submit to the right place.....
Believe in yourself Deborah :-)
Miss Mapp, I need to find a way to keep you around as my cheering section. :) I feel energized and ready to get back writing. Rejections usually put me off my writing for at least a day.
My problem is more than I'm too analytical. Someone can put me, personally, down and I'll shrug it off. I know my personal worth. As you said, we're both useful, valuable, special people and fine writers. :)
But when a person says something about my work and it just doesn't make sense to me, I get mentally stuck. After all, communication is generally supposed to convey meaning. However, I think I need to ignore anything in editor rejection letters that doesn't make sense. I'm coming to the conclusion rejections are intended to convey no meaning beyond "no."
I think you got it in one!
Why should they be intrested in some one that they don't think is going to make them money. It must be pretty vile for them to have to say no day after day after day too. So no, they don't want to get involved past the sorry, no thank you.
Which is OK, and I don't think any thing should be read into the no other than they are not the agent/publisher for you.
Can't wait to see what goodies you are going to come up with now.x
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