Manuscript Assessment

Does Nick do fantasy also? Do you, Barbara?

Nick for a while edited Clarkesworld Magazine, a very fine pro-level sf/f/h publication. and was renowned for his strongly voiced rejections.

Are the skills required to edit short stories the same as those for a novel?

Someone else I've heard good things about, who concentrates on fantasy in particular, is Stacy Whitman.

Thanks for the name.

I read any genre of fiction; but I always suggest starting with the 5000-word get-acquainted offer, just so we can both see if it's a good fit.

Barbara

childeroland said:

Are the skills required to edit short stories the same as those for a novel?

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I think they are, despite the fact that short stories really are very different from novels in much more than length. The structure of a short story is different from a novel, but most other facets --characterization, setting, dialogue, description and so on---are common to both forms. I write novels myself, but I'm a great reader of short stories and have edited quite a few.

Hi all, My literary/general/women's fiction/whatever mss is currently in the hands of an editor from the Writers' Workshop. Cost me about $750 for my 74,000words. It's been two weeks, so I might have another two weeks to wait.

The following is a short history of why I decided to take this route:

I finished my first draft of my mss exactly one year ago. Initially, I had about 15 beta readers, about half of them had degrees in English lit or journalism, and I used their feedback to polish it up. I had no idea what I was doing, did very little research on querying and didn't read forums like these. So I royally screwed up and started querying on draft two. Had a request for full. Got impatient after two weeks of waiting (again, I knew nothing!) and nudged. Was R'd the same day. Entered Abna. Made the semi-finals, got a good review from pub weekly. Requeried. Got one request for a full. Waited patiently for 2 months. Form R. Entered another lesser known contest. Was shortlisted and found out one of the judges was a Publishing Exec from Penguin. So I flew out to the ceremony on the hopes of meeting him and finding out what he thought about my book. No such luck at the ceremony. However, I emailed him after and he sent me a paragraph. He said: [FONT=&quot]this was the book which more than any other understood the shape that a traditional novel might have and achieved it. It contains many themes, woven together with care, and a narrative shape which allows these to be explored in a way that was frequently satisfying and illuminating. What it lacked at this stage, we thought, was the psychological depth of character which was needed to bring the story truly to life.....

[/FONT]So I emailed him back and begged him to tell me if this lovely paragraph was just more empty flattery and I should start my next novel or could I really fix this thing. And he recommended the Writers' Workshop. Said they'd help me and if it was good enough they'd help me find the perfect agent. So now I wait.

JJ Cooper said:

Recently at a local writer's group that I popped into, the guest speaker for the evening was the owner of a Manuscript Assessment Service and also owner of POD business.

She started her talk with 'no new author will get published in Australia without first having their MS assessed' and 'no new author will be published by traditional publishers in Australia unless they've self-published - just like Matthew Reilly did'. Every person in that room nodded as if they've heard the wisdom before.

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That woman is a tool.

And this is why I get so angry at people who feed new and inexperienced authors shit.

At the end of the sales pitch I introduced myself as a new author who landed an agent and traditional publisher without having to go through a manuscript assessment. Her response - 'You're the first I ever heard of. Must have slipped through the cracks.'

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Guess she didn't want you letting the other writers know the truth.

The sad thing is that so many of those people there will believe her and their careers will suffer untold damage from it.

I agree with a lot of what has been said on here about not paying for anything you can get for free (or at least putting a ms through as many free avenues as you can before you consider paying for an assessment).

One thing I will say, however, is that beta reading is not free. Ok, you don't pay any cash to someone to beta read your ms and to some that may be free but consider that most beta relationships are on the basis of 'I scratch your back, you scratch mine' in that if someone betas your ms they will expect you to beta theirs at some point... now, how cheap that is depends on how much cash value you put on your time

The story above about a manuscript assessor giving a talk... my first thought on that was regarding the massive bias in the source. She wants people to sign up for her service so of course she is going to tell them that there is no other way

If you do choose to use a paid service (after exhuasting all the options and frankly I'd get a beta read, do some edits myself, submit and then consider paid options if there was no luck there) then definitely look at the rep of the person involved and treat them the same as you would an agent or publisher - i.e. research the hell out of them and maybe post here in the bewares section asking for any info about them...