I’m revising a paragraph and it doesn’t read well. I take out a complex phrase and, voila, the paragraph flows. Fewer words can energize writing and increase the pace; more words slow it down. When editing, I ask myself:
I love those moments when something simple can be profound, such as this example from Chapter 2, when the antagonist is asked what he has planned for the day…
“Guten morgen, Sir. May I take your briefcase?” the driver asks, snapping to attention.
“Thank you.”
“And, where are we going today?”
“Eurotower.”
“Very good, Sir.”
The black limo glides west onto the B44, then loops back to follow the Theodor-Stern-Kai motorway, parallel to the River Main. As they slow for the Friedensbrücke bridge, the driver glances in his mirror.
“Sir, if I may ask, what have you got planned for the day?”
Michael is silent, his thoughts caught by reflections on the water. Across the bridge, he gazes up at the rising commercial landscape north of the round Westhafen Tower and finally speaks as their destination comes into view.
“I plan to change the world.”
I had to laugh when I made this new post. Why? because, I don’t yet have a literary agent for my new thriller. However, I worked closely with a publishing editor (MacMillan’s) and enjoyed this list—edited from an article by Nathan Bransford (link here).
This is far from the only criteria for determining whether you have a good agent, but it’s a mandatory starting place. A good agent should have either a track record of sales to major publishers or have a good deal of experience cutting their teeth at a reputable agency or both.
When you have a question, your agent answers. When you ask for something, your agent delivers. When you want to have a serious conversation, the agent is there to have it. A good agent doesn’t dodge, doesn’t hide, is straightforward with you and tells you things you may not always want to hear. If you feel like you are constantly pulling teeth to get the most basic questions answered, you may not have a good agent. The communications lines need to be open between author and agent.
Publishing contract clauses can be confusing, royalty statements borderline indecipherable. Your agent should know exactly what they mean and be able to explain them to you.
A good agent will act ethically and advise you to act ethically. If you see your agent act unethically it’s only a matter of time until you’re on the receiving end.
Know your rights as an author.
Most agents have clauses that stipulate that publishers send payments to them, then they take their commission and send you the balance. This is normal. However, that means it’s all the more important that they send your payments and contracts to you on time. Be very wary if you encounter delays.
No agent should charge you up front. They only make money when you make money and only charge you separately for things like foreign postage and manuscript copying.
This is key and was the determining factor when I worked with Macmillan Publishers. My editor was available, professional, keen and helpful. I trusted her. In the same way, you have to trust your literary agent. You have to have a good feeling about them. At the end of the day, having a bad agent is worse than having no agent. You have to be able to have faith that your agent has your best interests at heart and is good for your career.
I was reading a BBC article about a writer’s photography prize when the sharp rattle of an earthquake interrupted my morning cup of tea today. Oh, not a bad earthquake, but unexpected and one that jolted my mind with a practical application to writing thrillers. Every thriller needs ‘earthquakes’—writing that jolts the readers; an unexpected twist or turn. Let the tension build and then … kapok! I have to be careful not to have too many of these in my writing. If I do, the reader will expect them. The earthquake this morning reminded me to identify these sudden plot and character changes and, if possible, amplify them. Now, back to my cup of tea.
When is your manuscript ready for submitting to a literary agent. The truth is, never. But, as I have discovered the hard way, it has to be 99% ready first. This involved some key steps, including:
It played on my mind—the need to change a name in my new book. I had chosen Dan as the name of my captain, but realised that a boyhood friend of mine – Ted Cooper – was a much better fit. Ted and I both worked backstage in a high school play; no doubt it was Shakespeare. On the final night we stayed up late and decided to celebrate with a midnight cruise in a small yacht to a volcanic island, just off the mainland. It was a memorable trip across shipping lanes and we felt the freedom of Huckleberry Finn as we ghosted under sail through the night. Unfortunately, our old wooden boat took on water, forcing us to sleep ashore. I will never forget that night, nor my good friend Ted Cooper. We lost contact with each other but I found out that Ted had passed away. He had become a captain in the merchant navy. How appropriate that I should name the captain in my thriller after my good friend.
Editing is simple in Word – use the find and replace all menu and, bingo, the job’s done? No. Here are some of the replacements I discovered:
With double agents, defecting can be Tedgerous = with double agents, defecting can be dangerous
He was petedtic but damned good at his job = He was pedantic but damned good at his job
tedcer = dancer
Guitedce = Guidance
The moral of this post is to be careful when using “replace all” in Word. If you do, going though 100,000 words to find replacement errors can be danious – oops, I mean, tedious.
On July 20, 1969, Following their famous moonwalk, Armstrong and Aldrin discovered that a one-inch engine arm circuit breaker switch had broken off an instrument panel. This breaker was needed to send electrical power to the ascent engine that would lift the two off the moon. The broken switch was reported to Mission Control, but its experts had not identified a solution by the next morning. Without a fix, the two men would have been stranded on the moon.
Aldrin thought a felt-tipped pen in the shoulder pocket of his suit might replace the broken switch. He wrote later: “Sure enough, the circuit breaker held. We were going to get off the moon, after all. To this day I still have the broken circuit breaker switch and the felt-tipped pen I used to ignite our engines.” That, dear readers, is the power of the pen. And, as you lift your pen or hit your keyboard today, let it break any circuit-breaker in your writing and inspire the next paragraph, the next chapter, and the next book to take off.
One review of The Gray Man says, “The Gray Man is a story about assassins who are, we’re told, the very best in the world. And yet over and over again, they are shown to be shitty at their jobs. They incite international incidents. They wage small wars in town squares. And they have a very hard time holding a small girl hostage.” The reviewer, Joshua Rivera, notes that the plot for The Gray Man is tried and trite; of a protagonist who’s boss seeks their demise, as in The Bourne series. It is so easy to fall into a plot like this and (shh, just our secret) I almost did this the other day too. I prefer simple plots with complex endings that surprise the reader, but would never want you to know this. [Postscript: This movie is full of action—so much so, that one popular review says, “Sometimes it seems like everybody in hollywod (sic) has forgotten that things don’t have to happen on a massive scale to be interesting.”]
“There are two sides to every story”
“You can’t tell fact from fiction these days”
“All news is fake news”
Ah, the wonderful freedom a fiction writer has. With the lines blurred between real news and fake news – between fact and fiction – there is plenty of scope for a writer to flip between the two and build an authentic world for the reader. For example, a thriller may have elements of the real world, such as places, times and cultural events, and weave in among these a believable plot. I love thrillers that have ‘proof of life.’ That is, they lack extreme coincidences. I am not going to point any finger at a specific writer, but do remember reading a book that was full of impossibilities (two scientists are abandoned in a remote location and just happen to be rescued – you get the idea). It was a thriller by a well-known author, but the lack of authenticity prevented me from being immersed in the story. For other readers, it might have been fine (insert smiley face).
Back to the two sides to a story. When a plot juxtaposes truth and lies, it creates tension and ignites the plot. A reader can take one side, then have it destroyed when the lies become fact. You see this in TV dramas when the obvious killer is, in fact, innocent. This formula is all too clear for most of us and how disappointing it is to have someone next to you say, “I know who did it.”
For me, the challenge is to make the twist NOT obvious at all. And, I hope I achieved this in my new book. Oh dear, I don’t want to give too much away!
Maggie Shipstead (left) writes, “John Gardner famously wrote that fiction should be a “vivid, continuous dream,” but some readers’ willingness to dream is more robust than others. Some people will shut a book forever at the first sign of an error, their trust in the writer and their suspension of disbelief irrevocably lost. Others will happily read along through almost anything, swallowing the most preposterous plot points, the most egregious anachronisms, and the most glaring inconsistencies…But I think sloppiness is worth trying to avoid, both out of pure principle (why get something wrong when you could get it right?) and because mistakes can be indicative of an author not pressing hard enough on the world she’s building, not making it sturdy enough, settling for a facade.” In her article, Maggie mentions good, or ill-meaning, folks who delighted in pointing out errors in her published work. I had a textbook that was in its 3rd reprint when along came a young student (aka smarty pants) who wrote to my publisher to point out an error, and it was an obvious one—one that escaped the keen eye of editor, writer, proof-reader, etc. How could this happen? In my first novel, the errors kept creeping out of the pages; proof that I was a lousy writer? No matter how hard I tried, the errors were there and my flame-thrower spell checker never seemed to pick them up. When all seemed well, my American spelling lapsed into English spelling; a tense changed within a paragraph, etc. Why all these mistakes? Because, writers, like other humans, are fallible. We get tired. We get over our draft revisions and we long to be rid of the manuscript. My advice to those who find errors? Tell us, but then hide under the bed-covers before we find you and hit you over the head with our revised edition :-).