How to Make Your First Novel Publisher-Perfect

If you are an unpublished writer, especially if you write fiction, it can be hard to weather the cold shoulder of today's publishing world. Literary agents and major publishers don't have the time or personnel to find the diamond in your rough draft. They no longer have the time to shape your career, correct your grammar, or tell you why the protagonist isn't working. Most, if you even get the chance to talk to them, will tell you that they barely have time to use the rest room during the average workday.

Which is why you have to get your manuscript publisher-perfect before you even think of sending out your first agent query.

Yes, you can hire a freelance editor. Frustrated as all get-out that something I couldn't put my finger on was wrong with one of my manuscripts (after eight drafts), I took the plunge and called in a pro. And it was money well spent. I learned a great deal about editing fiction in general and what wasn't working in my manuscript in particular. I also got some good marketing tips.

But rates as high as a thousand dollars or more can bust a beginning writer's budget. Tackling the job on your own can be daunting, and if you fall into the usual traps, it can leave you in an endless loop of panic. Finally, you start wondering if you should just chuck the whole thing and become an accountant like your mother always wanted.

Here's how you can stop fretting and start editing like a pro:

1. Get your own SWAT team

If you don't have one already, find a writer's group. Don't fall into the easy trap of depending solely on your significant other or anyone in your family to give you honest feedback on your writing. While you may be lucky enough to have a loved one who can be impartial, that's not always the case. Your writer's group (if chosen and nurtured correctly) will get to know your writing style and your characters, and can tell you what you really need to hear: where the action slows, when a joke falls flat, when a character's dialogue doesn't sound natural, or simply where something isn't working. And they don't have to face you over breakfast in the morning.

2. Know when to walk away

You've been reading your first draft to your writer's group, scene by scene, faithfully listening to and making notes on their feedback, and now you've just read the last chapter. When you get home, you enjoy your favorite celebratory beverage, then plunge right away into your second draft. Not so fast, pally. Put it away for a while. Give yourself some space and let that thing mulch. Not so long that you lose your momentum, but just enough to gain some perspective. This is a very important step toward learning how to edit your own work. With perspective, you stand a better chance of catching things you didn't on the previous draft - things as small as a juxtaposition in time (your character was wearing a parka and gloves yet an earlier reference set the scene in August) to things as large as a redundant chapter. While you're taking your break, check out a little book entitled "The Art of Fiction" by John Gardner. It's meant for beginning writers but even experienced ones may find it helpful. He offers good insight into fictional time versus real time and plot structure among other valuable tidbits. I recommend that every serious writer have this book in his or her library.

3. It's compost and I'm raring to go. Now what?

Now the hard work begins (but some writers actually prefer the editing stage.) Read your manuscript carefully from beginning to end (many writers find it easiest to do this step with a paper copy). Using conventional proofreader's marks (or develop your own system), note words, phrases or passages that need to be changed, deleted, aren't working for you, seem confusing, or anything else that strikes you. Also, think about your writer's group's feedback and see if you want to incorporate any of it into this next draft. Keep a notepad beside you while read. Jot down any facts that need confirmation or anything else that needs to be researched (For example, could your heroine order a Diet Coke in 1976 or would she be asking for Tab? Can someone really run from that subway stop to the museum in ten minutes to catch the killer?) so you don't run into any "cred bumps" later on. (As a reader, there's nothing that blows a writer's credibility faster for me than not getting an obvious detail right. For example, I read a novel where the Poughkeepsie, New York train station's waiting room had rows of blue plastic chairs. I live near Poughkeepsie and know that it's an old classic station with rows of wooden benches. Totally ruined the mood for me. If you can't get to Poughkeepsie to check it out for yourself, call someone who can. Or change the name of the city.)

Also be mindful of common writing traps (and we're all guilty of them in early drafts). It might help to keep a list of them near your desk while you're editing.

• Dialogue tags. A simple dialogue tag of "he said, she said" is all that is needed (and sometimes not needed at all, depending on the pace of your scene). Embellishments such as "she said angrily" or "he cried (shouted, exclaimed, screamed...)" can be distracting or come off as amateurish.

• Adjective poisoning. Overuse (ditto adverbs) can clunk up your prose.

• Mouthfuls of metaphors. Used appropriately, metaphors can paint a picture, color a characterization. But if they don't fit smoothly into the text (for example if they're too complex, or inappropriate to the tone of the piece), you've lost your flow and a reader is left puzzling through all those words.

• Too tense? Watch the consistency of your tense and your point of view. Both can get quite complex if you use a lot of flashbacks or have multiple point-of-view characters.

• At loose ends? Make sure all your sub-plots are resolved. Map out the paths of your secondary characters as they progress through the story so that nothing is left hanging. I find it helpful to create a spreadsheet for this purpose. I list all characters on the left, and across the sheet I create columns for what the characters want, how they try to get it, the obstacles in their way, the other characters involved, and ultimately how the situation is resolved.

• Scene it. It might take a while to get a feel for how to start and end scenes, but it's important to your narrative flow. A common pitfall is starting with so much description that your readers are tempted to skip ahead to the action, or writing too much after the scene has already "ended." My writer's group is very good at identifying these problems. I'm often told to drop the last sentence of my scenes. But in case your group has missed something, review how your scenes begin and end. You might want to look at the first page of each scene and vary how they open (eg. Open one with dialogue, another with narrative, etc.) to vary the rhythm throughout the book. Macro-editing a manuscript is a balancing act: keep it smooth enough to provide good flow but not so smooth that the reader gets bored.

• Your personal bugaboos. We all have one, or several. Those words we overuse, those commas we stick in inappropriately. Learn yours and be vigilant when you edit. I was shocked at the number of times I use "very" and "just."

When you've done your research, made your notes, tightened the slack in the narrative, polished your dialogue, or generally have done whatever you can to make the story shinier, complete your second draft. Some writers (me, in particular) find it more effective at this point to re-key in the manuscript from beginning to end. Yes, it's a lot of work. But you'd be surprised at how it can improve your work when it's not as "etched in stone" as it may seem if you simply edit your first-draft files.

And when you're done with that...

4. "Every Writer Needs A Ruthless Friend"

An experienced novelist told me this when I was just starting to write. And it's true. Because trying to edit a second draft without additional outside feedback is a common self-editing trap. You tend to lose perspective at this point. And so can your writer's group. It's time to call in your "ruthless friend," commonly called a "first reader." This is a person who, ideally, has never read any part of your manuscript before, so they're coming at it with fresh eyes. It can be a trusted friend or colleague (who is either a writer or an avid reader), a writing teacher, or someone you might have met at a writers' conference. I met my "first reader" when I was part of an on-line writing group (where I brought my short fiction, not my novels), and I've been lucky enough to be able to call upon this gentleman time and again for over ten years. Whomever you find, make sure he or she is willing to do the job and has a strong sense of detail. If you have any doubts about your choice of first reader, start with something else you've written or the first chapter of your novel to get a sense of how he or she will critique your work.

When you have his or her feedback in hand...

5. Edit, edit, and edit again

No, you're not done when you get sick of editing. You're done when you've made the manuscript as tight and as polished as you can possibly make it. Call in reinforcements (other readers) if you need them. Then, and only then, pour yourself another celebratory beverage. Now you can think about those agent queries.