Five Things I've Learned From Reading Over 500 Manuscripts

Welcome to Five On Fridays, my weekly straight-no-chaser newsletter where I help demystify the publishing industry for new writers and early-career authors. Let’s jump right in.

Come May of this year, I’ll have officially been editing professionally for eight years. I did some very rudimentary math about my work during this time:

And these figures don’t even include the published books I’ve read for my own entertainment. If you haven’t guessed by now, I love to read and count it a blessing that each day, authors trust me with their words. The manuscripts I receive run the gamut from those penned by first-time writers to books from New York Times bestselling authors. They’ve come my way via production departments, agents, acquisitions editors, and, of course, the writers themselves. I’ve been fortunate to have had conversations with these industry professionals and even sat in meetings where I learned a thing or two about what makes a manuscript compelling and why even good manuscripts don’t always make the cut. Here are just five things I’ve learned.

Good manuscripts grab the reader’s attention from the first line

Though I think the emphasis on “perfect” first lines is overstated, I have to admit that there’s something exhilirating about a story that grabs my attention from the very first sentence. That first line and paragraph are a promise to the reader. They demonstrate voice and genre and raise a key question(s) I want to keep reading to find the answers to. Books that deliver well on that first line stand out from the crowd.

Good manuscripts deliver what they promise

Ever watch a trailer that gets you really excited about a movie, only to finally see the movie and be disappointed in the movie itself? Sometimes all the funny lines are in the trailer and the movie ends up not being half as funny as advertised. Or maybe the movie was promoted as a romance, but then there’s no HEA (happily ever after) at the end—Word to the wise, especially in the book world, you do not want to mislead Romancelandia by promoting your non-HEA story as a romance— And this goes for all genres. If your query letter and synopsis promise a taut thriller but the manuscript begins with pages of exposition, you’re not delivering what you promised, and that’s going to turn readers off, no matter how good the writing is. Speaking of good writing …

Good manuscripts have a handle on the messy middle

Beginnings and endings are exciting and life-altering for our characters. But those messy middles can get us every time. Sometimes we get mired in backstory and exposition. Sometimes we don’t know our characters well enough to take them through the middle of their story—and it shows. But when a writer understands their characters and masterfully ushers them through Act 2, the story comes to life and the reader absolutely feels this. Great beginnings might be what capture readers, but great middles are what keep them.

In an increasingly crowded marketplace, a good manuscript isn’t always enough

This one hurts; ask me how I know. With more and more writers committed to honing craft, attending writing conferences, and joining critique groups, the “good book” bar is higher than ever. There are a lot of good writers and good books in the world. A lot. The fact of the matter is, your good book, maybe even your great book, might not get you an agent, or if you have an agent, that book might die on submission. These are the cold hard facts about publishing. Like many other creative industries, talent is just one of the elements necessary to launch a successful writing career. Luck, timing, and tenacity are the others: The key is to write well, watch what the industry is doing, and be tenacious all at once. And then, of course, you have to keep writing.

About that writing …

Sometimes a manuscript is in pretty rough shape when it comes across an agent’s desk, but the premise is so original and the author’s vision so clear, the agent or editor is willing to take the writer on and work with them to revise the manuscript before going on submission. I think this happens more often than people realize, but less often than it used to happen because agents and acquisitions editors are more overwhelmed with submissions than ever before. To be clear, this is not a green light to rush a first draft to an agent because you have an original concept. Some agents receive hundreds of submissions each month; a query package laden with errors and full of plot holes won’t get the time of day, no matter how interesting the premise is. The point is: craft is always necessary, but perfection isn’t.

That wraps up this week’s Five On Fridays. Thank you for subscribing and reading. If you found this newsletter helpful, please share it on social media and forward it to your writer friends. Happy writing!

-Grace