Here is a transcript of my speech:

How many manuscripts get accepted each year? I wasn’t able to find a definitive answer from an irreproachable source, but a few places seemed to agree that about two percent of submitted manuscripts are published. I suggested this number to my fellow panelists and they agreed that figure sounded a bit optimistic. So they are probably right, but let’s be optimistic today.

Each year approximately ten thousand books are published each year. If this two percent figure is correct, that would mean that five hundred thousand manuscripts are submitted every year in Canada alone. With the median earnings of authors and writers sitting at almost $25,000—$2,000 lower than the national median—I think it is fair to place writing ambitions among the most competitive fields for the lowest pay.

Today I want to talk about refining your manuscript so you get the upper hand on the other near half-million manuscripts that will be submitted alongside your own. While I can’t promise a magic formula that will guarantee publication, I can at least place some meaningful questions in front of you. The first of which: is my manuscript in the top two percent of work submitted this year? If the answer is a definite yes, then you can doze off until Sarah from Freehand Books speaks after me. If the answer is no or maybe, then let’s see where this questioning gets us.

I believe competition is a good thing. I think it tests and refines our capabilities. However, competition is a complex beast and it doesn’t always make things better. For instance, I think it is a great mechanism for sports but perhaps not so great for politics. In ninety-five years the world record for the one hundred metre sprint has been sped up by more than one second. In a sport decided by hundreds of a second, that improvement is more than impressive. The forty-fourth Super Bowl will take place tomorrow afternoon, wouldn’t it be interesting to see the fastest runner from tomorrow’s game race the fastest runner from the first Super Bowl forty-four years ago?

Whether or not competition has made literature better or worse is an interesting question, but—I think— immaterial to today’s discussion. If submitting a manuscript became twice as competitive, would you still work on and submit your work to publishers? I think so. In fact, I would be interested to know how many writers consider how competitive publishing is before they submit. In any event, today I would like to talk to you about three things: first—the elements of a strong manuscript, second—an often overlooked step in preparing your work for submission, and third—my personal advice to making your manuscript stand out against the crowd.

There are many things that make a manuscript strong, but today I want to focus on four elements of a great manuscript.

Let’s start with the most important part of a manuscript. Impeccable story-telling. I wish there were a clearer, more definitive word I could have used to describe story-telling, but I’m afraid the most essential element of a great manuscript is also the most enigmatic. While there are no magic tricks to getting published that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be magic in your manuscript.

Once you have an impeccably-told story, the second most important aspect of your manuscript is the strength of the story itself. This might seem counter-intuitive, but I believe that excellent story-telling can save a mediocre story just as an excellent melody can save mediocre song-lyrics. Some—but not many—stories write themselves: the story is so good that it doesn’t matter how you tell it. For most stories, however, it is how you tell the story that engages the reader more than what you tell them.

The third aspect of a great manuscript is credibility. It might seem like a small thing, and I wouldn’t worry about it a great deal in first or second drafts, but making your manuscript believable—passing the BS sniff test—is a refinement with large dividends. Keep in mind how incredulous submission editors must be after reading hundreds of manuscripts each year. Even a great story with impeccable story-telling could be sunk by a jaded submission editor who didn’t believe that part about all-you-can-eat buffets in the American Civil War. So make your story believable, even to manuscript-worn submission editors and your readers will eat up every word you write.

The fourth attribute of a complete and competitive manuscript is a clear and direct message. A full-length novel starts at about fifty thousand words. You might think, “Those are a lot of words, who cares if I waste a couple here and there?” You could be right, perhaps a few wasted words aren’t that important, but in a field as competitive as book publishing, every word matters. By the time your manuscript gets to the editor, every word that she removes from your work should cut you deep into your heart, because you already considered cutting that word, but kept it because you were certain it was essential to the work.

Which brings me to my next point about manuscript preparation. Everyone has a different process while preparing their manuscript—some people use an outline, others wing it—but ultimately, every writer ends up in a similar spot: after many hours of writing, editing, probably quite a bit of coffee and hopefully not too much wine, the writer has progressed a manuscript as far as they can by themselves. What do they do next? Submit it to a publisher and watch the six-digit offers pour in? While that would be nice, perhaps I can suggest one more step before sending your work into the world.

Now, I’m not sure how you view the difference between preparing your work in the comfort and privacy of your own home and sending it to publisher for consideration, but I look at it as the difference between singing in the shower and auditioning for Canadian Idol. You might be an excellent shower-singer, but Simon Cowell might disagree. This is what makes writers among the bravest artists out there.

So what do I propose before you submit your work? Let’s say you’ve completed a manuscript. After almost a dozen rounds of revisions, you’ve taken the work as far as you can. Should you submit it? Allow me to suggest one more step: find someone with a critical eye and an honest tongue and do whatever it takes to get them to rip your work to pieces. I know this may sound frightening, but, when you think about it, what is the worst thing someone can say about your writing? If they say, “I hated it. Your book is the biggest piece of garbage I have ever read.” You can at least ask “why?” But if they say, “I loved it, it was perfect, I wouldn’t change a word.” Where do you go from there? What changes can you make?

To their credit, they think that’s what you want to hear and they don’t want to hurt your feelings. They don’t realize they are telling you the worst thing they could, they think it is the kindest thing they could tell you.

In searching for the right critical eye and honest tongue, you might be lucky enough to have a friend who will give you the opinion your work needs for the price of a cup of coffee and an hour of conversation. If you are not so fortunate, you have three options: hire an editor, join a critiquing group, or schedule an appointment with a writer in residence.

Should you choose to hire an editor, I would start with local writers, check their websites and see if they offer editing services. The bonus with published, local authors is they could recommend your manuscript to their publisher if they like your work. If you can’t find a local author to edit your work, I would try the Editor’s Association of Canada—their website is www.editors.ca –they have a section of their site that will refer you to qualified editors.

If you prefer the critiquing group, there are a number of options. Continuing Education through the U of C offers such a group, and the Writers Guild of Alberta has a critique group that meets on the first and third Thursday of each month at 7:00-9:00 PM at the Indigo of Signal Hill.

An often overlooked resource, however, is an appointment with a writer in residence. There are four writer in residence programs in Calgary and you can usually get a session free of charge. The U of C, the Calgary Public Library, the Alexandria Writing Centre, and the Canadian Author’s Association of Alberta, all offer a writer in residence program with excellent, and highly qualified writers ready and waiting to review a chapter or two of your work and then point you in the right direction.

Whichever path you choose, once you feel you’ve taken your manuscript as far as you can by yourself, you need to start looking for people who will offer you constructive criticism on your work. As much as you may want reassurance that what you’ve written is good, consider the effort involved and the value of someone telling you how they believe your story could be better.

If you’ll permit me, I’d like to close with four of my own bits of advice that I believe will make your manuscript better.

1) Avoid unnecessary and inaccurate words.

1. If you choose to employ the word “random”, I implore you to ask yourself two questions: is the action you are describing truly random? If so, is there no better word—perhaps one that is less abused—that you could use? Say, for instance, you were describing the decision making process of one of your characters, wouldn’t “thoughtless” or “mindless” be more meaningful and show greater effort to your reader than “random”?
2. And what about the word “literally”? Is your writing so unclear that you must indicate when you are being literal and when you are being figurative or metaphorical? Having read many submissions, I think the difference is usually quite clearly defined. So, if your intentions are clear—and this goes for more than just the word “literally”—then trust your reader to understand you. I find that the word “literally” is usually used as a false emphasis. For example, “He literally ate him alive right there on the salesroom floor!” When the actually events would be described as, “He literally yelled at him for a while right there on the salesroom floor!”

2)Don’t take shortcuts: if you can’t describe it, either rewrite it until you can or scrap it.

3)Don’t say in ten words what you could have said in five.

1. For instance, “incredibly interesting” could be “enthralling”
2. “Very dangerous” could be “treacherous”.

4)Get your best work in early.

1. We spoke earlier about competition, not only is your manuscript competing with hundreds of thousands of other manuscripts, your book will compete with millions of hours of television, movies, sports games, video games, board games, performing arts, social outings, and many more forms of entertainment which have become more accessible and appealing over the years—almost all of them are easier in every way than reading a book.
   We, as publishers and authors, need to give our readers a reason to pick up and keep reading a book. We fight against an alluring and effortless tide. Books need to be rewarding and entertaining, while TV only needs to be present.
   I believe you need to reward your reader quickly. Make them glad they picked up your book in the first ten pages—the first page if you are able. One of the best examples of rewarding your readers early is Wayson Choy’s, the Jade Peony. In it, Mr. Choy quickly brings the reader deep into his literary world and enchants them with perfectly told tales.

In conclusion, there are many aspects of a great manuscript, but if I could leave you with one thought, it would be: once you’ve brought your manuscript as far as you can, find a qualified reader who will tear your work apart. Because after you’ve rebuilt the story, it will be much stronger than it was before and ready to compete with the best stories out there.

The Space Age began in the fall of 1957 and technically continues until today. In fact, I don’t see a foreseeable future without humans in space, so the Space Age could continue for many hundreds of years. We’re going to have to discontinue its use sooner or later, so why not now? Personally, I can’t justify using a term that encompasses shag carpet and mobile internet, especially when describing something as “modern” or the “latest in design technology”.

Some notable inventions from 1957 are Velcro and size AA batteries. Compare that to touch screens, HDTV, e-paper, 10 terabyte hard drives, google maps.

Recently a friend of mine upgraded her cell phone, she was so excited that when she figured out how to send me a text message, she described her new mobile as “space aged”. How was I supposed to interpret this? Did it have Velcro on the back? AA batteries? Internet connectivity?

Once a word confuses more than it clarifies, I consider it obsolete.

What do you think? Have your say, add a comment.

1) A friend wanted to see it.

2) It was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

3) It had an interesting tagline (Every Family Has a Secret) and summary (Bennie travels to Buenos Aires to find his long-missing older brother, a once-promising writer who is now a remnant of his former self. Bennie’s discovery of his brother’s near-finished play might hold the answer to understanding their shared past and renewing their bond.)

4) It received rave reviews.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not against film festivals, but I have found one has to be careful to avoid “challenging but rewarding” films (which is really just code for, “That movie really, really sucked, and I would like my time and money back, but I contributed to the arts, and if I remind myself of that enough times I won’t resent everyone involved for tricking me so shamelessly.”)

Unfortunately, even with four solid reasons to see the movie, I ended up seeing a challenging but rewarding movie. Rather than complain to you in the form of a negative movie review, I figured we could all gain something from the 127 minutes I spent wishing I had snuck into a different movie.

There were a few things that Francis Ford Coppola did that corrupted the storyline for me and at Recliner Books, we encounter some of those same things in manuscript submissions. So let’s look at some of those things so you can avoid them in your writing.

Problem Number One

Have you ever heard of a literary device known as “Chekhov’s Gun”? Anton Chekhov was a Russian short-story writer and playwright. I’ll let him explain his thoughts on fire arms as they pertain to storytelling.

“One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.”

“If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”

This has evolved to include more than just guns but is usually limited to weapons. In the first half of the movie one of the main characters finds a gun. Even though there were plenty of reasons and opportunities for it, at no point did the gun go off. Which begs the question; why was there a gun at all?

In my opinion, this boils down to conserving your words. If you’ve written a novel you may say to yourself, “I don’t have to be as careful with my novel as I have been with my short stories; in a short story every word counts, in a novel, almost every word counts.” If this is your mindset then I hope something changes it.

I cannot stress this enough: in a novel every word matters. If your manuscript is accepted for publication, it should hurt your heart every time an editor wants to take out a word because you’ve spent so many hours agonizing over which words should go and which ones should stay. Of course, the editor will probably have a point, but I hope you know what I mean.

Problem Number Two

There are a lot of ways to dissect a story, for now I am going to say there are three parts to a story: back story (what happened before the story begins), story proper (what you write about), future story (what will happen as a result of the story proper). Generally speaking, back story should be used sparingly and future story only finds its way to the page in a sequel.

When you begin to tell a story your audience begins to form expectations about the scope of your story. Tetro messed with my expectations and as a result I felt like I watched three bad movies instead of one (potentially) good one.

This isn’t to say you should never experiment with the back story and story proper (if your reader feels like you are experimenting with the future story, it’s probably too long), but be prepared for some confusion, criticism, and correction.

Problem Number Three

Let your story speak for itself. One of the most discouraging things we encounter with manuscript submissions occurs when a narrator repeatedly says, “Look at how dramatic this is!!!!! Don’t you feel so bad for the protagonist???”

Obviously no one is using those exact words but their narrative is soaked in this sentiment. Good writing stands up for itself. If you’ve done your job as a writer most people who read your work will feel the feelings you want them to feel and think the things you want them to think. If you have to cheat and tell them how to feel then you haven’t done your job.

Without going into specifics; Tetro had to cheat and that’s one of the reasons it stunk. The lesson I learned: if a movie is directed by Francis Ford Coppola and written by someone else (perhaps Mario Puzo) then it might be worth a shot. If it is written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, proceed with caution.

P.S.

Problem Number Four

To be fair, this entry is not perfect. I used the word “story” twenty-one times in this 900-word blog entry. This is also bad storytelling.

On Friday I dropped of a manuscript for editorial review and decided to take my dog, Louis, along so we could visit Elbow Falls afterwards. But, before we get to Louis enjoying The Great Outdoors, I’d like to talk style for a bit.

Should the title be: “Louis’ Best Day Ever” or “Louis’s Best Day Ever”?

For Recliner Books’ house style we turn to The Chicago Manual of Style:

Possessives of titles and names

The possessive of a title or name is formed by adding ’s {Lloyd’s of London’s records} {National Geographic Society’s headquarters} {Dun & Bradstreet’s rating}. This is so even when the word ends in a sibilant {Dickens’s novels} {Dow Jones’s money report}, unless the word itself is formed from a plural {General Motors’ current production rate} {Applied Materials’ financial statements}. But if a word ends in a sibilant, it is acceptable (especially in journalism) to use a final apostrophe without the additional s {Bill Gates’ testimony}.

Proper nouns, letters, and numbers

The general rule covers most proper nouns, including names ending in s, x, or z, in both their singular and plural forms, as well as letters and numbers.

{Kansas’s legislature} / {the Williamses’ new house}

{Chicago’s lakefront} / {Malraux’s masterpiece}

{Burns’s poems} / {Inez’s diary}

{Marx’s theories} / {the Martinezes’ daughter}

{Berlioz’s works} / {Josquin des Prez’s motets}

{Strauss’s Vienna } / {dinner at the Browns’ (that is, at the Browns’ home)}

{Dickens’s novels} / {FDR’s legacy}

{the Lincolns’ marriage } / {1999’s heaviest snowstorm}

{Williams’s reputation}

The rule applies equally to company names that include a punctuation point.

{Yahoo!’s chief executive}

Rewording may be advisable to avoid such awkward possessives as “the Rogerses’ address”

Exceptions to the General rule:

1. Nouns plural in form, singular in meaning. {politics’ true meaning}{Recliner Books’ house style}

2. Names like “Euripedes.” {Euripedes’ tragedies}

3. Words and names ending in unpronounced “s”. {Albert Camus’ novels}

4. Other exceptions. For . . . sake expressions {for goodness’ sake}

With that bit of style behind us, here are some highlights from Louis’s best day ever:

Louis is buckled in and ready to go

Meeting a cow for the first time. I wasn't sure how close to let them get to each other.

Checking out the falls.

Elbow Falls

In starting this blog, I have read through a few other blog postings and confirmed that my blog is woefully inadequate—I already suspected it, but after reading the kinds of things these other “bloggers” are posting, there can no longer be any doubt.

But what is a guy to do? The way I see it I have three choices:

1) Speed date, bar hop, break the law, drink (a lot) and throw out all of the social conventions that I have been raised to believe are the mortar holding society together.

2) Lie.

3) Be boring.

I read a post by a girl who has an alter-ego that comes out when she drinks and she has vague suspicions as to what the alter-ego does when she is blacked-out drunk, but she never knows for sure. To top it all off, her alter-ego covers her tracks before turning in for the night. In her latest entry, she was pretty sure her alter-ego had sent out pictures of her boobs with her cell phone (why would anyone have nude photos of themselves on their phone?). I can’t top that, I can’t even come close.

I read a different post by a different girl who, in a thousand words, put all her cards on the table and revealed all of her dysfunctions, messed-up relationships, STI history. Everything. I couldn’t believe it. She’s telling things to strangers that I wouldn’t have told anyone ever. Alright, I guess I can tell you guys my STI history: none. Sorry to disappoint.

And then there’s me. I went out drinking last night so I should have some interesting stories, right? Well…not really. I had some drinks. I watched the UFC. I watched a movie (Old School, but no one was paying attention). I walked home. I saw a skunk. The end.

While there were elements that could have lead to an interesting story (my friend’s sister was drinking with us; we had a 60oz bottle of rye; I could have had a run-in with that skunk) nothing actually interesting happened.

So right about now I am asking myself what is the point of this ‘blog entry’ and why would I post it? I don’t know about you, but I measure quality of life by improvement. So this is where the bar is set, and each week I will attempt to raise it. Any feedback and advice is welcome!