I’ve worked on the acquisitions team at Monster Ivy Publishing (middle grade and YA fantasy, horror, and thriller) and Havok Magazine (fantasy, mystery, sci-fi flash fiction). Monster Ivy opened for submissions once a year, and I helped read through the submissions, offered feedback, and voted on which stories to accept. At Havok, I worked for a year as an editor on their Mystery Monday team. We received flash fiction submissions each month, and I collaborated with the team to choose which stories we should accept.
While different companies look for different things, I’ve discovered some major commonalities, on a craft level, for why publishers choose to reject some stories. If you’d like to understand more of the behind-the-scenes, business reasons for rejection, check out my earlier article “How Do Publishers Decide to Accept or Reject a Manuscript?”
Problem 1: Poor Writing
It’s true – the first thing someone notices about your book is the words. There have been times when I have picked up a book at the library, or opened the sample on Amazon, and didn’t read past the first couple of paragraphs. I could instantly tell that the writing was poor, or that I personally disliked the style.
But what does “poor writing” even mean? And if it’s really a barrier to publication, why do so many poorly written books sell out?
Here’s what I consider poor writing mechanics (not big picture stuff like characterization, plot, and endings), and the editors who trained me would concur:
- Poor use of verbs – passive voice, overuse of “to be” verbs, repetitive and uncreative verb choices
- Repetitive, boring, and unclear sentence structure
- Unvaried or overly flowery word choices and descriptors
- Unnatural dialogue that sounds the same no matter who is speaking
- Stylistic inconsistencies like point of view and tense shifts
- Grammar mistakes
There are more, of course, but these are the top ones I’ve seen. Notice that I listed grammar mistakes at the bottom. It’s not hard for a copyeditor to improve the grammar of a manuscript, but all the commas in the world won’t fix repetitive, juvenile-sounding language.
Verb usage is the biggest issue I saw in manuscripts while working at Havok Publishing and Monster Ivy Publishing, and it was the most common reason other editors gave for rejecting submissions.
You may have heard a million times, “Write actively!” Editors may have left you with cursory notes like, “Too much passive voice.” I’ve seen editors offer this line even if the sentences don’t actually use passive voice, but overuse “to be” verbs.
What’s the difference? In passive voice, the subject of the sentence is being acted upon, rather than doing the action.
e.x. 1: There was an air of unconventional attractiveness to him.
e.x. 2: His body was being wracked by hunger pangs.
It’s possible to use forms of the verb “to be” (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been) actively. Here are alternate versions of the examples above:
e.x. 1b: He was unconventionally attractive.
e.x. 2b: He was hungry.
However, it gets boring fast because it’s hard to keep such writing from sounding repetitive. Editors and readers prefer to see active AND varied verb usage:
e.x. 1c: Susy considered Andrew, with his bulging, brilliant blue eyes, unconventionally attractive.
e.x. 2c: Andrew clutched his stomach as another pang of hunger wracked his body.
Why are verbs of such vital importance? Remember the second poor writing issue I listed: sentence structure. Sentence structure just means the order in which you arrange your nouns, verbs, objects, etc. Though all you really need is a subject and verb.
“She ran.” That’s a complete sentence. Who is doing what? At it’s heart, a sentence is only as interesting as its subject and verb, and even changing one word can add information and flair. Did she run, or did she jog, dash, flee, sprint, speed, or fly?
The order and tone of your sentence will change drastically based on what you pick. “She took off at a staggering run, her breath catching.” or “Copper dust leapt up in waves behind Iala as her feet flew across the dry earth.” I didn’t think of describing the dust or the road until I added that Iala’s feet flew across the earth. When she was struggling to run, I thought to add a description of her body’s state, but when she was speeding along, I thought to describe the atmosphere.
Good writing isn’t just about what you avoid, but what you add. If all your sentences read back-to-back like, “He was hungry. She ran. The earth was dry,” they won’t just sound the same, but will lack the energy and emotional connection that makes stories and characters come alive.
Choosing better verbs and improving sentence structure aren’t separate tasks, but actually one and the same. I’m incredibly grateful for my first writing instructor in high school who gave me such a simple yet effective exercise. She gave us a program which enabled us to highlight all the “be” verbs in our documents, and the first word of every sentence.
She forbade us from using a single “be” verb in any of our papers AND banned us from starting any sentence with the same word more than once within a single paragraph. So if you started a sentence with “The” or “She”, it was off limits until you started a new one.
TOGETHER, these exercises forced me to develop sentences with a huge level of variety in both word choice and construction, resulting in a much more interesting style!
Let’s look at an example from Twilight by Stephenie Meyer.
“It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to make conversation with seven curious strangers, that I first saw them.
They were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, as far away from where I sat as possible in the long room. There were five of them. They weren’t talking, and they weren’t eating, though they each had a tray of untouched food in front of them. They weren’t gawking at me, unlike most of the other students, so it was safe to stare at them without fear of meeting an excessively interested pair of eyes. But it was none of these things that caught, and held, my attention….
I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanely beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine.”
Twilight (p. 15-16)
Every single sentence in this excerpt uses “be verbs.” Three sentences in a row start with “They.” Meyer repeats other simple verbs such as “sit” and “stare” in quick succession. It’s easy to understand, but reading a whole book like this usually turns into skimming, jumping over the same words and constructs and grasping for the characters’ emotions.
Here’s your first exercise. Rewrite the above segment following my teacher’s 2 rule: NO “be” verbs, and start every sentence with a different word. The key is to identify WHO is doing the action. If you’d like to share, add your version in the comments at the end of this post!
Then take a look at your writing. Do you tend to repeat the same verbs and sentence frameworks? If so, I suggest enforcing these 2 rules for a while. Once it becomes natural, you can ease off.
I also recommend brushing up on the different types of verbs. This brief article – “11 Common Types Of Verbs Used In The English Language” – acts as a great refresher.
Problem 2: An Uncompelling Main Character
Character-driven stories absolutely dominate the market. Some people prefer plot or worldbuilding forward stories, but they are in the minority, at least at present. It feels impossibly unfair, but unless you can get readers to care about your main character within the first 5 pages-1st chapter, they’re not going to continue.
But how can you make someone care in such a short time?
Writing instructors will offer the same advice time and again. Your main character needs:
- A strong goal or need
- A problem that gets in the way of them achieving it (stakes)
- Strengths that make readers interested in them and weaknesses that add tension to the story (“cool factor” and establishment of future character transformation)
You don’t need to indicate the “meta” plot in the very first chapter. In fact, it’s often best to establish the character’s status quo first. For instance, in the opening scene of Eragon, he’s just a kid hunting in the forest because he wants to have food to bring home to his family. Then his perfect shot gets ruined when some dumb rock mystically materializes in the middle of the deer herd. We immediately learn his status in life, that his family is important to him, that he’s a careful and diligent hunter, and that he, like anyone else, gets pissed off when a wrench is thrown into his dinner plans. Not to mention an introduction to magic and mystery. And that’s just in the first few pages. The next chapter introduces a secondary antagonist – the sneering butcher – who also gets in the way of Eragon’s attempts to feed his family. We get to see how he responds to interpersonal conflict, what makes him feel shame, and what he’s willing to give up in order to do his duty to his family.
On the one hand, he’s a perfectly ordinary teenage farm boy – nothing special about him. But through him, readers feel tension, shock and disappointment, curiosity, embarrassment and resentment, and the hope for something better, even magical. Eragon is hardly my go-to example for characterization – like Bella, he’s kind of a blank slate good boy. But Paolini’s book is a good example of how including these character elements in concert with the plot can make readers turn to the next page.
“But I’ve heard all that before,” you might protest. My character has all those things. Plus well developed family and friend dynamics, hobbies and quirks, and much more interesting things going for them than “fantasy ripoff Luke Skywalker.”
So let me pause to ask, have readers and editors only read your opener or has anyone read a more significant chunk of your story? If people have just read the first couple chapters and say that wasn’t enough to make them care about your mc, it may just be that you haven’t nailed your opening yet (a hard thing to do!). It’s worth begging your beta readers to read a few more chapters and ask if they gain interest in your character with a little more time. Then you’ll know whether you have to go back to the drawing board, or if you need to read up on how to write a smashing opening chapter.
But if a number of people read a good chunk of your book and say they lost interest because they didn’t care about the character, or read the whole thing and were dissatisfied for the same reason, then you should dig deep on characterization.
One question I’ve become convinced more authors need to ask is, “what does my main character believe?” I read so many characters these days who have passionate emotions and opinions, but they don’t feel much different from any other character who’s out for revenge, or has fallen in love, or who’s overcoming their traumatic past. Because none of these characters ponder “the big questions of life.”
They might be vaguely moral, with lines they aren’t willing to cross, but their inner world does not feel exceptionally deep or unique. Why should I keep reading about your brooding fantasy assassin vs. some other fantasy assassin? Because yours has dry, dark humor rather than cringey, “Marvel” one-liners? Because he’s hotter, or has a more unusual magic power?
Sure, I’ve finished books for that reason, then given them 3 stars for “averagely entertaining.” Like watching a B-movie on Netflix. But if you want your character to catch hearts, and be unforgettable to the acquisitions editor who’s making a decision about your future as an author, then I encourage you to dig deeper than “what’s my mc’s Myers Briggs?”
Check out my earlier article on “Why Your Main Character Falls Flat: Do They Think About the Big Questions of Life?” for more tips on how to implement beyond-surface-level characterization.
Problem 3: Pacing
Why do books like Twilight get published and sell millions of copies? The writing is weak, the characters are deliberately flat reader-inserts.
I would argue, however, that the pacing is amazing. Meyers does an excellent job of mixing emotion, danger, and mystery to keep readers flipping to the next page. Just when you’d get bored of Bella’s fluttering heart, someone tries to kill her. Just when the danger seems to have passed, relational issues pop up at home and at school that have nothing to do with the supernatural.
Like a catchy pop song that seems to hit the right beat at every moment to keep you singing along, the chapters are punchy and always leave readers asking, what happens next?
It can be difficult to pin down what exactly makes for “good” pacing. One of the best places to start is with story structure like the 15 point “Save the Cat” model or 3 Act structure. I call that “macro” pacing, but pacing at the chapter level (“medium”), and even sentence level (“micro”), is just as important for an engaging reader experience.
Often, an acquisitions editor will just be left with the feeling that the story is missing a certain “spark.” The character and concept might have been interesting enough, but they just didn’t feel a great urge to keep reading. I think the biggest issue at play in these situations is pacing.
At its simplest, pacing is how you time the telling of your story. Like a joke that needs just enough, but not too much, setup for the punch line to land right, a book needs to be told in a way that connects with readers. Some authors have that flair for storytelling, instinctively starting and ending each scene at just the right time. Other writers have to work harder to develop a style that makes their world and characters pop.
Maybe you’ve received requests for your full manuscript, and the editors sounded excited, but then declined your manuscript with somewhat vague reasons like:
“It just didn’t land right.”
“It didn’t keep me invested throughout.”
“I lost interest part way through.”
“The story didn’t really leave an impact on me.”
“It didn’t excite me as a reader.”
“X part of the novel was good, but the rest felt a little lost.”
Now, editors may say things like this as well if they don’t find your character arc compelling. But if the main issue is the characters, the editor will usually just come out and say it. But if they leave feedback like this and don’t specifically or extensively mention characterization, then I’m convinced the “missing spark” they’re getting at is pacing.
Check out my full article on how to master novel pacing for more insights and exercises. I suggest starting by giving a single chapter to a writer friend or beta reader and asking if they think you started and ended the scene in the right place, and whether all the content felt necessary. You might be surprised by how much feedback readers have on such specific questions.
Bonus Problem: No Author Following
You may have heard that publishers weigh how large of a following authors have when deciding whether to offer a book deal. This is true. When I worked on the acquisitions team at Monster Ivy Publishing, we narrowed down the submissions pile to our top 5 and deliberated from there. We wanted to accept all of them, but as a small press, had to pick only a few.
Two manuscripts were “tied” in terms of craft and story, so we looked at the authors. One of them had a much more established presence online and was clearly ready to jump in with marketing her books. That’s the author we ended up accepting.
Now, the author of our favorite manuscript among the batch had a very small online following. But her book resonated with us so much that we decided to accept her anyway. It was a mark against her though – it was only because of how much we loved her story that we were willing to take on the “extra work” of advising her on how to build up her online presence.
So I won’t say that a publisher will reject you if you haven’t already developed a following. But it’s true that building up your brand before submitting your manuscript for consideration will work highly in your favor, and may even be the tie breaker that gets you the book deal.
Hi, I’m Caylah Coffeen, a freelance editor and marketer of sci-fi and fantasy books. I love reading and writing and am a follower of Jesus Christ.
I’ve worked for Monster Ivy Publishing, Eschler Editing, and Havok Magazine. Reach out to chat about books and publishing!
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