You have finished your book and given it to friends and family to read. They all say it is wonderful (they would wouldn’t they?) So you send it off to an agent or publisher you have found on the net or in the Writer’s Year Book and the rejects come thick and (not very) fast!
What can be done? The best thing you can do is get your book professionally critiqued The costs for this type of service vary wildly so be careful in your choice. The level of detail can also vary. The detail in the example below is ideal for an initial assessment. It gives you, the author a basic guide for revision and an assessment of the viability of your book. If you were thinking of getting your book professionally edited I would strongly suggest you get it critiqued first. After all there is little point in spending a fortune on an editor if your book is not up to standard in the first place.
Critique Example
Narrative Flow
Overall I think you have produced a very well written and marketable book, and I definitely think you should submit it to a traditional publishing house (or consider self-publishing if you choose that path). The story pulls the reader into the action and into the characters’ hearts and lives from the first page on, and that pace is kept throughout the entire book. I could sense that you as an author have an intuitive understanding of human nature, and that comes through in your character portrayals. Each one of your characters is believable and interesting on many levels.
Also effective is the way you portray the beautiful, elf-like aliens, the Dacians, as the ones who are actually cruel and vicious, and yet the scary-looking, ugly, reptilian Mylians are the innocent, enslaved, victimised ones. This upheaval of typical assumptions made about creatures and beings in books and movies, and in readers’ minds, is well done.
I love the way you also use this sort of reverse logic in portraying how each race sees the other race as alien; excellent statement on the typical “us vs. them” mentality.
Your descriptions are so vivid as to make the reader feel as though he or she is right in the center of the action. I especially loved this in Chapter 4, “Shipwrecked.” Your descriptions of the intimate scenes between Tristan and Aurelia are skillfully and beautifully done, so well done in fact that readers who might be a bit on the shy side, or reserved and conservative will still be drawn into the scenes without feeling awkward reading about them. I also loved how you portrayed Tristan and Aurelia as two perfect halves of one whole, with each naturally being stronger for the other when one is feeling weak, such as when Tristan used his survival skills to make camp and hunt and care for Aurelia’s broken leg, yet Aurelia was strong for Tristan when they were journeying through the desert and the heat would overcome him.
There was one sentence in Chapter 5, “Rescue,” that I was particularly grateful to see as a reader and impressed to see as an editor. Instead of dragging the reader through pages and pages of useless, agonizing suspense as to what would happen once Tristan and Aurelia became separated, you simply mention, “Tristan did not realise it, but he would not see her again for a very long time.”
I thought this was very skilfully done, because it allowed you to launch in a different direction in the story line and bring the fully focused reader with you. So often authors miss this point, and in an effort to strive for suspense they instead the reader to be constantly distracted from the path of that different direction because they’re worried about another character (“What happened to Aurelia?”).
Chapters 9 and 10 tend to be a little heavy on the battle sequences. They are action-packed and realistically portrayed and described, but some readers might lose interest, as it may seem like heavy reading to them.
A few slight problems with parts of the plot:
Chapter 14 describes Tristan’s Guardian training, but it’s a bit baffling: At first it seems like this is training he underwent as a young man while still on earth, and then it is explained that to him it seemed like five years but was only a day. As I read the few pages that described his Guardian training experiences with Dionysia, I felt lost because this question nagged at my mind. While you do want to keep some suspense going, it might be better at the beginning of the chapter to write in a way that alludes to what is going on. For instance, “Tristan somehow knew that as a child he had been chosen for Guardian training, though his human mind could produce no memory of this.”
Another major source of confusion is the Epilogue, which is not a good place to leave the reader saying, “Huh?!?” since that will be their last impression of your book. I truly am not sure if the whole sequence of the book was a dream, or an image of what would happen in the future once Tristan has finished his training with Dionysia. If it would be too difficult to clear this up in the writing, then I would suggest simply leaving off the Epilogue, as it also does not serve the purpose of setting up the story for a second book in a series. It truly left me baffled as to your intent throughout the entire book that I had just written, which was a disappointing note to end on, because I really enjoyed your book a great deal, and found it to be a real page-turner.
Character Development
I especially liked the way you managed to capture the subtle interplay between men and women in the interactions between Tristan and Aurelia; even though this may have been written with the intent of describing just those characters’ interactions, as a reader I picked up on the subtle message of how “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” to use an old saying, and how we can seem almost like aliens to one another! Again, you may not have intended this, but it was an effective undertone to their dialogue.
In chapter 9 the text mentions Dar’en, but in that scene I think it should be Dar’len since it was mentioned a paragraph previous to this that Dar’len was standing behind Tristan when he was at the controls, and she obviously has some command over the people. But maybe it really should be Dar’en? It is confusing in the reader’s mind. On this note, I would recommend changing one of their names so that the reader isn’t easily confused. Dar’en and Dar’len look too similar. I realize these characters are only both mentioned in a few chapters together, but I would still suggest making one of the names uniquely different from the other. Then again there is a housemaid named Dar’lean in chapter 12.
In Chapter 11 a character named Devren is introduced, and soon thereafter the name is spelled Davren.
Editing Needs
Though there are entire sections – especially in the first eight chapters – that are perfectly clean, I think this manuscript would be enhanced greatly by having it professionally copyedited. There are some sentence structure issues here and there, and some spots with a few spelling and punctuation errors. I noticed some word usage errors and a few problems with tenses. Also, from about chapter 9 to the end of the book, I noticed a much greater need for editing (as the first eight chapters were cleaner).
An extra space needs to be inserted between paragraphs in the first chapter when the scene changes from Tristan’s frame of reference to Aurelia’s. This also occurs at various other points within the book (when the scene changes to another setting or to someone else’s frame of reference, but there is no paragraph break.)
I also noticed that the first two to three pages of the book have a lot of copyediting needs, and this is important to correct because those pages are where you want to really grab the reader. Some readers will actually put down a book and not give it a second chance if they encounter sentence structure problems and slightly cumbersome writing here and there in the very beginning.
There are some substantive editing needs in chapters 11 and 12. In Chapter 12, one short paragraph introduces the concept of the Guardian which, since that word is the title of the book, causes the reader too quickly to think, Oh, okay, so that’s who the guardian will be, and it might be more effective to refer to the artificial intelligence, and that it needs a special being in order to be reawakened, but not to call that special being the Guardian just yet. It wraps up the topic too neatly in one short paragraph, whereas it is better to plant the seed of the idea and draw the reader along with you as the concept of the child Tristain being this Guardian.
Such editing is vital. Since your writing is generally so clean, the errors are more glaringly obvious in contrast, and thus the errors detract from the nearly flawless book you have written. In other words, your book is truly a gem that just needs a bit more polishing, and then it will be ready for submission to a publisher.
After the review above was written the book went through several revisions beforebeing sent away for editing.
Look at the different publishing options available to you here
What can be done? The best thing you can do is get your book professionally critiqued The costs for this type of service vary wildly so be careful in your choice. The level of detail can also vary. The detail in the example below is ideal for an initial assessment. It gives you, the author a basic guide for revision and an assessment of the viability of your book. If you were thinking of getting your book professionally edited I would strongly suggest you get it critiqued first. After all there is little point in spending a fortune on an editor if your book is not up to standard in the first place.
Narrative Flow
Overall I think you have produced a very well written and marketable book, and I definitely think you should submit it to a traditional publishing house (or consider self-publishing if you choose that path). The story pulls the reader into the action and into the characters’ hearts and lives from the first page on, and that pace is kept throughout the entire book. I could sense that you as an author have an intuitive understanding of human nature, and that comes through in your character portrayals. Each one of your characters is believable and interesting on many levels.
Also effective is the way you portray the beautiful, elf-like aliens, the Dacians, as the ones who are actually cruel and vicious, and yet the scary-looking, ugly, reptilian Mylians are the innocent, enslaved, victimised ones. This upheaval of typical assumptions made about creatures and beings in books and movies, and in readers’ minds, is well done.
I love the way you also use this sort of reverse logic in portraying how each race sees the other race as alien; excellent statement on the typical “us vs. them” mentality.
Your descriptions are so vivid as to make the reader feel as though he or she is right in the center of the action. I especially loved this in Chapter 4, “Shipwrecked.” Your descriptions of the intimate scenes between Tristan and Aurelia are skillfully and beautifully done, so well done in fact that readers who might be a bit on the shy side, or reserved and conservative will still be drawn into the scenes without feeling awkward reading about them. I also loved how you portrayed Tristan and Aurelia as two perfect halves of one whole, with each naturally being stronger for the other when one is feeling weak, such as when Tristan used his survival skills to make camp and hunt and care for Aurelia’s broken leg, yet Aurelia was strong for Tristan when they were journeying through the desert and the heat would overcome him.
There was one sentence in Chapter 5, “Rescue,” that I was particularly grateful to see as a reader and impressed to see as an editor. Instead of dragging the reader through pages and pages of useless, agonizing suspense as to what would happen once Tristan and Aurelia became separated, you simply mention, “Tristan did not realise it, but he would not see her again for a very long time.”
I thought this was very skilfully done, because it allowed you to launch in a different direction in the story line and bring the fully focused reader with you. So often authors miss this point, and in an effort to strive for suspense they instead the reader to be constantly distracted from the path of that different direction because they’re worried about another character (“What happened to Aurelia?”).
Chapters 9 and 10 tend to be a little heavy on the battle sequences. They are action-packed and realistically portrayed and described, but some readers might lose interest, as it may seem like heavy reading to them.
A few slight problems with parts of the plot:
Chapter 14 describes Tristan’s Guardian training, but it’s a bit baffling: At first it seems like this is training he underwent as a young man while still on earth, and then it is explained that to him it seemed like five years but was only a day. As I read the few pages that described his Guardian training experiences with Dionysia, I felt lost because this question nagged at my mind. While you do want to keep some suspense going, it might be better at the beginning of the chapter to write in a way that alludes to what is going on. For instance, “Tristan somehow knew that as a child he had been chosen for Guardian training, though his human mind could produce no memory of this.”
Another major source of confusion is the Epilogue, which is not a good place to leave the reader saying, “Huh?!?” since that will be their last impression of your book. I truly am not sure if the whole sequence of the book was a dream, or an image of what would happen in the future once Tristan has finished his training with Dionysia. If it would be too difficult to clear this up in the writing, then I would suggest simply leaving off the Epilogue, as it also does not serve the purpose of setting up the story for a second book in a series. It truly left me baffled as to your intent throughout the entire book that I had just written, which was a disappointing note to end on, because I really enjoyed your book a great deal, and found it to be a real page-turner.
Character Development
I especially liked the way you managed to capture the subtle interplay between men and women in the interactions between Tristan and Aurelia; even though this may have been written with the intent of describing just those characters’ interactions, as a reader I picked up on the subtle message of how “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” to use an old saying, and how we can seem almost like aliens to one another! Again, you may not have intended this, but it was an effective undertone to their dialogue.
In chapter 9 the text mentions Dar’en, but in that scene I think it should be Dar’len since it was mentioned a paragraph previous to this that Dar’len was standing behind Tristan when he was at the controls, and she obviously has some command over the people. But maybe it really should be Dar’en? It is confusing in the reader’s mind. On this note, I would recommend changing one of their names so that the reader isn’t easily confused. Dar’en and Dar’len look too similar. I realize these characters are only both mentioned in a few chapters together, but I would still suggest making one of the names uniquely different from the other. Then again there is a housemaid named Dar’lean in chapter 12.
In Chapter 11 a character named Devren is introduced, and soon thereafter the name is spelled Davren.
Editing Needs
Though there are entire sections – especially in the first eight chapters – that are perfectly clean, I think this manuscript would be enhanced greatly by having it professionally copyedited. There are some sentence structure issues here and there, and some spots with a few spelling and punctuation errors. I noticed some word usage errors and a few problems with tenses. Also, from about chapter 9 to the end of the book, I noticed a much greater need for editing (as the first eight chapters were cleaner).
An extra space needs to be inserted between paragraphs in the first chapter when the scene changes from Tristan’s frame of reference to Aurelia’s. This also occurs at various other points within the book (when the scene changes to another setting or to someone else’s frame of reference, but there is no paragraph break.)
I also noticed that the first two to three pages of the book have a lot of copyediting needs, and this is important to correct because those pages are where you want to really grab the reader. Some readers will actually put down a book and not give it a second chance if they encounter sentence structure problems and slightly cumbersome writing here and there in the very beginning.
There are some substantive editing needs in chapters 11 and 12. In Chapter 12, one short paragraph introduces the concept of the Guardian which, since that word is the title of the book, causes the reader too quickly to think, Oh, okay, so that’s who the guardian will be, and it might be more effective to refer to the artificial intelligence, and that it needs a special being in order to be reawakened, but not to call that special being the Guardian just yet. It wraps up the topic too neatly in one short paragraph, whereas it is better to plant the seed of the idea and draw the reader along with you as the concept of the child Tristain being this Guardian.
Such editing is vital. Since your writing is generally so clean, the errors are more glaringly obvious in contrast, and thus the errors detract from the nearly flawless book you have written. In other words, your book is truly a gem that just needs a bit more polishing, and then it will be ready for submission to a publisher.
After the review above was written the book went through several revisions beforebeing sent away for editing.
Look at the different publishing options available to you here
