It all starts with an idea that hopefully leads to a million printed copies. We are interested in what happens in-between. In today’s article, we will discuss the writing of a manuscript you can submit to a publishing studio by giving you some tips on how to make a good product that could catch the eye of the pickiest of publishers.
For clarity purposes, we will focus on fiction and give you advice on the presumption you’re writing a fictional story.
Characters, Story, World Building
There are many different opinions as to where to start, so we will give you the three main starting points:
- Characters
- Story
- World building
Characters
If you have an idea for an interesting character, you can start there. Try to imagine what they look like. Close your eyes. What do you see? Describe every detail, big and small, on the page. Next, what’s your character’s occupation? Don’t worry if they don’t have one, because in novels being unemployed is an occupation of its own.
Afterwards, think about their distinctive traits. They can be anything from “evil” to “doesn’t like tomatoes”. Be as broad and as niche as possible until you get a character indistinguishable from a real human being.
Try not to fall into the trap of making a perfect, Jesus-like character; readers like seeing characters who are flawed like them. On the other hand, you can have a character that is all good, as long as you have other characters who feel more down-to-earth.
Story
In case you have a fascinating story that you want to tell, you can begin writing your manuscript by outlining the story. Think about the beginning, middle and end. You don’t necessarily have to write it in that order; some of the best books have a flashback structure which only shows the inciting incident around the end of the novel.
You can experiment with the format, but you should always know what follows what. The writer should be aware of the story at all times because that allows them to be the active maker of meaning.
Still, author George R.R. Martin has a different approach, that of a gardener, meaning that his story changes with time. On the other hand, he is talking about a successful saga with multiple entries, so this approach might not help a self-contained novel.
Once you know the main actions in your story, it’s time to think of characters who are going to do them and the world around them. Since you picked to start with the story, the characters and their environment should be based according to the logic of the story, not the other way around.
World Building
Based on our experience, not many authors start with an idea of a world that they then populate and play with. However, if you particularly like fantasy or futurism, this might be the right approach for you.
Let’s repeat the character exercise from earlier. Close your eyes and describe what you see. Is that fictional world set in the past, present, or future? What cultural and historical influences does it have?
No matter how unique your fictional world is, you should be able to find real life inspiration behind it. Research the real life references you can find to enrich your setting. However, you should try to make your world distinctive in some way, otherwise it’s just a mesh of existing places and periods. In The Hunger Games series, for example, people are divided in districts and every year people from these districts fight to the death; quite memorable and distinguishable, right?
To summarise it, let your imagination run free, but don’t forget about the research.
Find Your Target Group
Many writers choose to be blissfully ignorant of the market where they want to publish their books, citing reasons like creative freedom.
While we agree that creative freedom is very important, it doesn’t hurt knowing your readers, because you do need people to buy your book to become a successful author. You can do that by looking at any book ideas you might have and thinking about what audience they could serve.
For example, if your characters are primarily young, you might want to research the interests of young adults or children. If you tend to include many cultural or historical references in your books, you can check what high-brow readers prefer nowadays.
By researching your potential audience and their taste, it can undeniably help you edit your work, but it could also help you find the right publisher and prepare for the interview that might lead to your work being picked up by said publisher.
Find Your Genre
It’s not necessary for a book to fall under a certain genre to sell, though it might help with marketing. As much as we like to think that us writers can create unique works that cannot be categorised, most of the time they can be.
Is there murder in your story? Talk about your publisher about your book being a thriller or horror. Do your characters live in a terrible imagined future? Then you have a dystopian novel.
Genres can be as expansive and as niche as you can make them out to be. We don’t want you to change your work to fit a certain genre, we only recommend identifying your work to help you promote it better.
Get Opinions and Edit
Once your manuscript is ready, it’s time to get a second opinion. Let your friends and relatives read it and tell you what they think. If they only congratulate you without giving specific remarks, make sure to ask questions that will help you find out their true opinion.
One big thing to be careful about is ambiguity. If your readers find something hard to understand, especially if multiple people ask you about the same thing, you should consider editing that bit (unless you want it to be ambiguous on purpose).
We don’t recommend editing every time someone says something slightly negative, but you should be ready to make changes if you detect a glaring problem while asking for reviews.
The manuscript you’re going to submit to a publishing house is not going to be your first draft, or at least it shouldn’t be. Once you get a book deal, you’ll find an editor, but publishers want the manuscript to be polished, although they might not say it out loud.
The publishing business is competitive and you don’t want to be less prepared than your counterparts.
