Manuscript faults and agent Carly Watters

This week I read a brilliant blog post which  the agent Carly Watters posted on her website (www.carlywatters.com).  She is a senior agent at PS Literary Agency in Ontario, Canada.  I often read her blogs as they provide so much useful information for aspiring writers,  This post set out the most common faults she sees in manuscripts that cause her to reject the work.  I urge you to go and read it, the information in it is pure gold.

Her 'faults' are all obvious to the experienced writer.  Her first was a story that contains no external conflict.  As she says 'things must happen to the characters.'  I'm okay on that one. I go too far on the 'happening' side, skimming over my characters' deepest emotional reactions to things.  Her second 'no' is a lack of pace, an inability to keep the reader turning the pages.  I'm generally okay on that one too.  I've learned to split up my plots and narrative structure at cliffhangers.

Her third 'no' was a lack of individual voice.  And she wanted to distinguish the individual characters' voices.  In Genenunter Aris and Yull have distinct voices, but I still need to sort out my baddies.  This follows on to her next point, writing distinctive dialogue.  In Genehunter Aris has speech with lots of contractions, Yull's speech is formal, and I've developed his own phraseology and vocabulary.  

The fourth reason she rejected manuscripts was because they were the wrong length for the market.  I tend to write towards the short end of the range, so I've plenty of room to add the emotional depth the book needs.  Then she wanted to see a sensible structure for the story.  I tend to tell a tale from A to B, with beginning, middle and end in those places.  So I'm okay on that one.

Her last reason for a 'no' was lack of character growth and development during the story.   I have a bit more work to do on with Aris on this.  I think her growth will be an understanding of why her parents split up.  So far I've got her just accepting that, but I think she needs a bit more emotional response to it, and a changing understanding of why they split up.  But overall I'm quite happy with my manuscript as checked against Carly's list of 'noes'.  I think I'm getting it right, at last.

Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral and Panthera : Death Song and the short story collection Otherlives.  Find out more at www.wendymetcalfe.com