How to Make Your Fiction Manuscript Shine
- Sarah Burgos Maron
- Jun 14, 2019
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 24, 2020
Writing a book fit for publication and representation is no easy task. It takes time, technique, and lots of trial and error. Below we've come up with a three-step guide to help you make your fiction manuscript outshine your potential competitors, bringing you one step closer to your dreams.
Step 1: Draft out your ideas (all of your ideas)
You need to make sure you understand your manuscript down to its very bones. This can involve quite a bit of reflection and notetaking, but it will make sure your world and characters have depth.
You must be able to answer the following questions for a successful world build:
1. Who are your characters (both major and minor)? What do they want? What do they hate? What do they fear? What are some of their quirks, struggles, and motivations? What's their attitude about the world, and how does it affect their skills, opinions, and decisions throughout your manuscript?
2. How do your character arcs, histories, and relationships link together? How do they change over time and why?
3. What are the laws and structure of your world's society and universe? What climates, cultures, and tools are present? How do these factors affect daily life? For example, if magic exists, how does it work? What are its limits? What can a person do or not do (legal, possible, or otherwise)?
Once you're able to map out the answers to the above questions, it should help you better orient and understand your plot (and your world), which then leads us to step number two.
Step 2: Review the Major Technicalities
The amount of technicalities that go into writing a book exceeds a single blog post. So, for brevity's sake, we'll go over the top three technicalities writers tend to skim over or struggle with before achieving representation.
Major Technicality Task #1: Solidify Your Structure
The structure of your plot should make sense and not go off on any long, random side quests or tangents. Why? Because it impedes the story's flow and can potentially put off a reader.
Keep in mind that most story structures are made up of three acts. The first act focuses on getting to know your characters, the story's setting, the main hook, and the inciting incident that propels the rest of the story forward. The second act shows how your characters react to the inciting incident, as well as their growth and character development. And the third act revolves around the story's quest conclusion and resolution.
A brief example of the three acts broken down for HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE:
First act: Harry discovers he's a wizard and takes off to Hogwarts, where he's known as the boy who lived.
Second act: Harry must overcome the many struggles that come with him embracing his new life at Hogwarts, alongside his new friends and enemies.
Third act: Harry confronts Voldemort, and then returns to the Dursley's for the summer.
Please note you are still allowed to have minor side quests that interweave with your main plot in your manuscript. However, it's best to keep them at a bare minimum, and they must be relevant for world, character, or plot development. Everything else should be cut out (as much as it might hurt to hear that).
Major Technicality Task #2: Establish Your Character Arcs
Just as important as it is to solidify your story's structure, you also need to confirm your character arcs. All of your core characters should have a clear character arc. Where do they start off in the story and why? What motivates their development throughout the plot, for better or worse?
All of these questions should be answered in your manuscript. Review your earlier character notes for assistance, make sure you're throwing in enough adversity and flaws, and remember that no one is perfect (and that's exactly how readers and agents like it).
Major Technicality Task #3: Verify Your Character's Voice and Manuscript Point of View
Whether you choose to have one narrator or multiple, your point of view needs to be consistent. That means if you choose first-person, present-tense, stick with it. Mixing it up will only confuse and disengage a reader.
Your characters' voices should also sound unique. Who they are should fly right off the page and seep into every word. Consider their backstory, tone, vocabulary, and perception of the world to ace this section (especially if you're writing in first-person). If your characters end up sounding too similar to each other, it might be time to revisit your earlier notes for reflection.
Step 3: Cut down as much as possible
This is the hardest step to making your manuscript shine, but it's also the last in the entire process. Focus on making every word count. Remove any unnecessary side plots and characters. And if all else fails, seek out a fresh pair of eyes for feedback or advice.
Keep in mind that although it's recommended you stay within your genre's typical wordcount range, it's more important that you do your story justice. An agent won't mind a word count so much if they fall in love with a story. But it's hard to fall in love with a story if crucial parts to it are missing.
For those who struggle with this task, try reviewing your work on a page by page basis, working from back to front, or starting off with the sections you enjoy least. A line editor could also do this portion for you; however, if you hire one, make it clear to them upfront that you're hoping to reduce your word count. That way they can keep an eye out for that particular request from the start.
And there you have it! By following this guide in its entirety, your manuscript should be one step closer to making it to the top of a query pile. We wish you all the luck in your writing endeavors. If you have any questions, or if you have anything you'd like to add, please feel free to sound off in the comment section!
Best wishes,
- SBM Literary
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