What makes a good (and finished) manuscript?

Here is some additional guidance to help you determine if your manuscript has a chance of being considered for publication on ChapterByChapter.net.

The Hook

People have great constraints on their time. They multi-task. They're distracted by cell phones and tweets. If they pick up a book or visit a web site like ChapterByChapter, what they read must hook them immediately like a baited hook does a fish.

As an author, you must keep this in mind. You will want to introduce your characters and setting at the outset. However, a big mistake is to put it all up front in endless pages of narrative. Get the action started right away. One of the novels on this site, Eidolon: Quest starts out with the attack and sinking of a Navy guided missile cruiser. The author could have started out with You see, there's this guy named Sandor Tatrin whose Navy career doesn't look so good. He's [endless paragraphs of narrative without a single sentence of dialog or anything happening]. And his best friend is the NASA administrator. Boring. Go sink a battleship; that'll get their attention.

Show Don't Tell

Narration is the "tell" part. It's the first thing that we do as a child when we learn to tell a story. It's easy to do, requiring little style or skill. For example: "This happened. Then this happened. Then after that, this happened." It's boring. Novice writers rely too much on narrative. Furthermore, the narrative is often far too detailed. As an author, paint the outlines of the picture. Trust your reader to fill in the details from his or her own palette. The "show" part has two features that engage the reader's attention: dialog and action. These are essential to draw the reader emotionally into your, well, narrative.

Dialog

Telling readers that two people had a conversation is nothing compared to letting them listen in on it. Use dialog wherever you can because it allows you to tell something about the personalities of your characters as well as to convey emotion in a natural way. Compare the following.

Narrated:
Naomi was surprised and angered to find out about Sandor's military past and decided that she didn't want to be part of his crew.

Dialog:
"Were you or were you not on Exeter when it attacked Damascus?"
"Why do you think Exeter attacked Damascus? I didn't tell you that."
"It's not hard to guess. It was all over CNN."
"The answer to your question is no."
"Are you denying it? Don't deny it. I know it happened. It was an atrocity. You told me you were on Exeter and that she was in the campaign."
Sandor raised a finger, but she cut him off. "You need to take me home."
He shook his head. "What?"
"I don't associate with war criminals."

Action

It doesn't have to be guns blazing, bombs dropping, and fists flying. It can be anything that puts your reader in the position of the character with something going on. It often serves the purpose of describing the setting without resorting to straight narrative. Consider the following.

Narrated: Naomi's office was messy because she hadn't had time to clean up after returning from the field.

Action: She smiled and gestured to one of the two seats in front of her desk. "Please sit."
Both chairs had books piled on them. He lifted a stack from one and looked around for a place to set them. The ones on the desk would surely topple if he placed them there.
"Just drop them on the floor next to that equipment box."
She returned to her chair. With both of them sitting, they couldn't see each other. She sighed and pushed two stacks of books to the side.
"Please forgive the mess. I returned from the field just this week. I'm trying to catch up."
All of the words in bold convey some kind of action.

Characters and Point of View

Your novel of course has characters. However, it is primarily the story of only one of them. Robin Hood had his band of merry men, but Robin Hood is the main character. Your goal as the author is to relate the main character's journey and how he or she changed as a consequence of obstacles overcome (or that defeat him/her if it's a tragedy). This is called the character arc. If you don't do this, then you don't have a story. Now this part is important: your writing should be from his or her point of view. All the other characters are secondary; they serve only to propel the story along. In adult fiction, you can switch the point of view to another character. However, you take the risk that you will lose your readers if you overdo it. You can devote an entire chapter to the other's point of view. But don't switch back and forth, for example, in the course of dialog. For young adult or children's stories, never, ever change the point of view.
Consider: Robin trekked through the woods on his way to the camp. A big man stepped in front of him, blocking his path. Robin looked at the hickory staff that the man brandished. This could be difficult, he thought.
"Step aside, good sir, and let me pass."
"And who makes such a demand?"
"It is I, Robin Hood."
When John heard the word Hood, it reminded him of a child's fairy tale about a girl lost in the woods. He'd hated wolves and grandmothers ever since.
Did you catch the point of view switch? It took a moment to process, didn't it? Without warning, we are now looking at the encounter from John's point of view and are forced to think about his troubled childhood. But it's not John's story; it's Robin's. Switch the point of view too much and your readers will lose their patience. A better line would have been – from Robin's point of view – to hear John say, "What are you some kind of bloody lost girl with a red hood?"

Conflict, mystery, and page turning

What happens next? These words are music to an author's ears. They indicate that you've engaged the reader. You have them on edge until you give them the resolution of whatever you wrote that has put them there: a puzzle, a mystery, a great evil, frustrated desires, a personal flaw that threatens to unmake the hero. When you resolve it, you throw another one at them. Keep at it until the end of the story. Your novel is a story of overcoming obstacles. If you don't have conflict and mystery, then you will lose your readers. If you think that you have obstacles, but you are unable to convince the reader that they are important, you will lose them. On a site like ChapterByChapter, where the reader faces a choice of spending the next 99 cents or not, you must end every chapter with the reader thinking, "What happens next?"

Continuity and Focus

We've mentioned the character's journey. Make it a roller coaster. When you get on one, you're not thinking about last Thursday night's dinner. You're thinking about the ride. In the middle of the ride, you can't get off and suddenly appear on the merry-go-round. If such a thing were possible, it would be disorienting. Don't put your reader through this. You can, of course, have flashbacks and side narratives. However, they must serve the purpose of getting the roller coaster to its finish. Otherwise, they're a distraction. In other words, when one chapter ends, the next chapter should be a natural transition for the reader. You can jig a little. However, the reader has to know that he or she is still on the ride.

Adverbs

We use them all the time in conversation. However, in prose, they can distract. They're often a sign of wordiness and can almost always be eliminated. By doing so, you force yourself to be a better writer. Consider these two sentences.
Sally angrily shouted, "I hate you!"
Sally swiped angry tears from her eyes. She glared at Tom. "I hate you!"
Having convinced you never to use adverbs ever again, there is an exception. People use adverbs when they talk. Some may disagree with this, but dialog can be more authentic if you allow your characters to use adverbs as they naturally would. Just be sure to make it natural. "I wanted to cut your throat when you hatefully told that story to Sally. You knew how it would hurt her."

Passive Voice and Negatives

It was not impossible for him to avoid failing to imagine being the subject of such derision again.
Say what? That sentence has three, maybe four negatives in it and two uses of passive voice. Psychological research has shown that it takes people more effort to process negatives such as, "Tom didn't throw the ball", and passives like, "The bat was thrown by Tom." Say instead, "Tom threw the bat." There are times when negatives and passive voice are useful. Just don't overdo them. Your readers will thank you. Better still, they may keep reading.

More?

There are scores of other writing problems that can harm a good story. The ones listed above are more common. If you are so inclined, Google "writing style" to find other web sites that offer more detail.

Before contacting ChapterByChapter to offer your manuscript, look at it critically and decide if it has some of the above offenses to good writing. Better still, have somebody with a critical eye read it. And make sure you have it proofread and edited. In the absence of your presence, your words on paper or monitor screen are your representative. Poor grammar and misspellings reflect badly on the author. People will use them to judge the quality of the work. Third parties like an editor or proof reader will assuredly find problems that the author – being too close to the work – will miss. (And yes, assuredly is most assuredly an adverb.)