You’re living and writing right now, today, in the midst of huge change in the publishing industry. It’s so huge that by the time you’re ten years older you’ll have navigated the tectonic shift from Pangea to a modern continent.

One of the major developments of that change is the rise of the profession of the Independent Editor (IE). I don’t mean proofreaders. Anyone can proofread, and even the finest IE ever in history will miss the random typo. And I don’t mean copy editors. Anyone can look up proper grammar and punctuation online in about two minutes.

I mean professional editors who can first guide you in developing your story for the most powerful storytelling possible and then line-edit your language into truly memorable literature.

Yes. You have some really good reasons to be intensely grateful for the rise of the IE.

1. An excellent IE is heck of good for you—for both your self-esteem and your writing skills.


Possibly the biggest benefit you get from hiring a really talented and experienced IE is your self-confidence. Do you have the chops to become a professional in this industry? Or are you, as Erica Jong once characterized herself, “a scared little housewife scribbling in her spare time”?

Like Jong, you might very well be both. But you will never know until someone who does know shows you exactly what your strengths are, what you’re instinctively doing right, how what you bring to the craft is what the craft needs. Someone who treats you like the professional you hope to become.

Once you’ve heard about all that, believe me, it is a whole different world in which to learn the skills you have yet to develop. And they’re going to be a lot. No one ever learns it all. But a mentor who can tailor your lessons specifically to your own particular strengths and weaknesses, to your own particular manuscripts, is the fastest, most reliable, and overall cheapest way to learn. Truly—what you don’t get from attending workshop after workshop after workshop you do get from hiring a single excellent IE.

And those lessons you learn are for life.

2. An excellent IE is heck of heck of good for your manuscript.


Of course, the biggest benefit is improvement in your manuscript. Even if you never write another novel after this one, a great IE can edit the very best of your vision into the very best of your words.

Do you know everything you need to in order to make this manuscript the best it can possibly be? You know. . .maybe you do. Of course, if you’re unpublished it’s not all that likely—still, anything’s possible. Lots of debut novels have been the single great work their authors had in them.

But it doesn’t matter, because even if you have it all down in spades—the extraordinary vision, the native and developed talent, the practical knowledge of structure, the eagle eye for telling details, the delicate ear for fabulous dialog, the profound, paradoxical understanding of human nature that underlies all classic stories—it is still a fact of the craft that you can’t completely line edit yourself into the very best possible professional voice. Traces of amateurishness always, somehow, manage to slip through.

I know—I hate that it happens to my writing, too.

3. An excellent IE is the missing link between you and the industry you’re trying to break into.


Once upon, there were writers and there were publishers. But it got too hectic—too many writers, too few publishers. So we invented agents, and the agents served as the conduit between writers and the publishing industry.

And that system has served us well for many, many years.

But now the publishing industry has first gradually consolidated into a handful of giants and then abruptly lost its financial footing in the economic catastrophe of the past few years. And, at the same time, the emergence of the blogosphere has created a tide of aspiring writers like nothing ever seen before. Now that “hectic” part of the pre-agent days looks like a peaceful, lonely little walk in the park.

So, once again, we have invented a layer of guidance to serve as the conduit between writers and the publishing industry. And this time the system is even better: not only do we have a new professional group in the chain, but their sole purpose is molding aspiring writers into professional writers.

Not just connecting you. But teaching you the lessons you need in order to get properly connected so you’ll be a professional (rather than a lucky amateur) once you do.

4. You’re the first generation of writers to get the IE as a full-blown easily-available service industry.


We sure didn’t have this kind of help when I was cutting my teeth on writing (back in the reign of Elizabeth I), and sadly enough my decades of time-to-publication is living proof. Your ability to get an excellent IE for your work is a gift you probably can’t fully appreciate unless you’ve been out here slogging through the wilderness alone for all these decades.

But you guys are in the right place at the right time. That’s serendipity. Give yourself a pat on the head! This new magic wand is being created just for you.

The Art & Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon

You know how you work so hard to get that first draft down on the page? How you sacrifice comfort, companionship and casual entertainment, family time, work time, leisure time, exercise, sleep, nutrition, freedom from toxins, sobriety, eventually your very sanity—all for the sake of that novel?

Then you suffer the hellfires of the damned in revision?

Then you realize in a blinding flash of epiphany it’s a huge piece of crap and start the whole cycle over again? Because you want that badly for it to be good?

And then you finally, finally, finally have a manuscript you’re proud of, a beautiful, heartfelt evocation of everything you needed to say in exactly the way you needed to say it, and you hire an editor, and send that baby off. . .and it comes back. . .all EDITED.

What the hell?

Such a thankless task it is. These are the things every writer—even you, even me—always, by necessity, overlooks:

1. Chaos
   
   You outlined it. Swear to god, you did. And you did your blessed best to stick to that outline. But everyone knows characters have no respect for their maker, they go tripping off with their heads in the clouds, or in the sand, or under a rock, their fingers in their ears, singing, “la-la-la-la-la-la—I can’t HEAR you!” while you’re leaping up and down shrieking, “It’s a cliff! You idiots! You’re going to die a horrible death! Watch your stupid—! damn. Back to the drawingboard.”
   
   I don’t care how carefully you planned your story or how meticulously you adhered to your plan, there is stuff in there that makes no sense. You know why? Because you have a great imagination, that’s why. And there simply isn’t enough story in the world to sensibly organize absolutely everything you’re capable of thinking up.
2. Lag


Closely related to all-out chaos, these are slightly better-developed detours. Your characters come up with cool stuff to do that has nothing whatever to do with your story, but they’ve got you convinced it’s okay because, hey! they can get a whole lot done while they’re doing it. So you follow them dutifully, writing it all down, shaping it and molding it for climax and polishing the language, thinking, “Maybe there’ll be a spot for it.”

But there’s not. Bummer about that. So you shoehorn it in—not because it works—but because you simply can’t bear to leave it out.

3. Flab


Oh, the words. Words, and words, and words, and words. It’s not your fault. It just comes out of you that way.

Everybody uses more words than necessary, because it takes that many words to get the golden nuggets mined out of your subconscious and onto the page. Then you go back and bravely cut out 25% of them. But there’s another 25% that needs to come out, and you’re faced with a choice: this 25%? or that 25%? or some impossibly intricate, interwoven combination of the two? And what about the other 25%—is that all good, or are you missing something important that needs to be cut out of there, too?

And your vision goes swimmy, your head starts lolling around on your neck, there’s a ringing in your ears, and the next thing you know you’re on the floor under your desk biting your knuckles and twitching convulsively.

You just don’t know.

4. Overkill


The single most fundamental fact about the craft of fiction is the impassable abyss between what the writer sees on the page and what the reader sees. You see absolutely everything. Some of it you don’t even get around to writing down. And when you come back for revision, you automatically doubt every single instinct you had in the original writing about what the reader can tell is going on and what’s just a bunch of gibberish.

So you help them out. You insert a lot of useful, enlightening paragraphs meant to focus their telescope for them as they peer, eternally short-sighted, across that abyss at the world you happen to know is far more vivid and brilliant and meaningful than they can ever discern from such a distance.

5. Anticlimax
   
   And this one’s due to sheer, helpless, futile, blind hope. You know perfectly well that Climax doesn’t do it. But, oh, my ever-loving god, you have been through this entire manuscript so many times, so faithfully, so laboriously, so intently. There is no more blood in the stone.
   
   What are the chances that Climax works just exactly PERFECTLY, and you simply can’t see it for all the sweat and tears blurring your eyes?
   
   What the hell, you know?

Remember: just because you overlooked this stuff, simply by putting yourself out there and being a writer, you still have 8 Wonderful Lessons to Learn From Screwing Up Your Manuscript.

The Art and Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon

“The freshest and most relevant advice you’ll find.”
—Helen Gallagher, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Wonderfully useful, bracing and humorous. . .it demystifies the essential aspects of the craft while paying homage to the art.”
—Millicent Dillon, five time O.Henry Award winner and author of the PEN/Faulkner-nominated Harry Gold

“Teeming with gold. . .will make you love being a writer if only because you belong to the special little club that gets to read this book.”
—KM Weiland, author of Outlining Your Novel

The Art and Craft of Story: 2nd Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon

“Opinionated, rumbunctious, sharp and always entertaining. . .lessons of a writing lifetime.”
—Roz Morris, best selling ghostwriter and author of Nail Your Novel

“As much a gift to writers as an indispensible resource. . .in a never-done-before manner that inspires while it teaches.Highly recommended.”
—Larry Brooks, author of four bestselling thrillers and Story Engineering

“I wish I’d had The Art & Craft of Story when I began work on my first novel.”
—Lucia Orth, author of the critically-acclaimed Baby Jesus Pawn Shop

Here’s the thing about storytelling, folks: it has to have a purpose. Why are you telling this story? I mean, what’s your point?

If your point is that writing fiction is one heck of a fun and entertaining way to spend your leisure time, then I say, “Good for you.” Have yourself a field day. You’re enjoying your life! That’s what it’s there for.

However, if your point is that you expect to sell this story and make money off other people reading it, then I say, “Know thy audience.” Thy audience is not entertained by watching you hang out at your desk laughing hysterically at your own in-jokes. They are not moved to weep when you get all blue inside. They are not cast off the rainbow into epiphany by you leaping to your feet yelling, “Eureka!” They’re still sitting there stolidly waiting for it to matter to them.

And if you can’t give them that. . .well, don’t be holding your hand out waiting for the cash registers to start ringing. They’re not going to.

There is only one purpose to storytelling, and that is to get to the CLIMAX. So if your novel’s CLIMAX is boring, redundant, more trouble than it’s worth—FORGETTABLE—then you have a problem no amount of writerly marketing hype can overcome.

1. Resonance


This is the simplest technique ever, but aspiring writers rarely know about it. Resonance is that wonderful reverberating feeling inside the reader that makes their whole body feel like it’s been gong’d. Gonging a reader is putting them between two large brass gongs and giving it a hearty whangngngng. Great novels always have resonance. The reader reels back in their chair at the end shrieking, “That was toooooooo fabulous!” Then they’re desperate to read it again. Or, better yet, to read the very next thing this author writes.

You create resonance by putting a subtle but clear clue to your CLIMAX somewhere near the very beginning, then spending the rest of the novel drawing the reader’s attention away from it. This is why mystery writers have to put the culprit in the first 1/4-1/3 of the novel.

The simplest technique ever.

2. Fuses


This is the part pantsers love doing but rarely know they have to follow up on. You know what we call fuses that aren’t followed up on? Loose threads.

When you pants loose threads without knowing they’re supposed to be fuses, you get to the end of your novel. . .and it doesn’t end in all the fuses coming together to make an almighty explosion, but in you, personally, getting bored. Sadly, the writer is the last person who ever gets bored. Guess what that means?That’s right. All your readers have already died of boredom and turned up their toes long, long before you finally meandered into your ad-hoc, how-can-I-get-out-of-this? WTF-ever ending.

That’s not a CLIMAX. That’s just a fizzle.

Go ahead and amuse yourself to the eyeballs with the fruitful, verdant abundance of your random imagination. Lots of fuses! Boy, howdy!

Then spend some lengthy, intense, brain-breaking hours figuring out exactly how all those wild ideas can come together in the most thrilling, wonderful CLIMAX ever, the reason your legions of future fans are going to love this novel and read it again and again and again.

3. Logic


You all know about cause-&-effect, right? Because you’ve been listening to me rant about it for ages, on this blog, on the advice column, on the magazine, in the book?

Readers do not read for the honor of watching you sit around all your days scratching and drinking coffee (as fascinating as that might be). No. They read for logic. Their minds are steel traps. IF a character were to have this personality, AND they were to find themself in that impossible predicament, THEN how would they cope?

Every single event you put into your story must be tied inextricably to the other scenes. What’s your CLIMAX? And what caused that? And what caused that? And what caused that? And what caused that? And what caused that?

You know the old E.L. Doctorow saw about writing a novel being like driving a car at night where all you can see is whatever’s within reach of your headlights? That’s actually backward. Writing a novel is like backing a car up at night where all you can see is whatever’s within reach of your taillights.

4. Surprise


Readers stop reading when they stop being addicted to your story. When it stops surprising them. When their curiosity dies.

“What’s that? Something just fell out of me onto the floor. Oh. My curiosity. DEAD.”

Not only must every single page inspire your reader’s curiosity anew, keep it fat & healthy, thrill it with unending surprises, keep your reader helplessly addicted to you and your story. . .your whole reason for telling this story had darn well better be the most surprising, curiosity-inspiring, addictive part of the whole thing.

“How’d that author DO that?” You want them desperate to keep reading your novels to find out, “What kind of magic are you WORKING here?”

5. Inevitability


At the same time that your CLIMAX must be surprising it must also be inevitable. Deus ex machina is cheating. And readers with minds like steel traps hate cheaters. Do you want your readers to hate you? No, you do not. Not if you want their money you sure don’t. But how do you make your novel’s CLIMAX both surprising and inevitable? Both unexpected and familiar? Both shocking and ringing impossibly true?

UNFORGETTABLE?

All three parts of the braid working together: Resonance. Fuses. Impeccable, inescapable cause-&-effect Logic.

Lock it in.

And when you’ve got all three aspects of the novel locked in (HOOK, DEVELOPMENT, and CLIMAX), remember to stick those 4 Essential Post-Its up over your writing desk.

MOST HILARIOUS COMMENT:

I might have this tattooed on my forearm. The entire post.—Jessica

The Art and Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon

“The freshest and most relevant advice you’ll find.”
—Helen Gallagher, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Wonderfully useful, bracing and humorous. . .it demystifies the essential aspects of the craft while paying homage to the art.”
—Millicent Dillon, five time O.Henry Award winner and author of the PEN/Faulkner-nominated Harry Gold

“Teeming with gold. . .will make you love being a writer if only because you belong to the special little club that gets to read this book.”
—KM Weiland, author of Outlining Your Novel

The Art and Craft of Story: 2nd Practitioner’s Manual
by Victoria Mixon

“Opinionated, rumbunctious, sharp and always entertaining. . .lessons of a writing lifetime.”
—Roz Morris, best selling ghostwriter and author of Nail Your Novel

“As much a gift to writers as an indispensible resource. . .in a never-done-before manner that inspires while it teaches.Highly recommended.”
—Larry Brooks, author of four bestselling thrillers and Story Engineering

“I wish I’d had The Art & Craft of Story when I began work on my first novel.”
—Lucia Orth, author of the critically-acclaimed Baby Jesus Pawn Shop

Chuck Sambuchino is the aspiring writer’s conduit to the world of literary representation. An editor and writer for Writer’s Digest Books, he edits two annual resources: Guide to Literary Agents and Children’s Writers & Illustrators Market, and his first book was the third edition of Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript. He is a produced playwright and freelance writer with more than 600 articles in national and regional magazines over the last decade, including recent articles in Watercolor Artist, Pennsylvania Magazine, The Pastel Journal, Cincinnati Magazine, Romance Writers Report and New Mexico Magazine.

And today we’re giving him a chance to sit in the interviewee’s chair.

Chuck, you’re the man with your finger on the pulse of that one industry aspiring writers most dream of and fear: literary representation. You have the opportunity to meet everyone. How did you get this great job?

I was working as a newspaper reporter in town when I saw a low-level position opened up at Writer’s Digest. I went in to the interview and basically told the editor that this was my dream job. I got the position. Later, a position on the books side of things opened up (editing GLA), and I vied for the position and got it. And you’re right—it is a great job.

What’s your favorite story about running your blog, the Guide to Literary Agents? Your most hair-raising?

Good question, but I don’t have many crazy tales. The blog is wonderful (and it’s getting scarily big these days), yet surprisingly drama-free.

You maintain several running series on your blog, including How I Got My Agent and 7 Things I’ve Learned, which you solicit from guest posters. What would you love to post in those series that you’ve never posted before?

I suppose any genre that you don’t see very often—such as sci-fi or memoir or picture books. Those are hard genres to publish, so hearing stuff from their perspective is more unusual. It also reminds writers that it can be done—they made it, and so can you!

As online resources outstrip print in keeping up-to-date, while literary agencies continue to grow and morph year-round, some pundits are wondering if you’ll eventually take the Guide to Literary Agents completely online. Is that where you’re headed?

Possibly, but as long as the print guide is still selling well, it will continue to appear in bookstores. A lot of people—myself included—still love holding books in their hands.

I’m one of those people, too, Chuck. Now, I know in addition to maintaining your blog and editing you also speak publicly on the topic of literary representation. Are you attending writers conferences this year? Teaching? Leading workshops?

Always. I’ll be at the following in 2010: Wrangling With Writing in Tuscon, Arizona (September 24-26); Surrey International Writers Conference in Surrey, BC, Canada (October 22-24); Vegas Valley Book Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada (November 6); and San Francisco Writing for Change in San Francisco, California (November 12-13). I’ll also be appearing at libraries and bookstores around my area—in Cincinnati, Ohio; Dayton, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Erlanger, Kentucky. I love meeting writers in person and talking.

Can you list for us a half-dozen or so of the most talented and hungriest agents right now looking for good manuscripts from unknowns, particularly those interested in new hot genres?

Your average new agent, which I alert people to on my blog, is usually hungry to build a list. But just because they’re hungry doesn’t mean they’re super-talented (but—who knows—they very well may be). “Hunger” can be spotted—but “talent” is in the eye of the beholder.

All this said, an excellent place to start is the October 2010 issue of Writer’s Digest, which has our annual awesome list of 27 agents actively seeking new writers. I would say check out that special list of agents and use your own decision on who to contact. (That issue will be on newsstands in mid-September. The article will not be free online for several months.)

What are the hottest genres selling these days? What new hot genres do you see coming up on the horizon in the next couple of years?

Paranormal never seems to slow down. Narrative nonfiction always sells. YA, in general, is doing well. Romance had a boost during the recent recession (because people needed an escape, I think).

Yes—the recession. As you probably know, the “Purge of ‘08″ has turned a lot of knowledgeable acquisitions editors loose in the independent editing and agenting sphere. How do you see that development panning out over the next year or two?

There do seem to be a lot of new agents popping up (and many of them former editors), but it is unclear whether that large number will last (i.e., agents will make enough money to continue agenting). In other words, it’s hard to say. I hear a lot of people around the Internet taking wild guesses with the future of publishing, and they’re just that: wild guesses.

How do you see the shift of the burden of editing from publisher to agent affecting agents these days? Aspiring writers?

Agents still lack the proper time to truly edit work, so I would say they will continue to demand excellence before they take on a project.

Still, there are agents who don’t like the idea of authors having their manuscripts professionally edited before submitting them. Some say it makes them nervous, and most say, “Don’t mention it in your query.” What is your opinion on what this issue is all about, from your broad range of experience with agents as well as your personal experience as a publishing author?

My thought is that you should certainly have your work edited by others, whether that means qualified peers or an amazing independent editor. That said, I never, ever advise mentioning in your query that “the novel was edited by so-and-so.” You don’t need to explain that it was edited—they assume it was, and mentioning such a thing makes you look amateurish. Avoid mentioning it, and you may just skip this problem altogether.

Good advice. You know, everyone says to the aspiring writer, “Write. Keep plugging away. Learn from good teachers. Do your research and follow the rules when querying. Always remember your manners.” But what’s the one piece of advice you find crucial to success as a writer that nobody ever seems to give?

Goodness gracious, I could talk for 30 minutes on this very question—and I have. This sounds like the exact morning keynote speech I just gave at a conference in DC. How about this: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. If you are only writing one novel or memoir, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Diversify yourself and give yourself the best chance for writing success.

Here’s a couple of really important questions that unpublished writers can very rarely ask of published authors, agents, or acquisitions editors without being awkward. You’re the one person qualified to give an honest answer, and I’m one of the people in a position to ask:

How much can an unknown expect to make from an average first-time genre novel? Per novel that follows once that first one is published?

The reason that this question never gets answered is because there is no answer. You could write a romance novel and get a $2,000 advance from a small publisher. Or you could get a $150,000 advance for a trilogy of thrillers from Random House. It varies so greatly. I would say a moderate estimate would be perhaps $15,000.

You know—I was once in talks with a small press to write a picture book, and the discussed advance was just $1,000. But then, after it was split with the illustrator and co-writer, it would have been $250! So the point is: who knows. The real money to be made on a book is on the backend with royalties.

How much does the average agent make annually?

Anywhere from $0 to $300,000, I would imagine. Established agents who have a variety of authors on the backlog can make little lump sums from dozens and dozens of books. A new agent, with no sales, would probably make nothing save some kind of base salary (if that even exists).

Chuck, aside from your work for Writer’s Digest you’re an independent author yourself, represented by Sorche Fairbank of Fairbank Literary Representation. In fact, your debut humor book, How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack, just came out on September 7th. Congratulations! I’ve read the sample and enjoyed how you handle such dark material in a deceptively humorous style. However I understand it is, under the humor, a deadly serious treatise. What was it that forced you to bring your knowledge of this terrible threat into the public arena? Were you—I hesitate to ask—attacked?

Regarding any theoretical attacks, those testimonies are sealed and I cannot speak of such things. That aside, I realized there was no guide out there on these little monsters and decided to fill the void. Hopefully, lives will be saved because of this book.

Do you see a link between garden gnomes and other supposedly-harmless garden decorations like sunflowers and pink flamingos?

Pink flamingos and sunflowers are both “Class-1” ornaments—the lowest threat. Gnomes, on the other hand, are “Class 5”—maximum danger! The connection between them is still up for discussion. Perhaps flamingos could have a silent alliance with gnomes.

What’s your single biggest tip to homeowners around the country to protect themselves from these dark invaders (besides the obvious: don’t own garden gnomes)?

Buy a big %#&! dog!

What’s something your readers would be amazed to learn about you?

“Amazed”? That’s pushing it. If they want to be “surprised,” I’d say perhaps that my favorite thing to do when on the road at conferences, save meeting new friends, is sitting down to a piano and playing. I rarely feel more at peace than when I’m playing music. And if booze is flowing somewhere, big writer singalongs have been known to manifest.

Chuck Sambuchino can be found on his Writer’s Digest Guide to Literary Agents blog, Writer’s Digest Guide to Literary Agents newsletter and Twitter.

Chuck Sambuchino, editor of the Writer’s Digest Guide to Literary Agents and Children’s Writers & Illustrators Market, is known to aspiring writers and agents across the blogosphere for his series of new agent interviews on his Writers Digest Guide for Literary Agents blog.

In addition to editing and interviewing, Chuck also works as a freelance writer and produced playwright.

And now—hot off the presses—Ten Speed Press/Crown is releasing his debut humor book, How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack.

September 7, 2010. NEXT TUESDAY.

Who is this man? What’s it like to be the first person every new agent wants to meet? How can his secret knowledge of garden gnomes save your life? And what happens when you put him in front of a piano and get him drunk offer him a modest refreshment?

Join us Monday for:

How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack—the Chuck Sambuchino interview.