How to make a Publisher Angry

[Wordmaker]

This is where a professional editor is invaluable. Having someone who can give you an objective opinion, based on years of experience and market knowledge, is a huge help when making sure you hit the sweet spot where you give enough information that the reader can follow the story, without holding their hand all the way through.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

You don't want to dumb things down as if people are idiots but at the same time neither do you want to talk over their heads or become so cute that they can't understand what you're doing.

The real satisfying trick is being able to do things that work at more than one level.

I have a scene in an older work that will probably never be published where a line I really liked worked at three levels; the readers who'd never heard it before thought it was a cool line that fitted the context; the ones who recognised it as a song lyric thought it was appropriate that the character in question would be into that band and would quote them in that situation; and the couple of test-readers who like me were really into the band in question, were able to deduce from timing that to have heard that song at the point in time at which the novel is set the character in question would have had to put a lot of effort into getting hold of a single with a very limited release and that was a piece of information about the character that fit and worked.  Useful data if you get it, but if you don't, it doesn't scream out "oi, you're missing something".

[The Deposed King]

The real satisfying trick is being able to do things that work at more than one level.

I have a scene in an older work that will probably never be published where a line I really liked worked at three levels; the readers who'd never heard it before thought it was a cool line that fitted the context; the ones who recognised it as a song lyric thought it was appropriate that the character in question would be into that band and would quote them in that situation; and the couple of test-readers who like me were really into the band in question, were able to deduce from timing that to have heard that song at the point in time at which the novel is set the character in question would have had to put a lot of effort into getting hold of a single with a very limited release and that was a piece of information about the character that fit and worked.  Useful data if you get it, but if you don't, it doesn't scream out "oi, you're missing something".

That's cool.



The Deposed King