Is It Done Yet? - Part 1

This is the first in a series of posts I’m doing based on a presentation I made at the Las Vegas Writers Conference in May of this year focused on how to know when your manuscript is ready to query. 

Part 1 – The Goal: A Fully-Realized Novel

Knowing when your manuscript is ready is a topic that comes up quite regularly in many writers’ groups both online and off. Most of the time, the usual advice gets offered: it’s done when you can’t stand working on it anymore; it’s done when all you can revise is punctuation; it’s done when you think it is; it’s done when your beta readers tell you it is; it’s done when you’ve done x number of revisions; it’s done when you don’t know what else to do with it.

All of these responses miss the mark because the question being asked is: when is my novel ready to query? Underneath that question is the real one: how do I know my novel will attract interest from an agent?

My answer, based on my work as a developmental/ content editor, and several years reading and editing submissions for a literary agent, is a bit more complex and based on both the writer’s understanding of their work and the demands of the publishing marketplace.

Reading for the literary agent taught me a lot. Mostly, it taught me that the vast majority of manuscripts being queried weren’t ready yet. They needed at least another revision to become what I call a fully realized novel.

A fully realized novel is one in which all the novel’s elements work together to create the dynamic forward movement that propels the characters (and the reader) from the first word to the last in a satisfying and unified manner. There is a clear and well-defined premise or central question that organizes the plot, characters, theme, setting, relevant details, structure, information flow, and sequence of scenes. In a fully realized novel, everything that is on the page is relevant and necessary to create the overall effect of the work. The overall effect of the novel is vastly greater than the sum of the individual parts. 

A movie I think does a near-perfect job demonstrating what fully realized storytelling looks like (and I’m using a movie here because they create a complete story arc in roughly two hours) is EverAfter, the Drew Barrymore and Angelica Houston retelling of Cinderella.

What I love about this movie is that nearly everything, from the costuming to set design to dialogue has an arc with a purpose and a payoff.

For example, the line, “You have been born to wealth and privilege and with that comes specific obligations” is spoken three times. First by the Queen of France and then Danielle (the Cinderella character) to Prince Henry, and lastly by the Prince himself. Each time, the line changes in meaning and it effectively shows Henry’s growth from the errant prince attempting to shirk his responsibilities, to realizing the opportunities his position might afford for helping others, to a belligerent response after Danielle’s identity as a commoner is revealed at the ball and embarrasses the prince in front of his subjects and father (in response to which, Leonardo DaVinci, this movie’s fairy godmother, says, “Hogwash” and tells the prince to get over himself; if that's truly what he believes, he doesn't deserve Danielle).

Similarly, a distinctive ruby and pearl necklace provides a subtle detail that has significant payoff. One of the royal pages took the necklace from the queen’s bedroom and gives it to the stepmother so that a meeting can be engineered for the older daughter, Marguerite, and the queen. After church, Marguerite “returns” the necklace to the queen saying it must have fallen off while she was inside. The queen rewards Marguerite’s honesty by inviting mother and daughter to the palace for a chat. At the end of the movie, when Danielle is presented to her family as the prince’s wife, she’s wearing that necklace. No mention is made of it, but the arc of that small detail is clear. In addition, there’s an earlier scene in which the baroness is buying a broach with the intention that Marguerite wear it to attract the prince’s attention. She keeps telling the seller that it needs to be bigger, to which he says, “I fear if it were any larger, she might tip over.” These are two instances where the details that are called specifically to the viewer’s attention have significance and meaning.

A fully realized novel provides the same sense of purpose, arc, and payoff for all its elements. Every scene carries a sense of the underlying premise or question, every detail relates to it, every plot point builds toward the payoff. 

A great test for whether the novel is fully realized is how easily you can write your query letter or create an elevator pitch for your novel. I think many writers struggle with their queries because their stories haven’t coalesced around a central focus that drives the narrative forward, and this is mainly a result of not pushing past the initial stages of revision to the place where the story, that connective tissue that creates relevance and unifies the narrative, emerges and becomes clear.

In Part 2, I talk about knowing your genre as an important first step in the revision process. 

If you’d like to receive a copy of my revision flow chart, please contact me at: diane.glaz@gmail.com

If you'd like more information about my editing services, please visit my website or contact me through email, Facebook, Twitter, or IG. I specialize in literary, upmarket, commercial, YA, contemporary women's, erotica, and fantasy, and have a diverse and international client base whose work has appeared on the NY Times best seller lists and Amazon top seller lists.

Twitter: @DeeGeeWriter

IG: diane.glaz

(If you follow me on IG, be forewarned: you'll see a lot of pictures of my Airedales and whisky)

Here are the links for the all the parts of this series: 

Part 1: The goal of a fully-realized novel

Part 2: Know your genre

Part 3: What the writer needs - Telling yourself the story

Part 4: What the story needs - Telling the story

Part 5: What the story (also) needs - Telling the real story

Part 6: Destabilizing and inciting incidents

Part 7: What the reader needs

The Next Big Thing

Now it's my turn to take on The Next Big Thing.

My friend Traci  tagged me to participate in this ongoing chain of writers answering ten questions about their latest work or work-in-progress. So here it goes...


What is your working title of your book (or story)?
The Altar of Dead Pets

Where did the idea come from for the book?

It’s got kind of a convoluted evolution, but basically, the novel grew out of a short story that I wrote about fourteen years ago. The short story grew out of a free writing session two friends and I did on the word ‘choice.’ The first lines that came to me were, “School shrink says everything’s a choice and I think he’s full of it, because what about some fool-ass kid who sticks his head out of a car doing eighty…” and it was basically this teenage boy talking about how his brother had stuck his head out of a car while joy riding and ended up dead when he collided with a bunch of wood in a dumpster. That idea combined with the wild horses I’d seen during an off-roading trip with my husband and our then two-year old son (he’s now 17) in the back country around Reno (where we were then living), as well as the way my high school boyfriend had worshipped his older brother who had actually been a drug dealer, and became the story of Matt who discovers that his idolized older brother isn't the person Matt's always thought he was. 

I wrote the story in about a week. It went on to win some awards and get me a couple of grants, and got some good rejections from places like the New Yorker, but didn’t sell, so I started revising it. It was one of those projects that I would put down for a while and then come back to, and it gradually morphed from a short story to a novella. Then I started working on a (different) novel and decided to get my MFA at SF State. I used the original short story in my application for grad school.

In my second semester I was taking a short story workshop and was totally stuck for a second piece to bring in, so I told my professor (the wonderful and incredible Alice LaPlante) about this story and how it was now a novella and asked if I could bring in the original story to see if my revisions were on track. She said yes, and I did, and the comments were great. A couple of months later, I was doing a half-day workshop (with the also wonderful and incredible Matthew Davidson) and was working on a different project. Matthew gave us a prompt and I literally walked across the room to the desk where I would write thinking about this other project, sat down at the desk, and this scene from “Choice” just flowed from my pen, and that was it. The story told me it was a novel and that it was the only thing I was going to be working on until it was done. So far, it’s been true to its word.

What genre does your book fall under?

I got told by an agent that it is “upmarket fiction” which is the new term for what used to be called literary/commercial.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Wow. The only character I’ve ever had an idea for is the stepdad, Alan, and Denzel Washington would be an exceptional choice. When he was younger (like from his Gilbert Grape or Benny and Joon days), Johnny Depp would have been perfect for the older brother because Denny needs the charismatic, dramatically good-looking, wounded-boy image that Depp was really great at projecting. Matt, the younger brother, would have to be played by a really talented newcomer. And for the mom, Rachelle, I could see her played by Sandra Bullock. She’s outwardly fragile, but has got a core of strength that she doesn’t know she has.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Perfect recall is not perfect knowledge.

(Incidentally, this question has been the bane of my existence since the summer. Just so you know…)

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Agent and traditional publishing.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

The first draft of the story as a novel took about two years, but I was also in grad school at the time. I finished the second draft as my Master’s thesis, and the third draft took about a year. I’m doing revisions and hope to have those finished by March.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Catcher in the Rye was a huge influence on this book – especially the grief and longing that drives Holden over the edge. I’ve also compared this book to The Virgin Suicides, The Lovely Bones, and  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

In addition to Matt, who kept revealing himself and making my heart ache, I started exploring the intersections of memory, identity, history, and the creation of the narrative we call History. My narrator, Matt, has an extraordinary memory – he remembers everything that ever happened to him, which is both good and bad. Two things happen to him in the course of the novel. The first is that he can’t remember the night his brother died. He was there, but the trauma caused the memory of it to be erased. The second is that, even though he remembers everything about his brother, he didn’t know who his brother really was. Perfect recall isn’t the same as perfect knowledge.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

There are wild horses, the Nevada desert, and a crazy campfire ritual at the end of book that doesn’t quite go the way anyone expects. 

So, I'm tossing The Next Big Thing to Nina Schuyler next. Nina was one of my first professors at San Francisco State. Her next novel, The Translator, will be published July 1st of this year. Her first novel, The Painting, was nominated for a Northern California Book Award wand named a Best Book by the San Francisco Chronicle. She'll be posting on her blog at www.redroom.com.

I'm also giving a shout out to my friend, Kelly Gilbert, who's first novel is going to be released later this year by Disney Hyperion. Traci tagged her first, but head to her blog to check out what she has to say about her wonderful novel.