Four Ways to Impress an Editor

by Sarah Sally Hamer @SarahSallyHamer

Editors love to read. Editors love books. Editors want a book to be amazing! Is yours? 

Most of the books that cross my computer screen are good. Some are really good. But some need a lot of work. And, usually, an editor can tell within the first couple of paragraphs whether a book is worthy of publishing. That’s scary! The whole book, no matter how good, can be lost by what’s on the first page! So, here are four things that can help you to make sure your book gets past that first read.

First line

It doesn’t have to be epic, like “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” or “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” But it does need to pull the reader into the story immediately. 

Think about exactly what the reader will take away from that first sentence. In Pride and Prejudice, we get a quick taste of the culture (everyone knows that truth) and that there is going to be a romance (single man wanting wife). In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens immediately contrasts the “good” life in London with the horrors of Paris during the French Revolution. So we know that we’re going to witness both sides of a coin.

What can you say about your story in the first line? Some possibilities include setting the tone (horror? romance? comedy?), introducing a character (with dialog? thought?), or creating a question (will the character get what he or she wants?). Regardless of your method, see if you can find a way to draw the reader in and make that editor read the rest of the page.

Structure

If a story starts with a lot of exposition and/or description, the reader will wonder if the whole book is going to be the same. We want our books to start at the beginning, not by telling a lot of back story. Where does your story start? It should be where the adventure begins, not how the character got there. Bilbo Baggins’s story begins when Gandalf comes to his house to invite him on a quest. We don’t need paragraphs of why Bilbo is bored. Instead, we want the story to start with a “thing”—do you want to go on an adventure?—and build it from there. Back story is very useful and usually told in sequel instead of scene, but starting in media res (in the middle of the action) is the way most modern books begin. 

Power Words

We use power words to create tone, genre, shock-factor, and interest. Although there are specific ones for each genre, many of them are universal. For example, a horror story would probably use the terms blood, death, dead body, gun, knife, scream, etc. A romance could include love, kiss, caress, lips, etc. 

I recommend you make a list of specific words that create tone and power for your story. Make sure at least one or two of them are on the first page and sprinkle them liberally throughout. Don’t overdo it but allow your readers to “attach” themselves to a theme and stick to it.

Another point about power words is to try not to put them in the middle of a sentence. We readers tend to scan more than read each word, so it can be easy to skip over. Example:

She took a sip of coffee and, when a man fell from the balcony above, she set the cup back on the table.

Do you see how the important part, the man falling, loses its importance because it’s hidden by the surrounding words? Instead, how about this:

She took a sip of coffee and set the cup back on the table. A blur of color passing her window was followed by a scream, a whoosh, and a hard “thump” on the ground below. 

Of course, you would continue this (see the next point) with a reaction to the stimulus. Not perfect—I’m sure you can do much better—but do you see how just a few extra words in a better position bring the image to your mind?

Stimulus/Reaction

So, let’s continue the example above. She needs to react to the event. This reaction has a specific process, based on the sympathetic nervous system and how we humans react. First, she would have a VR, a visceral reaction. Her hand would probably come to cover her mouth (if you can stand it, you can watch videos of reactions of people seeing something shocking), she would stand quickly (so she could run or fight), and she would probably scream or say something like “Oh, my God!” What if she knocks her precious cup of coffee over? What if she runs to the balcony to look? 

In the second version, we don’t know for sure what it was that passed her window and fell, so what if she has to see to believe that it could be a person? This gives you as the writer a number of ways to SHOW the scene with a very realistic stimulus and reaction to that stimulus. The character MUST react. Sometimes the reaction is outer, where everyone can see it, but sometimes we have a character who isn’t able to react for various reasons. If we’re in that character’s point of view, we have the opportunity to allow them to react on the inside, in their thoughts. Either way works.

If you know how to make all these work on the first page, it’s easy-peasy to continue throughout the book and make it a great one that everyone will want to read.

Which item do you need to work on? 

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Four Ways to Impress and Editor, tips from @SarahSallyHamer on @EdieMelson (Click to Tweet)

Sarah (Sally) Hamer, B.S., MLA, is a lover of books, a teacher of writers, and a believer in a good story. Most of all, she is eternally fascinated by people and how they 'tick'. She’s passionate about helping people tell their own stories, whether through fiction or through memoir. Writing in many genres—mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, medieval history, non-fiction—she has won awards at both local and national levels, including two Golden Heart finals.

A teacher of memoir, beginning and advanced creative fiction writing, and screenwriting at Louisiana State University in Shreveport for over twenty years, she also teaches online for Margie Lawson at www.margielawson.com. Sally is a free-lance editor and book coach at Touch Not the Cat Books, with many of her students and clients becoming successful, award-winning authors. 

You can find her at hamerse@bellsouth.net or www.sallyhamer.blogspot.com