| Re: Experienced help needed
I think just about every member on this board knows how frustrating it is to have people try and judge your work based on a few "sample" chapters. I may not be an expert (I'm anything but, really) but I think a few good tips are:
1. Beef up your first few chapters; draw in your reader.
2. Perhaps flesh out your world a little, if it seems somewhat bland or unexciting.
3. Write a synopsis that compliments your work. If that was all the publisher had to go by to judge the entirety of your manuscript, then there's a good chance it just wasn't flattering enough.
4. This is definately the hardest, but certainly the most valuable tip. Take a good, hard look at your book, and ask yourself if you think it is as good as you really want it (need it) to be. Before I sent out my proposal, I did exactly this and ended up scrapping and completely re-writing the first 250 pages of my book, and of course after my proposal was accepted, the agent immediately requested (you guessed it) the first few chapters. He's now reading my entire manuscript (fingers crossed till they bleed) and I wonder if he would have accepted it if I hadn't made that huge change, which, after some deep thinking, I concluded was relatively sub-par.
Anyway, the honest best of luck with "The Shadowed Path", Psyloke. |