Where to Submit Your Short Pieces and (Hopefully, Eventually) Get Published (Bethany Brengan) PART 2

Where to Submit Your Short Pieces and (Hopefully, Eventually) Get Published 
by Bethany Brengan

Continued from Part 1

In my last post, I discussed how to find publications. Now it’s time to look at picking a publication and sending your submission.

Before you submit anywhere, you need to decide three things:

1. What do I want from publication? Be honest with yourself about your current goals. At the moment, I rarely submit to any market that doesn’t pay. But when I was starting out, I was happy simply to have the validation of someone else looking at something I’d written and saying, “Yes, this is worth sharing with readers.” I was more interested in building up my publishing credits (and my self-esteem) than my bank account. What do you need at this point in your writing career? 
2. Am I willing to pay to be published? And if so, how much? I’m a big believer in the “money should flow toward the writer” principle. However, certain types of writing contests frequently have entry fees (some genres are worse for this than others). Some of these are contests I have made money back on (and bragging rights, let’s not ignore bragging rights). My current rule is that I don’t spend more $3.00 per contest entry. But you have to decide what makes the most sense for you. Set a limit and stick to it.
3. Would I be happy to have this publication on my résumé? Only you can answer this question. But I’d advise finding a happy middle ground between “all-Wall-Street-Journal-all-the-time” and “anywhere that’ll take me.” You won’t always know what a publication will look like until after you’ve been accepted, but you can generally tell if you’re going to be ideologically opposed to its core principles. (I confess to skipping a publication I felt like my work would have fit because their submission guidelines included a sneering takedown of another writer’s work.)  

Once you have decided, on a publication:

1. Read the submission guidelines carefully. Mark any deadlines on your calendar.
2. Revise your piece/pitch/query (depending on the publication).
3. Revise again. A second revision is usually necessary to make sure you are sending out your best possible work. That said, pay attention to whether or not you are using the “just one more revision” excuse to avoid sending out your work (and thereby avoiding the risk of rejection).
4. Reread the submission guidelines (making sure you have included all the relevant information, followed the formatting guidelines, understood whether simultaneous submissions are acceptable, and grasped which rights you would be selling, and for how much, if you were accepted). 
5. Submit your piece/pitch/query, including your SASE and cover letter, if applicable. (Note: I usually work from a generic cover letter, so that I don’t have to rewrite it from scratch each time I submit.)
6. Track your submission. Some online publications will track your submissions for you. But usually, you are relying on the questionable organization of overworked editors and underpaid interns. I track each submission in a Word document, in chronological order. Each entry looks like this:

• Date submitted: Sept. 26, 2016
• Where: Fancy Literary Journal—(snail mail, NOT simultaneous)
• Submission(s): “Some Poem,” “Some Other Poem,” “Piece I Don’t Quite Like But I’m Hoping You Do,” and “Piece I Really Like But No One Else Does”
• Response: by (date listed on website—if no date, then just “?”)

This makes me look like a much more organized person than I ever actually am. But it’s a pretty simple system to use. In my file, active submissions are in green, returned submissions are in black, and accepted submissions are in blue. This lets me know at a glance how many pieces I am waiting for responses on. If it’s been over a month since the publication’s stated response time and I haven’t heard anything, it’s time for me to contact them.

7. Prepare another submission. Rejection is inevitable. One the best ways to dampen that sting is to know you have another piece floating in the ether of potential publication. 

There are no guarantees. You could send out a piece you love and get dozens of rejections. You could send out a piece you feel iffy about and see it snatched up immediately.


What’s important is that submitting pieces (and getting them rejected, revising them, and submitting them again) can not only lead to publishing credits, money, and a boost to your writerly confidence—it can also, slowly but surely, make you a better writer.

Bethany F. Brengan is a freelance writer and editor who reads too many comics. She is a contributing writer to Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder: Scholars and Creators on 75 Years of Robin, Nightwing and Batman (McFarland Books). Her poetry has appeared in The 2015 Poet’s Market, Poetry Quarterly, and The Crucible. She can be found at www.brenganedits.com andwww.readingwritingraptures.blogspot.com.

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices (even if they don't always agree with me). Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

Where to Submit Your Short Pieces and (Hopefully, Eventually) Get Published (Bethany Brengan)

Where to Submit Your Short Pieces and (Hopefully, Eventually) Get Published  

by Bethany Brengan

Part One: Finding Publications

If you’ve learned anything from following Chris’s blog, it has to be that traditional methods of publication are neither the only ways to build a writing career nor necessarily the best.

Now join me as I proceed to ignore all of Chris’s hard-earned wisdom and share a few tips I’ve learned about submitting short pieces to more traditional publications (whether print or online).

Beginning writers tend to make one of two mistakes when they submit their work: They either pick the hardest possible markets to submit to (e.g., The New Yorker) or they end up submitting to a vanity contest or scam.

Chances are that if you’re new to publication and there’s a market you have heard of, it’s probably highly competitive and not a great place to start. There’s nothing wrong with setting the bar high. But because a long string of rejections can be disheartening, you may want to protect your ego and look for some good mid-tier markets or new publications that haven’t had time to build their reputation (and their slush pile) yet.

There’s nothing wrong with vanity publishers if they are upfront about their practices and costs. But keep in mind that if you really just want to see your work published, there are usually cheaper ways to accomplish this than what most vanity “contests” offer. Be particularly wary of any unexpected costs (e.g., “you’re a semi-finalist” and now you must pay to continue “competing,” or you are asked to pay for the anthology your work appears in—even in non-paying markets, the publisher will usually provide you with a free copy of the book or journal your work appears in).

“But Bethany,” I can hear you saying, “where am I supposed to find these magical competitive-but-not-too-competitive markets?” Good question. For a long time, I found this the hardest part of the process. But fortunately, other people have started compiling these lists for me.

• Writer’s Digest puts out a yearly collection of market guides, including Poet’s Market, Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market, and Children’s Writer’s and Illustrator’s Market. Even with publication information only a Wi-Fi signal away, I still find these dead-tree listings useful. Sometimes they contain information not available on the publisher’s website, and they categorize publications by both their difficulty to break into and how much they pay. (Full disclosure: I have been published in the 2015 Poet’s Market, but I had been using the books for years before that point and would definitely have recommended them anyway.)
• Brian Scott’s Online Writing Jobs (http://online-writing-jobs.com) tracks various freelance writing jobs, but I tend to prefer his calls-for-submissions Tumblr (http://writingcareer.com), which is mostly for magazines, journals, zines, and anthologies currently open to submissions. Which one works for you will depend on what type of writing you are trying to submit, but they’re both very comprehensive listings. 
• I also like Freedom with Writing (http://www.freedomwithwriting.com), which is a weekly(ish) email list of possible markets for poetry, articles, essays, short stories, etc. 
• Sign up for publications’ email lists. Even (especially) if you’ve been rejected by the publication. This where most publications announce upcoming themes, contests, anthologies, and other calls for submissions. That publication in the 2015 Poet’s Market I mentioned? I heard about the call for submissions because I had been rejected by a Writer’s Digest publication earlier, but I had signed up for their e-mail list anyway.
• Take part in online forums, email lists, communities, etc. that relate to your interests. You don’t have to force this; pick topics/hobbies that you love and want to communicate on. This how you discover hobby and trade related publications. On Tumblr, I follow a lot of comic book related bloggers, particularly those who write about Dick Grayson. And this is how I got involved in what eventually became Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder: Scholars and Creators on 75 Years of Robin, Nightwing, and Batman. I had never imagined that such a niche interest could have resulted in publication. 
• If you love a publication, print or online, look up their submission guidelines. (If you can’t find the guidelines, ask.) 
• If you’re reading a collection of work (essays, articles, poems, short stories, etc.) by an author you feel has a style similar to your own, check the “previously published in” section in the back. You might find some markets that are right up your alley.
• Don’t ignore local publications. Often, the competition is lower than that of national publications but the need for quality writing is just as high. Pay attention to community bulletin boards, at places like your library or coffee shop, which sometimes advertise these.     

My next post will focus on choosing a publication and submitting your work. But hopefully, this is enough to get you dusting off some favorite pieces that still need a home.

Continue to Part 2

Bethany F. Brengan is a freelance writer and editor who reads too many comics. She is a contributing writer to Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder: Scholars and Creators on 75 Years of Robin, Nightwing and Batman (McFarland Books). Her poetry has appeared in The 2015 Poet’s Market, Poetry Quarterly, and The Crucible. She can be found at www.brenganedits.com andwww.readingwritingraptures.blogspot.com.

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices (even if they don't always agree with me). Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

Four Things Your Editor May Not Tell You (But You Should Know) By Bethany Brengan

If you ever do end up working with an editor (whether through a publisher or one you hire), I hope it is a delightful experience. (Or as delightful as watching someone hack away at your beloved can be.) And I hope your editor is transparent with you. But even the most honest of editors may have a hard time admitting to the following:

1. I can make your manuscript better, but I can’t make it good. Everything depends on our starting point. When I do content editing, I try to cover all the bases: from major plot holes to missing commas. I can tell you that a specific character doesn’t seem to be well-developed. I can even point you toward some tools and tricks that may help make him more three-dimensional. But I cannot make you think more complexly about people. I can tell you that a sentence sounds awkward or clunky. I can offer suggestions about ways to rewrite it, but I cannot turn you into a brilliant prose stylist. I can’t even rewrite every sentence for you. (Nor would you want me to; your book needs to sounds like you, not your editor.)

Ideally, every single manuscript would reach the same level of quality before it left my desk. But the truth is that although I try to give equal treatment to each project, it is easier to notice when the baseboards of your house need another coat of paint if I’m not also trying to deal with your flooded basement and caved-in roof. The cleaner and clearer a manuscript is when I receive it, the better its quality when it leaves my desk (and the cheaper edits will be for you).

As much as possible, I try to let writers know if they aren’t ready for edits yet. Hopefully, your editor will do the same, but just in case, I recommend at least one more revision than you think you need before you send one your work.    

2. I will make mistakes. Ugh. It hurts just to type that. Because when you are hiring an editor, you expect meticulous attention to detail. And you should; that’s what you’re paying for. But editors are human. In most cases, it’s not a matter of knowing something is wrong, but noticing the wrong thing (among a sea of other wrong things). Once, in a sports-related book I worked on, a multi-page heading read “Icing Skating” instead of “Ice Skating,” and I didn’t notice until I got the galley proof back from the printer. And sometimes, mistakes go to print. I used to flip through all the books I’d worked on until I found a “mistake” (usually an optional comma I no longer liked). Because, statistically, I knew there was probably one. But if I could find a small, unnoticeable mistake, I could still sleep at night.

Don’t be surprised if you catch your editor in a typo. Don’t be surprised if your editor sends you slightly panicked emails wanting to make changes to previously edited chapters (changes that may not seem that important to you). Don’t be surprised if she sends you several such emails. She’s trying to make sure all noticeable mistakes—the editor’s and the writer’s—will be caught before you go to print. But as long as the editing continues to be done by humans (it may be a while before robots fully grasp idiom and plot structure), there will be human error involved.

3. I don’t always agree with other editors. Editors tend to be opinionated people. Especially when it comes to grammar and punctuation. And although I may definitively tell you that you are not allowed to use literally to mean “figuratively” (and Garner’s American Usage would agree with me); I know that this usage is now so common that many dictionaries accept “figuratively” as a secondary meaning. And another editor might be perfectly fine with this usage in certain contexts. Meanwhile, a more prescriptive editor might “fix” every sentence that ends with a preposition while I roll my eyes and mutter about “the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.”

The point is that the rules of the English language are not nearly as clear and agreed on as your editor might like you to believe. Most editors have a style guide, a dictionary, and a certain attitude toward language that they rely on. Therefore, different editors have different “voices” in the same way that writers do—the differences are usually subtle, but they definitely exist. I believe that the best editors are able subsume themselves within the particular voice of the writer, but you will still want to find an editor who fits your style. And if you are uncertain about an edit, don’t be afraid to check a style guide and ask for clarification. Which leads to my next point. . . .

4. You should question me. Please, please, please for the love of all that is sweet and grammatical, read over your edits before you approve them for print. And ask me questions. Maybe I missed something. Maybe I misunderstood the way a certain character talks. Or maybe something just doesn’t seem “quite right” to you.

Recently, an author and I worked on her memoir. I had edited and she had rewritten her first chapter several times. I honestly thought it sounded pretty good. But she believed it could be better. I worried that more tweaking might ruin the flow of the chapter, but I agreed to look over another rewrite and give her my opinion. When she sent me the revision, I was blown away. It was much better. There was more tension; the emotion was clearer and seemed more honest. She had added other elements from her life story that I didn’t know about and never could have suggested. Because she was brave enough to say, “No, I think this needs more,” she got a much better opening than she would have if she’d just blindly accepted my edits.

I hope this helps you view the hacked up body of your book with a little more certainty.

Bethany F. Brengan is a freelance writer and editor who reads too many comics. She is a contributing writer to Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder: Scholars and Creators on 75 Years of Robin, Nightwing and Batman (McFarland Books). Her poetry has appeared in The 2015 Poet’s Market, Poetry Quarterly, and The Crucible. She can be found at www.brenganedits.com andwww.readingwritingraptures.blogspot.com.

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices (even if they don't always agree with me). Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

In Praise of Libraries (Bethany Brengan)

I sat down to write a completely different type of post, but then I realized that this is National Library Week (in the U.S.). And there are few things I love more than libraries.

There’s been a narrative circulating (pun intended) that people don’t use libraries anymore, that libraries are “out of date.” (Which fits in nicely with the “nobody reads anymore” narrative and the “everybody’s getting stupider and stupider and we’re all doomed!” narrative that never goes out of style.) The truth about modern library usage is complicated (and would require endless links to surveys, which Chris will thank me for not making him format), but a 2013 Pew Survey found that about half of Americans over the age of sixteen had used a library at least once in the past year.

[Note from Chris: I also recently heard a report on NPR that there are more libraries now in the U.S. than there have ever been in U.S. history.]

Just think about how many individual library patrons that is. Never mind the patrons who visit their libraries repeatedly (and the patrons under sixteen).

I’m sitting in my local library as I type this and thinking of all the ways the library has affected my life in just the past week:

• The first and most obvious is that I have been spending a lot of time working in the library lately. As a freelancer, I work from home, but recently, my home has experienced an influx of black mold. As the mess is slowly being removed, I’ve been spending some working hours at the library. When I first snuck in, carrying my laptop like some kind of contraband, I found that I wasn’t alone, in quiet nooks and crannies throughout the stacks, people were working on their computers: doing homework, catching up email, or just watching funny videos (I can hear them giggling). At first, I kept waiting for some librarian to come by, like the impatient café waiter when you’re typing away and you haven’t ordered anything but coffee refills for hours. But no one cared. And I feel so much better, less achy and groggy, for these few hours of breathing freely.
• There is a member of my family who is currently bedbound. I’ve picked up several DVDs and audio books for her this week. This doesn’t include the audio books she accesses through the library’s digital collection.
• This past weekend was the quarterly Friends of the Library book sale. I bought (too many) books for myself and some books for my writers group.
• I returned a interlibrary loan book and requested another one. (Did you know that if your library doesn’t have the book you want, you can request it from another library? Or that you can even request that they purchase the book you want?)
• Tomorrow night, my book club will meet in the library, using book kits purchased for us by the library. When I moved to the area, the first friends I made were through this book club.

That’s only the past week. In the past year, I have attended a zydeco lesson, poetry discussions, author readings, and a Native American dance demonstration, all hosted by the library.  

But perhaps what I am the most grateful for is how much my writing has benefited from the library.

For example, when I was researching my article for Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder, I quickly realized that I didn’t have all the resources I needed, and I definitely couldn’t afford to purchase them. The interlibrary loan system was a manna from heaven.

Also, I consider myself a good researcher, but at one point, I hit a roadblock; I couldn’t figure out where to find information on how gender influenced (or didn’t influence) parenting styles. One of the reference librarians took me through the shelves, pulling out book after book, and within those books were references to other books. Which I requested through interlibrary loan. Which became a starting point for my research. My article wouldn’t have existed without my local library. I couldn’t have afforded to write it.

This is what libraries do, they equalize knowledge. They’re one of few places in our culture where money won’t get you better service and lack of it won’t keep from getting served.

If you are writer (or a reader), please consider how you can support your local library (whether through donations or joining your Friends of the Library). If for no other reason, do it because it’s in your best interest to foster a community of readers.  

*********

Right now, there’s a woman working at one of the computer stations and a librarian is helping her access something. (Given the time of year, I’d guess it’s tax information.) “You’re a lifesaver!” she exclaims (as much as anyone “exclaims” anything in a library). It might sound like hyperbole, but I find myself nodding.

Bethany F. Brengan is a freelance writer and editor who reads too many comics. She is a contributing writer to Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder: Scholars and Creators on 75 Years of Robin, Nightwing and Batman (McFarland Books). Her poetry has appeared in The 2015 Poet’s Market, Poetry Quarterly, and The Crucible. She can be found at www.brenganedits.com andwww.readingwritingraptures.blogspot.com.

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices (even if they don't always agree with me). Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

The Top 5 Mistakes Made by Self-Published Authors (Bethany Brengan)

There are many good reasons to self-publish (more authorial control, a bigger piece of the financial pie, trying to put out a book in a niche market, etc.). And the perception of self-published books has changed a lot recently, making readers much more willing to give their time and money to these titles. However, self-publishing comes with unique pitfalls. The following list is based on the mistakes I’ve seen self-published authors make, listed in order of perceived severity (i.e., the closer to the top of the list, the more likely this pitfall is to affect your book sales and readers’ enjoyment).

1. Publishing too quickly. Some authors self-publish because they are unwilling to wait. They get a handful of rejections, or they become frustrated with the tedious cycle of traditional publishing, and they end up putting out books themselves. Books that, unfortunately, read more like second drafts than fully polished manuscripts.

In the afterglow of the first (or second, or third) revision, it can become tempting to believe that your book needs to be in the hands of the reading public right now. You feel that your idea is so great that if it was just available in print (or eBook), the readers and the money would immediately start flooding in. So you publish—without a final revision, or a marketing plan (more on this later). The truth is that the manuscript probably needs to sit for a couple weeks so that you can look at again with less lovestruck eyes. And after you’ve done that and made the necessary rewrites, you need to hand it to someone else (e.g., writing mentor, critique partner, well-read friend), someone who will be honest with you (preferably someone who is neither related to, or in a romantic relationship with, you). Remember that writing isn’t about proving your unquestionable genius to the world, but about putting out a good book. And at some point, this will mean accepting (constructive) criticism and making more rewrites than you had originally planned for. Most good things take time.  

2. Accepting terrible covers. I cannot overstate this problem. I have watched books sink or swim on their covers. A cover is your first point of marketing. It will be the image readers associate with your  book. It needs to be good. And not just in a sense that it appeals to you and your closest family members.

A cover has three jobs: to catch the reader’s eye; to suggest the tone, content, and genre of the book; and to be recognizable and clear at various sizes. Ideally, a cover feels both familiar and unique (“That looks like a baking-themed cozy-cottage mystery, but a baking-themed cozy-cottage mystery I haven’t read yet”) and will look just as good and as clear to readers shopping on their iPhones as it does to those browsing their local Barnes and Noble.

That’s a tall order, even for an experienced designer. And yet many authors think they can slap some clip-art and text onto a colored rectangle and call it a cover.

This is where to you need to put money. I am not a designer by any stretch of the imagination, but I can tell you that it’s not usually a compliment when a reader says your book “looks self-published.” What they generally mean is that it fits the stereotype of unprofessional looking covers that readers have come to associate with self-published books. (This is not purely a self-publishing problem; many small presses have the same issue.)

It feels cruel to pick out specific books as examples of bad covers, but try doing an Amazon search of nonsense genres, and then look at the results. At each cover, ask yourself, “Does this ‘look self-published’ to me? Why or why not?”

I attempted this with the phrase “fish romance”—partially because I thought it was a strange enough phrase that some self-published/small press books would show up on the first page of results, and partially because romance novels tend to have a distinct “look,” so it’s easier to compare their covers. The first page of my search results revealed entirely small press, self-published, and author co-operative novels. But my first impressions of the covers were very different. There were several nice covers from a single author who specialized in romance, and who obviously knew what she doing. The best covers also tended to let the reader know how “clean” the novel was or wasn’t going to be (ripped vs. unripped bodices). There was also a self-published romance title with a weird black bar taking up most of the cover and detracting from the interesting cover image. (‘Cause I always associate neon font on a black background with romance?) This was in combination with a painful use of mismatched fonts. It wasn’t a terrible cover, and people interested in its specific subgenre might pick it up anyway. But the chances are pretty good that, given a choice, readers will purchase a different book on the same topic with a more professional looking cover.   

"How YOU doin?"
Image description: Book cover--Barracuda Sequel to Free Fish Friday by Lee Stone 

3. Not researching the market, or book marketing in general. Even if you don’t self-publish, you will need to know about book marketing. But if are self-publishing, you will need to know more than the average bear. I feel like a hypocrite writing this because I hate marketing. But I’ve learned that what I hate even more is seeing good books languish because they haven’t reached their readership.

I specifically remember a book that a certain publisher I worked with was very excited about. It was beautifully constructed and met a need in the market. And yet. . .the publisher had the hardest time selling it. Everyone who bought a copy seemed to love it (heck, I loved it). But the author had more or less dropped it off at the publisher’s doorstop like a foundling and moved on to other projects. Without an author behind the book, willing to push it, it never met its potential. So before you publish, do your research. Learn who your readership is. Learn where they find their books, what social media platforms they use, what authors they follow (and why).

Before readers can love your book, they have to know it exists.

4. Unprofessional interactions with readers. I’ve just mentioned using social media, but honestly, some authors need their Twitter accounts wrested from their twitchy little hands. It’s not that you can’t be strange and eccentric online; it’s that you have to pay attention to what you’re selling. If you’re writing about conspiracy theories, then you might be able to get away with long rants about the Illuminati. But if you’re writing Regency romances, it might be time to dial back on the “lizard-people-are-the-reason-for-contrails” posts. Or to deliberately separate your professional accounts from your personal ones. The point is that you don’t want to drive away readers who would enjoy your book even if the content of your Facebook fights isn’t for them. Also, I’m not going to tell you to never get into fights online, but please, please, please do not fight with reviewers (professional or otherwise). The author never emerges smelling sweet.

This advice extends into personal interactions with readers. I’ve watched people kill sales (and not just book sales) by breaking into completely unrelated side-rants during their sales pitch. In any semi-entrepreneurial setting, keep your conversation to general pleasantries and the topics addressed by your book. Assume that your readers have different opinions and life experiences than you do. And if the topic of your book is controversial, then present yourself as a thoughtful authority on topic. Readers are more likely to respect your work if you show that you can respect them first.

5. No copyediting. This is last on the list because while editing is important, a misplaced comma isn’t going to make or break you. After content editing considerations are taken care of (see my earlier post on the different types of editing), the goal of copyediting is to make your meaning clear and create a text that looks professional and consistent. As a reader, I’ll generally forgive a couple typos and missing commas in a book, but if there’s a mistake in the back cover blurb or the opening paragraph, chances are pretty high that I’ll put the book back on the store shelf. My assumption is that if the author didn’t care enough to double-check the back cover or the first page, then maybe the author didn’t care enough to put in the work an interesting book requires. While readers will forgive a lot for the sake of a helpful informational text or a well-paced story, you will see a number of Amazon reviews along the lines of “After the third use of ‘should of’ instead of ‘should have,’ I just couldn’t keep reading.”

In other words: “Make your best possible book and make sure readers know about it.”

Bethany F. Brengan is a freelance writer and editor who reads too many comics. She is a contributing writer to Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder: Scholars and Creators on 75 Years of Robin, Nightwing and Batman (McFarland Books). Her poetry has appeared in The 2015 Poet’s Market, Poetry Quarterly, and The Crucible. She can be found at www.brenganedits.com andwww.readingwritingraptures.blogspot.com.

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices (even if they don't always agree with me). Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

Bethany Brengan

[Everything in italics will disappear the next time there's a post from Bethany.]

Since Bethany has written a couple of posts for us here at Writing About Writing (and has promised that she's got at least a few more on the way), it's about time we got her her own menu for The Reliquary.  

Bethany F. Brengan is a freelance writer and editor. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula and enjoys medium-long walks, tea, and overanalyzing comic books. Before going freelance, Bethany worked for the lovely people at Bluegrass Publishing in Mayfield, Kentucky. Her writing has appeared in The 2015 Poet’s Market, Poetry Quarterly, The Crucible, The Upper Room, Cicada, Scrapbook Business Magazine, etc. She is a contributing writer to Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder: Scholars and Creators on 75 Years of Robin, Nightwing and Batman (McFarland Books). 

Information about her editing business—Bethany Brengan, Editing Services—can be found at www.brenganedits.com. 

Her personal blog is www.readingwritingraptures.blogspot.com.

Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder: Scholars and Creators on 75 Years of Robin, Nightwing and Batman can be purchased through both McFarland and Amazon.

Should I hire an Editor?

Your Novel is Boring (Here's Why And How to Fix It)
The Top 5 Mistakes Made By Self Published Authors
In Praise of Libraries
Four Things Your Editor May Not Tell You (But You Should Know)
Where to Submit Your Short Pieces and (Hopefully, Eventually) Get Published  Part 2

Your Novel is Boring (Here’s Why and How to Fix It) By Bethany Brengan

Your Novel is Boring (Here’s Why and How to Fix It) 
By Bethany Brengan  

[Chris's note: The text of Bethany's post included proper footnotes and list formatting in the word document she sent me, which I tried very hard to make Blogger reproduce, but my full on lack of HTML coding is why I chose blogger over Wordpress in the first place, so apologies, but I had to improvise. The option of pasting the text as is usually leads to even worse format issues (as you can see with some of my older guest posts). Let's all pretend I totally did right by her.]


Your character lets out a scream into the void of space. Because you forgot that sound can’t travel in deep space.

Your protagonist introduces himself as “Jones. Joe Jones.” Because you forgot that in the previous chapter his last name was Johnson.

Your teenage protagonist ends up in an “oh-so-confusing” love triangle. Because you forgot that love triangles are stupid.

There are as many ways to screw up storytelling as there are types of novels in the world, but you will find audiences willing to forgive almost any mistake (real or imagined) as long as you don’t commit the one unforgivable sin of writing: boring the reader. Nothing makes a reader (or an acquisitions editor) more likely to put down a novel than boredom, and no trait reveals itself as early in a manuscript as monotony. Here are the four most common reasons a novel is boring:

The “Nothing to See Here” Opening.  I almost called this the “Nothing Happens” Opening. But you can start a novel (in certain genres) slowly, with descriptions of scenery or a character, as long as those descriptions are good and meaningful (and connected to the tone and themes of the novel overall). What you shouldn’t do is start a novel with a blocks of information. You need to engage the reader’s senses. Pride and Prejudice starts with a statement (and a killer one at that): “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” This is followed by an equally satirical statement, and then Austen moves straight into dialogue. Two sentences of (funny) information to set the tone and then right into a scene. Even before television, most good writers knew better than to waste the reader’s time pontificating.

Avoid what I call the “drinking orange juice and thinking about life”[1] opening. You know. . .that first chapter in which the character wakes up, drinks orange juice, and thinks about why her ex-husband left her, how she hates her job, and why she worries about her teenage daughter. Pretty soon you’ve got five pages of text and all that has happened is the character thinking. And she’s still got half a glass of orange juice left.

Information about your character’s relationships and job might be important, but unless orance juice has a symbolic significance, there’s no reason to start your novel with it. Your job is not to give the reader information. A novel is not an essay or a scientific report; it is an experience.


The Fix: Bring the reader into the protagonist’s experience by engaging the senses. Don’t just start with an info-dump about your character’s past. If the information is important enough to spend more than two hundred words on, then it probably deserves a fully realized scene.

I’m currently reading Open City by Teju Cole. It’s a slow-moving piece of literary fiction. (I have no idea yet if I will like it.) But even though book starts slowly (the main character literally walks around and thinks about life), it immediately gives the reader something to experience (the geography of NYC), followed by something to see (migratory bird patterns and “the faint contrail of an airplane bisecting the window”[2], and something to hear (“the odd way my voice mingled with the murmur of the French, German, or Dutch radio announcers”[3]). Even though this is obviously a novel of ideas rather than action, Cole quickly gives the reader something tangible; he builds a scene in the reader’s head.

Or to put it more bluntly: Don’t tell me that “it’s literary fiction” is your excuse for a dull beginning. All that means is that you need to work even harder than traditional genre authors to maintain the readers’ attention while you lure them into your ideas and language.

Start with the good stuff. And then stay with it. Always ask yourself “Is there a better way to get this information across—a way that reveals something about the character or foreshadows something or ties into the theme in an interesting way?”


Nobody Special Protagonist. Now, I love stories about regular people. But part of what I love about them is the way they reveal how “unregular” regular people can be, how they highlight the human experience. Sometimes authors say, “I want to write a story about an ordinary [mom/police officer/teenage boy/doctor/etc.].” But when the manuscript is finished the characters don’t resemble anyone I know. Instead, they resemble the author’s mental image of certain people, and that image is boring. In order to follow your characters for 250+ pages, the reader has to enjoy them. This is sometimes described as “likability,” but I think that term can get confusing. Not all characters are for all readers, and that’s fine. But when we talk about whether or not a character is “likable,” it has less to do with the character or the interests of the reader, and more to do with how you have presented that character to the reader.

Last year, I read the graphic novel Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli. The main character is several things I normally hate: a self-important sexist going through a midlife crisis. But he also has a wonderful dry wit. I kept reading because I wanted to hear what horrible thing he was going to say next. His horribleness was interesting (and ultimately contained a small seed of vulnerability, buried at the bottom of his character). The author let me enjoy watching Asterios without forcing me to sanction his behavior.

When approaching character, many writers mistake ideology for personality. In essence, “the character who believes all the same things I do and is therefore good” will generally have the traits and quirks the author secretly considers “best.” This is boring for several reasons but mainly because what happens to the characters ends up being based, not on their choices or circumstances, but on the approval or disapproval of their less-than-subtle creator. There are no surprises. The indie-music-loving, poor-writer-guy comes out on top; the jerk-boss-who-only-listens-to-oldies gets his comeuppance; and the pretty-but-not-too-threatening-girl learns to stop listening to Taylor Swift and love poor-writer-guy.

This is not simply a failure in writing; this is a failure in imagination. The author has failed to imagine people complexly[4]. Instead of really thinking about how and why people act certain ways, the author relies on stereotypes.

The Fix: Do your own research. Fortunately, you live in a world full of people. Talk to your neighbors. And actually listen. Every time your neighbor says something that doesn’t fit with the type of person you’ve already decided they are (e.g., soccer mom, stoner dude, won’t-pick-up-her-dog’s-poop idiot), don’t automatically dismiss it as an anomaly. Consider it another facet of his or her character. Study personality and basic psychology. Study people. Study yourself. Pay attention.

I love listening to actors talk about changing their body language for particular roles. It makes me consider how to describe my characters in physical space. Think about the ways different people move. Think about the ways different people react to anxiety, sadness, or anger. Now think about how emotional expression changes depending not just on personality but also on who a person is around. Think about your characters in various environments and relationships. Think about how people behave in groups and as individuals. Remember that the expression of personality isn’t static.

Let your characters be complicated.


Obvious Plotline is Obvious. This one is tricky. Frankly, predictability isn’t always bad. We repeat certain types of story for a reason. However, there’s a difference between “I knew from the beginning that this would be a story about the protagonist finding her voice and becoming brave enough to stand up for herself” and “I knew the treasure chest was actually empty this whole time and that his mentor was going to betray him.” One is an element of character growth that we recognize and crave, and the other is a plot twist that never twisted. Plot problems are difficult to discuss in vague terms. I can point at specific elements in a story and say, “That’s predictable” or “I’ve seen that too many times.” But it’s harder to discuss what makes something predictable. Perhaps because what is predictable now was once fresh and innovative. And perhaps because even the most overused plot elements can be written in fresh ways. I can, however, give you some pointers for finding the overly obvious plot points in your own writing.

The Fix: Ask others to read your manuscript and comment on what they “saw coming.” See if you can tweak these areas.

Don’t make things easy, either for yourself or your characters. One of the major pitfalls that makes a storyline predictable is the overly simple resolution. Number 19 on Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling: “Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.” (I know Pixar writes “kids’ movies,” but I also know that the beginning of Up made you cry. Look up the whole list if you haven’t already.)

Let your characters lose things. Even things they deserve to win. That said, also let them win sometimes. Grim and gritty can become predictable if it’s always the outcome. Let characters win things they should lose. Letting a potentially terrible situation fizzle out unexpectedly can create a good moment for comic relief, or for a break from suspense right before you build it back up.

Don’t telegraph your moves. Writing a scene that’s going to end terribly for someone? Try writing it in the exact same language you would use if everything was going to be fine, and then use that last paragraph to pull the rug out from under the reader.

Raise the stakes (emotional, personal, physical), and then raise them again. Make the characters face the things you are the most afraid of, and then bring them through to the other side.

Dick-and-Jane Prose. “The author writes sentences. The author gives the reader some information. The author gives the reader more information. The reader is bored to tears.”

This can be a subsection of the “Nothing to See Here” Opening. But the problem isn’t necessarily info-dumping; it’s just repetitive sentence structures.

This isn’t restricted to the “subject verb object” structure. All authors have personal clichés: phrases and sentence styles that they lean on a little too much. I like sentence fragments. A lot.

Too much?

Probably.

Also, I like starting sentences with also. In moderation, any of these things can work. But the variation of sentence length and subject placement does a lot to build, or demolish, the pacing of your novel, and thus, the attention of your reader.

The Fix: Read it out loud. Unnecessary repetition should become obvious. If it doesn’t, try reading aloud to someone else and notice when that person’s attention starts to drift. Read passages by your favorite authors and note the varied styles and lengths of sentences they use. If all else fails, buy a copy of The Art of Styling Sentences (Sullivan and Longknife) and practice the sentence exercises. (I know I mentioned Provost’s Beyond Style last time, but that also contains advice on sentence variation.)


So go ahead: let Joe “Johnson” Jones scream his love-triangle woes into the depths of space. Just make it interesting.

1- I read about this years ago in Writer’s Digest, back when the magazine used to critique first chapters. I don’t remember the exact wording or the author of the critique, but I do remember thinking, Oh, crap. I do that. So thank you, forgotten editor from Writer’s Digest.

2- Teju Cole, Open City (New York: Random House, 2011), 4.

3- Cole, Open City, 5.
4- Totally stealing this phrase from John Green.

Bethany F. Brengan is a freelance writer and editor who reads too many comics. She is a contributing writer to Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder: Scholars and Creators on 75 Years of Robin, Nightwing and Batman (McFarland Books). Her poetry has appeared in The 2015 Poet’s Market, Poetry Quarterly, and The Crucible. She can be found at www.brenganedits.com andwww.readingwritingraptures.blogspot.com.

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices (even if they don't always agree with me). Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.