The past month has been more about working with authors than working with publishers, which always has me on the lookout for across-the-board issues that I can provide some general tips on for other authors. I was also recently asked to do a Q&A for the amazing writer Debra L. Schubert’s blog, which had me thinking about how to answer general questions about editing in a way that benefits a group of authors, as well.

In the dating world, we try to get to know each other through awkward first encounters and small talk, figuring out who we have something in common with. Unfortunately, we don’t date books; we jump into them with both feet, so it’s the author’s responsibility to highlight the best (or worst, as the case may be) characteristics of the people we are spending time with in their story. As the author, you are therefore required to know your characters inside and out, warts, crippling insecurities, skeletons in the closet, and all. From there, the key is how to properly showcase the characteristics in the novel’s most advantageous way, so your reader becomes enamored with those characters.

I find in many manuscripts that the characters are either not as developed as they should be, which leaves readers lost in the text with no real anchor to pull them in, or there is just way too much of the character in the book, creating an almost psychiatrist-like case study on the character’s childhood, neuroses, and all of his/her likes and dislikes. The key for a writer is to have that file in your head or somewhere on paper, but not to include those facts about the character that are unnecessary for readers to know, because instead of serving to clarify certain character motivations or actions, an overwhelming amount of character details will just bog down the narrative. While it is important that you know this much about your character, your reader probably doesn’t have to, so here’s what I suggest when this happens. When reading a detail about your character, ask yourself:

• Is it important to this story, the events that are taking place in this one book?

This is a pretty easy one to answer. I always use the example of knowing that your character’s favorite color is, for instance, blue. Unless the color blue factors heavily into the story and our knowledge of the events are enhanced by knowing your character loves blue, you don’t need that detail in the manuscript itself. Next, ask yourself:

• Is this detail something that will immediately cause the reader to want to be or befriend my character?

When writers chose a general fact about their characters—that she loves the color blue or puppies or [insert other vague details here]—many writers justify its inclusion based on the likeability factor—building up the character’s personality to give readers someone to begin to latch on to in the story. Sadly, it almost always does the opposite because it weighs down the character’s actual development with unnecessary details that aren’t, by rule or reality, important to the reader. In real life, we’re friends with people because we have certain things in common, but we also are drawn to certain characteristics, like sarcasm, kindness, tenacity, intelligence, etc. When you think about it, how many of your friends’ favorite colors do you know anyway?

It’s important for you to have this developed dossier on your characters, but you want to show your reader who your character is and why he/she is someone to focus on, to root for, to want to be or be friends with, not give a laundry list of likes and dislikes or childhood memories.

When you catch yourself letting things in your manuscript like the color blue or that one of your character’s favorite food is pizza, think of the clichéd scenario where the guy is hitting on the girl and keeps getting excited over really lame similarities. “You like the color blue? Me, too! You hate olives on your pizza? Whoa, I hate olives on pizza!” Such details aren’t going to endear your reader to your character. As a matchmaker, you don’t set your friend up with a superficial jackass who won’t stop talking about himself. What will endear her to him—and your reader to your character—is some good old fashion personality. You want your reader to feel your character’s depth of dynamism, the content between the lines that isn’t spoken but intonated in the resonance of his words and actions.

As a writer and matchmaker, you’re looking for a long-term relationship to bloom from your efforts, not some one-night stand that leaves one with a bitter taste of booze and cigarettes.

What’s Your Genre?

One thing that became apparent as we were compiling statistics after the writer’s survey was that “genre” and “demographic” often meant different things to different writers. For example, we printed out the Genre column to do some preliminary numbers on young adult vs. adult, what sort of adult fiction we got, etc., and found many fine answers, but a couple caught my eye that followed a common pattern in query letters and book proposals. The following is a good example:

• Genre: Science Fiction
• Demographic: YA
• BISAC: FICTION/Science

These responses are actually contradictory for one book, so I thought a quick and dirty explanation of these three vital categories might help some of you first-time authors out there.

Genre: noun—a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content.

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• Genre is, as most people know, referring to the content of your book. Books can be divided into an infinite number of genres, really, so what you want to do, first and foremost, when this is asked is go most obvious shelving area in a bookstore. Would you look for Nancy Drew in the mystery section at the bookstore, or would you look for it in the MG or YA section?

Demographic: adjective—relating to the structure of populations and population segments, especially when used to identify consumers.

• Demographic is referring to the actual group of people you think are going to enjoy your book. While your genre may be young adult dystopian, your demographic would be 13–18-year-olds who enjoyed such books as The Maze Runner or the Hunger Games series, etc. Your demographic is not the same as your genre, but it does affect it. If your demographic is 8–12-year-olds, the first part of your genre is going to be “middle grade.” When you write your genre down, if you write it as Science Fiction, the person reading it is going to think that is Adult Science Fiction. If you say it is Magical Realism, I’m going to look for it wherever that bookstore shelves Gabriel Garcia Marquez, so if your demographic is made up of young adults, you’ve already made a faux pas, because your genre is YA, first and foremost with a “science fiction” or “magical realism” tacked on to the back.

BISAC code: acronym—Book Industry Standards and Communications code (noun)—officially the BISAC Subject Heading List. An industry-approved list of subject classifications, each represented by a nine-character alphanumeric code.

• The above goes for your BISAC code as well. If you write YA horror, your category is JUV018000—JUVENILE FICTION / Horror & Ghost Stories. It is not going to be FIC015000—FICTION / Horror, because that would shelve it in the Adult section.

While BISAC is not as important to have memorized (your publisher’s marketing/PR will be who figures out the exact right BISAC for your book), it’s important that you’re aware of how these things work. In general, you should always remember: Figure out who your demographic is, and let that guide your genre and BISAC.*

*This advice is, generally, for all writers. It is important for nonfiction writers to know these things as well, but demographic doesn’t affect BISAC in nonfiction the same way. You can write a self-help concerning eating disorders that is aimed at women between the ages of 18–30, but that means your demographic is the previously-stated group, while your genre is women’s self-help, and your BISAC is SEL014000—SELF-HELP / Eating Disorders. However, if you’re writing nonfiction about these issues that has a juvenile demographic, it could go under: JNF053160—JUVENILE NONFICTION / Social Issues / Self-Esteem & Self-Reliance or JNF024020—JUVENILE NONFICTION / Health & Daily Living / Diseases, Illnesses & Injuries.

And for those of you out there diligent enough to make it through this post, we have a present for you: your very own Excel spreadsheet of all the BISAC headings. Hooray for you and happy classifying!

~Gretchen

Gretchen and I are officially back this week from vacationing in Colorado. What a fabulously relaxing way to spend two weeks! Holidays are perfect for writers, too. One has time to ponder and reflect upon his or her work, away from the computer and familiar societal structures. Under new circumstances, the brain tends to widen with perspective. Novel experiences can pull and tug at old, crusty synapses. Heres and theres have the potential to become moments of epiphany. The whole process of leaving and coming back can be just the elixir a potentially stale book project needs.

Vacation, of course, also allows for the reading of books that have been patiently waiting on the nightstand. Both of us finished our hardcovers during the trip. I read Bike Snob, a systematic and merciless yarn to realign the cycling world by Eben Weiss, aka Bike Snob NYC. The book was laugh-out-loud in spots, with a poignant message too, the mark of good writing for me. I also like the book’s typography, art, and construction. Weiss’s writing and editors are fabulous. You can find out more about the book and order it here. (Thanks to April Streeter at Tree Hugger dot com for the referral).

Gretchen read Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the amazing tale of Henrietta Lacks, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia (who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951), and her immortal HeLa cells, which made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. Based on Gretchen’s reaction to the text, I can’t wait to dig in. You can find out more about the book here. (Thanks to NPR for the referral).

This break wasn’t all vacation (and never is for freelancers, to be brutally honest). Both Gretchen and I had more than one book project to work on the first week we were away, and we pick up on those and more projects this week. No rest for the weary! ~Henry

Because we had such a great time reading your answers to our zombie question in the survey, we felt it only fair that you get to read some of our favorites, as well as see who you want on your zombie-fighting team…gang…squad…troop? We also give you a chance to vote on your favorites, as well as chime in if you have any ideas.

Lindsey Culli (who can be found at pinchofpanache.com or on Twitter @1truesentence) is Gretchen’s zombie-attack-weapon soul mate. Though both have a limited reach, they went for answers that involved objects not only used in book publishing but also for excavating eyes:

Lindsey’s answer: “Well, of course like everyone, I’ve planned sensibly for zombie attacks. Weapon of choice, for me, an awl: good for book-binding and gouging out eyes.”

Gretchen’s answer: “My vast supply of pens for editing. I’m betting I could take out a lot of zombie eyes that way, and frankly, they are lying about everywhere in my apartment, car, all my bags, etc., so I’d always have them on hand.”

While Lindsey and Gretchen are definitely on the same page, they would possibly need one of you who chose a weapon with longer range to keep yourself alive. After all, no one wants to take on an angry horde of mindless minions with only gouging weapons and a small strike zone.

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Zombie attack stats:

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♦ Awl/pens (or other gouging devices) → only 2 of us

♦ Tank → 1%

*Stacee Himes (@shimes06) modified hers to include a Tanks for Dummies book as well—love it!

♦ Dynamite → 2%

♦ Sling shot → 2%

♦ Hand-to-hand combat → 3%

♦ Legs/fleet feet → 3%

♦ Chainsaw → 7%

*Nonfiction winner April Streeter (@april2462) modified hers to be a solar-powered chainsaw in case the zombie mob managed to cut off the electricity

♦ Handheld weapon to dismember with → 7%

*These answers ranged from axe and samurai sword to light sabre (for Ariel Cinii, found at http://sodyera.livejournal.com)

♦ People → 10%

*We found Janine Talley’s (@J9Talley) answer hilarious:

“To kill a zombie, I’d call on my husband Darryl’s former Buffalo Bills teammate, Hall of Fame quarterback, Jim Kelly. I’d have him fire footballs at their heads. He possesses the precision of a military sniper. Each ball launched would hit the zombie between the eyes with laser-like accuracy, thrusting the zombie’s head backward causing it to be severed at the brainstem, rendering the zombie brain dead within nanoseconds. This method works for me because I’m a girly girl. I don’t like scary things. I’m afraid of the dark and zombies thrive in dark places. Enlisting Jim to do my dirty work would remove me from the situation. Using the method of firing footballs from a distance would also ensure Jim’s safety.”

While some talked about strong loved ones, others chose, well, different answers:

“Whoever is standing next to me.” (Though she changed it at the end, we just loved this answer) – submitted by Sandra S. Rice (whose blog can be found at shemadeitallup.blogspot.com)

♦ Gun of some kind → 17%

*One entrant would have a shotgun/baseball combo, for backup and close fighting situations—you would all be a good partner for Gretchen or Lindsey

♦ Flame of some kind → 20%

*These were normally flamethrowers (good range on these bad boys too)

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Now those of you who do simple math will realize that we only have 70% up there, which means there are quite a few answers unaccounted for. To be honest, we didn’t expect SO much imagination, so here are some of our favorites that did not have another answer even close to being in the same category:

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“Sarcasm,” submitted by fiction winner Audry T (@AudryT) because “They’re going to get you anyway, so you might as well go out snarking.”

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Bad poetry “…read aloud in a monotone.” For Jeanne Glassman (found at www.jeannelyetgassman.com) to put them to sleep and tiptoe away

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“A wood chipper.  Messy but effective.” For Kenneth Campbell (@authordrummer and www.authorcampbell.com)

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“A CD player. I’d stick Thriller in there, and then they’d be forced to dance. Enough distraction to run away to safety.” – Ellen C. Jensen (this was Gretchen’s favorite)

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“Long-range Teflon-coated spray canister with hydrofluoric acid.  Eats away the eyes and absorbs into the skull so that you can spray on an approaching horde of zombies without worrying much about accuracy.” – Ben Langhinrichs (@blanghinrichs and www.benlanghinrichs.net)

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“My 1949 Ford 9N tractor, with bucket in front and 6′ mowing deck behind. I am untouchable AND creating valuable fertilizer at the same time.” – Ami Hendrickson (@MuseInks and museinks.blogspot.com)

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“…since zombies are the walking dead, my weapon of choice would be dry ice. I would put them on ice and hold them until I could train them not to attack, but to serve. Then I would loose them at after-Christmas sales and always get the best buys.” – Sandra McDow

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“A bar of soap. First, like middle-school-aged children, they are terrified of baths. Second, they say sleeping with a bar of soap under your blankets alleviates leg cramps. I’d make their legs feel better, they would no longer walk all wonky, and they would praise me as their savior for helping them blend into reular society. Attack over…until I turn them against you. Mu-hahahahaha.” – Ash Krafton (www.frontiernet.net/~ashkrafton)

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“According to the Facebook quiz, I’ll be annihilated within the first 10 seconds of the zombie attack. I do not have your back on this one.” – Ann Marie Gamble (@amgamble and annmariegamble.com)

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Last but not least, Morgan Baden (@MorganBaden and www.morganbaden.wordpress.com) does not need one because “The zombies would never attack me. They would sense a kindred spirit and leave me alone.”

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<a href="http://fs20.formsite.com/Cogitate/form757642449/index.html">Click here to complete: Most Likely to Survive a Zombie Raid</a>

Again, thanks to all who participated! There’s more to come. Stay tuned for Gretchen’s next article, “Hey, Baby, What’s Your Genre?” We’ll also be posting some of our writers’ top-10 reading and listening-music lists from the survey soon.

Yesterday was a special day for Cogitate; it marked the five-year anniversary of our editorial partnership. We celebrated with some take-out and the Cogitate Studios Writers’ Contest questionnaires. What a way to spend the day! Thank you to all who participated.

While we had a lot of fun reading your answers, the judging was…well, it was excruciating. We had such a hard time because there were many amazing responses. So many, in fact, that we decided that instead of just picking two grand prize winners, we decided to add two honorable mentions. So, without further ado. Here are our winners:

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Fiction

Audry T

Golden Vampires

(Blog at http://talshannon.livejournal.com; Twitter @AudryT)

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Non-Fiction

April Streeter

Cycle Chic: The Woman’s Style Bible for Urban Biking

(Blog at www.treehugger.com; Twitter @april2462)

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Honorable Mention

Robin Lemke

Johnny Steam

(Blog at http://mysteryrobin.blogspot.com; Twitter @rebobinar) 

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Honorable Mention

Ben Spendlove

The Sense

(Blogs at http://bcspendlove.blogspot.com)

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Our fiction winner receives, of course, a free copyedit with developmental notes on the first 5 chapters or 50 pages of her manuscript, and the nonfiction receives a copyedit and feedback on her proposal. Our two honorable mentions get a free read with notes, but no copyediting. We’ll be contacting you all later today! Congrats!

The winner of the three books from our title list this time around is: Candace Ganger (who was very close in the running for the other prizes, fyi)! You can check out here awesome blog at http://themisadventuresincandyland.blogspot.com and her Twitter @candylandgang. We’ll email you with the list, Candace, and you can contact us with your choices and mailing address.

Everyone, please stay tuned because we may have loved your response to one of the questions even if you didn’t win one of the big prizes, so you still may see your name in future posts about the contest results. Also, we’ll be posting statistics about answers and tips on things like genre/demographic descriptions, 1-2 sentence summaries, etc., which you may find interesting. (And we aren’t getting out of it; we are still posting our own responses to these questions later this week and giving a brief rundown of general scoring methods.) Now for some quick numbers:

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Manuscript Stats

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13% Nonfiction

• 60% self-help
• 20% religious
• 20% memoir

87% Fiction

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66% Juvenile Fiction

81.5% Young Adult

• 27% mainstream
• 23% romance
• 5% steampunk
• 45% sci-fi/fantasy

18.5% Middle Grade

• 20% mainstream
• 40% adventure
• 40% sci-fi/fantasy (we include paranormal in this)

34% Adult Fiction

• 7% romance
• 50% fantasy (this ranged from historical to urban, and from religious to paranormal, which is why we broke the adult category into separate sci-fi and fantasy categories)
• 29% sci-fi
• 14% literary fiction

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Writer’s Stats

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Do you have a website? Do you blog and/or tweet?

• 60% have Twitter accounts
• 78% have author blogs/websites
• 8% don’t have either a Twitter or an individual blog

Have you ever had your work professionally edited?

• 13% have had their work professionally edited
• 37% said maybe (These responses were mainly due to having previous work edited but not the work in progress (WIP) that they submitted for this OR they are editors as well as writers, so they have *sort of* had a professional editor look at it.)
• 50% have not had any type of professional editing

Feel your manuscript is complete?

• 50% said yes
• 26% said no
• 24% said maybe (These responses were mainly due to wanting another pair of eyes/editorial review, because their WIP was as far as they could take it without outside involvement − great answer, by the way.)

Average word count for:

• YA – 69,000 (highest was 120,000; lowest was 36,000)
• MG – 40,000 (highest was 50,000; lowest was 35,000)
• Adult Romance – 95,000
• Adult Sci-Fi – 84,000
• Adult Fantasy – 94,750
• Adult Literary Fiction – 78,000
• Nonfiction– The genre had no average, as very few are complete, but one weighed in at a hefty 130,000 words, with the shortest coming in at 25,000
• Three fiction projects were submitted as WIPs.

The contest is currently closed for entries!

Thank you so much to all who participated. Beginning this week, we will be posting responses, statistics, and our own responses to the questions we posed to participants.

As the rules state, on Monday, June 21, we will be posting the winners, and sending out some books. We also hope you all stay tuned, as we will be starting another contest at the end of July.

Here was the deal:

Henry, the former managing editor of Beyond Words (the publisher behind The Secret, The Truth About Beauty, and Elemental Love Styles) and current ghost writer and editor, will be providing feedback and review on a NONFICTION proposal or first 50 pages of a manuscript.

Gretchen, former agent/editorial director for Baker’s Mark Literary Agency (the literary agency behind Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel, Never After, and Comics 101) and current ghost writer and editor, will be providing feedback and review on the first 50 pages or first 5 chapters of a FICTION manuscript project.

To view our title lists and CVs, click here.

By “feedback and review,” we mean that if you win, we will copyedit your proposal or the first 50 pages of your manuscript and give developmental notes and feedback on the work absolutely free. We’ll also give you tips on the overall approach you will want to take when pitching to agents and publishers.

Why are we asking for you to fill out a weird questionnaire to win? Because compatibility between a writer and editor is imperative. (Take a look at our blog post on creativity with punctuation use and our post on loving the people you work with.) The same principle extends to pitching your work to agents and publishers. Not only that, but you’ll also have to answer questions about your book that every author should know the answer to and you’ll also get to answer some fun and ridiculous questions about yourself—because everyone should know what weapon they would chose in a zombie attack.

Besides, there are perks. In addition to a free copyedit and comments from a pro, just by entering your completed survey:

• You have the chance to win 3 free books from our title list. (One winner will have his/her choice of two from our fiction and nonfiction title lists [as long as it’s already out, of course] and will also receive a collectible issue of The Grove Review that we worked on.)
• You may be pimped on our site even if you don’t win. Awesome answers from the review will be posted and credited on CogitateStudios.com, Cogitate on Facebook, and our respective Twitter feeds, @editorStet and @cogitweeter. We’ll post your twitter or your blog. Heck, we’ll post both if you want.
• You can come back and visit the Cogitate Studios website to see some stats, responses, and analyses of other authors’ entries (i.e., how many people submitted in what genres, average length of manuscript, what commonalities showed up, what stuck out, who would most likely survive a zombie raid, and so on).

What have you got to lose? You will not be entered on any email list, annoyingly spammed, or sold out for cash. It’s a few minutes out of your day with a lot you may win. Who knows, it might kick-start that book idea that’s been collecting dust in the corner of your brain. Go ahead and try it. We dare you.

The specifics:

• ONE entry per person
• Deadline is this SUNDAY, June 13th, 11:59 pm PDT.
• We’ll choose TWO winners, based on our interests in reading the work, as well as how well your survey answers show compatibility with our editorial style.
• Winners will be announced the following Monday, June 21th on CogitateStudios.com.
• One winner will be picked out of FIRST 50 SURVEYS for the free book prize, and the winner can then chose which titles they want—winning the free books is random and does not affect your chances of winning the manuscript review.

Ready? Here’s a hyperlink to the writers’ questionnaire or just click on the red pen: 

When the submission is successfully sent, you’ll be redirected back to this page. Good luck!

~Henry & Gretchen

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The  longer title for this post is: Why You Must Love the People You Work With. Editing is, in many ways, more creative than people realize. Proofreading, of course, is a relatively straightforward job, requiring the editor have a knowledge of grammar rules, current trends (yes, even grammar has them), and house style guides. That being said, even certain grammar rules require a subjective look, e.g., “Does this sentence need a comma, or does it make sense without it?” (I’m not lying; CMOS 6.20 is “In a series whose elements are all joined by conjunctions, no commas are needed unless the elements are long and pauses helpful.”)

But more than that, as an editor, you need to know if your editing style is going to work with the author’s style. I run into this a lot in the work I do with historical and UK fiction, and Henry and I both encounter it on ghost writing projects. Personally, I tend to consistently follow rules, such as ellipsis to indicate stuttering speech or trailing off and em dashes to show interruption (within quotation marks) or an interruption in the dialogue to explain movement (em dashes in the middle of dialogue but outside the quotation marks).

Recently, I worked on a reprint of one of Cecelia Holland’s most popular novels, Great Maria, about the life of an ambitious woman of the eleventh century (loosely based on the Norman Conquest of Sicily). Wonderful work but I did have a conundrum with the ellipsis, as the estimable Ms. Holland used them to interrupt character dialogue. Here’s the thing: This is not inaccurate; it’s just different than what I normally do.

This does not in any way mean that I’m tolerant of people using semicolons where they should be using commas. Not everyone can be e.e. cummings, but you can have a style of punctuation and grammar that is both accurate and flavorful for your book, and the thing is: it’s more important than you think.

A good editor will see the patterns in your work and edit with them, at all levels of editing. You don’t want to work with an editor, agent, or publisher just because they claim they know what’s going on. Get references, take a long look at the titles they’ve worked on, and ask lots of questions. Treat them like your doctor because your writing’s well being depends on these people. Your work is in this person’s hands (no matter which level you are at), and he or she will develop it and shape it in certain ways; therefore, it should be obvious that you need someone with the same view of your work, similar tastes, and a respect for the process.

As an editor, I prefer to do a sample edit and have a meeting with the potential client to make sure that we are on the same page, that we see the same type of work going into their manuscript to develop it, and that we’ll get along well together as we work. It’s imperative that you have similar approaches and that the editor knows your genre. Don’t hire someone who does nothing but nonfiction simply because you can afford them to work on your fiction project. Search and find someone you like, because your editor (whether your edit be before representation, during representation, or after a publishing contract) will be molding your brand in many ways, both blatant and subtle.

And here’s a tip that I truly mean and that I had to go through over and over again with every writer we worked with at Baker’s Mark: you need an editor. Being a writer who knows grammar, punctuation, etc., is not the same as being an editor. You need someone who is less close to your work than your family, your friends, and…well, you, to be honest. You can’t overcome your writer brain enough to tap into the editor side when it’s your own work, and that’s okay. Find someone you like, find someone you can trust, and find someone who has worked with similar work and respects your tone. Then, go forth and publish.