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Why I Fall In Love With a Manuscript 5: You Edited

Remember in my first Why I Fall In Love post when I said I don’t reject submissions for bad grammar, poor prose or faulty construction? In reality, I reject submissions for these things all the time.

Your goal above all else is to share your story with your readers through the language you type on the page. I can forgive a few misspellings or misplaced commas. I can accept a submission that meanders a bit before getting to its heart. These are errors that editors are here to help you fix. I can see the story I’m going to fall in love with through these faults and help you polish it into the story it wants to be. But this isn’t a free pass to forego the rules of written language or storycraft. Polished submissions with clean declarative sentences, few spelling errors and a command of storytelling basics sing to me.

You have to edit your work. Send me the best you can offer. Let your manuscript rest for a few weeks or even months, then take a look at it with a fresh eye. Make sure to catch all the spelling errors you can (especially those pesky errors that spell check misses), clean up your punctuation and cut as much unnecessary words/digressions/fluff as possible.

Give me your best. Then I will help you to make your story the best it can be.

This is not an exhaustive list of reasons I fall in love with a manuscript, but it covers 95% of them. And I would wager that most every editor would agree.