By Aurorahouse2024 Author Articles • Writing Tips • • • • • • • • • 2 Comments

The Importance of a Manuscript Assessment

Let me guess, you’ve just finished writing your novel after spending the past year pouring your soul into it—writing it, then editing it again, and again, and again. You think it’s perfect, an absolute masterpiece that will be hailed alongside the works of Agatha Christie and J.K. Rowling. There’s nothing left to do now but publish it, right? Wrong. A writer can’t objectively edit their own work because they’re too close to it, and are blind to their own flaws. This is where a manuscript assessment comes in.

What is a manuscript assessment?

A manuscript assessment (also known as a critique, appraisal, or a structural report) is where a professional editor/assessor reads your manuscript as a whole, paying close attention to your story’s structure, character development, plot development, pace, setting, consistency etc. The assessor will give you a written report on what’s working and what needs improvement. Basically, it’s instructions on how to make your novel the best it can be.

What about family and friends?

Perhaps you think your manuscript is perfect and doesn’t need an assessment because your family and friends have read it and told you you’re a writing genius. Well, I hate to break it to you, but family and friends are unreliable sources. This is mainly because they probably don’t want to hurt your feelings, but also because, unless they’re an editor, they haven’t been trained to read a manuscript critically. This means they may miss things such as characters who lack depth, or overuse of passive voice—the types of things that generally determine whether a manuscript is ‘just okay’ or ‘totally addictive’.

What about copyeditors and proofreaders?

Maybe you’re paying to have your book published, and the publishing package you’ve purchased includes a copyedit and proofread of your manuscript, which you think is enough. Yes, having your manuscript edited is a crucial step, but it’s not the same as an assessment. A copyeditor and proofreader’s job is to focus on strengthening your sentences and correcting grammatical issues. In other words, they look at the manuscript piece by piece rather than as a whole, so you’ll have polished sentences, but your story might have pacing issues and plot holes.

What if my work really is perfect?

Some of you might still be reading this and thinking you’re the exception. You know your work is perfect and think paying an assessor will be a waste of money because your report will come back with one sentence: “This is an absolute masterpiece; don’t change a thing”. Well, the cold, hard truth is that that never happens. No work is ever perfect. I admit to being arrogant once and thinking my manuscript was perfect. I sent it off to an assessor expecting to receive an email back telling me how good my manuscript was, and that the assessor had forwarded it on to every literary agent and publisher they knew.

That wasn’t the case.

My world crumbled when I received my assessment. My manuscript was bathed in red ink and my report was seven pages long, informing me that my characters were flat and my world needed more development—plus there were about a hundred other issues that I needed to address. I was crushed. I’d worked so hard on my manuscript, it just couldn’t be true that it still needed so much work. Once I recovered from my shock, I re-read my assessment and it was as if the assessor had gifted me with new eyes. I suddenly saw all the flaws they were talking about, and I couldn’t believe I’d missed them. How had I been so blind? That’s what a manuscript assessment does: it gives you fresh eyes, so you suddenly see that your protagonist has no depth, or that your plot has no direction, or even that the island your story is set on was growing coconut trees at the start, and halfway through your story they changed to palm trees.

Assessments are for serious writers

At the end of the day, the choice is yours if you want to pay for a manuscript assessment. But if you’re really serious about being a writer, then an assessment is worth every penny. You’ll not only get instructions on how to make your manuscript the best it can be, you’ll also discover what your writing flaws are such as overuse of passive voice, wordy sentences, telling rather than showing etc. Once you know what your writing flaws are, you’ll be able to avoid them and become a better writer.

If you decide to have an assessment performed on your manuscript, Aurora House offers this service. Information can be found here https://aurorahouse.com.au/publishing/manuscript-assessment/. If you’re still not sure about paying for an assessment, Aurora House also offers an assessment of your manuscript’s first two chapters, or 5000 words, which will help you decide if you should pursue a full assessment. This service costs $80, and you will need to submit a synopsis, plus the contents (all chapter titles), and word count. If you would like more information about manuscript assessments, please contact Aurora House through the contact page: https://aurorahouse.com.au/contact-us/.

By Aurorahouse2024 Author Articles • Writing Tips • • • • 0 Comments

How to Write a Novel in Five Steps

So, you’ve woken up after dreaming about a dragon who convinces a witch to transform them into a human, and you think wow, what a great idea for a novel. You leap out of bed and dart towards your laptop, eager to put the story forming in your head onto paper. But you need to STOP and take a deep breath because writing without any pre-planning rarely ends well.

Writing a novel is like running a marathon. If you don’t bother training for the marathon and simply show up on the day expecting your enthusiasm to push you through to the finish line, you’ll probably collapse after four kilometres and crawl away in defeat. Or, in your novel’s case, move it permanently into your Unfinished Folder after running out of things to write 10,000 words in.

But don’t worry, with a little pre-planning you can avoid your novel turning into a short story. Just follow these five steps:

Step 1. Establish the foundation of your story

A story is made up of three basic components: a protagonist, a conflict, and a setting. Everything else in your story—theme, other characters, climax etc—is built around these three things. So before you start working on a story outline, you need to answer the following questions:

1.  Who is my protagonist and what is their primary goal?
2.  What or who is preventing my protagonist from achieving their primary goal?
3.  Where and when is my story set?

As an example, let’s apply these questions to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The answers would look something like this:

1.  Harry Potter, an eleven-year-old wizard, wants to find and protect the Philosopher’s Stone.
2.  Lord Voldemort, a dark wizard, who wants to steal the Philosopher’s Stone for himself.
3.  Contemporary Surrey, England, and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Yes, it’s that simple, so grab a pen and start scribbling answers.

Step 2. Research
If you’re like me and have been traumatised by writing 50,000 essays over the years, the word ‘research’ probably makes you want to lock yourself in a dark cupboard and start rocking back and forth while muttering never again. But it’s okay, doing research for your novel is a lot more fun than reading fifty textbooks on Ancient Greek politics.  

So how do you research? Well, it depends what you’re researching. If your novel is set in Medieval England, then I’d start with history books. If your novel is set in contemporary times, then you should visit the locations you plan to set scenes in, or look up pictures. If one of your characters is a teenager, then go somewhere that teenagers hang out and observe the way they talk and act—but try not to be creepy. No one likes a stalker.

Now maybe you’re reading this step with a smug smile planted on your face because you’re writing a fantasy novel set in a world created purely from your imagination. No research required. Well, I’m sorry to break it to you, but you’ve probably got more research to do than anyone because you have to build your world from scratch. This means you have to work out everything from the different types of trees that grow (if any) to how the world’s inhabitants greet each other, which means doing research for inspiration. Some things to think about include: vegetation, customs, clothing, transportation, dialect, weather, calculation of time, technology, food, building materials etc.

Step 3. Write an outline

All you need to do here is write a basic story arc—map out the main points in your plot. Now some writers like to write detailed chapter outlines, but I find when I’m writing that sub plots form, and characters develop a life of their own, veering away from my original plot. So I recommend keeping it simple: work out the key points in your plot and let your fingers fill in the rest.

 

Step 4. Allocate time

This step is crucial; you need to set aside time to write every day, even if it’s only for fifteen minutes. Now some of you might be shaking your heads and thinking I’ll write when I feel like it. And it is possible to write a novel this way, but it’s also a lot harder. Writing every day helps you connect with your story and allows your story to flow more freely. Where as if you’re only writing once a week, you’ll find it harder to become absorbed in your fictional world.

Think of writing like this: the world you created has a wrought iron fence around it, and the only way to get through is to unlock the gate with the key your imagination has created for you. If you walk up to that gate every day, the key will slip into the lock and the gate will click open. But if you only show up from time to time, the key will work at first, but as more time passes between each visit, the lock will rust and your key won’t turn as smoothly as it once did. And then one day, the lock will snap your key, forcing you to walk away and never look back.

So if you want to maintain access to your world, allocate a daily time to write, and don’t worry about reaching a word goal. When I tried writing to a daily word goal, I started dreading writing because instead of letting the story flow through me at its own pace, I was forcing the words out, dragging them kicking and screaming from the back of my mind before they were ready to come out. And it honestly doesn’t matter if you write 2000 words a day or 200, as long as you’re writing.

Step 5. Write. Write. Write

Okay, so now you can dart to your laptop and start writing down your brilliant story. The first draft is all about writing with abandon. Don’t worry about perfect sentence structure or spelling at this point. Just focus on transferring your story from your imagination to paper. Once you’ve finished your first draft, it’s time to start your second draft, which is all about revising: correcting grammatical mistakes, spelling errors, and ensuring the story flows smoothly. For your third draft, focus on addressing any problems with big picture things such as plot pacing, character development, and overall structure. And for your final draft, perform a proofread, paying close attention to any inconsistencies.

And that’s it. You’re finished. Congratulations, you just wrote your first novel.

By Aurorahouse2024 Articles • Author Articles 0 Comments

Marion Brownlie interviewed on River Radio

Facing Demons author Marion Brownlie is interviewed on River Radio. She talks about her book and what inspired her to write this amazing autobiography.

Beating the odds, she was near suicide then turned her life around – she had work to do! It still was not easy, and there were many things she had to sort out, and heal. Her story is one of determination, strength, and courage. She found the will to carry on, but there were still lessons to be learnt. Over the course of her life, you will hear how she found a way to work with and overcome obstacles. The rewards of finding the solution to a problem. And the satisfaction of being able to help others heal.

The interview is in two parts.