When is a Manuscript Finished?
Tips on looking at your work with clarity so you can determine your personal "done," as well as what to do when you reach that finish line.
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Transcript For When is a Manuscript Finished?
My name is Mary Kole with Good Story Company. Today's video is all about when is a manuscript finished.
This is a question that I work with probably every day. As a freelance editor, I work with clients who, you know, they submit their projects for editing. Some people think, "Okay, it's done. I'm gonna get it edited." What they don't expect is another round of feedback. It's not quite done. We take a few steps back and there's still more work to be done. Some people submit at the beginning of their journey and they know that there's a lot more work in store. And some people edit their manuscripts themselves or have it edited and work on it so much that they just don't even want to look at it ever again and they think, "Okay, I'm done." And some people do NaNoWriMo, type the end and on 50,000 words—big achievement, by the way—but then, don't even pay the idea of revision any mind and say, "Okay, I'm done." So there's a broad, broad spectrum of what a writer feels is done and what actually I would consider to be, "My manuscript is done."
So how do you know when a manuscript is finished? There's no good answer to that question. It's a question that comes up all the time but it really is individual to the writer and individual to the manuscript. Now, there is a very real point in a lot of manuscript life cycles where the writer just is like, "Nope, nope, if I look at this one more time, my head's gonna explode. I can't do it anymore." And that is a valid feeling. But that doesn't necessarily coincide magically with the idea of the manuscript being finished, finished and ready for consumption. Because when a manuscript is done, we have to decide what that means, what we want to do with it, whether it's, "Okay, it's done. I'm gonna query agents or publishers now," or "Okay, it's done. I want to share it with my critique group," or "Okay, it's done. I'm gonna engage a freelance editor," or "Okay, it's done. I'm gonna upload it to Kindle and press, you know, on sale." There are many different outcomes for what done might be.
So first, you have to decide what the next step is and then gear your understanding of doneness up with what your next step is gonna be. Now, some bars are higher than others. If you're gonna be sharing with your critique group, it very well could be that you revised a couple of times, maybe throw your hands up in frustration, that's a great time to pass it along to somebody else for a read, whether it's an editor, a critique partner, a family member who's gonna be reading it, but then, you have to set your expectation that it's probably gonna come back with some feedback for you to address and it's not necessarily going to be done, done just yet. You're just passing it off. If you have nobody that you want to pass your manuscript on to for additional feedback, I would still highly recommend you putting it away for a couple of months because your back brain, your creative brain will always be working on the manuscript. And then when you come back to it, you may have a lot of fresh ideas for revision. You may see things in kind of a new light. And so, that's one sort of benchmark of when you separate yourself from the manuscript. You say, "I'm done for now.*" And then you come back to it with the goal of revising it.
Now, maybe there's a next step for you. Maybe that next goal after you've revised a few more times is "I'm gonna submit this. I'm gonna either submit this to a contact. I'm gonna pitch it to an agent. I'm gonna pitch it to a publisher." This is a little bit of the higher bar. And I would also, if you are looking to publish independently on Kindle, make the book available. One of the things that I see take down a lot of independently published projects is the review that's like "Who was this person's editor? There are typos everywhere. There's proofreading mistakes everywhere. The formatting, uhh." You know, the book can be completely worthwhile but if you haven't taken the additional steps to make sure it's also clean, and readable, and a great experience for your customer and your reader, that could be a really big misstep and give you some reviews that you can't really get rid of that could taint the reputation of the book and its sales chances and Amazon's algorithm where Amazon won't even be serving it up anymore. So I would say, sort of as an aside to the people looking to publish independently, I would arrive at done and then take a couple more proofreading rounds, take a couple more rounds with it because really, you are the last line of defense before that manuscript gets out into the world.
So the idea of doneness, sometimes for independently published projects, arrives a little bit sooner than it should and the writer could do a little bit more due diligence. Now, this is a broad sweeping generalization, but it is sort of a dark mark on independent published authors that has sort of followed around for good reason. There are a lot of people who just upload and kind of throw their hands up and walk away, without doing a couple additional proofreading rounds. And that really hurts the reputation of independently published authors who are doing an amazing job, who are putting out very, very polished books. And so, I would say if it's just you deciding whether or not to hit upload, I would move your goal post for done a couple of paces and do a couple additional rounds.
So the next benchmark for people who want to go traditional is submitting to an agent, submitting to a publisher, and there, your bar for done rises considerably. The reason being it's a very competitive marketplace. A lot of agents report receiving tens of thousands of queries, 50,000, 60,000. I mean, I was probably at 30,000, 40,000 and I specialized in children's books. So if I was an agent open to all categories, I probably would have seen double that in a year of queries. The number seems to only be going up as more people get the desire to write a book. It's more accessible than ever to just sit down and start typing something. There are more educational resources than ever. So competition is stiff. And so, you want to be the top 5%, 3%, 1%, not even that 1% in the slush is going to get offers of representation because those agents are gonna pick maybe 20 clients a year, if they're getting started and building their list. But once their list gets filled up, they're gonna pick up maybe 10, 5, fewer new clients per year. And so, out of all the 60,000 people, you need to be the top 1 writer in some cases or 5 writers per year that really catches an agent's attention.
Now, some of these things that you're trying to connect to the agent about, you don't know their personal preferences for writing style. You know, agents do convey what they like. They give interviews. They write blog posts. They're on Twitter. They do a manuscript wish list, but it's impossible to be in their heads and know exactly what their tastes are. And so some of it is guesswork. Some of it is good agent research. But basically, you want to make sure that your manuscript is in absolute tip-top shape before you query and get it in front of that agent, that gatekeeper, that publisher.
So when is it done? I would say...This is the rubrics that I use for my editorial practice. I have three editorial assistants. And we talk all the time about what our role is, what our job is with the manuscript. For me, I'd say it is understanding your—in our case, the client's—understanding your vision for the project, being very, very aware of what it is you set out to do, what the story is that you set out to tell, what the effect of that story on your audience that you wanted to achieve. Your vision...Has this story borne out your vision in the strongest, most efficient, most effective way possible and doesn't make an impact on the reader. So if your vision is to tell this broad, multi-generational, sweeping epic of one deeply troubled family, and the story is really just like an ancestry.com profile of like, "Whoa, there was my great-grandfather. He did this," and it's just all backstory. Well, a sweeping multi-generational epic about a troubled family would be emotional. It would make the reader laugh. It would make the reader cry. It would involve a lot of sort of human suffering and human redemption, right. And so, if those emotional layers are not coming through, if they're not having that effect on the reader, then I would say that you're not quite having your intended effect, you're not quite bearing out your full vision for readers just yet. And so maybe that project isn't entirely done yet. This is a little bit of a complicated rubric but as I was just saying, only the top of the top of the top tend to get noticed in the slush pile, get offered representation, and move forward.
Getting offered representation by an agent, by the way, is not even the finish line. The finish line is then the agent pitching your project to a publisher and publishers have slush piles, too. They just come from agent-submitted material. They reject most of what they receive. And so then, it's just a fraction of a fraction of a fraction at that point that makes it. And so, these questions become really important, like understanding exactly what your vision is, exactly what you want to achieve. And then, telling a story in a way that really sort of brings that vision to life. And is it the right vision? Is it a vision that will resonate with the marketplace? Is it a vision the will resonate with readers? These are all kinds of questions that go into this broader metric of, you know, when is the manuscript finished. And so then, are you putting a compelling character on the page? Are you weaving in a plot that has ups and downs for readers to follow and get engaged with? Is the theme working? Does it hit the readers where you intend to grab them? And all of these other sorts of considerations? Is the writing beautiful, if that's your style? Is it mechanical? Is the writing accomplished? Does it seem solid and air-free? All of these other, sort of, not just big picture story questions, but also on the page sentence-level questions come into play when we consider doneness.
So it's not just like, you've seen a steak char, right, where it's like, this is blue steak. This is rare. This is medium-rare. It's very much a more nuanced question because every book is different. Every vision for every book is different. Every writer is different. And every project when it comes to full fruition, is going to be a little bit different and that vision of what fruition is, it's going to be unique to the project. And so that's why I can't be like, "Well, let's plug this into a formula and yep, it's done." It comes from knowing yourself and knowing what you hoped to achieve. And then being able to take a step back, whether by yourself, or with a critique partner, or with another trusted source, with a freelance editor, and evaluating, "Was I able to achieve this?"
So I don't know. I don't know if your project is done, and I can't give you kind of like three bullet points for whether it's done or not that you can just check off. But I would start with figuring out what your vision for the project is. And taking a cold hard look at your project, if you're able to, and just seeing, "Does this meet my vision? Does this sort of realize what I set out to do or is there still more work to do?" Because I think the main thing that I want to press upon you is you don't necessarily want to get out there with a project, start pitching the project, presenting the project, trying to sell the project, until it meets this lofty criteria of, "Okay, I have done everything that I can to bring my vision in line with this manuscript. Now, it's ready for the world." And I think only those projects that can really answer this question honestly and sort of sail confidently out there, those are the projects that are going to get the most noticed, that are gonna get interest, that are gonna get an offer for representation and hopefully, down the road, an offer of publication. So this is a lofty, lofty goal, a big question that a lot of writers ask. I think if you're in doubt at all, put your manuscript away for a couple of months. Come back to it and sort of see what is there and what isn't there and what could be there. And then you'll be able to answer this question, I think, with a little bit more clarity.
This is Mary Kole, Good Story Company, and here's to a good done story.
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