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5 Ways To Keep Me Reading Your First Chapter

lettersandlight:

Camp NaNoWriMo 2014 has officially launched! Whether you’re writing a new novel, tackling a screenplay, or finishing an existing piece of work, Camp is a writing free-for-all. For those of you still on your publishing journey before Camp, Blair Thornburgh, assistant editor at Quirk Books, explains what makes her stop reading a manuscript:

I was recently at a conference where an editor detailed her method for critiquing a first draft. The complicated process was as follows:

1. Start reading it.
2. When it stops being compelling, stop reading it.
3. When you stop reading it, draw a line on the page and write “This is where I stopped reading”.

Brash. Ballsy. Take-no-prisoners.

But what specifically makes an editor grind to a halt and refuse to go on? Opinions differ, of course, but as far as I’m concerned there are some pretty basic “don’t”s that make me want to close a document while I’m reading a sample chapter:

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