Good morning. I have well and truly been bitten by the writing bug. I have now started a Thriller novel and currently have just under 10k words. My question is; How do you know when your ready to approach an editor or contact a publisher?
Good morning. I have well and truly been bitten by the writing bug. I have now started a Thriller novel and currently have just under 10k words. My question is; How do you know when your ready to approach an editor or contact a publisher?
as previously mentioned in other peoples answers reread , re edit and rewrite it many times until you can't make it any better. Ask your nearest and dearest what they think of it and if there's anything that can be developed further or improved. Get the writers and artists year book when you're completely finished with writing and editing, it will give you lots of advice and contacts to approach.
Have you considered self publishing? It's a fantastic way of getting your self out there and gaining experience of publishing independently.
Good luck with your writing! let us know how you get on,
Molly
To answer your initial question, David, you don't approach anyone until the book is written. As a first time novelist, no-one is going to judge your work on the basis of a few chapters only; if they are interested they will need to see the whole thing, and they'll want it as soon as they ask for it. In this business, if you miss your slot, you may never get another. Equally, you could have publishers begging for your book - but if it isn't finished, they'll never get it.
In the course of writing a novel, you could change direction numerous times. You could find that the expected ending isn't where your characters want to go, or you could get halfway through and realise your MC should be someone entirely different. It sounds obvious, but a novel isn't finished until it's finished, and you won't know when that is until you get there.
Once you've written your book, give yourself a break from it. Then go back and look at it objectively.
Does the timeline work?
Does a character answer a phone even though the line was cut ten pages ago?
Has the man with green eyes changed to blue halfway through?
It's a thriller: do you give away too much early on, or is the ending too unlikely because you haven't given enough clues?
Does it live up to the name 'thriller'?
You really have to question your book as a complete article to make sure that what you think happens does actually take place. A writer lives with a story so intensely and for so long that s/he may forget what s/he actually wrote.
Write your book. It may take longer than you expect. Then the polishing will start, and again, that may well take a lot longer than you ever imagined. There's no rule for how many times you rewrite, or what you need to alter - the only rule is to turn out a book that's as near perfect in all its components as you can possibly make it. How you do that is down to you as an individual: we all write differently, after all.
Good luck with it.
Lorraine
I wrote my first novel, sent it out to agents, got told it might read better with the guy as the main character and not the girl, rewrote it - several times - and got an agent - yay! She suggested re-writes... I got a publisher - she suggested re-writes... To this day I still get the odd, irritating thought - if only I'd written it this wayor that way, it might have sold better...
Right now I'm writing a different sort of book and proceeding much more cautiously. And I'm currently on re-write number...oh hell,I can't remember! Point is, it's way, way better than my first draft. Way better. Seriously.