House of Souls: The Untold Family Saga of Wrestling Rings and Soap Suds
The novel is available on http://houseofsouls.blogspot.com, and I got a letter from a publisher who critiqued it. It's the most in depth critique I've ever gotten from a publisher that could serve to help other young writers:
Dear Justin,
We thank you for giving Samhain Publishing the opportunity to review your work , House of Souls, for possible publication. Unfortunately there are some issues with the manuscript that prevent us from offering a contract. The reasons are as follows:
1) Given your description of your book as a family saga, and the content of your manuscript, we felt it demanded a much higher word count than you dedicated to it. 15,000 words is appropriate for a quick tale, but a saga calls for a higher word count as, by definition it is a long, detailed story. As it stands, your manuscript reads more like an outline. Your multi-generational time frame supports a word count of 100,000 or higher.
2)The worlds of wrestling and soap operas do provide quite a contrast with plenty of dramatic potential, but expanding the characters and the events would allow the opportunity to demonstrate that much more fully. In addition, the Romeo and Juliet theme is never fully explored.
3)I would recommend that you go back and expand all the scenes outlined in this submission first, exploring the people and events in the story in more depth and detail.There's a general sense that you, the author, are maintaining a distance from the story, skimming over the top rather than delving into it.
As an example: the final scene has great dramatic potential that isn't
reached due to the brevity of the scene and the lack of build-up to it.
Three paragraphs is simply not enough space to establish the setting, the
characters, the mood of the moment. How do you, the author, want the reader to feel at the ending? Rewrite the final scene with evoking that response as
the goal.
Again, we appreciate your submitting to Samhain Publishing and wish you good luck in the future.
Angela James, Editor
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
http://www.samhainpublishing.com/
Not only is my writing too short and lack depth, but a writer friend commented that I'm trying to write stories that are too big and have broad canvases, and that since I'm at an early phase of my career at such a young age that maybe I need to scale back, and write smaller stories. Everyone I've spoken to about it (including the publisher's comments above) believe that I should take time off, and then write a much more scaled back second draft.
Another thing they agreed on was that the interplay between and soaps should be kept, and that there is a potiential market for that.
Dear Justin,
We thank you for giving Samhain Publishing the opportunity to review your work , House of Souls, for possible publication. Unfortunately there are some issues with the manuscript that prevent us from offering a contract. The reasons are as follows:
1) Given your description of your book as a family saga, and the content of your manuscript, we felt it demanded a much higher word count than you dedicated to it. 15,000 words is appropriate for a quick tale, but a saga calls for a higher word count as, by definition it is a long, detailed story. As it stands, your manuscript reads more like an outline. Your multi-generational time frame supports a word count of 100,000 or higher.
2)The worlds of wrestling and soap operas do provide quite a contrast with plenty of dramatic potential, but expanding the characters and the events would allow the opportunity to demonstrate that much more fully. In addition, the Romeo and Juliet theme is never fully explored.
3)I would recommend that you go back and expand all the scenes outlined in this submission first, exploring the people and events in the story in more depth and detail.There's a general sense that you, the author, are maintaining a distance from the story, skimming over the top rather than delving into it.
As an example: the final scene has great dramatic potential that isn't
reached due to the brevity of the scene and the lack of build-up to it.
Three paragraphs is simply not enough space to establish the setting, the
characters, the mood of the moment. How do you, the author, want the reader to feel at the ending? Rewrite the final scene with evoking that response as
the goal.
Again, we appreciate your submitting to Samhain Publishing and wish you good luck in the future.
Angela James, Editor
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
http://www.samhainpublishing.com/
Not only is my writing too short and lack depth, but a writer friend commented that I'm trying to write stories that are too big and have broad canvases, and that since I'm at an early phase of my career at such a young age that maybe I need to scale back, and write smaller stories. Everyone I've spoken to about it (including the publisher's comments above) believe that I should take time off, and then write a much more scaled back second draft.
Another thing they agreed on was that the interplay between and soaps should be kept, and that there is a potiential market for that.
posted by Justin Murphy | 6:54 PM
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