How Not To Get Published - How To Win the WWOTYA - 4, The Length

By: Gabrielle Guichard
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:43:26
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A good novel always reads too quickly, whatever its real length. The reader feels reluctant to close the book and leave the characters. Nevertheless, he knows that his feeling has nothing to do with literature. From a literary point of view, the story is completed. All the questions have been answered.

Examine your work. Do you write pretty clearly and straight to the point? You are wrong! You will never win the WWOTYA this way. If the lack of a nail may lead to the loss of the kingdom, that is to say: if to remove one sentence makes your story lose part of its meaning --or of its evocative power, how can you hope to avoid getting published? Obviously, your story is too well balanced.

The best way to spoil a good novel is also one of the easiest. You have written a good story of 40000 words? Double its length. Add adjectives, adverbs, long descriptions full of useless details, insert anecdotes that are not linked to the main plot (all the better if they are boring), tell the whole life of a secondary character, almost a shadow like a waiter or a taxi driver (only if they have no importance in the main story), multiply the dialogs about trivial subjects and give historical explanations about the names of the places only if they do not matter. Usually, it is enough to ruin a good novel.

You may be unlucky: a gold washer publisher could well tell you which parts you must sift to make the nugget appear. Do not get angry against her, it is her job to strike it lucky.

Gabrielle Guichard
writes bilingual textbooks and is in charge of the English-French department at Multilingual Bookstore, the publishing house that translates and publishes bilingual and multilingual short novels.

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