The Author's Checklist (An Agent's Guide to Developing and Editing Your Manuscript)

After many thousands of hours editing and evaluating manuscripts as an agent and freelance editor, Elizabeth Kracht noticed many of the manuscripts had similar issues and began to keep a list. Every manuscript has a weak point, even those closest to ready. Agents and editors decline manuscripts because the dialogue was too stilted, the voice seemed off for the genre, because of unsympathetic protagonists, lack of structure, formatting, and countless other reasons.

But here’s the thing: many of these problems are easy to fix.

Arranged as an a to z guide to various aspects of manuscript preparation, Kracht offers a brief summary of how to go about assessing that aspect and then provides a few points for review or quick reference, set up to be a checklist. The dozens of topics covered include the expected (dialogue; pacing; passive language; punctuation; query letters; subheads; timeline; voice) as well as areas that many first-time authors haven’t considered, such as agency guidelines; audience; chapter arcs; rejection; uniformity; and world building. Appropriate for writers of both fiction and nonfiction, the book includes examples to illustrate and inspire. Kracht also offers strategies for revisions and suggestions of where to go for more support on many of the topics, including online forums and courses to be explored.