I took a little break from my blog last week in order to meet my deadline. But I wanted to catch up with my blog picks that I do on Friday. This one over at my agent, Rachelle Gardner’s blog was exceptionally good and of course reminded me of what my editor was going to be looking at when she reads my second book, Chameleon, The Ravensmoore Chronicles, Book Two. I encourage you to be brave and fill your head with knowledge. What A Fiction Editor Looks ForAfter you read through that post think about where you may need to concentrate some of your writing efforts. Here’s one of mine:
“Make sure there are enough secondary characters, that they each play a role in the story, and that they’re intriguing in their own right.” My issue isn’t that my secondary characters aren’t intriguing, in fact they love to be in the spotlight. My fantastic editor has had to encourage me not to do this so much. One of the reasons for that is the word count. I’m not supposed to go over 80,000 words, so that means I have to be certain I can tell my hero and heroine’s story within that word count. If I get carried away with my secondary characters then it’s hard to get everything to fit in the story.
Keep this in mind when you are writing for publication. What issues do you struggle with related to what a fiction editor looks for?
I use a lot of secondary characters, too, Jill. I agree–there’s an art to depicting them well without letting them get too big for their britches. 🙂
Hi Rosslyn,
I’ve always loved secondary characters when they are well depicted. I like a lot of characters in a book, but as writers we have to rein those folks in so we don’t get off track. It is fun though. 🙂