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I was trolling Reddit the other day (hey.. don’t worry about me) and saw a post somewhere that was something like, “experienced editors/writers, what’s the number one mistake you see new writers making?” This got me thinking about my favorite thing to think about… the normal distribution. (below)
I’ve written a bit about this elsewhere:
but in short: the white dots are book deals, the X axis is talent. Amongst extremely talented people (who keep trying) you will find a lot of people getting book deals. Smack dab in the middle are people who are average at writing—statistically speaking, they really shouldn’t be getting book deals, those book deals should probably be going to the bits of blue space of more talented people who give up too soon, or write the wrong thing at the wrong time. People who are meh kind of shouldn’t be expected to be in the professional leagues, but sometimes people luck out with the right book at the right time.
This got me thinking about, what are the skills (or lack thereof) you see along this distribution of talent? If you haven’t done a lot of editing or reading other people’s work, you might not have a sense of what exactly are those top things that newer writers get wrong. Let’s cut the data by saying the population is composed of “people trying to be writers” and not necessarily “people actively trying to get published.”
This is what I came up with:
Bottom 5ish percent: I’m cheating a bit because some (though not many) of these people might not be the worst writers, but they are people who are unconscionably offensive or stupid in their actual premise. You know, like yet another WWII romance between a Nazi and a female Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp, or one of those really violent horror novels where violence against women is lovingly depicted and then the author lashes out at the (female) agent who rejects them. Can these people be redeemed? Don’t know, don’t care.
Bottom 15-20 percent: At a line level, there are mechanical errors—like grammatical mistakes/ the author not understanding how to put sentences together smoothly. Timeline is often confused because of unintentional tense changes or just confusion about what is happening when (ie, is this a flashback or happening right now?) Point-of-view jerks around clumsily. With these writers, it’s sometimes difficult to figure out what is actually happening in sentences. They often don’t understand that they can do cuts for transitions (ie, they include long scenes of the person getting from place A to B for no reason other than they didn’t know they could just press return twice.) Exposition is in the form of infodumps not integrated into the text, dialogue is awkward and often superfluous. Lots of “as you know Bob” dialogue. This is dialogue where people who in real life wouldn’t say things based on context do so to explain things to the reader. For example, text where two editors at a publishing house are talking to each other and one says, “So, here we are at Random House!” Characters are barely even cardboard cutouts- like not even an attempt at an archetype but something more “Bob is a soldier. Diane is his wife…” ..and that’s it
Next 30 percent. Serviceable but sometimes awkward writing that pulls you out of the story maybe once a page. I know what’s happening but I don’t necessarily care. Characters are one dimensional or archetypes—like you could name a couple adjectives to describe each character. I think writing at this level is often plagued with too many characters that aren’t characterized enough. Dialogue is sometimes misplaced (eg, this should be exposition not dialogue) or occurs at the wrong time (why are they having along conversation when a bomb’s about to go off??), but when used effectively does move the story along rather than distract it. Ultimately there isn’t much interesting about writing at this level. Often the premise itself is sort of common.
Next 30 percent: let’s come back to this.
Upper 15 percent. These are people consistently getting published, selling books. Writing is clear and not confusing. Characters are well-drawn and people get attached to them (think: readers who follow the same characters in a series for dozens of books). Crowd pleasers. Writer understands tropes and how to use them. Dialogue is snappy, even memorable and exists to serve a function. Plot isn’t confusing but is compelling and page turning. This is the hardest thing to describe, but the writer has a unique voice.
What is a writer’s voice? Not to be confused with the voice of the writing. For example, Never Saw Me Coming is (mostly) first person from the perspective of a snarky, sort of chipper college freshman psychopath. She’s making quips and saying judging things. That is not Vera Kurian’s voice. Voice is, when I’m buying an Elena Ferrante novel, I know to some extent what I’m getting—I’m buying it because of that voice.. Likely incredibly interior, psychologically in depth, fantastic line-level writing, and themes that connect with modern women. People who read Stephen King a lot could say things beyond “horror” (because a lot of his books aren’t even horror) but I would say he has down-home sensibilities about story telling, that he cares about his characters and it shows, that he’s drawn to the dark and grotesque, common themes of addiction and lost/imperiled children. Tana French writes fat mysteries with in depth characters and psychological depth (the point isn’t the twist or the plot really, IMHO, though there is always a mystery). This is to say, the author has a unique point of view that you can see demonstrated across their work. This doesn’t mean the author can’t grow and change, but to some extent you have some idea of what you’re getting when you pick up a novel by X.
Top 5 or 10 percent. These are authors who are taking language to new places, subverting genres, shining a light on culture and society. These are people who will probably be remembered after they are dead. These are the writers you want to study. It’s not just that they understand tropes or the genres, but that they play with your expectations of them, they are self-aware, meta even. These are the authors where you find yourself underlining text and saying, damn, that’s good. The ones you give 5 stars to. Note that I am not saying these are all literary writers. There’s a top in every genre, and defining what literary fiction is or isn’t is difficult anyway. Authors like this should be getting book deals—if one agent or publisher rejects them, someone else is going to snatch them up.
Let’s get back to the 30 percent I said I’d get back to. I labeled these folk “continuous heartbreak” for a reason. These are writers that are better than average. Being better than average means that an agent will perk up when they open these pages after a competently written query. But you read and it’s… fine. The writing is fine. The characters are fine. The premise is fine. There’s nothing wrong with it per se, there’s just nothing about it that makes it exceptional. No special sauce. I could see a lot of these submissions going into the “it didn’t grab me” pile or the “maybe” pile only to linger there- well, the writing was fine and the characters are pretty good… but was there anything compelling me about it? This is a rough place to be. Being better than average means you know there’s a bunch of people you are performing above at a technical level. You can’t quite see what’s wrong with your book. I think writers in this segment would have a better understanding of why they are struggling if they read a lot of submissions, TBH. When you’ve done slushpile reading you can more clearly see this distribution. that top 5-10 percent really does stand out like diamonds in the rough: you sit up straight and get excited. The really good stuff just below that immediately gets flagged as, “hey, this was really good!” But then the stuff just under that that is… fine… and it all seems similar to other stuff that is fine, but the problem is that numerically speaking there is a lotttttttt of stuff that is just fine. The premises are kind of meh. The characters are kind of meh. Maybe things we’ve seen before, or not executed in away that is new and different.
How does someone in the continuous heartbreak group graduate to working writers? If I could tell you an exact process I’d probably be rich, but I guess I’d say this: I think the heartbreak people don’t have a sense of where they are in the distribution—they can’t see themselves at the meta level. Maybe they struggle to see the difference between an absolute banger of a premise and a so-so one, or maybe they just don’t come up with banger premises. Maybe they think “I’ve made solid, likable characters” but they don’t quite understand what makes an unforgettable character. Their writing is good at a technical level, and I think they understand this, but they might not understand what the special sauce is. Especially when it’s also really subjective.
The only advice I would have for this problem, at least right now until I think about more: 1) study line-level writing of exceptional writers. Try to understand the difference between perfectly fine writing and writing that makes people underline stuff. To find writing like this, check out literary fiction, or books that particularly get called out in reviews for prose or being well written. (“This book was a roller coaster ride!” does not indicate good writing necessarily. But what does- one of my favorite blurbs of all time for The Satanic Verses which starts “a staggering achievement…” Even if I really like a book, I’m not going to blurb it by saying it’s a “staggering achievement” unless they’ve really done something other’s haven’t.) Another good place is NPR’s Book Concierge widget—check the box for “really good writing.” 2) study books that reviewers go out of their way to say are clever, original, intelligent. 3) read award winners in that genre. (Not all award winners are bangers, but best to start at the top I suppose.) As much as people are trying to hawk classes, the best way to improve as a writer is to read a lot, and to read the people who are good at the things you are not good at.
Photo by Edvard Alexander Rølvaag on Unsplash
Great post. I find that I despise serviceable novels by the “30 percent” more than terrible ones because they take longer to announce themselves and thus waste my time with their dreary, trope-addled competence and paper-chewing prose flavor. Donald Maass, in his book THE BREAKOUT NOVELIST, had it right when he wrote: "The type of novel submission that's the toughest to spot—and the most essential to reject—is the one that is skillful, competent, literate, and ultimately forgettable."
I really love this breakdown!! For me, the worse books are actually the ones that are just fine. I've read some terrible self-published romances that are so bad I genuinely will never forget them and even love in a twisted, Stockholm syndrome-y way loll. I also think the "just fine" writers suffer from writing that lacks a pulse. And I actually think THIS is much harder to quantify than voice (I mean most of us DO know what voice is, we use it everyday). But some novels just feel...alive? Despite being lopsided or oddly paced, maybe even because of these qualities. What I've noticed about the works that thrum and the works that don't is that the former feel like only that writer could've created that text, it's kismet, there's a fizzy specificity to it that "just fine" writing lacks, and also a leaning into idiosyncrasies rather than flattening them, I imagine by honing these ticks in revision rather than letting them in haphazardly or editing them out entirely. To the chorus of writing advice I'd add: read poetry if you want to elevate your prose! Poets are all about breaking and bending language to make the quotidian feel new. You can get a super cheap subscription to POETRY magazine and encounter a medley of different voices every month for like $25 a year or something. So worth it. Great post!! Thanks for writing this!