Six Ways to Drive an Editor CRAZY

Famed editor Maxwell Perkins once remarked that “style” is nothing more than one author’s decision to misuse the rules of grammar. My former agent once said, “There’s a fine line between ‘style’ and sounding like a moron” (much like this fine line, I suppose).

What I often say is, you have to obey the rules before you can break them. If there’s one place for obeying the rules, it’s in an author proposal.

The first step in getting a book published (by a publisher other than yourself) is submitting a query letter to an editor or agent. The letter is a three-paragraph pitch that introduces you, tells what your project is about, and explains why you are qualified to write it. If the editor is interested, she may ask for a formal proposal that goes into more detail about the work. It’s very easy to tank the project at this point, even if you have a killer plot or subject in mind, because your grammar trips all over itself. Editors are grammar sticklers—go figure.

Per that same agent, here are six common errors in author proposals that drive editors crazy:

1. Novelists who overuse exclamation marks–as though the period key didn’t exist!
2. “Writers” who seem to believe that all “emphasized” words belong in quotation marks. You know—“quotation marks.” Here’s an “idea”: cut it out.
3. Your/you’re; its/it’s; there/their/they’re. We’ve talked about this.
4. Ewe can knot relay on you’re spell chequer to catch everything. On the other hand, don’t ignore it either.
5. Repetitive paragraphs. The agent suggests that you “print out a copy of your proposal or manuscript and look it over. If the first word of every paragraph is the same, you need to go back and change it. (Unless the first word of every paragraph is ‘I,’ in which case you need to be slapped by the person sitting next to you, then go back and change it.)”
6. Dangling parentheses. That is, failing to include the close parenthesis (like this. It leaves editors dangling. And fuming.) (True confession: I do it all the time.

If you don’t make any of these mistakes, well . . . maybe you should write a book proposal.

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