SHALLA CHATS with freelance editor Mike Sirota

 

“Working with a Freelance Editor”

by Shalla DeGuzman

 

First of all, who ’s Mike?

I am a writing coach, a freelance editor, and a “spirit guide” to many successful and aspiring writers. I’ve written nineteen published novels including The 22nd Gear, Bicycling Through Space and Time, Demon Shadows and The Well, from such publishers as Bantam Books, The Berkley Publishing Group, Pocket Books and Zebra Books. Among my most recent client successes are Michele Scott's Death Reins In, due out from Berkley Prime Crime in June (her fifth published novel), and Whitney Lyles’ First Comes Love (Berkley Trade), her fourth published novel, as well as many others.

I was an editor and award-winning feature writer for a San Diego newsmagazine, I evaluate and edit manuscripts professionally, and I have taught writing classes at many educational venues, including the University of California, San Diego Extension and Palomar College. I am also a long-time faculty member for the Southern California Writers’ Conference and the La Jolla Writers ’ Conference.

Shalla: Hello Mike. Congratulations on Michele Scott's Murder Uncorked, it’s getting a lot of five stars on Amazon.

Mike: Thanks. Murder Uncorked was actually Michele’s first published work, and since then she’s published three more mystery novels, with a fifth due out this summer. She’s also under contract for a total of eight novels. All of her stories have been well received.

Shalla: Please tell us about your evaluation and editing services. What type of authors are the best candidates for working with freelance editors?

Mike: Great question. The best candidate for working with a freelance editor or writing coach is a writer who is open to taking the input from a professional and striving to strengthen her/his work in every conceivable area. That sounds like a no-brainer, but you’d be amazed how many people contact me and say, “I need an editor to clean up my 80,000-word manuscript; you know, grammar, punctuation, that sort of thing. The story is great, so no worries there.” Well, guess what: these are people with whom I will NOT work. There are more important things to focus on in order for a project to catch the eye of an agent or a publisher in this increasingly difficult market.

My usual first step with writers who have completed projects is to read the manuscript from “cover to cover” and provide them with a comprehensive evaluation, including many suggestions for revisions. This review focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of the work, including style and content.

For a novel, the evaluation focuses on strengthening key areas. Does it grab a reader's attention (the "hook")? Are the characters believable? Is the dialogue powerful, and have you balanced it well enough with your narrative? Have you chosen effective point-of-view characters to tell your story? Is your setting realistic? Have you framed your plot well? Is your pacing consistent? Examples from a writer’s own manuscript will be cited to show them where they’ve succeeded, and where they need work.

While this evaluation does not include line editing, I find that writers make the same editing/structural mistakes throughout their manuscripts. I point out these recurring problems in the evaluation so that they can make many of the corrections themselves. When a manuscript is finally in shape for line editing—often a time-consuming process—there will be that much less of it to do. This is far more cost-effective for my writers.

Shalla: Will you help us understand what things are needed to strengthen our work of fiction? What are the best ways to hook the reader?

Mike: Also a great question. Without a strong opening hook, the literary agent (usually the first person to whom writers submit their work) will not get past the first page. To paraphrase the responses of many agents about how they view a manuscript: “I read the first sentence. If I like it, I read the first paragraph. If I like that, I read the first page. If I like that, I turn to page two.” No joke. Yes, the opening hook is critical.

As for the best ways to hook a reader—well, how much time do you have? I have classes and lectures on just the hook alone that run as long as two hours. A single, powerful sentence is always a good bet—as long as it PAYS OFF in the story and is not simply used as an attention-getting device. Here are two of many great examples:

“ It was hell’s season, and the air smelled of burning children.” – Gone South, by Robert McCammon

“ Tuesday was a fine California day, full of sunshine and promise, until Harry Lyon had to shoot someone at lunch.” – Dragon Tears, by Dean Koontz

Shalla: What makes characters believable?

Mike: Many times (too many?) I find myself telling a writer in his/her evaluation that the characters seemed more like caricatures, like cartoon or comic book people. Your characters should be as real as the people you live with or encounter every day. OK, sometimes you have an OTT (over the top) character by design, but these need to be limited, so that they’re special when you do use them.

A character needs to elicit emotion from the readers. So many characters that I encounter in student/client works leave me feeling nothing; they’re just…bland. It doesn’t matter what kind of emotion that character elicits. Dr. Hannibal Lecter is as wonderful and well-drawn a character as Professor Dumbledore in the Harry Potter novels.

Shalla: How do we make the dialogue powerful? And how do we balance dialogue with the narrative?

Mike: Ah, here’s another hour-long workshop! Here are a few tips, in a nutshell.

What is dialogue? It is people talking, plain and simple. To write good dialogue, think about how a conversation in which you're involved would go. Write the words as you and the responding party would actually say them. Be a good listener. Don't write unreal or stilted dialogue. Be natural, and:

1) Don't worry too much about being ungrammatical
2) Make sure the dialogue is appropriate for your character
3) Don't overuse tag lines, and switch them around
4) Don't use irrelevant dialogue
5) Avoid contrived dialogue
6) Avoid “ten-dollar” words, unless appropriate
7) Enact your dialogue
8) Avoid “talking heads”
9) Give your characters “voices”

As for balancing dialogue with narrative, there are no set rules. I was once asked the question after having published a number of novels, and not knowing the answer, I checked my own work. Turns out I averaged 60 percent narrative and 40 percent dialogue.

That doesn’t mean fifty-fifty or even forty-sixty is wrong. Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men was 75-80 percent dialogue. The key is not to overload your readers with page after endless page of either. I work hard with my writers to ensure that their dialogue is not boring the readers to death with what I call the “Metronome Effect”.

Shalla: How do we choose the most effective point-of-view to tell our stories?

Mike: In a first-person narrative there is—logically—only one POV you can choose. In a third-person narrative the POV character is usually—but not always—the main protagonist. Many writers, I find, have little or no concept of POV. I’ve reads scenes involving five characters that include—you guessed it—five POVs. John thinks this, and Mary thinks that, and Fred muses over such-and-such, etc. A POV needs to remain focused. You can use multiple POVs, but they must be defined. A device as simple as a space break (double-double space) or new chapter will accomplish a change of POV.

Best advice for new writers: limit your POVs. In my novel, Demon Shadows (now re-issued as Snow Shadows), which is a third-person narrative, I am almost exclusively in the head of my main protagonist, Paul Fleming, with only occasional digressions to others.

Shalla: What makes the setting realistic enough?

Mike: Most writers use a real locale. (Working with many San Diego writers, you cannot believe how many ways the Hotel Del Coronado can be described!) Even fictional ones are usually based on real places. In Demons Shadows my fictional town of Stillwell, California was modeled after the Sierra town of Truckee.

Whatever setting you choose, GO THERE. Do some “Living Research”. If you live in Sheboygan and have never been to New Orleans, don’t place your story in New Orleans. Another no-brainer, yes, but you’d be surprised…

Shalla: How should we frame the plot?

Mike: When I was younger (and we used stone tablets and chisels) I never worked from an outline. “Let the story flow” was my mantra. Now, I urge writers to outline their plot so that they have some direction, something that can get them from Point A to Point B to Point C and so on. You don’t have to follow it point by point (this is what most writers fear). But in the long run it is invaluable.

My experience with this: after publishing thirteen fantasy-adventure novels, none of them outlined, with smaller publishers, I decided to try for “bigger game” and I wrote the first two chapters of a horror novel, Demon Shadows. I didn’t want to complete the book until it was contracted, which was OK with the publisher (Bantam), but they needed to know the story all the way through the end. So, I put together a six-page outline (more of a synopsis), which was painstaking for me to write. I’m not kidding! When they offered me a contract I set about finishing the book, and guess what, the story was already written! OK, I had to “flesh out” the six pages into a couple hundred more, but it was one of the easiest books I’d ever done. All subsequent books were outlined.

Shalla: Should the pacing of our story be consistent? And what does consistent pacing mean?

Mike: Consistent pacing means balancing the “action” in a story with other elements such as backstory and character development. Think of the early scene in Saving Private Ryan, the incredible twenty or so minutes depicting the Normandy invasion in World War II. To say this story started out with a bang would be a gross understatement. OK, fine…but can you imagine keeping that up for the nearly three-hour length of the film? No way—viewers would be running to the popcorn stand, or heading home. But then the action is replaced with character development, and via dialogue we learn what this story is all about: getting a solider whose brothers have all been killed out of harm’s way so that his mother will have at least one son left. Wow, now we care, and we’re willing to view on.

Until a short while back I facilitated read & critique workshops for advanced writers. This scenario was common: a writer with a suspense thriller reads a tense action scene, let’s say chapter five, and we offer our input. At the next session the writer announces that he’s going to read chapter seven. “But what about chapter six?” we ask. “Oh, that’s just some dialogue, developing characters, boring stuff,” the writer says. Uh-uh, I say. As lord and high master of this group I order him to read chapter six. It is just as necessary and useful as the scenes in which meteors fall out of the sky and skyscrapers are toppled. Without this consistent pacing, a novel will fall flat.

Shalla: Lastly, any other tips for writers?

Mike: The obvious: read, read, read! And don’t work in a vacuum.

Take classes; join a read & critique group—preferably a professionally facilitated one, but even a peer group is helpful. And if you are truly serious about pursuing this craft, don’t rely on the accolades of your wife or your mother, who will think your manuscript is just the greatest thing since pizza. You’ve invested a lot of time, blood, sweat and tears into writing this book, so why not invest in having a pair of professional eyes take a look at it before you even think of submitting it to a literary agent? You have a narrow window of opportunity to impress, and these days “good” is not good enough. Find someone who can help you make your manuscript “better ”.

Shalla: Thanks Mike, very helpful answers.

For more on Mike Sirota, please visit http://www.mikesirota.com

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Shalla DeGuzman's short stories have appeared in Poetic Diversity, the Mad Hatters Review, etc.; her articles in The Scriptorium and L.A. Freepress; her skits at the Stella Adler Theatre. Shalla, a former writer and producer of a health and fitness cable show, is currently writing a novel. She is President of The ShallaDeGuzman Writers Group where she interviews literary agents, publishers, editors, etc. News! Shalla DeGuzman gets nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize! Plus! SHALLA Magazine, which features short stories, poetry and more, is here! For more on Shalla: www.shalladeguzman.com

 

 

 

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