How to Get Published: Don’t Bore the Acquisitions Editor Into a Screaming Fit by Guest Author Erin Lale

Welcome to a guest post from acquisitions editor for Damnation Books and Eternal Press and author, Erin Lale. Her latest book is How to Turn Your Fan Fiction into a Novel. In this post, she shares with us what not to send to an acquisitions editor and how not to make her roll her eyes and bore her into a screaming fit.

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Have you ever seen someone roll her eyes so much they pop out?

Me neither, but that would be a great premise for a horror story, wouldn’t it?

Unfortunately I’m much more likely to receive a story labeled horror in my slush pile that is fan fiction based on the 20 year old quickly-canceled TV show spin-off of the role playing game Vampire: The Masquerade.

I can tell because the characters use the term Masquerade. If I’m going to publish a vampire story, I want to publish tomorrow’s take on vampires, not yesterday’s.

Novels that land in my slush pile based on an even older role playing game? For example, they have orcs and elves—like a Tolkien remake, except they also have paladins and clerics that heal with a touch, so, the story is an imitation of Dungeons and Dragons, which was an imitation of Tolkien. Those make me roll my eyes.

Basically anything that reads like fan fiction shuts off my excitement, even a stray reference to “the power of three” or anything else that shows you got your idea from a TV show. That goes for Bible fan fiction, too, so if your book uses Lucifer, Gabriel, etc. as a major character, it had better be breathtaking.

Of course, good writing is good writing, so it’s possible to make a tired-out trope fresh again if you’re amazingly good. A really spectacular first paragraph and first page will draw me in no matter what the synopsis is like. Just avoid writing errors like too much backstory when a new character is introduced, especially if it’s done as a plot summary of their life. So your character went toWestwoodHigh School? If it’s really important to the story, sure, you can put that in, but don’t TELL me; describe him as wearing a Westwood High School class ring or T shirt, or describe him as still having the physique of the Westwood High School football player he was 15 years ago, or having dinner with his girlfriend who is the same girl he met at Westwood High School, etc. etc. you get the point.

There are scenes I’ve seen too often. For example, the female lead of a romance novel spends part of chapter 1 masturbating in the bath. I get that the author wants to have a sex scene in the book before the couple even meets, but it’s so over-used.  Self pleasuring isn’t a sex scene, and adult women who live alone in their own homes can do it elsewhere than locked in the bathroom. Another example of a tired idea is a city’s local vampires ruled by a Prince who all wear fabulous goth fashion, regardless of what they were in life, how old they are, or where they are from.

The books that really make me roll my eyes are the ones that bore me before I even open the file. If your book’s synopsis mentions: a haunted house; a killer Vietnam vet with PTSD; a killer former abused child with MPD/DID; a spaceship crew finding the first evidence of life on another planet / making first contact with aliens that look funny but talk just like us; a witch / wizard school; the protagonist is an author; a romance with a “fiery” female lead with red “flame-colored” hair; the villain is a drug dealer, and that is the only thing that makes him a villain; a monster kills people who have video cameras in the woods; the male lead of a romance is clearly the right one to choose for no other reason than because he’s an alpha male—literally, being a werewolf; the hero / heroine is “the chosen one”; an erotic novel’s entire plot consists of a “scenario” such as boss/ secretary, teacher / student, cop / crook, voyeur / cheating wife, or anything else that sounds like it was lifted from the video catalog of a naughty film studio; a zombie apocalypse happens for no apparent reason and the protagonist fights his way from city to country with a random girl who falls in love with him because he’s the last man on Earth; anyone at any time utters the word Abaddon, unless it’s the name of a cute toy robot—then I give you one paragraph to blow me away with your scintillating prose or you’re getting a “does not meet our editorial needs at this time” email.

Show me something original. Make my eyes pop out—in a good way.

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Erin Lale is the Acquisitions Editor at Damnation Books and Eternal Press, Editor and Publisher of Time Yarns, and an extensively published author. You can contact Erin via Linkedin or via her Yahoo Group.