My father is retired and wants to be a published writer. He has been submitting things to literary agents and getting nowhere. His biggest frustration, besides not getting published, is that he doesn’t no why he’s getting rejected. He thinks his work is good, but he knows that it might be bad and that he just can’t see it. Is there somewhere that he can submit some stories for honest feedback?
Depending on what he writes, he could join a writing organization. There are lots of them, at least for genre writers (Science Fiction & Fantasy, Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers). Most of these organizations have membership categories for unpublished writers, and most of them sponsor writing workshops, seminars, and critique groups.
There are also local writing groups that offer the same thing.
There are also plenty of online sites where you can find an online critique group.
There are a lot of reasons for getting rejected, from actual problems with the writing to querying the wrong agents. Ågents and editors have no incentive to tell people why they’re rejecting their work. Some agents will give writers a critique when they think the work is promising and close to publishable, but not all of them do.
Note: if he finds an agent who wants to charge him for feedback and editing, that person is not a real agent, and their critique and editing will probably be worthless. Anybody who says “I can get you published, just pay me” should be avoided.
Are all novels subject to a sort of peer review before publication, much like an academician’s research paper?
It is not much like an academician’s research paper, but yeah. At the basic level, it has to grab an editor’s attention. At smaller publishing houses that can be enough, but at the larger ones the editor has to pretty much sell it to the whole publishing team including senior editors and outside sales staff before it’s accepted.
A local critique group is a good place to get unbiased opinions, but depending on the level of the skill of the members it can be the blind leading the blind. He might also be able to find professionals who lead groups or do lessons for money. It shouldn’t be that much, and he should stay away from anyone who wants to publish his book for money or who claims he can guarantee publication.
Thanks for the suggestions. I’m going give a little bump to see if anyone else has any other ideas.
Put a sample online and post a link to it here. There are plenty of Dopers, myself included, who would be happy to give it a look-see and give feedback.
If that’s allowed by forum rules, I mean. You might want to ask a mod first.
Given changes in how written stuff is distributed these days I think the book publishing industry has gotten a lot more selective about what they are willing to commit to paper and the expenses involved. Blind submissions have only an infinitesimal chance of success.
Some authors have had success with self publishing. If he feels his work is noteworthy why no go that route?
Plus as others have noted criticism is free if you go to the right portals and groups and there are a lot of under employed editors out there. If I was to publish a book as a first time author I get it critiqued to death then cleaned up by an editor before submitting it to anyone.
That’s a good idea, but I’ve posted things here that I definitely don’t want my dad to see.
Do you what the right portals and groups are? He found a message board where a literary agent critiqued submissions but he said the other posters just agreed with whatever was said previously and he didn’t get a get a good sense of what was wrong with his sample. He found a local writers group but they were a bunch of insecure people and he didn’t like the group.
He has both a realistic and unrealistic attitude about getting published. He knows how difficult it is but sometimes he seems to think if a literary agent would just tell him what’s wrong he can fix it and get published.
Cracks up. No, I didn’t suggest that you actually have him join the Dope. I was thinking that you could filter the comments for him. If all of the comments are something like “Dude, that stuff sucks camel balls!!!” You could tell him that people don’t seem to like it.
If you get comments like “I didn’t like it because XXX and he forgot YYY in the last part”, you could tell him.
It seems like you want him to get some helpful constructive comments, and this is a good place to get them, even though there is a lot of snark.