Is Your Book Any Good?

My mother gave me a manuscript to read recently. She’d been raving about it for months. It was a gripping read, she said, a real page-turner. “It’s brilliant,” she told me as she handed me the typewritten (not computer-printed) pages. “You’re going to love it.”

It was a gruesome whodunnit with a police lieutenant as the main character who gets thrillingly closer and closer to the killer, but the bad guy always stays that one suspenseful step ahead.

But the language was stilted, the story veered off at random tangents, the police procedures were unrealistic and there were many major plot holes. The ending was rushed and entirely unsatisfying: on the final page, the lieutenant’s partner gave a sudden and completely impromptu confession. He was sorry and he shouldn’t have done it.

The thing is, he couldn’t have done it. He’d been with the lieutenant when at least two of the murders were committed. But after the confession, that was it, case closed. The end.

It’s not that my mother doesn’t know a good story when she sees it. She loves reading, and she will happily give up on a book if she doesn’t find it engaging within the first 50 or so pages. She was just a little closer to this particular story than most.

She had gotten the manuscript from her friend whose husband had written it many years ago, but he had since died. It was certainly a huge achievement for him to type out a whole novel on an old electric typewriter in his spare time. It had taken him years, and his widow was immensely proud of him, as she should be.

But she also wanted an honest answer from me: was it any good?

Cognitive bias

We all know that being too close to a subject can cloud your objectivity. This is why family members are not always the best people to critique your writing. Even professionals can be blinded by their closeness to a project. I’ve known editors who have worked with their partners all the way from developing the story idea through the rewrites until the final version. They then gush about how this is a modern classic and a guaranteed bestseller, but change their tune when the rejections roll in.

This doesn’t mean that publishers and agents are always calmly objective. And they shouldn’t be. You don’t want someone to accept your book just because they think it’s objectively good. You want an agent and publisher who is passionate about your book and who will defend it and promote it as if you were a close family member.

This is where the difficulty comes in. You want your agent and publisher to be biased in favor of your book but you need honest feedback to make your story so good that an agent or publisher will take it on and promote it.

How do you do that? How do you know if your book is any good, if it’s ready to send to an agent or sell well if it’s self-published?

Strong support

We’ve already established that close family are unlikely to be reliable. They want you to do well, and if they don’t, then their judgement will be clouded by those other issues they have. That’s not to say that you should ignore advice from those around you. They will often have incredibly valuable insights into your writing, the subject and the story in general. And there are many great works that would not have existed without a great deal of spousal influence.

Véra Nabokov is reported to have helped her husband Vladimir rewrite many of his works, including Lolita. It’s even been suggested that she had an even greater hand in his writing while he was out chasing butterflies. Tabitha King is said to have helped Stephen get into the mind of a young girl for his novel Carrie, and Olivia Clemens was pretty much an editor for her husband Samuel, helping him produce the stunning works he wrote as Mark Twain.

But to ask for a Véra, Tabitha or Olivia in your family might be expecting too much. It’s usually safer to get your advice from someone who will be objective, and getting input from more than one person is almost always a good idea.

An objective perspective

Writers groups are especially good in the drafting stages of a book. Fellow authors can help you work through those tricky plot points, and the support you can get from others who’re going through the same process can be invaluable.

Beta readers are great too for the later stages when you’re close to your final draft. There are lots of places online to find people outside your immediate circle who will happily read your book and tell you what’s right and wrong with it. But good beta readers are hard to find. I’d define a good beta reader as someone who can give you useful and detailed feedback, such as those sections where the pace drops, or where a character get confused with another, whether the setting was clear or whether they had empathy with the main character throughout and, if not, why not.

When you feel you can’t take your story any further on your own or with the help of the writers group and beta readers, then it’s time to ask an editor. A professional editor will analyze your novel to find those details the others might have missed and help you make your story the very best it can be. As well as corrections to the grammar, syntax and typos, you’ll get feedback on plot, perspective, story structure, character development and often even on marketability and suitability for your target audience.

After that, you’ll be ready to find that agent and publisher or readers who will take your novel and believe in it like it was their own.

What about my mother’s friend? What did I tell her in the end?

I said that it didn’t matter what I thought, or what anybody else thinks. She enjoys the book because her husband wrote it and all that that entails. I’m in the process of scanning the pages and tidying up the mistakes the text recognition software makes. I’ll get a few copies printed for her and one for my mother. It might not be from a major publisher, but that’s not what’s important to her right now. She’s proud of the work he put into it, and she can be proud of her own role in supporting his dream, even to this day.

How do you get useful feedback on your writing? How have family and friends helped or hindered your writing?