3 Essential Tips to Help you Polish up your Manuscript before Querying + Query Critique

Guest Post: This post is a guest post from Lucia of Lucia’s Fiction.

I am delighted to welcome Lucia, a soon-to-be-published author, onto Nin Chronicles for today’s post! Lucia is passionate about sharing her querying journey, sharing honest stories about how she got her agent, and talking about the writing techniques and tips she wishes she knew when she started writing. Here she explores why it is important to polish up your manuscript before querying and covers three of the most important ways you can improve your novel.

To help querying writers this December, Lucia is offering query letter critiques! Make sure to check out her offer at the bottom of this writing guide to learn more and submit your query. Now, onto the post!

Why it is Important to Polish up your Manuscript before Querying

So you’ve been tapping away on your laptop all November for NaNoWriMo and now you have a complete draft in hand. It’s amazing, it’s exhilarating, and it’s also in need of a good polish before you can send it to agents in the New Year. (Congratulations by the way if you won NaNoWriMo! And congratulations still, if you didn’t win but got words down!)

If you’re a clean first drafter, then you probably have little polishing left to do on your manuscript. But if you’re like me and churn out drafts at their (very) early stage, then your manuscript likely requires two to four rounds of editing before it’s gleaming. Still, fret not, these three tips below are applicable to all kinds of drafts. You, as the cook, simply have to decide how heavily or lightly you need to apply them. Without further ado, here are three tips to polishing up your manuscript! 

Deepen Your Point of View

What is a Point of View? Commonly known as POV, it is one element agents and editors assess closely in every manuscript. The first rejection I ever received came with feedback asking me to deepen my POV so that readers could better connect with the writing. Over time I’ve seen lots of writers receive rejections for the same reason. So, while you polish up your manuscript for querying, ensure you deepen the POV until your readers feel they’re in the story, in your character’s minds, experiencing their journeys along with them. 

In terms of querying, one interesting fact about deep POV is that agents can assess it right in the first sample pages. You want to get it just right so that your awesome manuscript stands a stronger chance of getting the desired response!

Polish up your Manuscript: Check Your Pacing

Pacing is another vital element in storytelling. As a writer, you don’t want your reader to ever get bored or feel rushed while reading your book. Pacing is the right tool to regulate this. To begin, first determine what, if any, your story’s pace problem is. 

Crawling at a snail’s pace? Cut out scenes that don’t drive the plot forward. Amp up the tension in every scene. Break up overly lengthy sentences. Snipe out unnecessary descriptions. Condense excessive narration and use dialogue instead to share information.

Speeding so fast readers can’t catch a breath? Draw out your shorter sentences. Fold in more narration and descriptions. And include subplots if necessary.

Unlike with deep Point of View, pacing mostly comes into play further along in the story. And agents are very keen about pace. When you get those full or partial manuscript requests from agents, you want to hold their interest from start to finish with good pacing!

Tighten Your Prose

Tight prose is great for every story. While polishing your manuscript make sure your prose doesn’t dawdle or meander unnecessarily. Condense lengthy sentences into compact, bite-sized morsels that are easy to digest. 

You don’t always have to say ‘in front of’ but ‘before’. Or ‘had concern for the suffering of’ but ‘had compassion’. Tight prose shows an agent or editor/reader that you’ve been working quite diligently on your writing and manuscript and will lure them in like cat to milk. Tight prose says you spent time thinking about each sentence and constructing it to sound and feel just right.

Polishing up a manuscript takes time but the result is worth every effort! It makes your manuscript stronger and helps you grow as a writer. 

Query Letter Critique

To assist querying writers this December, I’ll be offering critiques on Lucia’s Fiction for my December Special.

Interested? Great! Please send the following to @nobigurl.icloud.com:

1. Your Query Letter

2. The First Five Pages of your manuscript in a Word document (double spaced!)

3. A small note on the critique style you want. General? Or detailed with track changes? 

Submissions are open until the 10th of December. I will be critiquing the first 3 (perhaps more) queries I receive. So hurry up and submit those queries! I would love to do more but December is a super busy time. Watch this space as I might do another Query Critique Package in January! 

If you’re one of the first three to submit and I’ll be critiquing your query, you’ll get a confirmation email from me shortly after I receive it. Along with my feedback will also be a link to my list of fast responding literary agents! 

Are you currently querying a novel or poetry collection? Have you ever had your query letter critiqued? Was the critique helpful? Tell us below!

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