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It does seem astonishing that certain editors have a 'no-first-person-narratives' rule - if that really is true. I doubt they are very successful editors. No major publishing house could afford to adopt such a draconian, and senselessly draconian, measure. There's no reason I can see why a...

I like this too; a story, interesting sentiments and good lyricism too. I concur with JohnB that the metre in places could be tightened, similarly the rhyme - if you're going for rhyming couplets it's good to be ironclad about it, forcing yourself to find exact rhymes and rhythms even if you...

Perhaps not a cat ;) I just felt it needed a human observer to inject some emotion. Because the character kills herself we are left with no point of view, save the God's Eye View (which I've never much liked... it feels too inhuman). This narrative seems like the sort of thing an estranged...

I like some of those images a lot, like the plankton dust and the shards of darkness in the sunbeam. The prose is a touch on the purple side and it occurred to me there's a way you might improve that quite simply... I was bothered by the style of description: who's describing this? Why do...

Funny you should mention M*A*S*H. I had an idea for a killer plot line for that show. Maybe they even did it (I never saw every episode, to my undying shame). But anyway... Hawkeye draws the short straw and has to go with Frank on a trip to another hospital. Midway, they get shelled, their...

Exactly. The fault (if fault it be) is not with the immature artist, it is with the audience who buy their work by the million! You can't blame CP for his readership. If people want to read it, then that's their "problem", not his. I do think the examples of young authors quoted are...

Interesting site - an anti-fan site, one might say. While I concede they have a point about Paolini, stones and glass houses spring to mind. I looked at their critiques of his (admittedly often very clunky) prose, and found to my amazement that many of their rewritings of his passages were...

I think that I aim for a kind of character-biased third person narration. What do I mean by that??! I mean that the viewpoint character is referred to in the third person, but the style of the narrative around them uses the tone of voice they might use, and notice the things they might...

Best example I can think of here is Tom Stoppard's play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead." For those that don't know it, it takes two minor characters from "Hamlet" and shows what happens to them during the course of "Hamlet" - in the wings, as it were. Bits of "Hamlet" cross the stage as...

Broadly agree, yes. However some people (like me) tend to under-write as much as they over-write. In that while some bits are long-winded and waffly in the first draft, other bits are rushed. So I have to expand in subsequent drafts just as much as I have to cut. In fact that makes my second...

I would offer a different view. For me, writing is definitely a craft, a learned skill. Certainly, practice is the main ingredient, but personally I find many "How To" books extremely useful. John Braine's 'Writing a Novel' actually gave me the idea to start writing. (That and Stephen King's...

For me the issue seems to be this. There are many books out there that are not good enough to be published professionally; indeed many authors who may never get good enough to produce a publishable novel. That does not mean that all of these novels are underserving of an audience. Some, indeed...

Just to complicate the issue... Lulu publishing worked wonders for me. I'd had an agent for over a year but couldn't make that final breakthrough to a proper publisher. I Lulu-published, got some good reviews, and within a few weeks of telling my agent of the reviews, I got signed by Faber...

Sort of like Edward Lear meets Dr Seuss by way of Lewis Carroll and Eminem... Like the way the sense is driven by the rhymes, rather than the reverse. The root of all good nonsense poetry.

I like Jimmy's character, a good broad-stroke sketch of the flaky UFO watcher. I like the way he isn't really phased by the idea of a 3rd-kind encounter, he takes it pretty much in his stride. That is quite convincing in a comic sort of way; rather than running away he regrets not bringing a...

I wouldn't waste your breath on him, John... My theory is that manuscriptx is a wind-up merchant (if that doesn't translate across the Pond, "someone who deliberately sets out to provoke irritation.")

Still, I rather felt that "His Daughter" is professionally written. The overall story is good, the construction well-thought-out and the emotions real. And many, many sentences and images in it pulled me up short (a wet rayon top that feels like "dog tongue", a laugh like a xylophone that...

Just to add a different viewpoint - I read the Meryl Trussler story about the father and the girl and thought it was astonishingly good; and not just for someone who's still at school (according to the biog). The personality of the self-loathing divorced father was nailed. The descriptions...

I would suggest your premise is flawed. If a book has sold enough copies to influence their judgement, the publisher will certainly have heard of it. If they haven't, the book is not successful enough. The real problem, though, is that they won't take your word for it that your book is 'like'...

:o No... and I don't look properly when emerging from junctions, neither. A metaphorical motorbike has just slammed into my wing and I may lose my artistic licence. Look, I'm just bored, okay... no-one's posting since Manuscriptx left!