How Much Can Writers Get Away With?

We know that writers have to get their work as close to perfect as possible to get it published: but the fact that publishers insist on paying editors to then edit those books before they are published implies to some that books don't have to be quite as perfect as is commonly thought before they are submitted. And if that's the case, what mistakes can writers get away with when they submit their work and what can't they afford to get wrong?

1. The basics of spelling, grammar and punctuation must be there. If the odd error has sneaked into your work then you're not facing an automatic rejection; if you show a persistent-but-consistent error which is relatively easy to correct, like using a hyphen where you should use a dash, then again you're not doing yourself too much harm. But if you misspell several words on every page, you don't seem to understand the correct use of the comma, and you pepper your whole manuscript with extended ellipses then that is going to signal to an editor that your book will need a substantial amount of work to get right—and will probably lead to rejection.
2. It's always possible to strengthen something: if a character isn't quite believable a good writer can work them more deeply into their scenes; new scenes can plug holes in gappy plots; structures can be consolidated or broken down; and a swingeing edit can work wonders on a flagging story-line, increasing the pace and tightening the story. The problem comes when all of these things need a lot of attention: the book will be very time-consuming to edit and with so much in need of revision it's difficult to be sure that the book will end up publishable. Rejection is the probable result.
3. The story has to be good. There is absolutely no point at all in constructing the perfect plot around a story which no one is interested in, or a story which people find repellent. Your story has to be really good, not just good enough.
4. If you have a good story and have perfected the structure, plot and characterisation, you still cannot guarantee that you have written a publishable book. What you also really have to have is a good voice—a unique, engaging and enticing voice. And this is the one thing that you have to get completely right if you want to be published because it's the one thing a good editor cannot help you with. It infuses every page of your manuscript and informs everything that you write. The stronger your voice, the more leeway you will be allowed with the rest of the book, and the more likely you are to get published regardless of what errors might lurk in your texts.

Guest Post: Voicing Concerns, by Dan Holloway

I've been wrestling with a couple of blog posts about voice: what it is, why it's important, and how to get a good one: and along comes the lovely Dan Holloway with this great post, especially for my blog's first birthday. Thank you Dan.


One of the commonest causes of “hands raised in horror” syndrome amongst members of the website Authonomy, is Harper Collins’ (who run the site) failure to publish any of the “beautifully-written” books that reach the site’s upper echelons (the Editor’s Desk). Yet, in the site’s forums, respected literary professionals endlessly repeat (and whenever I ask an “insider” the question, I get the same answer), what the industry looks for above anything else is “a fresh, original voice”.

It occurred to me that the continued prevalence of HRIH syndrome may actually be attributable to the belief that “beautifully written” – or its qualitative synonyms “tightly-plotted”, “exquisitely dialogued”, “masterfully characterised” – MEANS “fresh and original.” It doesn’t.

Let me explain.

After spending too many years studying there (10 – don’t ask), I spent a few more preparing students for Oxford interviews. It’s an infuriating truism that what Oxford looks for in would-be students is indefinable “but you know it when you see it.” I always thought “voice” was the same.

Which is why I was surprised to find it isn’t. I made the discovery whilst at a gig in Southampton a couple of weeks ago (we’d made the considerable journey to see our favourite band, The Boxer Rebellion). My regular readers will be rolling their collective eyeballs (“when he talks about marketing, it’s all music”, “social media and publishing – more music”, “even on sentence construction – it’s arpeggio this and cadenza that”), but music really is the perfect illustration of “voice.”

I’ve been to a good fistful of gigs in recent months. One of the delights of gigs (serendipity being my favourite word) is going to see a headline act and discovering some wonderful support bands (I met my Facebook novel’s “house band”, InLight, that way). It’s always interested me the way the first band comes on and the crowd thinks “great.” Enter main support and it’s “wahey, they’re fantastic!” But then the headline act comes on and everyone else vanishes.

Listening to the opening drums of The Boxer Rebellion’s “walk-on” number, Flashing Red Light Means Go, I realised why that was – and why it explained “voice.”

I’ve seen (checks his website to count links…) lots of support bands this year. They all perform excellently. The songwriting is uniformly exceptional. The frontmen have real charisma. But when you hear one song, then a second, you realise if you heard a third song, in a different context, you’d have a hard time saying whose it was. Any number of people could have written them.

On the other hand, every headline act I’ve seen writes songs that couldn’t have been written by anyone else. Within a bar (a note, even – just the tuning of their guitars is often enough; or if you prefer your music older and more German, think “Tristan chord”) you know exactly whose music you’re listening to.

And that, in a nutshell, is voice.

How do you write voice? Don’t ask me. I don’t have an original voice. Just a loud one.


Dan Holloway is a theologian by training. These days he pushes pens by day and writes by night. Author of several published short stories and two as yet unpublished novels, Dan writes literary fiction about life in modern Europe. Also an academic writer and presenter, on June 12 he will be speaking on "The Ghost at my Shoulder: Literary Reflections on Coming of Age in Post-Communist Hungary" at a conference hosted by the University of East London to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Dan is writing his current novel, The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's shoes, interactively on Facebook. He blogs regularly on literary futurology, is co-founder of the avant-garde collective Year Zero Writers, and is widely rumoured to have invented both time travel machines and bionic fingers in order to accommdate his schedule.