What do editors do when we’re not reading and rejecting manuscripts?
We stop by The Query Shark, of course. Got a novel you’re ready to submit to the tender mercies of the Manhattan Publishing Machine? The Query Shark will show you the many, many mistakes you can make in your cover letter – and why your cover letter can make all the difference.
Trust me, you don’t have time to make all these mistakes yourself. It’s far better to learn from other people’s mistakes first.
The subject of plot seems to be a popular bailiwick in web discourse. A few weeks ago, I posted a discussion about Lev Grossman’s contention that the reading public’s “thirst” for plot in a reaction to abstruse “modernism” is fueling young adult book sales. Now, over at Strange Horizons, Matthew Cheney provides a primer of historical literary criticism in reacting to the contention of my fellow Charlottesvillian, John Grishman. that plot and literature are somehow mutually exclusive realms. I guess John never heard of Charles Dickens much less, as Cheney contends, Aristotle.
The plot thickens…