Hi

I've just uploaded chapter three of my completed novel: "Out Of Hackney." These are the three sample chapters which I have been sending out (unsuccessfully thus far)to agents and as I this week to publishers.

All comments appreciated.

Cheers Kenny

Hi Kenny,

Since I'm still enjoying my free month as a partial member, I can't post comments directly under your work - apologies for posting them here.

I can see why this particular piece work is not being picked up by agents. My advice is to hold off and save yourself the postage and heartache until you've got something a lot more suitable. In my opinion (and it is only an opinion, mind), you need to do a lot more groundwork on the basics of writing - punctuation, sentence structure and grammar - before even thinking of attempting a submission.

I myself (as many others, I'm sure) have already been down this road - a few years ago I wrote a 120,000 word novel which I thought was good, but it wasn't. With the benefit of hindsight I can clearly see why it falls below the required standard, and I've decided not to even attempt any future submissions until I have a quality product to submit - two or three poor submissions may get one's name remembered by the agents for the wrong reasons.

Your work seems to be based on a good story and has the right "feel" for the context of an urban drama, but is let down by a lot of easily-correctable features.

The greatest error a writer can make is to have a sentence that doesn't make sense, even after re-reading it. Here's an example:

"Teacher by profession and because he went to university that can be deemed he was middle-class..."

This sentence needs re-structuring entirely. In other cases it's just a problem with punctuation, and the odd comma or full-stop would make it clearer and flow better. For example:

"Like many people in his mid thirties he was re evaluating his career and thinking of pursing an alternative career as he was beginning to become disillusioned with teaching."

This has several errors (a dash is required in "mid-thirties" and "re-evaluate"; "pursing" should be spelt "pursuing"; and it would be better to break the sentence, perhaps by replacing the word "as" with a semi-colon).

This sentence also uses the same word ("career") twice in close succession, which should be avoided. I noticed some others:

"Teacher by profession"
"Cheekily" and "cheeky".

In summary, what you have presented is a good draft, but it needs extensive editing before an agent will even look at it.

Please don't think I'm saying all this just to be vindictive or to make myself look superior, I'm just trying to be honest. If you want further comments I would be happy to help.

Cheers,

Nigel