How do you know when a piece of work you've written is good - up to a publishable standard? Is it measured by other people's responses to your work? Or, do you have an inner feeling that you have work worthy of publication? Just because you've written one good novel, does that necessarily mean that others will follow? Is the road to being published predetermined, to a certain extent? Is the desire to be published something that arises irrespective of the quality of one's work? Is an agent a useful arbiter of what is good - or is it all subjective?

How do you know when a piece of work you've written is good - up to a publishable standard?

I think you have to separate 'good' from 'of a publishable standard' from 'likely to get published' because the first is too vague, the second is a basic measure of competence but not much more, and there are so many other issues that influence the third, many of them nothing to do with the quality of the writing. 'Good' as a criterion is impossible subjective. (I blogged about it here: http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2007/10/theres-good-and.html)

Is it measured by other people's responses to your work? Or, do you have an inner feeling that you have work worthy of publication?

Does it sound pusillanimous to say it's both-and? I think at the core, when you've got your Inner Critic gagged and bound, you know very early on if you can write prose or create characters or tell stories that others want to read. But I think others' responses re-inforce that - and the more strongly if they're people whose judgement you respect - teachers, editors, other writers, agents. It's a feedback loop: their engaged, constructive criticism can give you the confidence to try different things, to judge what doesn't work yourself, and allow the confidence in your own judgement about whether it worked or not. On the basis of that confidence you write batter. Unfortunately worth doesn't ensure publication, for the reasons I suggested above: it's one measure of whether writing is 'good enough', but by no means the only one.

Just because you've written one good novel, does that necessarily mean that others will follow?

No: there are some for whom that one book was what they had to say. And having a two-book contract breathing down your neck isn't always the best way to discover whether you have more to say and the means to say it, or not. But I think if you have an ear for the best words in the best order, just about everything else can be learnt.

Is the road to being published predetermined, to a certain extent?

Not sure what you mean? I think a lot of WWers would describe feeling and experimenting their way along, until everything came together better than it ever had before. What if it hadn't come together? But I know most agents feel that the cream rises, eventually, even if they said, 'not for me'.

Is the desire to be published something that arises irrespective of the quality of one's work?

Yes. The desire to be published is fundamentally a desire to be heard. Why else would we do it? It can't be for the money, at least not past the first book and a dose of WW-style reality.

Is an agent a useful arbiter of what is good - or is it all subjective?

I don't think these two are mutually exclusive. I think good agents can tell 'good' to a reasonably objective standard, certainly no less so than ours, within a wide latitude centred on their personal taste. Whether they'll take you on is another matter, because to sell you well they have to feel passionately about your work, and see some prospect of selling it, which means only taking on work which is both plumb-centre in their taste, and has some prospect of selling in the book trade climate of the time.

Emma

Hmmm, thanks Emma, that's really helpful - I'll check out your blog. The reason I was thinking about it, was that in relation to my first novel, a creative writing tutor inspired me to send it out to agents and publishers. I didn't have much of an opinion on whether it was good or not. In fact, I find it increasingly difficult to judge the worth of my work. All that I can say is that there are widely varying views on my work, which adds to the confusion! Regarding the pre-determined question - sometimes, I feel that there's a force, a hidden force driving me onwards - all I have to do is follow it and eventually I'll get there. I know that sounds strange. But it's almost as if the works are already completed and I need to find them. For instance, I always find it very spooky when I return to a work, lets say I wrote a couple of years ago and I think of the exact same expression or words and then when I read later down in the passage, they appear...that can't be long-term memory, there's no way I'd remember what I wrote that far back. So, that's what I meant by this deterministic element. Now, off to look up "pusillanimous" in my online dictionary!

I can only speak for myself and say I honestly had no clue whether my work was 'good' and assumed it would never see the light of day, let alone be published.
When I receive lovely email from readers saying they've enjoyed my book I have to resist the temptation to reply 'Really? Are you sure it wasn't a bit obvious? Didn't you find the MC a bit annoying?'
Sadly, for me at least, this inabiity to judge my own work hasn't improved. I just submitted my second book and had no idea if it was pants. I would not have been in the least shocked if my editor had sent it back with a red line through it. I even posted on here asking if they could refuse to accept it and ask for the advance back!!!!
When the answer came back that she'd enjoyed it and would contact me with the edits I just thought 'Ahhh, now we'll see how she wants to change the whole thing.'
As you've probably guessed I have no confidence whatsoever in my own talent. I hope you have more 'cos it's a crap way to live.
HB x

I think there can be a big difference between thinking a particular piece of work is pants, and thinking you're pants as a writer. I also think as you get more affirmation and editorial input from the outside world it begins to be easier to tell the difference between your Inner Editor, which is rightly saying that the pace of chapter two is much too slow, and Jane is too thinly characterised, and your Inner Critic, who is telling you that you're rubbish and you might as well give up now because you're never going to get anywhere. Inner Critics are very good at masquerading as Inner Editors (or Inner Childcare Experts or Inner Housewives - anything, to stop you exposing your soul by doing anything as dangerous as writing)

I feel that there's a force, a hidden force driving me onwards - all I have to do is follow it and eventually I'll get there. I know that sounds strange. But it's almost as if the works are already completed and I need to find them.

I can identify with that. I always knew that I could write words people wanted to read, but that does leave an awful lot of the rest of a novel still to learn - plot, character, dialogue, ideas and themes... But I did always think I'd get there in the end, it was just at the moment I wasn't doing it well enough. I can see it would be particularly confusing if your writing is the sort that really polarises opinion, though.

Emma

Traveller, I was writing up some scribbled notes yesterday into a finished scene, and I found that phrases were coming into my mind and then I'd look at the scribbled note and found I had used them first time round! Instead of deterministic I felt this was related to me being predictable - that I would think of the same words to describe the same situation when trying a second time. I'm not completely convinced that's a good thing, actually - but it may not be a particularly bad thing either.

As for judging your own work, I have found it far easier to judge my own work after critiquing a lot of other people's work. I also find that my professional experience as a sub-editor for technical articles has helped me be objective about my own and others' fiction. So I do believe you can learn to judge yourself more effectively. It's also widely acknowledged that it's easier to judge your own work if you stick it in a drawer for a few weeks or months before getting it out and re-reading - then you see what it actually says, rather than what you meant to write, and it's easier to be objective.

However, there's a difference between being able to see faults in your work and assess your own competence, and knowing whether it is sparkling and unusual and punchy enough to merit publication.

Deb

it would be particularly confusing if your writing is the sort that really polarises opinion, though

There's also the issue of who you ask for opinions. If you ask people who are not used to making judgements about the competence of fiction - for instance, your friends and family - they may be positive because they don't see the faults glaringly and they want to encourage you.

My experience of reading out at workshops is that opinions are like arseholes - everyone has one - but you mustn't listen to all the advice you're given without considering who is giving it, and whether it's relevant to you. You need to develop judgement about which advice to take on board and which to ignore. Some people you ask won't be as experienced as you, some people will be more experienced but their taste or genre preferences could be completely different to yours, and some people will be more experienced and sympathetic to what you're trying to achieve, and could therefore give you invaluable advice.

Wasn't it Stephen King who said that if you ask ten people what they think of a scene, and each of them makes a different criticism, then ignore them all - but if most of them criticise the same thing, then believe them?

At a recent workshop, a new writer read out her first short story, which was very impressive. She has a natural feeling for words and it was quite moving despite some beginnery issues with viewpoint. Lots of people pitched in with advice, most of which was useful. However, she was advised by one person (who only writes non-fiction herself) to start the story at an earlier point, so she rewrote it with a new beginning, and it just killed the story. Her instincts first time around had told her exactly when to start the story, but listening to the wrong advice led her to do something which didn't seem natural to her, and which was wrong for the piece IMO.

So IMO it's not just a case of whether our writing polarises opinion or not - you have to assess who is giving those opinions, and whether to listen.

Deb

Wasn't it Stephen King who said that if you ask ten people what they think of a scene, and each of them makes a different criticism, then ignore them all - but if most of them criticise the same thing, then believe them?

Stephen King said if you have conflicting criticisms about the same thing then they cancel themselves out. eg, if character A is said to be under developed by one reader, but over developed by another then leave it as it is.
If several people highlight the same point and say there's something wrong with it, (even if you get conflicting advice on how to fix it), then you need think of ways to change it.

Sometimes something can be perfectly good, but it's not what the writer was striving for, so they ask for, and get, the wrong advice and the piece is ruined. That might simply be because the writer has not yet discovered what genre best suits their style of writing.

Thanks Naomi for clarifying SK's comment.

Deb

However, there's a difference between being able to see faults in your work and assess your own competence, and knowing whether it is sparkling and unusual and punchy enough to merit publication.

Sort of a repeat of my last post, but I think there can be a significant difference between being good, and being publishable. As Snowbooks commented on a past thread, a lot of mss submitted to them are prefectly reasonable, but not what they are looking for, or which may fall down on technicalities such as plot structure. So one's inner voice may be perfectly correct in saying 'there's nothing wrong with this', but still it fails to catch the eye of an agent. Then it is simply a matter of self confidence; the self belief that you are on the right track and to plough on and keep writing until you come up with a winner.


- NaomiM

Yes, that's what I was getting at. Being competent is not enough in a very competitive world.

Deb

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And I think it probably is far harder to assess yourself whether your writing is lifted from the merely quite good into the sensational/must-buy.

merely quite good into the sensational/must-buy.

Sometimes it's purely a matter of market share. You may have written a novel which several tens of thousand readers would consider a great read, but that's not going to interest a publisher which is looking for sales of several hundreds of thousands (in the genre market, as opposed to the literary market). It might simply be the subject matter, eg, a Creationist storyline, or something similar to Enid Blyton. Agent/publishers are not going to invest in a new Enid Blyton when books by the original is still going strong, but the author might well find readers if the book was out in the market. Then there are the saturated markets - chick-lit, vampires - where great mss get ignored simply because the Agents are fed up with reading them, or publishers have similar ones already at the printers.

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Personally I put far more weight in my readers views than an Agent's.

However, she was advised by one person (who only writes non-fiction herself) to start the story at an earlier point, so she rewrote it with a new beginning, and it just killed the story. Her instincts first time around had told her exactly when to start the story, but listening to the wrong advice led her to do something which didn't seem natural to her, and which was wrong for the piece IMO.

Debs, that rings true! But then my big question is: why doesn't anyone advise writers about this? Nobody advised me when I first started out, to be extremely careful about listening to certain kinds of advice. There should be some kind of health warning at the beginning of this writer's journey thing to alert writers - I guess, this is part of the 'trial and error' of becoming a good writer? It'd make the apprenticeship part of writing much easier if there was a big sign saying CAUTION, BE CAREFUL WHO YOU LISTEN TO. (And why do people who have no interest/experience in a specific genre offer advice to writers within that genre? I'd never offer advice to a crime writer, for instance, as I write literary fiction...)

The other conflicting strain is being able to listen to constructive comment and respond appropriately. I always felt that it was important to listen to those with more experience and to be able to revise a story in accordance with editorial direction. But now, I'm not so sure that this is such a virtue. I understand that tweaking too much with a work can totally ruin it! I completely re-wrote my first novel in the first person from third person out of desperation and now I'm deciding to revert back to the original third person! Why do I put myself through this? It would've been easier just to stick with what I had - although there are parts of it that I've discovered are weak and edited out. Yes, self-belief is important...but then self-delusion is even worse. Or perhaps you need to be self-deluded to a certain extent...as writers, I guess, ultimately we have to take responsibility for any changes we make to our work. Perhaps that's what marks out great writers from good writers? Those with a more highly developed ability to discern what works or not?


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PS that blog post about what makes writing good is a good post EmmaD!

Naomi, I'm sure you're right on that. Financial considerations seem to rule these days in many arenas, sadly.

Traveller, I agree that new writers are not warned of these perils. Mostly, new writers are told that they must listen to what people tell them, which IMO isn't the whole story - because it depends who is telling them and what they're telling them.

My own feeling is that part of becoming a writer is to develop the knowledge, confidence and judgement to be able to sift through advice, taking the useful and ignoring the useless. However, I doubt anyone ever reaches perfection in that goal - we can only try to move towards it.

Another new-writer "rule" I loathe is "show don't tell". Don't even get me started. Of course I understand why the advice exists, but it's far from that simple. All storytelling rightly involves some telling as well as showing.

Deb