Smileys don't work in 'added' sections (just as I think links don't automatically convert).

If you want to check you've got them working in a post, though, you can always click Preview.

Emma

Thanks, Emma.

For a second there I thought I had it wrong, but yup, it was Artellus. I spoke to Lesley Gardner about a year ago on the phone following a thread all about them on WW. She backed up their case very well, saying that as it takes a good amount of time to read a few script, they like to give the reader a little something to oil the wheels, because not every requested script is accepted.

I don't know if I go along with it though. Although I did send a script.

This all reinforces the notion that to get the best out of any of the services you need to work out what you want for your work, and find one that supplies it, even if it's just from a long chat on the phone, rather than a more formal partial submission.

Emma

By the way, I never met anyone who considered themselves a writer who didn't dream of being published but then I don't know that many.

Of course, but there's dreaming, and there's actually slogging away till you get there. I dream of all sorts of things, including winning the lottery, but that doesn't mean I'm actually prepared to cough up for a ticket, given the odds.

The trouble is, a newly-written book isn't a tangible, pleasurable, living (if you like) object the way a painting hanging on your wall is - it takes a vast commercial machine to turn it into one.

Emma

Yes, but if paying for services is the only way for a writer to improve then it makes writing a possible profession for the wealthy. Books on writing aren't cheap, but even if you're on the dole you can get them from a library. To someone with nothing, £20 is a lot of money, but £400, for someone to give a four or five page report is simply impossible.

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cross posted - replying to last but one post.

Believe me, Colin, with 2 kids and a 7 and 17yr old car on the drive, i'm not writing a £400 cheque out willy-nilly, nor flourishing it in the air with the expectation that it means i'll get published.

Sure, it's a hell of a lot of money for a critique, but - if i go ahead with it after some serious consideration - i consider it an investment in my writing career.

I don't think anyone gets anywhere writing nowadays - or have they ever -without shelling out for books, courses, tutorage. I take my writing very seriously and see this as no different to a bank worker being sent on a course to learn something new - the only difference is their employer pays.

Casey

That's fair enough. I've nothing against people choosing to do this, but it's increasingly being branded as the norm. The thing is, even with kids and cars, you are still in a position to consider this an option, even if it isn't an easy option (because it is a serious sum)soaks. But if you've got nothing, ie, no income, it isn't an option, so your only hope is to improve through books and by sending submissions direct to agents. If agents suddenly stop reading the slush pile to favour forwarded scripts from editorial agencies, those people (and I count myself as one) will be cut out of the loop.

Agents will always read some MS quicker than others - the ones that come recommended by a client or another agent or editor, the ones by a name in another field, the ones - yes - from a particular editorial service they know and trust. That won't ever change, partly because to some extent those all have gone through a sifting process: someone other than the writer's mother has said it's some good.

But I think it'll never be the norm for most agents to close the door to non-editorially-serviced scripts. A handful of agents close their doors to all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons, but most want and need to find new blood: their clients constantly die, or retire, or are relegated to midlist, or get writer's block. But they know that there in the slush pile maybe - just maybe - if only they can clear an afternoon to go through it, their next client is waiting.

And while I wholly take the point that this kind of fee is something that would be hard for many people to find, everyone does have to pay for their hobbies (in the broad sense of something you do for love, not (yet) money, not in the pejorative sense at all). Writing's cheaper than most. Have you seen the price of fishing tackle lately? Let alone the competition entry fees?

Don't forget that you can apply for an Arts Council grant to pay for an editorial service, too - it may end up costing you nothing more than a slew of forms!

Emma

If the trend is as Colin says then it does look like agents will use these services to reduce their own costs and time and if that does happen then he's right, most people, and especially struggling young writers, can't afford £400.00.

It's tricky though. Too many people write and think they're good when they aren't, way too many. It isn't like painting or music when you pretty much know whether you're any bad because what you do looks or sounds obviously rubbish or derivative or whatever, and anyway everybody else feels much more qualified to tell you if it is. People who write don't get that perspective and by very dint of the fact that they wrote the thing, it sounds and looks good to them! (It can be tragic looking back on stuff that once made us hyperventilate with bliss at our own genius) Surely one of the many things which separates a real writer from the rest is an ear! An ear for knowing when something's crap (maybe not right away, but after drafts and re-reads etc).

Everyone needs to learn and in the absence of the equivalent of art schools of music academies it's hard to know how to do that. But shelling out £400 a time for a twelve-page crit from a possibly unqualified stranger seems like a poor deal to me and would be an unacceptable state of affairs within an educational organisation for example.

On a separate note, if I were a reader/editor and an unpublished Tolkien sent in the Trilogy and I got the gig, I would write an excoriating report and throw it out of as many windows as I could find. And I feel sure I could make that critique stand up in literary court. So how does that work? How do you know that somebody isn't going to just dislike your work or hate your style?

Z

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any bad? doh.

Do you think that a professional editor/ reader/ critiquer needs to have a certain affinity with the writing style of the writer in order to be useful and constructive or can they abstract themselves from that?

I asked this question at the end of the 'How to write a Blockbuster' thread but didn't get an answer. I'd really like to know what Terry, Emma, Moondance and anyone else who does this professionally thinks.

Ashlinn

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Sorry, need to rephrase. In fact I'm very interested in what everyone thinks but I have a particular interest in the professionals' stance given that they are the ones who would critique our work if we send it to an agency.

I'm not sure if I'd need an affinity with the writing style, because if you know a reasonable amount about how writing works, you can usually work out what the writer's trying to do, and then how they could do it better.

I might personally write and enjoy reading spare, economical writing of limpid clarity, but I hope I can still tell over-written, thesaurus-backed, bloated nonsense from lavish, gorgeous, baroquely rich prose, and give a some hints on how to change one into the other.

If their writing has a very strong flavour of any kind - and I personally love writing that does - and I were talking about submitting it, I might have to say something like, 'you will find that writing like yours isn't to everyone's taste', because it's true: that kind of writing inevitably rouses people's tastes pro- and con-. But one of the jobs in doing this kind of work is to separate your personal taste - in as much as you can - from the quality (or lack of it) of the work.

There are certainly genres and types of fiction I wouldn't feel I could do a good job on. I don't read SF/F, and would turn down an MS which was, because I know that I don't know how it works, what the conventions are, and just how many is too many gadgets and/or magic potions per page.

Emma

Cor, this has turned into a very interesting thread.

Ashlinn, my view on your question is no, the reader doesn’t need to have an affinity with the style, but I think it’s important that they are familiar with the genre and/or target market. For instance, if I were writing fiction for children, or fantasy, I would expect a reader with an affinity for that type of story. They should be able to accomodate any style, I would think.

Dee

It's funny but I think that I would be able to adjust to a genre that isn't my cup of tea quicker than a writing style that doesn't appeal probably because I see genre as an intellectual thing whereas reaction to a writing style is an emotional one. The intellect can be reasoned with, the heart can't.

A.