Sample Reading Report

I've finished reading your manuscript, which I found extremely interesting with some problems, certainly, but also very enjoyable and very cleverly done. So first, congratulations! It's a huge achievement. 

Here's a quick overview of what I see as the main issues and how fixable they are:

1. It's a very ambitious, very complicated plot. Your threads support each other cleverly, but they also detract from each other as each one has its own meandering loop and slows down the progress of the others. Our task would be to look at the threads, see what can be seamlessly edited out, and see how the others can be streamlined to keep the storytelling tight. 

2. The pace of the novel is very slow, partly because of the quantity of plot threads, partly because of how your protagonist thinks, and partly because you include a lot of day to day detail that could perhaps be pruned. On the whole you've sacrificed tension and suspense on the triple altars of verisimilitude, academics, and a rather sprawling collection of plot lines. The pilgrimage scene is a notable exception, the tension in that episode is exactly what you need more of throughout. I gave you a little ovation when I reached the end of it. Also please note: I don't mean to imply that your protagonist’s academic interests are redundant or don't contribute to the story, just that they weigh the storyTELLING down. Some of this would be fixed if we could take the plot threads in hand, but a lot of it is in the texture of the scenes themselves, and we'd need to look at how to raise the stakes as well as how to cut or reshape some of the excess weight. 

3. In a cast of very vivid characters, your women are comparatively shadowy. This is especially true of A, who is the person (after your protagonist) who needs to be most alive. I can explain more about why/what's getting in the way, but wanted to flag this as an issue because it interferes with the reader's engagement in the story. We have to care about A if we're going to care about the outcome. This means we need reasons to become invested in her before we learn about her problematic behaviour. Currently it's hard to see why the protagonist falls for her in the first place. So a bit more experience of the more attractive side of her personality – not her physical attractiveness – is in order. 

4. You have some narrative issues with head-hopping. The first half of the novel is entirely your protagonist's point of view. After that he remains the dominant PoV but we occasionally jump into A's perspective and also a couple of the more minor characters. I can see the reasons for doing this, but as it stands it's a jolt for the reader. You can fix it by committing to the protagonist, or by moving around between characters from a much earlier point. Either one has its benefits and its drawbacks, but we could work through it and see what makes most sense. 

It's all fixable. It could be reworked to the point of being publishable – it's very well written and the premise is good. It might be a journey to find the right agent and publisher because I think making it an easy sell would break the book. Even so, the quality is there and there’s a lot of potential to make it shine if that’s what you choose to do.

So, options:

• A structural edit would give you detail about how to prune plot lines, make sure that everything you include earns its place in the story and sweep away the things that don't earn their place/clutter up your through line. It would make recommendations about PoV and narrative approaches. It would also give you some character notes to make sure that your people are feeding your goals, not interfering with them. This would help the energy, pace, and emotional impact of the story. 

• A line edit would help with the texture of the chapters, the dramatic tension, the balance of thought to action, and the moments of impact that are currently sometimes lost. It would catch things like moments of head-hopping (eg. when we're deep in your protagonist's PoV but we jump over to A for a sentence or two and then back again). It would also polish out any issues with what tense you're writing in, which is currently a bit haphazard. I'd obviously make it as clean as possible at a proofreading level, too. 

• A line edit and a structural edit could be combined into a manuscript mentorship approach, which essentially means that we'd work on it together, with discussions and a back-and-forth of rewrites and commentary. We’d look at everything from the structure to individual chapters and characters. I love working like this, it's enormous fun, but it can be intense work and can get pricey. We'd need to discuss what exactly you'd want it to look like and how much that would cost. 

If you want to discuss any of this, just give me a shout. Thank you for trusting me with it; it was extremely interesting to read and I'm so glad you sent it to me. I'll be thinking about it for a long time.