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READING SERVICE PRICES We will read, evaluate, and report on the following quantity manuscripts:
One Chapter
Two Chapters
Entire Manuscript
Fee includes a complete reading, evaluation and report back to the author, including suggestions of improvement, changes, and/or re-direction, as well as areas of strength and consistency. We will accept up to five questions about the evaluation via e-mail from the author for up to 14-days after receipt of report.
SUBMISSIONS Submissions should be double-spaced typewritten numbered pages, using Microsoft Word (no Word Perfect) formatted in Palatino, Times, or Georgia text, black print, lsentence case. Work must be e-mailed with the full name, address, and e-mail address of the author.
SEND TO
RETURN Reading will take ten business days. Reply will be by e-mail to the author's e-mail address.
PAYMENT Payment must be made prior to our reading the chapter(s) or manuscript and may be paid by credit card or PayPal.
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WHO SHOULD READ YOUR UNFINISHED WORK? FAMILY AND FRIENDS. Typically, new and flegling writers rely on family and friends to give them feedback on their work; however, this is rarely helpful since friends, family and neighbors have an invested interest in you and your efforts. Most will want you to succeed, and most would feel uncomfortable giving you any meaningful feedback. The result of this is that the writer is misled into thinking his or her writing style, ability, story line and characters are better than they might be, and provides little help in correcting significant problems. PROFESSIONAL WRITERS AND READERS. Nor are professional writers or readers usually of much benefit. If they know you, they will likely soften their response. If they do not know you, they will likely reject your work out of hand because it is not their work, written their way, or along their area of interest. This makes it difficult to get any worthwhile and meaningful feedback of your writing as you are developing your storyline and your characters. Yet, this is exactly what you need as you work--feedback that can help you before you get too far into your work to want to defend needs for change or redirection rather than understand the need and work it into the progression of your story. TEACHERS AND PROFESSORS. There are many people who teach literature, English, writing, and other areas of the trade. Many will either read it out of interest, or will charge a nominal fee to read it and tell you what they think. Sometimes this is done in conjunction with a class the writer is taking from them. Seldom do teachers and professors know what will sell, what is marketable, and what publishers and editors are looking for in a manuscript. MECHANICS. There was a time when the grammatical construction of writing was extremely important, such as never using conjunctions (I'm, we'll, don't) except in dialogue, never end a sentence in a preposition, and don't hang your participles. However, most popular books today are sprinkled with narrative conjunctions. and grammatical errors. Consider the split infinitive of Star Trek's "To boldly go where no man has gone before" and how well that caught on for the reader and viewer. The trouble is, teachers and professors in the English field often think in terms of grammatical construction and not in story flow. READING SERVICES. The answer to getting meaningful and worthwhile feedback is in having a professional service provide that for you. Unfortunately, most profressional reading services are also agents and look at a manuscript with an attitude of whether or not they think they can sell it--with the bottom line of wanting to make the best writers their clients. This is seldom helpful except for the few best writers that may use a service. The rest receive little help they can use. CONTESTS. Often a new or fledling writer will enter a contest where some money and representation is earned for the top two or three submissions. Again, since these critiques for the non-winners is based upon the value of their saleability, the response may have little use to the writer who is trying to improve his or her ability. SO WHO CAN YOU RELY ON? What is needed is a reading service that has no ulterior motive. As an example, at Write Like the Pros, we do not buy manuscripts nor sell them; we are not looking at work to see if it is saleable so we can represent the author and make money on their work; we are not interested in mechanical processes nor trying to keep writers inside the box. Our sole purpose is to evaluate and report on writing from the basis of what we have found makes great stories because great stories will eventually sell, and sometimes sell very big. But first, a writer needs to develop a writing ability that will get his or her manuscript read by the right people--publishers and editors. THIS IS WHAT WE DO
ONE CHAPTER. We will read your partial manuscript, preferably the first Chapter, to see how your writing and story flows, how your descriptive and narrative writing causes the story to move along or bog it down. The first chapter should include the introduction of some characters, at least the main characters, and we evaluate how they are introduced, how they are seen, and how consistent they are within the story flow. TWO CHAPTERS. We also prefer to read a second chapter along with the initial one that takes up the storyline and main characters further along in your story. In this way we can look for connections, reader understanding, and consistency of characters. THIS IS WHAT YOU GET
REPORT. We will send you a report of our evalulation in simple to understand terms, providing examples of good and poor writing, of what needs to be strengthened and what stands well already. You will have a list of responses covering the numerous points we have found leads to good and effective writing, such as dialogue, description and appearance of characters, their consistent or inconsistent mannerisms to their behavior, narrative, action scenes, technology as it relates to the storyline, and other areas we present on our CDs. FOLLOW-UP. We will answer five specific questions you send us via e-mail. The questions may be on anything relating to the report we sent you and the work we have read. FURTHER DISCOUNT. After you have re-written the chapter(s) we have read, we will r-read them for a 50% fee, and send you along another in-depth report. WE DO NOT ACCEPT
We will not accept, read, or report on any writing that involves pornographic material, lesbian-homosexual relationships, darkly sinsiter evil, horror, illicit sexual, or vulgar language manuscripts. If there is any question in your mind about your manuscript fitting into one of these categories, please do not send it to us. | ||||
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