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About Dave King

Dave King is the co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a best-seller among writing books. An independent editor since 1987, he is also a former contributing editor at Writer's Digest. Many of his magazine pieces on the art of writing have been anthologized in The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing and in The Writer's Digest Writing Clinic. You can check out several of his articles and get other writing tips on his website.

Recent Posts by this author:

  • Gatekeepers
  • Displeasure Reading
  • The Editor’s Clinic: Take a Break
  • The Editor’s Clinic: Problem Child
  • The Editor’s Clinic: Good Talk
  • The Editor’s Clinic: A Writer, a Shoe Salesman, and a Corpse Walk into a Bar…
  • The Lessons of Genre
  • The Editor’s Clinic: Brave New World
  • The Editor’s Clinic: The Limits of Editing
  • A Hook that Breaks the Rules
  • Catching the Train of Thought
  • The Editor’s Clinic: Yonder lies the castle of my father.

    • Gatekeepers

    By 33 Comments

    Lisbon, PT

    In a recent interview for a writing blog, I was asked how publishing has changed since I’ve been an editor.  The obvious answer is the rise of self-publishing and e-publishing.  But these are only symptoms of something deeper.

    Most publishing houses used to offer more support for midlist writers – writers who weren’t celebrities but who sold well enough to turn a decent profit.  (They were “midlist” because they appeared in the middle of the list of new releases the publishing houses put out twice a year.)  Then, starting in the 70s and 80s, publishing houses began to consolidate, and their approach to the business began to change.  Major houses started paying large advances for established writers, looking for blockbuster-sized sales and profits.  Spend a million dollars to buy the rights, spend another million promoting the book, and make five million in sales.

    It’s not a bad business model, but it does limit one of the main avenues for talented new writers to break into print.  Most writers will never become bestsellers, and certainly none of them start out that way.  So how do the skilled, respectable writers who aren’t blockbusters get into print now that traditional publishers are a little further out of reach?

    I’ve written before about small presses and self-publishing, both of which have their advantages and pitfalls.  But one of the main dangers of either of these came home to me in this last month – they don’t have gatekeepers.

    In order to get onto a publishing house list at all, you have to get past an acquisitions editor – the gatekeeper who both warned writers that their books weren’t ready for print and helped shape those who were close.  As a result, even beginning writers had a trained professional watching over them to let them know if and when they had gone off the rails.  There were still hacks, of course, but many writers who were only modestly popular in their day were skillful and engaging to read.

    Of course, there are still strong, midlist writers like that today.  But . . . [Read more…]

    Displeasure Reading

    By 68 Comments

    Not long ago, a friend who has been reading literary novels for years recommended one to me – Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami – and gave me the Kindle version.  Murakami is award-winning and well-reviewed, so I launched into the book with considerable hope. I immediately met a protagonist who didn’t care much about his […]

    The Editor’s Clinic: Take a Break

    By 9 Comments

    Lots of writing books, including Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, will tell you that you can use your paragraphing to emphasize key points.  Want something to stand out?  Put it in its own paragraph. Picking which parts of your narrative you want to emphasize is trickier.  As a rule of thumb, it’s a good idea to […]

    The Editor’s Clinic: Problem Child

    By 9 Comments

      Child narrators can be a problem. Children don’t yet have the experience or self-awareness to understand what’s going on around them.  So if you write intimately from their point of view, using only language and concepts that they would have available to them, it’s sometimes hard to convey what’s really happening.  Granted, you can […]

    The Editor’s Clinic: Good Talk

    By 7 Comments

    In the comments on a recent Editor’s Clinic, the question came up as to when you should treat a language colloquially – contractions, a relaxed, familiar syntax — and when you should use a bit of formality to create a sense of otherness.  The example then was of a conversation between two characters living a […]

    The Editor’s Clinic: A Writer, a Shoe Salesman, and a Corpse Walk into a Bar…

    By 13 Comments

    Mark Twain once said that analyzing a joke is like dissecting a frog. You can learn a lot, but the frog tends to die in the process.  Still, we’re going to ignore the warning this morning and take a look at what does and what doesn’t work in this passage. The writer prefaced this submission […]

    The Lessons of Genre

    By 30 Comments

    I once heard an editor say that, if you wanted to break into print, turn your current work into a mystery. Just pick a character, kill them off, and go from there. Not great advice, but there is some truth behind it. It’s always been easier to break into print when you’re writing in a […]

    The Editor’s Clinic: Brave New World

    By 14 Comments

    One reason writers fail when setting their stories in a different world –  in the past, in the present with a different metaphysics, in another galaxy — is by not digging deeply enough into what makes their world distinct.  Any writer knows to change the technology their characters use, and the better ones manage to […]

    The Editor’s Clinic: The Limits of Editing

    By 14 Comments

        One of the comments in last month’s Editor’s Clinic suggested that the piece I worked on should have been rewritten once or twice before the editing commenced.  (Incidentally, I’d encourage you to go back to that discussion.  At the time it went up, I was working to get ready for Christmas – a […]

    A Hook that Breaks the Rules

    By 15 Comments

                   It’s a given in most writing circles that you should never open your novel with a scene in which little happens, especially if that scene involves a flashback.  This is normally good advice, but this morning’s passage is an example of when good advice should be ignored. As always, it’s hard to […]

    Catching the Train of Thought

    By 8 Comments

    The single piece of advice I repeat most often is to get into your characters’ heads — to write with a more intimate point of view. Let’s take a closer look at just what that means. Most writers go wrong by losing track of how everything on the page needs to flow out of a […]

    The Editor’s Clinic: Yonder lies the castle of my father.

    By

    Yes, I know, Tony Curtis never actually said the line.  But does sum up one of the problems this morning’s editing is trying to address – language that is meant to create a mood of fantasy and wonder and instead simply comes across as formal and forced. First, a caveat.  This passage is taken from […]

     

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