There are several shocking revelations in Elizabeth K. Kracht’s book The Author’s Checklist: An Agent’s Guide to Developing and Editing Your Manuscript, but in short: most manuscripts “just aren’t ready for submission.”

Most require: greater attention to prose, the inciting incident moved forward, sharper internal conflict, a deeper consideration of themes, and more focus on plot development, structure, tension, dialogue, formatting, and setting. Even spelling. Far from being literary, “the majority of submissions that come to agents and editors are lacking the skills of even high-quality commercial writing.”

“There is a significant gap between manuscripts that writers believe to be ready for publication and those that agents or other publishing professionals do.” - Elizabeth K. Kracht.

Kracht’s book is designed to intercept an author’s manuscript: giving the writer a checklist of 220 questions to consider before hitting send. For a debut writer, this checklist is essential.

Each chapter defines the topic, describes hazards, and provides advice, insight, or instruction. Topics include query letters, author platforms, voice, overwriting, rejection, pacing, formatting, and permissions. I found the sections on filter words, chapter arcs, and settings particularly useful.

The text is brisk and clear, and each chapter concludes with interrogatives:

• “Have you cut the pleasantries out of your dialogue?”

• “Are your alternating POV chapters synched chronologically?”

I thought the published books cited for illustration were too narrow and repetitive, but that aside this is an illuminating and practical tool to consult rigorously not only at the end of production, but at the start of every new draft along the way.

The Author’s Checklist would also be useful reading for beta readers, book reviewers, and anyone seeking a literary vocabulary to critically discuss a book’s merits and flaws.

The Author’s Checklist: An Agent’s Guide to Developing and Editing Your Manuscript by Elizabeth K. Kracht was published by New World Library in 2020.

Many thanks to Elizabeth K. Kracht, New World Library, and NetGalley for my advanced reading copy.

Further Reading

If you are interested in seeing inside a writer’s mind, check out A.L. Kennedy’s On Writing and if you want to be engulfed in a hailstorm of literary wonderment, Richard Cohen’s How to Write Like Tolstoy is my favourite read of 2020.