What are some of the main issues with manuscripts on submission?
"Well, mostly it's the writing, whether at a line level or the overall story structure.
It could be the writing isn't strong enough yet, the word count may be too high for the genre they're writing. It's mostly due to, again, the loose writing, bad pacing, excessive description, or the scene goes on way too long. Or what I call story for story's sake is just. Telling the reader a lot of stuff that doesn't really matter in the big picture, no matter how interesting it is.
And you'll know if you have that, if you take out that section and it still makes sense. So it's just a lot of things just aren't quite gelling yet. And I've talked to so many people that just like, well, I wanna work on a new project, so I just need to get it out there. Like it's a time limit. You've gotta shove it out the door and then you really don't, you really need to take your time.
Full interview available on The Creative Penn Podcast with Renee Fountain