2023 Fellow Suzanne LaFetra Collier reflects on serving the other side of the BookEnds process.

I once attended a writing conference where an agent held up a manila envelope stuffed with a thick manuscript. “This is how much time you’ll have to get an agent’s attention,” he told the crowd, and lifted the first page a few inches, just enough to read the opening paragraph. He paused, then released the page, which slid back down into the envelope. He flung the whole thing aside with a flourish.

A BookEnds applicant does not get the manila envelope treatment. I know, because I spent much of the winter reading manuscripts from the first page to the last. Each manuscript is read by several people, including alums, all of whom are experienced readers. There isn’t a checklist or list of attributes we’re supposed to flag; reading is a subjective experience. My approach was to note the strengths and weaknesses in each manuscript, consider potential fixes for the problems I saw, and determine whether those issues could be resolved via BookEnds’ revision process. 

As a writer, it was enormously instructive to read lots of “almost there” manuscripts because it underscored some key elements that make stories work, even when they’re not yet ready for publication. I also found myself surprised (and comforted) at some­ of the things that landed a story in my YES pile, even when the manuscript had significant problems. 

So, as both a reader and writer, here are my takeaways. 

Character Matters

The characters populating the manuscripts I read were as varied as thumbprints. The ones that grabbed me were conflicted, inside and out. It didn’t matter that their arc wasn’t fully fleshed out, as long as they had personality and were flawed.

Another key element in strong drafts was a protagonist with agency. Passive protagonists who were like passengers in a car, watching their worlds go by, came off as underdeveloped. Characters who grabbed the wheel— even when they drove off in the wrong direction—crackled.

Characters with agency—who acted—shaped the story. In contrast, when the writer was the puppet master, marching hollow characters through a carefully constructed plot, things fell flat. I’m all too familiar with this problem in my own writing, which occurs when I don’t know my characters well enough yet and/ or I’m clinging to plot elements I’ve painstakingly constructed. A manuscript with a passive protagonist was a sign that a writer still had work to do.

Novel Writing 101 tells us that a protagonist must want something, and there must be obstacles—external and internal—standing in their way. But if a protagonist’s goal was still fuzzy, that wasn’t a deal-breaker for me. Sometimes, there was a tiny seed in a character’s backstory that had yet to blossom into a full-fledged inner conflict, but I could see the potential was there. I know from experience that figuring out a character’s desire can come quite late in the process.

Plot vs. Sensibility

We’ve all heard about bestselling novels that are “propulsive,” where every event causes another, like cascading dominos.

Reading the application manuscripts, I assumed that causality between events would be essential. Instead, I found that what mattered more than tight plotting was the writer’s sensibility and aesthetics, and whether I felt held by the worldview the author was creating.  

At the start of my BookEnds year, I presented the events of my story to the cohort. “And then X happened, and then Y, and meanwhile Z was happening over here….” I understood immediately that the story was not propulsive. Even though the events were connected in my mind, they hadn’t yet been developed to be causal. 

A propulsive narrative can’t be established until a writer homes in on character motivation, which requires time. My BookEnds year offered me the space to work on this critical element in my book, while helping me cultivate the flexibility to restructure my narrative in order to make it more propulsive.

Generosity

There is a subjective You-Know-It-When-You-Feel-It quality to a manuscript, something  BookEnds director Susan Merrell called out as “generous.” A generous story is one that feels written for the reader. 

Heavy-handed manuscripts that were trying to make a point didn’t come across as generous. Neither did those that seemed preoccupied with showing off the writer’s cleverness. Those drafts are for the writer. Sometimes, writers need to work through a few rounds before they can just tell a good story.

Manuscripts that obfuscated and withheld necessary information in an attempt to create “mystery” usually left me feeling frustrated. Similarly tiring was a parade of information that showcased a writer’s research, when it didn’t connect directly to the story. I have a note over my desk with WOO THE READER in all caps, to remind me that a good book entices readers, giving them enough—but just enough—to keep them turning pages.

When I was reading manuscripts with that generous quality, the story’s problems didn’t trip me up so much. Plot holes didn’t bother me, nor did wonky timelines. It wasn’t a deal-breaker when a book hadn’t quite found its structure. Even an unanswered central question like What is this story really about? didn’t disqualify a manuscript. In my own as-yet-unpublished novel, I have struggled with those big picture questions, and it was reassuring to remember that answering those questions is simply part of the novel-writing process.

There’s far more to this experience as a BookEnds reader; importantly, there were terrific manuscripts that strayed outside my subjective guidelines. Being open to what was in front of me, willing to go for the ride the writer was taking me on, was the most delicious part of the process. As long as the story had energy, if there was a beating heart in there, that was enough to carry me through. All other issues seemed workable. After all, writing is revision. 

Suzanne LaFetra Collier’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Creative Nonfiction, The Sun Magazine, Brevity, Smokelong Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, Juxtaprose, on the San Francisco NPR station, as well as in fifteen anthologies. She co-directed the award-winning documentary film, FREE: The Power of Performance, which aired on PBS.  She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and was a ‘22-23 BookEnds Fellow. She lives in Berkeley, California, and is finishing a novel, a dark comedy about late capitalism. More about Suzanne on her website: https://suzannelafetra.com.