One of the great things about social media is its ability to connect genre fans, or to connect authors and readers. It can also connect writers with editors, as Tor/Forge Senior Editor Melissa Ann Singer reminded us on Friday. Every once in a while, Melissa takes to Twitter to explain the reasons she rejected manuscripts recently. The reasons are all fairly general, but even a tiny glimpse behind-the-scenes of an editor’s thought process can be fascinating! So, we decided to collect Melissa’s tweets, and share them here for all the writers out there.

I’m about to tweet abt why I rejected things in the last few weeks. as usual, these will be fairly general remarks, w/out identifying info

• Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 

hopefully some of this is helpful to someone even so.

• Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

  romantic suspense, which I like, but too category for my list.

• Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 

unbelievable & obvious manipulations of characters to put them in the right place at the right time

• Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 too romancey for my list–I want books where romance is 50% of plot engine or less.

• Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 

good male MC but underdeveloped female MC

• Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 balance between narrative and dialog is off.

• Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 

characters continually tell each other things they already know, to educate reader.

• Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 main characters too similar; hard to enjoy interactions/relationship

• Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 

MC’s intended personal growth evident in synopsis but not in novel.

• Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 something we publish very infrequently and only if it’s brilliant, which this was not.

• Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 

1st chapter was really a prolog & took too long to be tied back into main story.

•  Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 MC kept making wrong decisions

•  Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 

core cast too large; not all characters had a clear purpose.

•  Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 not a subgenre I particularly like & full of purple prose.

• Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 

villain monologues from first appearance & lacks menace.

• Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 familiar subgenre & plot without enough of a new spin.

• Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 

unnecessarily overcomplicated backstory.

• Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 relationship between MC and supporting character did not make sense/fit with MC’s personality

• Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

 

action came to a dead stop about halfway through, for exposition & character interaction.

•  Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

. @laurenspieller remember, all editorial reactions are personal. what I see, others may not, or not be bothered as much by.

• Melissa Ann Singer (@maseditor) August 22, 2014

So there you are! Of course, as Melissa herself stated, these are all her own opinions, and may not reflect the opinions of other editors and/or agents. But we hope this peek behind the curtain is useful to all those aspiring writers out there!