Not sure if your manuscript is ready for feedback?

Here’s a quick guide from Academy Coordinator Jade-Louisa Pepper to help you decide – plus details on the different kinds of reports Faber Academy offers to help you move forward with confidence.

The moment when you finally, triumphantly, put a full stop after what you know to be the final line of your manuscript should be a moment of pure delight and celebration. But more often than not this moment is overshadowed by the realisation – there’s still work to be done.

No first draft will be perfect, but if you’ve been plugging away for long enough, it can be difficult to know how to edit it now. Or you might have just started a whole new project and have no idea if the idea is enough to sustain a whole novel. Or, you might now be in the position to submit to agents, but want a second opinion on your package before it lands in an agent’s inbox.

In all of these cases, a manuscript assessment report from an expert reader might be just what you need to see your manuscript clearly again, and feel supported as you return to writing. But how do you know your manuscript (and you!) are ready for feedback?

You’ve already completed your own big-picture edit

While I would never recommend getting caught in the ‘reworking vortex’, where you just know that if you can take one last pass on this scene, or this chapter, or tweak that section of dialogue, the whole draft will fall into place, doing your own first pass of your draft to evaluate what is actually on the page and what big-picture issues you think need editing is a great first step. After completing your own big-picture edit, what do you do next? This is where an outside perspective from a reader can be invaluable – with the benefit of distance from the work and professional experience they can offer editing advice and suggest changes that might never have occurred to you.

You’ve spent some time away from the work

Returning to a manuscript you tucked away in the depths of a drive might feel like an exercise in futility – you couldn’t get it to work the first few times, so what makes now any different? – but something about the siren song of a draft from years gone by is really hard to resist, even though you know the same problems will be waiting for you. A manuscript assessment can offer you a whole new perspective on the draft and its viability before you start editing in earnest again.

The project is only partly done

You’ve got most of the way through your manuscript and can’t figure out if you’re on the right path, or if your idea will work, or if you even have enough of an idea for a fully-fledged novel, or if your main character is developing the way you want, or if your world-building is working out . . . In short, you’re experiencing some writerly doubts. It happens to everyone! If that’s you though, it might be time to pause and get some outside feedback. Outline what you think will happen/needs to happen in the rest of the manuscript first, then submit what you have so far for review to get an honest look at where pitfalls might be ahead and how you can keep going until you hit The End.

You’re approaching a literary agent for representation

Your submission package is the first chance you have to truly sell your manuscript, so it only makes sense to hone all of your documents as much as possible to impress an agent. If you’ve never done so before however, knowing exactly what to include and how to truly sell your work can be a struggle – if you’ve ever found yourself asking ‘well what is a literary agent actually looking for in my cover letter anyway?’ then it might be time to get some industry insider perspective.

What kind of reports does Faber Academy offer?