How do you decide it’s ready for submission?

[MrsFionaCharming]

I’m on my fourth draft of my first novel, having been working on it on and off for 2 years.

I’m getting to the point where I make fewer and fewer changes with each draft which is promising. But theoretically, I could continue tweaking it forever, how do you decide when enough is enough?

When you can't bear to look at it anymore.

When you're not making significant structural changes or changes to character (not that these won't change based on feedback from your agent or hopefully eventual publisher) so you are, in effect, just tinkering at the moment. Are you going straight to submission or have you asked any friendly readers to provide feedback? If you are submitting then it might be an idea to be happy with the proof-reading of the first three chapters to make sure any agent would not be put off by poor spelling, grammar and so on before they are in love with your story.

Good luck.

I had my first draft read by someone I met online (in exchange for hers), so I know there’s no big issues structurally or with the overall tone and style. Other than that, I had 2 friends who read that genre read it, but they were both really nice, so not very helpful!

I’m pretty confident in my spelling and grammar skills, it’s my writing style I’m not convinced by. Just because something is technically correct, doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable to read.

I’m getting fed up with staring at it and having no idea how to improve it, because I don’t know if there’s anything to improve!

Then it sounds like it's ready to fly. Good luck with agents then publishers then the public.

You say someone read your first draft, but what about subsequent revisions? Have you had people you trust, who read a lot in your genre, and who are prepared to be critical, read those?

Unfortunately not. I don’t really have anyone I can ask - it would take someone hours to comb though 65k words! I did look at hiring someone to, but they seem to start at around £20/hr, and again, it’ll take hours! So at this point, I’m kind of just hoping for the best.

Can't you ask the friends who read earlier drafts to read this one? Though it sounds as if you may need to encourage them to be critical by asking specific questions about things you want to check are working in the pace, plotting, characterisation etc, if their natural mode is just to go 'I loved it'.