At work, we are reading lots of manuscripts after an open submission period. That’s got me thinking about some of the common issues plaguing romance manuscripts.

I often get emails asking, “Why is my novel getting rejected?” I want to help, because I’m a writer myself. But sometimes a combination of reasons led to the rejection, and unfortunately, when I’m at work, I don’t have enough time to respond to everyone.

Sometimes, we pass on a manuscript because the writing style itself is rough. There’s lots of showing and no telling, head-hopping, and so on. Style issues can be fixed! Writing style can be improved through practice, reading books about writing (or blogs like this one), working with knowledgeable critique partners, and reading plenty of good books and paying attention to how other authors do it.

However, we pass on well-written stories all the time. Why? Sometimes it just doesn’t fit our submission guidelines. If it’s not the length we publish, for example, or it’s not a genre we acquire, of course it’s going to be a no.Even if it fits our submission guidelines and it’s a good story, sometimes it gets a pass. That may be because we’ve already publishe a couple of stories like it, or something too similar is in development.

But often, we pass because of issues with the story, and some issues come up again and again. Here are four of them…and they can also be fixed!