Bill Cameron talks on characterisation at the Portlandbook Review.

Wherever you fall on the plot-driven vs. character-driven spectrum, no story is well served by poorly drawn characters. One reader suggested my problem was one of knowledge — you don’t know anything about police work. But that wasn’t it. Ignorance can be remedied and in any case, it wasn’t police work I didn’t understand. It was the police themselves, the men and women who do the work. Not only did I not know them, I didn’t want to know them.
And therein lay the solution to my character problem.

Bill explains how his own distrust of authority prevented him from creating fully fleshed police characters, and :

Write what you know may be the first advice aspiring writers hear, and not without merit. Of late, write what you don’t know has gained cachet. The great thing about writing what you don’t know is you get to do research, one of the writer’s favorite ways to avoid actual writing. True enough, I knew next to nothing about police procedure. But even research wasn’t enough. If I was going to write compelling, multi-dimensional cops, I would have to deconstruct my visceral distrust of authority, to dig into not only what police officers do but who they are.

The article details a solid approach to character development, and if you are interested in making strong, compelling characters (hint: YOU ARE INTERESTED), it’s worth a read. Bill is right in that you need to understand the characters you hate as much as the characters you love. Otherwise, you’re at risk of creating a caricature, a straw man that’s easy to hate but ultimately boring.

At its foundation, character development is not about likeability, or relateability [sic], or about sympathy, or pity. It’s about empathy. It’s not enough to write what you know, or what you don’t know. You must write what you hate, and to write it as if your own beliefs and values are on the line.

Read the rest here:
http://www.portlandbookreview.com/writers-on-writing/9-1-11-write-what-you-hate/

Writers Relief is a professional submission service, helping authors submit to agents and publishers.

They interviewed a range of editors to ask them what they considered the most egregious errors authors made when submitting.

You should read the article to get a feel for the specific mistakes each editor details, but I will list the very first line of each response to make a point.

1. This may seem like a no-brainer, but not following submission guidelines is the worst thing.
2. The worst thing a writer can do when making a submission is to disregard the submission guidelines.
3. The very worst thing an author can do when submitting work for publication is to ignore the submission guidelines.
4. As a poetry editor, I’m always on the hunt for good poetry[.]
5. The worst things: submitting without reading the instructions given by the editors or the guidelines set down by the journal[.]
6. As [...] poetry editor, I look for work that is fresh, polished, and powerful.

Two thirds of the responses are essentially the same: follow the submissions guidelines.

DRILL THIS INTO YOUR HEAD IF YOU EVER WANT TO BE A SUCCESSFUL WRITER.

Coincidentally, as I was preparing this post, the local author Alan Baxter  reposted an old article titled, ‘If you want to be taken seriously, submit properly‘. He details his own experience managing submissions. Some of the examples he lists, all of which occurred multiple times, are headscratchers. And the others are…well… I urge you to have a read.

Remember, if you want to increase your chances of being published, FOLLOW SUBMISSIONS GUIDELINES AS IF THEY ARE AN INSURANCE CLAIM. You know, if you don’t fill out an insurance claim properly, the insurance company isn’t going to pay it out. They’re looking for any excuse not to pay you.

Now, editors aren’t that mean (generally) but they are very busy, and if they have any kind of intricate automated electronic filing system, and you don’t have the right subject format in your submissions email, they won’t even notice that your masterpiece is missing.

Would you fill out an insurance claim any old way? If you answered ‘yes’, you’re going to have acknowledge that deep down inside you don’t really want to have your insurance paid out. It’s no different for your writing submissions. If you don’t follow the submission guidelines, don’t be surprised if your story isn’t accepted.

If you want a foot in the door, take your job seriously: RtFG (Read the Freakin’ Guidelines).