The Passion of the Editor

• First of all, I am having difficulty with your writing style. Narratives told in poetic prose are not very commercial these days. Keep in mind your target audience -- adventure stories involving miracles and mystical beings usually appeal to the 15- to 25-year-old market.

• You need to develop your characters more -- particularly God. I'm having trouble identifying with him in the story. Since you describe him as being all-powerful, readers won't feel much sympathy for him. I lose him in other areas of his personality as well. You say that he created Heaven and Earth, but what is his motivation? Is he lonely? Flesh him out more. Also, characters need to go through some kind of change in the story. God, however, stays the same from beginning to end. We'll get together later and discuss "character arcs".

• Your plot is unorganized. There are four parts to any story: exposition, complications, climax and denoument. Your story goes all over the place. One minute it's about Adam and Eve, next it's Moses, then on to Jesus -- blah, blah, blah. You need to simplify what you want to tell your readers.

• Don't muck up your story with meaningless characters. In several parts of your manuscript you go on with pointless details about who "begat" who. Who cares? Get to the meat of the story as soon as possible.

• Chapter four of Genesis, major problems: you have characters appearing out of the blue. In 4-17, you mention Cain's wife -- where did she come from? The book begins with Adam and Eve, then Cain and Abel. There wasn't any mention of another woman!

• Your sex scenes need some work. I believe eroticism and subtlety work well together. On the other hand, Adam "knew" Eve doesn't exactly get my motor running. Give more detail.

• Theme and plot sometimes contradict one another. You wrote that sexual intercourse is "original sin," but several of your holy characters indulge in sex. In the Ten Commandments scene, you wrote, "Thou shalt not covet they neighbor's wife," yet in another scene you have the Holy Ghost making moves on Joseph's wife, Mary. (Maybe they weren't neighbors.)

• Problems with repetition. You might consider combining the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, since they are basically the same story.

• Think about renaming Judas. I see him more as an Ernest.