Avoid manuscript about lives (4)
I believe the answer is:
miss
'avoid' is the definition.
(miss can mean to avoid)
'manuscript about lives' is the wordplay.
'manuscript' becomes 'ms' (abbreviation for manuscript).
'about' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'lives' becomes 'is' ('be' can be a synonym of 'live').
'ms' placed around 'is' is 'MISS'.
(Other definitions for miss that I've seen before include "Omit" , "failure" , "Fail to find" , "Young girl" , "Damsel" .)