Category Archives: advice

September 20, 2011   Stephanie   advice, critiques, opinion, queries, slush, Stephanie, suggestions, writing  
6

What’s the story

I’ve noticed something recently in many of the queries I receive: the writer wants to tell me all about the emotional journey of the story, but they aren’t telling me the actual story. Quite often, it feels like I’m given a general premise and a resolution but I don’t actually know what happens between the first and last pages.

Let’s think about this a bit. What is a story? It’s action, plot, and characters that are going places and doing things. Ideally for the writer, the problem is with the pitch (easy to fix) rather than with the entire book (not as easy to fix). Remember: the emotional journey of a character is reflected in the action of the story. But the story itself is just that—action, characters making moves that are always working towards a goal.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. (Note: this is not a real query):

(Protagonist)’s life has not been easy, but she’s made it through. Surviving a decidedly rough upbringing, she must cope with the pain of her mother’s violent drug abuse from a very early age.

Okay, we’re getting somewhere…

Vowing to never fall into the same traps as her mother, she relocates to a new city to start her entire life over. She must battle each day to find happiness and contentment, and not let her demons rule her life.

Keep going…

However, she feels that the memories of her past are never far behind. Throughout the story, she has to learn that we’re all human and that her mother needs her help. Ultimately, she forgives her mother and gets her into treatment.

Wait, hang on. What actually happens in the novel?

When it comes to distilling your entire novel into one paragraph for your query—a task I do not envy—you must zero in on the main characters and plot points. The emotional journey of a book is important, but when it comes to the pitch, be sure to convey the actual story first, and bring in the broader themes after.

September 14, 2011   Stacey   advice, inspiration, Stacey, writing  
2

Looking for inspiration (in some unusual places)

Yesterday I was talking to author David Hewson, who I know since he’s collaborating with one of my clients on a project, and he told me about a book he has coming out next Spring from Bloomsbury called Writing: A User’s Manual. He told me the idea for it began when some of his blog posts on the subject started generating attention, so I went to check out what advice he has to offer on his website, davidhewson.com.

I looked up the 135 entries that pertain to writing and found a treasure trove of interesting, informative, useful, and very specific advice here, with a strong focus on software tools for writers. He even released an e-book on writing with Scrivener. It’s also more than a peek into the author’s process, one which is very interesting, especially since much of his work is historical and based on extensive research (think multiple computers and screens).

I found this post particularly fun. In it, David shares his favorite (unexpected) writing devices, including a dog and a lawnmower, and it makes me want to ask all of you authors out there where you go and what you do to find your best inspiration?

September 06, 2011   John   advice, e-books, John, reading, technical help, technology  
5

Non-linear reading (or why the Kindle drives me nuts)

Howdy, folks! Hope everyone had a good restful Labor Day, and that you’re feeling recharged for autumn. Writing from cold, rainy NYC, it sure feels like summer headed out the door in a hurry. Of course, it will probably turn scorching and steamy again by Friday, but right now it’s one of those gray early-fall days where all you want to do is curl up in a corner with a good book—or codex,  as this insightful piece in the Sunday Times Book Review puts it.

It’s certainly thought-provoking to consider how e-readers restrict non-linear reading, and I was most excited to see Lev Grossman identify my biggest beef with the Kindle. Whenever I have an e-readers conversation with editors, we almost always agree on how great they are for reviewing submissions—I certainly don’t miss the days of dragging 300-page manuscripts home in my bag every night. But it drives me crazy that if I start reading a manuscript at my work computer, I cannot for the life of me find my place on the Kindle when I get home, no matter how many searches I try. Invariably, it’s just a long skim from “Locations 1-32” until I find the chapter where I left off—and Lord help me if I left off mid-paragraph or the document doesn’t have chapter headings!

So kudos to Grossman for pointing out this issue, and hopefully the good folks at Amazon will read the article and figure out a solution. But in the meantime, does anyone have any suggestions for how to find your place more easily? Any tricks? I’d love to know—especially on a cold, wet day that’s tailor-made for dipping into a book without having to hit the Next Page button ad nauseum.

August 31, 2011   Stacey   advice, reading, Stacey, writing  
8

Advice from the top

I’m just back from a lovely week in Maine, followed by a not-so-lovely weekend of cleaning up a flooded basement. It should be a quiet catch-up week, but instead I seem to be closing one deal and negotiating another, a good thing, but it doesn’t feel like the end of August at all!

In my hustle and bustle, there was something I saw this week that caught my eye. Ann Patchett, whose work I’m a big fan of, and who I’ve blogged about before, has written a short electronic book (it’s really more like a long article) with advice to writers that she is selling through Amazon, who was advertising it through an e-mail to its customers (or at least to me since I recently downloaded State of Wonder on my Kindle).
From the description, it sounds like a memoir about Patchett’s writing life, beginning in childhood, and offers a glimpse into the path of a talented and ultimately bestselling novelist. It’s only 45 pages, but I suspect for the aspiring writer, there is a lot of great advice to be found here. I found this brief and charming excerpt from the book(let?) at Byliner.com. Judging from the reviews on Amazon, the insight she shares is very valuable. I’m curious to know if it will be successful, and if we’ll be seeing a lot more of this kind of thing. I think it’s pretty cool that writers are expanding their oeuvre in unique ways that make their work in different formats more accessible to a wider audience.

I’d love to know what you think. Is this the kind of thing you’d be interested in reading, and do you think $2.99 is a fair price for it? And if anyone out there has downloaded it already and read it, please share your thoughts. Is it worth it? Is it too short? Should she consider expanding it into a full-length memoir? Maybe this is a way to test the market and see what the reaction is before she embarks on a much longer journey. Personally, I’d be happy to read anything she writes.

August 22, 2011   Jim   advice, Jim, reading, writing  
5

Write On

I’m going to take today’s blog post to direct you to a wonderful online resource in case any of y’all missed it.

Last week, I had a chance to take part in the WriteOnCon in two ways. I contributed a quick blog on writing queries and also took part in a delightful live panel on Tuesday with two editors and another agent.

I wanted to direct everyone there just because I found the people so delightful and was really impressed by the content, including posts from DGLM’s own Saundra Mitchell, Carrie Ryan, Nova Ren Suma, and Sara Zarr. Worth noting: I decided to alphabetize those authors so as not to appear to favor my own clients, but mine ended up coming first anyway!

In any case, lots of great stuff to check out over there. And since I wrote about how to write a great query letter and made quick note of how you obviously need to address your submission to the correct person, I’d like to offer a brief rundown of how the queries I received were addressed today:

Dear Mr. Maccarty, (close!)

“Dear James,” (not even my mother calls me James)

“Dear Sir/Madam,” (hedging your bets, don’t want to assume I prefer one over the other—I get it)

“Dear Sir,” (well, it’s an improvement)

“To whom it may concern,” (well, that’s definitely not me in this case)

“Dear Ms. Rennert,” (I’ll bet you a million dollars I know who else got queried)

And my personal favorite: “Dear Mr./Ms. Agent’s Last Name,”

August 18, 2011   Michael   advice, authors, Michael  
3

Your devotion is irrational (and I don’t mean to writing)

As my authors can attest, I love to talk. About everything. But I especially like to talk about building and maintaining a career, and how authors can get from where they are to where they want to go. My approach to that is to talk about building a brand, which to me simply means figuring out who you are, what you write, and how to communicate that to your audience. I’ve spoken about this at conferences, and I know it’s made some people uncomfortable. They want to be artists, not a product. But I argue that in a very crowded marketplace, you need to clearly differentiate who you are to stand out and attract fans.

Which brings me to this fascinating/disturbing article from Ars Technica about a recent study from the Journal of Consumer Psychology. Apparently, consumers have such strong attachments that their own self-image is impacted by the brand’s performance. While I find this frightening–if this isn’t a sign that consumer culture is the only culture, I’m not sure what is–I do think it’s an important lesson for authors. To have readers who are that invested can be very important to a long-running career. Think about the biggest authors; each of them is their own brand, with readers knowing what to expect.

What’s important to remember is that being a brand doesn’t mean you need to write crappy books, condescend to the market, or consider what you do “product.” What it means is thinking strategically, with your agent and publisher, about the best ways to position, market and publish your books. As far as I’m concerned, even artists need to think things through and have a plan, and we agents are here to help you do just that.

August 11, 2011   Jessica   advice, Jessica, queries, submissions  
5

Your Cup of Tea

In a response to one of last week’s posts, I volunteered to look at some query letters. The upshot was that I got a number of very good ones–apparently only ringers responded.  They were, in fact, so professional and polished that there is little point in posting them here. To paraphrase Aristotle (who was talking about people, not publishing) query letters are “good in but one way, but bad in many.”

In each case, what it came down to was simply an issue of whether the genre or subject matter is one in which I am interested. I rarely take on science fiction of any stripe, but the dystopian novel pitched to me sounded good enough that I would request it. Another was a historical novel set during the Civil War, but despite the richness of the milieu and an engaging enough synopsis, for reasons I cannot myself unpick, I find it hard to feel enthusiastic about the prospect of reading another Civil War novel.  Self-limiting, I know, but there it is.

Quirks of taste and interest are a part of this process, and if I dish them out, so must I take them.  I recently went out with a book in which part of the action takes place in Congo, only to have an editor warn me that novels set in Africa are rarely his cup of tea. Another editor once interrupted me midway through what I thought was a diverting aside about a trip to Peru to say that “Mesoamerica just didn’t do it” for him. Needless to say, that was the end of my report on the Inca Trail.  And I made a mental note never to send him the great Aztec adventure novel that I might someday represent.

That said, I endeavor never to say never, because as we all know, there are also those books that blow these preconceived notions out of the water.  I always think about Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit, simply because I have: a) no particular interest in horseracing and b) a deep-seated childhood prejudice against animal stories, since the main plot points invariably included injury or death of the animal in question (Sounder, Old Yeller, Big Red, The Red Pony, etc.).

In any case, I’d love to hear about books that redefined or overturned your own cups of tea.

August 09, 2011   Stephanie   advice, opinion, optimism, rejection, Stephanie  
12

Negative Nancy

The blog has been feeling a little angsty lately, no? Is it just me? Either way, today I figured I might as well touch upon that subject near and dear to my heart: negativity. It’s something we face each day, and Lord knows I’ve dealt with it in my time here. Rejections, bad reviews, and everyday blunders and bumps in the road leave us all open to negativity. It feels very familiar at times, and it’s pretty easy to be hard on ourselves and allow the things others say affect you. We’re all guilty of it.

So what’s my point? The point is that while I see the reason for your negativity, and while I get why you feel like being hard on yourself, try not to be. Everyone’s favorite agent/author/blogger Nathan Bransford said it best: Don’t complain about negativity.  Maybe you’ve received your millionth form rejection letter or some cutting criticism about your novel. But you know what? Just keep going. Don’t waste any time getting hung up on the harsh words or shoulda/woulda/coulda. Push through it, be strong, and things will become clear. Otherwise, why bother?

August 08, 2011   Jim   advice, Jim, Q&A, questions  
45

Bring It On

Alrighty, folks. Here we go again: it’s a Monday in summer, things are actually decently quiet, and I have no idea what to blog about.

So let’s try an oldie but a goodie. Ask me ANYTHING. If you get a question in between now and 9:00 tomorrow morning, I’ll answer to the best of my abilities.

Go ahead: do your worst.

August 08, 2011   Jane   advice, editing, Jane, opinion  
17

When three people tell you you’re drunk, sit down

So, I have been thinking about the art of listening, but not only listening – actually hearing what is “said” and acting on what you are hearing.

When I take on a project initially, I am 100 percent sure I can sell it.  I help my client make their proposal or manuscript (if it is a novel) the best it can be, and then I submit it.  I often think that editors turn down material just to do so—they dismiss it without reading it carefully or giving it their full consideration for a variety of reasons.  Needless to say, this pisses me off.  Then there are those projects which elicit rejections from a number of editors for the same reason. When this happens, I begin to listen to what is being said by my colleagues on the publishing side.  Most always,  I share these helpful and constructive comments with my clients who often choose to address them before we go back out to a second round of publishers.

Currently, I have a client who on my advice was more than happy to address those editors’ suggestions she agreed with and I am still hopeful that we will sell her project once the changes are made and the material is back out in the marketplace.

Then there are the clients who don’t listen to my advice or editors’ feedback at all.  They go to their friends and colleagues for opinions, argue with whatever suggestions I make and (sometimes) request that I respond to editors in ways that I think (and let them know) are not appropriate.  I wonder why people like this hire agents at all.  Really.  These authors are paying a commission for me to provide them with advice I have garnered after years of experience.  True, they don’t have to take my advice, but if they are just going to listen to everyone around them and disagree with their agent’s opinion, then why have an agent at all.  In fact, the inability to listen to one’s agent does not bode well for a good working relationship with an editor and publisher.

I have found, over the last many years, that listening and acting on what you hear is an art and something that is very important in moving forward in life and in one’s career.

I wonder if you agree.

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