Category Archives: opinion

February 06, 2012   Jane   Jane, advice, opinion, writing  
22

The lost art of communicating

This last week, I found myself having to evaluate entries for a fellowship in publishing.  There were five of them from students in a prestigious master’s program at a well known university.  Sadly, I was shocked not only at the lack of creativity exhibited in these entries but (more importantly) by the level of the writing.

Over the last several years, I have noticed that even young people who have PhD degrees have writing skills that are poor and ineffective.  It seems that communicating clearly and effectively has become a lost art.

It is one thing to write “pretty” sentences in a novel, for example, but I am discovering today that good technical business writing is extremely hard to find.  We need to do better; and the people I am talking about are all intelligent.

I wonder why this is happening.  One of my dear publishing friends has suggested it’s due to the internet, and I suspect that has something to do with it, of course.

But I think there is something else — a lack of focus on the actual process of communicating by the written word.  Young people especially, I think, have to be aware of what they are doing in this regard and how they are doing it.  With so much competition for jobs today, their writing skills are going to become an increasingly important factor in the kind of job and maybe ultimate career they can have.

I would love to hear what you think about all of this — whether you have noticed what I have, why it is happening increasingly now, and what can be done about it.

January 27, 2012   Lauren   Lauren, fun, opinion, reading, why we are agents  
4

The magic of words

If you follow me on Twitter (@laurenabramo), you might already have seen my delight at the appearance of one Stephen Fry at Barnes & Noble in Tribeca on Tuesday.  I’ve spoken of my love for him (and QI) on the blog before, so I don’t need to bore you with the details of why he’s in many ways my model of everything a human being should strive to be.  Instead of reading from his new memoir (published here in the US by Overlook), he spoke about his love for words.  Apparently, young Stephen was introduced to the magical possibilities of language when he came across the work of Oscar Wilde, who opened his eyes to the fact that words can do so much more than convey meaning and direction.  It’s what endeared him to the written word as an art form—and not coincidentally is much of what I love about Fry himself.

Hearing Fry wax rhapsodic about Wilde made me think about the first time I really got excited by how much power words could have.  I’d always loved reading, but I think much of my early love for books was love for story or characters.  It wasn’t even a book that first tipped me off to what language could do: it was A Few Good Men.  If you aren’t a huge fan and can only recall the climactic court room scene that might seem an odd choice.  But A Few Good Men comes from the pen of Aaron Sorkin, whose greatest strength as a writer has always been the absolutely glorious sentences he constructs.  It’s not even Jack Nicholson telling Tom Cruise he can’t handle the truth that was the clincher for me—throughout the film there are lines and moments that to my young mind were revelatory.  I started keeping a notebook of quotes and transcribed a pretty decent chunk of the film, adding those from other sources along the way.  The way Sorkin expressed even the most trivial things with a cleverness I’d never encountered before was really amazing for me.  I’ve been in love with words ever since.

Of course, it wasn’t long after that I discovered that the best resource for such word mastery was often in books.  Over the years I’ve taken to noting exquisite turns of phrase, not usually in a centralized location or even one I’ll return to, but with a folded corner.  I may never need it again, but I’m not the sort of reader who can let those moments pass unmarked.  In clients’ manuscripts, I usually go for a simple “!!!” in the margin.  No good phrase should go unnoticed as far as I’m concerned.

Surely Fry and I aren’t alone in this moment of explosive realization—I’d imagine many readers and especially writers would feel the same way.  Any distinct sources of epiphany for any of you?

P.S. I may have linked to this before, but it’s worth a listen/watch.  Pretty mesmerizing.

P.P.S. While I’m linking to tangentially relevant things involving British people, I was reintroduced to the delight of this clip from That Mitchell and Webb Look by Twitter earlier this week—I’d love to credit the person, but can’t remember!—and it’s worth watching.  This is pretty much exactly what all my meetings with clients are like.  What book would not be improved by adding a shark, I ask?  And you should definitely kill your main character in the first chapter.  Or don’t.

P.P.P.S. This blog post somehow inadvertently became a very clear view into what TV would look like if I were in charge of it.

January 26, 2012   Jessica   great books, opinion, reading, recommendations  
1

Reading to Quiet the Monkey Mind

My family has been in the grip of a particularly nasty stomach virus this week, so aside from endless loads of laundry, I fear I’ve not been able to accomplish much. My recent attempts to read this week’s New Yorker felt uncomfortably like the Shouts and Murmurs piece contained therein, “Me Reading,” in which the author, plowing through Anna Karenina on her Kindle while seated on the subway, is hard-pressed to concentrate.

“ ‘Yes, I understand it all now,’ said Darya Alexandrovna. ‘You can’t understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own choice, it’s always clear whom you love.’ ”

Did Larry really finish the Pecan Sandies? Now what will I eat?

“Sergei Ivanovich Koznyshev wanted a . . .”

Jane’s a nice name. I could make waffles

My own waffling came to an abrupt end, however, when I got to Adam Gopnik’s The Caging of America: Why Do We Lock Up so Many People? His argument: “The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life,” which he elaborates in his discussion of several recently published books on the American system of incarceration.  His piece was so effective, so astringent, so appalling that it banished all distraction–professional, domestic, and epidemiological–and nailed me to the page.

I’m curious to know what you’ve read, whether an article, a book, or a blog post, that shut down your multitasking “monkey mind” and commanded your absolute attention.

January 03, 2012   John   John, YA, children's books, fiction, lists, nonfiction, opinion, what we're looking for  
3

A new year, a new wish list

Happy 2012, everyone! I trust you all enjoyed the holidays and had memorable New Years Eves—and if you can’t remember them, so much the better…

Well, now it’s back to work. As promised in my last blog post, here’s my wish list for 2012. Dedicated readers of the DGLM blog might recall I posted similar lists at the end of 2010, but now with a full year of agenting under my belt I’ve tweaked the list a bit to reflect the areas I’ve found myself focusing on, as well as the areas where I’ve had the most success:

ADULT NARRATIVE NON-FICTION: This is definitely the most exciting category to me right now. If there’s an amazing book-length true story out there, I want to hear it. History, memoir, sports, music, immersion journalism, popular science, health, animals—whatever the subject, if you’ve got the credentials to write about it, send it my way.

ADULT MEN’S FICTION: I’m certainly still in the market for good, original thrillers and mysteries. However, after falling in love with THE ART OF FIELDING and enviously witnessing its success, I’d love to expand a bit into more literary territory. I’d love to find a Tom Perrotta, a Nick Hornby, a Chuck Palaniuk, a Don Winslow—in other words, a great storyteller with writing chops. And if it’s genuinely funny, so much the better.

MIDDLE-GRADE FICTION: I’m still looking for that great middle-grade adventure to take the place of Harry Potter and Percy Jackson—who’s going to step up in 2012 and deliver?

REALISTIC YOUNG ADULT FICTION: Looking at the YA clients I’ve signed this year, I’m realizing that while I certainly enjoy a well-done YA fantasy, more often I’ve been drawn to realistic teen fiction. Now, that doesn’t mean they can’t be high-concept or have a fantasy/sci-fi element—think Pete Hautman, Libba Bray, David Klass, M.T. Anderson—and historical fiction is certainly viable if the era hasn’t already been done to death. Basically, what I’m really looking for are those teen characters, perspectives, and issues that feel true to an actual teen’s experience, as opposed to the more escapist words of paranormal/dystopian fiction.

PICTURE BOOKS: Nothing really has changed here: I’m still pretty much only interested in professional illustrators who can write. It’s about time someone created the next great children’s book character or a high-concept project like Bob Staake’s LOOK! A BOOK! One new thought: if anyone’s got a good nonfiction project, I’d love to see it, too.

Being that it’s the first day back in the office, preceded by two nights of staying up late to watch the Giants and Rangers (bless you, DVR!), I’m still a little foggy and probably forgetting some key areas. But hopefully that’s enough to open up the floodgates, and I’ll probably revisit as the year goes on. After all, to me that’s one of the most enjoyable things about agenting—as the market shifts, so can your areas of interest.

Best wishes for 2012, and let’s see what you’ve got!

December 20, 2011   Morris   Video Games, adaptation, media, multimedia, opinion, reading  
3

Video Games + Books = ?

The New York Times wrote up a new Scholastic children’s book series today: Infinity Ring. What is interesting to me about this series isn’t that it is written by several different authors, some of which we represent, or that it is (according to the New York Times, anyway) supposed to be the successor to the Harry Potter throne. What I find interesting is that there is a tie-in video game, and that it is being called a multi-media property.

Video games are certainly one of the most interesting story telling mediums today, mostly because it hasn’t quite figured out how to best tell a story. Role Playing Games, like the recently released The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, have an expansive history of elaborate backstory and narrative driven gameplay. Action and Shooter games, on the other hand, have put significantly less emphasis on story, but some games, like the Assassin’s Creed series and the Uncharted series, are looking to change that. Meanwhile, there are those games that put story absolutely up front and center, like 2010’s Alan Wake, but those tend to fall flat on gameplay to the point of being totally boring. Of course, being an interactive medium, video games should be focusing more on player interaction than story. The greatest game I’ve ever played, Shadow of the Colossus (please play the ps3 version), has a story so bare bones and minimal it almost isn’t there. I call it the greatest game I’ve ever played because every time I play it, without fail, my palms sweat, my heartbeat triples, and I get this feeling of utter fragility in my limbs. That is what video games excel at – getting the player completely physically and emotionally involved in the game. You would imagine that video games that tie-in to other properties would do this exceptionally well, as the story and characters have already been laid out for the game designers and they need to just focus on the gameplay – like Shadow of the Colossus does.

An example of a truly great tie-in/multi-media project is Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire: the novel was really gripping, the comic was fun as hell, and the video game was absolutely amazing (I still play it). More importantly, each medium offered stories and aspects of the project unique and well-suited to that specific format. To the point where not only did each of the three work well as a standalone entity, but you couldn’t really consider any one of them to be the principal focus of the overall story. All three worked together in concert.

I have high hopes for Infinity Ring. There are really great authors behind it,  Scholastic is an exceptional publisher, and I think the timing is perfect for something new to sweep in and steal the hearts and minds of our youth. I really, really hope to see is a truly multi-media project in which all the different mediums being used are used to their full potential. It could be revolutionary, to the likes of which we haven’t seen before, and I can’t wait to see what happens.

December 12, 2011   Jane   Jane, advice, future of publishing, opinion, optimism  
8

Moving forward positively

I spend almost every weekday lunch with an editor or a publisher talking about, among other things, our business; what has been happening and where it is going.  Sadly, most of the time these days, my lunch companions are bemoaning the state of things.  Fewer books are being published, editors are losing their jobs, and advances are going down.

Perhaps I am being a Pollyanna, but I don’t see the future as anything but positive for writers.  Of course it can be more challenging to sell a book these days – as I have stated in this blog more than once, publishers appear to care more about platform and credentials than they do about the actual contents of the proposals and manuscripts they are considering.  But there are still those out there who do care about the writing and, even if the particular material presented to them isn’t quite right, many do want to help the author develop a book that will work.

What’s most exciting to me though, is the developing world of ebooks and online publishing.  There are now so many more possibilities for unpublished and even traditionally published authors.

We at DGLM had a very interesting meeting last week with some publishing executives from Amazon who are launching a large number of publishing initiatives.  It has been such a long time since there has been really original thinking in our business and I, for one, am hugely encouraged by what I heard.

And then, of course, there is the Wild West world of online publishing.  Last Friday, Alexandra Alter wrote this article in The Wall Street Journal about one woman’s success in this area. Though Darcie Chan’s experience is unusual and very few will be able to duplicate it, the piece does point out that there are so many new possibilities available to writers who have previously been turned down by publishers.  This also opens the door to those who never really aspired to be published by a traditional publisher as well as to those whose books are out of print and who want to breathe new life into them.

The DGLM online publishing initiative is something I am very excited about building – just as I have helped to build our agency over the last twenty-five years.  It would be wonderful if my colleagues on the publishing side, rather than seeing the negatives in today’s publishing landscape, looked forward to the future with excitement and a willingness to change.

As I have said all along, digital publishing has increased reading and book buying.  Looking into the future, we all need to help to build that world so its foundations are strong and it can offer more possibilities to more writers and readers. As always, I am eager to hear your thoughts and comments about this.

December 05, 2011   Jane   Jane, authors, opinion, selling  
25

Why not an older novelist?

Several months ago, I submitted a new novel by one of my bestselling clients to a house that hadn’t previously published him and to an editor who was a great fan of his.  The editor loved the novel – he should have, it is brilliant – but when he presented it to his colleagues, they turned it down.  A couple of weeks later, I had lunch with one of this editor’s co-workers who told me the real reason the novel was turned down was that my client was too old.  I was absolutely dumbfounded.

Then I read this piece in Publishers Weekly and I realized that in this day and age, when it’s all about youth, older authors are sometimes discriminated against simply because of age.

How incredibly stupid is that?  These writers have not only honed their skills over many years, they also have so much more life experience to draw upon in their writing.  Older novelists, I find, have the skill and patience to create stories with depth and well drawn characters.  While there are many brilliant young novelists, we should not discount the contributions of our literary “elder statesmen and –women.”

So I wonder, what you think about all of this?  Have you read any interesting well written fiction lately by someone who is, say, over fifty or sixty?

Oh, and about that client of mine – the one I spoke about at the beginning of this blog?  I sold his novel to a much better publisher than the one who had claimed he was too old. We have great expectations that the novel is going to be a huge success.

November 29, 2011   Morris   advice, comics, digital publishing, e-books, future of publishing, graphic novels, opinion  
8

What eBooks can learn from eComics

Digital publishing is changing the industry, from the author to the reader and everyone in between. The comic book industry is also turning digital. Now, I’ve been reading comic books since I was 8 years old, and I visit my local comic shop every week. Comics are as much a part of my personal reading as traditional prose is, so I’m very happy to see comics embracing new technology. But comics are facing many of the same problems the traditional book publishing world is dealing with, and more. For example, digital comics still have technical issues, with different apps providing different reading experiences with different ways of jumping from panel to panel, and still none of them can figure out how to satisfyingly reproduce a full-page spread.

However, I have also noticed some very positive trends in digital comic publishing.

(For those of you who are unaware of how comics are published: Comics are released every Wednesday. Hundreds of comics are released every week, and comic book stores display the new releases on the walls or on magazine racks. As the comic-book-buyer looks at the new releases, he or she grabs what they like – “pulling” it off the wall. New purchases have been lovingly nicknamed “pulls.” Comics are generally published serially, month to month. So Spider-Man Volume 1 will come out first week in January, and Volume 2 first week in February. Meanwhile, X-Men will come out on the second week of the month, and Captain America on the third, etc.)

I have said for the longest time that I refuse to buy an eReader until I get an ebook bundled with the purchase of a physical copy. (I simply prefer paper, and I don’t see myself buying a digital book and not wanting the physical copy on my bookshelf.) Marvel is going to start doing just that in January with their Ultimate line and several Graphic Novels.

Comixology, the leading digital comic retailer and online comic book resource, is utilizing what they call “digital storefronts,” so that the customers can buy digital comics though their local stores, and so continue to support them. The comics cost the same to the consumer, but the retailer is the specific shop – not Comixology.  Comixology also fully supports physical sales by linking your “pull list” – your picks for the week – with your local comic book shop, so that they hold them for you.

The incorporation of digital editions in the comic book world utilizes and embraces the brick-and-mortar, physical side of things.

I, for one, would like to see the traditional publishing world follow suit.

November 29, 2011   John   John, e-books, future of publishing, opinion, technology  
7

Enhanced reading

With tablets and eReaders approaching ubiquity as the holiday gadget-buying season commences, the conversation over eBooks vs. print, or even “what is a book,” continues to take on different angles. So far, though, one of the big losers in eReading seems to be the “enhanced” eBook, where readers can access ancillary content that’s either embedded or clickable through hyperlinks. The fact that some publishers actually admit this is pretty damning, as publishers typically sing the praises of all things e-related in public.

But maybe there’s a different way to feature enhanced content? According to a Marketwire press release, business author Jeffrey Hayzlett’s forthcoming book Running the Gauntlet will feature SnapTags at the beginning of each chapter, “offering readers a direct connection to unique video content further explaining the core concept of each chapter.” Evidently SnapTags are like QR codes, those blobby barcodes you see on everything these days (for the uninitiated, check out Lauren’s post on QR codes from earlier this year), only these seem to link to specific multimedia content, rather than a website through your phone’s browser.

Now, will readers actually sit with the book in one hand and their Smartphone in the other, using both in conjunction? I have to say, on the face of it, it sounds a bit clunky—but then again, on a recent train ride to Philly, I saw plenty of people with books and newspapers on their laps, phones in their hands. And while I personally don’t get the thrill of QR codes in the first place—always seems like a lot of steps, which was one of the problems with enhanced eBooks in the first place—maybe other readers will find the separation of hard copy and e-content easier to digest? I imagine the SnapTags are less distracting than the links in an enhanced eBook and don’t interfere as much with the strict reading experience.

What do you think about SnapTags or QR codes in a hardcover book? Intriguing? Intruding? Useful for certain subjects? Worth a look-see, or just another e-gimmick?

November 22, 2011   Morris   Morris, great books, horror, opinion, reading, thrillers, writing  
7

Weaving Plot and Prose: A Lesson From King

This past week, I finished Stephen King’s latest book: 11/22/63. The week before that, I read King’s mid 90’s serial novel The Green Mile. The week before that, I read King’s late 70’s horror masterpiece The Shining.

You could say I’ve been reading a lot Stephen King lately.

One of the things I noticed when reading 11/22/63 is that King finally seems to have figured out how to write fiction. He simply knows what words to put where to keep you reading. But that doesn’t mean his work is good. Now, I really liked 11/22/63. But I loved The Green Mile. And I will forever be affected by The Shining.

In The Shining, King is still figuring out this whole writing thing, and it’s apparent on the page. The writing is awkward and clumsy at times. King takes chances with unique phrasing

(REDRUM)

and  narrative techniques. He wrestles with the possibilities that are available to him, and it works. The Shining is the most terrifying book I have ever read. After reading thirty pages on the subway, I was unable to order coffee or read submissions. I was shaken.

In The Green Mile, King tackles a very serious challenge – a literary and suspenseful story about an older man looking back on his past. There isn’t much action in it, but I was on the edge of my (subway) seat the entire time. Again, King’s prose here really helped accentuate the right aspects of the book.

In 11/22/63, King’s writing has become formulaic and universal. There are parts of 11/22/63 that are truly gripping and very, very real, but there are other parts of it where the story fall flat because King is utilizing his perfect writing. And while that may work all of the time, it’s not necessarily appropriate every time.

So what I’m learning from diving headfirst into the deep, deep pool that is The Works Of Stephen King is that prose and plot must always be dancing with each other. When King adapts his writing to suit his story and vice-versa, the effect shines. When he doesn’t, when he sticks with his tried and true prose style, well, it doesn’t fall flat – it is Stephen King, after all – but it simply doesn’t work as perfectly.

But, of course, everyone has their own opinion on craft vs. plot. What about you? Would you endure a terrible plot because the writing is beautiful? Would you drag through clunky prose because the story is great?

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