Monday Mania--Query Letter

One of our readers submitted a query letter for critique. Feel free to make comments, but please keep them constructive.

Critique Archive 0039:

Agent name
Literary Agency
Address

Dear Agent,

Georgina Blackinsworth is not a typical eighteen-year-old girl. While other girls attend dance and piano lessons, she gets combat, weaponry, and assassination training. Not only that, but her dad puts her through “If this happens . . .” drills to make sure she is prepared for all possible scenarios. Now, as her classmates focus on high school graduation, Georgie finds herself locked in a family battle.

Kent Blackinsworth, Georgie’s dad, leaves town and fails to return. Georgie thinks it’s just another drill and blows off all signs indicating otherwise until she finds a letter which explains why she’ll never be typical and leaves her doubting if her dad is alive. Now she must discover the location of a family vault while avoiding her murderous aunt Edith.

With the help of her best friend Jake, Georgie begins a journey full of clues and discoveries. She finds she is falling in love with Jake and trusting him despite all evidence telling her she is making a mistake. As trust fights against her an ultimatum is set: find the vault she knows nothing about or Dad dies.

Encoded Secrets is my first young adult mystery, adventure novel complete at 77,000 words. I hold a Master Degree in Music and have taught in the public school systems. I am an active member of the American Night Writers Association and attend as many writing conferences as possible. If you are interested in Encoded Secrets I would be happy to forward you the complete manuscript. I have included the first fifty pages in the body of the email.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,


*Author*
My contact information

Revision Time: Over-Used Words

We all do it. It's nothing to be ashamed of . . . unless you don't fix it in the revision stage.

What is it? The dreaded repeated word curse. It's dead wood that sucks the life out of your sentences. Pulling out the dead wood of repetition isn't hard, but it does take time.

Doing a search of your document for these is worth the effort. Some of the most common culprits include:

The empty verb/action:

Was

90% of the time, find a stronger verb. And don't resort to passive and other awkward constructions to avoid it.

Another: would

I see this one a lot: Every day, she would make her children their lunches.

Try: Every day she made her children their lunches.

Much cleaner. Also avoid gerunds (was -ing).

Finding fresh ways of showing emotion and small actions and gestures can be hard, so those and other verbs tend to multiply like rabbits if you aren't careful, such as:

look

glanced

thought

realized

began

smile

started

Empty words:

You may find a time where one of these is needed and adds to the work. But those times are rare.

Often, these words are meaningless modifiers. If I say something is "really big," what does that mean? Big compared to what? A boot? A watermelon? A truck?

As a general rule, avoid meaningless modifiers, including:

Just

Only

Actually

Suddenly

Very

Really

Little

A bit

Directionals

Sometimes we go overboard explaining the how and where. When in doubt, cut it. Especially when you have two directionals next to each other (such as "she looked over at her mother").

from

over

at

toward

up

under

around

Other words

The most common extra word I see is that. Sometimes it's needed, such as to clarify which of something. But often, it's just a filler word, such as:

Paula saw that the class was staring at her.

Talk about a weak sentence altogether:

1) Since we're in Paula's head, don't tell us she saw anything; we'll figure out she's the one with the eyeballs.

2) We've got a weak gerund verb with was staring.

3) And then that is shoved in with no purpose.

A stronger sentence: The class stared at Paula.

(Then show her reaction.)

Every writer has their own pet words or phrases, and sometimes they vary from project to project. I've been known to catch myself repeating one word, and then in an attempt to avoid it, I inadvertently find a new favorite word and repeat it realizing what I'm doing.

Several years ago, an editor pointed out the overuse of heart in one of my manuscripts. Puzzled, I almost challenged her. How could I overuse such a specific word and not realize it? I searched the document, and lo and behold, oodles of emotions mentioned the heart in some way.

If my heroine saw the hero, her heart rate sped up. If someone was in pain, their heart thumped against their ribcage. Fear? Heart raced. Heart, heart, heart. I think I took out a good 10 instances in that book.

The Takeaway

Search your work for the most common repetitions. Several writers I know have lists they keep of words to search their manuscripts for. That's a great idea. Cut most of them.

Then have someone else read it for you. I wouldn't have known about heart without someone else catching the repetition. Your readers may find a repeated word you never imagined.

As always, don't even worry about this stuff until the revision stage. Don't paralyze your creative drafting mind by stressing out over repetition. This is for when you put on the editor hat and clean things up.

Just be sure the hat does come out at some point.

For other sneaky self-editing issues see Stephanie Black's great post.

Congrats to . . .

If you are a blog follower and have a new release, please let us know. We are happy to announce it here!


Congratulations to Dean Murray, on his new book, Frozen Prospects:

Promote This!

By Julie Wright

I am going to talk about evil things--demonic things--things that make you cry, shudder, want to hide.

Everyone wants to be a writer. And because technology is pretty cool, lots of people get to realize that dream. Writing is the fun part--the satisfying-I-want-to-do-this-again part.

But there's this other part . . . it's ugly, it's not fun. It almost cheapens this great creative work of yours.

It's called marketing.

See! I told you I was talking about evil things today!

Publishers expect authors to self promote. They want us to get out there and peddle our little hearts out! We are pretty much required to keep blogs, to have a Facebook page, to Twitter, to have book launches, and to basically drive our neighbors insane by always mentioning how our books make great Christmas gifts.

At World Fantasy this last year, I was hanging out with Guy Gavriel Kay (and he bought me chocolate covered strawberries; is there anything in the world better than a cool author buying you chocolate covered strawberries?). Guy and I were talking about the need to self-promote. if you've never had the chance to meet and speak with Guy, you are missing out. His voice is rich and adorable. He's incredibly intelligent, and he's funny, funny, funny!

We talked about the good old days where authors were asked only to write books. Those days are so over. Ah the bliss of nostalgia.

So, what's an author to do? Well, if you don't have a blog--get one. On that blog find your own voice. Figure out your blog persona and be that. Follow other blogs and leave comments. Try to be consistent. I have problems with this a little because if I'm blogging, then I'm not writing. Writing is my first priority, and words written on my blog do NOT get to count for my daily writing goal. Get a Twitter account. Follow other people, make friends. Get a facebook account. Friend people. Be social.

That's what you do, but there are lots of "don't do" mixed into the things you do. My first bit of advice for don't do is:

• DO NOT REPLACE WRITING WITH MARKETING. It can get overwhelming. Keeping up on all these mediums sucks time away. Don't let it become the reason you miss deadlines, or the reason you missed your kid's soccer game. Keep your head while engaging in social media. Keep your priorities straight.
• When you're following other blogs and leaving comments, those comments should NOT be: "Hi I wrote a book, come over to my blog and take a look!"
  That is annoying. No one will go take a look at your blog; they will likely delete your comment and create a rule that everything you do should go in a spam file.
• When you're friending people on facebook, every status update should not be: "Hey I'm selling books! Buy my books!" and do not overuse the "invite" feature on facebook that tells people of events. It gets tiresome. You will get blocked. The same goes with Twitter.

The point of these Internet tools is to make REAL friends. To care about their lives as much as you want them to care about yours. The point is not to lose the friends you already have by bludgeoning them with promotion.

We were discussing this several months ago on my writing group list, and Tristi Pinkston wrote:

Are you knocking my Tristi mugs, My Tristi T-shirts, my Tristi pens, my Tristi
flying monkeys, my Tristi fingernail decals, my Tristi water bottle covers, my
Tristi, shoelace decorations, my Tristi nose rings, my Tristi sports team (the
Tristi's), and the hospital wing named after me?

Well . . . yes.
Please note that Tristi was being funny to make the point that over promotion is well . . . overpromotion. Be yourself when writing your blog. Blog, tweet, and facebook update real things about you. This is not to say you can NEVER blog about writing. Of course you can! It's part of who you are. But balance it with other things so your friends don't run and hide when they see you coming.

Like everything in writing, a healthy dose of balance goes a long, long way.
Oh and just so you all know--I've got these great books coming out in March and I thought you'd all want to join my fan page and . . .
;)

A Time to Please

by Annette Lyon

After yesterday's inspiring and fun post from Julie, today's topic will sound downright dry. Maybe even wrong. She made some fantastic points about loving what you do and that if you aren't having fun, if you aren't writing for yourself, it'll show.

And yet.

There is a time to write to please. Learning how to do literary acrobatics can be useful and profitable.

But I'd better back up. First of all, know that I'm not talking about fiction here. Everything Julie said applies to fiction, and I say a big, "amen!" to her post.

Today I'm talking about freelance non-fiction.

While I'm a novelist, first and foremost, I make twice as much from freelance work each year as I do in royalties, split pretty evenly between editing work and other freelance writing projects. (I'd like to think some day that will change, but most writers who make a living at it earn more on non-fiction than on novels, alas.)

In this economy, the extra money has been useful. When a child comes to you with dreams in their eyes to join a school team and perform, the last thing I want to do is squelch that with, "Uh, sorry, but we can't pay for it." So I continue to wear three hats: novelist, editor, freelance writer.

With one of my first freelance writing gigs more than a decade ago, I also got one of my most valuable educations. Fortunately, the editor who'd hired me was willing to teach me (and rehire me, because I'd learned from her lesson).

I finished and sent off an article she'd requested, pleased with how it turned out. It was published with a completely different opening. Several phrases and words were changed rather dramatically. My gut reaction was annoyance; I knew full well that everything I'd written was grammatically correct and just fine.

But with a second reading, I clued in: What I'd sent in didn't match the voice of the publication. Their voice was far less formal that I'd written the piece, more like good buddies having a chat. I studied the final version and realized that if I wanted to keep writing for them, I'd have to learn to write in that voice, stat.

Writing that way was hard; their voice was so specific, and it didn't come naturally to me. (Ironically, when done right, the voice came across as easy and breezy, but each word was wrenched out of me.) But I did learn. The result: I was hired again for several other projects for about two years, when the editor changed jobs.

I was lucky; not everyone would be willing to train a newbie. I knew that. So moving forward, I studied magazines in a different way, looking for length of pieces, voice, evergreen topics, angles, the advertisers, and much more. Even if I never wanted to pitch to a particular magazine I was reading, I still tried coming up with article ideas, just for practice. And it's paid off.

Recently, the lesson of writing for an audience/boss was hammered home again, in a good way. I was hired by a company to write technical scripts. (That alone is funny to me; there's a reason I freak out when the printer fails and I cry out, "Honneeeeeey!")

They gave me two trial scripts. Before starting, I read the company's style guide, which took a couple of hours all by itself. (And whoa, what a style guide it was! SO specific on phrasing and terminology and usage . . .) I researched my tail off on the topics and worked hard on those trial scripts to make them as close to what the company was looking for as I could.

When they came back edited, a comment said, "Wow. I don't think I've ever seen a trial script so clean!"

I was promptly asked how much work I could handle a week.

Just a hunch, but I'm thinking not all their first-time writers spent as much time studying their style guide. My extra effort paid off in spades. (And helped finance some Christmas presents and several other things.)

Booyah, people.

Lesson of the day: She who reads the style guide, does her research, and turns in the copy they're looking for, comes out on top.

Loving What You Do

by Julie Wright

I'm currently working on book two of a science fiction series for the middle grade market. Book one of the Hazzardous Universe Series releases March 01, 2011. I want to make sure book two is ready to go so I'm cranking it out now (which is why I've been pretty silent on blogs lately). Yesterday, I researched comets, the conversion of water, oxygen, and nitrogen from rocks, and the various forms of ballet-styled dancing throughout the various peoples of Earth. I also figured out the wickedest-awesomest-coolest way ever to make dragons feasible.

Dragons are a sore point with me. Their eating habits alone make them unlikely for natural selection on any planet. And yet they are so many shades of cool that it's hard to write for the children's market and not want to put a dragon in the story somewhere.

I've never used a dragon in a story. I just couldn't make myself buy into the fantasy of their existence enough to pen one into a novel. I love dragons--love the idea of them, but there are too many rational reasons as to why dragons *can't* exist for me to ever give myself over to them--until yesterday. In my new novel, there be dragons!

I am danged excited about my dragons. I'm danged excited about comets and space dust and solar winds and the magnetic structure of planets. I am excited to learn how to make life on a comet at least semi-plausible.

I am excited that my characters are going places that are awesome.

In short--I'm excited to be writing--which is exactly how it's supposed to be. A long time ago, I wrote a post about keeping it fun. I'd lost my way when it came to fun and writing. I was working too hard to please publishers and critics. I'd forgotten the joy there is creating something that is awesome to ME. A friend of mine, Jeff Savage, told me the biggest reason for all the frustration I'd felt in writing was due to the fact that I wasn't having fun anymore. He was right. I re-evaluated my goals, and wrote something I wanted to write.

And rediscovered myself in the process.

There are a lot of people out there in the literary world to please. There are people who won't like what you like, people who hate your genre, your character, your method.

And while I think it's important to please YOUR audience of readers. I don't think it's important to please EVERY audience of readers. It's been years since Jeff reminded me to have fun, and I haven't ever forgotten to keep that fun in my heart.

Love what you do. Love what you write. If you are loving it, then you've succeeded--no matter what else happens.