Remember to take notes when visiting the relatives this holiday season. They'll make great characters in your next book.
We'll be back soon. In the meantime, check out the latest Monday Mania.
Have a fabulous holiday!
Monday, December 24, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
Monday Mania: First Page
One of our readers submitted the first page of her novel. Feel free to make comments, but please keep them constructive.
Critique Archive 0014:
PROLOGUE
(April of last year)
(April of last year)
In 1864, Gregor Mendel published a study revealing the results of an experiment that used ________ to determine the principles of genetics.
A. Pisum sativum
B. Garden peas
C. Legumes
D. All of the above
I rolled my eyes and circled ‘D’. This was a trick question since Pisum sativum and legumes were each terms for ‘pea.’ The question was especially tricky since you not only needed to know the correct answer (peas), but you also needed to know that the other two choices were still, technically, peas.
Pencils swished and tapped and, for one student directly behind me, screeched against paper; there were mutterings and the occasional deep sigh; the smell of sweat and fear was thick in the air.
I finished the last question of the section I was on (the two major kingdoms of unicellular organisms are: C. Protista and Monera.) and sucked in a deep breath, stretching my arms above my head and letting my gaze travel across the room. Because the final took so long, the two honors classes had been combined and the students seated in alphabetical order.
The twenty tables in the testing room were arranged in two symmetrical rows. The tables were designed to seat four people but with the scratch paper, calculators and extra pencils each student brought, plus snacks and water bottles, the tables were pretty crowded with just three of us at each one.
I was in the first seat of the first row, second table. This was because my last name was Bean. Abigail Bean. Next to me was Riley Porsche Bennett. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. She was the kind of pretty that made your breath catch in your throat. The kind that made you want to ask her to be still and not speak for a moment so you could just look at her. She had long, silky brown hair that was pulled back into a stylish ponytail. Her eyes were ice blue and her lips were full and naturally pink. Yeah, she was pretty, but she was also meaner than a deadly parasite and dumber than a single-cell organism.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Get Ready, Get Set, QUERY!
by Heather Moore
The holiday bustle is in full swing. Everyone is checking their lists twice. Lines are already obscenely long and panic fills the eyes of many a shopper.
Slow down. Breathe. If you haven’t finished your gift shopping, what are a few more days?
NOW is the time to send out those queries. Like most of us, other writers are preparing for the holidays, planning vacations, sending out cards to everyone they’ve known since a toddler.
But the agents are still in their offices, putting in full days . . . reading queries, requesting partials. Yet, the writers aren’t submitting at their usual pace.
Right now, agents are in the “zone” or the “evil dry spell” as referred to by Kristen Nelson, of Nelson Literary Agency:
Ms. Nelson says, “For unrepresented writers, this is actually a good thing because that means we are looking furiously for something new to take on because in the dry spell, we start reading our queries faster. We ask for more sample pages then we might ordinarily. We’ll take a chance on reading full manuscript of a work that maybe didn’t win us over entirely initially in the sample pages but because it’s so dry, we’re more lenient and will request a full.”
Nathan Bransford of Curtis Brown Literary calls it the “December Publishing Coma”
He says, “This is a time when agents and editors alike catch up on their reading and try and get things in order for submissions in the new year. So if you are polishing off a query, go ahead and send it now (but I'd avoid the week around Christmas and New Years).”
So get busy. Put off that shopping and work on your queries!
The holiday bustle is in full swing. Everyone is checking their lists twice. Lines are already obscenely long and panic fills the eyes of many a shopper.
Slow down. Breathe. If you haven’t finished your gift shopping, what are a few more days?
NOW is the time to send out those queries. Like most of us, other writers are preparing for the holidays, planning vacations, sending out cards to everyone they’ve known since a toddler.
But the agents are still in their offices, putting in full days . . . reading queries, requesting partials. Yet, the writers aren’t submitting at their usual pace.
Right now, agents are in the “zone” or the “evil dry spell” as referred to by Kristen Nelson, of Nelson Literary Agency:
Ms. Nelson says, “For unrepresented writers, this is actually a good thing because that means we are looking furiously for something new to take on because in the dry spell, we start reading our queries faster. We ask for more sample pages then we might ordinarily. We’ll take a chance on reading full manuscript of a work that maybe didn’t win us over entirely initially in the sample pages but because it’s so dry, we’re more lenient and will request a full.”
Nathan Bransford of Curtis Brown Literary calls it the “December Publishing Coma”
He says, “This is a time when agents and editors alike catch up on their reading and try and get things in order for submissions in the new year. So if you are polishing off a query, go ahead and send it now (but I'd avoid the week around Christmas and New Years).”
So get busy. Put off that shopping and work on your queries!
Monday, December 10, 2007
Monday Mania: First Page
One of our readers submitted the first page of her memoir. Feel free to make comments, but please keep them constructive.
Critique Archive 0013:
1979
· The USSR invades Afghanistan.
· Sony introduces the Walkman at a retail price of two hundred dollars.
· The price of gas is a staggering eighty-six cents per gallon.
· China institutes the one-child-per-family rule to help control the population.
· The Knacks are at the top of the charts with, ‘My Sharona’.
· Fonzie is king (“Eyyy,”).
· Robin Williams is running around in really tight pants, coining phrases such as “Shazbit” and of course “Nanu, nanu”.
· In the Sahara desert, it snows for thirty minutes.
· The world says goodbye to long-time idol John Wayne.
· And, on August 22nd at 12:26 a.m I enter the world
OK, so maybe me for John Wayne isn’t the best trade you’ve ever heard of but one would think that at five pounds some odd ounces I was fairly cute at least. I’d like to go on and on about how I was born. I’d like to tell you about how my entire family gathered around, happily anticipating my arrival and how joyous they were when I finally came. How they passed me around from one person to the next, cooing and smiling and tickling my little toes. I’d like to tell you all of these things and more, but I can’t. Although I’m sure my mother at least was happy to see me, this is a story that I cannot tell because it’s a story I’ve never heard. No one has ever told me about the day I was born. There is no baby book of which I’m aware to record the memories, no pictures that I have seen. The earliest picture I recall seeing of myself was taken when I was nearly a year old, practically bald with a rather large forehead.
Critique Archive 0013:
1979
· The USSR invades Afghanistan.
· Sony introduces the Walkman at a retail price of two hundred dollars.
· The price of gas is a staggering eighty-six cents per gallon.
· China institutes the one-child-per-family rule to help control the population.
· The Knacks are at the top of the charts with, ‘My Sharona’.
· Fonzie is king (“Eyyy,”).
· Robin Williams is running around in really tight pants, coining phrases such as “Shazbit” and of course “Nanu, nanu”.
· In the Sahara desert, it snows for thirty minutes.
· The world says goodbye to long-time idol John Wayne.
· And, on August 22nd at 12:26 a.m I enter the world
OK, so maybe me for John Wayne isn’t the best trade you’ve ever heard of but one would think that at five pounds some odd ounces I was fairly cute at least. I’d like to go on and on about how I was born. I’d like to tell you about how my entire family gathered around, happily anticipating my arrival and how joyous they were when I finally came. How they passed me around from one person to the next, cooing and smiling and tickling my little toes. I’d like to tell you all of these things and more, but I can’t. Although I’m sure my mother at least was happy to see me, this is a story that I cannot tell because it’s a story I’ve never heard. No one has ever told me about the day I was born. There is no baby book of which I’m aware to record the memories, no pictures that I have seen. The earliest picture I recall seeing of myself was taken when I was nearly a year old, practically bald with a rather large forehead.
Friday, November 30, 2007
An Example in Style
By Josi S. Kilpack
People talk about it all the time: I love their style! The style of their writing was so unique. The style of the writing left me a little cold.
So what is style? What does it mean and how do I find it?
Style is one of those things that is rather vague and transitory, it's very difficult to define and sometimes hard to pick off with absoluteness. J.K. Rowling has a style, as does Tom Clancy and Amy Tan, it's not what they write--it's how they tell the story. If J.K. Rowling every writes an action packed spy novel, you can bet it will sound very different from Tom Clancy. Even within genres with similar story lines, the stories will sound different, enough that a reader might love Danielle Steele and hate Catherine Coulter even though they both write romance. It's the style that brings the author behind the words to life. They way they use the words and share interpretation and sensory information is what makes their story stand out.
In addition to the fact that every author has a style, most authors struggle to find it. They want to sound like Mary Higgins Clark, but kind of like wearing you're big brother's pants, it doesn't fit and therefore it's uncomfortable and unflattering. They are sure that if they sounded like Ken Follett they would get published. Wrong. You will get published when you find out what you sound like, and when you find the place that you are most comfortable. That's not to say you won't have room for improvement. One of my style points is to avoid description, and I've had to work on that because description is an important elements of writing fiction. But because I know my base, I can move out from that part and incorporate new elements that make my voice stronger, richer, better understood.
I'm sure this is still clear as mud--it's taken me years to understand style and yet two weeks ago when a teacher in whose class I was presenting asked me to talk about style I froze. It is a very difficult thing to "teach". However, there are some great books that can help you discover your style: The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron and The Elements of Style by William Strunk, jr. and E.B. White, are two of my favorite resources when I find my own style slipping through my fingers as I'm seduced by the idea that if I sounded a bit more elegant, or intense, or dramatic--more like THAT author--the writing would be better overall. But my style is mine, and when I try to ignore that I sound mechanical and well, not myself.
To illustrate this, I've included a report my daughter wrote for her health class. She had me read through it for editing purposes and I was just tickled by the style behind her words. It sounds just like her and somehow she made Lung Cancer an entertaining topic. I could read every report in her class without names and know this one was hers because of the style she has when she writes. And that is our challenge, to find out how we best sound like us:
Lung Cancer
#2 Kilpack
Your lungs, like all of your other organs and body parts, help you stay healthy and alive. Your lungs are located in the chest area. Your lungs are a big organ, so it takes up most of the room in the chest area One thing that I thought was interesting was that your lungs aren’t the same size, crazy! The left lung is a little bit smaller than your right. So there’s room for the heart. You probably already know that the lungs help you breathe, inhale air, exhale air, and talk. So their a BIG deal. But if your lungs stopped working, BOOM! Your gone for good. So of course you want to keep your lungs healthy. But how can you damage them?
One of the ways is smoking. Everyone knows that smoking and taking drugs are bad, even if people do those things, they still know it. Drugs are very scary things. They don’t only ruin your lungs, but also your skin, teeth, fingers and toes, fingernails, toenails, and of course the way people think of you. Some reasons why people take drugs are because they think it makes them cooler (only makes them less cool ), to relieve stress, they get offered and addicted, etc. What can it do to your lungs? A lot.
It causes lung cancer. You may think it’s just another of those cancers. But every cancer is dangerous. Lung cancer is one of the most deadly cancers. Lung cancer kills more than colon, prostate, lymph and breast cancer combined! That’s a lot of deaths!
Most cases of lung cancer could’ve been prevented by NOT SMOKING! 90% of cases of lung cancer are caused by smoking. Every cigarette increases your risk of getting lung cancer. Lung cancer also may cause fatigue, loss of appetite and weight loss.
Because lung cancer doesn’t cause signs or symptoms in it’s earliest stages, its often advanced by the time it's diagnosed, but when there is a symptom, the most common way of knowing is a cough.
Also be alert for:
Smokers cough that worsens
Coughing up blood
Chest pain
Shortness of breath
Hoarseness that lasts for more than two weeks
People talk about it all the time: I love their style! The style of their writing was so unique. The style of the writing left me a little cold.
So what is style? What does it mean and how do I find it?
Style is one of those things that is rather vague and transitory, it's very difficult to define and sometimes hard to pick off with absoluteness. J.K. Rowling has a style, as does Tom Clancy and Amy Tan, it's not what they write--it's how they tell the story. If J.K. Rowling every writes an action packed spy novel, you can bet it will sound very different from Tom Clancy. Even within genres with similar story lines, the stories will sound different, enough that a reader might love Danielle Steele and hate Catherine Coulter even though they both write romance. It's the style that brings the author behind the words to life. They way they use the words and share interpretation and sensory information is what makes their story stand out.
In addition to the fact that every author has a style, most authors struggle to find it. They want to sound like Mary Higgins Clark, but kind of like wearing you're big brother's pants, it doesn't fit and therefore it's uncomfortable and unflattering. They are sure that if they sounded like Ken Follett they would get published. Wrong. You will get published when you find out what you sound like, and when you find the place that you are most comfortable. That's not to say you won't have room for improvement. One of my style points is to avoid description, and I've had to work on that because description is an important elements of writing fiction. But because I know my base, I can move out from that part and incorporate new elements that make my voice stronger, richer, better understood.
I'm sure this is still clear as mud--it's taken me years to understand style and yet two weeks ago when a teacher in whose class I was presenting asked me to talk about style I froze. It is a very difficult thing to "teach". However, there are some great books that can help you discover your style: The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron and The Elements of Style by William Strunk, jr. and E.B. White, are two of my favorite resources when I find my own style slipping through my fingers as I'm seduced by the idea that if I sounded a bit more elegant, or intense, or dramatic--more like THAT author--the writing would be better overall. But my style is mine, and when I try to ignore that I sound mechanical and well, not myself.
To illustrate this, I've included a report my daughter wrote for her health class. She had me read through it for editing purposes and I was just tickled by the style behind her words. It sounds just like her and somehow she made Lung Cancer an entertaining topic. I could read every report in her class without names and know this one was hers because of the style she has when she writes. And that is our challenge, to find out how we best sound like us:
Lung Cancer
#2 Kilpack
Your lungs, like all of your other organs and body parts, help you stay healthy and alive. Your lungs are located in the chest area. Your lungs are a big organ, so it takes up most of the room in the chest area One thing that I thought was interesting was that your lungs aren’t the same size, crazy! The left lung is a little bit smaller than your right. So there’s room for the heart. You probably already know that the lungs help you breathe, inhale air, exhale air, and talk. So their a BIG deal. But if your lungs stopped working, BOOM! Your gone for good. So of course you want to keep your lungs healthy. But how can you damage them?
One of the ways is smoking. Everyone knows that smoking and taking drugs are bad, even if people do those things, they still know it. Drugs are very scary things. They don’t only ruin your lungs, but also your skin, teeth, fingers and toes, fingernails, toenails, and of course the way people think of you. Some reasons why people take drugs are because they think it makes them cooler (only makes them less cool ), to relieve stress, they get offered and addicted, etc. What can it do to your lungs? A lot.
It causes lung cancer. You may think it’s just another of those cancers. But every cancer is dangerous. Lung cancer is one of the most deadly cancers. Lung cancer kills more than colon, prostate, lymph and breast cancer combined! That’s a lot of deaths!
Most cases of lung cancer could’ve been prevented by NOT SMOKING! 90% of cases of lung cancer are caused by smoking. Every cigarette increases your risk of getting lung cancer. Lung cancer also may cause fatigue, loss of appetite and weight loss.
Because lung cancer doesn’t cause signs or symptoms in it’s earliest stages, its often advanced by the time it's diagnosed, but when there is a symptom, the most common way of knowing is a cough.
Also be alert for:
Smokers cough that worsens
Coughing up blood
Chest pain
Shortness of breath
Hoarseness that lasts for more than two weeks
Thursday, November 29, 2007
The First Page: Kleenex & Chocolate
By Heather Moore
Can you tell if you like a book from the very first page? What makes you continue reading to the second page?
Readers are different from agents and editors. Most readers will give a writer a fairly decent chance to pull them in. In fact, I can remember several books that I’ve recently read that didn’t fully pull me in until 50-100 pages. But I kept reading because someone had recommended the book to me. So I gave it a chance.
But what about an agent?
They don’t give you a chance if the first page doesn’t pull them in. This may seem like an almost impossible feat. But if you go around your house and gather your favorite books, then read the first page—ask yourself what compels you to keep reading.
Recently I finished a manuscript. I emailed the prologue to Josi, since she had included an excellent prologue in one of her books. She read it and promptly said that I needed to drop the first three pages. Not that the writing wasn’t good, or the story, but she wanted to be drawn in from the first page.
The competition is crazy out there. Write your novel. Then get someone who will be exceptionally honest to read it. Finally, get out the chocolate and Kleenex and start editing.
Can you tell if you like a book from the very first page? What makes you continue reading to the second page?
Readers are different from agents and editors. Most readers will give a writer a fairly decent chance to pull them in. In fact, I can remember several books that I’ve recently read that didn’t fully pull me in until 50-100 pages. But I kept reading because someone had recommended the book to me. So I gave it a chance.
But what about an agent?
They don’t give you a chance if the first page doesn’t pull them in. This may seem like an almost impossible feat. But if you go around your house and gather your favorite books, then read the first page—ask yourself what compels you to keep reading.
Recently I finished a manuscript. I emailed the prologue to Josi, since she had included an excellent prologue in one of her books. She read it and promptly said that I needed to drop the first three pages. Not that the writing wasn’t good, or the story, but she wanted to be drawn in from the first page.
The competition is crazy out there. Write your novel. Then get someone who will be exceptionally honest to read it. Finally, get out the chocolate and Kleenex and start editing.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
The Mighty Dollar
by Annette Lyon
Take a guess at what type of letter I recently received that included the following phrase:
"You are a fantastic writer"
No, it wasn't from a reader (although I've certainly welcomed the few letters like that when they've arrived). It was a rejection letter.
Yup.
The reason this particular publishing company gave for passing on the project is the bane of many writers’ existence. Regardless of how the reason is phrased, it all boils down to the same thing: Money.
Publishing is a business, and if a company thinks that they’ll likely sell 15,000 copies of a book that’s moderately good and only 1,000 copies of a darn-tootin’ amazing piece that just isn’t quite as marketable, take a guess on which they’ll pick.
Some presses do take on the occasional book that they know won’t sell much—but they’re only able to publish it out of love because they’re making enough money on the cash cows they’re already selling. It’s the best-sellers that essentially finance the work of the occasional little fish they give a chance to, regardless of quality.
In my case, the target demographic was deemed too small to make the financial investment viable for them.
In your case, it could be any number of other things:
Take a guess at what type of letter I recently received that included the following phrase:
"You are a fantastic writer"
No, it wasn't from a reader (although I've certainly welcomed the few letters like that when they've arrived). It was a rejection letter.
Yup.
The reason this particular publishing company gave for passing on the project is the bane of many writers’ existence. Regardless of how the reason is phrased, it all boils down to the same thing: Money.
Publishing is a business, and if a company thinks that they’ll likely sell 15,000 copies of a book that’s moderately good and only 1,000 copies of a darn-tootin’ amazing piece that just isn’t quite as marketable, take a guess on which they’ll pick.
Some presses do take on the occasional book that they know won’t sell much—but they’re only able to publish it out of love because they’re making enough money on the cash cows they’re already selling. It’s the best-sellers that essentially finance the work of the occasional little fish they give a chance to, regardless of quality.
In my case, the target demographic was deemed too small to make the financial investment viable for them.
In your case, it could be any number of other things:
- The genre is currently saturated.
- The genre is no longer "hot" and sales are declining
- A book very similar was recently published (by them or a competing house)
- A similar book was recently submitted by a best-selling author (guess whose they’d rather take, a big-name author who will sell thousands just by having their name on the cover, or an unknown writer?)
- The target audience is unproven as eager book-buyers
- The publisher is unsure how to market the book and reach its target readers
- The manuscript is too long to make a profitable product with an unknown writer (Note how short the first Harry Potter book was. There’s no way anyone would have let even JK Rowling get away with a 700+ page tome her first time around. She wasn't the mighty JK then.)
- The book has lots of sub-genres, making it difficult to classify
- You don’t fit the publisher’s typical tone/voice/style
- And so on.
None of those mean your book isn’t well done or publication-worthy. It just means that the publisher isn’t ready to take a financial risk on a project that may or may not throw them into the red.
What do you do? Study the markets. Find where you belong. Revise your manuscript if need be so you can fit those requirements. Or find another market that's a better fit.
What you don’t do is throw it on the garbage heap.
Sure, indulge in self-pity and some Rocky Road for a little while. Then get back out there, keep writing, and submit again. And again.
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