The Saga of Greene Newbie -- pt. 6

Revisions... I do not think it means what you think it means...

A few weeks later, and a straggling couple of rejections have passed, along with one more request for a full read; he got to make use of his 9 1/2 query letter turned summary twice. Greene's heard nothing back on the original full request and one of the partials has already turned into a "no". By this point, he's chomping at the bit (<---- horse reference for you city types who've never seen horse outside a fountain centerpiece ;-P ) and wanting some kind of sign that the agents at least received his emails. He checked his "sent" box to make sure he'd really sent them to the correct addresses and double, triple, quadruple checked to make sure none of them had bounced back.

It was only a quick intervention on Friendly Writerman's part that stopped him from making that gravest of agent-etiquette faux pas (<--- that's some quality high school French right there): THE PHONE CALL. Greene didn't see any harm in this supposedly benign activity. After all, if the agent is reading his pages, surely he rates high enough to be able to call if he needs to -- but, sadly, no he doesn't. And he never needs to.

Friendly presents him with the hard truth of "no less than three months and then email". Ten minutes later, Greene comes to from his faint on the floor. "Three months? Three whole months? As in 90 days or more?"

"Yep," Friendly says. "Unless it's a holiday season or convention time, then you can bet on four."

Another ten minutes later...

Greene gets a notice in his inbox of a new email message. The clouds part, angels sing, he gets a weird flashback from his college haze...er days... as the room turns purple... it's from one of the agents with a partial.

Reading through her comments (and after Friendly has explained to him that comments =/= complaints, they're good things), he finds a mixed response. She liked most of what she read, but isn't sure about one of the characters. Maybe two.

Your voice is clear and the plot is definitely engaging, but I feel that Sidekick McWhippingboy is a little cliched, and some of his personality traits are redundant next to Beautiful Damselgirl. Also, Hero Goodguy needs a bit more edge to him. He's too good to be real. I'd be happy to read a revision if you can tweak those points.

And so, Greene goes off on a tangent about artistic vision and not selling out and cramped style. He's on his third wind of the filibusterer when Friendly smacks him on the head with a print out of his manuscript. (As it was a 115,000 word piece, that's a lot of smacking power.)

"You don't have to do the revisions if you don't want to," he says. "But you do if you want her to read it again."

But ... that's just not FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIR!!! It's Greene's story. Why should anyone else get a say in how it goes?

Because he doesn't have the same perspective as the agent, that's why.

He doesn't know that:

* three books have just sold with characters like Sidekick McWhippingboy, so another could get lost in the dog pile.
* "clean cut" heroes don't sell as well at the moment as Byronic ones.
or
* Beautiful Damselgirl is nothing special to anyone other than Greene. She's so nothing special that she's having her name legally changed to Mary Sue when he's not looking.

Friendly suggests that while he's waiting to hear back from the other agents, he try to implement some of the agent's suggestions - without getting rid of his original. It's entirely possible that someone else will love the story as is or that Greene will like it better with the tweaks.

It's all a matter of balance. And in the end, it's all a matter of what will and won't sell.

(to be continued...)

The Saga of Greene Newbie -- pt. 5

But what does it all mean????

Sure enough, Greene got a couple of quick turn around replies from his querying. Within 24 hours, he'd received three "not for me" responses and one request for a partial read. He sent off the requested number of pages, and then sat down to agonize over what - exactly - wasn't for those other three agents. He thought he did his homework, so all of them were perfect for his book.

Unable to determine the answer on his own, he decided to just ask the agents what it was about his work that didn't hook them. That way he could fix it next time.

He sent another email to each agent asking them to elaborate on what he needed to improve, then waited for a reply. And waited... and waited... and waited... Another 24 hours passed and he didn't get an answer.

This led him to the conclusion that the agents hadn't actually read his query. They got something with "query" in the subject line and automatically sent a rejection. Greene decided he didn't want to work with agents like that anyway. If they were so busy they couldn't be bothered to read a short, simple, letter that he'd sweated over, then they should just say so on their websites.

It was in this haze of righteous indignation that Friendly Writerman found him when he came by to check on Greene's progress. And it was in that righteous haze that Greene couldn't understand why Friendly was laughing at him.

"Not for me means just that," he said. "It didn't click for them. They don't have to have a reason any more than you do when you don't like something but aren't sure why."

Greene complained that agents should be better than that. They should at least help new authors out. After all, how long does it take to send a short note?

Friendly asked him how many queries he though an agent got a week. Greene wasn't sure, but he took a guess - and it was so low the Friendly started laughing again.

"If agents responded with feedback to every query, they'd never be able to do the main part of their job, which is to represent their existing clients."

Greene hadn't thought about that. Once he got an agent, he sure expected that agent to help him along with getting his book to publication, and he wouldn't like hearing that the agent spent all their time with people he or she didn't represent. And query-reading didn't make either of them any money.

"Plus," Friendly said. "Most writers aren't near where they need to be to get published. 99%. And a good percent of those don't believe it when someone tells them so. Pointing out their shortcomings isn't a chance for improvement to most of them, it's a reason to blast the agent from the safety of their keyboard."

No one likes to be insulted or belittled, agents included, so there's no reason for them to invite such treatment if all they get out of it is an extra work load.

Friendly told him to be happy with his quick partial request and to keep waiting.

By the next week, Greene had two more partials out and one request for a full. He was practically light headed from the excitement - though he'd still rather the process go faster. His friends and family were still asking why his wonderful book wasn't on shelves yet. They wanted to take his picture next to the display, and they'd love a free copy.

In that time, he also got:

* a detailed rejection that showed him another weakness he'd missed in the first chapter.
* a rejection based on the fact that the agent was already representing a similar book
* a form letter from a huge agency's legal department saying his query had been deleted unread and that they didn't accept new clients except by referral.
and
* something that evidently didn't survive the trip from the agent's email to his, but looked like it might have originally said "no thanks".

Then Greene got another cryptic rejection. This one said that the agent's list was far too full and she couldn't handle one more client, so she was sorry.

This time when Friendly asked how things were going, Greene told him about the successes, left out the "passes" and said he was "wait listed".

By this point, he was beginning to think that Friendly wasn't so friendly and only came over for a good laugh.

"What now?" Greene asked.

"It's a form rejection," Friendly said. "Agencies don't wait list people. She was being nice -- like that girl that says "it's not you, it's me". Let it go."

Poor Greene was left wondering how something so small as a query could be so complicated and what would become of the others out there in inboxes and (the horror!) possibly spam filters.

A Day of Not Writing

You know that saying "as boring as watching paint dry"? Well, today, I found out that it's not all that boring, nor does it take as long as you'd think.

Since the house where I live was painted by people who didn't know the difference between "buttercream","egg shell", and "off-white" -- meaning they thought all of those roughly translated into something the color of rancid lemon meringue pie filling -- a good bit of my birthday was dedicated to painting walls and hanging curtains.

And, since my laser printer has mysteriously slowed down to whatever is slower than a snail's pace, it took me roughly the same amount of time to paint a wall as it did to print 128 pages of rough draft for editing.

Sadly, I'm going to have to go back for more paint because my room is slightly larger than I realized. (Just like I realized that it was "16" inches on the curtain rod package and not "18", so back those go, too). But at least my room doesn't look like rotten pie anymore.

Also, in a weird mix of happy and sad, another idea popped into my head for a historical fantasy that will be absolutely awesome if I can translate it from the images in my head to something half as cool on paper. Seriously, this idea was so perfect, I googled it to make sure I hadn't read it somewhere else, and ... Nope. It's mine free and clear. It's dark and decadent, like a piece of black forest cake, and a twist on such a well known story that just about anyone can follow it. I have high hopes for this one.

Now... back to the editing.

The Saga of Greene Newbie -- pt. 4

My kingdom for a query...

Greene Newbie, who can already feel the color peeling off him, is at that point where he's finished a novel and thinking of letting it rot at the bottom of a drawer where no one will ever see it.

"Why?" you ask...

He's hit the mother of all roadblocks: THE QUERY LETTER!!!!!

This deceptively intricate torture device is what separates to wannabes from the writers, and usually the published from the not. It's not for the faint of heart, those with high blood pressure or the verbose to the point of spawning their own language.

It is your introduction to prospective agents, their first idea of your writing style and voice, and the core plot of your book reduced down to 300 words or less. Greene's first attempt was over ten pages.

Friendly Writerman shook his head and fed the pages into the shredder. And when Greene found out he had less than one full page to work with, he tried to feed Friendly into the shredder. His plot was far too complex and his characters were far too vivid to be confined to such a small space.

He got the brilliant idea to just send the first few chapters with his contact information. If everyone else was agonizing over those stupid (and impossible!) letters, he'd give the agents a break and let them skip that step to get right to he writing.

"Once the agents read it, they'll love it," he protested.

"But, they'll never read it," Friendly said. "Not without a query letter. And not without a query letter that fit certain expectations."

So, Greene sat down and tried again. This time he got it down to 9 1/2 pages. Friendly read them, as good and long suffering friends will do, and this time he didn't toss them out. Greene was thrilled. He hoped this meant he was ready to go with his query letter, but Friendly told him to set the packet aside - he had a great summary if someone requested that, but he still didn't have a query.

Greene pouted. He refused to believe he could do his story justice in a short letter. So, Friendly gave him a little nudge.

To write a query answer these questions:

* Who is your main character?
* What is his goal?
* What stands in the way of his goal?
* What happens if he doesn't meet his goal?

And remember a few guidelines:

* Minimize the number of character names.
* Minimize the number of plot threads.
* Query writing is "main lining" -- Just follow your main character through the main points of the main plot.
* Voice is key: funny queries for funny books, tight queries for suspense. (And know "in your dreams" doesn't mean you nailed it for a fantasy...)

Greene Newbie wrote out answers to all of Friendly questions and sat down to try again.
Have you ever wondered...

Friendly took the page and shredded it. Then he added another guideline:

* Avoid rhetorical questions, especially as the opening. If you ask me if I've ever wondered _____, I'll answer the question with something you don't like, but makes me laugh. The joke will be inappropriate and make me not want to read a book about it.
In a world where...

This isn't a movie, Greene... into the shredder it goes.

Hero and Heroine, total opposites, are thrown together...

... and together, they fight crime! If it sounds like it came from an Internet plot generator, into the shredder it goes.

The struggle went on for an hour before Greene whittled his novel down to its core elements and strung them into a form that didn't end up as confetti. It required two pots of coffee, one trip to the office supply store for more paper, and breaking out the cigarettes no one was supposed to know he still smoked, but he did it.

The grand query total, with salutation and close came out to 326 words.

Greene dashed over to his email account, retyped the letter, pasted in his five sample pages and (after a near miss in which Friendly saved him from the pitfall of blanket copying all of them at once) sent them off.

"I can hardly wait for tomorrow to see what they say," Greene said.

Friendly kind of laughed, and shook his head again. He got his hat and coat and left Greene Newbie staring at his inbox waiting for instant gratification.

(to be continued...)

The Saga of Greene Newbie -- pt. 3

Adventures in Beta-Reading...

Greene is not a happy writer. Having learned what a beta is, he found himself an online writing group and paired off with someone he's decided is either deluded, stupid, or jealous. That is to say, someone who told him his opus has promise, but needs work.

Beta Reader offered some 3rd party insight into the mechanics of writing as they applied to Greene's master work --

* There are so many adverbs and adjectives, the prose has been choked down like it was under a kudzu vine. Thankfully, it's easier to prune a MS than it is to kill kudzu.
* Many of the passages are in passive voice, which means there's a stall out where there should be action. If "The page was picked up by Hero Goodguy.", it's usually better to say "Hero Goodguy picked up the page."
* There are inconsistencies in the storyline, such as the character's nicknames and the color of their eyes. The time allowed for getting from place to place is unrealistic.
* While most of the POV is solid, Greene occasionally headhops into the minds of characters whose thoughts he shouldn't have access to.

Greene huffed and puffed and claimed artistic vision for seven and a half hours before stomping off to eat a sandwich. What does that stupid beta know anyway? If he was such a hotshot, he'd be busy writing his own book and not have time to read others'.

His family loved his book and praised his artistic style. His friends did the same. They said the piece was amazing and encouraged him to get it published... in fact, they keep asking what the hold-up is. It's been two whole months, so his book should be in print already...

After his sandwich was well on its way to digestion, Greene returned to his MS, ready to fire off an angry and detailed email reply picking apart each of the beta's complaints. If this moron couldn't tell a stylistic choice when he saw one, Greene was just going to have to point them out.

Then he started going through the beta notes one at a time...

Uh-oh...

He hadn't realized his prose was quite so purple. He certainly didn't notice it straying into the ultraviolet. Maybe it would read better if he cut some of the adjectives.

And where did those redundant passages come from? He didn't remember hammering so many details into the book over and over and over.

Seriously? Hero Goodguy's eyes were brown at the beginning? He could have sworn they were green all the way through... oh wait, it was his car that was green... at least it was until it morphed into a truck halfway through chapter seven.

Crud...

It's even too passive.

Maybe Beta Reader knows more than Greene thought he did, and maybe Greene's family and friends were being a little more supportive than objective.

That's another lesson:

The mom who proudly displayed your first macaroni collage on the fridge, even after more than half the spray painted noodles had dropped off and been swallowed by the dog, most likely won't be in a hurry to point out weak points in your book. She probably won't even notice them. Outside eyes are necessary to catch the things you're too close to see because you will often read what you "meant" to write instead of what actually ended up on the page.

After combing his entire MS, Greene has found that he agrees with about 80% of the suggestions the beta offered. Other aspects, like changing the characterization of some of his favorites, he'll ignore - after all, there's nothing saying he has to agree with Beta Reader's opinions. But when he's done with another round of edits, he'll have a stronger story that will be more appealing for its lack of common errors.

Now, all he has to do is write one of those query thing-a-ma-jobbies.

(to be continued...)

Party Hats and confetti

Today is my birthday - HOORAY!!!

That is all.

:-P

The Saga of Greene Newbie -- pt. 2

When last we left our erstwhile writer, he'd given up on the craft. Actually, he hadn't even crafted yet, he just wrote and gave up at the first hiccup.

That's Lesson #1 -- there WILL be hiccups.

*Most people want to write, few start.
*Of those who start, few finish.
*Of those who finish, few make the book saleable.
*Of those ready to sell, few succeed - mainly because they fold too soon or don't recognize that their vision may need corrective lenses.

Greene Newbie's pal, Friendly Writerman, stands outside the door ringing the bell. When Greene doesn't answer, Friendly slips the key out from under the mat and lets himself inside for a long talk with the wannabe novelist. He starts by telling him that what happened with the not-so-nice publishers doesn't mean he wrote a bad book -- or a good one. It just means he wrote a book, and that in itself is an accomplishment to be proud of.

But Greene didn't want to hear it. None of the "real publishers showed any interest at all. It had been days and not so much as a blip.... that's when Friendly had to explain that most likely his emails were either languishing in a spam filter somewhere or deleted outright by an editor's assistant.

"Greene, you are a writer, but not yet a novelist," he says, then tries to set his friend straight on a few things.

Greene listens, still slightly shell shocked from the downfall of the alliteration-laden letters as Friendly lays out a few points.

1. ALWAYS check out a publisher you haven't heard of. There are millions of wannabe writers out there, and 99% of them fail. That's a huge pool for the less than honest to cull marks.

2. Realize that honest and successful aren't the same thing. Check the track records for publishers. Most new presses fail in a matter of months even if the guy running it has no evil designs in mind. There's no reason your MS should be his learning curve.

3. Find out how copyright works - and how it doesn't. Legit publishers won't steal MS because they're too busy. Fake publishers won't steal MS because it's too much work and they want the easy money.

4. Money ALWAYS flows to the author. Costs are paid by the publisher, not the author. The publisher pays the author for the right to publish their words. The author does not pay the publisher for the privilege of being in print. This is YOG's law. YOG is smart. Listen to YOG.

5. Call your local bookstore and ask if a publisher's books actually make it to shelves. If they say
"No P.O.D.", then don't go with the POD* press.

6. Commercial publishers don't have author testimonials on their sites. Random House, Scholastic, none of them. They don't need them; they're not trying to lure new authors. They sell their product to consumers, so that's where their sites' focus will be.

7. It's a business, not a dream. Publishers are in it to make money - for themselves and the writer. That's all. They don't have the vested emotional attachment the author does. All they want is the best possible product. Sometimes that means a book isn't right for them, and sometimes it means the book needs to be tweaked. It's not a personal attack when they say no.

8. Publishers prefer agents. Since they have no emotional attachment to the work, they like that buffer zone between them and the very emotionally attached writer. Get an agent, then the agent will handle the publishers - they have sharper teeth.

Greene Newbie scribbled furiously in his notebook as Friendly Writerman gave him the finer points, and was shocked at just how little he actually knew. He, like most of his friends and family, thought it was just a matter of finishing a book and handing it over... this is actually kind of scary.

Greene heads back to Google and looks up "American Literary Agents", and after applying Friendly's [name]+[scam] formula weeds out the less than stellar candidates. By the end of the day, he's got himself a list of ten names he's certain will jump at the chance to represent him.

(to be continued...)

*POD = Print/Publish on Demand. The book is stored as a text file to be printed when an order comes in. There are no print runs - which is why the books cost so much.