Blown Mind

Last night’s online chat with Jeffrey Moores (literary consultant and editor) over at Agent Query was mind-blowing to say the least. Seriously, it was like that Pizza Pop commercial (or is it Pizza Pockets?) and everyone was a little pizza pocket and then Jeff came along and *splat*! I will be sponging grey matter off the chat room walls all day! But it was sooo worth it.  ‘Its got more stuff’ could apply to Jeff in last night’s chat.

Here’s a taste of some of the advice he handed out to members: cut all your adverbs. Do NOT put a hook in your query letter. Yes, “AVOID THE HOOK”. And I quote.

It was a great chat with all sorts of great advice that will keep us writers thinking for days to come. If you want to check out the chat transcripts, click here. (You need to be a member. If you aren’t a member, simply sign up. No cost.)

Don’t forget, Jeff is doing a double hitter. That means another chat tonight! Don’t miss out. Join us. He’ll be critiquing 5 lucky AQ members’ work. Woo! (If you entered the ‘draw’, check out the thread on AQ to see if you ‘won’.)

Enjoy!

Literary Consultant Chat: Victims Needed

Agent Query has a chat coming up tomorrow night (Tuesday April 28, 9pm Eastern) with literary consultant, Jeffrey Moores. And as an added bonus, there is a second chat on Wednesday night (9pm Eastern, April 29). It is for the second chat that we need our victims. Oops. I mean, volunteers.

About Tuesday night’s chat: It will be a regular publishing industry chat with Jeff who will fill member’s brains with useful industry insider tidbits not normally found while sitting at one’s writing chair. How can I make such a bold claim? Well, let me tell you a bit about Jeff. Recently he began his own business as an editor and literary consultant (that means he helps people who need writing help/advice–read more on his website) after leaving his job as a literary agent at Dunow, Carlson and Lerner in New York. Yes, a former literary agent and student of literature is going to deliver the goods! That’s how I can make such bold claims.

Now, Wednesday night we’re throwing AQ chat tradition to the wind…and we need victims. I mean volunteers. See, Jeff has very graciously offered to do a live critique on 5 first paragraphs whether they be from someone’s query or manuscript. What you need to do is jump over to AQ (finish reading this first) and check out this thread where I explain everything. If you aren’t a member of AQ, become one. It’s free. Really. No strings attached. Okay, I lied. The community will make you a better writer–not a bad ’string’, eh? Once you are a member, bravely toss your name in the hat. On Wednesday, I will have the sorting hat pick a few sacrificial lambs for Wednesday’s chat. We need a variety, so come one, come all. And if the hat doesn’t pick you, no worries, you can still join in the chat and learn a ton. So come on, put down the remote, get in your writing chair and help out your writing career.

As usual, I will be there moderating the chat, so come out and join us! It is sure to be a blast.

Character Catch Phrases

Okay, I’ve got a new one for you aspiring writers.

What are your characters’ catch phrases? Do they say “ah” a lot when they are nervous? “Damn the asteroids” when they are aggravated and things aren’t going well?

Think of the boss in the movie Office Space. What does he say? “Rrrrriiight. If you could just go ahead and…” Memorable. Grates on the main character, doesn’t it? It has purpose, that catch phrase. It also makes a character identifiable. Who says “Doh!” “Don’t have a cow, man”? Yep, Homer and Bart Simpson, respectively. If you have catch phrases that make your characters distinguishable, there is one more spot in your work where you can skip dialogue tags. Sweet.

Not every character needs to have a catch phrase. In fact, overdoing them can hurt your work and ruin what you are attempting.

For fun, here are a few catch phrases. What images come to mind when you hear these catch phrases? What kind of person says this? What do they look like? Talk like? Dress like? What are their hobbies?

* Bogus!
* Whatever
* Damn the asteroids
* That’s what she said
* God will get you for that
* You got it Pontiac
* Where’s my Prozac?

Tips on choosing and using a catch phrase:
- Don’t overuse it. Even 3 times in 100,000 words can be enough if used appropriately.
- Use it appropriately. In a ’stellar’ context that makes sense and adds to the scene you are creating. Don’t throw it out there willy-nilly.
- Use it purposefully. Have the catch phrase add to the scene, what’s going on as well as that character and the sense of him/her that you are creating.

In other news, the University of Ottawa says we should avoid catch phrases in our writing unless quoting others as a stale catch phrase can be considered <gasp> cliche. So be careful young grasshoppers or the cliches will getcha.

I’m Big In England

Okay, maybe not ‘big’ per se…

Maybe not *this* big...

However, my query hook has made it into the Guardian’s Book Blog. (The Guardian is a Jolly Big newspaper in Lovely Ol’ England.)

“From “VI Warshawski meets Lucy and Ethel” to The Price, in which “two elves decide to defect from their kingdom and make new lives in a neighbouring land”, or The 15 Date Rule (“for astrophysicist Allie, falling in love is as easy as identifying the planet Venus”), it’s an eclectic mix of submissions, and Bransford has collected an impressive response rate from wannabe agents.”

The 15 Date Rule! That’s me! Something I wrote is being quoted in a BIG newspaper across the world! How freaking cool is that!!? It gives me a shot of hope when only a few days ago I felt a bit like a crash test dummy that had finally rounded that ‘last’ corner and slammed into the proverbial brick wall and was left to slide down, a mortifying tangle of limbs and bruises.

Thanks Guardian and thanks Nathan. This made my day. Oh heck, my week!

Highlighting Characteristics

So you have a character. You know this person better than anyone, yet you aren’t sure you are getting it across to your readers. What do you do? Give them a nice little list of characteristics that make up this person you have created and sneak it in the first few pages of your story?

You could. But you may bore them, plus the chances are your reader is going to whizz through the list and not absorbing your carefully selected laundry list of characteristics.

What if you highlighted one thing? Just one important detail?

Easy!

Hang on. One thing? Just one thing? One thing that makes this character so unique that if he/she was pushed into a pile of fictional characters a reader could identify and yank your dude out of the pile?

For one of my stories, the fact that the main character, Allie, is always losing thing is a defining characteristic. She is brainy and winning awards, yet very absentminded and thus loses things. A lot. How is this important? Well, outside the story it really isn’t. Everyone can probably think of someone they know or times where they have lost things due to preoccupation. Yet, this characteristic is key within the story. People are stealing Allie’s work from under her nose. It isn’t particularly noted or even noticed seeing as she is always losing things. Therefore it is easy to discount missing documents, purses, keys, etc. This causes problems and conveniently becomes a vital plot point.

Once you have your key feature/characteristic, think of a way to highlight that feature for your readers. Take a lone paragraph and fill it with 2-3 sentences on that key feature. The chances are the reader is going to take note. (But don’t overdo it.)

If I had to describe Allie in a few sentences to highlight her absent-mindedness, I might say something like this:

The expression ’she’d lose her head if it wasn’t attached’ could have been made with Allie in mind. The woman lost three purses in four months. She was losing documents so often she didn’t just fear losing her job, but her sanity as well.

What sort of things might be key to your character and hence become an important part of your story’s plot?

Chewing gum? The fact that your character walks like they’ve been stuck on a horse for days? A severe dislike for dill pickles? Whatever you choose, make it work for you.

Enjoy!

Catch Up Time: Blog Contests

I took a few days off and almost forgot to update you lovely folks on what happened in the online ’stuff’ I was involved in last week.

Over on Nathan Bransford’s blog and his Agent For a Day contest, I was query number 15. (I offered to have my query tossed in the slush pile for his readers to get a taste of what it is like to be an agent.) I just checked and there are 325 comments with an 8% request rate. I did learn through this process that my query is repetitive. Believe it or not, this query was looked over/critiqued by others. But seeing it through these generous fresh eyes, I see all sorts of things I didn’t before. It was a great experience and I am pleased to be a part of it, even if I did get rejected almost 300 times.

Over on the Miss Snark’s First Victim Blog, I was part of Authoress’s Secret Agent Contest (Entry #34). Sadly, I didn’t hook the secret agent (Kate Schafer Testerman–I guessed it was her. I read her blog all the time and recognized her voice in the comments section.). She didn’t totally discount my entry, but she wasn’t hooked either. And I learned from the wonderful readers who left comments on my 250 word piece that I did overdo the ‘breathing’ thing in my opening. I guess I was kind of banging the issue over their head. Oops! Sorry guys. I will fix that!

The interesting thing with this contest was the fact that the changes I made (based on judge feedback from a different contest) were the very things that turned off these readers as well as the agent. Ack! Another writer, Judith, noted this in her piece as well. I guess we both learned to be ourselves, now didn’t we? Either that or you can’t win no matter what you do. Ha, ha. Groan.

Oh, and I also entered two pitch contests last week. One I’ve heard back on Query Tracker. I wasn’t picked out of the 500+ entries. It was good practice though. Try summing up your work in one line. Wowzers! I won’t hear back for the Knight Agency’s pitch contest for some time yet, but I don’t have my hopes up too high on that one. I’m sure they’ve had at least 2000 entries and while I am pleased with my pitch, I’m not confident I can knock 2000 other folks out of the ballpark. Know what I’m saying?

All the contests were great experiences for me, but they also wore me out. Combine that with the mind bending online class with Shannon Donnelly and my brain is a big, messy, mashed up pile of swirling neurons.

Either way, I’ve learned an incredible amount in the past week…leading me to admit that my trip to Vegas and LA last weekend came just in time. I needed a break and distraction. Not thinking about writing or even checking email for 3 days was just what the doctor ordered. But now I’m back…so let’s hit it!

If you are curious, these were my pitch contest entries (long, convoluted and well, the best I seemed to be able to come up with at the time):

For Query Tracker (one line only):
When Beth breaks up with her fiancé as a way to solve her mounting problems, she also breaks up with her dreams of starting a family; however she doesn’t count on the new man in town waltzing over to offer her dreams on a platter or that following her dreams will only add to her mounting problems.

For the Knight Agency (you are only allowed 3 sentences):
After an accident takes her future father-in-law’s life, Beth breaks up with her fiancé and their mounting problems, not to mention her dreams of starting a family. While she waits for her ex to recover from his debilitating guilt due to causing the fatal accident as well as dry out, Beth meets a fresh-from-the-city doctor who provides exactly what she expects: a steady shoulder to cry on as well as an unbiased ear. What Beth doesn’t expect is the dazzling engagement ring she can’t seem to refuse nor the fact that her ex is suddenly speeding down the path to recovery—just in time to make Beth question whether she should utter the words ‘I do’.

Miss Snark’s First Victim’s Secret Agent Contest

On Monday I defied the odds and managed to email my 250 word piece in time to Miss Snark’s First Victim’s email account for her Secret Agent Contest: Are You Hooked? Seriously, the contest submissions opened and within a minute were closed–why? Because they were full! Yikes! (My heart was beating so fast for the second round, I felt like I was trying to win a huge bid on eBay!)

Anyway, Miss Snark’s First Victim, aka, Authoress, has posted the entries. I think it is supposed to be annonymous, so I won’t tell you which one is mine. However, I do urge you to pop by and take a peek. Post some comments, give some tips. Let the aspiring writers know what you liked and didn’t like. (And be nice about it–that goes without saying, right?)

See you over there!

Be An Agent for a Day

Holy Poop!

I had forgotten. Literary agent Nathan Bransford is holding a ‘Be An Agent for the Day’ contest where folks try to pick the 5 queries that are from published authors and which are not.

Well, not only did I forget that I had zipped off my query for his contest’s slush pile, but I actually got picked. A friend over at AQ brought it to my attention and by the time I got over there, guess what? 109 comments on my query!

Wow! Amazing!

I will let you know which one it is when the contest is over as the queries are to be anonymous.