Questions? Come One, Come All!

Literary agent Mary Kole of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency will be answering questions for all us writers this coming Monday (April 12th) over on AgentQuery Connect. She’s a savvy agent who loves young adult and middle grade books. AND her agency is ranked numero uno in terms of sales for these kinds of books. So, if you are a writer who has questions about these categories, she’s your gal, and AQC is the place to be. If you aren’t into writing those kinds of books, but are curious about the world of publishing and what the future may hold… Ms. Kole can help you out there too! Or, if your questions are more basic, such as, what do agents really want in a query letter, that works too.

You may have also heard of Ms. Kole due to her awesome-McAwesomeVille blog, Kidlit.com, which simply rocks. I think I’ve mentioned it a time or two….

Don’t miss out on this one-of-a-kind opportunity to have your burning writerly questions answered by an industry pro. Go over to AQC and become a member if you aren’t already (it’s completely free) and ask away in the dedicated Ms. Kole group. (Lurking is also allowed….)

Enjoy!

P.S. If you enter a dialogue with Ms. Brown (i.e. ask a question over on AQC) this can, in some cases, work as a jumping off point in a future query to her. (You know, make it a bit more personalized to help you stand out in the massive pile of queries she gets on a daily basis.) For example, “Dear Ms. Kole: Last week I enjoyed reading all your replies to my fellow AgentQueryConnect members. You had mentioned that you are looking for novels that X, Y, and Z in response to my question about what is hot in middle grade novels right now. I believe my story BEST THING EVER fits what you are looking for.” Etc., etc….

Advice From Literary Agent Kevan Lyon

Last night, I moderated a live online chat over at AgentQuery Connect with literary agent Kevan Lyon of the Marsal Lyon Literary Agency in California. It was a full house with many new faces and Kevan answered around 30 questions in that short hour. In case you missed the chat, I will share a few tidbits, insights and advice from Kevan Lyon.

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On being located on the West Coast (instead of New York):

*Kevan mentions that West Coast agents often work longer hours as they start early in the day in order to be available to those working on the East coast. She says working in the Pacific timezone also works well for writers who are in other parts of the world. Plus, Eastern editors tend to start later in the day and work later–matching the West Coast workday. In today’s world where the majority of business is done electronically, it matters less and less where agents are physically located. (Especially when they are like Kevan and are willing to hop a plane to New York as needed.)

On e-books, and debuts in trade paperback (instead of hardcover):

*”I see the shift to trade paper as a positive for new authors — with a lower price point there is less reluctance on the part of readers to take a chance on a new reader. The $25+ hardcover price can be a difficult hurdle in this market, partic for a new author. On the e-book side I see those sales as primarily incremental. There is the potential to introduce your work to a whole new market of readers that may not have otherwise been exposed to your book. I encourage my authors to promote their availability on e-books to ensure they are casting a wide net.”

On female/male protagonists:

* “Generally there needs to be a female protagonist somewhere in the story. The majority of readers are women! I prefer a female main character, but will certainly consider a story that has male protagonists — try to include a woman tho!”

On word count:

* Yes, 200,000 words will make an agent skeptical. However, if the writing is uber intriguing, they may consider it. But remember, reading that many pages is a massive time commitment. On the flip side, if you are writing a story you want published in its own volume, try and get over the 60,000 word hump. (We’re talking about novels and adult non-fiction, here.)

On historicals:

* “European history — from King Henry’s time period forward to Victorian times — it is fairly UK centric, but France is also popular. If you are writing straight women’s fiction/historical they generally prefer a well known historical figure to be included in the story.” She also likes books done in the Civil war era, but cautions that other periods can  be tough to sell.

On YA (young adult novels):

* Male protagonists are fine (even though the majority of YA readers are female). Protagonists should be in about the 15-19 age range. A little romance in your YA is welcome, but any genre is okay as long as you have a good hook.

On series:

* Sell the first book, first. Then worry about getting the rest of your series on a bookshelf.

On writing in multiple genres:

* She feels that is a positive thing and would not turn down a writer because of it. (This was where I began professing my love in the middle of the chat!)

On being a young (high school age) writer seeking literary agent representation:

* “If the query is well written and the plot intriguing I will take a look. It is not necessarily something I would suggest you stress [referring to your age], but it is worth mentioning — there are marketing benefits sometimes for the publisher.”

On query writing:

* “Make sure you capture the essence of your plot in a succinct and descriptive way — you need to distinguish your story in the query — we read many queries at one sitting generally.”

* Comparing to other titles and pinpointing your market in your query: “The market is probably most key in my view for non-fiction. In fiction you need to tell a wonderful story. I don’t really need you to tell me the target market in your fiction query. But I do want you to be clear on what your plot and story line is for comparison to other titles it can be helpful for fiction, so that I get an idea of the narrative style or voice, but not absolutely key.”

Additional hints:

* Don’t call her ‘Mr. Lyon.’

* She prefers e-queries.

* Don’t tell her why she would be a perfect match, tell her what your story is about.

* If she asks for a short synopsis, she feels that 3-5 double spaced pages is fine.

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If you would like to meet Kevan or her partner Jill Marsal at a conference or workshop, check out their Facebook fan page. And if you would like to query Kevan, find out more about their submission guidelines here.

Book Review: Zen and the Art of Writing

Book Review for Zen and the Art of Writing
By Ray Bradbury

Broken into essays on writing that spans over 19 years, this book is a gem of inspiration and passion. You can tell Bradbury loved to write. Truly. As in, leave a rip-roaring time to hurry home and put a story to paper. Zen and the Art of Writing covers subjects from feeding and keeping a muse, finding inspiration, using life in your stories, how the brain stores things for later, and of course, never giving up. The man gathered an impression rejection pile in his time. If you are looking for a little inspiration, the first few essays in this book are sure to do the trick.

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Book Review: Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity

Book review for Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity
By Hugh MacLeod

Hugh MacLeod, a cartoonist and blogger, provides succinct, proven advice on creativity. (Everything from ideas to money to selling out to being broke to friends to hobbies to jobs to props to approval to… you get the point. He talks about the life and what it truly is and what it truly isn’t.)

Not only does MacLeod provide an easy-to-read book full of nuggets, his practical, down-to-earth, tried, tested and true advice is real. Can I repeat myself more? No, probably not. So, carrying on… His common sense advice is probably a lot of what is already swimming around in your creative head. That is, if you listen to it. And that’s the thing. It can be really hard to listen to those little voices, ideas and theories, especially when they go against your neighbours and friends who are saying something to the tone of who-are-you-and-what-do-you-do-and-what-do-you-make-doing-it society. It’s good to hear from someone who has been there and have him share his thoughts on paper. And not only that, but to have bigwigs agent it, publish it and sell it. It gives a certain legitimacy to those swimming ideas rocketing through your brain. But most of all, it gives you the courage to not only believe it, but to follow it.

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Upcoming Chat With Scott Edstein

Scott Edelstein, publishing world guru, of HelpingWriters.com is joining us at AgentQuery Connect for a chat tonight, Tuesday October 20th, at 8p.m. Eastern.

Scott has worked as a professional writer, literary agent, editor, journalist, freelancer, ghostwriter, columnist, writing instructor, and has finally donned the title of publishing/writing consultant. Scott will be discussing: “tips for assessing your own writing, creating a professional book proposal (especially for non-fiction), and how to conduct proper market research for your proposal or novel. He will also be on-hand to answer your questions about everything related to the business side of publishing such as contract negotiation, how to comparing publishers and literary agents, and what it’s really like to sell your book to a commercial publisher..” (AQ Crew over at AQ) and much, much more.

If you have any questions about publishing and writing, drop in and join the chat. It is free, as always and sure to be informative. If you can’t make the chat, the transcripts will be available on the AgentQuery Connect site by Wednesday morning. (You need to be a member of AQ to join this chat, but the membership is free and painless.)

Please join us!

Writing Tips From Literary Consultant, Jeffrey Moores

Last Wednesday night Jeffrey Moores, former literary agent and current literary consultant, critiqued AgentQuery Connect members’ passages from their manuscripts over in the AQ chat room. He dispensed a ton of advice and tips, and 17 of those sweet writing tidbits I will share here.

1. If you can, skip using ‘first’ and ‘then’ to introduce action. It’s filler. Example: First she stood up, then she whirled around.

2. Instead of using two or three descriptor words, find one ‘good’ word that encompasses it all. His example: Instead of “sudden dead stop”, try “jerked to a stop”.

3. On adverbs (those words that end with ‘ly’): “Adverbs are usually weaker constructions that you could replace with more active verbs.” My example: He quickly ran to the store. He bolted to the store.

4. Use your verb choice to show your character. As Jeff asked, “how would grandma move across the room?” Wheel? Shuffle? Jeffrey added: “These are what I call “COMPOUND DETAILS”; those which show us an aspect of character development or theme or scene, while moving us forward at the same time.”

5. Don’t stuff a lot of details into one sentence. Do you have details you want to highlight for the reader? Focus on one per sentence and relate them to a theme or the character’s mood, etc. Justify why you are focusing on that detail. Save your details for the right moment.

6. When creating a scene, be careful how many images you throw at your reader. Allow time for them to sink in. Start with what is most pressing/important or sets the scene the best. What detail do you want to be the strongest? Give it the attention.

7. Delving into a character’s history needs to be warranted. There needs to be a reason for breaking the action in order to give some history.

8. When using words from another language or technical words that your reader may not know, add contextual clues so the reader can guess the exact meaning. Either that or use a narrator to explain what it is.

9. Hook your reader by putting the action first, then once you have them seeing a scene and wondering how your character ended up in this situation, move into telling, background, etc. to fill in the facts they need to know.

10. On other kinds of action… Actions causes reaction. Start by showing the action that propels the character and then move into the reaction. Show us what they see, then show us how they react. If something makes the main character yelp, show why they are yelping before they yelp.

11. Want to up the action? Speed things up? (Say you have a murder scene or a fight scene where you want to bring your reader to the edge of their seat and things to be happening one right after another.) Skip the ‘and’s linking those actions together. For example, instead of setting it up so this happened then that and this and this. Go for the jugular. This happened. That. This. That.

12. Early on, decide what your character’s level of smarts will be and what kind of things they will notice and in how much detail. Word choice and detail awareness create a character. For example, do they see erratic zigzags or 1 inch slices at regular intervals? Base the reaction and detail awareness on the character who is noticing the details.

13. Read aloud to hear the rhythms of you word choices, sentence lengths, etc. Anywhere you run out of breath or stumble, the reader will as well.

14. ‘Show’ when you can. Don’t tell the reader he was shocked or the mutilation was savage. Give us the details, let us draw the conclusion that this character is shocked and this is a savage mutilation.

15. Ensure your comparisons are equal. Don’t compare a cut to the bone to a papercut.

16. If you are using both second and third person point of view in your novel, break them apart so they are in different ‘scenes’.

17. You can start your novel with dialogue, just ensure that it isn’t between too many people and the scene and setting is immediately recognizable so you don’t lose your reader.

Advice From Literary Agent Sara Megibow

For those of you who missed the chat with Sara Megibow of the Nelson Literary Agency last Thursday, I’ve got some of the highlights here. However, if you want it straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, you can check out the transcripts here. (You must be an Agent Query member to view them. The good news is, it is free.)

A few highlights:

#1: Having troubles figuring out the genre of your story? Check out the bookstore. Figure out where it would be placed in the store and voila! As well, if your story’s most important aspect and focus is on the romance/relationship between the hero and heroine, it is likely a romance. If you aren’t sure between two genres, say urban fantasy and romance or romance and mystery…read a few books in each genre and see which yours leans towards.

#2: Did you know that some agents, when they get sample pages that they like, they go to Google to check you out? They look for a positive web presence. So don’t go bashing agents, the publishing word or discusses how hard writing is, etc. Make it professional, folks!

#3: Here are a few genres/ideas that are flying over Sara’s desk like mosquitoes in a swamp and may or may not be overdone: vampires, divorced women opening B & Bs, war survivor stories, YA where the hero speaks to the dead or has secret world-saving powers they didn’t know they had and of course, have to save the world. Now, just because these story ideas are common at the moment, it doesn’t mean she’s going to shred your query if your story is based on the above. See #4.

#4: The art of writing is very important. It is more important than the POV (character point of view the story is written from), topic, or even how fresh the story idea happens to be. Fresh, good, strong writing wins. I.e. copycat story ideas can work if the writing is fresh. Although a fresh story idea is always compelling, but it needs good writing to back it up.

#5: Don’t start your novel with one big flashback. Start where the story starts.

#6: If you have quotes in your story, you don’t need the rights to use that quote in a published work at the time of querying–the publishing house will acquire them when the time comes.

#7: Some argue that saying ‘completed’ and giving a word count is redundant when querying. However, if you are querying Sara, do say, “My completed novel X, Y and Z is 100,000 words.” She likes that. Her perfect query would start something like so: “I have a completed 100,000 word romance novel set in regency England.” And then add the pitch paragraph…etc.

For more information on Sara and the agency she works for, be sure to check out the agency website–especially if you are querying.

Online Chat With Literary Agent Michelle Brower

That was a fantastic chat over on Agent Query with literary agent Michelle Brower. It was nice, homey and cozy. As chat moderator there wasn’t any juggling cats, turtles or even anything flaming last night. Just straight forward good ol’ information about queries, genres, young writers, older writers, killer titles and so much more. Yeah, you missed it. But yes, you can check out the transcripts right here.

Half the scoop: Yes, you need to polish your writing before getting it out there. Generally the setting can distinguish the genre, but many some twists on a story such as a story set in elfland, NOT being about elves would be good. (The ideas are endless when you think like that! Wahoo!) Some titles rock more than others and yes, a killer title can help set your query apart. Yes, Michelle likes the one sentence hook, but definitely the story hook to be obvious in your query. There was so much great info, you need to read the transcripts yourself. It won’t take long and I promise you will learn a lot.

And did you know that landing an agent and getting the book sold and printed can be compared to having a baby? I kid you not. (Another reason to check out the transcript–I wouldn’t want to spoil the reason for the comparison for you. It surprised me. It might surprise you too.)

Michelle Brower, literary agent with Wendy Sherman Associates.

(A big thanks to Michelle for spending time with us over on AQ.)

Michelle is also blogging over at her agency website. Go check it out.