Personalising Queries

So I’ve been hounding my CP’s lately about personalising queries. I spend a fair amount of time researching agents to see if they are a good fit for my MS. Sometimes, I find agent interviews that help me understand what they are after and can mention these at the start of my query. But often, when I look at successful queries online, they get straight to the point.

And then when I do find a compelling reason, like they are after a strong female protagonist, I worry that I’m sounding too arrogant. Oh, really, Lorelle? Well we will be the judge of that…So should we be limiting our opening sentence to include books they currently represent? But even then, we have to be careful that we aren’t insinuating that ours will compare.

So there is a fine line between gaining the edge and falling over it, and I’d love to know what writers think about personalising a slush-pile query.

Do you have success without it? Do you find you have a template that is successful and adaptable to most agents for that first sentence?

I don’t have a problem diving straight in, but you do hear that agents are wary of a query that looks like it has been sent to 50 agents at once.

Of course, I use the agent’s name in the salutation, but is that, as well as meeting submission guidelines with sample pages etc, enough? Or in this day and age of quick and accessible communication, is brevity beauty rather than beast?

When writers edit – why we keep missing errors

I was pretty harsh on hindsight about 9 months ago in one of my posts. I might have mentioned the word hindsight alongside words like acid, fire and brimstone. I may have also likened it to a pointy-edged object. But I’ve grown lately, and I’ve come to understand that there are reasons I miss editing errors the 1st, 10th and even 40th time around.

I think it has something to do with my capacity to hold new information. Now writing veterans don’t have the same learning curve as I, but there are probably still moments where they fly over an error because they can write without having to be so conscious of mistakes. It’s the nervous performer who often succeeds.

But in my case, when my information funnel is full, I can only fit more in when the contents start filtering through the bottom. And the bottom of my funnel is pin sized and the information is like mud….

So I’m going to take it easy on myself this time around. I wanted to berate myself for sending off queries too early. But I had done my research, am continuing to research and am learning from research. So each round, I’m going to tweak – change the first paragraph of my MS, change my query blurb, take out unneccesary words and scrutinise further.

Why didn’t I do this first time? Well, I did – as far as I could tell. But with queries looming over my head and time dragging on from my final draft ( I needed that belly laugh) I had to send those queries out.

Have you even felt that?

And now that they are out, I feel like the bottom of my funnel is now marble sized, and with that extra room, I can see things I couldn’t before.

Surely, I’m not the only one…

 

 

 

Critiques: The truth hurts, but it will gain you entry into the Feedback Protection Program

I made the decision a month ago to enlist professional assistance with my query.  I felt I was gathering conflicting feedback on all aspects of selling my MS, where the only certainty was confusion.

Over the past six months, I’ve been building my own understanding of the submission process, querying and pitching. I’m not going to lie: it’s been a tough six months. But it’s six months that I will never have to endure again. Of course, I’ll always be learning. But that learning curve, like a child introduced to the complexities of the English Language and school bullies, will never be so steep again.

I needed a gauge. A reference by which I could work from. Rewriting and rewinding and spinning and freakin’ cartwheeling ideas in my query was only costing me time on whine and money on wine.

But here’s the thing. Unless you’ve been round the block a few times and caught up with the cool kids for a smoke, you might be surprised at how your work is viewed objectively. It’s daunting. And demoralising. And yeah, I’ve swallowed the subjective angle to make myself feel better. But I needed to accept that there are aspects of my MS, query or synopsis that are confusing and need work.

So, just as an alcoholic has to admit  that they have a problem in order to progress, I needed to accept how far along I was in the process. And just like those brave alcoholics, I have my own support network: The Feedback Protection Program.  And without my honest critique partners who support me when I’m down, I would need a drink also.

So  initially, it set me back days. And after those days of WTFing, I realised it’s going to set me back months.  But if I’m lucky enough to get a partial or a full request, I don’t want there to be any surprises that I didn’t plant throughout the plot.

And that could set me back years.

 

 

 

 

When nothing shocks us anymore

Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, Tom Cruise in Rock of Ages, just Rock of Ages. . .  Is there anything that will shock us these days? And it’s not just the material available in books, it’s the reality we’re faced with as a world. Atrocities and destruction have always been present. But today, with media, we get a bird’s eye view. Are we becoming desensitised?

And, what does this mean to writers?

1) Your unique concept may be as unique as a teenager cuddling a One Direction pillow after a Facebook frenzy.

You’ve heard it all before: it’s been done before, and then again as a space opera where the MC is a 105 year old goat herder. And I know, your goat herder has been raised on the blood of sacrificial virgins, and their goat herder hasn’t. I’m not suggesting you change your concept or try to create a new one; I still believe in write what you want to write. But we need to accept that this ship has been sailing for a while. And the more writers there are, the more likely it is we are all going to drown in an abundance of overflowing ideas as we hug each other for safety and support rather than grab the damn life raft.

Which brings me to:

2) Selling yourself – with clothes on/off depending on whether you like to write in the nude.

The writing community is so supportive, but we have to accept the reality that we have to work hard to differentiate ourselves. Maybe it’s important to clarify that we can do this with each other rather than in spite of each other. Whether it’s a twitter contest, a standout query or a title that hits the spot. You might have to sell your book as ‘Honey I Blew Up The Kid’ meets ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer.’ And although you’ve almost run out of words for a tweet, you’re creating a unique idea that might have people thinking, “How much money would you have to pay Buffy to kiss Rick Moranis?”

3) Characters you love vs characters you could take or leave, or leave for dead.

I’ve heard that for a death to make impact, you have to invest in that character as a reader. But how about investing in the character that’s left standing? The MC’s mother dies after years of toiling and trouble. Make that double! And to feel empathy for that MC, you want to be thinking, “I want to be here to see how he/she get through this,” not, ” Why the hell wasn’t it them!”

4) Building up suspense: charge for the milk and they may want the whole cow, too.

This one has been the latest eye-opening addition to my revelations repertoire. Being a lover of urban fantasy, I’m always conscious of getting to the action. Get to those reveals, get people interested in your concept. But how about the get-people-hooked-by-suggesting-something-and-hinting-at-this-and-that-and-revealing-at-the-end strategy. It looks long and cumbersome, but trust me that counts as one word when you’re pitching, but it might be that we need to work harder on suspense and less on the action. Look at ‘Flowers in the Attic.’ How long did we get dragged through the mothers despicable behaviour, wondering whether she could possibly be that evil? We were all on that journey, knew there was something going on. But we all keep watching, waiting for the reveal.

So, we may have to work harder, but isn’t that generally what makes us more proud of what we do? And doesn’t that also translate in our work?

Query Lesson Part One: hook and voice breakdown

And I mean breakdown as in, ‘Let’s break this down for everyone,’ not ‘Breakdown? Excuse me, who are you and how did you get into my house? Oh, you’re my husband? YOU THINK THAT MAKES IT OKAY!??’

I’ll try and make this as brief as possible. I’ve been practicing hard for this post. 75K words became a 1-2 page synopsis, a 150-word blurb, a 35-line logline, then a 140-character twitch ( my name for a twitter pitch. Fitting, don’t you think?)

And I’m going to post on this again after I’ve been querying agents for a while – process what I’ve learned. I hear you, though. If you’ve done all your research, there should be little to learn. Well, we know there’s a difference between a hook and a hook, just like there’s a difference between a happy ending and a happy ending. You know what I’m sayin’….

So we all know the basics. I’m not going to just hand over the curriculum, the same as I wouldn’t let you into my house until you’ve offered me a drink. You heard me correctly.

I’m going to offer a piece of advice that will have you curling your lip at the screen, rushing from the house through closed windows, and hissing while covering your eyes as though I’ve cracked a blind open and it’s vampire week in the editing process.

To get your hook on the right track, it might help to keep track of twitter and blog pitching competitions – even if you don’t compete. Why? It can really help with your hook. Monitoring the competitions really highlighted what my hook was lacking, why my concept, as awesome as I thought it was, will be overlooked: voice. And it might just be my ability to focus on information that I’m interested in and forgetting things like, ‘it’s time to pay the mortgage,’ but I think agents seem to appreciate ‘voice’. If you look at the hooks that do well, the twitches that get traction, they have this way of pulling you in with their voice. I’m in awe; I am still unable to compete as I should.

How do you get voice into that hook? Great question! I guess like when you sleep in past 6am and realise your kids are at your mum’s, you know when it’s not there.

So I finally have my hook with voice. And where does it go? Thank you to some great critiques, I know to sit it proudly up top, before my blurb to give a little taste of what’s to come. Because if I say my book has light humour and darkness, but the hook doesn’t reflect this, won’t we have to go back to rehashing the whole ‘show vs tell’ debate? Although I believe this may be one of those arguments where we all get ready to sit on one side of the see-saw and look at the other side waiting for someone brave enough to sit on the other side…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Approaching agents online: is there a protocol?

If you have done your homework, you know that there is an accepted way of approaching an agent with your query. This process takes a long time ( in my opinion), and it is only once you have all the information in hand that you can look back and think, ‘Ah, I get it now. Why did this take me so long?’

Not only is there a structure for your query to follow, but there is an etiquette surrounding your approach, your response and your professionalism. No different than a resume for a job really. I mean, if you didn’t tick the right boxes and if you didn’t hold the experience the employee is after, they would pass you over for the job, right? And most times, they wouldn’t call you to tell you that, or to offer advice on where you went wrong. Submitting a query should be no different; it’s not as though we are approaching the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld…follow the rules, don’t be too chatty, get to the point, move to the side and wait.

With pitching competitions becoming so prevalent online, and writers following agents on twitter for information on the literary industry,  are we breaking down the barriers? Are literary agents more approachable? Do we have a more direct route to information?

I follow agents on twitter, and I believe I have only responded to one of their tweets. In my head, I changed my tweet a number of times, resulting in a much wittier response that would never be read. My clothing can’t withstand that sort of sweating pressure again. I could just tweet sans clothing, but I would prefer to withhold a response.

But could I approach them directly regarding query information? Regardless, this is what I would do after: Oh my God…Did I use the conjunction comma in the correct place? Do they prefer the oxford comma? DID I JUST SAY ‘SHOULD OF’ INSTEAD OF ‘SHOULD HAVE’??

In most cases, information on their querying process is available on websites, publishing sites, query sites. So should we feel comfortable in treating them as we would a fellow writer we follow, an author we follow?

 

Twitter pitches gave me the pitching twitches

Have you ever seen stage make-up in the full day of light? On stage, with all the stripping lights, it looks fabulous. But when you see that same make-up on someone just walking around during the day, it’s confronting – too much. This is kind of like my introduction to twitter pitching. Pitches I believed too fantastical, too in-your-face, ended up being the life of the twitter party. In other circumstances the pitch might look out of place – like the party animal whose outlandish behaviour  at a frat party is encouraged, but that same behaviour would be frowned upon should they turn up to a job interview wearing a beer-chugging hat. But are twitter pitches as one-dimensional as this? Or like the beer-chugging frat boy who calls his mummy on Sundays and ruffles the hair of his youngest niece, is there a depth and intensity that you never saw until you gave them more than a passing glance? Yes, of course 🙂 Twitter pitching might have given me the pitching twitches, but it was a great sensation: it made me feel something again.

I loved the way my friend Jean would get all *shifty eyed* when we spoke about involving other people into the world of my book. Well now, not only am I giving the milk away for free, I’m throwing in a milking station and jean-short wearing cowboy – who likes to massage . . . It was sobering to throw my story in people’s faces 24 times in 12 hours and have people scan past it. It made me realise that there are a lot of great stories out there and that they sound a hell of a lot more interesting than mine. And it made me realise my hook is more just ‘slightly-bent’ and that it’s going to need some serious shaping to latch anyone with its curvy goodness. That can never be a bad thing 🙂

I don’t want to get into what makes a great twitter pitch; people do this so much better than I. (Check them out one day. The ones I tried are #pitchMAS and #SFFpit, but there was #pitmad a few days prior ) I do have two opportunities with agents wanting to see my query, so that was pretty awesome. And after spending two months building my query and then moaning because I couldn’t send it out to agents this close to Christmas, it was nice to finally send those first two queries and have that feeling of hope resurface. Because isn’t that what keeps us going? As corny as hope is as a concept, I would rather have the possibility of rejection, than no possibility at all. It’s exciting – like when you know you shouldn’t call the love interest who shows little interest in you, and you know they won’t return your call. But don’t you just love that feeling in the pit of your belly that makes you feel alive?

 

 

Selecting a literary agent: enjoying the power for the first and last time.

I don’t mind a good giggle. If I get a belly laugh, I consider it a great day. Explaining how agents and publishers work to my Dad gave me a good giggle. Not a belly laugh, though; I’m not that disrespectful to the industry. So, it was a good day, not a great one.

Although I’ve been having a hard time summarising for my blurb, I think I did okay at summarising the submission process within the literary industry. I guess I didn’t need a snappy first sentence to be judged on, he allowed me more than 20 words before his attention was lost and he decided to speak to me even though I haven’t been writing since my brain could form creative ideas. That’s a good quality in a Dad. He also used to pick me up late at night from the city when taxi’s wouldn’t. Another great quality in a Dad. Now if I could only get him to become a literary agent, build up a network of contacts and get a handle on the publishing industry, I would have the best agent ever: one that would drive me home after events and make sure I’m tucked up safe in bed. I think they exist.

So back to the good giggle. When he paraphrased back the writer, agent, publisher relationship, I was not only proud of his listening skills, I was excited that it sounded as crazy out loud as it did in my head. Just like my MS. But that’s okay because I’m aiming for crazy.

Be that as it may, crazy or cockameme, this is how it works and I will respect that. I respect loads of people that I giggle at, and with, and it’s okay as long as they know it and I can handle them giggling at my expense. I’m sure loads of people will be giggling at my attempts at submitting my work, but then again, I hear these people are too tired to laugh – or maybe that’s why they laugh: they are so overworked they’ve gone loopy. That’s the agent I want. Hardworking, loopy and can drive me around. I’m narrowing this down…

I’m at the part of my post-submission process where it’s time to select an agent. This is pretty exciting; it will be the first and last time I’ll be on this side of the selection process. After I send these off, the power will be lost forever. So I need to enjoy it. But how do I select an agent that’s right for me? What would ensure they are on my top ten list?

When sending queries, your opening line should mention why you chose them specifically and that you have done your research. It would be nice if you could just mention that they accept your genre, but you need to go beyond this, I believe. But stalking author acknowledgements for the agent they thank… Is that the best way to select them? Do they want another similar author on their books where they will need to pitch you both against each other in a particular market?

Publishers may only have one opening for a book of a certain genre. So if that agent has two of me on their books, wouldn’t me and my other me be fighting for that spot? So based on that, is my excel spreadsheet full of agents of my favourite authors only good for polishing up on my basic excel skills?

I have the books and websites where I can research agents, the questions you would ask if they want to represent you. But other than saying: you fit the brief because you are an agent with a license to…well no license actually. How do you set them apart? Who will be my taxi-driving, great-listening, loopy hard worker?

 

 

How important are your writing credentials? When your bio is like b.o.

I like to think that I’m like dark chocolate.  A little bitter, but with too much cocoa, the bitterness is so overpowering you decide to stop eating it. So my bitterness level is like cocoa. Sometimes, I’m a 70% cocoa, sometimes I push the 90% boundary, and other times, I’m straight dark chocolate.

Today I’m straight dark chocolate. Maybe, 50% cocoa instead of your usual 45%; I do like to push the boundaries. But either way, in Lorelle terms, I’m standard dark chocolate.

I’ve been dissecting the query letter. After all my post-submission options, I’m hunting agents, which means I’m dissecting queries. Which takes months. So they deserve their own post. Not this one. Today I can say, and only today,  ‘Begone, Agents.’ – but don’t go too far. I will need you in about 345 days when I finish my blurb.

So I get to the Bio. And it hits me. What the fudge ( dark chocolate fudge of course) ! All this time, I’ve been glossing over the bio because it sits at the bottom and has none of me in it – no ‘ I ‘ in it – so my bio may as well be called a b.o. And yes, it stinks.

Credentials. How important are they? If I have none, should I pack up my little keyboard and let my cats use it as a bridge between two chairs? It becomes their new chair?

When you apply for a job, you take note of the work experience required and you only apply if you have the necessary credentials. Why would it be any different in the literary world?

In a job interview, when you are asked about your weaknesses, you know that you have to say something to the effect of: I’m too dedicated; I spend too much time perfecting my work; I have trouble delegating.  A weakness with that positive spin. You just know that you should answer in that way. There’s a technique, an understanding.

Publishers and agents can spot amateurs; there are red flags, apparently. If I’m entrenched in the industry, considered one of them, I would know not to apply without such credentials? And being entrenched as such, I would have been racking up such achievements without it being a box that needs to be ticked?

Should they say, you shouldn’t apply if you haven’t won or placed in a writing competition, or had some piece, however small, published? Or the fact that I need to ask, means that I shouldn’t apply?

 

Pitch this! My query research

I prefer for my blogs to be article in quality, but I have so much to say I have to cut to the chase. No opening, no pictures, just the facts. Well, the maybes.

I thought there was a standard with queries – a formula that I could follow that was adopted universally. I am a woman of rules and black and white lines that cannot be crossed. I need a framework to work with before the only frame I’m associated with is one of the Zimmer variety. I understand there are  hard and fast dos and don’ts with querying – and I’m glad there is at least that, because it means I can discard some avenues. Like with grammar. You can play around with whether you use the oxford comma – as long as you are consistent – but there is no question whether someone’s name earns a capital.

I have my head around the opening line, the researching of agents so that you can personalise  the query, the need to mention word count and genre, what you should and shouldn’t include in your bio. These always seem pretty clear. Although when I read things like: your opening sentence should be one line – just add this, this, this, and oh, this.

Where the most work lies for me is the pitch. Which part is the pitch? The whole thing? The logline? The hook? The 1-3 sentences that sums up my book? The opening sentence? ( Is this where my logline goes????) The blurb-like synopsis that follows my logline?

So, I have come across the following summaries:

A logline – one sentence ( although someone did mention two sentences..which confused me)

In my original logline, I reveal the whole concept of the book. Should I hold back and make it more general? Will they read this and then say, well I don’t need to bother being hooked now because you just served me the bait on a bed of seaweed, accompanied with a glass of brine?

This is something you can tell your friends, right? When they ask that really personal question, ” What is your book about?”

If I told them my original logline – the one I would pitch to agents –  there would be no suspense for them in the first quarter of the book.

Does that mean I don’t use this as my logline?

So I can make it general: Glory, an urban fantasy of 74000 words,  is the story of a girl who is forced to accept her role in a supernatural life when she discovers she has no control over her emotions uncovering evil.

That’s pretty general, but I can tell people that and they know the type of book it would be.

I can reveal more – but it gives the whole mystery away…..Not telling!

A 140 character or less pitch

Twitter, I’m guessing?   Now I get it. So glad I am nutting this out with my post!

I’ll put this one on the back-burner.

A one to three sentence summary

When I tried this, I still ended up revealing the concept of the book that is a mystery up until 25%. It’s certainly not what I would show a reader. I have yet to compile this one. I still don’t know if you reveal everything here. I’m losing it!

A blurb-like summary.

Is this synonymous with  the 1-3 sentence summary? I have seen mention of three to ten sentences here…

This, I understand. They say blurb and I know that this is what a reader will see. But I have seen queries where they don’t use language like I would see on the back of a book. ie they are really abrupt and to the point.

Like this: John wakes up to find his wife dead. But she isn’t dead, she’s just sleeping. Thankfully, he has the cure for that and kills her. When he takes her body to add to the rest, he notices that his favourite one is missing. He didn’t even tell Max about that one. How did he know where this one was hidden? John will not rest until Max has returned the body to it’s rightful place, but will Max hand it over when he finally has the only thing John has ever wanted?

That’s not my book lol That’s not any book – thank God! But it doesn’t sound blurby to me.

Blurbs to me are like:

Mae never thought there was anything strange about the three Sinclair brothers living across the street while growing up. Her crush on Gage Sinclair was normal teenager behaviour – even if he happened to be the middle child – but when Gage returns after a four-year disappearance acting cold and distant, Mae will learn there is nothing coincidental about their childhood association.

When Mae’s emotions begin to spike to uncontrollable levels, she realises she has bigger problems than Gage’s indifference. And losing consciousness after barrelling towards a stranger on auto pilot, sensing evil, only adds to her concerns. Gage is involved. He must be, because it’s only this incident that peaks his interest in her again.

As Mae struggles to makes sense of her emotions and the role she is forced to  play in a secret life of murder, she will have to decide if working closely with Gage will protect her from danger, or whether Gage is the very danger she should be seeking protection from.

This is mine. I worry it’s too general, too mysterious.

A 300 word synopsis

This is where I was getting my wires crossed a few months back. I thought this was the pitch in a query, where you held back enough to entice the agent. I think that if a synopsis is requested for this amount of words, it includes the whole plot, but is to the point, including main characters and main story – no sub-plots.

A detailed 1-2 page synopsis

This one is fine. Probably requested after interest has been shown with your query. More detailed than 300 word synopsis. One agent in Austalia mentioned 300-1000 words.

So you can see why I was confused a few months back with regards to what goes into what and what is revealed.

 

I think that what I will do is something like this in terms of structure.

Dear [full agent name]:

Paragraph one: Opening sentence – showing research of agent and why I’m approaching them

                             Logline – including word length and genre.

                             Maybe intended audience and writing style here.

Paragraph two: Blurb-like summary

Paragraph three: Bio

Thank for time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Me!

Please jump on board if you see I’m off track somewhere 🙂