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 Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Keep Your Career Alive by Following the Reader
Posted by Jane
Today I had a wonderful conversation with Mr. Media (Bob Andelman) about Writer's Digest, the writing/publishing community, and the future ahead for writers. You can listen to the recording of the live show here.
While the conversation was initially sparked by this previous Mr. Media interview, we spent much our time discussing issues affecting writers.
Many newspaper/magazine/publishing outlets are disappearing—due to lack of advertising revenue, readership, and/or sales. So writers have to look for those places where readers are actually engaged and spending their money. That's where the money will follow for content creators, and I use that moniker very specifically. It's not about being a freelancer or journalist or author any more. Most often, it's about providing content, in a variety of forms, or adapting it for different audiences and purposes. Same goes for the future of publishing and media companies; they don't provide just a book or a magazine—they provide content or, you could say, a service wrapped around that content.
I like the idea of following the reader. There is a blog now called Follow the Reader that discusses some of these issues (in relation to book publishing), and you can follow Twitter conversations on the topic (#followreader).
Building Readership | General | Industry News & Trends
Tuesday, August 04, 2009 5:21:21 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  Trackback
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Sunday, August 02, 2009
Best Tweets for Writers (week ending 7/31/09)
Posted by Jane
 I
watch
Twitter,
so you don't have to. Visit each Friday or Saturday (or Sunday!) for
the week's best Tweets. (If I missed a great Tweet, leave
it in the Comments, or if you want more of a particular category of
Tweet, also comment.) Best of BestToday's writing must-read: a literary agent on word count - #pubtip via @bubblecow via @bjmuntain
@dbschlosser
One agent (@BookEndsJessica) muses on the impact of the recession on the publishing world
@BubbleCow
The pros and cons of hiring a professional publicist
@AuthorsNews
Wicked Clever Writing Advice from @mlvalentine - Looking for Publishing Advice? Why Offline Might be Better
@jesshartley
Online tools to help you publish your own book from @techradar
@TXBirder
Stand AloneIf you don't have publishing credits, don't say so. No need to draw attention. That you finished a novel is enough.
@jodimeadows
Querying a novel starting with a dream sequence is almost a guaranteed pass.
@MarleneStringer
When you bemoan lack of quality in publishing, do you realize you're biting the hand that may someday feed you?
@rachellegardner
Don't tell me your book targets young adults and adults. that's rare. who does it target more--where should it go in the store
@BookEndsJessica
If ms takes more than 5pp to hook me, it's not going to hook an editor. Don't say it gets good after first 50pp."
@MarleneStringer
Narrative nonfiction definition: nonfiction that illuminates through story (memoir, history, true crime, etc.)
@NathanBransford
Most FREE advocates and "Print is dead" pundits have no skin in the game; self-promoters with no responsibility for revenue or employees.
@glecharles
Distribution is primary value-add a publisher offers. Everything else is available to writers w/o an intermediary.
@glecharles
Authors: you do not have to account for *every* *single* *step* in a character action - reader will fill in basic blanks.
@papertyger
WRITING THE BLOCKBUSTER NOVEL: Zuckerman advocates Follett's method of "illuminating 1 character's interior in any given scene or chapter."
@KFZuzulo
Best of Twitter
Sunday, August 02, 2009 6:58:28 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) Trackback
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Thursday, July 30, 2009
Are You Too Ambitious for Your Own Good?
Posted by Jane
Ira Glass has some of the best advice I've ever read for writers, at
least in relation to great storytelling. He's said that you have to be
willing to be bad at what you do for a long time until you actually can
achieve the vision of perfection you have in your head. He even puts
himself out on a limb and offers recordings illuminating how bad he was at radio when he first started.
I
was reminded of Ira when my writer-friend Teresa Fleming shared with me
the following letter from Charles Dickens, where he responds to an
aspiring writer.
Tuesday, Feb. 5th, 1867.
DEAR SIR,
I
have looked at the larger half of the first volume of your novel, and
have pursued the more difficult points of the story through the other
two volumes.
You
will, of course, receive my opinion as that of an individual writer and
student of art, who by no means claims to be infallible.
I
think you are too ambitious, and that you have not sufficient knowledge
of life or character to venture on so comprehensive an attempt.
Evidences of inexperience in every way, and of your power being far
below the situations that you imagine, present themselves to me in
almost every page I have read. It would greatly surprise me if you
found a publisher for this story, on trying your fortune in that line,
or derived anything from it but weariness and bitterness of spirit.
On
the evidence thus put before me, I cannot even entirely satisfy myself
that you have the faculty of authorship latent within you. If you have
not, and yet pursue a vocation towards which you have no call, you
cannot choose but be a wretched man. Let me counsel you to have the
patience to form yourself carefully, and the courage to renounce the
endeavour if you cannot establish your case on a very much smaller
scale. You see around you every day, how many outlets there are for
short pieces of fiction in all kinds. Try if you can achieve any
success within these modest limits (I have practised in my time what I
preach to you), and in the meantime put your three volumes away.
Faithfully yours.
Yikes, right? (You can read more Dickens letters here.)
Here's the secret, though: If you're the writer, do you read this and think: I should just stop trying.
Or do you read this and think: He doesn't know how wrong he is!
Writers in training know they're not good, but they know they're getting better. And they go on to fight another day.
Photo credit: wallyg
Fun | General | Getting Published
Thursday, July 30, 2009 6:06:48 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) Trackback
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Tuesday, July 28, 2009
The Four Stages of Marketing & Promotion (and MWW Recap)
Posted by Jane
This past weekend, I spoke at the Midwest Writers Workshop in Muncie, Ind. It was my seventh year speaking there, and remains one of my favorite conferences. (Read my three recaps from last year, starting with Day 1.)
Among other things, I gave a two-part session on essential tools for online marketing and promotion—and did my best to explain what it means to use Twitter, Facebook, sites, and blogs to build meaningful relationships with an audience.
One of the key takeaways: you can't decide it's time to market and promote on the day of your book's release. By that time, it's far too late. You need to establish relationships and connections the day you decide you want a career as an author.
To help break this down into a manageable process for people, I outlined four stages to marketing and promotion, especially when you're entering any online community and trying to be an authentic member:
- Sign up, observe, and educate yourself (sometimes called lurking). Many people stay at this stage for a long time, simply soaking up good information.
- Participate. Start to make yourself known. This could be as simple as making status updates, posting photos or sample writing, or creating a profile.
- Share something and grow relationships. Focus on what you give people or what you can share that's of value. As you participate and share with others in the community, and do things for each other, relationships grow and develop.
- Ask for help. This is when you might actually put your connections to work as a means of soft or hard marketing. Maybe you want to tell people to pre-order your book on Amazon on a specific day. Or you're hoping that your network will spread the word about an upcoming event you're hosting. So you ask.
People who know you and trust you will be more likely to help you. That's why it's important to establish relationships far before you market and promote a product/service. The relationships have to be meaningful before they have value in a marketing/promotion effort, particularly online.
(Because most authors don't realize the importance of marketing/promotion until it's too late, the first annual Writer's Digest Conference is focused on these types of strategies and skills.)
Other notes from the conference:
- Dennis Hensley gave a rousing keynote about the "re-create 8" — or eight ways to be a better creative thinker (e.g., reduce, rearrange, expand, reverse).
- Eric Butterman, an expert freelancer, gave sessions on how to earn more money writing even in a down economy. He struck me as one of the most engaging and prolific freelance writers I've met in a very long time, who really knows his stuff. (If you can manage to find a workshop or class with this guy, jump on the chance.)
Many thanks to the MWW committee (I'm pictured above with members Alan, Jama, and Barb) for another lovely year. I highly recommend the event to all writers for its hands-on craft/technique sessions as well as access to literary agents.
Looking for more?
Conferences/Events | Getting Published | Marketing & Self-Promotion
Tuesday, July 28, 2009 5:01:58 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) Trackback
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Sunday, July 26, 2009
Best Tweets for Writers (week ending 7/24/09)
Posted by Jane
I
watch
Twitter, so you don't have to. Visit each Friday or Saturday (or Sunday!) for the week's best Tweets. (If I missed a great Tweet, leave
it in the Comments, or if you want more of a particular category of Tweet, also comment.) Best of BestReading 67 Overlooked Freelance Writing Niches
Great ideas!
@UrbanMuseWriter
100 Inspirational Posts to Make You a Better Writer
@flipbooks
Good post with a list of 25 book blogs [and how to pitch bloggers]
@BubbleCow
Top book marketing posts from @TonyEldridge
@thecreativepenn
Stand AloneSome people write great books but not killer queries; I give the sample pages more weight than the letter.
@rachellegardner
A good memoir requires all the writing ability of fiction, and all the platform & marketing of nonfiction.
@RachelleGardner
DON'T say “the book gets exciting in chap 5” or “the pace picks up toward the end.” Make it shine from page 1.
@rachellegardner
do not put in a query that you are still editing and revising. it's so much better if you are done and at work on the next thing
@BookEndsJessica
Writers, please research your genres for word count. I can' t sell a 39K word romance, nor a 165K mystery.
@MarleneStringer
Begging in a query is a real turnoff. "Please give me a chance!"
@RachelleGardner
Requests for fulls/partials, but no agent yet? Go back and work on craft & story. Take your time, get help.
@RachelleGardner
the sign of a really good writer isn't the first draft, but how well revisions are handled.
@BookEndsJessica
"Plot, in fact, is yearning challenged and thwarted," by Robert Olen Butler. Wish I had said that. Sublime.
@plotwhisperer
Best of Twitter
Sunday, July 26, 2009 7:24:24 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) Trackback
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Friday, July 24, 2009
Your Protagonist Must Have a Goal (Plot-Protagonist Secret #3)
Posted by Jane
Today's guest post is the final installment of a three parter, and comes from the experienced Jim Adam, who I met at a
recent Writer's Digest Editors' Intensive. Visit his homepage, or follow him on Twitter.
Warning: Harry Potter spoilers ahead
To
illustrate the importance of protagonist goal, let's look at an example
(again from the Harry Potter series) of a character who abandons the
role of protagonist while remaining the sole POV character.
At the end of Book 5, The Order of the Phoenix,
Dumbledore tells Harry the Chosen One Prophecy. According to this
prophecy, Harry is the only person able to destroy the genocidal
Voldemort. Dumbledore says that he should have told Harry the prophecy
sooner, but held back because of his desire to keep Harry safe and free
from additional burdens and worries.
We aren't done yet, but
note that warning flags have already gone up. By protecting Harry,
Dumbledore has minimized exactly those things that keep readers
immersed in a story! Safety and freedom from worry for the protagonist?
Since when was that a good idea in a work of fiction? There's a reason
why The Left Behind series chronicles the tribulations on Earth, not the big party in Heaven.
What
the end of Book 5 shows us is that Dumbledore isn't the right
Dumbledore for the Potter series. Whether his "mistake" indicates
soft-heartedness or a desire for personal glory, it doesn't matter.
Dumbledore has made life easier for Harry, and thus has undercut the
full potential of the story.
Continuing on, the very end of Book
5 shows Harry returning to his aunt and uncle's house where, for three
months, he'll be safe and free from additional burdens and worries.
[Insert the sound of screeching tires here.] Wait a minute! Dumbledore
just said this was a mistake, and now he repeats that same mistake?
Worse, Harry lets him get away with it?
What
we have here is a plot outline forcing our Hero to become a passive
little lamb. Harry goes where the plot outline tells him to go, he sits
on his hands when the plot outline requires him to, and he takes
decisive action only when the plot outline authorizes him to.
According
to Dumbledore, Harry has the ability to stop Voldemort from committing
genocide on the human race. (At this point, Voldemort is back and is
operating in the open.) Exactly what kind of protagonist would go off
and waste three months' time under such circumstances? A goalless
protagonist, that's who.
The goal of destroying Voldemort has
now become Dumbledore's, and the old codger pursues his goal
relentlessly. Unfortunately, he also pursues the goal mostly off
screen, leaving readers to watch Harry pursue various subplots:
Quidditch, romance, and questions like, "What is Draco up to?" and "Who
is the Half-Blood Prince?"
To see how insidious lack of goal (or in this case, the wrong goal) can be, let's look briefly at Book 6 of the Potter series, Half-Blood Prince.
Near the beginning of that book, when Harry learns that he's to be
captain of the Quidditch team, Hermione asks him, "What about the
Defense Association?" [DA is a student group, led by Harry, designed
to prepare students to fight against Voldemort.] Harry replies, "We'll
just disband it."
Oops. Although Voldemort is already killing
people left and right, Harry's goal is to be Quidditch team captain.
The Defense Association is a distraction from that goal, and so it must
go.
The plot outline has won and, as far as the main sequence of
events is concerned, Harry has become goalless. The price for this
isn't that some arbitrary rule of writing has been broken. The price is
that Harry becomes a heartless wretch. People are dying, and if he
applied himself, Harry might be able to stop at least some of that, but
he can't be distracted from his extra-curricular activities even for
such a lofty goal. This is the Hero of seven books?
A goalless
central character can easily lead to a mushy story, one lacking in
conflict and clear direction. (Imagine a goalless Dorothy wandering
about Oz, without even the Wicked Witch chasing after her.) In the
Potter series, however, the disturbance in Harry's world is both real
and impactful. Events move forward inexorably, and the books continue
to resemble stories. Only on closer inspection do we discover that
Harry is an inhuman widget.
As writers of commercial fiction, we need to make sure that:
- Our story has a protagonist.
- Our protagonist has a driving goal.
- Our protagonist has the right goal (prepare to fight Voldemort, not prepare to win the Quidditch trophy).
- Our
protagonist is the right protagonist—one who would accept wise advice
when given (follow the Yellow Brick Road), but one who doesn't just get
led around by parents, wise mentors, angels, friendly locals, etc.
The Overshadowed Protagonist
Speaking
of getting led around by the hand, the overshadowed protagonist seems
to be another common mistake we writers make. Consider our Wizard of Oz
example. Suppose that when Glinda arrives, instead of giving Dorothy
some sage advice, Glinda accompanies Dorothy to the Emerald City. The
result would be that Dorothy gets overshadowed, the dangers to her get
minimized, and—quite likely—the story gets bogged down in backstory and
exposition, as Glinda kindly fills in the poor girl on the history of
Oz, the habits of the Munchkins, the magical processes used in creating
the Tin Man, etc.
Although the real Dorothy is joined and aided
by other characters, although she remains ignorant of much of what is
going on about her, although she never becomes a witch or a Kung Fu
master, still Dorothy retains her goal and is able to pursue that goal
relentlessly. Her goal-driven behavior keeps the trip to the Emerald
City from being a travelogue, and it keeps the trip to the Wicked
Witch's castle from being an arbitrary sidetrack.
Despite
Dorothy's general ignorance, she always has enough information to
pursue her goal under her own impetus. This is the difference between a
protagonist and a widget:
If a protagonist has no clue how to pursue their goal, they might as well not have a goal.
This
is another key point that seems to trip us up as writers. For most
readers, "pursing a goal" means more than a protagonist waiting
patiently or wandering blindly, hoping for inspiration.
In the last book of the Potter series, The Deathly Hallows,
Harry is trapped in that sad state of wanting to destroy Voldemort but
not having a clue how to proceed. He moves one step at a time,
following a trail of breadcrumbs, never fully comprehending what it is
he's doing, or why. It seems an ignominious state for a Hero to be in.
However:
Ms. Rowling apparently realized that Dumbledore was too powerful to
keep around, and so killed him off. Unfortunately, she then allowed him
to manipulate events from beyond the grave, thus turning poor Harry
into a pair of granny glasses scuttling about in the woods. Ms. Rowling
got away with it, and maybe you can too, but why take the chance?
If
we give our main characters goals, make their achieving those goals as
difficult as we can, and then let them pursue their goals under their
own impetus, the result will be a more engaging story. And after all,
isn't that our goal?
Photo credit: TRAFFIK
Craft & Technique | Guest Post
Friday, July 24, 2009 10:53:03 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) Trackback
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Thursday, July 23, 2009
Does Your Novel Fall Victim to the Protagonist/Goal Switcheroo? (Plot-Protagonist Secret #2)
Posted by Jane
Today's guest post is the second installment of a three parter (ending Friday), and comes from the wise Jim Adam, who I met at a recent Writer's Digest Editors' Intensive. Visit his homepage, or follow him on Twitter.
Read Part I (How to Prevent Reader Boredom in Your Novel) here.
Some of us can't quite decide who we want our protagonist to be.
Sometimes this results in a story that contains a lot of POV
characters, but that isn't always the case.
In my novel, I had
one primary POV character for the first 250 pages. Then I switched to
another POV character for the middle 250 pages. And then I switched to
yet another POV character for the final 250 pages. As a result, no
single character was strong enough to tie the book together into a
cohesive unit. A master writer (or somebody with a body of fans
already in place) might have been able to get away with this sort of
thing. Unfortunately, I don't fit into either camp.
POV
switching is harder to pull off than professional writers like Stephen
King or George R.R. Martin make it look. Each POV character brings a
different goal with them, or at least a different slant on a goal, and
as a result, readers can easily find themselves several chapters into a
book, still unable to decide what the story is really about.
If
your story features a lot of POV characters, or if it switches around
between several protagonists along the way, make sure the story truly
requires it. For many of us, POV switching is a sign that we haven't
quite figured out what story we're trying to tell.
Goal Substitution
In
some stories, the protagonist stays the same but their goal changes. If not handled carefully, this can make a story feel like it's gotten
sidetracked, with the plot suddenly chasing after a will-o-the-wisp.
Sure,
plots don't have to be linear, but readers are liable to get confused
(or miffed) if we change either the protagonist or the protagonist's
goal without sufficient justification. In the movie The Matrix, Neo's
original goal is to find out what the matrix is. Partway through the
movie, Neo gets his answer. This forces him to adopt a new goal:
"Figure out how to fit into this new reality." Neo's goal change works
because it's integral to the flow of events, and thus it makes sense to
the audience.
For a protagonist to change goals on a whim,
however, or in response to some ancillary or trivial event: that's
going to be hard for many readers to swallow. Maybe it's a sign that
we're conflict averse, or maybe we think we're perpetrating a "surprise
twist." But whatever the explanation, the result may be the same: a
disappointed reader.
The flip side: if something happens (as
with Neo) to invalidate a protagonist's first goal (such as they
achieve that goal), the story needs to quickly provide the protagonist
with a new goal. Using our Wizard of Oz example, imagine Dorothy
showing up in Oz without any burning desire to get back home. Not only
does she wind up wandering around endlessly, now she doesn't even have
a meaningful goal.
One sign of a goalless protagonist is that
they get pushed about by events. Instead of acting, they react.
Even
if we throw life-threatening challenges at them, the challenges still
begin to seem disconnected and arbitrary. The result is generally that
the story looses its zip and, possibly, many of its readers.
A
goalless protagonist seems to be especially common in "translation"
stories where the main character is pulled out of a mundane life and is
suddenly transported into an amazing Other World. The Wizard of Oz and
The Matrix both show how to make such a premise work.
Many of
us who attempt translation stories, however, try to carry the story
with clever, amazing, and humorous interludes. The Munchkins,
Scarecrow, the sentient trees, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, Emerald City: we expect these elements to hold the reader's interest by themselves. Maybe they will, maybe they won't, but certainly Dorothy's story loses
something if she's wandering about goalless, just enjoying the scenery.
The protagonist's goal is the glue that holds a story together, giving events heightened purpose and interest.
In tomorrow's final installment, we'll look at examples that illustrate the importance of goal, as well as what happens in the case of an overshadowed protagonist.
Photo credit: nasebear
Craft & Technique | Guest Post
Thursday, July 23, 2009 5:13:10 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) Trackback
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Wednesday, July 22, 2009
How to Prevent Reader Boredom in Your Novel (Plot-Protagonist Secret #1)
Posted by Jane
Today's guest post is a three parter (ending Friday), and comes from the inimitable Jim Adam, who I met at a recent Writer's Digest Editors' Intensive. Visit his homepage, or follow him on Twitter. Warning: For any Harry Potter readers and/or movie fans who do not know the outcomes of Books 6 and 7, spoilers lie near the end.
Most people define plot as "the events that make up a story," and that's a fine definition. Except that for writers, it's a shortcut to the hot place. I've been burned by it, and as I read unpublished works by other struggling writers, I see them getting burned by it too.
Here's a better definition:
Plot is the set of actions that protagonists take to achieve their goal.
Wait, don't leave yet! I know you've seen this definition before and are bored by it. Maybe you have every right to be bored, but for many writers, the simplicity of this definition is misleading. We look at it and think, "Yeah, yeah, I learned that twelve years ago." But however simple the rule seems, many of us still haven't mastered it. We continue to churn out stories that are collections of disconnected events, stories that lack drive and intensity, and stories that wander off course.
What ties a series of scenes together, so that they feel truly connected?
- A common cast of characters?
- A common central conundrum?
- A common setting?
- Cause-and-effect relationships?
Even taken together, all of these elements aren't enough. Only by giving goals to key characters, and letting those characters drive the story, can we make a sequence of events hang together as an integral plotline.
Maybe it sounds easy, but I continue to struggle with this concept in my own writing, and based on what I'm seeing in various workshops, I'm not alone.
The One Sentence Plot Description
My editor tells me that I should be able to describe any novel in a single sentence of the form:
Protagonist must do X or else Y will happen.
Does that sound reductive? Too linear? Maybe it is. But for those of us struggling to get our act together, simpler is better. Sadly, for many of us, our one-sentence plot statement would be something like, "Gretta must do what she's told when she's told until I reach the desired word count."
Characters without strong goals become widgets, pushed about by our word processors. They meekly subvert their personality to the predefined plot outline. As a result, they come across as passive, unreliable, dull.
The Right Protagonist for the Job
Consider The Wizard of Oz. When Dorothy steps into the Land of Oz, her eyeballs bulge. Goodness, they certainly don't have flowers like these in Kansas! As she wanders about, a soap bubble lands and out steps Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. Glinda tells Dorothy, "To get back home, follow the Yellow Brick Road. That'll take you to the Wizard, and he'll be able to help you."
Dorothy straightens her back and stomps her foot. "I most certainly will not! Go visit a Wizard? Ha. What do you take me for?" And so Dorothy tramps off into the wilderness, carefully avoiding the Yellow Brick Road whenever it comes into sight. A thousand pages later, she's still at it, no closer to getting home than when she started.
The problem here isn't that our shadow Dorothy lacks a goal, but that the author has selected the wrong Dorothy for the story. This alternate Dorothy's hard-headedness makes her look like a dolt, someone that readers will have a hard time identifying with, sympathizing with, or caring about.
The more cynical reader, of course, sees this alternate Dorothy for what she really is: a convenience for the author, who wants to write an epic story but can't be bothered to come up with a true plot, and so makes do with an episodic travelogue.
If a protagonist (or villain) has the path to victory laid out for them, and then turns away from it for some arbitrary reason, the story loses intensity. Some readers may even lose their faith in the story's trustworthiness.
At the risk of being pelted with bludgers, I'm going to use Harry Potter to illustrate this point. In the Potter series, at the end of Book 6, Half-Blood Prince, the evil Voldemort has won. Voldemort's nemesis (Dumbledore) is dead, and Voldemort's Death Eaters are inside Hogwarts itself—locked in battle with Dumbledore's loyal followers.
Voldemort's path to victory is clear. He need only join the fight and he can carry the day. Instead, his Death Eaters flee Hogwarts, and for the next three months, Voldemort quietly sits on his hands so that Harry can have his traditional summer vacation at home.
In this case, the villain is forced to turn his brain off precisely because the protagonist of the story isn't the right protagonist. Harry is neither ready, willing, nor able to take up Dumbledore's mantle. If Voldemort played his cards, Book 6 would end with Harry Potter dead, and Book 7 of the series would vanish.
The arrangement here reminds me of a Warner Brothers cartoon: A wolf and a sheepdog walk up to a time-clock and punch in. "Morning, George," the sheepdog says. "Morning, Ralph," the wolf says. They move to their respective positions, the 8 a.m. whistle blows, and they begin feuding over the sheep. When the 5 p.m. whistle blows, they clock back out and walk home together amiably.
When a story manipulates key characters, forcing them out of character in order to achieve something the writer considers important, the result can become farcical. The best way we can avoid this fate is to:
- Make sure our key characters have solid goals that they pursue vigorously.
- Make sure our protagonist is well-matched (both in ability and in temperament) to the obstacles he's expected to overcome.
If the obstacles aren't great enough, reader boredom will likely set in. If the obstacles are too great, we'll be forced to cheat in order to reach a happy ending. Of course, both the first Oz book and the last Potter book cheat. The Wizard of Oz suddenly decides that witches melt if touched by even a drop of water; The Deathly Hallows introduces three godlike magical artifacts to get Harry across the finish line. What this shows, I think, is that if we have a strong story, nothing's going to stop us. However, for those of us with boxes full of rejection slips or an interest in producing the very best story possible, we need to carefully match our protagonists to the obstacles they face, and vice versa.
Photo credit: principia aesthetica
Craft & Technique | Guest Post
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 10:00:16 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) Trackback
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Monthly News from Glimmer Train
Posted by Jane
Glimmer Train has
just chosen the winning stories for their May Short Story Award for New
Writers competition. This competition is held quarterly and is open to
any writer whose fiction hasn’t appeared in a print publication with a
circulation greater than 5,000. No theme restrictions. Word count
range: 500-12,000. Their monthly submission calendar may be viewed here.First place
Noa
Jones of New York, NY (pictured above), wins $1200 for “Brother Ron”. Her story will be
published in the Fall 2010 issue of Glimmer Train Stories, out in
August 2010.
Second place
Farley Urmston of Sherborn, MA, wins $500 for “Pretending”.
Third place
Benjamin Janse of Jamaica Plain, MA, wins $300 for “The Great Storm”.
A PDF of the Top 25 winners can be found here.
Deadline approaching!
Very Short Fiction Award: July 31.
This competition is held twice a year and is open to all writers for
stories with a word count range not exceeding 3,000. No theme
restrictions. Click here for complete guidelines.
--
If
you didn't know, Writer's Digest partnered with Glimmer Train to
publish two compilation volumes of the best stuff from their Writers Ask newsletter. Be sure to check them out.  
General | Getting Published
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 9:47:33 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) Trackback
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Tuesday, July 21, 2009
5 Elements of Query Letters
Posted by Jane
 Earlier this year, I taught an online class where I offered "extreme makeovers" on query letters. To help ensure everyone took away some concrete advice, every attendee was invited to submit a 1-page query for review. It was a successful workshop, so we're repeating it again this Thursday. In preparation for the workshop, I take the query letters that are submitted and categorize their basic elements into "good", "OK", and "needs revamped." The five elements I look at are: - Personalization. What effort has the writer made to ensure this letter has been customized for a particular editor, agent, or publishing house?
- Hook. How effective is the hook? Is it too long? Is it clear? Does it cover everything an editor/agent needs to know to say, "Yes, I've got to see more!"
- Bio. For nonfiction, people often slip up and don't emphasize the right aspects of platform or credentials. For fiction, it can be difficult to know what to mention, if anything, when you're unpublished. So I always give examples showing the best-case scenario, as well as examples when you rely on your hook and overall charm or professionalism to carry you to the finish line.
- Basic info. Have you included the necessary information about title, genre, word count?
- Opening/closing. There are lots of red flags and stumbles that can make it onto the page. Some aren't deal breakers, others are. I show examples of both.
I speak at conferences frequently about query letters, but seeing real examples of what's working and not working can be the best way to learn how to fix your own. Go here for the link to register ($99); after the event has concluded, you'll have access to the recording for a year. Plus I'll share a recap of the event on this blog, offering some takeaways for everyone. In the meantime, here are some excellent query resources. Essential Blogs
Great Posts From the Guide to Literary Agents blog
Want to know more about upcoming online events? Click here for more.
Conferences/Events | Getting Published
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 12:38:14 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) Trackback
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