X = 7 Reasons Agents Might Give Your First Chapter an X

The dreaded first chapter, or even the first paragraph of your novel. That's all the time you have to impress an agent into asking for more. So here are some tips on what not to do, unless you like seeing how fast an agent can lose interest in your novel.

Previously, I attended the Writer Idol Event at Boston Book Fest. It was not for the faint of heart, but for those willing to brave public ridicule, it was a great way to get helpful feedback.

(How to Support an Author’s New Book: 11 Ways For You to Help)

This is how it worked: An actress picked manuscripts at random and read the first 250 words out loud for the panel and the audience. If at any point a panelist felt he would stop reading, he raised his hand. The actress read until two or more panelists raised their hands, at which point the panel discussed the reasons they stopped, or in cases where the actress read to the end, they discussed what worked. Helene Atwan (Director of Beacon Press) and agents Esmond Harmsworth, Eve Bridburg, and Janet Silver (all from Zachary Shuster Harmsworth) served on the panel.

These panelists were tough! I’d say less than 25% made it to the end of the passage. Here are some of the common reasons panelists stopped reading.

1. Generic beginnings: Stories that opened with the date or the weather didn’t really inspire interest. According to Harmsworth, you are only allowed to start with the weather if you’re writing a book about meteorologists. Otherwise, pick something more creative.

2. Slow beginnings: Some manuscripts started with too much pedestrian detail (characters washing dishes, etc) or unnecessary background information. 

Click here to read tips 3-7 at Writer's Digest.

Click here to enter for a chance of winning Angel Eyes until the 30th!

H = How to Spot Contest Scams

Writing contests are a way for writers to get their stories and their names out there. And most contests with a decent payout have an entry fee. But, how do you know that the contest you just submitted your story and your money to is legit? It's hard to tell, but there are a few red flag you should know about.

Have you ever been scammed by a writing contest?

I run a short story competition at Writers’ Village, so I have an interest in asking. We attract around 1200 entries each year, and with total prize values of £1500 ($2400), we’re edging into the big league. So I get angry when I hear about contests that don’t play by the rules and give all story awards a bad name.

Here’s a recent example.

One of my contestants told me he was about to submit an entry to a contest that we’ll call GeeWhiz Stories (not its real name). The contest announced total prize values of £4000 ($6400). That’s top money! At a £10 ($17) entry fee, it would need to attract 400 entries just to cover its prizes. Yet with low page rank, its website couldn’t be getting much traffic. Nor did its name appear in the web’s top contest directories, like Ask About Writing, Places For Writers, or Compete Around The World. So how did it attract over 400 entries annually and fund its prizes?

It didn’t. GeeWhiz was a scam.

Read John Yeoman's five tips for spotting rotten contests.

Enter The Eye of the Sword Giveaway until the 14th!

Weekly Roundup for 2/4/13

Did you enter the contest I mentioned last week? I did. Sent it in less than two hours from the deadline. I do hope my email made it through on time. If you entered, tell me in the comments! I'd love to find out.

But you're here for some useful links. Today's post features several helpful articles all the from the same person. I became "acquainted", to a certain degree, with John Yeoman through a fantasy group I joined on Yahoo ages ago. I've posted links to his site before, but I thought I'd mention this time the quarterly writing contest he runs. It costs fifteen pounds (he lives in the UK) to enter but you get personalized feedback no matter if you win or not. Consider looking into it! Here's more information. If you don't win, this might be a helpful post.

John posts many articles on wooing readers, and this one is no exception.

Here's his take on how to write a bestseller. Don't think it has anything to do with writing just anything you like.

A while back, he ran a mini-contest for the worst sentence in a published book. Want to know the winners? They certainly are hilarious!

And finally, try downloading and reading his free ebook "21 Wicked Ways to be a Better Writer" for 20 + "recipes" for writing better.

Looking to wow an agent? Why not try branding yourself?

I hope you enjoy his posts as much as I do!

Until next time.

Weekly Roundup for 1/29/13

HUGE news today. If you're a YA or Sci-fi writer that is. And I've been quite excited because I fall squarely into one or both of those categories for my novels. Writer's Digest is currently running it's Lucky Agent contest and the focus this time is YA and Sci-fi. So, pop on over to read the rules and what to enter if you're interested. You've only got until the 31st to submit!

In other news, Janice Hardy lets us know just how much an agent or fellow writer can tell from a query.

If self-publishing, ebook or print, here's a list to help you make it look professional.

And probably my favorite find of the week, Aaron Hamburger detailing his outlining in reverse method which is highly similar to my own version of outlining after writing as the first step of editing.

However, what really convicted me this week was this article on an agent's blog about the over-utilization of character names and pronouns. I found that I'm prone to this. Oops?

Until next time!

I've been Interviewed!

I've been sitting on this happy, happy news for about two days since I had the tour to complete first, but...I've been interviewed! And by Gus Sanchez who, if you remembered, I interviewed first in my NaNoWriMo Spotlight series this month. The interview and the process was fantastic. Check it out!

Courtesy of Klo

Also, look forward to a juicy bit of news on Monday for my next Weekly Roundup post. If you follow me on twitter then you will have already seen the news/link.

The next NaNoWriMo Spotlight interview will be posted tomorrow as it couldn't be posted on the last day of the tour.

Until next time!

First Weekly Roundup of the Year

It appears that the new round of interviewees have been met with a good deal of interest (thanks to all the people promoting it). But now it's time to resume the weekly posting of links. I've got several good ones for you today on several interesting topics.

I'm sure hidden among your writerly New Year's resolutions is a line about querying that manuscript you're working on as a goal to apply bottom to chair and actually finish it. But, before querying, please do put on your polite hat. You might want to take a few hints from this rant by Fizzygrrrl about how to react when (yes, when, not if) you receive The Rejection. (Hint: blowing up is not an option.)

Before querying, you need a query letter, right? But how do you follow all that advice on the web of 'writing in your novel's voice' when your novel is written in first person? Jane Lebak of Query Tracker has a few excellent warnings to read before going down that route and embarrassing yourself.

However, once you've achieved that bottom to chair fusion that typical results in a completed first draft as well as second, third and so forth, you might want to enlist some fresh eyes to copyedit before sending it out. Marcus Trower has a few good reasons why a pair of fresh eyes is a price well worth paying.

But, we've deviated slightly. New Year's resolutions. We all have them. But Stina Lindenblatt thinks that this is also the time for laying out business plans. You might say, wait, do business plans belong in the same sentence as writers? Stina says yes and I think she has a point.

Ash Krafton has four major resolutions which she hopes to hold to this year, not least of which is wrangling herself into setting goals and deadlines.

Finally, Jane Lebak has some good advice about the types of writer's groups out there and how to choose the right one for you. Isn't it a writer's dream to find the perfect group of critique partners? I know I'd love to find the right group.

Now for the fun bit! I only found out about this today or else I might have tried to enter. I'm sure everyone's familiar with Amazon's breakthrough novel contest (which is currently accepting submissions and which I may never enter because, have you read the fine print?!!) but I found another smaller contest with a similar reward. The contest is sponsored by Curiosity Quills Press and they only accept NaNoWriMo novels. There are three rounds, each with prizes and the grand prize winner is offered publication by them. Right now, the voting for round two is going on. Sadly, the only thing the readers can vote on at this point is the cover concept but each of the remaining entrants has a synopsis, cover concept and excerpt up on the site. Go here to read and vote (they give out prizes to readers/voters as well!). I'm quite keen to enter this contest so it looks like I know where my NaNo novel later this year will end up!

Until next time!

And so it Begins

After handwriting the entry in my journal while the car jostled my pen, my heart raced quite fast. I was satisfied with the result, amazed at my own depth of brilliance and ready to send it on its way.

Five minutes ago I put the final touches on my entry and sent it off to week one of The Story Within Contest. I'm on a dizzy high after writing and completing a less than 200 word story and from lack of sleep.

Of course this may also have something to do with visiting the Rembrant exhibit in Raleigh. I found a painting there (not by Rembrant, btw) which is begging me to write a story about it. I took a picture of it. Perhaps I'll post up a picture of it and of another picture I took of yellow, dead grass which might be combined into the inspiration.

I fear that if I go on I will not make much sense, so I shall stop it here. My eyelids are drooping to the rhythm of the pouring rain outside.

Until next time!

Links Saturday

Ok, ok. I know the schedule says that Saturdays are when I'd be posting in depth discussions on writing or some other topic related to writing. However, I don't have anything that comes to mind to discuss, so I'll link to you another blog which has an interesting discussion. And I've discovered so much juicy information these past few days that I had to share it. I've learned more about writers, writing and publishing in the past month on Twitter than I have in years previous. I think I made a good choice to dive in (even if Mom thinks I'm crazy [Yes, I do love you, Mom]).

Before the long discussion, another giveaway to report! Sophia Chang is giving away a book and a 25 page critique over at her blog to celebrate her blogaversary. Head on over to enter! (And tell her I sent you. ;) )

Another goodie. "The Story Within" (Penguin books) author Laura Oliver is judging a weekly contest based around writing prompts. Each week will have a different winner and the weekly winners will be entered in a drawing for the Grand Prize: a 2 hour consulting (critiquing?) session with Laura Oliver. So, put on your thinking caps and head over to Laura Oliver's site to read the prompt. Week one entries are due on the 18th! (It's only 250 words or less so I think it's perfectly possible.)

For those of you considering self-publishing, you might find this article informative. It's not just writers seeking traditional publication who have to be careful of scams. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/12/self-publishing-cons_n_1203007.html

And now onto that writerly discussion post I mentioned in the first paragraph. I found it particularly enlightening. (Excerpt below.)

The Business Rusch: Why Not?

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

On TV’s most popular drama series, NCIS, the main character, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, walks through the office, and if he hears a stupid statement, he slaps the speaker on the back of the head. Now, this is fiction, mind you. In any real office, military or not, he’d probably be fired, brought up on charges, or forced to have sensitivity training.

But that’s not my point.

My point is: I can relate.

I walk past writer after writer after writer, and as I hear what comes out of their mouths, I want to slap some sense into them. Because words don’t seem to be working.

Which is odd, considering that writers use words as their stock in trade.

The biggest problem writers have as a class isn’t that they work too cheaply, which I wrote about last week, or even that they don’t understand business, which I write about almost every week, but that they think too small.

Huh? you think to yourself as you read this. My last novel clocked in at 140,000 words. I invented an entire world. I don’t think small.

Oh, yes, you do. Every damn day. It’s the rare writer who actually has ambitions—real ambitions—and stands up for them. It’s the rare writer who not only dreams of glory (bestseller lists, millions of dollars, fame, lasting acclaim, or whatever) but actually works toward those dreams.

Click here to continue reading. It's a long post, but well worth the time spent reading it.

One last goodie. I must applaud these indie bookshop owners for all the time invested in creating this video and if I lived in Canada anywhere near them, I would be hopping in the car to visit. Enjoy!



Until next time!