Writers’ Toolbox: Don’t Dread the Query Letter!

by Sandi Layne

Is the hardest thing about publishing writing a query letter that gets you in the door?  Both an art and a science, the creation of the perfect query letter is not impossible. It just takes creative thought and the true understanding that every word counts.

Let’s assume you’ve already researched what varieties of books the agent represents or the publisher publishes, and that you know your work will fit.

First: Read the Directions

It may seem simple but, after talking to people who read query letters and judge a writer by their presentation, I have learned that this is not something everyone does.

Whether you are submitting to an agent or a publisher, you will find there are rules to the submission process. Read these rules carefully. Follow them to the letter.  Don’t think that throwing in “extras” will earn you any points. It won’t.  One of the things a professional does as they read the query is see how well the author responds to direction.  From an editorial standpoint, at least, this is a huge deal.  An author that can’t be bothered to follow the simplest of rules for the submission of a query is not one they are likely going to want to work with in the long run.

And please, whatever you do, don’t submit the same query letter repeatedly to the same agent or publisher. If they rejected your work the first time, this kind of repetition will not help.

Second: Think Hard

The query letter has one aim:  Getting you, the author, favorably noticed so that your words will be read by someone with authority to make decisions about representation or publication.  To do this, the letter has to be amazing, because the agent and/or editor might encounter hundreds of these letters every month.

But don’t dread this letter. It’s basically a four-part production.

Introduce yourself, introduce your qualifications for writing whatever it is you’re writing, then tease the reader about your book.  (Note: If you’re writing fiction, never ever send this query letter until your work is in its final, most outstanding form.  It should never be a work in progress when you’re querying an agent or publisher.)  Finally, wrap it up by saying why people will read/buy your work and share what kind of readership you might already have (a blog, podcast audience, ezine readers).

Before you freak out about how to make it dazzling, just get the parts written.  Really, it’s less stressful.

Third: Make It Amazing in One Page or Less

This is perhaps the hardest part of creating a query letter that opens doors.  We are often conditioned to play down our accomplishments, our best attributes.  But in a query letter, you have to accent them. Make them shine. Scintillate. Effervesce, even. Each word counts because you have one page to make this work.  Agents and editors are busy people and they only have time to devote to one page upon this initial introduction. How many words might that be?  Shoot for five hundred or less.

I can hear you now: “What?”

Yep.  Four hundred is even better.  Four hundred well-chosen words can do wonders.  Trust me.

Go back to the draft you’ve written.  You should have the pieces all jotted down.  Read each sentence and do your best to make it zing.  Use powerful adjectives.  Cut out extraneous explanations.  Check to see that all the highlights have been, well, highlighted.  Then whittle it down to make it fit into one well-written page, including the salutation and the closing.  Make sure, while doing this, that you have met all the criteria requested by the party to whom you are writing.

Fourth:  Get a Second Opinion

This is hard, but you should be prepared to be open to people in this way.  Send your letter to someone whose opinion you respect, who supports you in this creative endeavor, and who has a thorough grasp of basic grammar concepts.  Ask them for feedback.

Then, rewrite your letter. Read it out loud to yourself. When you are surprised by your own awesomeness, then it’s time to send the query.

Finally:  Keep Track of Where They Go

Once you send that introduction into the world, keep a copy of it (hardcopy as well as digital).  You can tailor a new one to suit a new recipient.  Keep a spreadsheet or journal or something about where you sent the query, perhaps which “version” you used, and when the query was sent.  You do not want to badger anyone even by accident, so careful record-keeping can keep you from a gaffe of the most innocent nature.

Then, breathe.  You might get rejected. You might be asked to send three chapters, fifty pages, an entire manuscript…  But know that you’ve presented yourself in the best way possible.  The rest is out of your hands.

Best wishes!

_____

Sandi Layne is the author of historical and inspirational fiction. She has wowed an editor or two with her queries as well as been rejected with tiny slips of paper that said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”  She’s still smiling.  She invites you to visit her website at http://sandyquill.com and is also to be found on twitter @sandyquill.

Writers’ Toolbox: The Importance of Reading

by Jennifer deSylva

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
― Stephen King

When I was about twelve, I needed to be at my grammar school on a Saturday–likely for a practice of some sort.  It was about a half mile walk from my house and I decided I needed some entertainment along the way. Eschewing my snazzy Walkman with the radio/cassette combo, I grabbed a book we had been assigned to read for school. Sounder, to be exact.

I managed to traverse the streets of Brooklyn safely, avoiding traffic and getting at least a chapter read along the way. Needless to say, there was some good-natured needling from my friends when they spotted me close to the school, crossing the street, with my nose in a book.

Point is, that’s how much I loved reading at twelve, a love that has lasted through most of my adult life.

I’m a new writer, so to speak. I’ll often see writer bios declare, “I’ve been writing for as long as I remember.” Me? I’ve been writing for two years. And no, I’m not eighteen. As a matter of fact, I just passed the other side of forty.

I mention it because once I started writing, I stopped reading. Weird, huh? The thing was, with a young child and a job, I thought I needed to spend all of my free time pounding out the Great American Novel. Then I read the above quote by Stephen King and I could have been knocked over with a feather. Or as my daughter would say: duh.

So I got myself a Kindle and started reading. Good books, bad books, meh books, classics and galleys, amateur and professional. And I fell in love again.

Words can be powerful; they can be silly, they can make us roll our eyes, throw a book across the room in anger, or cry with emotion. But no matter our reaction, they make us feel something. If I ever write a few words that evoke any emotion at all, I’ll feel like I accomplished something.

Needless to say, I’ve read a good number of books over the past few months. I’ve reviewed one of my favorites below.

***

Book Review

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

This is a difficult book to review. Not because there aren’t many, many things I want to say about it, but because to properly review would mean I’d give away plot points I shouldn’t.

Fair warning, the book starts off slowly. But if you can make it through the first third, you will be richly rewarded with a fine, intricate piece of storytelling. For me, the historical aspect was as compelling and interesting as the personal stories.

The narrative is a little dry at first. Queenie, a female prisoner of war, being held in Nazi-occupied France during WWII, tells the story of her friendship with Maddie, one of the few active female pilots flying for England during the war. Their friendship is lovely, but the narrative really comes alive when Queenie describes her current situation. Her voice is distinct and brutally honest.

The story really picks up in Part Two. The secondary characters are as richly drawn and three dimensional as the Queenie and Maddie–I had a particular soft spot for Jamie.

That’s about all I can say without giving anything away, except I’m glad I gave this book a chance and stuck with it. The payoff was amazing, well-written and even surprising.

___

Jennifer deSylva is a Program Manager at Fictionista Workshop and aspiring writer. She’s putting the finishing touches on her first novel when her Kindle isn’t glued to her hand. You can follow her on Twitter at @jd_writes.

Post NaNoWriMo

by Kayla Griffith

Thus has ended another November of that reckless writing abandon we lovingly call NaNoWriMo, or not so lovingly call “that stupid ****ing writing thing.”

Really, both names work.

In the last month, writers from all over the world tried their darndest to get arthritis in thirty short days by typing 50,000 words or more. Most of us aren’t even “real” writers, the kind who get paid to type until their joints swell. No, those of us doing NaNoWriMo have other jobs, “real” jobs that pay the rent and feed the kids. We had to write 50,000 words in our non-existent free time.

It’s quite a feat, really.

And now that we’ve all rested and stopped shaking from our caffeine-overdoses, we have to figure out what on earth to do with the manuscript.

So, what’s the first thing you do with 50,000 or more words? Nothing.

I’m serious—do nothing.

Walk outside and reacquaint yourself with the sun. Maybe go into the living room and see how much your spouse or children have changed over the last thirty days. Check on the goldfish, love a dog, and call a friend. But for God’s sake don’t touch those words.

Let them rest and let your mind wander; it could use the break. If you backed up your work (do it now if you haven’t, right now), those words will be there in a few days or weeks. You need a set of fresh, non-bloodshot eyes to see them clearly now that November’s feverish word war is done. You want to be at your best when you see your precious words again, because believe me, they ain’t pretty.

All those hastily thrown down words need editing. Lots and lots of editing. Oh, sure, you love each and every one of your characters and scenes, but they were created in the mad dash of November, and they kinda suck in parts. So edit. Rip the thing apart and make sure it all works.

Once the story is all spiffed up and made to look pretty, the next step is to go back and finish it. The only book you can publish is a finished one, so finish.

Yeah. That’s not as easy as it sounds.

During editing, I bet you’ll find run on sentences, misused modifiers, and plot holes the size of a volcano’s caldera. Finishing a NaNo novel is a bit like trying to fill a bucket full of holes; it just won’t hold water. You have to repair it before it can do its job.

Once you’re finished with the story, you’re actually not.

Sorry, but you need to edit it again. And again. And give it to friends who know a bit about grammar and plot to have them edit it. You need to let other writers offer their opinions. You need to send it to people who will give it an honest and objective critique.

What shouldn’t you do with the manuscript in December?

Don’t, don’t, DON’T send anything to an agent. Your story might be brilliant and you may indeed be the next Hemingway, but your manuscript sucks eggs right now. Your novel isn’t ready for a professional to look at it. I don’t care what your mother said about it, it’s not.

And don’t give up. Don’t you ever give up. Even if the words you wrote weren’t enough to win NaNo, or the storyline has hit a dead end, or you want to kill off your main character out of spite, don’t give up. Think about what you’ve learned from NaNo, or what you will learn by editing your book and having others look at it. Think about what made you love that story enough to sacrifice your health for it.

You will be a professional writer one day because you have a story within you that is brilliant enough to be published—but only if you refuse to give up.

Oh, and that promise you made to yourself to never do NaNo again? Yeah, whatever. See you next year.

_____

Kayla Griffith is a veteran NaNoWriMo participant, and will no doubt return for another round next November. Check out her blog at http://writings.kaylagriffith.net/.

NaNoWriMo: Research

Research

by Tara L.

If there is one thing that successful writers from all genres have in common, it’s good research. Without it, a plot can’t be fully realized, characters fall flat, and settings tear apart at the seams. For example, if I ask you to picture a hulking, 10th century Viking King, does the name Blaine sound like a good fit? Would it make sense to have Blaine-The-Terrible captaining a specialized Spanish Armada ship? Probably not. While readers will often forgive small incongruities in a story, large errors can pull the reader out of the narrative and make it difficult to follow.

Luckily for today’s writer, good research can often times be just a few mouse clicks away. Here are a few online resources to jump start your research:

Little Details – Little Details is a Live Journal community that bills itself as a “community for writers concerned about factual accuracy in their stories.” Writers can post specific questions relating to their own story, or simply search tags to review all of the information amassed on a specific topic.

Shelly Thacker – Prolific author, Shelly Thacker Meinhardt, outlines 7 key steps to successful research.

HistoryBuff.com – A great resource for any writer that is venturing into historical settings. The site focuses primarily on how news of major, and not so major, events in American History were reported in newspapers of that time.

Library Spot – A research hub that is a great starting point to any research project. It provides breakdowns of online literary sources that start out very general, but can be distilled into very specific areas of information.

So grab your outline, open your browser, and find the details you need to make your story sing.

___

*This article was first posted here last year.*

NaNoWriMo: Story Development

Outlining for the Pantser, Pantsing for the Outliner:

Planning just enough and winging it sufficiently so you don’t get stuck during NaNoWriMo

by Killian McRae

Do you know what you’re having for dinner tonight?

Okay, how about tomorrow night?

If you have your meals planned out, even three days from now, chances are you take the same methodical approach with your writing. That is, before you even label the first page with a prominent CHAPTER ONE across the top, you have your story mapped, tracked, and tagged. You know exactly where it’s going, who falls in love, who dies, who gets abducted by aliens, etc.  You, my dear writer, are an outliner. Nothing left to chance or folly, you hit your novel with all the strategy and wherewithal of a Roman general on the field of battle. You know what your character finds behind door number three, and you like it that way. Now, all you need to do is take that skeleton you have in the corner, and write some clothes, flesh and muscles on him.

Then, there are writers like me. We are a different lot who sips tea while waxing the words poetic and listening for the muse whenever and however she may call upon us. We’re not just working on one manuscript, we likely have four or five competing projects going at any point. Each one is at a critical point where we’ve run out of words, where the flow of our creative juices has run dry, or where we just plain grew tired of thinking about it. Oh, they’re not abandoned, but our heroine has just grabbed the car keys and left in a huff after having a fight with her mother, and we just haven’t figured out yet to where she’s driving to or why. We have an idea, but every time we sit down and start her dialogue as she enters the gay bar on 3^rd & Vine, we remember that we didn’t want her to go there until after she met the guy with blue glasses, because then she would have noticed the mechanical bull already that we weren’t planning on her discovering until after she robbed the bank. Yes, we have ideas. Too many, in fact, to the point that where we don’t know where to take them without our story taking an emergency exit to Tangentville. It’s not lack of direction, it’s lack of destination that plagues us. We write by the seat of our pants and by the grace of the coffee in our cups. We are the pansters.

And one thing we pantsers have in common with the outliners is this: Come NaNoWriMo, we’re both screwed.

As with many things in life, those at the two extremes of the spectrum have more in common with each other than those in the middle. Plan too much, and you feel obligated to stay on the scheduled tour, even when you see an interesting spire rising from the sky in the distance. Don’t plan enough, and you’ll wander around the fictional streets between the Conflicts and Resolutions districts without finding an efficient route in between. In short, you’ll get lost and get stuck.  In NaNoWriMo, time is of the essence. Writing fifty thousand words in the span of thirty days is a completely achievable task, but only if one does not get mired down in the process of writing. Having too much of a plan may lead you to feel overly confident. That is, you may be all hat and no cowboy, taking on your novel knowing what you’re going to write, but not how. Also, writing is an art form, and in art there must be wiggle room to allow the artist to mold inspiration. Likewise, having no clear plan but only vague ideas may lead one to get delayed in the art of writing by overindulging in the process behind the words.

May I be so humble as to suggest, at least in preparation for NaNoWriMo, a hybrid of the two approaches?

I think it’s good to have more than a vague idea of what you’re going to write. I’ll admit, even as a pantser, I’m gearing up by at least sitting down and making a bullet point list of the major plot points of my story. I know, however, if I get wrapped up in microploting my characters’ actions before hand, I’ll lose inspiration and drive to tell the story. Think of it this way. I feel like I’m standing in the land of good intentions and yet-to-start actions, and across the river of Novelia, the imaginary land where I live most the time, lies Fifty Kay Acres. I need to build a bridge to this place, so I’m now pouring the concrete that will make up the pillars. But to truly cross the bridge I’m going to need to lay down the road. I’ve got all my materials ready, but I’m pacing myself to show up over at Fifty Kay by December 1^st.

Yeah, I use metaphors a lot. Sorry about that.

Some other tactics you might want to consider as you plan your own NaNoWriMo are listed below. The methods combine the best of the pantsing and planner approachers, allowing one to overcome the shortfalls with each.

• The Post-it Method: Who are your characters? What are the major events in your book? What is the journey? Write a little something about each of these things on post-it notes that you can either put on the wall near where you write, or in a binder you can easily access. Then, arrange them. How? Well, chronologically perhaps. Or if you’re more a punster, perhaps by want. There’s nothing wrong with having conflicting post-its about where your story might go. As you head in one direction or another, or as you achieve the plot point, take it down and make a stack. Not only will this keep you on track, the stack of post-its will give you a visual confirmation that all your hard work is adding up.

• The Flow Chart Method: That’s right, flow charts. Now, you don’t have to stick to all the rules, but just chart out your story. Make sure you leave room on the side to make notes. You can then branch out with different ideas if you have several about the twist your plot might take. As you eliminate options or advance in your plot, ex-out the unnecessary bits.

• The Popsicle Stick Method: Go to your local craft store and purchase a bag of popsicle sticks. Write possible routes your story might take or details about your characters on as many as you feel comfortable with, then throw them in a bag. When you get stuck or need a pointer, randomly draw out a popsicle stick and remind yourself what you were thinking of when you wrote it and, more importantly, how you frame that in what you’re writing now.

• Use a recycled plot. I’m not joking on this one. A wise friend constantly reminds me that there are no new stories. In fact, I don’t really believe that, but I will admit that there are very few. What changes are the details. If plotting isn’t your thing, but your excel at detail, at capturing the human condition, at examining the clockwork of soul, by all means recycle. But be wary: I’m not saying plagiarize. Plagiarism is bad, wrong, and lazy.  But there are some generalized plots you see over and over, and don’t necessary get warn. The young lovers separated by the station of their families, for example, or the virtuous, strong hero overthrowing the tyrannical despot. It’s okay to tell a classic story, as long as the story you’re telling is yours.

• Phone a friend. Do you have a person in your life who just… gets you? Why not use them as a bouncing board. Throw off some ideas about your book and get their general reaction. Perhaps even stage a fake pitch, as though your friend is an agent and you’re trying to sell your intended book to them.

• Pantsers: cut off shorts are also comfy. If you’re a pantser like me, you’re convinced that “outlining” is an ancient Norwegian cuss word. How about blurbing? Can you contain the essence of your book in 200 words or less? If not, why not give it a try? The brevity will give you lots of room to work as inspiration hits, but having a basic summary will orientate you about where you’re going.

Whatever method you use to help you get ready for NaNoWriMo, the most important thing is this: write. Write every day, even if only 100 words. Even if you know you’re going to delete those words in the first draft, write. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but the novel about it might be written in a month.

Killian McRae is an aspiring writer of romance, alternative history, and fantasy fiction, and also has a sizable portfolio of derivative fiction. Her first published novel, 12.21.12, was released in December 2010. To learn more about her, please visit her website www.killianmcrae.com.

Interested in participating in NaNoWriMo?

Sign up at www.nanowrimo.org to get started and continue to visit the Fictionista Workshop homepage for tips and tools to aid you.

*This article was first posted here last year.*