Tag: fiction

Everything you need to know about writing a query

  By ,

PART ONE: THE HOOK

A hook, a.k.a. elevator pitch or logline, is 2-3 sentences explaining what your book is about. It’s the heart of a query letter, the thing that gets the agent to request pages. It is also the second hardest thing you will write (next to your synopsis, which we’ll discuss later). But here are some tips that made it easier for me.

The Technical Stuff

Write in third person, present tense. Anything else will get you in trouble. Even if your book is in first person, past (“I did this, I went there”), write the hook in third, present (“He does this, he goes here”).

Keep it short. The entire letter should fit on one page in Times New Roman, 12pt. That means the hook is one or two short paragraphs.

State facts, not opinions. No fluff phrases like “thrilling page-turner,” “harrowing adventure,” “heart-wrenching tragedy” or any of the things you want reviewers to say after you’re published. That’s bragging. Don’t include your book’s theme (e.g. “about trying to find hope amidst despair,” “about love conquering against all odds”). That’s telling, not showing, remember?

 

How You’ll Really Get it Done

Start with one sentence. I took this advice from Nathan Bransford. It’s painful, but it works. Write in one sentence, as short as possible, what your book is about. Then, expand in one or two more sentences, including whatever makes your story different from everyone else’s.

Write what it seems to be about, not what it’s really about. If your story seems too complicated to narrow down to a hook, this tip is your magic key. I struggled with the same thing for years. In one book I had two storylines and at least five major characters, three of whom had back story to be explained before any of it made sense. In 2-3 sentences? Impossible. So I turned my thinking around. Yeah, when all is revealed, it’s really a complex political chess game involving secret organizations and entire worlds, but what it seems to be about, what happens in the first chapter – is a bunch of kids stranded in the wilderness. So I went with that. And it worked.

You’ll know when you’ve found The One. I read this somewhere and then experienced it myself, so I swear by it now. I sent out multiple versions of a query letter thinking each version was alright, but I never got page requests back. That was my problem; it was decent, okay. But I wasn’t in love with it. Then when I finally hit upon The One, I felt it, deep down – and I got page requests days or even hours after submitting it. So learn from my mistakes, keep rewriting your hook and don’t submit a query until you know. And none of this “I think I know.” You’ll know.

—

Still confused? Read some exciting hook examples!

What fiction genre sells the best?

  By ,
book store display

Image by Kriss

You’re going to be smart. Strategic. You’re going to look at the books readers are going crazy over right now and write one just like them – but better – and copies will sell like hotcakes because you’re giving the people what they want.

As you’ve probably figured out, it doesn’t work like that. You can look at the market now and see that Twilight* is popular and decide to write a novel about the forbidden romance between a vampire/werewolf hybrid and a dog lover who runs a blood bank. It’s going to be huge! The problem? It’s going to take you a few years to write and edit the book, another couple of years to find a literary agent to represent you, another couple of years for your agent to find a publisher willing to take a chance on you, and another year before it sees print. Next thing you know, a decade has gone by and paranormal romance is so blasé now. Steampunk zombies are the new hot topic.

Don’t write for the market; write for yourself. This sounds narcissistic at first, but when you really think about it, it’s quite the opposite. If you are writing for the market, what’s your motivation? You want to sell a million copies, become rich and famous, and be interviewed on Regis and Kelly. But if you write for yourself it’s because there’s a story you need to tell. You want to write the kind of book you’d enjoy reading, and you want to share a bit of your soul with the rest of the world.

Now this soul bit you create may or may not be a huge commercial bestseller. It may or may not sell at all. But it will be honest, and it will be a good story, and because of that, it will be more likely to succeed than any produced-for-the-market book would ever be. When you like your own story, you put more tender loving care into it. You take the time to get it right, and your readers can tell.

With that being said, you must also be conscious of your responsibility to your audience. Writing talent is a privilege, having your work read by others is an honor, and in exchange for these things you owe honesty, quality and completeness. So write from the gut, rewrite like a critic, and be sure to tie up all your loose ends.

—

*If you’re curious, I’m team TARDIS.

book store window

Should you be writing a different genre?

Inspiration Monday VI

  By

Monday again, yippee! I hope it was a good weekend for all. Last week produced some particularly powerful pieces from all the participants, as if the inadvertant theme was “how to change people’s minds using words.” Go ye and checketh them out!

Mike and Mike’s flash fiction

Indigo Spider

Find an Outlet

Char

I feel like I’m missing someone. Am I missing anyone? Shoot me a comment!

*EDIT*: I was! I believe Jinx was the first to post: Jinx

—

The Rules

There are none. Read the prompts, get inspired, write something. No word count minimum or maximum. You don’t have to include the exact prompt in your piece, and you can interpret the prompt(s) any way you like.

OR

No really; I need rules!

Okay; write 200-500 words on the prompt of your choice. You may either use the prompt as the title of your piece or work it into the body of your piece. You must complete it before 6 pm CST on the Monday following this post.

The Prompts:

Whispers from the casket

The papercut that changed the world

The last man on earth

You can hear the stars speaking to each other

future-proof

 

If you want to share your Inspiration Monday piece, post it on your blog and link back to today’s post (it’s easier for me if you also comment below with a link); I’ll include a link to your piece in the next Inspiration Monday post. No blog? Email your piece to me at: stephanie (at) balcomagency (d0t) com.

Happy writing!

7 surefire writing tips for April

  By

I thought I’d kick off the month with a quick list of writing tips that are sure to create a bestseller.

1. Don’t write every day. Writing is like lifting weights. Your mental muscles need to rest every other day, or you might strain something and damage it permanently.

2. Don’t read other people’s work. When you create something, it needs to come from you alone. You can’t write something pure and honestly yours if you have other people’s words swimming around in your head.

3. The more words, the better. A short novel is the sign of an amateur writer. Anything less than 100,000 words is a disgrace.

4. The first chapter should be mostly backstory. Your readers need to get to know your characters before they can get into the real action. Flashbacks are really useful for this, and you can use as many as you want.

5. Don’t nitpick. 99% of the time, the first version you write will be the best version. Don’t second-guess yourself. Anyone who criticizes your grammar or sentence structure just obviously doesn’t understand art.

6. Use a cool font. Times New Roman is kind of boring. Comic Sans is much more fun looking, and it will add whimsy to your writing.

7. Take up smoking. That way your hands will have something to do when you’re not typing.

BONUS TIP: Once you get published, make sure that on the front cover, your name is bigger than the title of the book. Branding yourself as an author is way more important than promoting the story itself.

Lemony Snicket: four victories and one epic fail

  By , ,

A Series of Unfortunate Events. Even the title is enough to spark interest for its sheer cleverness. First, because of the play on the word “series,” and second, because “unfortunate events” is simultaneously charming and intriguing – a word which here means “makes you long to pick it up and peruse its pages.”

And Lemony Snicket’s thirteen-volume series does not disappoint. Except in one important respect.

Mr. Snicket, as stated, does not lack charm. His whimsical wit is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll and Douglas Adams, but with melancholy overtones. A chapter titled “Déjà vu” opens with a description of the stated phenomenon. We read to the end of the page, turn that page – and find ourselves reading the same page again. And this is only one in a long list of amusing devices.

Mr. Snicket uses reverse psychology to make his writing irresistible. He opens Chapter One of Book the First with:

“If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle.”

Mr. Snicket does not forget that his narrator is also a character. From starting each volume with a mysterious dedication to “Beatrice,” to slipping in snippets of his own sad story at intervals, to confiding in his audience that he often visits bookstores so he can find copies of his books and put them on the highest shelves where they won’t be found, Mr. Snicket carefully paints a picture of his baffling, utterly depressed self.

Mr. Snicket keeps us interested by feeding us tidbits of information that we know are important. We begin to desperately wonder what happened  to Beatrice, whether or not the Baudelaire parents are actually dead, and what in the world is in the sugar bowl. We devour each chapter, bookmarking every few pages – everywhere we see a clue. As we near The End, the mysteries are piling up, we are holding our breaths, we—

And this is where Mr. Snicket fails us.

Granted, he warned us there would be no happy ending. Granted, he did everything he could to persuade us not to read on. But we still expected different. We expected the ending to be happy after all because no matter how vehemently the author denied it in every printed line, we could read the truth printed on the white spaces in between. Or so we thought. But even if we took his words at face value, we at least expected answers. Every problem promises a solution, remember? Every mystery promises an explanation.

But all we are left with at the end are broken promises and a sugar bowl that will remain eternally shut.

And hours of amusement. Yes, even though I am grievously disappointed in the ending, I would still highly recommend the series. Such is the dark art of Lemony Snicket.