Feedback from the Gatekeepers

[fireflyz]

Hey all,
  I have been quiet the past two weeks.  Between work, the holidays, and the fiance having a terrible cold, I've been pretty busy.  But I think my schedule is settling back down, so I thought I'd get back to posting.  I have an update from the agents that requested partials and fulls from me and I'm interested in what you all think.

  I'll start with the good news.  The agent that requested the full from me gave me quite a bit of feedback.  She went out of her way to say that she liked my writing style and thought the manuscript well written.  Unfortunately, it went down hill from there.  I only posted the first few chapters here, but one of them was a flashback chapter.  I know some (Asmodean in particular) do not like flashbacks.  Apparently, agents don't either.  She said that she liked the concept behind my story, but felt that the flashbacks pulled her away just when she was getting into the book and that it ended up feeling more like a character study rather than a novel.  She had told me up front that as she has 40+ authors already she would have to love the book to represent it.

  The other agent that requested the partial got back to me with somewhat of a form letter.  There was a little personal note that said he thought it was going to be more literary than the type of fantasy it actually was and it wasn't something he represented. 

  I was pretty bummed about all of this at first, but on the bright side the first agent obviously thought my writing was on par, even if she didn't like my concept.  The first agent had also requested a query before asking for the full.  The agent that said it wasn't his style only heard my pitch at World Fantasy and hadn't seen my query.  So I guess it was a case of me not researching enough to find the right agent and the agent getting the wrong impression from my pitch.  Or it was just terrible, haha.  The bottom line is agents wanted to see my work and that feels pretty good.  One step up the rung.

Anyway, after a lot of thought, I've decided to revise my work again.  I didn't think that flashback chapters were all that unusual (Scott Lynch uses a similar approach, and Pat Rothfuss's approach, while radically different, is almost entirely flashbacks).  The agents seemed to think otherwise.  I'm not so stuck on myself as the artist to not heed their advice.  Out of the 40 some chapters in my novel, about a dozen or so are flashbacks.  I'm going to attempt to pull out the main message I wanted to convey with each flashback and put that in either through dialogue or in very brief bits scatterred throughout the story (like the main character dreaming as he has nightmares and/or thoughts that occurr to him in situations).  I am guessing this will drop the wordcount from 145k to about 130k, tighten up the prose, keep the pace moving, and most importantly, not pull the reader out of the book.

Thoughts, criticism, and advice from those who might have experienced/be experiencing similar situations is very much appreciated.  :-)

[LongTimeUnderdog]

It's awesome you gots yourself some agent lovin'.  It's also awesome You're working hard.

To be fair, most everyone hates flashbacks (from what I hear).  But don't confuse something like "The Name of the Wind," with flashback.  I'm fairly certain its not the flashbacks that bother them, but the content and writing of the flashbacks.

Beside the point, it's super awesome you're on your way.  Super super awesome.  One of us is finally growin' up and makin' his way in the world.  Sniffle.  Sniffle sniffle.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Dream/nightmare sequences are also something it's usually best to avoid until you are more established in your career.

[fireflyz]

@LTU, thanks for the encouragement!

@Peter, thanks for the advice.  I'll make sure to use dialogue/thought to convey the bits of backstory that are neccessary to the story and avoid the dreams.

[fireflyz]

I just started querying again this week after getting all the feedback from my alpha readers on my latest revision (post agents advice).  Good news is I've already receieved a request for a partial.  Nothing too special, just first few chapters. 

Funny thing is, after the initial euphoria wore off, I kept thinking, how good are my first 3 chapters?  Do I pull the reader in enough?  Is it alright that the arc starts off on a level and then begins  to ratchet up the tension?  Is the ascent too slow?  ARGH!  Haha, isn't that the way it always is? 

I've reworked my first chapter to get rid of the flashback.  If anyone cares to see and give feedback before I submit, let me know.  Offers good for the next few hours.  I'm reading over the chapters again and again, but I'm planning on submitting tonight.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  If they ask for more I'll let you all know!

[Silk]

Best of luck.

[fireflyz]

Well, I guess they liked my first three chapters.  I've received a request for the full.  I'm excited, but I was in the same position a few months ago and it didn't work out.  I just wanted to say thanks again to everyone for the feedback.  I know that's helped strengthen my current work.  I'll keep you posted.

[Justice1337]

Dream/nightmare sequences are also something it's usually best to avoid until you are more established in your career.

It's important that you don't read this as "best to avoid until you get more skilled".  What agents like, what publishers will put out, and even what a reader allows himself to like is actually quite influenced by the author's name.

It could be that you're doing flashbacks very well.  You might even be one of the best flashback authors out there. (I don't know. I only read a couple of your chapters, and those weren't flashbacks.)  But as you tread into the business of the art, you'll find that a lot of really good stuff doesn't get published, and what you're doing is going to be more and more influenced by your appraisal of what the world will like.

And you seem to realize that not very many like flashbacks.

Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings was criticized for having too many flashbacks, and he's a great author WITH a name.

I wouldn't call the structure of the Name of the Wind to be flashback form either.   You have to understand what exactly it is that the reader doesn't like about flashbacks, a concept much bigger than just a label.  In A Name of the Wind, I'd say the ratio of young Kvoth scenes to Old Kvothe was at least 9:1, (first two chapters excluded).  What you have there is an interesting structual way of giving perspective.  Readers had few problems with it.

And when you think about it, there's a lot of ways to do things like this.  In Sanderson's Mistborn, the protagonists were translating the memoirs of the person they believed to be the Lord Ruler (antagonist).  Excerpts from the translation were added to the beginning of each chapter, and they added a nice perspective to what was going on that most readers enjoyed.  In Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, verbal dictations of the school supervisors were taken and added to the beginning of each chapter.  These were quite large when compared to the size of teh actual work, but still most readers didn't mind it.  Some distracting element wasn't present there, simply becasue physical description and traditional chapter structre were taken out.  You just got dialogue, and you were left to figure it out.

A LOT of fantasy/sff has this kind of thing, and I'd think about it when you consider how to improve your work.  Best of luck in the industry.

[fireflyz]

It's been a long time since I've updated this thread.  I've put it off because for a little while the only update I had was bittersweet.  Now I've got some good news to relate, so it will take the edge off so to speak.  Before I get into my current state of trying to break into the publishing industry, I want to apologize for not giving more feedback on the Reading Excuses forum.  Alot of people gave me solid feedback for weeks on end.  I tried to keep up whilst working on my latest project but between a new job, planning a wedding, writing, revising, etc...  Basically life got in the way.  I want to extend an invitation to those that were there for me (Akoebel, Hubay, Asmodean, etc.).  If you'd like me to look at an entire novel via email I would definitely be willing to do that.  I feel that I owe you guys something, if for nothing more than making me feel like what I was doing was worth something.  And that something is starting to pay dividends.  So, standing offer, whenever/if ever, let me know 

My last novel was Written in Blood.  I only sent it out to 8 agents.  It received three partial requests and two fulls.  One of the partials turned into a full as well.  Unfortunately, they all passed.  The first few were back when it was 140k and included flashbacks.  The last was after I removed the flashbacks and wove them in, trimming it back to 125k.  The book was much better for those revisions.  The last agent to request a partial and then full was the best of the lot IMO.  She didn't know me at all, but based off of my query she asked for the partial and after that the full.  That gave me a lot of confidence as my previous submissions came after cons.  Unfortunately, she too passedon it in April.  The project wasn't quite right for her.  She did say that both her and the president of her agency thought I had a lot of talent and she asked me to think of her in the future if I wrote anything else.  Definitely bittersweet.  She said I had talent which was good.  She asked to see future work which proved she wasn't just being nice.  But she still didn't want me.

I was at a crossroads at this point.  I'd been shopping Written in Blood around since October and while I had garnered interest from some of the bigger wigs of fantasy, I still hadn't gotten representation.  Written in Blood is epic fantasy and from what i've seen the published authors in that field are either huge or nobodies.  The agents repping them are fewer than one might think.  A lot of agents put fantasy as a genre they're interested in on their websites, but when you look at the authors/titles they sell, most are not epic fantasy.  I still had another half dozen names to hit up.

But I had been toying with a modern YA sci-fi thriller.  Also, I'm a fast writer.  I think I'm talented (but don't we all?).  My ultimate goal is to publish an adult and a YA book in fantasy/sci-fi/steampunk every year.  I'd never written a YA and the challenge appealed to me.  So after receiving the last rejection in April I began work on the YA book.  I wanted to have it finished by the first week of June but as I alluded to life got in the way.  Nonetheless, I was able to finish it the last week of June and get revisions done by the first week of July.  A month late, but still not terrible.  At 95,000 words it's the shortest novel I've written, but in the ballpark for YA. 

Now comes the good news.  I've begun submitting this week.  And already I've received a request for a partial.  The nice thing about YA is that there are a lot more agents out there that rep it.  The caveat for me is that they also have to be willing to represent adult fantasy as that's my first love and I doubt I'll ever tire of it.  I have another dozen or so agents to send this out to.  Once those are out I'm going to send Written in Blood out to the 6 other agents I never got around to.  You might wonder why I waited.  I wouldn't advise anyone else to do that, but for me, when I'm invested in a project it takes all of my attention.  I couldn't try to query WiB and write another novel at the same time.  Now that they're both done, I can get them out there.

I'll be updating my Twitter feed and this thread (much more occassionally than Twitter).  So if you're interested, feel free to follow along.  Just started Twitter, but every Tuesday I'll post a tip of the day that will include something that helped me personally improve my writing.  I'm sure some of it will be old news to those of us that write a lot, but it always bares repeating.  Fridays I'll post book reviews, helpful links, etc.  Otherwise I'll be using it to track my progress.  Who knows, this book might go the way of Written in Blood, but I feel like I"m getting closer and that's all you can hope for.  Get a little closer each time until you finally cross the finish line.  Writing's a marathon, not a sprint.

So there you have it.  I apologize for the long, long post.  But I felt a lot of you deserved an explanation for my extended absence.  If any of you guys are currently submitting or recently did so and have some war stories to share I'd love to hear it. Good luck to everyone else out there, we're all in this together! 

[akoebel]

Hi Fireflyz,

Glad to see you're getting some feedback for your work. 5 requests out of 8 queries look like a high hit ratio, so the queries must be good!  I hope they gave you some useful pointers.

Just one question : why not also submitting directly to publishers? If I remember correctly, about half of the authors were unagented when their book sold.

[fireflyz]

@Akoebel,
  I've thought about submitting directly to publishers, but have held off for a number of reasons.  I know both Dan and Brandon had offers from TOR before they had agents.  But they made their contacts through cons and even then it was something like 6 months later before they heard back.  Additionally, once they had an offer, they used that as a springboard to secure an agent.  Not a bad strategy at all, but they ultimately ended up where I want to.

I know that Pyr books (Scott Lynch and Joe Abercrombie publish under them) allows unknown authors to submit directly to them.  You can follow Rene Sears on Twitter as he is their gatekeeper.  I know TOR used to.  Haha six years ago when I started I was convinced I'd submit to TOR (Tom Doherty) and be a star.  Ah, to be young again.  I think TOR might still allow that and Baen books as well.

Here's the issue.  Submitting to a publisher generally takes a lot longer time to get feedback from.  Also, while they do occassionally find the diamond in the rough, agents do serve a purpose and by circumventing the system I believe it's sending a message that you couldn't get an agent so you're trying directly.  I've heard agents say that they don't like to hear about authors submitting to publishers, because if the publisher says no and you get an agent a few weeks later who tries to submit your work they've already rejected it.  I wonder if it's just not agents wanting to protect their 15% haha.  For me, the incredibly low success rate (even lower than getting an agent) is what prevents me from pursuing.

Having said that, I believe if you go to a con and meet with editors you have a much better shot.  Just make sure your manuscript is a good one so you don't waste the opportunity.  I tried to meet up with one of the younger TOR editors at a con, but even stalking her by Twitter I kept missing her, haha.  Also, this is only my experience for the US.  I know Scott Lynch queried Gollancz directly and got started in the UK and he's from the midwest.  So Europe/UK might be compltely different.

Anyway, that's my thinking!  It could definitely be wrong, but that's what I've learned so far.

[fireflyz]

@Akoebel,
  I read your blog today.  Just wanted to say that I thought you raised a number of interesting points regarding self publishing.  I'm still generally against that myself, but there are a lot of arguments in favor of it.  I think the biggest negative is audience.  Who reads self published authors on a consistent basis?  Have there been breakouts?  Yes, but very few and far between.  I guess it's the marketing that is a deal breaker for me.  If there were a way to reach an audience I think it would have the potential to crash large publishers...unfortunately, the reading community seems as averse to change as the writing one is so I'm not sure if that's on the horizon or not.

[hubay]

Good luck! You certainly have enough drive to get your work published, and that goes a long way. I also enjoyed Written in Blood, if that means anything, so I hope at a later date someone's interested enough in it to give you a shot.

Anyways, my novel isn't close to being finished, but I might have to take you up on that offer when it is. A writing group is good and all, but I could use a good alpha reader – or is it beta? I always feel like the later letters should come first so that the alpha is most important, counter-intuitive as that is – to look at the finished product in one go, not in tiny little snippits like we do here (I know that isn't quite what you were offering, to be an alpha reader, but if you'd like I'd be interested in trading stories and critiques). Either way, you're always welcome to hop in and critique and be critiqued.

[akoebel]

Follow people and they start reading your blog :-)

This was from a time where I had read a number of very dark author blogs who were advocating to go all out into self publishing, since the gates are kind of closing on regular publishers.

Since then, I talked a little with Brandon on the subject and I went to a con where the discussions revolved around this, and I feel a little better.

First off, you have to be the kind of person who can do it (part of what you called marketing). I may have the technical skills (even thinking about creating my own software to do it), but I've never been good at selling anything (least of all myself), so I'd rather sell my work once to a publisher than to any number of readers. In fact, I'd rather have an agent do it for me, even for 15-20%.

Then, as you said, there is the audience problem. People advocating self publishing tell that you have time to grow your audience, but let's face it, a midlist book sitting for 3 months on a bookstore shelf will sell a lot more than a one in 10 millions e-books sitting on a website for a couple of years. If I could be published, and then go put my backlist on Amazon, great, but starting there all alone by myself? I would consider it sheer luck if I managed to sell more than one copy a month.

A point Charlie Stross made at my con was that right now, the market for e-books is all open, but there is an increasingly large number of copyright frauds being sold at $ .99. So much that Amazon doesn't even reply to injunctions to remove them unless they come from writer's organizations. In the near future, Amazon will be forced to put restrictions on our capability to upload our books there, so that gate might not be as open as we'd like to think.

Ah, and yes, David Farland said that to be really successful in the e-publishing area, you should have a whole series ready to sell, which is contrary to what we do in the traditional way where standalones are easier to shop. For now, I feel more like writing different stories in different settings or genres each time, so definitely traditional publishing for me.

All those considerations are far away for now since I have 35 chapters to edit before my book is fit for Agents/Publishers inspection

What am-I doing here? Shouldn't I be blogging ? :-)

[fireflyz]

Haha, yeah I have avoided Twitter until recently.  I applaud anyone that can blog.  I've tried in the past and I end up petering out after a few weeks of constant posting haha.  That's awesome you got to speak with Brandon.  I met him once at a signing, but I only got to speak with him for a few moments and unfortunately it was more gushing fanboy than author to author.  I did get to speak with Dan for about 15 min at a con and that was more professional though I did gush a little bit about Mr. Monster which he was cool enough to sign.  Self publishing is something to keep an eye on for sure, but I don't see it being viable unless you have special circumstances.  A finished series would definitely help.

@hubay I would definitely be interested in that.  I find for me that writing groups help polish the first few chapters.  I think for beginning writers they can help for the whole book.  After that I think alpha/beta readers are the best.  (haha, which is it alpha or beta?  people say the same names for different things so I never know).  It's easier for me with my current schedule to sit down and read an entire book than to try to critique half a dozen chapters.  A nice thing about an overall critique is that it can help make sure you're fulfilling promises to the reader and broader trends that might be an issue.  Just let me know.