Tag Archives: Kristin Nelson

Another lit agent blogging: Rachel Vater

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OK, this is so cool. Bernita at An Innocent A-Blog has posted about some blogs she reads regularly, including one kept by literary agent Rachel Vater of Lowenstein-Yost Associates.

Another agency to add to my blogroll :-)

But it gets better. I queried that agency in July (got a “no” back the next day) and it turns out, Rachel blogs about queries she reads and her response to them. So by scrolling back to July 10 I found her note about mine:

4. An adult novel about discovering little fairies. It’s really the tone of this novel that makes me think it’s not right for me. It seems sweet, light, and romantic. Maybe perfect for someone else, but I tend to like very funny, or else very kick ass, or darker, edgier paranormal novels. Sweet isn’t quite for me.

This really points out how fraught with peril is the querying process. My first version of my query read too dark (Kristin Nelson passed on it for that reason!) so I lightened it. Then maybe midway through the querying process, I decided I’d gotten it too sweet and modified it again.

I don’t know if the book is right for Vater (and since I’ve received multiple requests for fulls at this point I’m not going to lose any sleep over it) but I think I missed my chance with her because of my query, not because of the book itself.

Incidentally, the interface for submitting to this agency isn’t an email address — it’s an online form. As a result, I wasn’t able to include 5 sample pages, which I typically do as per the divine Miss Snark’s regularly repeated advice.

The sample pages would be plenty to show that the novel’s tone isn’t exactly “sweet and light,” although it has its comic and romantic moments.

Coincidentally, Miss Snark touched on the inherent inadequecy of query letters again this weekend:

You can write the world’s worst query letter and if you have good writing attached to it, I’m not going to pass. It’s not the query letter that keeps you from “yes”: it’s the writing. I’ve said it before, here it is again: most query letters suck. Good writing trumps all.

Two of my requests for fulls came from the query plus first five pages. It’s the five pages that dunnit. I so owe Miss Snark.

Plot, plot everywhere . . .

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Literary agent Kristin Nelson has an interesting post up today about the difference between “dramatic plot elements” and conflict. She writes:

I just want to clarify here that these two things are not the same.

Conflict is what motivates and drives your character (and can be internal and well as external).

Dramatic plot elements are simply events that occur in the story.

Not the same thing. So what I’m seeing is that writers are confusing the two and making the assumption that if they have a lot of big events in their novels, that’s enough “conflict”  to carry the story.

I’m going to ask, in her comments, if she’ll follow this up by elaborating on conflict . . . when she critiqued pitches on TWLAuthorTalks last week, she mentioned lack of conflict as a major strike against a couple of pitches. It would be interesting to get more insight from her into how successful writers build conflict into their novels.

“Hi, Concept!” “‘Lo, Concept!”*

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The subject of “high concept” came up this week on TWLAuthorTalks, where agent Kristin Nelson is a guest (and is going to be critiquing pitches this afternoon!)

If you’re a novelist — for that matter, if you’re involved in any aspect of the entertainment biz — you’ve probably at least stumbled across the term. And hopefully after you stumbled you did more than glance at it and kick it out of the way, since it’s one of the cornerstones you’re going to need if you want your career to get anywhere.

The members of TWLAuthorTalks’ spinoff forum, PitchClinic, have been refining our pitches this week, with an eye to showing off our novels’ high concept aspects.

We also talked a bit about what high concept is. Diana Peterfreund posted this link, to an article she wrote about high concept for her lit agency blog. Here’s an excerpt:

A high concept story has the following qualities: easily understood from a few words, and promising tremendous public appeal. When you describe a high-concept story, you can see the whole story — its premise, promise and execution — in a few words. A high concept story also “has legs” — in other words, it doesn’t need a name to sell it. It doesn’t need to be written by Stephen King or have Reese Witherspoon attached to star (though neither of those hurt, and you’ll notice that these two most often produce incredibly high-concept products).

It isn’t easy condensing your 70-100,000 word masterpiece down into one catchy sentence, but as we’ve also noted on the forum, the benefits far outweight the pain. It forces you to really focus on what your novel is “about.” If you can’t find that sentence — if it’s just not there — it may mean that you have to re-think your book. It’s that important. (More to come on that topic . . .)

*Bonus points to anyone who gets this reference hee hee hee

Above the knee? Below the knee? How long is long enough for that novel you’re writing?

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Where’ve I been, you ask?

Why, working! And editing my novel :-)

Plowed through a good 150 pages today, starting to get tired, so thought I’d take a quick break now to blog about . . . novel length.

My WIP is now at 65,000 words, and I’m betting it will finish at 67-68K.

The count has been creeping up during this latest round of editing, as I add some scenes and flesh out a subplot that I’d set aside while I worked on the main plot. Still, it’s on the thin side, so naturally I sat up and paid attention when I read this, in a post titled “Too Short” over at agent Kristin Nelson’s blog, Pubrants.

My agent friends and I just recently discussed an interesting trend on our chat loop: queries for novels with really short word counts (like 50,000 or 60,000 words) that aren’t category romance, cozy mysteries, or YA.

Queries for “full-length” novels.

In fact, according to one agent friend, she says that about half the queries she receives highlights this short word length.

We are all stymied by this.

Where are writers getting the info that this might be an appropriate length for a work? That it would be a marketable length? Standard word length is usually between 70,000 to 100,000 words for a novel. Fantasy can push up to 110,000 but for a debut, it’s going to be a tough go if the word count is higher.

About the same time the issue of manuscript length came up on Deanna Carlyle’s Chicklit Yahoo forum. The discussion offered a new twist: using a computer word count (i.e. MS Word’s utility) gives a shorter length than calculating word count the old-fashioned way — i.e., use Courier 12 pt text, then multiply your page count by 250 — Courier 12 pt gives you an average of 250 words/page.

So a couple days ago, just for fun, I reformatted my WIP from the default font — Times Roman 12 pt — to Courier 12 pt. It jumped from 265 pages to 340.

Is that the secret to legitimately “padding” your official MS length?

Unfortunately, the answer is “probably not.” I actually had a chance to put this question to Kristin Nelson herself, since she’s the guest this week on TWLAuthorTalks (still time to click and join if you want to ask her a question yourself!)

Kristin said that agents and editors use MS word count — and that although published authors can get away with shorter books, first-time novelists are going to have a hard time selling anything that falls outside that 70-100,000-word rule (excluding the genres she noted in her blog post).

She does give a ray of hope for those writers whose work is coming up too long–or too short. If your novel is good enough, word count won’t matter as much.

If your novel is good enough.

I’m not worried about my WIP btw. Partly because I’m totally enamored of it, right now — flaws? What flaws? lol

But mostly because I made a conscious decision, with this book, not to worry about length. I’m focusing on the plot and the characters. I do tend to write rather spare prose, and frankly I don’t want to cure that. I want this book to move, and I want its bones to show.

One day I’ll know whether I can sell it, at whatever length it comes out to be, but until then, it’s just not a problem I’m going to let climb into the boat ;-)

Pitch slam AND pitch clinic!

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It’s big bonus time for writers!

Starting Monday, July 12, literary agent Kristin Nelson will be the guest at TWLAuthorTalks.

Not only will you be able to ask her questions about the writing biz, but she will also be critiquing one-sentence pitches, like Jenny Bent did this last week.

Don’t have a pitch? Not to worry! With TWLAuthorTalk owner Dorothy Thompson’s blessing, I started a spin-off Yahoo Forum, PitchClinic. Join up by following the link, and you can send along your pitch and other members will give you feedback and help you refine it.

This is a wonderful opportunity even if your novel isn’t ready to shop. Think about it: you have a chance to run your premise/concept and main conflict/story arc past one of the industry’s top agents. What better way to find out if you’re on track? What better way to find out if you’ve got a gem or need to rethink your novel’s basic elements?

See you there!

Why nibbles aren’t enough

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When you’re shopping for an agent, “they” say, you have to query a lot of them. Dozens, anyway.

It’s the “only my mom knows how special I really am” approach to finding an agent. You have this book, you know it’s adorable, now all you have to do is find that one agent out there who can See what’s Really There– the one agent who will Believe.

Then every once in awhile you come across a writer who sent out a few queries and whoops, next thing you know, he/she has offers from multiple agents.

Kristin Nelson blogged today about that experience from her perspective as an agent:

I wish it wouldn’t happen as often as it does but when I see a great project, chances are good that other agents think it’s good too. I offer and the writer mentions she already has a couple of offers on the table.

“When I see a great project, chances are good that other agents think it’s good, too.”

So what’s that say about a project that’s been shopped to, say, 20 agents, or 50, or more, and none have responded with particular enthusiasm? (Assuming, of course, that your query letter is literate and you’ve done your due diligence about which agents you’ve approached.)

It’s not easy to accept the fact that the wonderful book you’ve written isn’t good enough. But agents aren’t dumb. On the contrary, they are the ultimate novel quality feedback machine: they screen novels for a living, they have a vested interest in spotting projects that can sell.

So personally, I’ll know I’ve hit my mark when I have multiple agents vying to represent me. That should be the target, IMO. It’s my target, anyway, I’ll say that.