Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Yay Olympics! (And contests for you!)

Okay, so I'm supposed to have a regular blog post today, but I'm busy watching the XXX Olympics (which has a refreshing lack of nudity--London is too cold for skin). So instead, I'll tell you about four awesome contests.

Three are connected and run by the Teen Eyes editorial crew (I've already mentioned Taryn Albright--she has friends). ALL THREE OF THESE CONTESTS ARE GOING ON TODAY, AND END... UM IN 1 HOUR (AT 12 NOON EASTERN TIME) AT MIDNIGHT TONIGHT (12 PM has so many meanings):

I totally stole this pic from the Teen Eyes site.
Hope they don't mind.
Taryn will be judging a query contest over on one of my favorite contest sites, Miss Snark's First Victim. Go post your query in the comments and you could win $100 to use toward the purchase of one (or more) of Taryn's awesome editorial services. Which, I can tell you, you want.

I wonder if it would be cheating to enter the contest with the query Taryn helped me polish last week....

Brent Taylor will be judging 35-word pitches over at Brenda Drake's blog. You could win a 20,000 word in-depth manuscript critique.

Kate Coursey is judging a 250-word contest on Mother. Write. (Repeat.). You'll also need a 1-sentence pitch. Kate is also giving away a 20,000 word manuscript critique.

You wanna enter, don't you? Go! Go! Go!

If you missed those contests (sorry), you can still enter to win a copy of Dan Well's latest head-trip: THE HOLLOW CITY. This is over on my favorite book-blogger's site, Bloggin' 'Bout Books. Susan's contest is open through August 15.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Twitter Tips

Smarter, more savvy Twitter users than I have already addressed this topic. Nathan Bransford, for example, wrote a post a year and a half ago about How to Use Twitter. Some of his tips are outdated (Twitter now shortens URL's all by itself), but most of it is still very sound. I especially like his advice on how to start an @ reply tweet: if you want it to go to all your followers, you need at least a period before the @.

For example:
@Robin_Weeks--haha I can't believe you said that!
Will only broadcast to your followers who also follow me.

but
.@Robin_Weeks--haha I can't believe you said that!
Will broadcast to everyone who follows you.

Did you know that? Well, I didn't before I read Nathan's post. :)



Anyway, I just have a few tips for using Twitter that have really helped me enjoy it and make the most of my time there. If you've been using Twitter for any length of time, you might know these tips already. If not, read on.

On Getting and Keeping Followers
There are these incredible apps you can use to generate thousands of followers fast. They work on the "follow back" premise--that most people you follow will automatically follow you back. These engines will search out people with similar interests and follow them. Then you can just unfollow those who don't follow you, so your following/followers numbers don't get too pathetic. I've seen accounts with literally tens of thousands of followers and they've only tweeted a few hundred times. These accounts and the engines which drive followers to them are also known as SPAM. They must constantly switch techniques to avoid getting shut down by Twitter. They are not interesting and they do not add to the conversation. They are interested in the numbers, not in talking to me. DO NOT DO THIS.

Instead (wait for it)--just follow people you like. Authors, writers, librarians, rock stars you can't help but like. The famous people probably won't follow back unless you actually know them in real life. But really, we don't usually follow famous people because we want them to talk to us (though that is awesome when it happens) or because we think they'll enjoy reading our own Twitter feed (though we can dream). We follow some people because we're voyeurs. We want to see what they say.

Most of the people we follow, though, will want to follow us, too, if we really do have common interests. If they don't follow back automatically, try saying hello. Reply to one of their tweets. Start up a conversation (TWITTER'S MAIN PURPOSE IS TO HAVE A CONVERSATION).

When I first started out, I scoured my friends' twitter friends and followed the ones I also thought were interesting. Today, I'm following almost 400 more people than I have followers. And that's okay.

Don't:

  • Auto-Direct-Message new followers with a link to your blog or an impersonal welcome message. That's extremely annoying and some people will unfollow you just for that. They followed you because they thought you were unique or interesting... now they know you're not.
  • Dump people who don't follow back. Did you follow them to increase your numbers or did you follow them because you thought they were interesting? Are they less interesting because they take a few days to decide if they want to follow you? Nothing is more annoying than getting a new follower notice, then, a few days later when I have time to see who they are, find that they're not following me anymore. 
  • Worry about who is following you. Just don't. You'll give yourself a complex and that's not interesting.
  • Exclusively use your feed to plug your books, or your blog, or your whatever-else-it-is. That's like asking people to sign up to watch a commercial. Would YOU volunteer to watch commercials? You'll want to plug your stuff, of course, but use care. Twitter shows the most recent three tweets to most people who click on your profile name. If all three are about what they can purchase from you, they'll run away. Make sure at least one (better if it's two) of your last three tweets is something real. A witty observation. A book recommendation (not yours, not a good friend's, just a book you really enjoyed). Something to prove you're a real person and not a spam-bot.
On Lists
If you haven't experienced the joys of lists, do yourself a favor and start now. Following 1500+ people gets to be a lot like trying to pick gems out of a rushing river. Lists help filter the river down to a very manageable stream. You don't have to make your list public. No one has to know who is on what list--or even that you HAVE lists.

That said, I have a couple private lists that I urge you to create for yourselves:
  • Favorite Writer People: These are the people in the writing world whose tweets I don't want to miss. They aren't the thousand people who I followed because they're writers or because I stumbled on their blog. These are people I regularly talk to, or who I've found tweet things that make me laugh. People I'd love to be friends with in real life. I'm VERY selective about who goes in this list so that I don't have to be selective about who I follow. 
  • Favorite Writers: These people I'd still love to be friends with, but I follow them because I love their books. If they never follow me back or even reply to me, that's okay. I just like to know what they're up to.
TweetDeck
This is a program you download to your computer that holds all your lists, your contacts, and your direct messages for you. You get to have your lists side-by-side with your regular stream, DM's, and you get to pick which ones are on which screen. You can even have a column with a favorite hashtag, like #YALitChat or #askagent.

That's all for now. Do you have any favorite Twitter Tips you want to share? What bothers you about Twitter (or about the Tweeps on Twitter)? Do you use it or are you still resisting?

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Important Things (including a contest)

Contest Alert! 
Taryn Albright, who is quickly becoming my favorite teenager (only she's 19, so soon she'll be all old and stuff) is an agency intern and an editor for Teen Eyes, an awesome editorial service where you can get experienced, intelligent teenagers from your target audience to critique your YA manuscript. They also do FREE query critiques (though if too many of us reveal our desperation for review, they might be forced to change that policy) AND Taryn is having a contest this week (ending tomorrow, Wednesday, July 25th). If you enter the contest you are guaranteed a free query crit. If she likes your query the best, you'll win a 10-page critique.

Did I mention she's an agency intern? So she, like, knows a good query when she sees one? Unlike some people who like to blog about queries but only know how NOT to write them?

She's also going to break down the good query on her blog. How's THAT for awesome?

Also, while she critiques queries, she's started doing #querycrits on Twitter, which is all 10 kinds of awesome. You definitely want to follow her.


Poll Results
Okay, so this isn't all that important, but just for the heck of it, I'll tell you that I got 3 votes to continue my How NOT to Write a Query series, 2 votes from people who want to volunteer their own queries, 3 who said they would help, only 1 who won't be reading them (we'll miss you), and absolutely no one was honest enough to tell me I'm up in the night to be dispensing query advice.

My current plan is to critique a query once a month (even those who like the series didn't think I should do TOO much of it). For more information, please see my newly added tab at the top of the page for all your How NOT to Write a Query resource needs.

The Kiss of  Stranger
This week only, Sarah M. Eden's awesome Regency romance The Kiss of a Stranger, is on sale for $2.99 on Amazon. I've only read one of her books so far, but I'm determined to read them all because 1) she's such an awesome researcher, I interviewed her about research for Authors' Advisory--so we know she has her details right; 2) she's absolutely hilarious in real life; 3) the one book I read was soooo good (which, let's face it, is the only really important consideration).



You gonna join the contest? Submit your query for future editions of HNTWAQ? Buy Sarah's book? Good for you.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

HNTWAQ: Practice 2 Rewrite

I've discovered my favorite part about this series: REWRITES. I love seeing the raw query and then the  so-much-better rewrites. I'm learning so much about HOW to write a query by watching these folks improve theirs. Maybe someday, I'll understand how to write a good one myself.

Until then, this is How NOT to Write a Query: Practice 2... the rewrite.


Once again, this query is by Robin Hall (not to be confused with Robin Weeks, though her name IS almost as cool as mine). This is the rewrite, which I love so much more than the last draft.

Dear Agent,

Because you’re so awesome I thought you might be interested in my magical realism YA, LOVESENSE (55,000 words).

Seventeen-year-old RAE can look at a photograph of a couple and determine the length of their relationship by its smell—a strange gift of “lovesense” she’s always had. The worse the stench, the nastier the breakup. It’s why she owns more nose plugs than an Olympic swimmer, avoids checkout stand magazines, and dreads her photo counter job. Because Rae has never sniffed an everlasting relationship, she believes true love only exists in fairy tales.

Trying to make the best of her lovesense, she runs an anonymous drop-your-photo-and-cash-here business at school. As Rae focuses on passing Junior English and conquering the 110-meter hurdles, she smells relationships ending through bat guano, rotten eggs, and half-masticated rotting seal. Until an old photograph changes everything: Rae smells something good. And, this time, she’s in the picture.

Finding the grown-up version of the mysterious baby boy she once played with becomes her quest. But just as Rae begins to open herself to the idea of true love, her nemesis exposes Rae’s secret talent and illegal school activities. Now she’s suspended from school, banned from the City-County track meet, and rumored to be a psycho gypsy freak.

Rae must embrace her lovesense and take a chance on love if she’s ever going to find her match, or face her classmates again.

I have included the first ten pages of the manuscript. The complete manuscript is available upon request.

Thank you for your time and consideration,
Robin Hall
[Contact info redacted]
The thing I love most about this rewrite is that it solidifies what a lovesense is and how it works--and she doesn't take forever explaining it, either. I also feel like I know Rae better: how she deals with her extra sense, how irritating it can be, and how she actually profits from it, helps me see her as resourceful and spunky. I also understand better why she wants to find her true love when she doesn't really believe in it. Her nemesis and the consequences of exposure stand in her way to not just true love, but also getting a normal life back, and if she fails, she could face permanent ostracism and never find true love (I love that so much better than just not having a boyfriend).

So it's pretty good right now, but let's see if we can help make it better. 'Cause that's what we do. Also, everyone who voted and said they'd help critique queries, now's your chance.
Dear Agent,
Because you’re so awesome I thought you might be interested in my magical realism YA, LOVESENSE (55,000 words).
Okay, so I still don't know much about genre definitions, but I found a link where agent Vicki Motter talks about Magical Realism . . . and she'd not a fan of the term, though she's not the only agent out there. I still recommend YA Contemporary Fantasy or YA Paranormal Romance.
Seventeen-year-old RAE can look at a photograph of a couple and determine the length of their relationship by its smell—a strange gift of “lovesense” she’s always had. The worse the stench, the nastier the breakup. It’s why she owns more nose plugs than an Olympic swimmer, avoids checkout stand magazines, and dreads her photo counter job. Because Rae has never sniffed an everlasting relationship, she believes true love only exists in fairy tales.
There's a lot of great information in this paragraph, and I think all of it is important. I also love the quirky details about what she does to avoid smelling a bad relationship photo. I would consider rethinking "dreads" for her photo counter job. Dread suggests fear for a future evil, and, well, if she still has the job, she probably shows up there on a fairly regular basis. Maybe a different detail? Like never peeks at the wedding photos? Also, can she tell the length of time until breakup, or just how bad it will be?

Also, maybe it's just my own worldview, but I've seen tons and tons of successful relationships, so I have a hard time buying that she has never smelled something good from a couple's photo. Also, if no one ever gets good news about their relationship, why would people pay her to predict that they will break up? I'd buy that most relationships smell rotten, but all? I have a problem with that. Especially since it seems that Rae is seemingly the only one who can find her true love. Seems unfair, even if she is the MC.
Trying to make the best of her lovesense, she runs an anonymous drop-your-photo-and-cash-here business at school. As Rae focuses on passing Junior English and conquering the 110-meter hurdles, she smells relationships ending through bat guano, rotten eggs, and half-masticated rotting seal. Until an old photograph changes everything: Rae smells something good. And, this time, she’s in the picture.
Again, good details. I'd refine the phrase "she smells relationships ending through"--I love the detail on the bad smells, but the phrasing is awkward and I had to read it a few times. Also, since this paragraph starts talking about her business, it makes it seem like the photo was submitted to the drop-box, but that's not what it says. I'd suggest clarifying it one way or the other. I do love the detail that it's a picture of herself with a mysterious boy. 
Finding the grown-up version of the mysterious baby boy she once played with becomes her quest. But just as Rae begins to open herself to the idea of true love, her nemesis exposes Rae’s secret talent and illegal school activities. Now she’s suspended from school, banned from the City-County track meet, and rumored to be a psycho gypsy freak.
This paragraph is good, too, but I think it can be better. Instead of saying that finding the boy becomes her quest, is there a way to word it that also hints at her struggle to understand why she's bothering? Again, if she has even once seen/smelled a good solid relationship, she would have a reason to believe. What is it that makes her believe in love if all she has seen is failure? (AKA: That must have been some smell.)

Also, calling a nemesis a "nemesis" is rather cliche and cartooney. This is compounded by the fact that I'm guessing that the nemesis is the boy in the photo, so I want more details and I think you're trying to be sneaky by hiding behind cheesy labels--which only draws more attention to it. If I'm right, give him/her a gender (preferably male) and a name so that I can think I'm right and so I'll really really want to read the book to find out. If I'm wrong, leave the nemesis out and just say she's exposed. True nemeses are important--just ask Perry the Platypus--so they deserve a few more details. The more (brief) details you can give me about him/her, the more I'll wonder if my crazy theory is wrong.
Rae must embrace her lovesense and take a chance on love if she’s ever going to find her match, or face her classmates again.
I think this is adequate, but think about also tossing in her plan to thwart the nemesis. It'll be even better if my crazy theory is right and she's both trying to find him and thwart him. :)
I have included the first ten pages of the manuscript. The complete manuscript is available upon request.
I'm assuming you're also going to put some sort of biographical information in the query? If you have zero writing experience, it's okay to leave it out, but if there is anything that makes you the perfect person to write this book, it could be helpful to include it. 
Thank you for your time and consideration,Robin Hall
[Contact info redacted]
As I said before (and I'm not the first)--be careful not to let your query voice fall victim to a desire to take someone else's advice. In a toss-up between good voice and a perfectly structured, voiceless query, agents are more likely to overlook structural flaws than flat voice. Or so it seems to me. You write it the way you want it, and everyone else can butt out.

Speaking of whom, anyone else want to chime in? Any genre experts? Anyone else suspect that the nemesis is really Rae's true love?

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Ah, Melodrama

When I was in high school, I was in a melodrama for my church congregation. I played Goldie, with yellow-painted ringlets (seriously: we used poster paint on them). The dastardly villain wanted our home, my aging "father" couldn't pay the mortgage, and the villain insisted I marry him to pay the debt. When all was lost and the ceremony was progressing, we did a freeze frame in which we all held our tragic positions while my "grandma" broke 4th wall to call for a hero,who was fortuitously available (and, quite coincidentally, the cutest guy in the area *sigh*). The day was saved, I married the hero instead, and a hilarious time was had by all. Until I had to wash my hair.

Anyway, I bring this up because melodrama is a very valid form of art. The point of it it to poke fun at extremes, both of emotion and of circumstance, and to convince us all that even the most terrible, horrible, no good very bad situation can be laughed at, ridiculed, and overcome by clever tropes.

It is ridiculously easy to spot melodrama. The point of melodrama is to take something normal-sized and inflate it out of all normal proportions. If a girl is sad because her boyfriend left her (normal), she becomes devastated and suicidal (melodrama). An antagonist doesn't just oppose the hero, he seeks to obliterate him--just because that's the evil thing to do.

Melodrama also tells us exactly how we should react to the scene. There is no need to bring along your thinking cap when watching a melodrama. Thinking is highly overrated and, really, discouraged. Sure, there may be some melodramas with a deeper meaning, but most of them are predictable: the damsel in distress, the dastardly villain, and the heroic hero going round and round the same old story. Suspend your disbelief, check your brain at the door, and do as you're told, and you'll have a good time.

So how does this apply to writing? Well, most of the melodrama in writing . . . isn't supposed to be there.


Don't get me wrong--some melodrama can be effective in fiction. Take, for example, this excerpt from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone:
"We swore when we took him in we'd put a stop to that rubbish," said Uncle Vernon, "swore we'd stamp it out of him! Wizard indeed!"
"You knew?" said Harry. "You knew I'm a - a wizard?"
"Knew!" shrieked Aunt Petunia suddenly. "Knew! Of course we knew! How could you not be, my dratted sister being what she was? Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that - that school - and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was - a  freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!"
She stopped to draw a deep breath and then went ranting on. It seemed she had been wanting to say all this for years. 
"Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you'd be just he same, just as strange, just as - as - abnormal - and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!" 
Can you picture real-life people saying this, even if forced to harbor an unwanted magical nephew? If someone in your real life ever gave anything close to this speech, you'd stare at them with an open mouth.

Real life people generally try to be more PC. To justify themselves with more than "She was a freak--how can you blame me for abusing her son for 11 years?" At the very least, a real person would try to explain why magic is so bad they felt a moral imperative to eradicate it from the boy they loved as their own. Or they wouldn't explain at all and be all "Who are you to judge me?" or something like that. Real people try to avoid saying crazy, illogical things out loud.

(Okay, so that doesn't always work in real life, since real people say things that make no sense all the time, but since the main difference between fiction and real life is that fiction has to make sense, hopefully you can catch my meaning anyway.)


The Durseleys can be melodramatic because they aren't designed to be real people. Through the rest of the series, the Dursleys never rise above the stereotypical villains of Harry's childhood. They don't get more rounded. They don't feel shame. They can be cowed and manipulated, but they don't ever accept Harry. They don't grow as characters.

And that's okay. The Dursleys are the comic relief in a world that goes slowly mad. Their stagnant stereotype is rather soothing in contrast to everyone else's desperate dynamics.


If you don't want comic relief, though, cut the melodrama.

The insidious danger of melodrama is that it can creep into our writing when we don't want it to. When we're just trying to tell a normal (or even paranormal) tale with pretty average (even if supernatural) characters who are supposed to speak and act much like we like ourselves do (or would do, if we had superpowers).

So here's a quick checklist to make sure your characters aren't auditioning for the part of Damsel in Distress or Dastardly Villain:
  • Does a character who is supposed to be well-rounded say anything that would get him labeled as crazy he he said it in real life? (And no one calls him on it?)
    • “When I left you, I was but the learner, now I am the master.” 
    • “Only a master of evil, Darth.”
  • Does a character say anything that would go well with a swoon or a limp-wrist-to-the-head?
    • "You've used me until I'm all used up!"
    • "How could you do such a horrible thing to me?"
    • "I can't go on alone."
    • "Search your feelings, Luke, you know it to be true!"
    • "Noooooooo!"
  • Does a character use an adjective to modify a word that doesn't need to be modified?
    • "I was a victim of a terrible rape." (Implying that some rapes aren't terrible.)
    • "My brother was cruelly murdered." (Some murders aren't cruel?)
    • "I just finished 24 grueling hours at the crash site." (As opposed to the 24 easy hours all the other EMT's did.)
  • Do your characters issue trite comments over and over about the emotional hardships they are facing and how hard it is for them to overcome them?
    • "I can no longer feel the love I used to have inside for him, so I'll never be able to forgive him."
    • "Love will conquer all. You just have to have faith."
    • "Search your feelings, Father, you can't do this. I feel the conflict within you. Let go of your hate."
  • Do your characters make any speeches that sound like there should be a heroic swell of music behind them?
    • "I want to come with you to Alderaan. There's nothing for me here now. I want to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like my father."
    • "I must face him, alone."
    • "You're wrong, Leia. You have that power too. In time you'll learn to use it as I have. The Force runs strong in my family. My father has it. I have it. And... my sister has it. Yes. It's you, Leia."
    • "I know. Somehow, I've always known."
  • Do you or your characters EVER spell out the moral of the story, thereby making sure the audience knows how to feel about it?
    • "And now I know that love will always overcome fear."
    • Jane sensed that the trials she had lived through had changed her forever, and that she'd now be a better person because of them.
    • "I'll not leave you here, I've got to save you." 
    • "You already... have, Luke. You were right. You were right about me. Tell your sister... you were right."
Yes, I think Star Wars is one of the most melodramatic franchises I've ever watched. You know it's true.

A quick note and I'm done.

Humans are messy, emotional creatures. Especially while growing up. I don't think we ever completely lose the tendency to freak out over nothing, to wallow for no good reason, or to get all passive-aggressive and woe-is-me when the little things aren't going as we want them to. We philosophize, curse the heavens, and talk ourselves down off ledges using trite words of self-affirmation. It happens.

The difference is that, as we get older, we learn to adapt our behavior to conform with what society expects of us.

Which, let's face it, is LESS MELODRAMA. No one wants your sticky emotions washing all over them. So behavior that is normal in a 12-year-old would be strange in a 16-year-old and bizarre in an adult.

So if you're thinking that it's natural for your characters to feel melodramatic, you're probably right. But it is not--repeat: NOT--normal for someone over 12 to act melodramatic. To say melodramatic things.

Cut it out.

Have you ever stumbled over melodrama in a published book that totally kicked you out of the story? (No titles, please. We don't need to tear other authors down in public to learn how to do it better ourselves.) How do you avoid melodrama in your own writing?

Thursday, July 12, 2012

HNTWAQ: Practice... Poll


Randy suggested that I make How NOT to Write a Query: Practice a regular feature on my blog. I'm happy to do so, but I thought I'd get a feel for interest, first. Therefore, over in the left sidebar (that's stage right for you theatre geeks), you will find a new poll, which will be open for... um... one week. Unless no one votes, in which case I might leave it there longer, just to advertise my unpopularity as long as possible.

Since I know how hard it is to understand the subtext in short sidebar options, here's the explanation for each:
Option Numba One:Why, yes, Robin, I would love to have you critique more real-life queries on your blog. I do so enjoy the carnage. Rip, tear, shred some more!
Option Numero Dos:Not only would I like to see you critique more real-life queries on this-here blog, but I would enjoy submitting my own query because I have a really, really thick skin and it tickles me to no end when someone points out all the ways I can do things wrong.
Op-ti-oh-nay III:I'd love to see more queries critiqued here AND I've been planning to jump on in and help critique the queries myself someday. Yanno, just in case there comes a time when you don't say it all perfectly first.
Option-the-Fourth:Well, see, I've already read your query critiques and really can't imagine that you have more to share, so I probably won't be reading any more of them. Plus, dang, are they LOOONG!
Option Final-Five:Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to have you do query critiques when you can't even land an agent yourself? Talk about blind-leading-the-blind! Just stop while you're ahead, k?
And that's all I can think of for now. You can select as many as you want. Do feel free to leave comments, as well, and to make up your own options as you do so. Unlike queries, this poll is rule-free. Please feel free to leave comments or just vote in the poll anonymously. I'm also interested in comments on how often you'd like to see query crits here (if at all). I'm leaning toward once a month.

Thanks!

UPDATE: I couldn't see the votes, so I shortened the responses... but it deleted the 2 votes I had. Sorry!

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

HNTWAQ: Practice 1 Rewrite

Good queries aren't just born--they're painstakingly built, draft after draft. Or, well, that's what I assume, since I'm still not sure how to write a good one.

Today, I'm pleased to produce the first rewrite of the first real query I critiqued almost two weeks ago.


Randy decided he's still speaking to me after all, and is even letting me tear apart his rewritten query. Here's the new version:
Dear Agent,

Every thousand years, Hell has a footrace to the gates of heaven, and the winner receives a second chance at life.

Banan, a Saxon warlord with a knack for fighting, defied tradition and married a Welsh woman named Morna. She had hooked his feral heart and opened his eyes to the non-violent aspects of life. But his best friend, Wregan, opposed his union to an enslaved, pagan vassal and betrayed him. Moved by love and honor, Banan killed a priest to protect Morna and was subsequently executed for his crime.

In Hell, both men retained their hatred for one another. For centuries, Wregan has been secretly eliminating Banan’s family on Earth.

Banan has only once chance to escape from the tortures of Hell and change his eternal fate. He will be competing against some of the vilest and most ruthless souls the Earth has ever produced. Then he discovers that his wife bore him a child after his death and Wregan plans to murder the last member of his family during the race. He must choose between saving a girl he doesn’t know and winning HELLATHON.

Complete at 120,000 words, HELLATHON is a fantasy novel for adults. I have stories published in Gentle Strength Quarterly and The City of the Gods: Mythic Tales with another story being scheduled for inclusion in the next City of the Gods anthology coming out in 2013. During the 2011 LDStoryMaker conference I took first place in the First Chapter contest for the speculative fiction category. In 2012 I took second place for the same competition and category.

Thank you for your time and attention on this matter, and I hope that you enjoy what you read. I look forward to your reply.

First, I like this version lots better than the last one, since 1) he's answered a lot of the questions I had, and 2) a lot of the details that were muddying things have been left out. My main complaint is that, well, Randy added some details that I don't think are necessary. That's probably my fault. :)


I think we have the details of who Banan is, what he wants, who stands in his way, and what happens if he fails--but we also have some other stuff. Here's what I would suggest:

Dear Agent,  Every thousand years, Hell has a footrace to the gates of heaven, and the winner receives a second chance at life. 
I love this new start--it tells me immediately what is at stake.
Banan, a Saxon warlord with a knack for fighting, defied tradition and married a Welsh woman named Morna. She had hooked his feral heart and opened his eyes to the non-violent aspects of life. But his best friend, Wregan, opposed his union to an enslaved, pagan vassal and betrayed him. Moved by love and honor, Banan killed a priest to protect Morna and was subsequently executed for his crime. 
This paragraph, though, is all back story. While it helps me understand Banan and Wregan, it totally halts the forward motion of the query. I'd suggest a one-sentence summary. Something in the lines of "Banan and Wregan were best friends in life... right up until Banan tried to marry the wrong woman, killed a priest, and ended up in hell." Then skip right along to the next paragraph. We don't need to know all the details of what went wrong with their friendship--just a few hints will give us a framework that will let us understand why they're rivals now.
In Hell, both men retained their hatred for one another. For centuries, Wregan has been secretly eliminating Banan’s family on Earth. 
This is all good info--I just suggest streamlining it a tad. If you take my suggestion from the last paragraph, combine with this one and give us a hint why Wregan is in hell (is it just because he's a racist?) and also why he hates Banan so much that he's killing off Banan's family.
Banan has only once chance to escape from the tortures of Hell and change his eternal fate. He was a Saxon warlord in life, but to win, he'll have to best He will be competing against some of the vilest and most ruthless souls the Earth has ever produced. Then he discovers that his wife bore him a child after his death and But when he discovers that Wregan plans to murder the last member of his family during the race, Banan realizes there might be something more important than escaping hell.
[I added this space.] 
He Banan must choose between saving a girl he doesn’t know and winning HELLATHON.
First sentence is good. I don't think the "wife bore him a child after his death" is a necessary detail--and adding it makes it seem very important. I think what's more important is the fact that he has descendants who are being killed. The last line could use some tweaking--calling his last descendant "a girl he doesn't know" seems to minimize the stakes for me. If he thinks of her that way, what is it that makes the choice hard?
Complete at 120,000 words, HELLATHON is a fantasy novel for adults. I have stories published in Gentle Strength Quarterly and The City of the Gods: Mythic Tales with another story being scheduled for inclusion in the next City of the Gods anthology coming out in 2013. During the 2011 LDStoryMaker conference I took first place in the First Chapter contest for the speculative fiction category. In 2012 I took second place for the same competition and category. 
Good stuff.
Thank you for your time and consideration. attention on this matter, and I hope that you enjoy what you read. I look forward to your reply.
Agents don't promise attention--it's your job to grab their attention. Also, they already know that you hope they'll enjoy it... and many of them will never reply. Keep it simple.

One last caution, Randy. As I've seen pointed out elsewhere, it is possible to workshop a query so much that it loses your voice and becomes lifeless. Therefore, please take all my suggestions as just that--and write it the way you feel it should be written.

After all, I still don't know how to write a good one. :)

Anyone else have some suggestions for Randy?

Monday, July 9, 2012

Reminders: Query and Pitch Contests Today

Today from 6:00 am EST through 3:00 pm EST is the Christmas in July contest hosted by  Michelle Krys and Ruth Lauren Steven. If you want to play, send your query and first 500 words to lottiehumphries14 (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk--but go to one of their blogs to get proper formatting instructions first. The best 20 entries will get feedback from Michelle and Ruth before being shown to 10 participating agents.

Also today from 9:00 am EST through midnight tomorrow is a Pitch Contest at Writerly Rejects. If you want to play, send an email to writerlyrejects (at) gmail (dot) com with your title, name, genre, and 3-5 sentence pitch. The best 20 entries will be forwarded to Claire Anderson-Wheeler, a new agent with Anderson Literary Management. Winner will get a full manuscript critique from Claire.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Having Some Fun

In the race, from far left right: SonC, SonB (in back), SonD, other folks

Yesterday, we attended a 4th of July breakfast/festival at a local park. SonC (bright green shirt) absolutely loved the sack races. Did them over and over for about an hour. Won almost every time.

Can you blame me for taking a break from blogging?

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

HNTWAQ: Practice 4

Once again, this is a little series I started when it became painfully obvious that I had no clue how to write a good query. I still don't know how to do that, but I'm sharing everything I've learned about all the many, many ways there are of screwing it up. Once you cut these puppies out of your query... well, you'll probably have made a few of your own, unique mistakes, but you'll be that much closer to perfection.

I never really intended to critique real life queries (preferring to take book blurbs and reverse-engineering them to the crap their authors probably wrote first), but, well, these folks volunteered. And there's this contest coming up and how fair would it be if I didn't help my competitors beat me?

I really wanted to do this one in a line with the other three from last week. I really did. But, MAN! Critiquing queries is HARD! And draining. I will never again criticize an agent who won't give specific feedback. Three in a row just about did me in, and I didn't want to short change this last one just because my brain had melted.

So let's do one more:


This query is the brain-child of L.M. Miller, who won a query crit from me on June 21st. (And, yes, I've talked about nothing besides queries and query contests since then. Why do you ask?) Here's her original, un-ripped-and-torn query:

Dear Agent,
Seventeen-year-old Adalmund Port will do anything to save her country. She’s left her home, gone to war, and sacrificed her arm. As the last person in her country able to see and manipulate the threads of magic woven across her world, she enjoys her new position as tutor and protector of her country’s heir to the throne.
But her first job ends in failure. The queen orders Adalmund to infiltrate a neighboring country and assassinate the man who killed the heir. Seeking redemption and revenge, Adalmund complies. Instead, she finds an army—larger than any her nation could ever raise and better armed than any military she’s ever seen—prepared to attack her country. To stop them before they cross the border, Adalmund will have to strike a deal with that country’s revolutionary, Peace.
A charismatic and violent man with the same magical powers as Adalmund, Peace is leading a rebellion against the military. He’ll stop at nothing to overthrow the neglectful nobility of his nation. Adalmund will have to work with him to stop the army marching towards her home and find the murderer she’s there to kill.
To stop a war she’ll have to start a revolution.
REBEL THREADS is a young adult fantasy of 70,000 words. It is a standalone book with series potential.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Once again, I removed some wayward hard returns so the lines would break naturally for the blog, but other than that, my initial reaction was: Very cool story idea. I love revolution plots, especially with magic. I think you have a lot of great details, but I think the central conflict thread is getting lost.
This comes up a lot (it absolutely comes up a lot in my own poor query efforts), so let's talk about it. The central problem is the goal. That one thing that must happen for the heroine to be successful and without which the world will end (literally or figuratively). A query is not a magic trick. It is not a place to practice slight-of-hand. Therefore, follow this rule:

Everything that distracts the eye from 
the actual, central goal... should go.

This includes (oh-so-sadly) those shiny, sparkly things that we love. Our sub-plot darlings. Our tricky-turns-of-phrase. Our backstory beauties. That kid in the background of the picture who gives such quirky life to our story world, but who doesn't drive the main plot.

If you can use them to bolster the main plot, sure, but if they're there just for flavor, cut them. Salt the meat of the story and skip the garnish.


Once again, the four questions:

Who is the protagonist: One-armed 17-year-old Adalmund Port, who can manipulate the threads of magic (I don't have a clue what this means) and who is a tutor and (ultimately unsuccessful) protector to her country's heir. I'm a little confused at the get-go about not just the magic thing, but also how such a rare person becomes a tutor. I know the heir is important, but what makes a one-armed ex-soldier and rare magic user qualified to tutor the heir? How old is the heir? Is this a way of putting her to pasture or a promotion? I wonder if the query might be better if we cut the heir--or at least her relationship to the heir--out. She goes to the enemy country at the command of the queen. That's probably enough of a motivation for the query.


What does she want: This is also a tad muddled by the heir backstory. She wants to avenge his/her murder by killing the assassin AND she wants to prevent the slaughter of her countrymen by the hugenormous (don't use that word in your query) army she finds. One of these plots feels slightly more important than the other, and I sincerely hope that the war is more important to her than her guilt-driven vendetta.

What stands in her way: For the war plot, what stands in her way is the gigantmous army and the government behind it. For the revenge plot . . . not sure exactly what stands in her way, other than the natural difficulty of finding a single killer in a country preparing for brutal war.

What will happen if she fails: This part is actually pretty clear on the war plot: if she fails, her country is doomed. Very nice stakes. The revenge plot . . . she'll fail again? Not quite enough to drive a book. Revenge plot is a subplot.

So my main advice is to cut the revenge subplot and focus on the war. (Please note that this advice ONLY applies to the query. I really like the revenge subplot idea for the book itself.)

Let's see if I can give some advice on how to do that (and maybe how to save a bit of the revenge plot):
Dear Agent,
Seventeen-year-old Adalmund Port will do anything to save her country. She’s left her home, gone to war, and sacrificed her arm. As the last person in her country able to see and manipulate the threads of magic woven across her world, she enjoys her new position as tutor and protector of her country’s heir to the throne. 
The first sentence here is telling--and unnecessarily so. (Yes, some telling can be good.) More, it doesn't describe your book to the exclusion of all others, other than the name of the MC. Try something like "Seventeen-year-old Adalmund Port sacrificed her arm to her country's defense. She would have given more, but, as the last magic weaver, she is pulled home to protect the heir." Only, you know, better.

If there is a quick way to describe exactly what her magic can do somewhere in the query, that would be good, too. Also, people who "enjoy" things are boring in queries. Just saying. Hurry forward to the part where everything goes boom.
But her first job ends in failure. The queen orders Adalmund to infiltrate a neighboring country and assassinate the man who killed the heir. Seeking redemption and revenge, Adalmund complies. Instead, she finds an army—larger than any her nation could ever raise and better armed than any military she’s ever seen—prepared to attack her country. To stop them before they cross the border, Adalmund will have to strike a deal with that country’s revolutionary, Peace.
I'd suggest emphasizing the primary motivation, here: that the queen ordered it. Saying that she was seeking redemption and revenge when she complies suggests that she wouldn't have gone if she didn't have her own motivation. Nothing in the rest of the query hinted at that level of self-rule. Maybe just say that when the heir is murdered, the queen sends her to kill the assassin.

A couple words of explanation about why she was chosen for this task might be relevant and help build her character--was the queen angry with her for failing? Is she really the best warrior/spy her country has? Why send their only magic weaver away?


Also, I'm picturing this army lined up in ranks, all ready to march. Can you say how much time she has to foment rebellion? A day? A month?
I do love the description of how she'll have to strike a deal with Peace.
A charismatic and violent man with the same magical powers as Adalmund, Peace is leading a rebellion against the military. He’ll stop at nothing to overthrow the neglectful nobility of his nation. Adalmund will have to work with him to stop the army marching towards her home and find the murderer she’s there to kill.
Again, I'm completely lost on what "the same magical powers" means. Keep in mind Brandon Sanderson's rule of magic use: if you want to solve problems with it, your readers must understand how it works. This isn't completely necessary for a query, but a few hints will get my imagination working for you. How will their magic abilities help them? Since you mention both of them having the same abilities, I assume it will factor in?
Also, "neglectful nobility" seems so cliche. Is there some sort of specific thing they do that can help me quickly understand why he's so intent on overthrowing them? It might be good to throw in some specific details about how big the rebellion is. Are we talking 30 rebels or 3,000? What are their chances of success? Since this rebellion is the main driving force in the plot, a bit more detail is probably in order.
To stop a war she’ll have to start a revolution.
I love this line. Great summary of the main conflict.
REBEL THREADS is a young adult fantasy of 70,000 words. It is a standalone book with series potential.
Thank you for your time and consideration.

To sum up:

  1. Focus on the war/rebellion plot, cut anything that doesn't support it.
  2. Describe the magic so we can see how that will help the rebellion.
  3. More information on the rebellion. (Yes, I love me a good rebellion.)

Thanks for playing, L.M.!

Okay, your turn, bloggers. Any advice I missed? Any advice you completely disagree with? Either way, chime on in, so L.M. doesn't think I'm just making this stuff up. :)