As many of you know (via my #queries sessions on Twitter), agents receive a lot of bad query letters. No, not bad; horrendous.
In an effort to share the delightful reaction I have to these letters, and add a little levity to the no-nonsense submission process, I present to you: In Bad Taste: the Horrendously Hilarious Query Contest!
Dear Ms. van Haitsma,
In 1993, an all-male secret society in Tuscany conspired to publish a string of English books about the beauty of the region and the passion of its men. For the next two decades, they reaped the rewards of streams of easy-to-seduce American divorcees. Their plot is discovered by a woman who gets invited to a shack in Tuscany by someone who appears to be a vampire, but is actually God. She meets the vampire while hiking the Appalachian Trail.
My 379,000-word novel is very similar to the new Julia Roberts movie "Pray, Eat, Love." I have never actually been to Tuscany or the Appalachian Trail, but I have Einstein-hair like Malcolm Gladwell, which will convince people that I am a genius, despite doing almost zero research and using people from my personal life as major examples of my ideas.
I have been trying to fit in a group of repressed Muslim women who were empowered by American teachers, but couldn´t quite manage it. I would appreciate any suggestions about where to add them. In the back of the novel, I will include several Tuscan recipes that I downloaded from the internet. I have also added references to many currently popular YouTube videos, in order to enhance the novel´s appeal to younger readers.
I haven´t written the book yet, so I will need an advance of at least $125,000. I think that will be enough to help pay for translating the story into Swedish, then having it translated back into English, so that the cover can say it was translated from Swedish, because I hear that is a hot publishing trend now.
Sincerely,
Elva Donaldson
PS: If you want, I can rework the novel to be about zombies.
-kindly provided by Dax Oliver, a writer and recovering comedian living in Queens, New York.
Submission guidelines:
Contest opens Monday, September 13th at 8 AM EST
-post your query in the comments section below the "contest open" post (to come)
Contest closes Friday, September 17th 12pm EST OR after the first 75 entries, whichever comes first
Queries must be no longer than 500 words
Please note that, due to the volume of submissions received, I am only able to respond to those I am interested in.
1st Place: I will WRITE a query for you.
-Yes, that's right; a bona-fide agent pitch, just for you! Query, detailed synopsis, and first ten pages of your manuscript will be required. A critique of all materials sent will also be included.
2nd Place: critique of query, synopsis, and first ten pages.
3rd Place: critique of query
My reading period is .2857 days. If you have not heard back from me within that time, unfortunately, I have passed.
Winners will be announced on Monday, September 20th
Mock your novel; mock a published novel. Mock the industry, mock the guidelines. Flaunt humor in the face of rejection and despair. Rant your frustrations on paper. Whatever you do...get ready, authors, to DO YOUR WORST!
Adventures in Agentland
The Blog
Monday, August 23, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Creating Dynamic Peripheral Characters
This is a blog post I never thought I would write. Why? Because I had no idea, until I went head-first into revision with one of my authors, what to say about it.
But when an editor comes back to you saying she loves the book, but she’d like to see some revision on peripheral characters, well, gosh darn it, you figure out what to say pretty fast!
So here are some tips that I came up with for my author:
Ask yourself: What is their motivation?
One of the most important elements of your novel is understanding motivation. And not just your hero and/or heroine’s. A great exercise for this is to write a piece of the book in each of your character’s perspectives. You don’t have to include this; but see what they have to say. After you give them a voice, go back to your novel, and make sure their motive and perspectives come through without needing to be in their heads.
Avoid black/white characters
No, not physically; your peripheral characters can be purple for all I care. What I mean here is: avoid blanket good/bad stereotypes. Yes, sometimes these blanket characters pop up; epic stories usually have them. But the gray area is always so much more interesting and heartbreaking.
A great example of this came to me last night, when I (re) watched (for the millionth time) Pirates of the Carribean. Captain Barbosa is clearly a bad guy…right? But that last scene, when he dies, and the bright green apple falls from his fingers…you definitely feel heartbroken for the guy, don’t you? That little detail, those darned apples, were a beautiful plot device for making him more dynamic. They were a physical representation of his motive. He wasn’t bad for the sake of being bad; he was in pain. Yes, he also gets a chance to explain his motive to us, but it’s the apples that really drive it home.
Ask yourself: Are these characters just tools to an end?
Part of what may make a character seem less dynamic is if they only exist to drive forward the plot. Yes, yes; back to the epic fantasy example, sometimes it’s unavoidable to encounter these “extras.” Not every character in a movie needs to run up to the heroine and explain their motivation. I think, perhaps, creating a little map of where each character in your book falls in relation to the hero/heroine should demonstrate the appropriate level of development in your novel:
As the circle widens, the development lessens.
Great; I’ve done the circle and the exercise. Now what?
Good question. Everyone’s approach to revision is different. But to start, think back to the Barbosa example: allow your peripheral characters a chance to explain themselves. Their motivations are going to have to come through via interaction with the hero and/or heroine, if you don’t have multiple POVs (which I never recommend). So go back to pivotal scenes, and give them a voice!
But when an editor comes back to you saying she loves the book, but she’d like to see some revision on peripheral characters, well, gosh darn it, you figure out what to say pretty fast!
So here are some tips that I came up with for my author:
Ask yourself: What is their motivation?
One of the most important elements of your novel is understanding motivation. And not just your hero and/or heroine’s. A great exercise for this is to write a piece of the book in each of your character’s perspectives. You don’t have to include this; but see what they have to say. After you give them a voice, go back to your novel, and make sure their motive and perspectives come through without needing to be in their heads.
Avoid black/white characters
No, not physically; your peripheral characters can be purple for all I care. What I mean here is: avoid blanket good/bad stereotypes. Yes, sometimes these blanket characters pop up; epic stories usually have them. But the gray area is always so much more interesting and heartbreaking.
A great example of this came to me last night, when I (re) watched (for the millionth time) Pirates of the Carribean. Captain Barbosa is clearly a bad guy…right? But that last scene, when he dies, and the bright green apple falls from his fingers…you definitely feel heartbroken for the guy, don’t you? That little detail, those darned apples, were a beautiful plot device for making him more dynamic. They were a physical representation of his motive. He wasn’t bad for the sake of being bad; he was in pain. Yes, he also gets a chance to explain his motive to us, but it’s the apples that really drive it home.
Ask yourself: Are these characters just tools to an end?
Part of what may make a character seem less dynamic is if they only exist to drive forward the plot. Yes, yes; back to the epic fantasy example, sometimes it’s unavoidable to encounter these “extras.” Not every character in a movie needs to run up to the heroine and explain their motivation. I think, perhaps, creating a little map of where each character in your book falls in relation to the hero/heroine should demonstrate the appropriate level of development in your novel:
As the circle widens, the development lessens.
Great; I’ve done the circle and the exercise. Now what?
Good question. Everyone’s approach to revision is different. But to start, think back to the Barbosa example: allow your peripheral characters a chance to explain themselves. Their motivations are going to have to come through via interaction with the hero and/or heroine, if you don’t have multiple POVs (which I never recommend). So go back to pivotal scenes, and give them a voice!
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