In Pursuit Of Happiness — The Agent/Author Conversations: Why Main...

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The Agent/Author Conversations: Why Main Characters Need to Drive Your Story

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As the "Now What?" Months continue, we’ll be hearing from agents, editors, self-publishers, and authors about the road towards sharing your work. We’ve asked several authors to interview their agents for a peek behind the curtain at what it takes to write and sell a book. Today, Kelly Loy Gilbert interviews her agent, Adriann Ranta, about typical critiques, beta readers, and more:

Kelly Loy Gilbert: When I come out of my writing cave with a new draft, one thing that’s always a big transition for me is that process of opening it up to other voices. I tend not to show anyone what I’m working on as I’m doing it, so for months the only voice I’ve been hearing has been my own. But, of course, if you’re going take a story out into the world, whether that’s sharing it with a reader or an agent or editor, whether that’s self-publishing or traditional publishing, suddenly there will be a whole chorus of voices surrounding your previously shy story.

Adriann, what have you learned about the revision process from the agenting side?

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Great Writers Never Stop Writing: Establishing the Cycle

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Camp NaNoWriMo may be over, but creative inspiration doesn’t stop. Maintaining a writing habit takes as much care as revising your first draft… today, R.M. Prioleau, an active NaNoWriMo participant and independently published author share her tips for building a writing and editing rhythm:

If you are one of the many who have won this year’s Camp NaNoWriMo, then congratulations! You have done the majority of the hard work—getting your book out on paper. But don’t think it stops there… especially if you are considering publishing your great work of art. Sure, you’ve managed to write ‘The End’, but the manuscript is far from being officially done. This is the first draft. And you’ll need to be prepared to spend a lot of time with that first draft.

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5 Ways To Keep Me Reading Your First Chapter

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Camp NaNoWriMo 2014 has officially launched! Whether you’re writing a new novel, tackling a screenplay, or finishing an existing piece of work, Camp is a writing free-for-all. For those of you still on your publishing journey before Camp, Blair Thornburgh, editorial assistant at Quark Books, explains what makes her stop reading a manuscript:

I was recently at a conference where an editor detailed her method for critiquing a first draft. The complicated process was as follows:

  1. Start reading it.
  2. When it stops being compelling, stop reading it.
  3. When you stop reading it, draw a line on the page and write “This is where I stopped reading”.

Brash. Ballsy. Take-no-prisoners.

But what specifically makes an editor grind to a halt and refuse to go on? Opinions differ, of course, but as far as I’m concerned there are some pretty basic “don’t”s that make me want to close a document while I’m reading a sample chapter:

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Kami Garcia: On Building Better Stories and Perseverance

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The “Now What?” Months are here! In 2014, we’ll be bringing you advice from authors who published their NaNo-novels, editors, agents, and more to help you polish November’s first draft until it gleams. Today, Kami Garcia offers a pep talk filled with step-by-step advice:

So you made it through NaNoWriMo, and you have 50,000 words… now what? It’s the same question a lot of writers face when they finish a first draft. The good news is you finished the hard part: you have a draft.

I can hear some of you cursing me now: “But Kami, my first draft is totally crappy and worthless. It’s terrible. I wasted an entire month of my life, and all I have 50,000 terrible words to show for it.”

My answer: It doesn’t matter if you wrote the crappiest first draft in the history of all first drafts. You have something to work with, which means you can fix it, mold it, and bang it into whatever shape you want. Here are a few tips to get started:

Read Your First Draft (and Possibly Cry a Little)

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The 6 Commandments of Starting the Editing Process

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The “Now What?” Months are here! In 2014, we’ll be bringing you advice from authors who published their NaNo-novels, editors, agents, and more to help you polish November’s first draft until it gleams. Today, author Renee Ahdieh teams up with her literary agent, Barbara Poelle, to propose six editing commandments:

(Also, Barbara is offering free query critiques! To be eligible to win, just tweet this post, and include @Bpoelle and @rahdieh!)

While thinking about how to compile the Six Commandments of Editing, I turned at once to my trusty vodka guru, er, literary agent, Barbara Poelle. Over the course of our relationship she has caused me to alternate between tragically weeping and Breakfast Club fist-pumping, all in the span of a single day. And my manuscript is always the better for it.

So, without further ado, here are our suggestions/directives/rules-to-live-by (analytical commentary included) when approaching your knock-kneed, newborn masterpiece:

The Six Commandments of Editing

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What to Keep When Editing Requires a Reset

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The “Now What?” Months are here! In 2014, we’ll be bringing you advice from authors who published their NaNo-novels, editors, agents, and more to help you polish November’s first draft until it gleams. Author Cristina Alger tells us what to do when editing requires mass-deletion:

“So what did you think of my manuscript?”

“It was good.” Jenn smiled at as she took a sip of her coffee. And then, after a pause: “Have you ever heard the term ‘updraft’?”

I shook my head.

“An updraft is a basically a rough first draft, in which the author is just getting ideas onto the page. The term comes from throwing up. As in, you sort of just throw up on to a page. An updraft.” She smiled again.

I nodded, speechless. Had she just compared my manuscript to throw up? I was prepared to hear that my manuscript was boring, or badly written, or otherwise unpublishable. Frankly, I was grateful that Jenn, a well-known agent at a well-known literary agency, had bothered to read it at all and was willing to give me feedback. But … throw up?

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4 Ways to Grow A Newborn Novel

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The “Now What?” Months are here! In 2014, we’ll be bringing you advice from authors who published their NaNo-novels, editors, agents, and more to help you polish November’s first draft until it gleams. Marivi Soliven shares four steps she took to publishing her book, The Mango Bride:

Maybe you woke up on December 1, sleep-deprived but exhilarated over birthing your novel. What now? You can bury it in a folder or grow that NaNo-newborn into a novel fit for publication. That’s what I did.

I plunged into NaNoWriMo 2008 to overcome my life-long phobia of novel writing. After self-congratulation got old, I did a reality check: of my 50,000 words, only 26—all in the first sentence—were any good. The rest wallowed in histrionic dialogue and sordid drama. 

NaNoWriMo was a mad sprint, but if you’re ready for the long slow slog of rewrites, here are a few ways to grow your newborn novel into a book:

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Battling Clichés & Tired, Old Tropes: Foreigners as Food

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It’s an age-old writers’ question: What do I do about clichés and well-worn tropes? This month, we’ve asked authors about the clichés and tropes they find themselves falling back on, and how they fix, invert, or embrace them. Today, Mitali Perkins, author and editor of , discusses the problem of using food as a descriptor:

CLICHÉ: Using food to describe a character’s skin color or race

Have you noticed how writers sometimes describe the physical appearances of non-white characters? A default strategy is to use food-related metaphors and similes. Does your Chinese character have almond-shaped eyes? Does your Nigerian love interest have skin like dark chocolate or espresso? If so, you may have fallen into the dreaded “Foreigner as Food” trope. (If all your characters are white, you’ve probably managed to avoid this particular trap, but consider asking if your setting and plot truly demands that sort of cast—but wait, that’s not my beef here. Even though my skin is the color of a well-done burger.) 

I have no idea why we default to food when we describe the skin, eyes, and hair of people who aren’t white. And believe me, white writers are not the only ones who do this without thinking. It affects all of us who grew up reading fiction mostly featuring white characters. Maybe we have good subconscious intentions. The edible stuff we use to describe nonwhite appearances typically is familiar and tasty—maybe we’re trying to help our readers feel closer to marginalized characters. Now they are neither strange nor foreign! They are yummy!

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