Intermediate

Posts Tagged ‘Intermediate’

TANSTAAFL and the Novice Writer

Wednesday, January 4th, 2006

Written by Elizabeth Moon
From a note posted on SFF Net
(TANSTAAFL ¹)

elizabeth_moon When I was teaching short workshops, I found that some beginning writers want business information in the curriculum and others hate it. One critique sheet complained bitterly that I spent a couple of hours on the business end (out of eight) and was “too commercial”. Needless to say, the only people who have ended up published after these workshops have been the ones who weren’t afraid to be commercial.

Novice writers have to take some responsibility for their own careers. The good information is NOT that hard to find. The novices who don’t find it–and don’t find it repeatedly–are resisting the truth.

Example: at a Dragoncon, I heard Anne McCaffrey talk on a 2-hour panel aimed at new writers. She talked, she answered questions, she put out a lot of good information on Copyright issues, agents, editors, contracts, and so on. Patient, firm, clear, all the above.

On her way out of the room, a young man who had been in the audience ambushed her, and asked again, the very basic-stupid question he had asked the panel twice. He was convinced that she had said what she said only because she “had” to say that in public, but in private she could give him the Magic Button to Getting Published.

There is no Magic Button. There is no such thing as a free lunch (not even when it’s charged to the editor’s plastic.)

This kind of novice will claim, to his deathbed, that no one ever told him the real secret to getting published … because, of course, he never listened. No writers’ group, SFWA or any other, can be held responsible for this kind of novice. We are not their fairy godmother, and we have too many other claims on our time to spend much effort trying to break through their fantasy.

How do I know? I was once a hopeful hobby writer myself, who had a wistful vague dream that someday a shaft of light would beam down from above, trumpets would sound, little drifts of glittering gold would land on my shoulders, and I’d be anointed Real Writer. I would know it. My mother would know it. My friends and their friends would know it. And of course editors and publishers would know it instantly. Fame and fortune awaited me; I had only to wait until the right moment.

While in this hazy dream, I didn’t seek out any practical knowledge whatsoever. I didn’t go to the library and find writers’ magazines or books on how to write. I didn’t take courses. I didn’t join a writers’ group. No: if I had the talent, someday the light would come. I wrote bits of stories and sent them to a friend who was in a graduate English program; she trashed them and sent them back. Then I’d go into a decline (mentally wailing and worry about my talent) before before trying again. (The one thing I did right, was write. At least I was working on the salable skill, if not the skill to sell it.)

The turnaround for me came when something (I now forget what) shook me out of this idiotic daze and I realized that if I wanted to be anything other than a science fictional Emily Dickinson, I would have to know some practical stuff. The “getting published” side of writing was more like “getting a driver’s license” or “getting to Europe” than having a religious experience.

I had gone from “it sure would be nice to hike along mountain trails” to reading, researching, renting equipment for short hikes, buying equipment, and finally hiking along mountain trails pretty competently. I had gone from “it sure would be nice to be able to ride horses over fences” to reading, researching, taking lessons on the flat and over fences, leasing a horse, buying a horse, and riding my own horse over fences.

So … what was this silly nonsense about a spotlight from on high when it came to getting published?

From that revelation came an immediate burst of research–which did not take long to put me in touch with perfectly good sources of information. The information is out there. It is available. You can tell the good stuff from the scams just as easily as you can in any other field. All it takes is applying the same business attitude you would if buying a car, a house, a horse. While any writers’ organization (including SFWA) may provide general information on the business of writing and the realities of a writer’s life, you don’t have to find it here–it’s in every library.

Genre-specific info is another thing entirely. By the time I went to a half-day SF workshop, I already knew about manuscript preparation, why I shouldn’t be looking for an agent yet, which publishers handled SF, and so on. I had finished three books and quite a few stories; I had been submitting stories for over a year. But I had no idea what a science fiction convention was, or why anyone would go. I knew no writers (SF or other, except for reporters at the county newspaper), no editors, nothing.

The workshop presenter mentioned SFWA and handed around a copy of the Bulletin. I had read about SFWA (briefly) in Writer’s Market; the presenter, and the Bulletin, convinced me it was an organization with something to offer. In other words, I was ready to hear what SFWA had to say.

He also explained conventions (sort of … ) and I decided to get a one-day membership to the NASFiC in Austin that year. While I did not meet any science fiction writers then (I had two sales, but nothing out in print; I felt suspended between novice and neo-pro) I had the chance to see them, watch them, and start figuring out the tribal customs. The workshop also gave me an immediately useful bit of advice (”Send your stories to an editor whose choices you already like — he’s most likely to like yours”) which was responsible for my first hard-SF sale, about three months later.

But there were over thirty people at that workshop. Many were where I had been a few years before — drifting along day-dreaming of being writers by annointment. They had never finished a story; some had never started a story. They wanted to hear that they were talented — they wanted the beam of light to come down and mark them as Instant Real Writers. They couldn’t hear the practical advice being given, and they have never sold a thing, even if they kept writing. Another group were almost ready to hear it — close enough that they formed a support group, and most of those later achieved at least one professional sale.

I’m coming on strong here, because I just spent another half-hour writing back to a newbie with a fantasy novel who is desperate to find an agent, and has gotten a nibble from someone who wants a reading fee. I spent an hour yesterday combing my files and essentially re-writing several articles for him. He came back with a bunch of “yes, but … ” sorts of things. If he writes me again, still misty-eyed because someone is willing to read his work, I’ll give up. He’ll have proved himself determined to be fooled. I have mail waiting from someone who wants me to read her work and tell her she’s talented enough to keep going — although I’ve told her before to workshop her stories in her own area (which has writers’ groups.) I’ve spent hours and hours with promising beginners (some of them now thoroughly published) when I felt they were taking in the info I could give, but I do not have the time to waste on people who want the Magic Button or the Free Lunch or the Secret Decoder Ring to the Publishing Empire.

¹ TANSTAAFL: There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. (From Heinlein, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”.)

Tags: Elizabeh Moon, Intermediate, Moon, writing
Posted in Advice for New Writers, Building a Career, Information Center, The Business of Writing, Tips for Beginners, Workshops and Critique Groups | Comments Off

Perseverance, Publishing and the Urge to Write

Tuesday, January 4th, 2005

Written by James Van Pelt

Discouraging news about the publishing business has pummeled the writing community lately. Beside the frightening specter of Norman Spinrad’s misadventures with his publisher, and the ongoing fracas with Bantam over the Star Wars novel contracts, other high profile harbingers of trouble for veteran and novice writers lurk on the horizon. Spider Robinson, for example, has posted an open letter about his thoughts on publishing, and none of his thoughts sound hopeful. An eleven-year SFWA veteran recently vented his frustrations with novel publishers in a resignation letter to the SFWA Forum. Paula Guran of Dark Echo also lately bemoaned the state of the publishing industry in her e-mail newsletter.

For many, particularly those who earn a living or hope to in this business, things have never looked bleaker, and appearance mirrors reality well in this case. More people it seems are writing science fiction, fantasy and horror than ever, and fewer places accept the work. The cutbacks in “mid-list” authors in the book publishing market, and the disappearance of major short story markets are well documented.

Because of these trends, numerous authors and want-to-be authors are despairing. Comments like, “You have to know someone to be published,” or “The editors only print their friends’ work,” are common. A former student called me last week, completely down in the mouth about her writing. She said, “I’ve been working for years and seen no success at all, just one rejection after another. I think I ought to quit.”

I told her that if publishing was the reason she was writing, then maybe she should quit, but if publishing was the main reason she was writing, then she’d probably never be published anyway. Publishing is the result of perseverance, luck and talent, and it should be almost totally removed from the urge to write.

It’s true that the odds against placing a manuscript have never been higher. Scott Edelman at Science Fiction Age reports that he reads 1,400 to 1,600 stories every two months to choose the six or seven stories for print. Numbers are higher at Asimov’s, Analog and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Unagented novels at the major publishing houses are also coming in record numbers. An acquiring editor at one of the major houses told a kaffeeklatsch group at this year’s WorldCon that to handle the crunch of manuscripts she once rejected 26 novels in 25 minutes. Literary agent Donald Maass reported that he, like many other agents, is receiving hundreds or queries and manuscripts. So from a numbers stand point, the odds look bad.

Fortunately, manuscripts are not chosen from a numbers stand point. They aren’t plucked randomly from the pile like some kind of literary lottery; they are evaluated (as hard as it is to believe that a novel could be evaluated in less than a minute).

Why this is good news is that rejecting 90% or more of the work is easy. Of the thousands of manuscripts, some significant percentage are by people who are sending in their first story or novel (or by people who don’t seek feedback on their writing, so that everything they write is essentially their first work). When they are rejected, they quit. Writing, after all, is a lonely sport that requires a certain mix of determination/vision/anti-social tendencies to continue. Not many people can sustain the effort in the face of rejection. My guess is that if someone kept a data base of all the authors who submitted stories, a surprising proportion would only appear on the data base once.

Then another significant percentage of manuscripts are obviously poorly written. They betray themselves in the first couple of sentences and require no more reading. I edited The California Quarterly, a literary magazine, for two years, and most manuscripts revealed their ineptitude on the first page. Writing skills don’t come easily to most, and even massive improvement won’t raise these writers to publishable standards.

Those two groups, the first-timers and the poor writers, make up the bulk of the slush pile. After that are the earnest middle-of-the-road writers whose skills are adequate (but not great), who don’t have interesting stories to tell, or they haven’t learned how to make the story interesting.

So, out of a thousand manuscripts, not many remain that are worth looking at. Certainly fewer than one-hundred.

More good news is that, for the serious writer with a modicum of talent, getting into the top 10% of the stories in the slush pile isn’t that difficult. All that is required is perseverance and the capacity to learn; two qualities that most people lack. The persevering writer doesn’t give up. He/she keeps producing new work and submitting the old. George Scithers once rejected a story of mine with this helpful advice: “I hope while you were waiting to hear from us on this story that you were working on your next.” Fortunately, I was.

Connie Willis says that at one point before she’d published her first story, she had eight manuscripts in the mail to different markets. One day she checked her post office box, and in it was a slip telling her to pick up her mail from the postmaster. Instead of a package or something pleasant, however, the postmaster handed her rejections on all eight stories. Crushed, she considered quitting, but because she’d made it a habit to address envelopes to the next market for each story, she decided to slip the rejected work into the new envelopes and send them off. Eventually, she says, all eight works found publishing homes.

I have never sold a story to the first market that saw it. However, last year I sold a story that had been bounced thirty-one times previously.

Writing publishable work also requires the capacity to learn and to improve writing skills. Too many unpublished writers take their old skills to a new story, figuring that their last rejection was the result of just telling the wrong story. What would serve them better, and move them closer to publication, would be to work on their skills. What ought to be different on their next writing project is not the topic but their ability to accomplish the task. Writers who are dedicated to improvement study successful writers, seek feedback on their own work, and look to make definite changes in their style.

Perseverance and growth will pull a writer into the top 10% quickly. As far as publishing goes, however, the real challenge and the hard pull is to get into the top one-half percent. But the slush pile is thinner than it looks.

I told my dejected student that if publishing was the main reason she was writing, than she’d probably never be published. Writing her stories and marketing her work should be separate hobbies. Getting one too entwined with the other will surely damage both. When she started writing it was because she felt she had stories to tell. Her hope was to bring her passion, vision and voice to the stuff of her imagination and the materials of the world so that she could explain herself to herself and others. If she is ever to have a chance of being a published writer, she needs to be a writer who writes even if there is no hope of every being published because the act of writing is more important than the fate of the writing.

As far as marketing the work afterwards, it’s a distinct and different activity. I talked to a writer from the south-west who told me that she’s on Greenberg’s short list for writers who are invited to submit work to his anthologies, and her stories have appeared in several of them. She got that connection through an older pro who was a friend of hers. She also told me, however, that she was envious of me because she’s never made an “over the transom” sale to a magazine. At the same time I was pumping her for information on anthologies, she was trying to discover if I had placed work in magazines through connections or some sort of secret backdoor. She told me that she had concluded (just to make herself feel better) that a previously unpublished writer had NO chance of getting into those magazines, since all the sales were to friends of the editors.

I had to tell her I had no connections. I just write them and mail them. The news made her look somber.

And I don’t have any connections, really. I have shaken hands with editors at conventions. I once stood in a small group that was talking to Gordon Van Gelder. I’m one of the faceless hundreds who shake hands and stand in groups.

So, I’m back to my starting position on these marketing matters, which I think philosophically, motivationally and artistically is the place to be. I write the best damn stuff I can, tell the stories I want to read, and if they never sell, stay happy with what I have done.

I heard an anecdote once attributed to Stephen King. Someone asked him what the secret to writing success was, and he said that it was easy. “You just need to be in the right place at the right time. Since none of us can know when the right time will be, our job is to get to the right place and stay there.”

I’ve always liked that quote.

Someone is getting published everyday. Even in the novel industry, there are hundreds of authors. When I walk through the genre section at Barnes and Nobel, it is forty feet long and six feet high. New titles rotate through constantly. If one disregards media tie-ins (and why would one?), there’s still an impressive number of new books.

The magazine market is somewhat analogous. Despite some magazines’ disappearance, there are still numerous markets. Chris Holliday’s on-line market list shows twenty professional and twenty-seven semi-professional magazines. Although the competition is fierce, editors must find new work. Someone will write the stories that the editors find.

Selling a work presents incredible challenges, but publishing or not publishing should have nothing to do with the impetus of the stories, at least for us who are not making a living at it. In fact because publishing is so unlikely, it gives me the freedom to write anything I please. I recently sold a story to Realms of Fantasy that was a writing experiment on my part. I didn’t think it was commercial at all, but I liked writing it.

I sent it out because I have this second hobby, submitting the work. Marketing feels exactly like fishing to me. Most of the time, nothing happens, and I begin to believe there are no fish in those enticing holes I’m tossing my lure into. Then, every great while, I get a strike. When I took education classes they called that occasional hit, “sporadic reinforcement.” Turns out that it’s the strongest motivator, and it sounds like fishing to me.

The odds don’t stop me from marketing. I like the hobby. I even think some of my stuff is good enough to find a market, so I keep trying. On the off chance that meeting someone at a convention might help, I go to those too. Maybe some day a tired editor will pick up one of my manuscripts and think, “Oh, yeah. Van Pelt. He’s that pleasant fellow I met in San Antonio,” and at least be in a charitable frame of mind as he reads my story.

But I’m not betting on it.

In the meantime, I have a story that’s been bugging me. I really want to explore it, play with it, discover what it has to teach me and what it has to say to others. I think I’ll go to work on that hummer right now and make it sing.

Tags: Intermediate, James Van Pelt, van pelt, writing
Posted in Information Center, Keeping At It, The Craft of Writing, Writing Technique | Comments Off

Hunting for a Literary Agent

Tuesday, January 4th, 2005

Written by Chuck Rothman

Index

What is an agent and why do I need one?

An agent is a writer’s business representative. His job is to market your book, negotiate a deal with the publisher, keep track of rights sold, and generally handle the business end of things so that the author can concentrate on writing.

You may not need an agent. If you write poetry, or short fiction, or articles, you don’t. Agents only handle book length manuscripts — fiction and nonfiction. It’s not worth their while to handle shorter works.

Even if you write books, you may not need an agent. There are two main advantages that an agent can offer you when it comes to marketing:
- A good agent knows what editors are looking for. He can target your manuscript more effectively; an author has to send it out hit or miss, wasting time on editors who are overstocked and missing windows of opportunity. Generally, it will take a good agent less time to sell a manuscript than it would take if you did it yourself. However, if the agent can sell the novel, there’s a good chance you can sell it, too. Conversely, if the novel is no good, no agent is going to be able to sell it.
- Many publishers don’t accept unagented submissions. Or, more commonly, they allow an agent to send the entire manuscript, while limiting unagented submissions to outlines and sample chapters. You’re more likely to sell if the editor reads the entire book.
The main advantage of having an agent is not in marketing a novel; it’s when you find a publisher willing to publish it. A good agent is an expert in negotiating contracts. She knows what clauses to ask for, which are harmless boilerplate, and which seemingly innocuous ones are invitations to disaster. A good agent will know how to get you the best possible deal. Unless you are in the publishing industry, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to negotiate a contract that gets you the most money possible while protecting all your rights.

(Some people think that a lawyer can replace an agent when it comes to this. However, few lawyers specialize in the type of contracts publishers use. In the words of editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden of Tor Books, every time an author used a lawyer to negotiate with Tor, the author was left “skinned and bleeding.”)
When do I need an agent?

The first thing you need to do is write a book-length manuscript. Unless you have the book in hand, an agent won’t be interested. He needs something he can see; without a manuscript, there’s no knowing if you can write anything that’s worth the agent’s time to try to sell.

When the manuscript is done, you can start contacting agents. But don’t let the search for the agent get in the way of your search for a publisher. You’re perfectly welcome to start marketing the book yourself, if you want. It’s up to you.

If you do send the book out, and get a call from the publisher that they’re interested, this is the perfect time to find an agent. Indeed, some publishers will even recommend you get an agent before there’s any negotiation; they’d much rather deal with a professional. It’s said that, if you do get the call from a publisher, you automatically say, “I’ll have my agent contact you” — whether you have an agent or not. If you call agents and tell them about the offer, they will often jump at the chance to take you on. After all, it’s a quick way for them to make a buck. The hardest part has been done; all they have to do is negotiate a contract, which means they (and you) will be paid in a couple of months, not several years.
How are agents paid?

Agents are paid by publishers. Usually, when they sell your book, the check is written out to the agent. The agent then takes his percentage of this amount and sends you the remainder. Most literary agents nowadays take 15% of any money paid you; a few still stick with the old rate of 10%. (Screenplay agents are required to only charge 10%.) If the agent sells your book to a non-North-American publisher, they usually take 20%, since they often work through a subagent.

Some agents also pass through charges for expenses to their authors. This can happen in different ways. Most commonly, an agent will pass along charges for “extraordinary” expenses. These include charges for such things as Express Mail, Special Couriers, and other items that are not the usual part of doing business. Regular postage and copying costs are not extraordinary. Agents generally deduct these expenses from any money due you. In other words, if you’re paid $1000 for your novel, and the agent spent an extra $15 for Federal Express, you’d be paid $835 instead of $850.
Where to I find information about agents?

There are many sources, of varying degrees of reliability. The best is to ask a published writer about her agent. If the writer likes the agent, ask if the agent is taking clients. If so, contact the agent.

Writer’s Market and Literary Market Place list agents in their yearly volume. Check out the agent entries, looking for people who represent authors in your field of writing. Look for names of clients and recent sales.

You can find ads for agents in Writer’s Digest. However, many of these are for sham agents who take money and do little to advance your career. I would strongly urge you to look elsewhere. Good agents don’t take out ads to find clients.
How do I choose an agent?

This is the hardest question to answer. Anyone can call herself an agent. Scams are common; the pages of Writer’s Digest are filled with people who claim to be literary agents, but who have never sold a book in their life. Even among legitimate agents, one agent may be perfect for you, but all wrong for someone else.

The first step is to eliminate the scams. The quickest way is to stick to one invariable rule:

Never, under any circumstances whatsoever, pay money to an agent.

If you follow this, you automatically eliminate the frauds. A fraud is out to get your money. A few years ago, scam agents charged “reading fees.” Lately, as word has slowly gotten out that this is the sure sign of a ripoff, the same agents are charging for “expenses.” Sound plausible, but the reality is that legitimate agents don’t ask for money in advance for any reason.

If you send money to an agent in advance, there’s no guarantee she’ll do anything other than cash your check. A legitimate agent doesn’t get paid unless she sells your novel; a fraud isn’t going to go to the bother.

Other signs to be wary of:
- Agent asks you for money up front. Yes, I know I just said this, but it bears repeating. Do not pay any agent, and especially don’t pay anything in advance merely to have him represent you.
- Agent won’t give you the names of his clients and recent sales. Always ask for this. A legitimate agent is all too happy to recount his successes; most send out press releases whenever they sell a book. A fraud won’t tell you (usually citing “confidentiality”), because it gives you a handle to track him down (and because he often has no recent sales).
- Agent recommends an editorial service. Be very wary here. Real agents either like your manuscript or pass on it; if it’s close, they may ask you to revise it yourself. There is, however, a common scam where the agent recommends an editorial service. There’s a good chance the service is paying the agent a kickback to make that recommendation. (Note: probably the most notorious of these editorial services is a place called Edit Ink. Don’t even consider any agent who mentions Edit Ink.)
- Agent has contacted you. Agents don’t need to go out of their way to find clients. But it’s quite common for frauds to buy mailing lists of writers and go fishing. Unless you have published something, or otherwise have a reputation as a writer, no real agent is going to contact you out of the blue.
- Agent’s contract has a time limit. Agents used to work on a handshake basis, but nowadays even good agents often have contracts. But legitimate agency contracts are open ended: the continue until either party decides to quit. Frauds set a time limit, since this allows them to ask you for a further fee for “expenses” or “representation.”
- Agent claims sales to a vanity press. A vanity press is one where the author pays to be published. No real agent would even consider sending a manuscript to one (how could they make any money, if the publisher isn’t going to pay?). Some agents do recommend vanity presses, most likely because they are getting kickback from the press (how else do they get paid?)
- Agent asks you to put up your money in advance. What I tell you three times is true.
If an agent does any of these things, go somewhere else. There is little chance any agent who has these policies will be any help at all to you, and could do great damage to your career — with you paying for the privilege of having them ruin you. It’s just not worth it.

For more information about how agents work, check out this article by Dan Perez.
How do I contact an agent?

Once past this hurdle, the question becomes one of nuances. Does the agent seem interested in having you as a client? Does she have some sort of vision for your career? What do her other clients think of her?

Most agents do business by mail (a few by e-mail). The first thing to do is to send a query letter. The query letter should introduce you to the agent. Explain that you are looking for representation for your completed book. Describe the book in general terms (i.e., it’s a science fiction novel), but don’t summarize the plot. Mention any publishing history (if you have one, if not, say nothing) or any background information that might indicate a relevant area of expertise (if there’s nothing directly relevant, leave this out, too). Keep the query letter short (if it’s more than one page, it’s way too long). Be sure to include a self-addressed stamped envelope for a reply. Send it off.

A question that crops up is whether you can query several agents at a time. It all depends on what you’re comfortable with. It’s generally acceptable to send off multiple query letters, so if you want to go that way, do so. However, once an agent asks to see your manuscript (or more likely, sample chapters and an outline), you should send it to that agent alone, and to none other until he says yes or no. If you get a second request, wait until you hear back from the first agent before sending it along (it isn’t necessary to tell the second agent it’s out somewhere. Just say nothing until you’re ready to send it to her).

Incidentally, your agent hunt can be separate from the hunt for a publisher. You can send the book out to editors while agents are deciding; if the book sells, call the agent who is currently considering it. Note, however, that an agent often wants to market the book from scratch, and has a slight preference toward a book that has yet to be rejected.
How do I create an outline and sample chapters?

These are essential to selling a novel. Most agents (and publishers) want to see these instead of a full manuscript (note: if at all possible, it’s best to find a way to send a full manuscript. But be careful: doing this when the agency/publisher doesn’t allow it may mean that your book will not be read. You can break this rule, but be prepared to suffer the consequences).

The sample chapters are always the first chapters of the book. Usually the first three, but if you’re writing extremely short chapters, send the first 50-60 pages (don’t stop in the middle of a chapter). The idea is to give the editor/agent an idea of your ability to write.

An outline runs around 20 pages and describes the action in the book. It is usually written in the present tense (our hero kills off all the soldiers, but the princess is kidnapped by the Grand Vizier). Include any particularly important lines of dialog and all important scenes as you lay out the plot and all subplots.

Some agents prefer a synopsis to an outline. This is shorter (5 pages) and is more of an overview. Needless to say, either your outline or your synopsis must be well written and interesting.
What happens if I don’t get an agent?

There’s no reason you can’t market your novel yourself. There are a few hurdles, but it’s eminently possible. It isn’t the end of your career, so just keep on plugging. Sooner or later, it will click for you.

Tags: agent, Chuck Rothman, Intermediate, Rothman, writing
Posted in Agent Etiquette, How to Sell Your Novel, Information Center, The Business of Writing | Comments Off

Selling to Foreign Short Fiction Markets

Tuesday, January 4th, 2005

Written by Douglas Smith
Copyright © May 2000
(links and markets last updated: June 1, 2001)

When considering potential markets for their short fiction, many SF&F writers overlook the many non-English language magazines and anthologies published around the world. This article discusses why you might want to consider these markets, and how to go about selling to them.

Why Submit to Foreign Language Markets?

Especially if you can’t read that particular language? First, it broadens the audience of readers who gain exposure to your work. If you also write novels as well as short fiction (or plan to), a resume of sales in non-English markets can assist in foreign rights sales for your longer work.

Secondly, anything you make from these sales is found money. Yes, you will generally get less for these reprints than for selling first rights in an English market, but remember that you can sell your reprints in multiple countries and languages. My foreign language sales have ranged from $20 to $200, averaging about $100 per sale — so you can easily pick up another few hundred dollars per story. That being said, many of these markets also pay only in contributor copies.

Finally, it’s fun to say that you’ve been published in X languages and Y countries. And if our writing can’t bring us some fun, then why are we doing it?

How to Select Foreign Language Markets

Rule 1: Don’t submit a story to any foreign language market until you have first sold it to an English-language market. Many of the top English genre fiction markets have foreign language editions or will ask for an option on foreign language rights. Selling a story to a non-English market first could jeopardize a more prestigious and lucrative English first-rights sale. In addition, it’s a lot easier to sell to a foreign language market if your story has the credentials of a major English market.

So that means you are looking for non-English markets that will accept reprints of stories that have appeared in an English market somewhere in the world. That is by no means the rule: many foreign language markets publish only local authors.

Rule 2: You are looking for markets that will accept unsolicited submissions. Most foreign language magazines publish reprints from English markets, but many make the selection of those stories themselves from a review of the top English magazines — i.e., they won’t accept a direct submission from the author. You may still end up with your story in these markets, but you have no control over the decision, beyond writing a great story and selling it to a top English market.

Rule 3: Unless you are multi-lingual, you are looking for markets that accept submissions in English and will translate your story at no cost to you. In my experience, any market that accepts submissions in English will translate at no cost. Some markets, however, will accept reprints and unsolicited submissions (rules 1 and 2), but only in the language of the magazine.

Even then, you have options. I sold a reprint to a French magazine that not only did the translation for free, but also provided me an electronic copy of their translation. That allowed me to sell the translated version to another market that only accepted submissions in French.

So the above discussion leads us to the …

Definition of a Valid Foreign Language Market:
A market that accepts unsolicited submissions in English of stories that first appeared in English language markets, and translates them at no cost to the author.

About the Author:

Doug’s stories have appeared in professional magazines and anthologies in eight countries and six languages, including Amazing Stories, Cicada, and Treachery And Treason (Penguin/Roc) in the US, Interzone and The Third Alternative in the UK, and Prairie Fire, Tesseracts ⁶, and Solaris(Québec) in Canada, as well as magazines and anthologies in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Brazil. He has upcoming stories in On Spec and the anthology, North of Infinity II.

2001 John W. Campbell Award Finalist!!: Doug was a finalist on the 2001 Hugo ballot for the John W. Campbell Award, an international award given each year to the best new SF or fantasy writer whose first work appeared in a professional publication in the previous two years.

Contact Douglas Smith at doug@smithwriter.com

Tags: Douglas Smith, Intermediate, Smith, writing
Posted in Building a Career, Contracts and Copyrights, Information Center, The Business of Writing, Where to Submit Short Stories | Comments Off

Hunting for an Agent (with Sample Synopsis)

Tuesday, January 4th, 2005

Written by John E. Stith

I managed to get my first agent before I sold my first novel. Having an agent generally doesn’t affect the odds of sale, but it does hasten the process of finding out, so if your first novel is complete and unsold, you might consider this approach.

This article contains the text of the cover letter I sent to an agent, the letter that resulted in representation for my first novel. Following the query letter is the sales synopsis I sent with the novel, a synopsis that helped result in a first novel sale (about one year later). The synopsis is patterned after the one Dean Koontz used in Writing Popular Fiction. Comments not actually part of the submission are shown in <this manner>. The title of the novel, as submitted, was Time Waves. The title Ace wanted to use for publication was the title I had used in earlier drafts: Scapescope. The only information “sanitized” is my address/phone and the agent’s name/info. Scapescope, a kind of humorous take on 1984, was published by Ace in November 1984.

THE QUERY LETTER

John E. Stith
my street address
City, State Zip
10 October 1982
Phone: (xyz) 123-4567
(Collect OK)

Agent
Agency name
street address
New York, NY ZIP

Dear Mx. ______:

I have completed a science fiction novel, entitled Time Waves, and I would like to know if you might be interested in representing me.

The novel is approximately 62,000 words long. It opens in 2147 with a protagonist who learns, with the aid of a device that yields limited information about the future, that he is soon to be listed on the government’s known political criminal list. The second half of the novel is set in the NORAD Cheyenne Mountain Complex, one of my former places of employment.

If there is any more information you require (e.g. a detailed outline, sample chapters, or the entire manuscript), I will be happy to provide it promptly.

I have sold about ten science fiction stories to markets including Amazing, Fantastic, and Spectrum, but Time Waves is my first novel. I’m a member of Science Fiction Writers of America.

If you’re reluctant to take me on, could you please tell me whether or not you might be interested in representing me if I come to you with a publisher who is ready to purchase the novel?

For your convenience, an SASE is enclosed. Thank you for your time and attention.

Sincerely,

Signed: John E. Stith

THE SALES SYNOPSIS

Stith Time Waves Synopsis Page #

John E. Stith
my street address
City, State Zip
Phone: (xyz) 123-4567

Background

The date is 2147 A.D. The location is Earth. Comparatively superficial improvements have been made in several aspects of the human condition, including energy resources and the population growth rate. Population density is critically high. With the introduction of the scapescope in 2130, fundamental attitudes have begun to change.

The scapescope is a device that provides glimpses of the future. Since so many divergent futures exist, images farther into the future than a few seconds are blurred, so a policy of summarizing significant events in a predictable format enables people to learn about future events by viewing the information displayed in the form of alphanumeric text on a screen. Events in the immediate future can be viewed with high clarity, but the observer is limited to viewing six months in the future. The clarity of the image is greatest when an event is probable and soon. Events that are less probable, or nearer to the six-month limit, are hazy or not visible at all.

The primary impact of the device is that the human race is becoming nearsighted. Projects with significant chances for failure are not undertaken. Mankind is losing the ability to gain knowledge and maturity via occasional wrong turns and serendipity.

Characters

The protagonist is Mike Cavantalo, a photonics engineer and futurist, working for the government. At the time the novel starts, he has not yet questioned the long-term effects of scapescope.

He meets Lisa Ryan, a member of a secret group working outside the government on a solution to the problems created by scapescope.

Theme

The overall theme of the novel is that one makes one’s own future; predestination is a myth. Moreover, the frequently aggrandized ability to foresee the future may actually make the human race lazy and less capable of dealing with the future.

Tone

The tone of the book is one of underlying humor and hopefulness. It is intended to be a fast-paced adventure, illustrating our ability to make mistakes and then take the required action to correct them, learning in the process.

Synopsis

The story opens with Mike Cavantalo receiving an unusually severe reprimand from his boss, for apparently failing to do a thorough job on a recent report. (Cavantalo’s sketchy first draft found its way into distribution as a final copy.) After the tirade, Cavantalo retreats to his office wondering, “if it’s starting now.” In a flashback, he recalls a recent scene, one in which his former lover moved out because, via scapescope, she had seen Cavantalo’s name on a list of political criminals, two months in the future. Cavantalo himself is quite disturbed since he is aware of no quality in his personality or plans that might explain why he is seemingly relegated to such a fate.

Cavantalo resolves to cheat fate and find out what happened to cause his reprimand. He is disturbed to find out that his access to information is no longer as wide as it previously was. He is subjected to technologically caused harassment, such as being trapped in an elevator, and experiencing wide temperature fluctuations in his apartment. He feels that someone is probably manipulating him, but, before he finds out any significant details, he is subjected to another reprimand for missing a deadline. (This time his article text simply vanished, as if he had never even started the project.) He is demoted.

After more investigation, he is demoted again because of an article critical of the government, apparently authored by him. Then, due to apparent computer error, he is almost given an unnecessary operation. He is thoroughly convinced by now that he is being deliberately manipulated, but he still does not know by whom.

Soon, Cavantalo is fired for supposedly sending a threatening communication to his boss, but he has had time to trace the sabotage efforts to another government office. He bluffs his way into the office and in a confrontation is able to obtain an admission from the agent in charge. The purpose of the manipulation was to put him into a position in which he could easily be coerced into doing a large favor for the government.

They reveal that Cavantalo’s sister is a member of a clandestine group currently occupying the long-deserted NORAD Cheyenne Mountain Complex, buried deep in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. The group apparently includes one of the original developers of scapescope and is working on a project that is felt to be a threat to the government. (The primary speculation is that the group is working on a scapescope improvement that will allow them to see farther into the future than the government can.)

The government wants Cavantalo to infiltrate the group and stop the effort. He refuses. One last elevator ride, during which one of Cavantalo’s close friends is threatened, is enough to change his intentions. He agrees to cooperate but privately resolves to take no action.

Cavantalo contacts his sister and is able to enter the mountain complex but soon finds that, despite his tarnished public image, he is not to be trusted with the nature of the project. He meets one of his sister’s friends, Lisa Ryan, and is attracted to her.

Before he can gain the confidence of the group members, he is placed in a precarious situation. He is approached by a man who claims to be an infiltrator and needs Cavantalo’s help to smuggle a modified scapescope prototype out of the complex. Caught between wanting to protect the group’s work and not wanting the government to know that he might not cooperate, Cavantalo steals the prototype but, unknown to the reader and the infiltrator, damages it so that it will not be of any use to the government. He turns the secretly damaged prototype over to the infiltrator who is then disclosed to be a now-loyal group member.

Ostracized, but allowed to stay in the complex, Cavantalo keeps quiet until an apparently real infiltrator anonymously contacts him. Cavantalo talks to Lisa and convinces her that he had not betrayed the group but that no one else should know since his position will allow him to keep tabs on any other government people. Cavantalo admits to Lisa that he is torn between helping the group and not wanting a longer scapescope viewing time, when she tells him that the real purpose of the group is to make scapescope totally unusable by creating time waves, a disturbance in the energy field necessary for its operation.

While the group is making final preparations for operating their disrupter, Cavantalo is approached by the infiltrator who has planted a device that will kill everyone still in the complex in a few hours. Cavantalo breaks away, and, after a chase and fight, tries to warn the people in the complex, but they don’t believe him. He makes his way into the testing area where Lisa convinces the others to listen to Cavantalo.

<Note: You must tell the editor how the book ends, at least in general terms>

They find the device and deactivate it. Final testing of the scapescope disrupter is finished and it is turned on. It works, but the disruption caused by the device has a secondary effect; it enables them to see brief glimpses of periods that they guess to be one to two centuries in the future. Thus, although their efforts have created a potential long-term curiosity or problem, they have eliminated the short-term predicament.

End of Synopsis

Good luck to those first novelists in the audience. And if you’re not sure what agents to approach, look at the listings of recent sales in Locus or Science Fiction Chronicle. If you’re already in SFWA thanks to some short-fiction sales, check the agent listing at the back of the annual directory. It’s the very best source around for finding out who represents writers who’ve been around long enough to have fired their agents if they weren’t happy.

END

This article is Copyright. Publishing Note: On-line publishing rights to this article (which first appeared in SPECULATIONS, January 1995) have been provided free to SFWA by the author, John E. Stith, for an indefinite period.

Tags: Intermediate, john e. stith, stith, writing
Posted in Agent Etiquette, Information Center, The Business of Writing | Comments Off

50 Strategies For Making Yourself Work

Tuesday, January 4th, 2005

Written by Jerry Oltion
Copyright © 2001 by Jerry Oltion

Work avoidance is one of the major paradoxes of the writing profession. Generally, writers want to write (or want to have written), but all too often we find ourselves doing anything else but. We’ll mow lawns, do the dishes, polish silverware–anything to keep from facing the blank page. At the same time we know we eventually have to get to work, so we come up with all sorts of strategies for forcing ourselves to the keyboard.

Sometimes a single strategy works beautifully for an entire writer’s career (for instance: for over 40 years Fred Pohl wrote four pages a day no matter what, after which he was free to polish all the silverware he wanted), but in my own case I’ve discovered that any particular strategy only works for a couple of months before I learn to subvert it. As a result I have to keep inventing new ones. I’ve come up with quite a few (some of which I’ve stolen from other people), which I offer here for anyone who cares to try them. They’re not in any particular order, so don’t feel compelled to work your way down the list. Just try the ones that seem interesting, and remember that some of them won’t work for you at all. Also, while some of them are mutually exclusive, most of them aren’t, so you can mix & match all you like.

Set a quota of pages written per day. Make this realistic. The object isn’t to prove anything to anybody, but to give yourself a reasonable goal to shoot for, one you’ll actually be able to hit every day. If you go over it, that’s cool, but all you have to do each day is hit the quota. The catch: Extra pages don’t count toward the next day’s quota.
Set a quota of hours worked per day/week. The same applies here as with page quotas. Make it realistic.
Write a story or chapter a week.
Promise your sweetie a steady supply of bedtime stories.
Pay yourself an hourly wage for time worked, and don’t allow yourself leisure activities (movies, dinner out, etc.) unless you can pay for it with this writing money.
Have someone else pay you for writing. Use the coin of whatever realm you happen to be in: someone else cooks dinner when you finish a story, or a friend buys you a cookie, or your significant other does that kinky thing with the chocolate syrup.
Write to music. Put two or three CDs in the player and stay at the keyboard until they’re done. Crank it up. Boogie a little. That’s not just background noise; that’s the sound of you working.
Lighten up on yourself. Give yourself the freedom to write when the urge strikes, and not write when you don’t feel like it. That’s one of the attractive things about the popular conception of the writing life, right? So enjoy it!
Hide your wristwatch in a drawer. (Meaning: reduce your dependence on the clock. Let your inner circadian rhythms tell you when it’s time to write and when it’s not.)
Set a timer for a short period of time (15 minutes or so) and stay at the keyboard–no matter what–until it dings. Then do it again. Only allow yourself to get up after the timer dings, and always set the timer again if you stay at the keyboard. This will hold you in place long enough for the first impulse toward work-avoidance to pass, and you’ll often discover yourself eager to keep going when your time’s up.
Schedule your day’s activities–and schedule writing hours first. This doesn’t necessarily mean putting them first in the day, but putting them on the schedule itself first, so they get priority. Schedule everything: bathing, eating, sleeping, telephone time (outgoing calls, at least), walking the dog–everything. Then, if it’s not on the schedule, don’t do it. Schedule it tomorrow.
Form a support/nagging network of other writers.
Graph your hours and/or pages against those of your support group. Post the graph where you can see it when you write. Also post it where you can see it when you don’t write.
Challenge other writers to finish a story a week, losers to buy dinner (or dessert, or whatever) for winners.
Generate story ideas mechanically. Roll dice and pick characters and settings from a list. Tumble a desktop encyclopedia downstairs and write about whatever it opens to when it lands. Throw darts at your bookshelf and write a homage to whatever you hit. The goal here is to demystify “idea” as a stumbling block. Ideas are a dime a dozen once you learn how to find them. Become a supplier rather than a consumer.
If you’ve been sitting on an idea until you think you’re good enough to do it justice, do it now! You may be run over by a bus tomorrow. Even if you aren’t, by the time you think you’re good enough, the passion for it will be gone. Write it now! Write all your good ideas as quickly as you can after you get them. Don’t worry about getting more; they’ll come faster and faster the more you write. Before you know it, you’ll be begging people to take them, like a gardener with zucchini.
Outline. Plan everything you’re going to write, scene by scene, all the way through to the end. Do your research while you’re outlining, so by the time you start writing the actual story, you’re already living in that world. With a detailed enough outline, the actual writing becomes a matter of choosing the right words to describe what you’ve already decided to tell. You can concentrate on style and let the plot take care of itself, because you’ve already done that part.
Don’t outline. Don’t plan ahead at all. Feel the lure of the blank page. Trust your instincts and dive into the story, and don’t look back until you’re done.
Keep written goals, and revise them daily. (Production goals, not sales goals, which you can’t control.) Rewriting them every day helps you focus on each one and think about what you can do at the moment to further it along.
Unplug the TV for six months. This is a tough one, but it’s the one with the biggest potential for shifting your priorities over to writing. You can gauge your need for it by your resistance to it. If you can’t imagine giving up your favorite programs in favor of writing (or if you’re more faithful to your viewing schedule than to your writing schedule), you should probably remove the TV from the house permanently; but no matter what you do, give it six months, minimum, before you even look at it. Turn the screen to the wall. Seriously. What’s more important to you: your writing or TV? Find out.
Turn off the talk radio. Same as above; if you can’t give it up, you’re making it more important than your writing. Even if you think you need it for background noise, substitute some other noise that doesn’t engage the language center of your brain. That’s for writing, not for listening, when you’re at the keyboard.
Remove all games from your computer. This is just as vital as reducing your dependence on TV or radio. The key to all these suggestions is to reduce the amount of time you spend on unproductive stuff. If you play games to relax, put them on another computer in a different part of the house, and play them outside your writing time.
Ditto the above for email and web surfing. Don’t allow yourself to do it until after you’ve done your writing for the day. If you’re really addicted, allow yourself to read only one email message per paragraph written. Don’t count paragraphs shorter than 50 words, either. I don’t mean add up all your short paragraphs until you get 50 words–I mean don’t count paragraphs shorter than 50 words at all. Write until you get one that’s at least 50 words long. So what if you’re in the middle of a stretch of dialog? Keep writing. (And if this email-as-reward system works for you, join a busy listserver!)
Reward yourself for success. Choose the reward so you’ll work hard to earn it.
Read a book a day (for inspiration).
Keep 5 (or 10 or whatever) manuscripts in the mail at all times. Choose a number that’ll make you stretch a little, but one you can realistically maintain.
Use every spare moment to write something, even if it’s just one sentence. An extreme version of this: don’t plan any official writing time; just use the spare moments in your day–but use them all.
Carry a note pad or tape recorder with you wherever you go. Use it to record ideas as well as the actual text of stories. Make it your external memory. The idea here is to keep yourself focused on writing no matter what else you’re doing.
Keep more than one project going at once. Switch to another the moment you slow down on one.
Collaborate. You’ll be less likely to slack off if someone else is counting on you to perform.
Switch tools. If you normally use a computer, write with pad and pencil for a while. If you normally write hard sf, write fantasy. Get out of whatever rut you might be in.
Change your writing environment. Rearrange your study, or go write in the library or a cafe for a while.
Keep yourself constantly “on.” Start another project immediately after you finish one, before you even get up to stretch your sore muscles.
Don’t think; just write. Keep the writing and editing processes separate. Don’t worry about clumsy bits; you can fix those later. If you’re writing on paper, intentionally cross out a few lines and re-write them so you won’t have to worry anymore about messing up the page.
Edit for perfect copy as you go. This one works for some people, but not for others. If you find yourself getting too critical of your new material, stop editing during your creative time. But some people discover that they build up momentum editing, and when they get to the end of what they’ve already written, they’re eager to forge ahead into new territory.
Write an hour for every hour you read.
Spend an hour a day in the library researching new ideas.
Rewrite a story a day. (Works best if you’ve got a lot of unsold stories lying around.)
Jump-start your creative juices. Start your writing day with a long walk in pleasant surroundings, or gardening, or doing something else that wakes you up and gets your mind working.
Identify your best hours of the day and write during those. Let other people take the leftovers for a change.
Paper your study walls with Playboy foldouts (or whatever else is likely to keep you in the room).
Evaluate everything in your life according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Air is at the top. Food and shelter are close behind. What’s next? Sex? Money? Where does writing fit in now? See if you can move it up a couple of notches. Write now, breathe later.
Give yourself regular days off. Most people get weekends off; why shouldn’t you? An important point: Days when you tried to write but failed don’t count as days off. Only days you’ve scheduled in advance count. Conversely, now that you’ve got regular days off, don’t use your work time for personal stuff.
Take up a hobby. A lot of writers started writing as a hobby, and it slowly became their passion. That’s cool, but it left an empty niche in your life where the hobby used to be. Find something else to fill it. You’ll be amazed at how much you realize you missed that kind of thing. More to the point: you’ll suddenly stop resenting your writing for not fulfilling that need, and you’ll start to enjoy it for what it is.
Turn writing into a hobby. Not everyone has to be a full-time writer. If you don’t want to (or can’t) write full-time, or if you can’t find another hobby that scratches the particular itch that writing did when it was a hobby, then make it one again.
Hack-write. Put words in a row for pay. Write anything you can get a contract for, so long as there’s money in it, but here’s the kicker: do the best job you can on it. Even if it’s something you don’t care about, do a good job anyway. You’re practicing two things here: writing on demand, and writing well.
Build a ritual around writing. Start well ahead of the actual act of writing, and continue the ritual after you’ve finished work. The idea is to make writing an integral part of a bigger picture. Let the cat out, make a cup of tea, feed the fish, put on some music, light a candle, write, check the mail, fix lunch, do the dishes. Doesn’t seem quite so ominous when it’s buried among all that other stuff, does it?
Light a candle. Make it a big, wide one. Write until the wax pool is entirely molten, as far out as it will go. Anything less will “core” the candle, wasting wax as the wick burns itself downward without using the wax from around the edge.
Binge! Gear up for a major writing weekend. Get your ideas ready, set a goal, and plan to work every waking hour until you’re done. Cook meals ahead of time and freeze them so you can just nuke ‘em and keep going. Tell your friends you’ll be out of touch. Turn off the phone ringer and put a message on your answering machine telling people to send the cops if they really need to talk to you that bad. Lock yourself in your study and don’t come out until you’ve committed fiction.
Chain the wolf to the door. Buy expensive things on credit, quit your job, etc. JUST KIDDING! (But I tried it once, and it worked, too … for a while.)

Tags: Intermediate, Jerry Oltion, Oltion, writing
Posted in Information Center, Keeping At It, The Craft of Writing | Comments Off

The Complete Nobody’s Guide to Query Letters

Tuesday, January 4th, 2005

Written by Lynn Flewelling

Whether I’m giving a bookstore reading or teaching a writer’s workshop, one of the most frequently asked questions is always, “How do I get my first novel published? What’s the trick, the secret?” The secret is that there is no trick, just skillful, focused effort.

The first step is to write a really good book. The next, equally important, step is attracting the notice of someone in a position to get it into print. Some people do this by networking at conventions, or striking up a relationship with a published author who recommends them to their publisher, both viable routes. For most of us, however, it’s a “market by mail” venture. Whether you decide to seek an agent, or go straight to publishers, you need a letter of introduction – the query. Dissected and examined critically, the query letter is an elegantly concise piece of promotional writing. You have exactly one page to introduce yourself and your novel-just four or five clean, tight paragraphs, each with its own specific purpose. That doesn’t sound so hard. We are writers, after all, right? But the devil is in the details, especially for a newcomer with no track record or flashy credentials.

That’s where I found myself a few years back when it came time to market my first fantasy novel, Luck in the Shadows. I hadn’t published any short fiction; I’d never been to a convention to network; the few published authors I knew before I was already well into the process were literary sorts with no connections in the genre world. According to the prevailing collective wisdom that persists among the unpublished, I didn’t have much of a chance.

Happily, the prevailing wisdom is wrong. It’s certainly a plus to have a few fiction credits or an influential mentor, but it’s not an absolute necessity. If it were, I wouldn’t be writing this article.

So, there I was back in ‘94, with a book I was burning to sell and no idea how to go about it. As I chewed my way through various “how to” books, it quickly became clear that the most important tool I needed was a great query letter. It’s a writer’s introduction, our calling card and, hopefully, our foot in the door.

For us nobodies, it’s basically a cold sales job; we’ve got one page to engage an agent or editor’s interest, make them want to flip the page to scan our carefully chosen sample chapters. Some agents and editors glance at the letter but read the chapters first. Others read the query and reject the chapters unseen if the letter doesn’t sing. You never know, so write the letter like it’s the one thing standing between you and success. It just might be.

Here’s the query letter that sold several agents on Luck and ultimately led to a two-book contract with Bantam.

Specific person
Agency
Address
Address

Dear (Agent/Editor’s Name):

I am seeking representation for my fantasy adventure novel, Luck In The Shadows, complete at 170,000 words. I am enclosing a synopsis and a sample chapter. The sequel, Stalking Darkness, is nearing completion and another free-standing book featuring the same characters is in outline form.

I love thieves and spies – those sneaky people who live by intuition, skill, and inside knowledge. In fantasy, however, they are often portrayed as dark, ruthless characters or relegated to second string roles, a la Falstaff, as useful or amusing foils for more conventional heroic types. Luck in the Shadows gives the rogues center stage.

Seregil is an experienced spy for hire with a murky past and noble connections; Alec is the talented but unworldly boy he rescues and takes on as apprentice. “I admit I’ve cut a purse or two in my time,” Seregil tells Alec soon after they meet, “and some of what I do could be called stealing, depending on who you ask. But try to imagine the challenge of overcoming incredible obstacles to accomplish a noble purpose. Think of traveling to lands where legends walk the streets in daylight and even the color of the sea is like nothing you’ve ever seen! I ask you again, would you be plain Alec of Kerry all your life, or would you see what lies beyond?” Alec goes, of course, and quickly plunges into danger, intrigue, and adventure as their relationship deepens into friendship. The interaction between these two forms the core of this character-driven series.

I’ve been writing professionally for ten years and am currently a freelance journalist. My articles appear regularly in the Bangor Daily News, Preview! Magazine, and Maine In Print. I’ve covered everything from software to psychics; my interview credits include Stephen King, Anne Rice, and William Kotzwinkle. Thank you for your consideration of this proposal. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,
Lynn Flewelling

First things first. When approaching any market, make certain you’re writing to the right person. If you’re using a reference book-the Writer’s Market, for instance- make sure it’s the latest edition. Addressing your query to someone who left the agency three years ago shows a lack of research on your part and can prejudice some readers against you before you’ve even begun your pitch. The same goes for spelling their name wrong, addressing them by the wrong title or gender. (Any mail I get addressed to “Mr. Lynn Flewelling” is immediately suspect.) Such errors may not automatically land your query in the Round File, but they aren’t going to win you any points, either.

Reading the market news in trade journals like this one can help keep you up to date on who’s where. Most agents and editors I’ve talked to say that a brief call to their office to verify the information is also acceptable.

And now, on with our dissection:

Paragraph 1: This brief opening accomplishes a number of things. It states what you’re selling, how long it is, and that it’s complete. (Some agents and editors will consider a few chapters and an outline from an unknown; most won’t. A finished novel proves that you can go the distance.)

The “synopsis and sample chapter” mentioned in this paragraph are the exact items this particular agent’s listing asked for. Giving them what they want-no more, no less- demonstrates that you’ve done you’re homework and are approaching them as a professional. If you send out multiple queries, be sure to tailor each query package and letter accordingly. No one likes a form letter. If you have other related works underway, it’s a good idea to mention them here, showing that you’re not a one-shot wonder. If you don’t, however, don’t worry about it, and don’t bother mentioning other works in a genre the agent or editor does not handle.

Paragraph 2: The “why I wrote this book” ‘graph. Those of you who are basing your science fiction epic on your Nobel prize-winning research in human genome mapping won’t have much trouble with this one. For those of us “nobodies” with less stunning credentials, it can be a bit daunting.

Most of the sample letters I found while researching queries were written by people who were, as stated above, basing their latest novel on their own research or some life-changing personal experience. In every case the author had an impressive publishing background of some sort, and none of them were first-timers. I, on the other hand, had simply written a book I really liked, so I said that and let the enthusiasm carry it. Keep it simple and direct. Don’t go on at length about your literary influences or what book first turned you on to the genre; they’ve seen that a million times. Just be sincere.

Paragraph 3: Give ‘em a glimpse of the goods. You can’t tell the whole story; that’s what the outline or synopsis is for. Just give them the flavor, introduce the protagonist, and above all, demonstrate that you can write well. How you present your book here is just as important as the story itself. Make your thumbnail description concise but lively. Try to capture what or who the book is about. In short, consider this paragraph your book’s audition scene, and know that this paragraph is the one most likely get you rejected for the right reasons.

“Right reasons?” you ask.

Absolutely. Most editors and agents are book lovers just like the rest of us, with the same subjectivity of taste. If an agent doesn’t like books about dragons and that’s your main focus, then they aren’t going to want your book and you don’t want them representing it. What you want from an agent is an enthusiastic representative for your work. With editors, you want someone who’s excited by the prospect of polishing your manuscript into a salable book and getting it on the shelves.

A wise friend once observed that the ratio between rejections and acceptances is about 12:1. What happens generally is this: Agent One reads your carefully crafted query and thinks he’s seen your idea a hundred times before; Agent Three thinks it’s the freshest treatment he’s seen of that idea in ages; Agent Seven just plain hates that sort of plot; Agent Eleven can’t get enough of it. Simple persistence and faith are required to run this gauntlet, and rejection letters do have their uses. We’ll return to this shortly.

Paragraph 4: Experience and background. Got it? Flaunt it! Don’t got it? Keep quiet.

While the freelance writing I mentioned in my query by no means guarantees that I’m a good novelist, it does suggest that I probably know how to string words together. I also tried to be creative in my spin on the subject. I’ve written dozens of feature articles for local papers, and interviewed lots of interesting people; the ones I chose to mention in the query were selected to highlight my interest in the fantasy field, and in literature and authors in general. Whether or not it impressed anyone is debatable, but it did relate to the book I was selling.

A caveat: If your background has no bearing on the novel in question in some readily apparent way, it’s best to just leave this paragraph out, or keep it brief.

Paragraph 5: Your standard polite good-bye. Don’t press them for response times, hand down ultimatums (”You’ve got two months, then I’m sending it somewhere else”), or offer to call. The market listing which provided their mailing address should also include an estimated turn-around time. Be patient and don’t expect them to meet their own deadlines to the day. However, if you don’t hear back for a month after the listed time, a polite phone inquiry is usually appropriate.

A few additional basics:

Stationery- Queries should be neatly typed on high quality, unadorned, 8 1/2 by 11-inch business stationery. While white is your safest bet, color-wise, you can probably get away with ivory, buff, or a light grey. Avoid brightly-colored paper and ink at all costs. The same goes for cute border prints, patterns, and dot-matrix printing unless you want your query to scream Amateur!
Letterhead- A plain, business-like letterhead looks sharp and conveys your address information in a professional-looking manner. If you have access to a good laser printer you can design your own, avoiding pretentiously ornate or hard-to-read fonts, and illustrations. If you are gainfully employed, do not use your company stationery, no matter how classy it is. A letterhead from “Joe Bloe, Attorney at Law” will only cause undue confusion. And resist the temptation to style yourself “Jane Doe, Novelist.” That should be self-evident.
The query package- As stated above, do your homework. Research each market and send them only what they ask to see. This usually doesn’t include “return reply” coupons (First Class postage is your best bet), photos of yourself, photocopies of writing samples, your resume, or manuscripts other than the one you’re currently offering.
Proofreading- Do I even have to address this? According to my agent and editor friends, the answer is a world-weary “Yes!” A query (or manuscript) marred by typos, blotches of correction fluid, erasure marks, or coffee stains is a red flag to publishing professionals. If you’re sloppy with something as important as a query, what will you be like to work with on a manuscript? Chances are, they’ll spare themselves the trouble of finding out. Proofread your letter carefully for errors, then show it to some other trustworthy soul. Our own mistakes are often the hardest to spot, since we know what’s supposed to be there on the page and tend to see it whether it’s really there or not. Finally, retype or print out a crisp, blameless copy of the corrected letter.

While the purpose of this article is to help you make that wonderful first novel sale, I’d like to finish up with a few thoughts on rejections.

Fear of rejection is a reality for most of us. Many a good manuscript has languished in a drawer because the author just couldn’t face the possibility. Let’s face it, rejection sucks. But it’s also a normal part of the game. Sit around with any group of writers and sooner or later the war stories start flying. One-upping about who’s gotten slammed with the nastiest rejection letter is practically a sport. Rejections are our battle scars, and only those with the guts to strive earn them. Take comfort in the fact that all writers deal with rejection time and again throughout their careers. I keep a copy of Andre Bernard’s Rotten Rejections (Pushcart Press, 1990) close at hand. It’s an inspirational collection of rejection letters received by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and Jane Austin for books which now grace university required reading lists.

So when that first rejection shows up in your mailbox, toast yourself with a tall glass of something very nice. It’s proof that you’re off the porch and running with the big dogs now. Later, as those dozen or so rejections pile up on the way (we hope) to that first, glorious “yes,” study them carefully. They can be a useful guide. It was an agent’s thoughtful rejection letter that ultimately led to revisions that sold my first book. The most valuable rejection letter gives reasons. Many will be contradictory. One letter will praise what the last one damned as trite, then go on to nail you for something completely different. Some will be valid criticisms, others are purely subjective. If a certain comment strikes an “Ah ha!” chord, then take a second look at your work, but realize, too, that you can’t and shouldn’t rewrite the book to please every critic.

What you do need to watch for, however, are patterns. If five out of seven agents mention that they did not understand your main character’s motivation, or that your opening chapter did not engage their interest, then you need to take a hard look at what you’re sending out.

I began by saying that there is no secret trick to getting published. You can, however, think of the process as a game. Games have steps, rules, and strategy. The better you become at these, the better you can use them to your advantage. The good query letter is one of your most valuable assets.

Tags: Flewelling, Intermediate, Lynn Flewelling, query letters, writing
Posted in Advice for New Writers, Building a Career, How to Sell Your Novel, Information Center, The Craft of Writing | Comments Off

You and Your Characters

Tuesday, January 4th, 2005

Written by James Patrick Kelly

Copyright © 1991 by Davis Publications,
First published in WRITING SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY,
edited by Gardner Dozois, et. al., St. Martin’s Press.

Once I admitted to myself that I had the raging hunger to write, I gobbled up every book on the subject I could find. I still have most of them; I’ve just gathered fourteen and stacked them beside my computer monitor for inspiration. Each has a chapter on characterization. If you’re looking for technical jargon, have I got some used books for you!

It seems there are all kinds of characters: developing characters, static characters, round characters, flat characters, cardboard characters (oh, are there cardboard characters!), viewpoint characters, sympathetic characters, unsympathetic characters, stock characters, confidantes, foils, spear-carriers, narrators, protagonists, antagonists. But that’s not all; characters can play many roles. There are flat, sympathetic, static confidantes, like the unnamed first person narrator in H.G. Wells “The Time Machine.” Or developing, flat, unsympathetic antagonists, like HAL in 2001, A Space Odyssey. Still with me?

I’ve recently been teaching my daughter Maura to ski, a skill described by a language every bit as arcane as that of characterization. To execute the stem turn, for example, you must learn to unweight, sideslip, and reset the edges of your uphill and downhill skis. Suppose I were to ski alongside of you as you write your next story, shrieking instructions. “Okay now, drop a little description here, shoulders downhill, unweight the uphill ski … now use your foil to set your edges, sideslip, that’s it, keep your spearcarriers nice and flat … no, no! Slow down! Tell, don’t show!” You’d get so flustered trying to follow directions that you’d end up face down in the snow. No one can tell you how to ski — or write — until you’ve already tried it and taken some falls. You should open a how-to book like this only after a hard day of doing, when you’re sitting with your feet propped in front of a crackling fire, figuring out what went wrong, how to make it better tomorrow.

Although the vocabulary of characterization is important, it can also get in your way. In fact, even if you were to memorize all the definitions, your next move would be to forget them as soon as possible. I don’t worry about who’s round and who’s flat when I’m working on a story; I’m too busy trying not to slam into the trees. The way to master technique is by writing, not reading. You need to load the fundamental concepts of the craft into your intuition, where they can do the most good, rather than into your consciousness, where they can only distract you. Internalize, internalize!

Having said that, there’s one suggestion I can offer before you launch yourselves onto fiction’s slippery slopes. Nothing startling, nothing abstruse — just a little trick that works for me. Why don’t you try it before we sort through the nomenclature?

In my opinion, the best way to write believable stories is to pretend each character is you.

The operative word here is pretend. You couldn’t possibly be your characters since you exist in different worlds. There are no wizards or vampires in your neighborhood and you’ll probably never get into orbit, more’s the pity. The life histories you create for these imaginary people will necessarily be different from your own. You’ll have to pretend to be both male and female, young and old, good and evil. Yet no matter how far a story leads away from your own experience, or even from the familiar precincts of reality, you must strive to put yourself in your character’s place.

Imagining you are your characters can help keep you from reproducing the cast of plot-driven robots that has traditionally clunked through our genre. Take, for example, the bore. Chances are you wouldn’t dream of lecturing people in a casual conversation and you look for the exits when some bore does start to pontificate. Yet characters in badly written sf are always dumping information on each other in order to advance the story. Or consider the plot convert, who spends most of the story thwarting the hero until a moment of blinding revelation. A conversion follows which makes St. Paul’s on the road to Damascus seem half-hearted, so that the writer can present us with an ending as tidy as a military school bunkroom. In my experience, people admit they’re wrong grudgingly, if at all. Yet another example is the damn fool. Why is it that when some bloodthirsty creature clearly threatens the planetary exploration team, some damn fool always wanders off and gets himself killed? Would you leave the safety of the spaceship? Of course not! However, the damn fools do every time; otherwise there’d be no story.

All right, you know better than to make such basic mistakes. So then why does every character have to be you? Can’t you draw from your circle of friends and acquaintances? Your Aunt Mary? George Bush? Yes, by all means. Many writers base characters on real people who are not themselves. I know I have. However, I do not fool myself into imagining that I’ve captured my real life models in words. Maybe I can make my characters act just like people I’ve met or read about. If I’m lucky, I might even have the benefit of having heard my models explain why they did what they did. But most people live the unexamined life that Plato warned us of; their insight into their own motivations is limited. Besides, human behavior is overdetermined. We have more than one reason for doing just about everything that we do. When the real life murderer confesses, “I killed him because of this,” he’s oversimplifying. What he should say is, “I killed him because of this and this and this and especially that, which I had no way of knowing.” Journalists report confessions; when readers want simple truth, they buy a newspaper. But readers also crave more complex truth. When they seek a literary experience that maps the often bewildering convolutions of their own inner lives, they buy Asimov’s. As a fiction writer, your job is to sift through an array of possible motivations — some logical, many not — and present only the ones that make the most story sense to you. The way to do that is not to ask, “What would make one man kill another?” Unless you’re a telepath, the answer to that question will always be unknowable. Better to ask, “What would make me kill someone?”

While I believe that this unblinking self-examination is absolutely necessary, I realize that it can be very disturbing. You want to be liked and would much prefer to present your best side to the world. However, fiction is not public relations. We all have dark impulses which we’ve been taught to hide, perhaps even to deny; to be a writer you must unlearn some of the lessons of civilization. Nobody takes seriously a story in which the good guys are all saints and the bad guys are the spawn of hell. Saints can have their bad days and even monsters love their moms. Increasing the level of moral ambiguity usually enhances a character’s believability. Only psychopaths do wrong for the fun of it. Most of the evil in the world is perpetrated by people like you and me — the very people you want to characterize. Sometimes we do it out of malice; sometimes we’re merely selfish or lazy; often as not we think we’re doing the right thing. In any event, you have to be brave enough to portray your own ugliness in order to create memorable characters.

I know that some will resist this advice. Why go to all the trouble of putting yourself into stories, stretching your moral imagination to the breaking point, perhaps scaring the hell out of yourself in the process? In the May, 1985 issue of Asimov’s, the great Isaac Asimov himself stirred up a controversy when he published a polemical essay called “The Little Tin God of Characterization.” Isaac’s thesis was that because of the unique nature of science fiction, characterization is not as important as getting the ideas right. “I do what I can, but I’ve got my limits, and if I have to settle for less than 100 percent, I just make sure that I remember where the science fictional bottom line is. Not characterization, not style, not poetic metaphor — but idea. Anything else I will skimp on if I have to. Not idea.” Throughout the history of the genre, others have made similar arguments for the supremacy of idea over characterization. In fact, if there ever was a war between the humanists and the cyberpunks of my generation (a dubious proposition), it was fought over this very issue. You’ll find any number of published, award-winning writers who will “skimp” at times on characterization while they dazzle us with the brilliance of their ideas. In fact, some writers, myself among them, have actually been taken to task for attempting to write the science fiction novel of character — an oxymoron, to some sensibilities. So whom should you believe?

First of all, as Isaac and others were quick to point out, character and idea are not mutually exclusive. Moreover, few are gifted with the extrapolative genius of an Asimov. The rest of us, beginners especially, must work as hard at characterization as we do on our ideas in order to maintain the suspension of disbelief which readers demand. When a wonky idea, a wooden character or even an incoherent sentence cause readers to realize they’re reading fiction, the writer has lost the game. And there are certain standards of characterization below which even the hardest of hard science fiction writers dare not descend. There is, however, an even more telling objection to those who maintain that brilliant ideas can carry mundane characters.

The quality of speculation is directly related to the quality of characterization. Readers presented with a new reality, whether it is a generation starship, an alien planet or a magic kingdom, apply certain tests of credibility. How long could a closed system in outer space be self-supporting? Could a world without metals support a technological civilization? What would keep the wizards from taking over everything? Although questions about infrastructure, of political and social organization may be the first to occur, readers will eventually ask another, equally crucial, question before disbelief is completely suspended. Does the fictive world support the diversity of human life that we see in the real world? It makes no difference that the shiny mag-lev trains run on time if the riders are all middle-aged white American males in three piece suits. A richly imagined world inhabited by mannequins is inherently less believable than the same world would be if it teemed with well-drawn characters who are truly citizens of their alternate reality. In my opinion, this is one reason why some of the classic writers of science fiction are now so painful to read. E.E. “Doc” Smith’s work is still chock full of intricate speculation, but who can take his characters — especially his women — seriously? It’s not only bad art, it’s bad extrapolation. The science fiction character is the readers’ guide to the ideas of the story. If she doesn’t belong, nobody will trust her; if she isn’t real, no one will believe her. Even the writer who aspires to write idea stories skimps characterization at her peril.

The problem with this whole debate is that it makes the questionable assumption that we can yank characters out of their natural environment of plot and setting to analyze them. It’s like expecting to learn something about the ethology of rainbow trout by watching the one you’ve just caught as it flops and gasps on the hot deck of your fishing boat. Or as Henry James said, “What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?” Character, plot, setting, theme, idea and style are inextricably bound; all must stand or fall together.

So yes, it’s necessary to work at characterization, no matter what your ambitions in the genre are. And since your technique will be better if it’s intuitive rather than self-conscious, it may help to try to imagine that you are your characters. However, as we’ve seen, writers and critics have developed a common language over the years so that they could talk to one another about this subject. Time now for some vocabulary drill. Don’t worry; there will be no pop quiz at the end of this chapter. You don’t have to memorize the list in order to write well. However, whether you can define these terms or not, you must eventually come to understand them.

Antagonist: a.k.a. “the bad guy” but better thought of as the opponent of the protagonist or central character. The action of a story arises from conflict between the antagonist and protagonist, as in Baum’s The Wizard of Oz with its struggle between the Wicked Witch of the West and Dorothy. The antagonist need not be a person at all but may be an animal, an inanimate object or even nature itself. For example, the antagonist of Tom Godwin’s story “The Cold Equations” is outer space.
Cardboard character: A stereotype, mannequin, drone or otherwise uninteresting simulacrum passing for a real character. Cardboard is what you use when — for whatever reason — you fail to put yourself into your characters. It is the only pejorative I’ve included in this list. The utopia of Edward Bellamy’s didactic “idea” novel Looking Backward is entirely populated with right-thinking men and women of cardboard.
Confidante: someone in whom the central character confides, thus revealing her personality. Once again, that someone need not be a person. In Robert Heinlein’s The Door Into Summer the central character, Dan Davis, continually confides his plans and feelings to his cat, Pete.
Developing character: a character who changes over the course of the story. The central character is often but not always a developing character. However, it’s crucial that the action of the story causes some character to change. When I was at Clarion, Damon Knight used to write “Who cares?” at the end of stories in which no one develops — a characteristically terse criticism which I found devastating. A tour de force of developing characterization is Louis Sacchetti, the protagonist of Thomas Disch’s Camp Concentration, who is infected with a disease that makes him a genius.
Flat character: Someone who is characterized by one or two traits. “Flat” and “round” were terms first proposed by E.M. Forster in his Aspects of the Novel and they are often misapplied by modern critics. Flat is especially corrupted when used as a synonym for cardboard; in Forster’s usage, flat is not a derogatory term. Rather, it describes a character who can be summed up in a sentence. Gollum from The Lord of the Rings is a wonderful character who is absolutely flat in that his character is determined by his obsession with the recovery of the ring, “his precious.” Every story needs some flat characters and many successful stories, for instance Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol, have nothing but flat characters.
Foil: someone whose character contrasts to that of the protagonist, thus throwing it into sharp relief. In Connie Willis’s “The Last of the Winnebagos,” Katie Powell serves as a foil to the protagonist David McCombe. Katie chases after David to expiate her guilt over killing one of the last surviving dogs on Earth, while David runs away from Katie and from admitting to himself that he, too, is responsible for the dog’s death.
Narrator: the fictional storyteller. When the narrator is involved in the action of the story she’s called a first person narrator. The sentence “I watched the triceratops eat my purse,” is narrated in first person. When the narrator stands outside the story, she is usually taken to be the implied author. “Persephone watched as the triceratops ate her purse,” is narrated in third person, presumably by the writer. Narrators can either be reliable or unreliable. For example, in Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver narrates his own story: “I began last week to permit my wife to sit at dinner with me, at the farthest end of a long table, and to answer (but with the utmost brevity) the few questions I ask her.” However, he is so credulous at the start and misanthropic at the end that we know enough not to take everything he tells us seriously. Since he is unreliable we must read between his lines to discover Jonathan Swift’s intent. On the other hand, we have every reason to trust the third person narration in “Nightfall”; the implied storyteller, Isaac Asimov, means exactly what he says. The vast majority of author-as-narrator stories are told reliably. Indeed, a story in which the implied writer appears to be unreliable is usually scorned as a “readercheater.” However, there have been interesting experiments in unreliable third person narration. The implied Bruce Sterling in “Dori Bangs” makes clear that he is unreliable in pursuit of higher truth. This is all very complicated, I know. We’ll more talk about narrators when we get to viewpoint characters.
Protagonist: The central character, or the one whose name comes to mind when you ask the question, “Whose story is this?” A story ought to have just one protagonist but a novel can have several, as in Kate Wilhelm’s multigenerational novel of the Sumner family, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang.
Round character: one who is complex and perhaps even contradictory. E. M. Forster (see Flat Characters) put it succinctly, “The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way.” If a flat character can be summed up in a sentence or two, a round character would probably take an essay. For example, Genly Ai in The Left Hand of Darkness is one of the of Ursula Le Guin’s many round characters.
Spear-carriers: minor characters who provide verisimilitude. They must necessarily be flat since they are rarely named or described in any detail. They tend to run in crowds; in movies these are the folks who made up the “cast of thousands.” The dim-witted population of Earth in C. M. Kornbluth “The Marching Morons” are spear-carriers.
Static character: a character who does not develop. Most characters in a story should be static, so as not to distract from the significant changes you will be depicting in the central character. Static, however, most certainly does not mean boring. In Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” all of the characters except for the scapegoat, Tessie Hutchinson, are static.
Stock character: a.k.a. stereotype, but actually a special kind of flat character who is instantly recognizable to most readers, as in the Brave Starship Captain or the Troubled Teen or the Ruthless Businessperson. In the hands of a clumsy writer, the stock character never rises above the cardboard stereotype, which is unfortunate. Even as cliches encapsulate a kernel of truth, so do stock characters reflect aspects of real people. Courage is required of military personnel; people in business act ruthlessly at times in order to survive in the Darwinian world of business. In his collection of short stories, Fancies and Goodnights, John Collier demonstrates how to bring stock characters to life — he’s particularly good with devils.
Sympathetic character: One whose motivations readers can understand and whose feelings they can comfortably share. This is the kind of character of whom naive readers will say “I could identify with her.” The protagonist is often, but not always, sympathetic. Note that a sympathetic character need not be a good person. In George Orwell’s 1984, despite the fact that he betrays Julia and his own values by embracing Big Brother, Winston Smith remains a sympathetic character.
Unsympathetic character: One whose motivations are suspect and whose feelings make us uncomfortable. The boundary between sympathetic and unsympathetic characterization is necessarily ill-defined. The protagonist of Lucius Shepard’s “Black Coral,” an Ugly American named Prince, is definitely not sympathetic, nor is he intended to be. However once he brings destruction down on himself, we feel sorry for him. The central irony of this story is that the punishment Prince receives is to become a sympathetic character.
Viewpoint character: the focus of narration, the person or persons through whom we experience the story. One kind of viewpoint character is the first person narrator. Here’s Mitchell Courtenay, the first person viewpoint character of Pohl and Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants: “As I dressed that morning I ran over in my mind the long list of statistics, evasions and exaggerations that they would expect in my report.” When author herself acts as narrator, she usually chooses to tell the story in the third person, limiting herself to the perspective of one character. While she is in his point of view, she has access to his thoughts and memories but not to those of any one else, as in “The View From Venus” by Karen Joy Fowler:

“Linda knows, of course, that the gorgeous male waiting for her, holding the elevator door with his left hand, cannot be moving into apartment 201.”

A well-written third person viewpoint can be so seductive that it appears that the viewpoint character is, in fact, the narrator; the implied author seems to disappear. However the invisible author must continue to be reliable even if the viewpoint character is an unreliable focus on the action of the story. John Kessel’s Good News From Outer Space has several limited third person viewpoint characters — some fairly reliable, some less so. Kessel maintains consistency of point of view by switching only at the chapter breaks. It’s also possible to have no viewpoint character at all, as when an omniscient author sees through everyone’s eyes. In “Day Million,” Frederick Pohl not only tells us what all his characters think but also what his imaginary readers are thinking as they read his story!

There is one bit of advice which I most certainly will not give you. It says in some of the how-to-write books here in my collection that when you create characters you must “Show, don’t tell.” This pernicious commandment charges you always to dramatize the personalities of your characters rather than to explain or comment on them. So instead of simply informing us that “Balthazsar was a reckless man,” you must send him over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Don’t believe it!

A short story is not a play. The playwright can enter the consciousness of his characters only with great difficulty, through awkward devices like the soliloquy or the aside. Almost all fiction, however, starts inside someone’s head; readers expect to have complete access to the thoughts and feelings of at least one character. Although our inner life is not inherently dramatic, it is the stuff of superior fiction. Daniel Keyes “Flowers for Algernon” for example, is almost entirely told in the form of journal entries; there are relatively few scenes. Yet Charlie Gordon is one of the more memorable characters of science fiction. This is because, happily, telling can be showing. A character like Charley dramatizes himself when he describes what he thinks and feels or when he interprets the actions of other people.

There is also the problem of limited resources. You would be squandering precious story time were you to allow each and every member of the crew of the starship to act out his reasons for choosing space service. Showing should be reserved only for very important persons. Feel free to tell readers exactly why your spear-carriers are restless.

Finally, as a science fiction writer you usually have the dual challenge of creating both character and context. In order to place your imaginary people in their imaginary world, it may at times be necessary to come right out and explain that your heroine is a girlygirl, an underperson, “cat-derived, though human in outward shape” and that this has everything to do with the fact that she falls hopelessly in love with a human lord of the Instrumentality and then never tells him. Or at least Cordwainer Smith thought so when he wrote “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell.”

This is not to say that such tools of dramatic characterization as dialogue, action and reaction are not essential. Rather it is to warn that “Show, don’t tell” ought not be carved on the foundation stone of your house of fiction.

Before you turn the page to the next chapter, one last tip on characterization: Remember that when you make a new world, the people in it must necessarily be the crown of your creation.

Tags: Intermediate, james patrick kelly, Kelly, writing
Posted in Information Center, The Craft of Writing, Writing Technique | Comments Off

Breaking Into Print: What Length Sells Best?

Tuesday, January 4th, 2005

Written by Melisa Michaels

There’s a lot of advice floating around as to how best to achieve those first sales. Some say you should write short stories to break in. Some say better yet, write short-shorts since they take less time. Some say forget the short stuff: the real market is novels.

The answer that is right for you depends on your ultimate goal. If you just want to see your name in print, the quickest way might be to rob a bank. If you want to see your work in print, the quickest way might be to write for fanzines or other small magazines that pay in contributors’ copies. If you want to build a career, forget quick ways. There are none.

That’s the bad news. The good news is, you can probably do it if you try hard enough. With a modicum of talent and a whole lot of work, you can learn your craft and begin to make those first sales.

But What Length Will Sell?

The answer to this question is simple: what will sell to the real paying markets is the best work their editors can find that matches their editorial guidelines. Yes, they may more often have room for one more short-short than for another novella. Yes, you might therefore be able to sell three good short-shorts while remaining unable to sell one good novella.

Unfortunately that does not mean it’s a good idea to concentrate on short-shorts to the exclusion of novellas (or short stories, or novels), if what you want to do is build a career. You can’t learn as much writing short-shorts as you can writing short stories: there just isn’t room in a short-short for the kind of world-building, character development, plotting, etc. that are essential in longer works.

If you have a brilliant idea for a great short-short, by all means write it. Study the markets and get it in the mail to an editor who might like it. Then write something else. If you mean eventually to write longer works, start now.

But don’t start with the first book of an endless series in which the individual novels don’t stand alone: that will be no more useful to you than short-shorts. Works at either end of the length spectrum will teach you the least. Settle somewhere in the middle if you can, where you have room to develop all the skills you need as a writer, but where you also have some boundaries.

Short stories are adequate to develop basic plotting skills, and they will teach you word-management: you won’t have room to waste any. Novellas and novelettes will help you hone your plotting skills, world-building, and character development. Novels will give you room for more complex plotting, sub-plots, and all the skills required for the shorter works. Any length will give you practice in pacing.

Yes, But Which Length Should I Write?

I’ve been avoiding the real answer because it will almost certainly disappoint.

You must write your story just the length it needs to be.

In the final analysis, the best length to write is always the length the idea requires. Begin at the beginning and write until you reach the end. If you really want to be a good writer, don’t worry about markets until after the work is written. And don’t worry about wasting time writing some “wrong” length: no time spent writing is wasted. Not if you are writing to the best of your ability, working at it, and learning. In that case every hour spent writing is an hour spent honing your craft.

Okay, Then What’s the Secret to Making Sales?

Hard work. That’s it. That’s the secret.

The learning and honing process is unending. There will never come a day when you can say, “That’s it: I know all there is to know about writing and can sell my work from now on.” Very likely the best you’ll be able to say is that you’ve done your best, that the current work is finished, and that you think it may be marketable in its present state. (You’ll also know at that point how long the work is.) Good. Study the markets again, send it out, and start another.

Unfortunately when you’ve finished the next piece you may have learned enough to realize that the previous piece was not quite as good as you imagined at the time. Get used to it: if you’re good and work hard at this business, that will become a familiar sensation. It means you’re doing something right. You’re learning.

I Still Don’t Know Whether to Write Short Stories or Novels

One of the things you will learn to judge as you go along is how much room an idea is going to require to be told the way you want to tell it. You will learn to know the idea for a short story from that for a novel before either is written; and the idea for a short-short from either of the others. Novellas and novelettes are more difficult to tell from novels in the raw idea form, but you’ll know the idea for either from that for a short story or a short-short once you’ve had some practice.

Even then it should be your need, not the market, that determines which you choose to write. If you have an idea that is going to require a six hundred thousand word manuscript to do it justice, it would probably be best to put that one aside till you’ve made a name for yourself since really long novels are a greater risk for the publisher and therefore harder to sell; and if you happen to have an idea that’s going to come out just the length needed by one of the better-paying markets it would do no harm to give that idea priority. But for the most part, if your goal is to build a career by becoming the best writer you can be, it is wiser to concentrate on what you need to write than on what you think will sell.

But You Haven’t Told Me How to Break Into Print

Yes I have. There are five steps to the process, and each is crucial:

Write.
Study the markets.
Send out your work.
Write.
Write.

Tags: Intermediate, Melisa Michaels, Michaels, writing
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Making Monsters

Tuesday, January 4th, 2005

Written by James Patrick Kelly

Copyright © 1996 by James Patrick Kelly
First published in PARAGONS, edited by Robin Wilson, St. Martin’s Press
(You may find it helpful to read the story “Monsters” first. It’s available on the author’s webpage.

This essay isn’t turning out quite the way I expected. I was going to begin with one of my favorite anecdotes about making art but, when I checked into it, I found out the story I’d heard was a myth. Well, almost.

It’s about the film classic Casablanca. According to legend, the actors weren’t told the ending — mostly because the writers couldn’t come up with one until almost two months after shooting started. Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart and Paul Henreid had to enact their wrenching love triangle so that it made emotional sense whether Ilsa stayed with Rick in Casablanca or flew off into the fog with Victor Laslow. In other words, the actors faced the same uncertainties as do we who muddle through real life. I’ve always found the idea immensely appealing. As yet, nobody has handed me those last few pages of the Jim Kelly Story — those which reveal whether I am destined for a tragic fall or happy ever-aftering. I’m just making me up as I go along.

Unfortunately, there never was an Ilsa-stays-with-Rick option for Casablanca. Although Bergman claims in her autobiography that such an ending was discussed several times, the reality was that no censor in 1942 would pass a movie in which a woman deserted her war hero husband for her lover. Yes, the writers were still casting about for an ending late in the production, but their problem was not whether to send Ilsa off with Laslow, but just how to get her onto that plane. Does Rick persuade her to leave? Order her? Trick her? Slug her and then load her on? Why does he want her to go, anyway? And how could she ever agree?

To me, these questions point up the difficulty of discussing plot without sliding into character analysis. This is the wave/particle duality of fiction. In a story, things happen for reasons. It makes sense to say that what someone does falls for the most part in the domain of plot and why she does it is largely a matter of character, but I can’t always make a hard distinction, nor do I see the profit in it.

Some writers are assiduous planners; I am not one of them. In fact, the outline is probably the rustiest tool in my kit. Of course, different projects require different strategies. I wouldn’t launch into a novel without making notes, timelines and character sketches; complex, episodic stories sprawling over someone’s entire lifetime might require a diagram. But in general, my approach to plotting is to procrastinate. I don’t necessarily want to work out everything that’s going to happen ahead of time. Whenever possible, I prefer to wait until I can collaborate with my characters. I ruefully acknowledge that this isn’t the most efficient way to write, but it’s what works for me.

Procrastination serves two purposes. First, by keeping myself in the dark as long as possible, I’m better able to maintain my own interest in the story. The reader can sense when a writer is bored, so I try never to be. And without doubt, the most exhilarating moment in the creation of any story is when what I see on the screen surprises me. Second, I think that developing plot/character using the Casablanca model adds verisimilitude. Characters who navigate precisely through a storyline to some well known destination all too often turn out to be plot robots who never come alive on the page. Even if they do, I worry what they are missing along the way. I prefer to send my people out to discover the story. If, on the road to denouement, they chance across a cave which leads to a secret empire, I let them climb down for a look.

“Monsters” began with Henry. I wanted to write about a character on the day before he became a mass murderer. The conceit is that he feels possessed by some interior “monster,” so that the infliction of pain on others gives him intense, almost sexual pleasure. The plot arises from his struggle to contain the monster within. To help him suppress his craving for violence, I gave him a strong religious impulse. However, as I considered what might happen to Henry, I doubted God would save him. I believed he would lose the struggle with his monster in a splatterpunk explosion.

Note that I decided to tell about the day before he became a killer. This was an important structural decision, since it dictated that “Monsters” have an organic plot which observed the unities of time and, to some extent, of place. This story could have been about how Henry got to be the way he was, in which case I could have ranged through his childhood, his sad careers at school and work and his non-existent love life, picking and choosing key moments to dramatize. This would have been a longer, more episodic story, possibly more complex but less immediate and therefore less scary.

All by himself, Henry doesn’t necessarily suggest a plot. A plot arises out of conflict; the protagonist needs a strong antagonist. I wanted to put someone in Henry’s way; a final obstacle to overcome before he began his killing spree. Celeste is a character I conceived of over twenty years ago. She is an oxymoron: at once a caterpillar and a butterfly, the ugly angel. Because she has what the world perceives as a deformity, it has brutalized her. Yet, she still clings to an unlikely dream of love. I made several pages of notes on Celeste when I first thought of her, but for some reason she never seemed to throw off any plot lines. I relegated her to the idea drawer with the dozens of other half-baked characters, openings, suggestive titles and snippets of dialog I had scrawled on scrap paper over the years. (The contents of the idea drawer have since migrated to a file in my computer.) Just as I was trying to figure out what to do with Henry, Celeste popped out of the drawer and volunteered to help.

The plot flows from their interactions. In her desperate attempt to get his attention, Celeste unwittingly puts Henry under the stress that will release his monster. She thinks she’s in a romantic comedy; he’s in a horror story. My first thought was that he would kill her, only to discover, too late, that she was the angel whom his God had sent to save him. Although I did not have a firm notion of everything that was going to occur in “Monsters,” the plot did have a destination image which, when fully developed, was my intended climax: Celeste must be undressed so that her miraculous wings could unfold.

Most adults I know spend the greater part of their day on the job, yet surprisingly few genre stories take place in the workplace. Whenever possible I like to show what my characters do for a living. So Kaplan’s Cleaners becomes the setting of much of what Robin Scott Wilson calls the involution of the plot, the purpose of which is to push Henry past his breaking point. The scene in St. Sebastian’s, set outside Kaplan’s, serves as a kind of gauge on which the reader can read Henry’s rising tension. It is also a blunt foreshadowing of the violent climax I anticipated at the time I wrote it.

Foreshadowing is perhaps the most useful tool in my plot kit. It is a way to create expectations and to prepare the reader for what may come. To foreshadow is to parallel some climatic event at a strategic moment early on in the story. Foreshadowing can be as subtle as a passing, perhaps enigmatic reference; it can be as blatant as a pattern of repetition or a particularly striking image. All the monster’s appearances foreshadow its final possession of Henry. When Henry imagines Celeste in a three piece bikini, it foreshadows the scene in which she reveals her wings. While overindulgence in foreshadowing can become affectation, the careful writer can use it to make even the most improbable twist believable. Foreshadowing can also be used like a magician’s handkerchief to distract the reader from the author’s true intentions, to create a seeming inevitability where none exists. More on misdirection in a moment.

I remember getting stuck as I approached the end of Henry’s work day. This is the price one pays for plotting on the fly. Outliners have it easy; they always knows what comes next. I regard getting stuck as nature’s way of telling me that what I am about to do is wrong; the problem crops up in almost every project.

The plot point I needed was for something very bad to happen to revive Henry’s monster. But what? An obnoxious seatmate on the commute home? A fight at the bus stop? A burst pipe in the apartment? All these seemed either too tame or generic. The real problem was that I didn’t know enough about Henry at that time to write a scene powerful enough to free his monster. Such a scene would have to be deeply personal. My early plot/character decision not to delve into Henry’s psychopathology was now catching up with me. It was time to answer the question Damon Knight had taught me to ask twenty years ago at the Clarion Writer’s Workshop: what mattered most to my character?

I had long since decided that Henry’s parents would be conveniently dead; it almost always pays to economize on characters. However, if the reader was to understand my tortured loner, I needed to stage some of his history. A clumsy way to accomplish this would have been to have him gaze at a picture of himself and his dad, say standing on the dock at the lake, then cut to flashback. In fact, just such a picture was hanging in the story at the time. Or else that obnoxious seatmate on the bus might say or do something that jogged his memory … nah! Eventually I got it. Henry’s dad wasn’t dead; he was dying.

This insight remade the plot of “Monsters” in a way I could never have imagined before I started writing. The hospital scene was perfect for scraping Henry’s emotions raw — and I was able to implicate Celeste in the disaster too. But I found the old man’s rebuke so scarifying that my sympathies turned. It became clear that the emergence of the monster coincided with the onset of Roger West’s long illness and his unfair, pain-wracked censure of Henry, who was trying as hard as he could. Pardon my hubris, but the god Henry was praying to was me; what kind of universe was I running here? By the time I finished the hospital scene, I no longer wanted Henry’s monster to win, even though that had been the climax toward which I had been working for the previous 7,420 words.

Which brings us back to the craft of misdirection and the uses of the surprise. Did I now owe it to the reader to unforeshadow the murder ending? I believe I did not. After all, I hadn’t changed the actual destination image of my plot: the unfolding of Celeste’s wings. I’d simply changed its meaning. In no way had I made it impossible for Henry to beat the monster. Indeed, there are glimmerings of humanity in him. Certainly, he loves his father. He also refuses to crush Celeste emotionally when he has the chance. Building on that fragile foundation, Celeste might be able to save him. It would probably take a miracle, but then I was already committed to the miracle of Celeste’s wings. If I wasted her, literally and figuratively, “Monsters” would have ended as one more splatter fest with an ironic twist. The potential for redemption had always been there, I had just never considered it.

There are reasons why science fiction and fantasy writers try so hard to inject surprise into their plots — particularly into their endings. We’re writing popular literature here; surprise may be the most special of our effects. And it’s part of our heritage. After all, we’re the folks who gave Western Civilization Amazing and Astounding. Surprises sustain and even enhance the reader’s interest in a developing plot. Remember that when most critics use “predictable,” it is as a pejorative. Nobody wants to hear, “I guessed how it all came out on page two,” whereas a well-wrought twist ending can prolong the life of the story in the imagination. For some time after that last page is turned, the reader will still be thinking about what happened.

Surprise forms part of the philosophical underpinnings of the genre as well. If science fiction is about things that could happen but haven’t yet, and fantasy is about impossible things, then astonishment is our natural condition. We deal in the shock of the new — and the strange. Moreover, the genre has a proud history of subverting cultural assumptions and challenging the common wisdom. What if we didn’t have to die? What if we’re not the crown of creation? What if reality is a lie?

Up until the moment that Celeste undresses, “Monsters” can be read as a mainstream story; its many commonplaces invite the reader to map the real world onto it. For example, it’s entirely possible that Henry has multiple personalities and his monster is one of them. If this is a “realistic” story, the reader’s dread must soar when Celeste arrives at Henry’s apartment, because in the real world Celeste would seem to be doomed. It would take a miracle to save her, and the common wisdom is that, in reality, there are no miracles, more’s the pity. Actually, two miracles occur in the seduction scene and only one is fantastic. When Celeste kisses the monster, a disoriented Henry reappears; when Henry sees her wings, he finds the strength to banish the monster.

Which was more important?

I mentioned earlier that I attended Clarion. In the years since, I’ve become a workshop enthusiast; I’ve been to Milford, Philford, Sycamore Hill and am currently a member of the monthly Cambridge (Massachusetts) Science Fiction Workshop. While workshops are not for everyone, I find that listening to a group of very creative readers analyze and interpret my work it is always instructive. In particular, what workshops do best is scrutinize plot and character. “Monsters” was the first manuscript I put through the Cambridge Workshop. Their comments helped me fix a number of problems, most related to the midcourse plot/character correction. The remains of the splatter ending were distorting the salvation ending. Henry was at times too bloody-minded and psychotic; he did not appear to be a good candidate for redemption. In part because I had intended to kill her off, I had drawn Celeste as an annoying and superficial chatterbox; she did not seem to have enough self-insight to deliver her tirade against the deity. These flaws in characterization undermined the climax of the plot. I made what I thought were the appropriate revisions and sent the story to Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.

Gardner Dozois and Sheila Williams have published sixteen of my stories, including much of my best work thus far. When they make suggestions, I always pay attention. They wanted to buy “Monsters” but worried that the last few pages were too rushed. After all, Henry goes from crazed blood lust to peaceful post-coital sanity in a very short span. They wondered whether I’d lurched toward the happy ending too abruptly. My recollection is that they wanted me to provide more foundation for Henry’s profound change — perhaps by means of some pillow talk right before the denouement.

As Robin Scott Wilson points out, the ending of a work of fiction consists of climax and denouement. The climax, as the turning point of the plot and the moment of highest reader interest, gets the most attention, as well it should. However, the denouement, the sorting out and sending off, all too often is treated as an afterthought. A grievous mistake, in my opinion, because it’s here the writer gets to make one last statement about the meaning of the story. It is also the perfect place to impart what politicians these days call spin.

A story I wrote once upon a time as a student at Clarion involved a woman scientist who, against her better judgment, participates in an unspeakable experiment. In the process she nearly wrecks her marriage. After much techno-mayhem, she alone is left of the research team; the experiment has succeeded but at a horrific cost. At the denouement, she retreats in a daze to her office, where she finds a dozen roses from her estranged husband — a peace offering. In the version I workshopped, she decides impulsively to take the bouquet, go to him and leave everything else behind. It was the bland conclusion to a “There Are Some Things We Are Not Meant To Know” story. In her critique Kate Wilhelm taught me the importance of the denouement. After reading my manuscript, Kate suggested a change: what if my heroine tossed all but a single flower out, stuck that one into a bud vase and sat down to write up the experiment? All it took was two sentences and one red rose to transform the piece into a chilling and powerful Scientist-Loses-Her-Soul story.

After mulling over Sheila and Gardner’s criticism of “Monsters,” what I decided was that rather than pad the climax, I’d put a new spin on the denouement. Here’s the last paragraph of the version they read:

Much later, he eased out from under the covers so as not to wake her. He realized where the monster had gone when it left him. He pulled on his jeans, padded into the living room and felt under the cushion. It was in the Beretta. He stared at the gun without comprehension. Even though it was still as hard and black and cold as ever, it didn’t seem real to him anymore. He stripped the magazine, picked the shells out one by one, and hid them under the sink. He stuffed the gun in the trash under the pizza box and went back to bed with his angel.

Compare this to the revised denouement, as published in Asimov’s. There are several ways to interpret the penultimate sentence, but at least one valid reading is that the monster is not permanently defeated. As Henry vacillates and then decides not to get rid of the Beretta, the monster may once again be insinuating itself into his psyche. Henry has not yet been completely redeemed; however, he does seem to have mastered his madness — for the time being. This is not necessarily a happy ending, although it is hopeful. Like so much of what I write, “Monsters” didn’t turn out quite the way I expected.

Which comes as no surprise.

Tags: Intermediate, james patrick kelly, Kelly, writing
Posted in Information Center, The Craft of Writing, Writing Technique | Comments Off

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