(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . WriteOn! In Summary... [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-06-15 Does the picture have anything to do with the diary? No, not necessarily. But as someone who’s spent years having my writing ‘helped’ by my furry companions, I thought I’d go with it. Originally I wanted to talk about querying — the process by which a novelist finds a literary agent. And I will, but I realized the subject is much bigger. It has to do with being able to condense information to the most effective form. Querying The process of getting fiction published is a complicated one if you’re looking at traditional publishing. Some small presses take unagented submissions, but by and large? Step one is writing a novel. We’re not going to touch that here, but assume it’s been done. Step two is revising the novel, and we’ve had a lot of lovely diaries over the years talking about revision methods, editing depth, etc. Step three is potentially getting your novel beta-read — another topic that’s been covered in other diaries. Step… wait. Step zero is coming up with the idea, potentially plotting it (other diaries), and then starting. Ok, now step four? Step four is writing a query package. The secret of publishing is that by and large, decisions are made fast. Any time someone says ‘well, it gets good after….’ that’s someone who’s going to struggle to sell the book. There are more people writing more stories than ever before, and the trick about querying is to hook an agent’s attetion. After all, it’s a pretty good sign you can hook a reader’s attention, which is what publishing editors are looking for in new novels to buy. A query package consists of a synopsis (very similar to an outline, it’s a 1-2 page detailing of what happens in your story), the first 5-10 pages of your novel, and a query. So let’s talk about the query. In a query you get 50-100 words for any personalization, any comps (similar, recent titles — or older ones, or movies, etc — but you want to have SOMETHING here that’s recent and in your genre, so the agent knows you care about the current market), and your bio. Those sections are designed to show that you’re a Real Human that won’t be utter misery to work with, and that you know the current market you’re trying to sell in. The bigger part of the query (200-250 words) is built around selling your novel. A query is meant to introduce the main character, their motivation, and what stands in their way. You can’t tell the whole story of your novel in 200 words, and you’re not supposed to. But queries usually brush over the first third or so of the book, in an easily digestible way that also gives the agent a hint of the voice you’ve written the manuscript with. Not much space. Lots of information. MORE information if you’re writing speculative fiction, because you need just enough worldbuilding to show how you fit into that part of the speculative market. Hard stuff. Pitches Pitches are even harder. It’s ‘your novel in 30 seconds to 1 minute.’ Maybe a moodboard. Maybe a tweet — or toot on Mastodon. These are designed to get attention, and fast. How can you reduce a novel to one or two sentences? At this point, as some of my other friends further along the publishing path have said, welcome to the world of publishing. However, I wanted to pause here a moment and think about the skills you need to take a complex topic and produce it quickly and still catch the essence of it all. You need to know what the main thread is. You need to know who the main character is. Or are. You need to paint a picture not with a thousand words, but with ten. Twenty. Two hundred. And that made me think. Do we do that in other things? All the time. So in brief…. You might have a character who’s done an investigation need to give a quick recap to someone else. The reader would be bored to tears if you as the writer take pages to say… what the reader already knows. You might have a character who’s sending a distress message and only gets 50 characters to do it in. You might have a character questioned because they’re a suspect for a crime. You might be the suspect of a… whoops, never mind that part! But yes, these are skills we use in our non-writerly lives, too. Whether it’s a presentation on a complex subject, writing up a grant application, designing an advertisement, reviewing a favorite book, creating a Tik Tok video, being able to catch the essence of a thing in only a few words is valuable. Whether it’s a query, a pitch, or your character. Summing it all up… I have a challenge for tonight! Challenge 1: Write a query for your novel (complete, in draft, or in idea). You don’t have to send it — and just the ‘meat’ of the query. Max word count, 250. Challenge 2: Your characters have to touch on the high points of something, for some reason, and present a coherent and quickly sketched story. Use your own or pre-made! Are they recaping what they’ve done, producing (or creating) an alibi, or presenting a different set of information? Are they composing a new song/epic poem, or are they snapping off the important bits before the train leaves the station? No max word count. 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