Know The Heart Of Your Novel

Happy conference season to all those who are submitting! During a writer's chat I took part in last week (#IndieChat on Tuesday at 6pm PT on Twitter) the question of how to pitch came up. Having landed two agents, the best answer I can give is that you must know what the heart of your novel is before you can pitch it or start submitting it. If you don't know, neither will the person you're trying to 'sell' it to, which means they won't buy off on the idea.

Knowing the heart of your novel is more than just saying it's about this character or that event. It's saying what is deep down, the idea that drove you to write the novel in the first place. Take one of my novel's for example, The Secret Of Spruce Knoll. At first glance it looks like a story about a girl who discovers she's a channeler after her parents are killed and she has to go live with her aunt in a strange little town. But that isn't the heart of the novel, not by a long shot. The heart of the novel is that Eren is part of an endangered species that is going extinct as the world slowly dies. See what I mean about the heart? The second description illicites a deeper response because it's about the big issue, what is outside of the character and drives them through the novel.

You have to get to the deep issue and bring it to the surface of your query or pitch. Only then will others see your novel and it's potential. You may have written an amazing novel but if you can't communicate what is so amazing about it then no one will ever know. It's all about that first impression. Those of you who are querying and getting no bites, take another look at your query. Does it get to the heart of things?

Best of luck!

~Heather

Author of The Secret Of Spruce Knoll, Born Of Fire, Channeler's Choice, and coming in May of 2012, To Ride A Puca. A short story of Heather's is also available in the free In His Eyes eBook anthology. 

What Not To Do At A Conference

It's nearly conference season again and I thought I'd share some of what I've learned about them with you. First let me put your mind at ease. Agents and editors expect you to be nervous and they don't mind. Take a deep breath and remember they are people too. They want to like your book. Now to the good stuff.

1) Come prepared. If you know you'll clam up and forget what to say bring notes or a copy of your query letter. Don't read straight from it if you can avoid it. Agents want to interact with you. Bring a copy of your first ten pages just in case, but do NOT push it on them unless they ask for it. Typically agents don't like business cards. They say they get lost or end up as scratch paper. It may not be the rule, but it is the consensus of the majority of agents I've talked to.

2) Don't bring gifts, gimmicks, or props. You don't want to know what I've heard agents say about this. Let's just say most of them see it as a cover for the fact that your writing may be lacking and you may be trying to make up for it. They want your work to stand out on it's own.

3) Don't lie, ever, about anything. It isn't worth it, it won't get you a deal or an agent, and they will find out.

4) Be polite and respectful. People in this industry talk, a lot, and you don't want to burn any bridges because they all connect. Agents aren't at a conference because they need to be, they're there because you need them to be. They have authors they already represent, manuscripts to critique or read, and editors to call or meet. It is a kindness that they take the time out of their busy schedules to attend.

Now relax and have fun. We write because we love it, remember that above all else. I'd love to hear any other great tips or tidbits of information anyone has on conferences!

~Heather

SDSU Conference: Part 2

Last Monday I wrote about the San Diego State University Writers Conference, including the overall nature of the conference, and a panel discussion of agents talking about the emerging e-publishing paradigm. (click here)

Today I want to extend last week's discussion to share some notes I took at another excellent presentation at the conference, this one by bestselling author and teacher, James Scott Bell. His experience and insights on how to write fiction that will get published are powerful, and carry the extra bonus of utilizing a novel writing/filmic structure approach (i.e., get published and get Hollywood interested).

What I love about Bell is his way of communicating. It feels direct, hands-on, clear, and loaded with valuable content. The presentation was billed as being on Structure.  It was, but Bell made Structure come alive by giving examples of his points that provide content we can relate to in our own novels.  Here's an overview of most of what he squeezed into an hour:

Bell calls his system for structure LOCK.
L:  Lead
O: Opposition
C: Confrontation
K: Knockout

L is the Lead Character.  Readers get into a novel by bonding with the character.  You want to open with a Boom!  Pull readers in right away. The lead character in trouble works well. This will immediately interest readers and get them rooting for the character.
Techniques:
1.  trouble for the character/imminent jeopardy
2.  hardship, not of the character's own making, and the character doesn't whine about it. Example:  Forrest Gump
3.  inner conflict—two voices in the character's head:  a) "you have to do this," and b) fear (usually)
4.  vulnerability:  at any point this character could be smashed by the forces arraigned against her
5.  no wimps.  Can start out there, but must see change very quickly

So, you are shooting for your character to display inner strength and likability.  


Likability often comes from a character who cares about others. Bell suggests a technique for incorporating this characteristic. It is called the 'pet the dog' or 'save the cat' beat. (He spoke in terms of 'beats,' as in music.) This is where the character takes a moment to protect someone else while they are themselves in great jeopardy.

For example, Harrison Ford in The Fugitive: the moment when Tommy Lee Jones' hunt for him is closing in; HF has figured out part of the truth about who murdered his wife and framed him for the crime, and is in Cook County Hospital in Chicago tracking down the proof he needs, with the U.S. Marshalls hot on his trail, when he sees an injured boy on a gurney in the incredibly overcrowded, understaffed hospital. He risks blowing his cover and getting caught by taking an interest in the boy, talking to him and realizing (because he's a great doctor) that this boy will die without immediate surgery. As HF forges a doctor's signature on an order for surgery and wheels the gurney to the surgical suite, the Feds are bursting through the front doors of the hospital in pursuit of him. We LOVE this lead character, who demonstrates his humanity in a moment of personal peril. His act of kindness can get him in more trouble. It raises the stakes and his likability.

O is Objective:  the main goal of the character for the novel. It has to be about impending death. This can be:
1.  physical death
2.  professional death—if the character fails, their professional life will either be over or severely damaged. (For example, Clarisse Starling in Silence of the Lambs)
3.  psychological death—this is the key to category romance, e.g.  If the one great love is lost, that's death.


The Objective can take two forms:  to get something, or to get away from something. The stakes are death. You must make the stakes matter to the character that much. These things have to be thought through before you start writing.

C is Confrontation:  the opposition character. The opposition must be stronger than the lead character. The opposition character doesn't have to be a villain. It can be someone with the opposite agenda (e.g. Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive). But you need to explain the opposition character's justification, so the reader feels some sympathy. Fully justify who they are, be able to crawl into their skin, and ask yourself, why do I love this character?

K is Knockout Ending:  the reader thinks, this is the perfect ending, but I didn't see it coming.

Endings are the hardest things to write because each is unique to the story.

Think of the climax as a final battle:  inside and outside. Inner conflict. Example:  Casablanca—the final battle is inside Rick. He can have Ilsa, but at a moral cost. He makes the moral choice and loses Ilsa, but his reward is he becomes a full person again and rejoins the war effort.

Bell made the point that these guidelines hold true for all dramatic writing, whether genre or literary.

For our part as writers, we all know that guidelines are only guidelines. Great writers break rules all the time, by doing what they do instead incredibly well (Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford's literary novel, Independence Day, comes to mind, in which he opens with a beautiful descriptive passage of setting.) But James Scott Bell's points are very well taken. If we use these guidelines where we can in our work, it (and we) will benefit.

There are many points in Bell's approach that resonated with me. The one that surprised me the most, because I'd never really thought about it, was that the opposition character (antagonist) must be stronger than the lead. That little statement opened up a whole new way of thinking about antagonists for me. How about you? Do you have a favorite writing truth you use to guide a writing choice?

~Linda

                           
           

What I Learned at the SDSU Writers Conference

It's been three weeks since the San Diego State University Writers Conference, and I can hardly believe I'm just now getting around to blogging about it! We Critique Corner Sisters were all there, and had an excellent experience. If you're considering conferences, this is a good one to look into.

The overall is, it's a comfortable conference with high level professionals running it and leading seminars, sharing their expertise, talking to writers one-on-one through appointments for both pitching and editorial review of material you send in ahead of time, AND, maybe the most distinguishing thing about the conference is that it's set up for casual, open interaction with editors and agents.  Each day, time is set aside for drinks, snacks or lunch in a ballroom with big round tables labeled by genre.  You can sit anywhere you choose, and agents and editors join the table and chat with writers about what they're working on, and frequently request submissions.


I've been madly restructuring my first two chapters based on thoughtful input I got from a terrific editor there, which is my main (if inadequate) excuse for just now getting to this blog post.


Here's an important fact about the face-to-face opportunities you get at conferences:  the general success rate of writers getting submission requests is reported to be around 60%.  That's right.  Six zero.  Compare that with the success rate of around 1% we hear about for unsolicited mail or email queries.

Aside from that, though, I want to share a couple of prize tidbits I picked up from speakers at SDSU:

From agents Kathleen Anderson, Amy Burkhardt and Loretta Barrett, on the role of agents in the new publishing paradigm:
     Publishers are years behind on e-book publishing, which is not yet producing huge revenue for them. One big problem area is the definition of e-book rights in contracts, which publishers have not nailed down properly.
     Authors need a contract that preserves these rights, and agents control the content of the contracts, so they are an extremely important link for authors.
     Make sure your agent is fighting for everything for you—the out-of-print clause, the e-book clause, everything.
     Multi-apps publishers will grow.  A multi-app is not an e-book, not a movie, it's a mix.  (Think children's picture books with touch hyperlinks that make voice or atmosphere sounds, and expand that to other sophisticated formats that combine media.)
     The role of editors is still extremely important, and more and more, writers are hiring free-lance editors.
     Publicists are crucial.  It's tough to find the right one when looking for a free-lance if that's what you need to do.  The cost range is huge, from a firm like Lynn Goldberg's ($15-20,000 for a six month contract that does everything, to firms that charge far less for very targeted programs, like only national radio tours, which are great for non-fiction, but not fiction). Loretta Barrett suggested a good book on publicity:  Publicize Your Book, by Jacqueline Deval.

These agents' ideas about the new paradigm that's trying to emerge were fascinating, thought provoking, and helpful.

On a different day, James Scott Bell, best-selling novelist and writing teacher, gave an outstanding presentation on the subject of story structure and content, which is more the type of thing we usually talk about on this blog.  I've run out of time and space on this post, but will come back next Monday to share some powerful specific strategies he provided on how to write fiction that will get published.

So here's my sign-off question:  are you thinking in terms of e-publishing for your novel?  If you've looked into it, or done it, could you share what you learned about what role an agent/editor/publisher plays in the process?  Do the things the agents talked about at the SDSU panel fit with your understanding of the current situation?  Thanks!!

~Linda

Just Do It

Like many wannabe writers, I’ve always had the best of intentions to write a novel. The first chapter always found its way onto my computer, but the next time I sat to work on it, I edited what I had previously written. This process went on for many years. The moral of that story is I had many versions of a first chapter.

For years I have been crafting stories in my head, with the greatest of intentions to put them to paper. But I never did. Not because I didn’t try, or because I didn’t have a strong enough desire, it was that life just got in the way. A husband, three kids, a couple master degrees, and starting my career over at seven different airlines, always got in the way.

A few years back a friend told me that I should attend the Maui Writer’s conference, and I agreed. But the price, and the time commitment, and life… it all got in the way.

The great thing about life is we all have a choice. Of course we have obligations and commitments, but what I realized is if I wanted to succeed as a writer, I needed to invest in myself and take the plunge. I made the right choice.

The Hawaii Writer’s conference was by far the best investment I had made in years! With William Bernhardt as my instructor, I took away an education of a lifetime. I realized that my delay in writing was actually due to my inability of knowing ‘how to’ put my story together. And the women in my class, Heather and Linda, gave me the greatest gift: a realization that I belong in their world, the world of writers.

The place where imagination, creativity, research, and a lot of hard work, come together to make dreams come true. These women have assisted me with the basics, provided encouragement, and indulged my many questions. Our conversations of plot and character arcs took me to a new level of enjoyment. I realized that this is the world in which I belong. I am living in a fantasy with my characters, bringing them to life, and love every minute of it.

Making a commitment, to William Bernhardt, to write everyday gave me focus. And with my new skills, along with the commitment to myself, in three months I’ve finished a 400 page novel, and am on the 3rd revision! It won’t be long until I too am submitting to agents. I even joined a writers group. And yes… I am making this work with grandkids, holidays, birthdays, floods, and studying my new airplane. If I can do it… you can too.

It’s more than wanting it… it’s all about making a commitment and just doing it! Believe in yourself and go for it. Life is too short to do anything else… but write!

~Karlene