When it comes to television, I’m pretty much a PBS addict, but I do occasionally watch other channels. One of my guilty pleasures is watching TLC, since I like some of the programs having to do with fashion, like the makeover shows and shows about wedding dresses.  (I’ve become a fan of the designer, Pnina Tornai — some of her dresses are amazing! — and I named Crea’s cousin in How to Steal a Demigod ‘Penina’ as an homage to her.)  On one episode of Say Yes to the Dress, the sales consultant’s reaction to a comment made by a member of the bride-to-be’s entourage is hilarious.  People can certainly say odd things when criticizing a dress and saying what it reminds them of (or describing what they think the dress should look like), and in this case the odd objection caused the poor consultant to look both confused and exasperated and exclaim, “What does that even mean?!”  The way she drew out the word ‘mean’ for maximum effect made it particularly funny, and also made the phrase and her intonation stick in my mind.

So I’ve been buried in copy edits for the first two volumes of In the Shadow of the She-Wolf, and it never ceases to amaze me how little things can sneak through in a manuscript that’s been picked over and edited many times. Some of those sneaky proofreading errors are fairly understandable, such as a replacement of one word with a similar one that’s still a real word with a correct spelling.  My writing buddy whom I sent an ARC to caught one of those — ‘pouring’ in place of ‘poring’, when it means going over something in detail.  (Like copy edits!)  Since I normally pride myself on my copy editing skills (and the first agent who read a full manuscript of mine commented on how clean that manuscript was), it’s still embarrassing, but it’s not as if that’s a word most of us think about very often.  Much worse — and I have no idea why it wasn’t corrected earlier — was the replacement of the word ‘series’ with ‘serious.’  Three other people (in addition to myself) read that, and not a single one of us caught it?  Seriously? 😉

I’ve come to the conclusion that even the most picky readers (who can be very scathing in their criticism!) sometimes get caught up in the story or are focusing on one aspect of the writing more than another, and miss things that should be obvious. As I mentioned before, some of the little bugs that make me cringe are repetitive things, like the same word appearing three or four times in a paragraph or two when it could be reworded to avoid that repetition, or using the same speech tag or a very similar description of someone’s expression only a few paragraphs apart, even if those things might not really bother a reader who is caught up in the story.  Even more embarrassing is when you come across a sentence or phrase — which might have been intended as a poetic metaphor or a creative way of capturing a feeling, or might just have been something which should have been simple yet didn’t come out that way — and realize you’ve been skimming over it because it seems to capture the gist of what you intended.  But when you take a good hard look at what the words on the page actually say, you find yourself thinking, “What does that even mean???!!!”

I thought I would share the laundry list of reasons for choosing to undertake the publication of my three-volume SF novel, In the Shadow of the She-Wolf. Though some aspects of the situation I found myself in with this book are probably uncommon, I’m sure the issues I’ve considered here may strike a chord with many other authors.  Some of those issues relate to market-related challenges, others are mostly personal, and some are a combination of both.

There are at least two things that make the situation surrounding publication of She-Wolf unusual.  The first is the amount of time I’ve spent working on this story; I’ve been pulling this book out and rewriting it on and off throughout my entire adult life — ever since I wrote the first sparse draft during my last year in high school — and that affects both my relationship with the novel and how much patience I have for the process at this point.  The second is that I’m one of the owners and editors of a small press.  Although I started the press last year with a couple of my siblings (and we’re beginning by publishing several of our father’s books as we learn the ropes), it is a bona fide independent press that will hopefully publish the works of many authors over many years.

While it was in the back of my mind that it would make it easier if I chose to go that way at some point, the business was definitely not created for the purpose of publishing my own books.  So in a sense, having our press publish this novel is a hybrid between being published by a small press and self-publishing, making it like becoming a hybrid of a hybrid.  (Maybe that’s a ‘double hybrid’? Or a ‘hybrid squared’?)  In any case, it also means I’ve already started to acquire a bit of experience in book publishing, and I’m not doing it on my own.

Most writers are very curious about statistics when it comes to querying (and anything else involved in the pursuit of publication), so I’ll attempt to recap the querying history of this novel. If I go all the way back and include my first attempts at querying early drafts of the manuscript (starting when I was in college), I believe there have been four different times when I sent out at least one query for the manuscript and then stopped querying it.  In the first instance, I quit after about half a dozen queries because I realized I could make the book better and I wanted to do more revisions (which is a wise decision when you’re only twenty). When I next tried querying again, the first (and only) agent I queried at the time (who was my ‘dream agent’) gave me detailed feedback on the full manuscript.  Although I agreed with most of her concerns, I couldn’t figure out how to tackle a couple of the essential ones, and it took me over a year to get the inspiration I needed (and that led to one of several major rewrites).

And in the most recent round, (after many more drafts in which the story grew longer and was eventually split into three volumes), I pulled the first volume from querying after going through only a quarter of the fifty agents on my list.  (Incidentally, that list included some long shots, as it wasn’t too easy to find that many agents who rep adult science fiction — many spec fic agents are now focused on YA.)  The total count in the final round was fourteen queries sent, with eight form rejections, five non-responders, and one request for a full, which was ultimately rejected with some brief feedback (and that feedback implied that the agent was actually unfamiliar with the authors I’d used as comps, and consequently had expected a different style of SF).  Then, for the last time, I stopped sending out queries when I realized that continuing to put the time and effort into the querying process for this novel just didn’t feel right — and what follows are some of the reasons for that. 

1 ) We’re not immortal.

That may seem like a pretty obvious statement, but when you have elderly family members and want to make sure they get to see at least one of your books in print and enjoy it, the glacially slow pace of the publishing world, on top of the uncertainty, becomes a pretty big incentive to find a different way to make it happen. (Not to mention that when many people who know you are aware that you’ve been working on a novel for many years, it’s only natural for them to start wondering why they’ve never seen it.)

2) You can’t spend your whole life writing one book.

After having spent more time on this project than anyone should ever spend on one novel, being able to put it behind me and call it ‘done’ has become a major priority. Most people agree that one of the best ways to grow as a writer is to write lots of books and not dwell too long on any one project.  Although I’ve also worked on a number of other manuscripts over the years, the fact that I’ve always kept coming back to this one, (and kept thinking about this one), has definitely slowed me down a great deal.  I need to get out from underneath this book and shift my focus to all the other novels I already have in the queue (in various stages).  So the sooner I can finish this one for good, and no longer have it hanging over me, the better.  (The title is apparently appropriate on an extra level, as I think I’ve been living ‘in the shadow’ of this book just as much as the hero lives under a shadow in the story!)

3) An author’s style evolves — especially a young author’s. (Or ‘This one needs to be first’.)

One suggestion that’s often made when something about a book makes it difficult to sell as a first novel (such as the word count) is to set it aside until you’ve sold another book or two, and then come back to that one. With this novel, I realized that wouldn’t be a workable solution for me.  In addition to the fact that I’ve been visualizing this as the first one I would publish for many years, the evolution of my style would make it seem a bit odd.  I’m not wild about the idea of putting out a couple of novels that are more mature and sophisticated, and then following them with a work that represents an earlier phase in my development as a writer.  Sure, I know that’s happened with many author’s books, and it’s also possible that many readers wouldn’t really notice — but I would.

I do need to make one thing clear, however. I am not recommending that anyone publish something they wrote when they were young and expect its shortcomings to be excused because it’s a first novel and represents their early beginnings as an artist; many writers regret getting carried away with youthful enthusiasm and publishing something that becomes an embarrassment to them down the road, especially now that self-publishing is so easy.  The reason I couldn’t put this manuscript behind me by ‘trunking’ it was that I’m sure it’s a darn good book (in spite of its painful and protracted birth), and even if it might not be something I would write today, I’ll never look back at it and be embarrassed by it. (Incidentally , it evolved from my third attempt at a novel, not my first, so I’d had a fair amount of practice at novel-writing even before I started the first draft.)  In short, I would not be doing this if I weren’t confident that the writing and editing are at a professional level, and that this novel is every bit as good as the majority of the science fiction novels put out by the big publishers.

4) Agents and editors need authors to be open to revisions.

This is an issue that normally shouldn’t be a bone of contention. The only reason it’s a problem in this case is that ‘I’ve already spent so much time on this book’ situation.  As I thought about the process, it occurred to me that if an agent were to request any structural revisions, I probably wouldn’t want to do them, even if I felt they were really good ideas.  Because this book has already undergone multiple rewrites involving structure and content, I really don’t want to do it all over again with the same manuscript (refer back to #2).

Part of what makes repeating that kind of editing unappealing is that each time you think you’re done with that phase, you subsequently spend a lot of time and effort polishing the language (especially if you’re writing literary fiction or genre fiction in a literary style). So it’s a lot like building a brick wall and then painting a beautiful mural on it.  If you keep taking the brick wall apart and rebuilding it, you’ll have to do parts of the mural over again.  If you do that too many times, pretty soon you‘re not going to get any more artists who want to sign up to paint that mural; they’re going to look for another wall to paint on.

So while I knew I’d be fine with ordinary copy edits — i.e., suggestions for changes to the wording here and there, or perhaps toning down the invented slang — I realized I didn’t even want to think about more significant changes.  (And to a certain extent, any time you show a manuscript to someone new it means the possibility of stirring up the pot.)  But I definitely wouldn’t want to start off on the wrong foot with an agent or editor by being inflexible.  Obviously it’s very important that when an author begins to work with an agent, they show that they’re open to suggestions, and the agent is also going to want to see the writer demonstrate strong revising skills.  (I’ve read that some authors spend a year or more doing a major overhaul of a book under their agent’s guidance before the agent decides the manuscript is ready for submission to editors.)  So that seemed like a pretty compelling argument for no longer trying to get an agent involved with this book.

5) Unless an author has already published a few novels and gained some clout, many sources say it’s impossible for them to sell books that fall outside the accepted word count limits and equally impossible for them to sell multivolume books such as trilogies. (Though evidence suggests this claim may be partly mythical.)

It’s no secret that word count limits are very restrictive in publishing today. I’m pretty sure that nobody talked much about word counts back when I first learned about the basics of querying, because it wasn’t considered such a big deal; a novel was as long or as short as it needed to be, and all you needed to know was that anything over 40k words qualified as a novel.  But, undoubtedly because of publishers’ current emphasis on economic concerns, they’ve figured out what length of book is most cost effective to produce and distribute, and they want to avoid books that fall outside that range unless they’re written by an author whose works are guaranteed to be big sellers regardless of the length.

And while some folks will suggest breaking up a longer work into multiple books, plenty of others say that’s no solution either. Now I’m a bit suspicious that this is one of the countless myths perpetuated on writer’s forums, because whenever I look at the new releases in the SF/Fantasy section in bookstores, there are quite a few that are clearly presented as a debut for that author and also say right on the cover ‘The Saga of So-and-So, Book One ’ or ‘The First Installment of the Chronicles of Such-and-Such.’ Granted, these tend to be in fantasy more than in SF, but some are SF books as well.  Based on that observation, it seems it’s not as difficult for a new author to sell a trilogy as many would have us believe. Still, it does give one pause when so many people keep insisting that it can’t be done.

6) Many editors (and consequently agents) are wary of anything that doesn’t fit into conventions and norms of structure or style.

The obvious stumbling block with this novel is that it consists of three volumes (I don’t personally consider it a ‘trilogy’, but that’s another issue).  As discussed above, some people are adamant that the privilege of being allowed to spread a story over multiple volumes is only granted to well-established authors.  But added to that issue is the fact that the opening section of She-Wolf (the first several chapters) takes place twenty years before the rest of the book, and has a different POV character.  (Though the main character in the novel is present in those chapters, he doesn’t do much — it’s pretty hard to do much when you’re very small, enclosed in a dark space, and mostly sleeping!)  And when you consider the current widespread prejudice against prologues, I can easily imagine that some people would have a very negative knee jerk reaction to this. (The fact that it’s not exactly a prologue — or, it’s a lot more than a prologue — might only make it worse.)  But the last thing I want to do is to argue with anyone about it now — it is what it is.  The opening grew out of the natural evolution of the story, and once I realized that the novel tells the story of the hero’s mother as much as it tells his story, I knew it was there to stay.  (I talk more about this aspect of the story here, and also in the comments I posted here.)

One way I like to describe it is to say that Jem’s story is framed by his mother’s story. Even though it doesn’t shift back to her POV, the end of the novel is focused on what happened to her and why, and on her son’s role in uncovering the truth behind her fate.  And no doubt the people who would object to this structure even if the entire novel were in one volume are probably going to object to it even more when it’s spread over three books, since the reader doesn’t learn the full significance of everything in the opening section of the first book until they get to the end of the third one.  But I still feel that this structure works for this particular story, and in any case, there’s no way I’m changing it at this stage of the game (once again, refer back to #2).

Another thing that could be considered a challenge to traditional publication for this novel is simply the issue facing most of my work: I write speculative fiction in a style that’s generally associated with literary fiction. Most agents and editors like to see books that are sure to have widespread appeal, and in SF and fantasy that often means fast-paced action-adventure stories told in a very plain, accessible style.  (Let’s face it — people may gush over writers like Le Guin and shower them with awards and accolades, but authors who take after Suzanne Collins instead are going to sell a lot more books in the short term, and short term profits appear to be the primary goal in publishing today.)  So while this is something I’ll always have to deal with — and I can only hope there will always be some people who truly appreciate literary speculative fiction — when you add that hurdle together with the ‘undesirable’ structural elements of this novel, the reality is that there’s a good chance it was going to be a hard sell for many agents.

7) There are some advantages to being ‘in control’.

On top of not having to worry about the possibility of getting embroiled in more revisions, taking on the publication of a book yourself means not having to deal with things like having the title changed or ending up with a cover you don’t like. (In the world of traditional publishing, authors typically have no say whatsoever when it comes to the cover.)  So while this is a minor issue for me, it is kind of nice to be able to make those things fit one’s own vision for the book.  For instance, selecting the cover myself means I can choose an elegant image that I feel would also be appropriate for a literary novel, and in the end I think that will fit the story better than a conventional SF style cover that might give some readers the impression that the book is plot-driven space opera.

Being in control of the process also seems like a good option for a three-volume book for this reason: you can bring the volumes out one right after another, and not worry about frustrated readers losing interest when they have to wait a year for the next installment.  Though there are now some exceptions, in which the publisher speeds up the release of multiple books in a series, the traditional publishing schedule has usually meant that it takes a year or so to produce each book, even if the author already had the next book written before the first one was released.

So there you have it. Is it scary to dive into such turbulent waters?  Absolutely.  In some ways it’s terrifying.  Especially since I believe that this novel is far too good to not be taken seriously, and that’s a real risk here.  But the most important thing at this stage of my career as a writer is to move on and put my energy into working on all those other books.

There’s been a lot of talk about hybrid authors in the last few years, and I’ve noticed that a number of authors who’ve had real success with their traditionally published works have also chosen that option, as well as writers who are just starting out. A hybrid author, for anyone who’s not familiar with the term, is one who has some books published traditionally — i.e. by a major publisher that only works with agented authors — and also self-publishes some of their work.  (It doesn’t mean a wicked fairy turned the writer into a Toyota Prius.) 😉

It’s certainly always been my plan to pursue traditional publication for all of my novels. Maximizing the exposure as well as the recognition for every book is very important to me.  (It also matters when it comes to things like the chance of being nominated for major awards.)  But around the same time that I started seeing frequent references to the hybrid author concept, I also discovered — from perusing writers’ forums, blogs, and other online resources about writing — that the traditional route to publishing has become even more uncertain.  After all the years of being told by countless people that if you’ve written a really good book, it will definitely sell, it was a big blow to find out that it isn’t necessarily true.  The reality is that no matter how good a book is, it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll find an agent who wants to represent it.  This is because an agent may honestly love your manuscript but decline to take it on if they don’t feel it’s commercially viable enough to sell to the publishers — and the big publishers have become extra cautious for purely economic reasons.

When I learned this, I realized that having the hybrid option out there — and knowing that it has become more respectable and more widely accepted — is the ace in the hole. By that I don’t mean something secret that you’re holding back, but something you can fall back on if things don’t go as planned, especially when you’re undertaking a risky venture. And it’s a backup plan that makes all that uncertainty less nerve-wracking, because it means that if you’re unable to sell a book you really have confidence in — perhaps only because the agents or editors are too worried that it may not have broad commercial appeal — it doesn’t have to be relegated to the proverbial trunk after all.

Both eBooks and POD (Print on Demand) publishing are instrumental in making self-publishing viable for authors, because setting up books in those formats and making them available to purchase can cost next to nothing (although it may involve a bit of a learning curve if you want to do it well). I understand the perspective of those who see big companies like Amazon as part of the mechanism that over-commercializes everything — which contributes to the value placed on books being determined by their profit-making potential, rather than by any measure of intrinsic worth.  However, the flip side is that the economy of scale available to a huge corporation is part of what makes things like POD publishing accessible to everyone.  That, in turn, makes it possible for artists to fight back against the system by giving them the option of putting their work out into the world themselves. So it’s certainly a complicated situation (and I hate to see big businesses pushing out small businesses, like independent bookstores, as much as anyone), but the upside has to be the variety of options we have now.

One issue that muddies the waters further is that the ease of self-publishing means a staggering number of books are put out before they’re ready, whether they simply suffer from poor editing and presentation, or whether the author is so green that their writing is years away from being presentable. And all of those sadly unprofessional books that clutter the market can be seen as giving self-publishing a bad name.  So this contributes to the reason that many still refuse to give self-published books the same respect as traditionally published ones.  But, as I’ve seen pointed out numerous times, there have always been plenty of lousy books put out by the big traditional publishers as well!  And one positive thing that can be done is to educate authors and help them understand that it’s not to their benefit to rush into self-publishing (or querying agents, for that matter) before they’ve put in the time to acquire solid skills — and before they’ve gotten honest feedback from others confirming that their work is truly ready for publication.

Another warning authors may hear is that if they put a book out and it doesn’t sell well, potential agents and publishers considering their other works may be put off by their low sales record. But to be honest, I would be skeptical of anyone who took a hard line on that subject, because it seems both unfair and illogical.  Common sense would dictate that any reasonable person would take into account how the book was put out and what kind of publicity and distribution were involved.  If it were self-published or published by a small indie press that expected the author to do all the publicity themselves, even if it only sold half a dozen copies it might be no reflection on the quality of the book at all.  It might be a really good book, and the author might be a really good writer.  But they might also be someone who couldn’t sell a bucket of water to a man whose pants are on fire, in which case it would be quite unrealistic to blame the lack of sales on the book itself!

Obviously if an author already has an established fan base from previously published books, or some other kind of solid platform that ensures they’ll have readers lined up, it makes choosing to self-publish less of a risk. And there are plenty of other factors to consider as well — for instance, if the author has contacts with others who have the skills to help with editing, proofreading, cover design, or marketing and promotion, it can make the whole process much easier, as well as making it less of a gamble.

Of course, whether or not one has those advantages, this isn’t a decision to be taken lightly, nor an excuse to cut corners and publish work that isn’t of a professional quality. But when you also consider that we could miss out on some wonderful stories that don’t make it through the traditional grind for reasons that have nothing to do with whether readers would truly enjoy them, having another option is definitely a positive thing.  So while there’s no question that there are many issues that have to be weighed in making that decision, there are times when self-publishing may be the best choice for a particular book.

In my next post, I’ll explain why it seems the best route for one of my novels (or three, depending on how you look at it), and why I’m taking advantage of this option sooner than I’d imagined I might when I first learned that it could be a legitimate alternative.

After delving into loglines and discussing what I’ve learned about them (here and here), I thought I would try illustrating how one can use a logline as the foundation for constructing a query.  One problem we often see when writers first attempt a query is that they throw in everything but the kitchen sink — names of numerous characters, places, and objects, an entire paragraph of back story, a long synopsis-y description of the plot that tries to bring in all the secondary plot lines, etc..

The key is finding the central plot line and choosing the most significant elements to focus on, and then developing that enough to make it both clear and intriguing, without trying to include and explain everything.  What makes this far more difficult than it sounds is that when you’re looking at your own story, which you know so well, it’s hard to stand back and see it objectively enough to break it all down into something so brief.  Naturally, you think all of it is important (otherwise you wouldn’t have written all those words). 😉

This is why starting with a logline, in which you’ve already pared the story down to that essential kernel at the heart of it, can be helpful.  So I’m going to walk through the process here, in the hopes that this may make the task easier for anyone who’s having a hard time wrestling with the big bad query beast.

Here are two versions of a logline for my fantasy novel, How to Steal a Demigod.  One is shorter, the other has a little more development and further detail.  (As mentioned in my first post about loglines, different situations may call for one type or the other.)  Of course this exercise assumes that you’ve already managed to put together a decent logline that fulfills the basic requirements; the longer one here got a nod of approval from the logline guru, Holly Bodger, so that’s pretty good assurance that it qualifies.

Logline #1 –

Chosen for her climbing skills, Crea is one of four thieves plucked from the dungeons of Tibera and offered clemency if they can retrieve the kidnapped young figurehead of the Temple, but things get complicated when they discover the boy doesn’t want to be rescued.

Logline #2 –

When the young spiritual leader of the Temple is kidnapped, Crea is one of four convicted thieves promised a pardon if they can retrieve him.  Imagining how terrified the boy must be, Crea is determined to succeed for his sake as much as she’s determined to earn her freedom.  She leads a daring climb into the fortress where he’s held captive, but there’s one little problem—the boy doesn’t want to be rescued.

When you compare the two versions, you can see how the second one includes most of the same information, but fleshes it out more.  We’ve added the additional incentive Crea has for wanting to rescue the boy — her concern for him, on top of the desire to gain her own freedom — which gives us a little insight into her character and makes her even more sympathetic (we see that the motivation for her goal isn’t purely selfish).  We’ve also elaborated on where the boy is held captive and why her climbing skills are useful on this mission; this kind of thing is a good example of how we can build the query without getting sidetracked — adding more depth to the information we’ve already included, rather than throwing in something new.

Now I’m sure many would agree that the hardest part of a query is the first line or two, a.k.a. the ‘hook’. There are actually a number of ways in which a logline and a hook overlap, since they’re both intended to give an immediate sense of the book and grab the reader’s interest.  So although it doesn’t have to be, your hook might be similar to a short version of your logline. But it certainly doesn’t have to include as much information as a logline — it can be a ‘teaser’ whose meaning isn’t entirely clear until you read further into the query.

To a certain extent, a hook is one of those intangible things — you know a good one when you see it, but it’s hard to come up with a formula guaranteed to produce one.  One thing that can be said is that it needs to have some kind of inherent tension or contradiction. A simple way to do that is to use the scenario in which the main character is hoping or planning to do something, but something else — which would be the inciting incident — happens that throws a wrench into their plans.

Here are a couple of examples (albeit clichéd ones!).  For a romance, the hook might be something like this: “When Sally rents a beach cottage, all she wants is to spend a quiet summer alone recovering from the tragic death of her fiancé. Then she meets the scrumptious lifeguard living right next door.”  Or a murder mystery: “When Sally rented the beach cottage, she just wanted to have a fun weekend relaxing with her friends, but there’s nothing relaxing about unlocking the door of the cottage and finding a body —with a knife sticking out of its back.”

Okay, those are pretty bad — but I think they convey the idea of that little ‘twist’ that makes the opening pull the reader in.  To write a truly successful hook, there should be something about the character, the situation, and/or the inciting incident that’s distinctive or unusual in some way, so it doesn’t sound as if the story is going to be just another version of something that’s already been done a thousand times.  (Unlike both of my examples!) 😉

So for the query for Demigod, I brainstormed until I came up with this:

Crea doesn’t want the gods to think she’s ungrateful, but she wishes they’d found another way to answer her prayers.

The idea that someone could have their prayers answered but take issue with the way the gods have made it happen is something you wouldn’t expect, giving the statement that little bit of a twist. (I also think this hints at the humor and irreverence that’s sprinkled throughout the novel.)  Notice that this kind of hook doesn’t immediately explain the situation and the inciting incident — don’t feel that you always have to fit that into the very first line; the crucial thing is that it’s intriguing.

Next we have to properly introduce our MC.  So here I added one sentence to characterize her a bit and to explain how she became a convicted thief, which is a fact about her that’s included in the logline.

Before family misfortunes left her to fend for herself and she discovered that her agility and petite frame gave her an advantage as a thief, Crea was a respectable young lady who never dreamed she’d be convicted of theft and locked in the notorious dungeons of Tibera.

And that’s the most you’d want to do in terms of summarizing character history or back story — more than one line would usually be too much.

Then we have to get right into the storyline, which means bringing in the inciting incident.  So I used one sentence that ties back to the opening hook, and then the next two actually describe the inciting incident, providing a lot more information about it than we had in the logline, to show why it has the impact that it does on the characters in the story, but without including too much unnecessary detail.  And since Crea’s situation (the fact that she’s been convicted of theft and locked in the dungeons, where she desperately appeals to the gods), is the springboard for the inciting incident (her being chosen to rescue the kidnapped boy, with her freedom as the reward if she succeeds), this section weaves those things together.

Now it seems the gods have made an odd choice in response to Crea’s pleas. Surely they could have come up with something less drastic than the kidnapping of the young spiritual leader of the Temple—especially since no one knows just how barbaric the mysterious barbarians who’ve taken the boy really are.  But the kidnapping has given Crea the second chance she asked for; chosen for her climbing skills, she’s one of four thieves promised a pardon if they can retrieve him.

That will be the second paragraph in the query. Again, notice that I’ve stayed pretty close to the logline.  Though we’ve added the issue that we put into the hook — the odd way the gods have answered Crea’s prayers — we also combined it with information that was presented in the logline, rather than straying off into something different.  And for the final paragraph, we come right back to that second logline again, lifting out parts of it as-is.

Imagining how terrified the pampered and sheltered boy must be, and fearing his captors may do terrible things to him, Crea is determined to succeed for his sake as much as she’s determined to earn her freedom.  When she successfully leads a daring climb into the fortress where the boy is held captive, her goal seems within reach. There’s just one little problem—the boy doesn’t want to be rescued.

Now this would be sufficient, but because I had a little room (still keeping it under 250 words, which is a good rule of thumb for queries), I decided to go ahead and add one line that brings in the romantic element, since it’s a fairly significant part of the story. But I didn’t bring the love interest in at the beginning to distract from the main plot line, or go into a great deal of detail about it; I just slipped it into the middle of the last paragraph to up the stakes a notch, since it means there’s another reason for Crea to want to succeed and to ensure that she has a future.

And her feelings for one of her fellow thieves, the cheerful and charismatic Lamad, have rekindled her hopes for the future.

So this is what the complete query looks like:

Crea doesn’t want the gods to think she’s ungrateful, but she wishes they’d found another way to answer her prayers. Before family misfortunes left her to fend for herself and she discovered that her agility and petite frame gave her an advantage as a thief, Crea was a respectable young lady who never dreamed she’d be convicted of theft and locked in the notorious dungeons of Tibera.

Now it seems the gods have made an odd choice in response to Crea’s pleas. Surely they could have come up with something less drastic than the kidnapping of the young spiritual leader of the Temple—especially since no one knows just how barbaric the mysterious barbarians who’ve taken the boy really are.  But the kidnapping has given Crea the second chance she asked for; chosen for her climbing skills, she’s one of four thieves promised a pardon if they can retrieve him.

Imagining how terrified the pampered and sheltered boy must be, and fearing his captors may do terrible things to him, Crea is determined to succeed for his sake as much as she’s determined to earn her freedom.  And her feelings for one of her fellow thieves, the cheerful and charismatic Lamad, have rekindled her hopes for the future.  When Crea successfully leads a daring climb into the fortress where the boy is held captive, that future seems within reach.  There’s just one little problem—the boy doesn’t want to be rescued.

Now I’m not saying this is a perfect query, but it has all of the required elements — character, problem, goal, conflicts, and stakes/consequences — and I think there’s a decent chance it would pique the interest of some agents. (Unless they’re sick of the ‘thieves sent on a mission’ trope in fantasy!) Some might say that the consequences of Crea not getting freed from the dungeon should be spelled out, but I think that’s spoon-feeding the reader — common sense tells us that any ‘dungeon’ is a very bad place to be, and staying there usually means a significant reduction in one’s life expectancy (not to mention the serious quality of life issues you’ll have while you’re there). 😮

Also, since our target audience is literary agents (whom we can assume are well-read and reasonably intelligent), it’s only fair to give them credit and expect that they’ll understand some things from the context. Of course the exception would be a concept that’s specific to the invented world of your story, which you’d have to briefly explain somewhere in your query — but only if it’s necessary for understanding the basic elements.  Otherwise, just don’t bring it up, and then you won’t have to explain it. (This also helps to avoid ending up with a long, complex query because you keep adding an explanation for each thing that anyone who reviews your query raises a question about!) 😛

Another thing to note is that any book will have plenty of elements that don’t necessarily come through in the query — after all, you can only do so much in 250 words.  For instance, I think this novel is much quirkier than it sounds here.  Also, although I think an adult voice is somewhat apparent in this query, I’m sure some people may still be surprised or disappointed to find that the book doesn’t have the youthful voice and plain style that many have come to expect in a genre now dominated by YA; like most of what I write, this book’s style has more in common with that of a literary novel for an adult audience (which it’s intended for).

As well as a fair amount of humor, it also has quite a bit of philosophical stuff going on. (It playfully points to the underlying universal nature of all religions and the absurdity of the idea that those who worship differently must be wrong, and the problematic concept of separating body and soul when our physicality is such an indelible part of the human experience, and each chapter begins with a quote from Joseph Campbell.)  One of the reasons I picked this book for this exercise is that right now I’m not really planning to query it (though I may change my mind). Between the quirkiness and the fact that it’s on the long side, I think it may be the kind of book to bring up once you’ve already signed a contract with an agent and successfully worked with them on another book or two, and I have a couple of others in the works that I think will be better suited for querying.

But we have to remember that the purpose of a query is to get someone to want to take a look at the book, so as long as you don’t misrepresent it in any way, all the nuances that aren’t captured in the query shouldn’t cause a problem. This is where comps can come in, too — if you reference books that have a style and ‘flavor’ similar to yours, it should give agents an even better idea of what to expect.  (And of course, if your submission includes the opening pages or chapters, they’ll find out what the style is like right away.)

So I hope that was helpful (and maybe a bit entertaining), and that it shows how you can pin down the focus of a query by starting with a logline, rather than starting from scratch and flailing around. Then you can maintain that focus by building onto that framework, only adding details that expand on the basic elements, until you’re confident that you have a functional query.

I remember my oldest brother laughing about how he’d heard that there was an actual formula for Harlequin Romances, and each significant story element was supposed to happen on a specific page. So the moment when the heroine first meets the hero, when they first kiss, when they have their first misunderstanding, when they reconcile, etc., all had to happen on designated page numbers.  That was many years ago, and I don’t know where he came across that information or how accurate it was.  But even when the formulas involved are nowhere near that detailed, it seems that today there are many restrictive conventions and expectations when it comes to the structure of a work of fiction.

Some are blatant, like the idea that prologues and epilogues are strictly verboten, while others are not really talked about or even consciously recognized. When I discovered Miyazaki’s films (which I talked about here) I had an epiphany about ‘unconscious conventions’, because it made me realize how much American-made films fit into formulaic guidelines.  Why is it that foreign films usually have a different ‘feel’ that brands them as foreign more than the language difference?  It’s because they don’t follow the same conventions when it comes to everything from the perspective and the pacing to the inclusion of certain standardized elements.  So it can be something of an eye-opener when you realize how many other things can be done with film that American filmmakers simply never do.

For instance, we have an unwritten convention that animation is for children’s stories and comic adventures. With the possible exception of an occasional film that would be considered avant garde or ‘artsy’, no one here would do a contemporary drama in animation. That rule certainly isn’t present in Japanese film-making; Wishes of the Heart is one example, and I’ve also seen another animated film put out by Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli that’s a realistic contemporary romance (it’s essentially an ordinary ‘chick flick’).  And I’ve realized that even when people rave about an American movie and say how much it surprised them and was ‘different’, when you really take a good hard look at such a film, you’ll see that it still follows most of Hollywood’s unwritten rules.

Similar kinds of rules appear to apply to novels, especially when it comes to genre fiction. (It seems that authors can be much more daring in literary fiction.)   I find it a bit frustrating that agents and editors are constantly saying they want something different — something new and surprising — while the evidence suggests that they’re afraid to take on anything that doesn’t fit neatly into a tried and true mold.  For instance, when authors actually do get feedback on a rejected manuscript, they may be told that although the material is good, it’s too much of a risk specifically because of the elements that make it ‘different’.  It’s as if what publishers really want is just enough of a twist on a well-known concept to create the impression of something fresh and exciting on the surface, but they still want everything else about the book to follow the standard formulas.

Now clearly when we’re talking about some genres — the prime example being Romance with a capital ‘R’ — readers really do want books to follow the rules; part of the reason you read a Romance or a Cozy Mystery (or a children’s picture book, for that matter) is because you want the reading experience to be very comfortable and familiar.  But overall I think we’ve gone too far with developing phantom limitations in fiction and creating an environment in which too many of the books being published are quite similar to each other.  It’s rather like some types of popular music that aren’t very memorable because all the songs start to sound the same.

A couple of years ago I beta read a fantasy novel with some distinctive elements that I liked (which was why I volunteered to read the manuscript). The overall storyline was predictable and had several things in common with Harry Potter; the protagonist discovered to her surprise that she had magical abilities that were greater than everyone else’s, and the book culminated in a huge battle that ended with the heroine sacrificing herself, only to be saved at the last minute.  While the manuscript had a number of youthful errors, it certainly had potential, and my feeling was that once it was tidied up it would be almost guaranteed to sell — because it did fit all the formulas and was easy to envision as a movie.  But in retrospect, it was ironic that the very things that made me confident that the author could probably get an agent to take it on also meant that the story would have had far more emotional impact for me if it hadn’t been so predictable — I would have preferred the story to be more intimate in scope and to not have the heroine be any sort of ‘chosen one’.

Finding the right balance between creating something unique and memorable and meeting expectations can involve treading a fine line. My writing buddy, Mary Johnson, did an excellent post about the trust between authors and readers, and the problems with violating that trust, and I couldn’t resist jumping in and writing some lengthy comments.  One of the things I talked about with regard to my own experiences as a reader was that, while it’s fair to say that an author shouldn’t cause a reader to expect a certain kind of story and then deliver something different, sometimes what the reader ‘wants’ isn’t really the best thing for the story — and upon reflection, the reader may see how the thing that didn’t fit with their expectations benefitted that story.

The examples I mentioned on Mary’s blog include some of Le Guin’s novels, such as Eye of the Heron. I felt the structure of that novel was setting up for a romance, but the romance never materialized because (spoiler alert!) one of the two main POV characters didn’t survive.  Obviously, crappy things like that happen in real life all the time.  So if you’re writing a serious, realistic novel — rather than a comfortable, formulaic Romance with a guaranteed HEA ending — doing something like that may mean breaking your readers’ hearts.  However, in cases like that, I don’t think it’s right to say that the novel itself is flawed because it violates the reader’s trust.  In many ways, whether or not it works — and actually makes the book stronger — comes down to both who your audience is and how the unexpected elements are handled.

Sophisticated adult readers can take being challenged, surprised, dismayed, and yes, even, heartbroken. In contrast, the last Harry Potter book is seriously flawed because (on top of having problems with the voice and being woefully in need of editing), it’s part of a fantasy series for young readers — not a standalone novel for adults — and the author violated crucial ‘rules’ that she herself had created for the series.  For instance, one of the most obvious violations is simply that you cannot say you’re doing a seven-book series about a boy going to a seven-year wizard school, with each book taking place during one school year, and then have the hero drop out and not even go to school in the last year!  (I’m still absolutely floored that the editors allowed such a thing — not only does it make no sense whatsoever it terms of the structure of the series, one might even say that it suggests to kids that it’s fine to drop out of school.)

So there’s no question that there’s a time and a place for following rules and sticking to certain structural elements. But outside of those situations, authors should be free to expand on the possibilities of a novel and not feel bound to make the storyline fit into a particular framework.  Le Guin’s ‘depressingly realistic’ plots, as I sometimes call them, are examples of how a story can have a more meaningful and lasting impact on the reader because the author has taken advantage of that freedom to create a storyline with greater realism and, consequently, even greater emotional depth.

One convention that we usually don’t question (or even think about), is having the POV characters be the survivors of the adventure or crisis in the story, while relegating those who do not survive to being secondary characters and tragic figures who impact the protagonist because of their loss.  This is why we’re shocked when Le Guin ‘kills off’ major POV characters — and why some readers might even feel that she betrayed our expectations by doing so.

But even when we don’t dehumanize ‘non-survivors’ to the extent of the characters in horror movies who are there only to be victims, we often still discount them, at least on a certain level.  Perhaps it’s only natural to want to tell stories from the point of view of survivors, but it could also be argued that it’s not realistic; those who become victims of senseless tragedies are significant human beings as much as anyone else, and their experiences are just as valid.  So when Le Guin writes novels in which much of the story takes place in the mind of a character who dies (such as Eye of the Heron, Word for World is Forest, and Left Hand of Darkness), those books challenge that shortcoming and give those people a voice, too.

In my comments on Mary’s blog, I also talked about my novel, In the Shadow of the She-Wolf.  Now maybe I’m still following the convention in She-Wolf when I say that, because of what happens to her, the only way I can tell Omalda’s story is to tell her son’s story (though there’s more to it than that).  But I also endeavored to truly include Omalda’s voice, both in the opening chapters and — in a different way — at the very end of the novel.  Still, when it comes to reader expectations, I know that some people may strenuously object to bonding with one character in the opening chapters of the book only to jump ahead a number of years to a different character.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a well-known example of a book that jumps ahead (a great many years, in this case!) leaving behind the characters the reader has bonded with, since it’s really three shorter stories linked together, rather than one novel in the traditional sense.  (One does have to wonder if it would be difficult for a new writer to publish something like that today, at least in genre fiction — certainly that would be more likely to fly if it were literary fiction.)  And I confess that as a reader I initially felt a pang of disappointment upon discovering that Brother Francis wasn’t the protagonist of the entire book, since Miller certainly makes his readers develop a strong bond with that character.  But when you look at the book as a whole and you understand the author’s purpose, an adult reader can accept that disappointment as a necessary part of the journey the author is taking them on.  So this is another good example of how ‘drawing outside the lines’ can allow the writer to create something that has a greater impact.

I stumbled upon an essay written a few years back by Romance writer Jennifer Crusie called “A Writer Without A Publisher Is Like A Fish Without a Bicycle: Writer’s Liberation and You”. In this amusing but astute essay, she compares frantically trying to get published to being desperate to get married.  She points out that desperation and frustration are always off-putting, especially when it involves no longer being true to yourself because you’re trying to fit into some mold that represents what you think will please others the most.  So while Ms. Crusie doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t pursue either marriage or publication, she explains why seeing those things as your primary goal is problematic, because being genuine — in both relationships and writing books — has to come first.

And it seems particularly enlightening that this is coming from an author who writes in the genre that probably has the most rules that really must be followed to make readers happy, such as the requisite HEA ending (even if there isn’t really a formula for what happens on which page number!).  But she makes it clear that even within that framework, there should be as much flexibility and freedom as possible, so the author’s individuality can shine through: “When we deny our voices and our visions to write what is popular and publishable, we’re making ourselves into lemmings, indistinguishable from the crowd. When we write the stories that only we can write, those stories become different, interesting, and rare, and editors become more inclined to dig a wider hole.”

So I think we have to stress that no matter what genre they’re writing in, writers should never get themselves all tied up in knots worrying about rules and conventions; the important thing is to write the book that you love, in the way you want to write it, feeling free to explore different ways of structuring the story to express the ideas and experiences you’re striving to capture in that story. The more genuine a book is and the more the author puts their heart and soul into it, the more likely it is that others will be truly moved by reading it, and that the book will offer a meaningful experience that will linger with them long afterwards.