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One of the easiest ways to learn what makes a good, standard query letter is simply to see an example of one that does its job well. If you write fiction or narrative nonfiction, a query letter is your first (and often, your only) chance to get an agent interested in reading (and, with hope, signing) your work. You should put just as much care and attention into crafting and polishing your query as you did into your manuscript. After all, if your pitch doesn’t hit its mark, your book will never leave your desktop.
The main objective of a query is simple: Make the agent care enough about your protagonist and your plot that she wants to read more.
Following is a successful query for a middle-grade novel that led to me first requesting this full manuscript and later signing on to represent the author, Dianna Dorisi Winget. Her debut book, A Smidgen of Sky, went on to sell to Harcourt and hits shelves this fall.
No matter what you’re writing—fantasy, thriller, sci-fi, romance—or whether you’re writing for children or adults, there’s a lot you can learn from this example about conveying characters clearly and getting an agent invested in your story in just one short page.
—by Mary Kole
Example of a Query Letter
Dear Ms. Kole,
[1] According to your agency’s website you’re actively seeking middle-grade fiction, so I’m pleased to introduce my novel, A Smidgen of Sky. [2] This novel won me a scholarship to attend the Highlights Foundation Writers Workshop at Chautauqua. It was also awarded honorable mention in the Smart Writers W.I.N. Competition.
[3] A Smidgen of Sky is the story of ten-year-old Piper Lee DeLuna, a spunky, impulsive dreamer, whose fierce devotion to her missing father is threatened by her mother’s upcoming remarriage.
[4] Everyone else has long accepted her father’s death, but the fact that his body was never recovered from his wrecked plane leads to Piper’s dream that he might one day reappear and free her from the secret guilt she harbors over his accident. Her stubborn focus leaves no room in her affections for her mother’s fiancé, Ben, or his princess-like daughter, Ginger.
[5] Determined to stop the wedding, Piper Lee schemes up “Operation Finding Tina”—a sure plan to locate Ben’s ex-wife and get the two of them back together. But just as Piper succeeds with step one of her plan, a riot breaks out at the prison where Ben works, and suddenly nothing seems sure.
[6] Since middle-graders care deeply about things and people and love to daydream about their future, I think readers will identify with Piper Lee and find her an appealing heroine as she learns that you can both cherish the past and embrace the future.
[7] This story, set in the coastal region of Georgia, runs about 33,000 words and is somewhat similar in tone to Kate DiCamillo’s Because of Winn-Dixie.
[8] I’m a 1990 graduate of the Institute of Children’s Literature and my work has been published in U*S* Kids, Child Life, Columbia Kids, True Love, Guide and StoryPlus.
Thanks very much for your time. I have included the first ten pages and look forward to hearing from you.
Truly yours,
Dianna Winget
Agent Comments on Query Letter Example
[1] This is pretty basic personalization, but it shows me that Dianna did her research. In your query, make it clear that you’ve done your homework and are querying this particular agent with good reason. Agents like to see signs that you’re a savvy writer who is deliberate about the submission process—that bodes well for your working style, should we partner with you in the future.
[2] It’s unusual to lead with accolades, but in the children’s world, the Highlights Chautauqua workshop is a big deal, so this got my attention. If you have similar achievements, by all means, shout them from your opening paragraph! If not, just dive right in and start telling me about your novel.
[3] In setting up your story, you absolutely must convey a sense of what your main character wants most in the world, and of what’s standing in her way, as Dianna does here. We care about Piper Lee right away
because we know what she cares about, and this is key.
[4] We get a good sense of Piper’s character here; it’s important that your query not just flatly tell us about your characters, but show us who they are. The conflict (another essential element of all compelling fiction) rises when the fiancé and future stepsister are introduced. Dianna does a great job of establishing her protagonist’s denial, and she’s already built a lot of tension when she hints at what will soon shatter it. This further demonstrates that her story is driven by strong character motivations—just as any good page-turner should be.
[5] This gutsy scheme teaches me even more about Piper Lee. It’s also bound to have some disastrous consequences, and that’s exactly what agents want to see in a novel: strong actions, strong ramifications, and lots of emotions tied to each.
[6] This is a bit of self-analysis that I wish writers wouldn’t indulge in when writing queries. Dianna could’ve easily left this paragraph out (especially the vague “since middle-graders care deeply about things and people”) and let the strength of the story speak for itself. Of course you think the book is thematically resonant and that readers will love it—you wrote it! So refrain from editorializing. That said, this still makes this letter a great example to show here—because it’s proof that even a query faux pas won’t result in an instant rejection. If you sell your story well enough, agents will overlook small missteps.
[7] This simple sentence is a great and concise summary of necessary information. When you query, be sure to include the stats of your manuscript (genre, target audience, word count, etc.) and any relevant comparative titles—with a caveat: Be sure to highlight a comp title only if it helps the agent get an accurate picture of the style of your story and if it doesn’t smack of delusions of grandeur. Claiming you’re “James Patterson meets Dan Brown” is useless. Dianna’s comparison here was quite apt and, again, made her seem savvy—and realistic.
[8] The bio paragraph and sign-off are short and sweet, and that’s really all we need. If you’ve hit on the basics well and conveyed the essence of your story and why it’s a good fit for that particular agent, you’ve done all you can to entice us to request the full manuscript.
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Follow me on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Check out my humor book, Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl.
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There are important benefits of writing a novel or memoir from beginning to end before going back and starting again. Here are seven of them that you should know.
1) Rather than stop and start over again and again, when you allow yourself to write a rough first draft from beginning to end, you actually finish a draft all the way through.
2) Until you write the end, you do not have a clear grasp of what comes earlier.
3) You accomplish what you set out to do.
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Martha Alderson, aka the Plot Whisperer, is the author of the Plot Whisperer series of writing resources for authors:
The Plot Whisperer Book of Writing Prompts: Easy Exercises to Get You Writing ,
The Plot Whisperer Workbook: Step-by-Step Exercises to Help You Create Compelling Stories, companion workbook to
The Plot Whisperer: Secrets of Story Structure Any Writer Can Master (Adams Media, a division of F+W Media),
Blockbuster Plots Pure & Simple (Illusion Press) and several ebooks on plot.
As an international plot consultant for writers, Martha’s clients include best-selling authors, New York editors, and Hollywood movie directors. She teaches plot workshops to novelists, memoirists, and screenwriters privately, at plot retreats, through Learning Annex, RWA, SCBWI, CWC chapter meetings, Writer’s Digest, The Writers Store and writers’ conferences where she takes writers beyond the words and into the very heart of a story.
As the founder December, International Plot Writing Month
better known as
PlotWriMo, Martha manages the award-winning blog for writers:
The Plot Whisperer which has been awarded honors as a top writing advice blog by Writers Digest 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013. Her vlog,
How Do I Plot a Novel, Memoir, Screenplay covers 27 steps to plotting your story from beginning to end and playlists to help writers create a compelling plot for their novels, memoirs and screenplays. Follow her on
Twitter,
Facebook and
Pinterest.
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4) Once you have a skeleton in place, you are able to stand back and “see” her story in an entirely new light
5) Until you write the entire story, you do not know the end. And until you write the end—the climax—you do not know what belongs in the beginning.
6) The less time you devote to making every word perfect in the first couple of drafts the less painful future cuts and revisions will be. Because you haven’t invested hundreds of hours going back to the beginning, you’ll be less reluctant to cut the customary thirty-five to one hundred pages that almost always get chopped from the beginning of the manuscript. The more of yourself you give to making every word perfect before moving to the next scene, the more emotionally attached you become to the words. Cutting your work is never easy, but the more you can endure the chaos of ugly prose, gaps, and missteps in the early drafts, the better.
7) One of the greatest benefits of writing a truly awful, lousy, no good first draft is that it can only get better from there.
Join Martha October 17th at 10am Pacific and learn
How to Pre-Plot & Complete a Novel or Memoir in a Month:
The Benefits of Writing a Fast Draft from Beginning to End
Follow me on Twitter: @BrianKlems
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Multiple viewpoints provide diversion from, and contrast to, the protagonist’s perspective. They can deepen conflict, enlarge a story’s scope and add to a novel the rich texture of real life. Subplots carry those effects even further. In our workaday world, we do not live in isolation. Our lives intersect, collide and overlap. Subplots lend the same sense of connectivity to a novel. They remind us of our mutual need, our inescapable conflicts and our intertwined destinies.
Subplots and multiple points of view are often linked by their very natures. When you introduce several point-of-view characters in your story, you will be presented with the choice to create subplots for these characters and weave them into the main plot. How many secondary characters and subplots you choose to create will ultimately affect the pacing and structure of your novel.
Of course, subplots and multiple points of view make novels longer and more work, but rewards for that effort are there for writer and reader alike—that is, if they are successful.
—By Donald Maass,
author of The Breakout Novelist
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In my novel One Amazing Thing, nine characters are trapped by an earthquake in the basement of a high-rise building. When they realize there’s no escape, they begin in their panic to lash out at one another. After a bad fight that brings down chunks of the ceiling, a student named Uma urges them to focus their energies on something positive by each sharing a story from their lives, something they’ve never told anyone. When one of the other women protests, saying she doesn’t have a story, Uma insists that everyone has at least “one amazing thing.”
I, too, believe that we all have stories, wonderful, amazing ones floating around us—or even inside us—like magical spores. I have long relied on “found” stories—or snippets of them—to create my fiction. I’m not alone in this. Most of us bump up against amazing things more often than we realize. If we can remain in a state of openness, ready for the great story that might come to us any moment, and if we can learn to identify these moments of power, we’re off to a great start. But how to transform these moments into successful fiction? To create stories that are ours, that ring with authenticity, that have personal depth—but that are not restricted by the autobiographical? I’m going to share with you three techniques that have worked for me.
—by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Follow me on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Check out my humor book, Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl.
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The writing world lost a legend with the passing of Tom Clancy. From
The Hunt for Red October to
Clear and Present Danger to
Threat Vector, Clancy entertained millions of readers worldwide and redefined the thriller writing genre (and inspired quite a few video games as well). He was dubbed the “father of techno-thrillers,” a term he rejected, saying he “just writes novels.”
To honor the author of the Jack Ryan novels, we dove into our archives and found this wonderful Writer’s Digest Interview with Tom Clancy from 2001 (featured below). My favorite quote from the interview: “I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I just keep it simple: Tell the damn story.” [Click here to Tweet this quote!
]
His last novel, Command Authority, is due out in December.
You will be sorely missed, Mr. Clancy.
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Follow me on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Order my book: Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl.
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Television can give us great breaks from the work of writing, even if we feel slightly guilty for watching. But we can temper our guilt by inviting our Inner Editor to sit beside us and show us what to avoid in our writing.
As we become better writers, we become more attuned to the believability of characters and their actions in movies and series. Here, from TV shows (that I guiltily watched), I’ll share two types of unbelievable situations we can learn from and practice avoiding in our writing.
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This guest post is by
Noelle Sterne, author, editor, writing coach, and spiritual counselor. Sterne writes fiction and nonfiction, having published over 300 pieces in print and online venues, including
Writer’s Digest,
The Writer, Women on Writing,
Funds for Writers, and
Transformation Magazine. Her monthly column, “Bloom Where You’re Writing,” appears in Coffeehouse for Writers. With a Ph.D. from Columbia University, for over 28 years Noelle has assisted doctoral candidates in completing their dissertations (finally). Her practical-psychological-spiritual handbook in progress helps them further. In her book Trust Your Life: Forgive Yourself and Go After Your Dreams (Unity Books; one of ten best 2011 ebooks), Noelle draws examples from her practice and other aspects of life to help writers and others release regrets, relabel their past, and reach their lifelong yearnings. Her webinar about the book, with narrative and slides, is available on
YouTube. Noelle explores writing, creativity, and spirituality on Author magazine’s “
Authors’ Blog”: Visit Noelle at her website:
www.trustyourlifenow.com.
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Where Did She Learn That?
Everything that happens, especially in crises, must be prepared for. Otherwise credibility is sorely strained. Maybe you don’t consciously realize it as you’re watching a show and you become engrossed in the plot and/or characters’ struggles, but your Inner Editor is ever lurking. Sometimes, usually as I’m falling asleep after a two-hour TV movie, questions pop up: “How did he know that?” “Where did she learn that?”
Case in point: A Hallmark movie called Mending Fences (2009) takes place on a ranch. One of the main characters is the grandmother, whose eyesight is seriously failing and who has little use for today’s electronic gadgets, including cell phones.
When she and her city granddaughter take a horseback ride out to the edge of the property, they encounter a violent storm. The granddaughter has just learned to ride and her horse spooks, throwing her to the ground and knocking her out. The grandmother, panicked, reaches into the girl’s pocket and grabs her cell phone.
In the dark, with rain pelting, the grandmother holds the phone and, with one press of a button, reaches her daughter, the girl’s mother. Help arrives quickly.
Okay—how did the grandmother (a) know how to use the phone, (b) know that a speed button would connect with the mother’s phone, and (c) see the right button in the dark with her failing eyes?
Lesson: The writers gave no preparation at all for the grandmother’s day-saving actions.
Remedy: Plant, plant, plant. For example, early in the movie, when the granddaughter first arrives from the big city, the grandmother grudgingly admires her cell phone. The girl admonishes her, “Like, it’s the 21st century, Gram. See, it’s easy.” And with a flourish she shows off, pressing the speed-dial button and instantly hears her mother answer.
Too Much Talk
A major technique of hour-long shows, especially mysteries, is the last-minute figure out/tie-up/confessional. Murder, She Wrote is famous (or notorious) for these. I confess I’m a Jessica addict and still marvel that I haven’t seen all twelve years of the late-night reruns. In the crucial three and a half minutes before the hour’s end, Jessica always nails the murderer with a nonstop exposition that rivals an auctioneer’s spiel.
It generally goes like this: With the local police ready nearby, Jessica surprises the murderer who is breaking into the office to destroy the incriminating evidence. When she confronts him or her, the murderer denies it boisterously. “What a wild imagination!” “This woman is crazy!” “You have no proof!”
In her gentle but firm way, Jessica replies, “No, Cliff, you’re wrong. You . . . .” And she begins the long, involved narrative of what really happened, her confident voiceover recounting every detail while the screen shows all the steps of Cliff planning and carrying out the deed.
How in Holmes’ name did she figure all that out?
Lesson: The parallel in your writing to all this talk is too much exposition. You need some, of course, at the start of your story or novel and a few points along the way. But don’t rely on a stuffed-in, long-winded, over-detailed explanation at the finale. It just ties everything up too neatly and, as with Jessica’s soliloquy, strains reader credibility.
Remedy: Like the previous version of unbelievability, one solution here is to keep planting. Granted, it’s a challenge and art to plant enough clues subtly enough so the viewer or reader doesn’t guess the murderer too early (one writer friend and her husband have contests for who can guess the culprit earliest in the show).
For example, you could show the murderer interested as if naturally in the victim’s life or possessions—a special ceramics class, a custom-engraved pen, an old beloved upright piano with a wobbly leg (but show other characters interested too). Brush on these potentially important pieces of evidence once or twice near the beginning and at the middle: the broken bowl shard for throat slitting, the pen for chest stabbing, the piano leg for head clobbering. By this method, you’ll be planting clues but not the whole garden.
Believe It
As you watch such shows and observe their flaws, apply the lessons to your own work. Check and recheck your plants and plot twists for believability. Keep asking yourself how your characters knew about this or knew how to do that. If you come up blank, go back and tuck in some believable allusions. Then your readers will not only enjoy your stories and novels but will also believe your characters and eagerly look for them in your works.
This week I helped celebrate #BannedBooksWeek by moderating a Google On Air panel of popular authors discussing why banning books does a disservice to readers everywhere (Man, Google, you picked THAT screengrab of my giant head as the promo image? Sorry about that folks.). Anyway, the discussion lead to some amazing points about the problems with banning books, other solutions to dealing with kids reading mature content and why parents should put less emphasis on getting books banned and more emphasis on reading with their kids. Watch and enjoy.
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Follow me on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Check out my humor book, Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl.
Sign up for my free weekly eNewsletter: WD Newsletter
Is your manuscript too long? Many of the queries I receive begin, “In my 200,000-word novel….” I stop right there. As I tell all of my clients, I can’t sell anything over 120,000 words by a first-time writer. “Help me cut it,” they say, knowing that I spent some 15 years as an editor before becoming an agent.
But I won’t do it. I make them do the cutting themselves. Once it’s cut down to size, I can help refine it. But they need to do the cutting themselves.
—by Paula Munier
http://www.writersdigestconference.com/ehome/61986/117547/?&
And Happy Cutting!
Let me be clear—I don’t take sides. I appreciate the self-published author, the author published by a small press, and the New York-published author. Because you know what? No matter what publishing route any of us decide to take, we are all still authors.
We write because we can’t not write.
No label will ever take that passion away from us.
Each of us has our own path.
Each of us has our own voice.
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Guest post by Jessica Bell. The Australian-native contemporary fiction author, poet, and singer/songwriter/guitarist, Bell also makes a living as an editor and writer for global ELT publishers (English Language Teaching), such as Pearson Education, HarperCollins, Macmillan Education, Education First and Cengage Learning. She is the co-publishing editor of Vine Leaves Literary Journal, and the director of the
Homeric Writers’ Retreat & Workshop on the Greek island of Ithaca.
CLICK HERE to subscribe to Jessica’s newsletter. Every subscriber will receive The Hum of Sin Against Skin for free, and be the first to know about new releases and special subscriber giveaways.
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The beauty of indie publishing is the very thing that critics say is its downfall: there is room for everyone. Have a unique voice that doesn’t fit the mass market? Want to write another angel book, even though publishing experts say angel books are “dead”? Indie publishing allows the readers who love exactly the kind of books you write to find you, even if that number is too small to interest a mainstream press. And if you have written a book that has mainstream appeal? There are even more readers who will scoop up your value-priced indie book.
The climate of the publishing industry nowadays is pretty exciting for indie authors. And the stigma attached to non-traditional publishing is well on its way to the paper shredder. Take a look at this article.
More and more authors are finding the courage to self-publish or sign contracts with small presses dedicated to building niche markets. They’re proud of their work, and they’re making serious money selling it to readers around the world. They are reaching readers by the thousands, tens of thousands, and even millions, without securing a contract with a mainstream publisher. The fact is, the market is saturated, especially as more and more indie authors make bold steps toward self-publishing. Mainstream publishers are driven by market trends, leaving a unique opportunity for indie authors to cater to niche markets and target audiences.
Since I decided to go indie, I wear the badge proudly. Because, yes, it’s in my best interests right now. My best interests. This is a choice I’ve made, and it’s working out well. I sell around 400 books a month. And bit by bit, that number is increasing. To some, this might seem like peanuts compared to self-published successes like Hugh Howey and Colleen Hoover. But to me, whose intention was to connect with readers, the figure is certainly nothing to laugh at. With these sales, I cover all my marketing expenses, and earn a little extra cash. And most importantly, I’m being read, and my visibility is growing. I’d rather have my work out there, and organically garner interest now. I have the control to attract new readers every day, build a loyal fan base for my other works, rather than leave my manuscripts sitting in a drawer waiting for consumer trends to change in my favour. I may not have millions of readers, but 400 a month is a lot better than zero.
Indie publishing is not the only solution, but if you don’t get that big break because the mainstream publishers are only publishing a select number of books, and yours doesn’t happen to be what they’re looking for, then submitting your work to a small press, or publishing your books yourself, may be your best option. In fact, for some authors, even if a mainstream publisher is interested, indie publishing may still be the route you prefer to take.
Indie publishing allows all writers of all stripes access to the world’s readers.
The industry has changed, forced into embracing the digital revolution, just like the music industry. Independent artists are everywhere now. Authors don’t self-publish because they’re too lazy to go through the slog of submitting queries to agents, or editing their manuscripts properly, or simply out of impatience to see their work in print, just like independent musicians aren’t too lazy to find a record deal. They simply have a different sound. Or they don’t want to be told by the record label what they should and shouldn’t record. In a saturated market, where publishers/music producers have millions and millions of queries and proposals, independent artists are driven by self-belief and a passion that their work deserves a place.
Independent artists are, in fact, some of the most motivated and tough-skinned artists I’ve ever known. A lot of them, including me, have huge stories behind the reason they publish independently. Stories that most people will never know about, because when someone releases a book, it’s not like you can say on the blurb:
“This book is self-published, but the author actually once had an agent and a book deal with a Big 5 publisher, but decided to go the indie route because she felt it was better for her, both professionally and emotionally.”
Or …
“This book is self-published because the author spent years and years querying it, was told that the writing was great, but no agent believed they could sell it. So … here’s the book. The author doesn’t need to sell a million copies, a few hundred is enough. Plus it’s been through so many edits after all the agent feedback, you won’t be able to find a thing wrong with it.”
Or …
“This book is self-published because the author looked at the future changes coming in the industry and decided to leap ahead, to follow a path that had not been trodden a thousand times before. This author isn’t afraid to be different.”
Every indie author’s path is unique.
Because every author is unique.
So, I urge everyone who is skeptical about indie publishing, to think about the story behind it, and the effort it’s taken to get it out there, and the determination the writer has. Indie publishing is not for the impatient … it’s for authors who want their fate to rest in their own hands.
There are many pathways to success as a writer. Whether you choose to pursue a mainstream contract, go the small press route, or dive straight into self-publishing, your path will be unique to you.
You are a writer.
So be an author.
Note: Today I am celebrating the launch of Indiestructible: Inspiring Stories from the Publishing Jungle which brings you the experiences of 29 indie authors—their passions, their insights, their successes—to help you make the leap into indie publishing. The personal essays in this book will leave you itching to get your work into the hands of readers and experience, first-hand, all the rewards indie publishing has to offer.
100% of proceeds will be donated to BUILDON.org
, a movement which breaks the cycle of poverty, illiteracy, and low expectations through service and education.CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE INDIESTRUCTIBLE
Contributing authors:
Alex J. Cavanaugh <> Angela Brown <> Anne R. Allen <> Briane Pagel <> C.S. Lakin <> Ciara Knight <> Cindy M. Hogan <> D. Robert Pease <> Dawn Ius <> Emily White <> Greg Metcalf <> Jadie Jones <> Jessica Bell <> Karen Bass <> Karen Walker <> Kristie Cook <> Laura Diamond <> Laura Pauling <> Laurel Garver <> Leigh Talbert Moore <> Lori Robinson <> Melissa Foster <> Michael Offutt <> Michelle Davidson Argyle <> Rick Daley <> Roz Morris <> S.R. Johannes <> Stephen Tremp <> Susan Kaye Quinn
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Follow me on Twitter: @BrianKlems
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Today at 4 p.m. (Eastern) I’ll be moderating a free Google Hangout Event in honor of Banned Books Week
, where we celebrate the freedom to read whatever we want! I’ll be joined by bestselling author Jaime Ford (
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet), as well as authors Deb Caletti, Sean Beaudoin and Kathleen Alcalá. Should be a fun, lively discussion. (Though forgive my hoarse voice–I’ve been battling a nasty cold for days.)
We’ll be discussing our views on banned books, how different our lives would be if our favorite books were banned, what it’d be like if our books were banned and more. Plus, we’ll be taking questions from the audience via the Google Hangout Chat function.
I hope you’ll join us and show your support.
Click here to join the event (it’s free, plus it’s a great chance to experience a Google Hangout if you never watched one before!).
P.S. In honor of Banned Books Week, WD is taking 15% off orders from our shop
and ALSO donating 15% of proceeds to the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. Talk about a nice combo: Support your writing career by supporting the freedom to read. Click below and use the discount code
READFREE.
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Follow me on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Check out my humor book, Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl.
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Whenever there’s a loud noise outside my little back-room office, the cats all instantly look at me. (Somehow there are always at least two or three cats napping on my desk or on nearby bookshelves.) If I react to the noise — if I leap up in alarm, spilling my coffee and scattering notes — the cats go mad. They start rocketing around the room in total panic, clawing books off shelves, running headlong into the sliding glass door, climbing up me as if I were a tree and a bear were after them.
But if I ignore the noise from outside and continue placidly typing or reading, or even if I just glance casually out the window, the cats all shrug and resume their naps, because obviously the noise was nothing important.
They judge whether or not to take it seriously by my response. And when I’m reading fiction, I do something very similar.
When something of apparent importance happens in a story I’m reading, I look at the responses of the characters to know whether it’s something I need to take seriously — or not. If the narration claims that a bloody murder just took place, but characters who have not shown any signs of being a sociopath are reacting with flippancy and jokes, I decide that it was a false alarm — no murder actually occurred. And therefore the narrative voice was just kidding, really, and I stop reading because IbecauseknowpetRegister Now and Join Us >>
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Everyone loves to pick up an escapist novel and just drift away into a world of romance, intrigue, or mystery. This was especially true for me while working as a correspondent and anchor for CNN for more than two decades. I would always grab a paperback on my way through the airport. The more outrageously fictitious, the better. You see, I had quite a good dose of reality every day: bombings and school shootings, wars and financial ruin, natural disasters. I wanted fun and enjoyment in my reading. Here are a few rules I adhere to when I write my own romantic thrillers.
—By Kitty Pilgrim
Register Now and Join Us >>
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Follow me on Twitter: @BrianKlems
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People sometimes look askance when I say that experiencing a life-threatening illness was a good thing for me. The truth is that when you’re at the bottom of a deep, dark pit, there is nowhere to look but up. Contemplating how you might climb out—and what you will do when you get there—can be a positively transformative experience.
In the last few weeks of a long stay in Egypt in 2004, I began to feel unwell. Once back in California, I tried to tough it out, but a month of exhaustion, shortness of breath, and peculiar fuzzy-headed thinking finally forced me to seek medical help. After a stereotypical knee-jerk diagnosis of depression, the real cause for my malaise was identified as profound anemia. At serious risk for a stroke or heart attack, I was rushed to the nearest hospital for a massive blood transfusion.
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Guest post by Lydia Crichton, who has traveled all over the world in her twenty-plus year career as a marketing and fundraising expert for nonprofit organizations. A trip to Egypt in 2002 turned into a life-changing odyssey, which led her to discover a passion for telling stories that entertain as they explore complex and controversial social and political issues. She currently lives in California’s Napa Valley––the inspiration for a second book in the Julia Grant Series, Grains of Truth, woven around the shambles of illegal immigration in the U.S. For more information, visit:
www.lydiacrichton.com.
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The next eight months unfolded like a bad dream. Countless tests, often painful and all expensive, failed to reveal the cause of the anemia. After a hospital nurse confided that “some patients are treated here for symptoms for years without ever learning the cause,” a chance encounter led me to a naturopathic doctor. Through a quick and painless saliva diagnostic, she identified the problem: parasites. Within a week of administering a few inexpensive herbal remedies my blood count began to rise, as did my state of mind.
That’s how my “calling” as a writer began—certainly not with any formal education in the craft—but with a desire to record my ordeal (which became less important as time went by), and the need to speak of things I had seen and learned in Egypt. My “work” prior to that could mostly be found on billboards, in business letters and grant proposals (some of which might be classified as fiction). Basically, with a brain in recovery, I learned to write backwards, with absolutely no idea what I was doing; the only point of reference being thousands of books read over the years. It all started with a hand written journal of my travels. As a fairly private person, I hadn’t thought to make the memoir public. Oddly enough, although my logical left brain still languished, my creative right brain was asserting itself in unusual ways. When I sat down to sort out my thoughts on the computer, other ideas poked their heads out right away.
A story began to emerge, and it wanted to be a good one, the kind that I like to read: to entertain, to present something new and spark readers’ curiosity to want to learn more. My first novel, Grains of Truth, was born. Originally, the book consisted of three parts, with my own story setting the stage as Part I. Insecure about the daunting task of writing an entire book, I went on to throw in everything I could think of including the kitchen sink—along with the bathtub and several other appliances. Working in a fevered state, the first draft took six months. From the start, I believed that it could be a good story, but I also realized that it needed a lot of work. A lot of work. Things had to come out. A lot of things.
Over the next few years the manuscript went through relentless editing, revision and rewrites. I began to learn how to write: took classes and workshops, attended conferences and seminars. A screenwriter’s workshop in Los Angeles taught me how to improve the pace and tighten it up. I went through it, from beginning to end, over and over and over again; looking at structure, dialogue, pacing, character development, word usage…well, you get the idea. Each edit honed it down, bringing a heretofore unknown satisfaction. It was always easy to get lost in the story because this was my story—my people—my creation. Research fueled the plot and gave birth to new characters. Having them serve the story that I wanted to tell, making the pieces fit together in a seamless way, making the points I wanted to make while never losing sight of the vital importance of keeping the reader entertained and engaged: that was the challenge. I worked hard at having different characters present differing points of view on an infinitely complex subject: striving to set aside my personal points of view to objectively view the point. As in life, this can be a difficult thing to do.
Thankfully, the pistons in my brain now fire as well as they ever have. With the writing of the second and third books in the Julia Grant series, my process has become more organized, more efficient. Once settled on a provocative issue, the stories still unfold in an organic way, revealing themselves as they see fit, but I now log an outline as I go along. This helps to streamline edits and rewrites. And, even though the words come easier now, the one edit still nearest and dearest to my heart is that of examining them. Because a good story is, after all, made up of just the right words.
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If you are like most writers, when you get an idea for a book, you want to start immediately. If you are a mapper or plotter, you may stop to outline your scenes or your content prior to sitting down to write. If you are “pantser,” someone who likes to just write “by the seat of your pants,” you probably just hurry to your computer and start typing.
In either case, it’s highly likely that you don’t do any business planning. Yet, almost every book project benefits from the creation of a pre-writing business plan. No matter how you want to publish your book, a business plan helps you produce a marketable, which equates to a successful, book.
—Nina Amir
A business plan helps you focus your book on your reader and target market. To create a business plan for your book you must identify your ideal reader. This also involves identifying a target market. Once you have this information, you can determine what content best serves the people in your market. A book that offers benefit to many people in a specific market has a higher likelihood of selling. That benefit can come in the form of solutions, answers, relatable stories, escape, or inspiration. You decide what value to add to people’s lives through your book based upon knowing the needs and desires of your ideal reader and target market.A business plan helps you write a unique and necessary book. A business plan for a book includes a competitive analysis, which compares your book idea to existing successful books currently on the market. This helps you decide how to make your book better and different from current titles.A business plan helps you hone your idea. When you have taken the time to look at the market and competition for your book, you can work with your initial idea to make it more marketable. You can mold it into an idea that bests serve your ideal reader and rises above the competition—and write creative content to match that idea. In other words, you can combine your competitive and market analysis to help you make content decisions, which increases your book’s chances of becoming a popular category option.A business plan helps you plan for success. Today, books succeed because authors help them do so. A business plan includes a post-publication promotion plan as well as a description of your author’s platform, which equates to your pre-release promotional efforts. Both pre- and post-publication promotion determine how many copies of your book you might sell. To plan for success, take the time to create a promotion plan for author platform building starting 1-3 years before you book is released and for the release of your book including 1-3 years after it hits the bookstores.Writing by the seat of your pants has its place, and often turns out inspired works. In today’s ever-more competitive publishing industry, however, marketability remains the watchword. If you take the time to do initial planning, you increase the likelihood of producing not only a creative but a saleable book as well.
Learn More at the Writer’s Digest West Conference Sept. 27-29 in L.A.
Meet Nina Amir at the Writer’s Digest West Conferencein Los Angeles! Elizabeth will present two sessions there: “How to Blog a Book” and “Your Book’s Business Plan: How to Prepare Yourself and Your Book Idea for Publishing Success.” The lineup of speakers is one of the best and the conference also includes the famous Writer’s Digest Pitch Slam, where you get one-on-one time with agents to pitch your ideas.
Register Now and Join Us >>
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It’s with a heavy heart that we mourn the passing of bestselling author Ann Crispin, co-founder of Writer Beware (
you can read a short note about it here from Ann’s close friend and Writer Beware counterpart Victoria Strauss). Ann contributed to Writer’s Digest on several occasions and has long been an advocate of writers’ rights. To honor her, we’ve pulled 5 excellent tips from our archives that she shared with us over the years.
1. Not all agents are created equal, and editors know the difference.
2. When you meet your dream editor at a conference, your first words after “Nice to meet you” should not be: “I’ve written a great book, can I send it to you?”
3. Don’t think working with just any agent will give your manuscript a better shot at acceptance than your own submitting efforts will.
4. Looking for publication is no bed of roses, and there are no shortcuts. Remember, every writer who ever has succeeded was once where you are.
5. A publisher that skimps on quality and doesn’t provide adequate editing and proofing won’t do a better job with promotion.
You will be missed, Ann. —The Writer’s Digest Staff
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I find that writers are usually nice people. Nice people have a hard time understanding nasty people, let alone liking them. Let alone loving them!
You must overcome this.
—by Elizabeth Sims
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Not to get all English-majory on you, but I remember a pertinent lesson from studying the early novel Gargantua and Pantagruel (Francois Rabelais) in university. To hyper-simplify what Rabelais tried to convey in that vast satire: to be a man is to be a dog (with a dog’s disgusting habits and appetites), and the only way to fully be a man is to enjoy being a dog.
There is our lesson for writing villains successfully: to be an author is to be a villain, and the only way to fully be an author is to relish being a villain.
Thus we must learn to enjoy playing in the dirt, oui?
Even if your story will not tell anything from their viewpoint, you really need to get to know your villains so they will act realistically and consistently. Brainstorming on your bad guys will definitely help your plot as well as your characters.
Reach into your own dark side for this one.
1) Spend some time remembering something awful you did that you were sorry for. The specifics are unimportant: remember how you felt when you were doing it. Jot a note or two.
2) Now remember something awful you did that you’re not a bit sorry for. Feel that feeling! Jot a note or two.
Those two simple practices will instantly improve your empathy for your villains.
Now, must your villains be bent on destruction and murder 24/7?
Well, no.
Real villains in the real world often act like the nicest people ever. Ted Bundy worked a suicide prevention line while he was killing women who looked like the girlfriend who threw him over. Jack the Ripper probably had friends. That BTK guy—remember him?—had a whole family, friends, a church…
Your villains are merely people acting in their own self-interest, feeding their own needs—only with total disregard for the rest of us. That is where they differ from normal people. The truly horrifying thing is, they don’t have to differ all that much, to be effectively evil.
I might add that believable characters are always a mix of good and bad; it’s really just a matter of degree, and of course, perspective. The axe-murderer’s mother will believe to her grave that he acted in self-defense. He will believe he acted in self-defense.
Which leads us to more depth: Think about your characters, and love them, in light of human failings like self-delusion, unrealistic expectations, secret yearnings—yearnings that can’t possibly come true.
Enjoy the dirt, and reap the rewards!
Learn More at the Writer’s Digest West Conference Sept. 27-29 in L.A.
Meet Elizabeth Sims at the Writer’s Digest West Conferencein Los Angeles! Elizabeth will present two sessions there: “How to Write a Dynamite Mystery or Thriller That SELLS” and “Quit Your Day Job—Seriously!” The lineup of speakers is one of the best and the conference also includes the famous Writer’s Digest Pitch Slam, where you get one-on-one time with agents to pitch your ideas.
Register Now and Join Us >>
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David Magee didn’t learn to write his Academy Award–nominated screenplays Finding Neverland and Life of Pi in a classroom. He never cared much for screenwriting books or workshops, and what writing he did in his younger days—random scenes or script ideas he scribbled in personal journals—he hardly showed anyone. In fact, he didn’t learn to write from the movies at all. He learned by reading novels—and tearing them to pieces.
Originally an aspiring actor, Magee took a job reading audiobooks to make ends meet, a job that required him to first read the full novels, and then their “horrible” abridgements. Despite his shyness with his writing, he couldn’t help telling his producer what might have been the most important sentence of his career: “I could do better than this.”
—by Scott Atkinson
Selling Scripts to Hollywood: How to Prepare, Submit, and Sell Your Script
The Screenwriting Formula: Why It Works & How To Use
TV Scripts – Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript eBook Excerpt
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Many writers consider dabbling in writing about food—I mean, we all like food, don’t we? Before diving in, it’s important to ask yourself these 5 questions to make sure you’re taking your roll as food writer seriously.
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Judith Newton is a Professor Emerita in Women and Gender Studies at U.C. Davis where she directed the Women and Gender Studies program for eight years and the Consortium for Women and Research for four. She is the author of the award-winning food memoir, Tasting Home: Coming of Age in the Kitchen (Shewrites Press/March 2013) and co-editor of five works of nonfiction on women writers, feminist criticism, women’s history, and men’s movements. She blogs for the Huffington Post and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area of California where she tends her garden and cooks for family and friends. For more info, visit:
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1. Since my interest in writing about food lies mainly in the emotional work that cooking for, and dining with, other performs, I always begin a piece on food by asking what did this cooking or dining experience mean to me? Why did I think it important? Everything follows from that answer.
Two years ago, for example, my husband and I had a simple meal in Santa Fe that struck me as enchanted. It was our last day in town, late in the afternoon, and we had decided, quite spontaneously, to try for an early dinner. A restaurant with a courtyard like an impressionist painting–full of greenery, light and shade, soft white, yellow, and tan umbrellas– had been jammed the day before for lunch and we had refused the forty minute wait.
But, now, magically the place was empty, all our own. We sat at a table to the side of the courtyard that was partially shielded by a bush as tall as a tree, and out of the blue at 4:30 p.m. on a Tuesday, a guitarist began to play. The dishes we ordered and then ate with delight–chicken enchiladas with green chile and wild mushroom tamales– struck us as the best food we’d had all week. That moment, in its many unexpected pleasures, was so perfect that my throat began to ache. What was I feeling? That was the question with which I began. Was I feeling the delights of this meal with a special intensity because I was about to leave Santa Fe?
2. A second question that I pose when I am writing about a moment of cooking or dining is what larger story is this a part of? Is there some movement from one place to another in which this moment participates?
In this case, the answer was yes. This final meal recalled the many other pleasures that Santa Fe had offered us for a full week—a picnic before the opera at a wooden table overlooking a canyon, against a rose flushed sky; the comforting heft of chili mixed with lettuce, cheese, and Fritos in a Frito Pie, eaten to the sound and feel of New Mexican rhythm and blues pulsing from the bandstand in the plaza; the cool air of a bar after a hot walking tour of Santa Fe restaurants, the combination of spice, sweet, and chill in a cocktail called the Agave Way.
Our final meal bore the imprint of those pleasures too, pleasures I had to leave because I do not live in Santa Fe. And then it struck me, in a meditative moment over my draft, that this is also what it feels like when the beauty of the world rises up before you in some sudden way and at the same time you understand that you will be leaving it and all its beauties, This time you will not return. And that was the larger story–my coming to understand how this moment was about mortality.
3. A third question I pose has to do with connection. What personal relations has this experience of cooking or dining involved?
For cooking and dining almost always have impact on my relation to another. Sometimes the relation undergoes a shift that is part of the food experience. My husband, and I were alone, for example, when we discovered the empty restaurant, after a week spent, quite happily, in the company of old friends. The surprise of the restaurant’s being open, of its being empty, of its existing for a moment just for the two of us, the guitarist making songs like Sixteen Tons sound like ballads, the spicy flavors of our meals, made for a moment in which two people shared the experience of feeling blessed. Sharing unexpected pleasures, or even expected ones, can create or deepen many bonds, can produce a moment of unusual intimacy. That is what dining together often does for a couple, a family, a community, a group of strangers.
4. A fourth question is how I can bring the reader to the table, engage her in a sensuous apprehension of the food and its surroundings, because always , for me, the surroundings enter into our experience of the food itself. What senses can I evoke, how I go beyond the visual and beyond a description of taste. How can I use smell and feel and even sound?
The wild mushrooms tasted of earth, the polenta was soft to the tongue and scented with poblano chili. The yearning music of the guitar mixed with, and was somehow answered by, these other bodily sensations. (I always take pictures of the meals I mean to write about so I can re experience them later. The same goes with pictures of the setting and of the city or country itself. )
5. A fifth question is how do I bring the sensuous apprehension of food together with its emotional meanings and my reflections upon both?
Most often I rely on weaving. The food, the setting, the feelings they inspire are threaded together within a narrative that moves from one point to another. Sometimes I reach for something outside my immediate frame of reference to emphasize the underlying theme. While writing the Santa Fe essay, for example, I remembered a favorite picture of Frida Kahlo, the one at Xochomilco, the watery pleasure garden outside of Mexico City. Frida looks over the boat and as water trails lightly through her fingers she seems to be feeling but also thinking about pleasure. “Perhaps,” I wrote, “she is thinking about the fleeting nature of delight. Perhaps she is thinking about mortality. I want to think about mortality too–so I remember to live. “ For me this picture helped capture what was at the heart of our Santa Fe meal—an enchanting moment against the sharp edge of leaving it.
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An eighty-plus-year-old friend of mine is on a one-woman campaign to eliminate the word “iconic” from public discourse. She’s got a point. But my own current choice for vocabulary to vaporize is “creative”, as in “I can’t write or make art because I’m not creative.” I suspect that creativity is simply a slightly more desperate form of problem solving, and its presence or absence is not likely what’s making it hard for anyone to write well. My father, the writer Bernard Malamud, used to say that his success was 10 percent talent and 90 percent effort.
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Guest post by Janna Malamud Smith, author of four books, My Father is a Book: A Memoir of Bernard Malamud, A Potent Spell: Mother Love and the Power of Fear, and Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life. Her most recent book, An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Creative Mastery, explores the psychological obstacles artists face in their creative process. Her titles have been New York Times Notable Books, and A Potent Spell was a Barnes & Noble “Discover New Writers” pick. She has written for The New York Times, Boston Globe, and the Threepenny Review, among other publications. A practicing psychotherapist, she lives with her husband and two children in Massachusetts. For more info, please visit jannamalamudsmith.com.
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Remembering him and his ways has helped me understand that people stop writing––stop trying, stop practicing, stop revising, stop making the huge effort it takes to get good––because they trip over unconscious fears that lie like rakes across their paths, and they go splat, and it feels awful, and they figure the game’s up, and that they have no talent or they’re not “creative” enough. Of course, that’s a simplified version of my thoughts. And, of course, I recognize that many current circumstances––from the pressures of the Internet/social media revolution to the pressures of a terrible recession, and the competition in the arts & entertainment marketplace––have a large impact.
What especially captured my attention as a psychotherapist, and the focus of my new book, An Absorbing Errand: How artists and craftsmen make their way to mastery, are the quiet fears that derail people as they try to learn to write or make art. I am quite certain that IF you can stay in the game, your creativity will often prove adequate to your task. But the difficulty comes from learning how to recognize and tolerate your fears, so they don’t lead you to prematurely throw in the towel.
In my book, I examine the lives of various artists––from John Keats to Charlie Chaplin to Leni Riefenstahl to Julia Child to Michael Jackson––and use them as jumping off points for examining difficult feelings, and ways of getting them to power your writing project rather than halt it.
1. Fear of Being Seen
For example, there’s the fear of being seen. Of course, if some part (or parts) of you didn’t want to be “seen,” or heard, you likely wouldn’t write. Most people are drawn to writing because they want to express themselves, to have their say; and they want other people to pay attention. But that wish for attention tends to be ambivalent, and is often closely paired with a profound sense of terror at the notion of being recognized by eyes you imagine as belonging to “the enemy.” It’s no accident that so much energy in the natural world goes to camouflage. Recognition , as in, “I recognize you” carries two very different connotations. One refers to feeling seen with loving eyes, and appreciated. The other, carries more of the feeling of being recognized as prey to be eaten. It’s life and death. Often times, as we write our way into areas where––without any conscious awareness––we start to write about feelings or subjects that either feel disloyal to people we love, or perhaps were somehow prohibited in our upbringing, we start to fear that we will be “recognized” in this frightening way. Inner voices get going, hoping to distract us, telling us we’re stupid or evil or inept at writing. I know someone who stopped working on a family memoir because he couldn’t imagine letting the world “see” the portrait that was emerging. I imagine he unconsciously felt guilty about his portrayal and feared being judged and criticized by family and community. The first step in dealing with the fear (and with all fears) is simply to recognize IT.
2. Fear of Being Humiliated
Closely related to this first fear, is a second of being shamed or humiliated. You write your heart out, and put what you’ve written out in the world, and everyone points at you and shakes their heads in dismay, or outright laughs. You are pathetic or disgusting or over-reaching. Or so your fear of humiliation suggests to you. Shame is one of the most hard-wired, deepest feeling states we have. It’s universal, and likely it was incredibly useful in the distant past when we were more immediately dependent on our tribes and kin for our well being. Shame is the way we collectively seek to eliminate behavior that endangers or harms the group. (Shame on you for making eyes at your sister’s boyfriend.) But for individual artists, writers – and people in general, shame is a much more ambiguous – and often useless-cum-destructive feeling. My hunch is that the fantasy of being shamed, of feeling profound public humiliation, stops more people in their tracks more quickly than any other feeling. Once again, awareness helps. But one good antidote to shame I discuss in the book is surrounding yourself with a group of friends, colleagues, perhaps fellow artists, that meets regularly , appreciates you, and helps you laugh off the shame states as they emerge.
3. Fear of Aloneness
The third fear is the fear of feeling the profound aloneness that can come with writing and other solitary artistic endeavors. Solitude is often a critical phase of art-making. People need privacy not only to concentrate and to be able to spend time deep inside their own minds and psyches. They need it so that they aren’t forced to reveal their work when it’s unready and too vulnerable. There’s nothing worse than having someone comment negatively upon (and even a slightly raised eye-brow can feel crushing) something that is only begun – or half-finished. On the other hand, we have so romanticized artistic solitude, that we don’t prepare people for how lonely it can be, and how hard it can be to tolerate that loneliness. So, a good first step is to change your expectations about how much time alone is really healthy for your work. Maybe your solitude is too solitary, and that profound aloneness has to be tempered before you can succeed.
I hope you read An Absorbing Errand. I know that if you do it will help you overcome the obstacles that hinder mastery. Good luck!
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Guest post by Jessica Bell. The Australian-native contemporary fiction author, poet, and singer/songwriter/guitarist, Bell also makes a living as an editor and writer for global ELT publishers (English Language Teaching), such as Pearson Education, HarperCollins, Macmillan Education, Education First and Cengage Learning. She is the co-publishing editor of 
