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How Does an Agent Know in 10 Pages If I Am Worthy?

“I can tell from the first page what genre your novel is probably going to be. If I’m wrong about what genre it’s going to be based on the first page, then, honestly . . . there’s probably something with the writing that the writer needs to look at.”

 

I saw this question on Quora the other day: how does a literary agent know from the first 10 pages if the novel is worthy or not?

 

First, let’s discuss the meaning of the word “worthy.” What exactly does the writer mean when she says “worthy?” Presumably “worthy” means worthy to be published: is it a good novel, is it a good story, is it something marketable it’s something that an agent would be interested in, is it something an editor would be interested in?

 

The issue we have here is, your first step in querying agents and editors is to make sure you are querying the correct person for your work. You don’t want to send a horror novel to someone who exclusively represents romance, for example. In this instance, the literary agent knows from the first page, and certainly by 10 pages in, whether or not you have submitted the right genre to that agent or that editor.

 

Most novels are going to be able to establish their genre well within the first 10 pages, and often within the first page. I run a service on Fiverr where I critique the first page of people’s novels, and every once in a while someone will say, “Well, but how can you tell from the first page if it’s any good?” It’s because when you read as many manuscripts as I do, (never mind how many agents read!) and this many books, this many query letters, I can tell from the first page what genre this is probably going to be. If I’m wrong about what genre this is going to be based on the first page, then, honestly, there’s probably something with the writing that the writer needs to look at.

 

Every Sunday night at 6 p.m. Pacific time, we host a live stream called First Page Sunday. We use my first pages or first pages from published novels or first pages that have been submitted to the show, and we read them and give a quick—very friendly but professional—critique about that first page. More often than not you will be able to tell what genre this story is going to be based on the first sentence, certainly in the first page, and never mind 10 pages.

 

By 10 pages into any book we should be well-established into what kind of book this is going to be, because in those first 10 pages, you’re establishing character; you’re establishing tone; you’re establishing voice; and a really good writer is probably even going to introduce the main conflict of the story. We may not know what it is for sure, but it’s probably going to be there at least in the background if not introduced outright.

 

If you think about some of your favorite stories and go back and read the first 10 pages, you will probably start to see that we know who the main character is; we know that they are headed into some kind of trouble, and hopefully (more often than not) they’re headed into trouble because of a choice they have just made that is going to forever alter the trajectory of their life. All of these things, generally speaking, are going to occur in the first 10 pages. If none of those things occur in the first 10 pages, then that’s how a literary agent is going to say “This isn’t ‘worthy.’”

 

Using the word “worthy” here makes me feel as though the writer believes that something can be objectively good or objectively bad; objectively worthy or objectively unworthy. That’s simply not true. There is, simply and frankly, no accounting for taste. That’s something writers will face when submitting to any agent.

 

Maybe you have written a romance novel, a traditional contemporary romance, and it has a happily-ever-after (HEA) ending. All of your friends say it’s good, your beta readers, your critique partners . . . everybody says it’s great. You send it off to 20 or 30 or 50 agents and they all reject you. Oh my god, you’re not worthy!!!

 

Right?

 

Of course not! That’s absurd. Don’t ever think that.

 

(aside: Do as I say not as I do…)

 

The fact that your awesome romance novel has been rejected by 20 or 30 or 50 agents doesn’t mean you’re not worthy; it doesn’t mean the story isn’t worthy of being published. It means a million different things that you have zero control over. Maybe the agent was having a bad day. Maybe she just got five other manuscripts that sound a lot like yours. Maybe she’s not sure if she’s gonna be keeping her job or not. Maybe her mom and dad are really p.m. sick and she has to care for them and so she’s more focused on that at the moment.

 

There are so many different things that go into an agent choosing to represent or not represent a novel. One of them—and please listen carefully to this—that you cannot ever control is simply this: maybe it wasn’t a good fit.

 

I promise at some point in your career, if you’re going in the traditional market, you will get rejection letters that say “It just wasn’t a good fit.” Every writer who gets that rejection says, “Oh my god! What on earth does that mean??”

 

It means it wasn’t a good fit.

 

There were agents who p.m. passed on Harry Potter. Who said, “This isn’t a good fit.” You might hear that story and say, “That shows them! They didn’t pick up this smash hit! I bet they wish they’d picked up Harry Potter, hahaha!”

 

The reality: In terms of wishing they had that kind of money? Sure, of course they wish they had that.

 

Do they wish they’d picked up Harry Potter? Probably not. They said no because it wasn’t a good fit.

 

That is something we writers and authors need to accept and really get into our bloodstream. Sometimes it is literally that simple. I’ve gotten rejection letters from agents and editors like, “This is awesome, I love it, you’ve got a great voice! . . . It’s just not for me.” So you move on. You can’t bother getting upset by it.

 

By page 10 we ought to know who the main character is, an idea of what the conflict is going to be, and the voice and tone of the novel. The lesson here is to make sure that your tone and your voice is consistent. That’s one of the takeaways I want you to have when you start your novel, wherever you end up choosing to start it. You’re establishing a world and you establish that world on the first page. There’s no escaping it. Whatever it is you’re establishing on that first page needs to carry through the rest of the book.

 

I opened up my science-fiction book club novel—Hounded, by Kevin Hearne—and on page one, there is no question what type of book this is going to be. (The link will take you to the book’s Amazon page, where you can Look Inside.) I don’t know the main conflict on page one but I know the tone, I know the protagonist, I know what he’s capable of, I know the world that we’re getting into. Hearne is able to put all of that into the first page. By page 10, we absolutely know where the story is going.

 

That’s just good writing. Whether you subjectively feel it’s a good book is up to you. I’m going to finish the book, and I may end up not liking the book; that’s up to me as the reader. But was the job accomplished? Yes, I think you can critically look at the book and critically determine whether or not Kevin Hearne has done his job as the writer.

 

Keep writing!

 

(And if you need more advice and feedback on your work, consider joining us at Patreon for only $5 a month.)

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Book Review: ARARAT, by Christopher Golden

tl;dr? watch it here

Christopher Golden has constructed a place you never want to go but that you cannot stop reading about.

The novel Ararat takes place on the mountain of the same name, where Noah’s Ark is reputed to have come to rest. That’s exactly what the novel seems to be about, when an earthquake unearths what appears to be remnants of a giant ship. But when scientists ascend the mountain to study the discovery, they quickly find that there’s something in there that should not be. Whether it’s Noah’s ark at all becomes secondary to survival as the team squares off with a chilling and brutal entity that will feed off the reader’s worst fears!

As a horror writer, I have many different tools available to scare you. One of those tools is dread, which is not the same as horror, terror, or the gross-out. Dread is a tough one to do, because it requires patience and precise words and pacing. Golden has done that here. He doesn’t hide his monster, it’s in plain sight the entire story, yet the dread just builds and builds until you are forced to stay up long after dark, reading to see when things will finally burst.

The author and I were both nominated for the Bram Stoker Award the same year (in different categories), and Ararat won that year. I have not met Christopher Golden, but I have met Joe Hill and other horror authors who speak highly of him and there’s no question he’s at the top of his game when it comes to dread. So whether you are a reader who loves horror novels or a writer who’s looking to sharpen that particular tool in your toolbox, I highly recommend reading this Bram Stoker Award winner.

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Your Novel Isn’t Ready to Submit Because… part 1

Before we begin:

  1. You can publish a novel with a traditional publisher.
  2. I believe in you.

 

I say this up front because what follows is a little on the snarky side, and I need you to know that I am nothing special. I was just like every other aspiring writer when I got my first agent and first book contract. If I can do it, you can, too. (If that’s the direction you choose to go. There are lots of reasons to go straight to indie publishing, which we’ll cover at another time.)

 

Also, congratulations! I’m serious—you’re on a site called FictionMentor.com for crying out loud, which suggests you take your writing seriously, and that’s the thesis of this article: Take writing and publishing your novel seriously if you want to see your book on store shelves.

 

How do I know without reading a single page of your novel that you’re not ready to submit the manuscript to an agent? Easy:

 

You haven’t finished writing your novel.

I’m guilty of this. I once sent a query to an editor while about halfway through a novel, thinking, “Why not, it’ll just be rejected, may as well get used to it.” Surprise! I got a request for a full manuscript. So I spent the next ten days feverishly working to finish the thing. And no, it did not get picked up. Shocking, right?

 

Always finish your novel before taking another step. Hundreds (thousands?) of people do this every November during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) which is great, but too many of them neglect the next step:

 

You haven’t revised and edited your novel.

Typing “The End” does not mean you are finished. There’s still revision and editing to be done.

 

Here at FictionMentor, I define revision as the broad, sweeping changes needed to ensure your continuity is correct; the plot is seamless and interesting; the dialogue fresh and moving the story along; the characters compelling; i.e., big changes. One or two revisions is not enough. Three or more is common . . . for working, published authors.

 

I define editing as correcting spelling, grammar, and formatting errors. Editing requires two, three, or more passes through the entire manuscript, whereas revision can take . . . well, as many passes as it takes to make the story shine.

 

Note: Editing also includes at least one pass with a hard-copy (printed out) manuscript. Research shows we catch more errors reading on paper than we do on a screen. Put your best foot forward on every single page before submission. The occasional typo won’t doom your manuscript – nobody’s perfect – but it’s your job to make your copy as clean as possible, especially those first ten pages.

 

When do you think your novel is ready to send? Drop a comment @tomleveen and share your journey!

 

Keep an eye out for Part II…

 

Tom’s Linktree

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Is YA Bad For Your Kids?

This is taken from an online interview I gave about YA Lit:

Q: What do you say to a parent who thinks that reading YA lit will corrupt their kids?

 

Then the parents need to read more YA.

 

But they have to step into their own teenage shoes first. Books don’t corrupt teens, adults do. I mean, let’s take a phenomenal book like SPEAK by Laurie Halse Anderson, which critics wrongly said is “about date rape.” (It’s not, it is about depression.) No teen is going to read that book and go, “Hey, I should date-rape girls!” No one will read THE OUTSIDERS and say, “Gangs are cool! I should stab someone!” YA authors and editors are fierce defenders of teenagers—with our time, our words, our money, everything. That’s more than many parents can say, I’m afraid.



 

Q: What advice would you give to parents of a 12 or 13-year-old about YA books (and video re-imaginings)? Should parents get involved?  If so, at what point–selection, screening, pre-reading, vetoing, post-reading discussion?

 

Let them read anything, eventually. Censoring our kids’ reading isn’t helping them, but only each family can determine what’s appropriate and what’s not. But this idea of keeping books away from kids is unforgivable utter nonsense. Why would a parent waste this golden opportunity to read a book with (or before) their kid and see what conversations come out of it?

There have been reading groups at schools and libraries where one kid won’t participate for months, even years . . . then suddenly one day, that kid will start talking about she really feels for Melinda in SPEAK, or Morrigan in PARTY, or Tyler in manicpixiedreamgirl. Why the sudden talking? Because that book hit a chord in that kid’s life, and now the kid has a way to talk about it without giving herself away. As a parent, why toss away one single tool in your parenting toolkit?

Take them to bookstores! Ask them which ones look like they’d be interesting reads. Talk to the booksellers, they know their stuff.

Video is another thing entirely, because video—anything on a screen—impacts us differently than the written word. Anything happening to us from kindergarten through high school is going to be in our heads for the rest of our lives. Every time a grownup says “You can’t,” or “You’re stupid,” or “You suck,” or “You’re a bad boy/girl,” that stuff sticks for a very long time.

I gave a TEDx talk about this: Can you name your first grade teacher? Who you went to prom with? What your first car was? Yes, yes, and yes, because our brains are built to do that, to hold onto information as it develops. Ergo, I do tend to think that policing our kids’ screen time is important, as well as what is on those screens. Instead, cram those brains full of books. No child was ever harmed by the not-watching of a video.

 

Q: YA lit covers lots of territory in terms of genre and maturity level. Is there good and bad YA, or just a lot of variety?

 

There is “bad” YA in terms of quality of writing perhaps, but that is so, so, so objective as to be rendered a meaningless discussion. Some of my books are viscerally hated by some readers, and some readers have re-read those same books until the pages fell out. There’s simply no accounting for taste and opinion. We’ve all read a best-seller or award-winner and thought, “Really? Really, though? This?”

In terms of good and bad for kids? I don’t think so; there really is just that much variety. Dr. James Blasingame at Arizona State University, the Yoda of YA literature, says there is a book for every teenager, and I believe that. This is why we need trained librarians (and, you know, libraries) in our schools and communities. They make a huge, positive difference in the lives of teens.

It’s also important to understand the author’s intent when choosing a book. One of my author friends writes, shall we say, “fluffy” romances, where there will be a kiss at the end between a male and female. Is that wrong? Bad? Nope, it’s what they write, and I love many of those books because they are well written, well plotted, and a lot of fun to read. They are just different from a book like ZERO or RANDOM, where my style is to not pull any punches when it comes to what some teens are going through.

I’m after a different theme than my friend, and our styles reflect that. Neither of us is better or worse than the other, and both have their place in the development of teens into adults. Sometimes you need a fluffy romance, sometimes you need zombies invading your high school.

 

Ready for more? Climb the tree.