Who is a “good” literary agent?

I recently received the following email in our query inbox, “Dear Sara Megibow, thank you so much for sending a response to my query. Even though it was a form rejection letter, it’s still better than nothing. You are a really great literary agent.”

This is a polite and thoughtful email response. Typically, it’s not necessary to respond to our rejection letter however the nice ones are always better than the mean ones. Still, and this pains me to say it, there is an error in this person’s response. OH how I hate to admit this because I’m sure my rating at querytracker will go right through the toilet. Yikes. Here goes…

An agent’s process for responding to slush pile submissions (and the speed at which they do so) is not an accurate way to evaluate whether or not that agent is good at their job. Some agents personalize each and every response. Some agencies (like ours) send out a response to everything with a form rejection. And some agents don’t respond at all unless they are interested in the book. I know some writers compare notes: “X agent responded in 12 days” and “Y agent didn’t respond at all” and “Z agent’s form rejection is polite” but I’m here to tell you that this is not a good way to evaluate your potential business partner.

Of course I like being known as a “good” agent but let’s go over what that really means.

My job as a literary agent is to turn my clients books into money. Period. Publishing is a business and I represent one potential business plan for a writer. I offer representation when I believe there is financial potential in a book. Reading submissions and presenting books to publishing houses represents the vast minority of my time each week. Negotiating and auditing contracts, selling subsidiary rights (audio, foreign, film, etc), auditing royalty statements and organizing production, publicity and promotions are how I spend my time. These are the tasks I perform to make my clients money. Looking at it from this point of view, I can’t very well call up Tiffany Reisz to say, “I couldn’t shop THE SIREN for film this week as I was responding to slush pile submissions.” The biggest misconception about the job of a literary agent is that we serve the pre-published author. Unfortunately, that’s not true – we exist to make money for our current clients. That’s a harsh and ugly thing to admit online, but it’s the truth. Another way to look at it is like this – if I offer you representation you’d want me spending my time on your books, right?

The Catch 22 of this scenario is that in order to make money for our current clients, we have to HAVE clients and the vast majority of those clients come from the slush pile. So, how to respond to query letters remains a relevant discussion. I stand by our decision to respond to every email even though it costs us tens of thousands of dollars each year to do so (and it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales in order to make the 15% agency fee to cover that cost). I WANT to be known as nice and friendly and I believe that pre-published authors deserve a response. So there you have it – even though it’s not a perfect process, our agency continues to respond to every submission. But remember – that’s not what makes me good at my job.

A GOOD agent is one who can make you money, not one who responds quickly to the slush pile.

In researching agents, here are good ways to evaluate: Does an agent:
- Negotiate competitive contracts, including royalty rates (profit for an author shouldn’t just come from the advance money)
- Audit royalty statements
- Sell subsidiary rights
- Monitor the production process for quality and innovation
- Help organize publicity and promotions
- Communicate the publishing process effectively so all members of the team can be focused on writing and sales as opposed to being focused on errors and misunderstandings
- Work with an author to craft the career the author wants for him/herself

How would you find this out about an agent?
- When an agent offers representation, ASK! (it’s ok – you’re not being nosy. These are important questions)
- Ask to speak with an agent’s other clients to get a feel for some of these behind-the-scenes tasks
- Follow an agent at www.publishersmarketplace.com or on their agency website and watch for subsidiary rights sales or blog posts about these issues
- Meet agents at conferences and ask good business questions
- Follow agents on their blogs and on twitter (I’m on twitter at @SaraMegibow where I try to answer questions) (My boss, Kristin Nelson, blogs at http://pubrants.blogspot.com/ and she’s tackled each of these topics thoroughly over the years)

I hope this information helps! As you are researching agents for your career, remember to focus on the things that agent will do to make you money. Painful as it sounds, responding to the slush pile is not one of those tasks.

Happy writing and thanks again for having me here at Romance University!
-Sara

***

Yes – she went there.  So, what questions or comments do you have about Sara’s post?  What is your experience with agents and the slush pile?  Did it impact whether you would accept an offer of representation? Did it stop you from submitting?

On Friday, the fabulous Theresa Stevens is back!

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UNRAVELED by New York Times bestselling author Courtney Milan

He has no use for love…

Smite Turner is renowned for his single-minded devotion to his duty as a magistrate. But behind his relentless focus lies not only a determination to do what is right, but the haunting secrets of his past – secrets that he is determined to hide, even if it means keeping everyone else at arm’s length. Until the day an irresistible woman shows up as a witness in his courtroom…

 

But love has other plans for him.

Miranda Darling isn’t in trouble…yet. But she’s close enough that when Turner threatens her with imprisonment if she puts one foot wrong, she knows she should run in the other direction. And yet no matter how forbidding the man seems on the outside, she can’t bring herself to leave. Instead, when he tries to push her away, she pushes right back – straight through his famous self-control, and into the heart of the passion that he has long hidden away…

Bio:

Bio: Sara Megibow, Associate Literary Agent
Nelson Literary Agency, LLC

Sara has worked at the Nelson Literary Agency since 2006. As the Associate Literary Agent, Sara is actively acquiring new clients! The Nelson Literary Agency specializes in representing all genres of romance (except inspirational or category), young adult fiction of all subgenres, science fiction/ fantasy and commercial fiction (including women’s fiction and chick lit). Sara is an avid romance reader and a rabid fan girl of super sexy and intelligent stories.

Nelson Literary Agency is a member of AAR, RWA, SFWA and SCBWI. Please visit our website http://http://www.nelsonagency.com/for submission guidelines, FAQs, resources and sample query letters. Sara’s Publisher’s Marketplace site (www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/SaraMegibow) is a great place to find more about her personal tastes, clients and recent sales. You can also cyber stalk Sara on twitter @SaraMegibowHow an agent chooses what books to read.

She was born Kathleen Erin Hogg in Alexandria, Louisiana, the youngest of eight children. Her father passed away when Kathleen was only twelve. Raised by her mother and older sisters, Woodiwiss remarked once that “every single one of us had minds of our own even then; I was no exception. I suppose that carried over into my creations of heroines who weren’t weak-willed.”

Her revolutionary debut novel, The Flame and the Flower, was rejected by agents and hardcover publishers alike for being too long – and at 600 pages, it put the smaller historicals that were popular to date to shame. Woodiwiss then submitted it to Avon, who purchased the novel in paperback. It sold over 2.3 million copies in its first four years. Way to go!

Published in 1972, The Flame and the Flower was a historical romance, with an alpha hero – and real sex scenes. Not just hints and tremors, ocean waves crashing in the distance or murky feelings, but actual sex scenes. The Flame and the Flower is credited with starting a new romance writing phenomenon, following the hero and heroine into the bedroom. Novels following this breakthrough book by Woodiwiss contained longer plots, very intimate sex scenes and a stronger heroine.

Kathleen Woodiwiss gave her heroines spunk. Have you ever read Shanna? Now there’s a girl with a boatload of spunk! Determined to meet her father’s requirement of marrying, she instead married a prisoner meant for hanging – she’d be married as per her father’s request, but have no husband to burden her down while she searched for true love. =) Of course the prisoner didn’t hang, and guess who her true love turned out to be? Absolutely.

Kathleen’s stories absolutely took me away to another time and place. With The Wolf and the Dove the castles, serfs and wars of Normans versus Saxons came alive. With Ashes in the Wind I discovered the horrors of the Civil War. In So Worthy My Love, we met a feisty heroine, an irritable – yet dashing-hero and got a fine taste of Kathleen’s sense of humor, when two bungling would-be kidnappers take the wrong woman. Kathleen’s mastery at story-telling kept me, and many others I’m sure! Up until the wee hours of the morning, trying to read just one more page.

In my own personal collection, I have at least two of every book, as well as approximately seven different copies of Shanna. Just in case. =)

Kathleen passed away, July 6, 2007, with twelve novels to her credit and over 36 million sold.

Next time RU authors, you write a particularly spunky heroine into your latest romance manuscript, give a nod of thanks to Kathleen Woodiwiss.

***

RU Crew – What book and/or author has made a difference in your writing or reading?

Join us on Wednesday when we chat with agent Sara Megibow about who is a good literary agent?

***

Weekly Lecture Schedule for May 14 – May 18, 2012


http://www.RomanceUniversity.org

Let’s face it, RU Crew, it’s May, which means the weather is getting hotter. Good news is RU’s schedule will help you keep your writing cool through the next few months. This week, we have some great lectures planned for you. MONDAY Carrie Spencer takes us back to one of the great romance writers, Kathleen Woodiwiss. Wednesday, Sara Megibow is back to give us the secrets of finding a good agent. On Friday, we host monthly columnist Theresa Stevens.

Mon, 5/14 – Go back in time with CARRIE SPENCER as she reviews the impact Kathleen Woodiwiss had on the world of romance writing.

Weds, 5/16 – SARA MEGIBOW tackles the question “Who is a Good Agent?” and will give away a copy of Courtney Milan’s Unraveled. www.nelsonagency.com

Fri, 5/18 – Editor THERESA STEVENS returns with her fabulous monthly column. Don’t miss Theresa’s insights on the writing and editing process!

All Romance University lectures are generously provided by our Visiting Professors. RU is a tuition-free zone!

All our best,

Kelsey Browning, Adrienne Giordano, Robin Covington, Carrie Spencer, Tracey Devlyn, Jennifer Tanner, and Becke Martin Davis

In my previous post, I focused on how streamlining and tightening your prose can strengthen your writing. Line edits provide an opportunity not just to tweak the technicalities of writing but also to do some specific line-by-line content editing. When reading closely and objectively, ask yourself questions like: Is a specific action getting across the message it’s trying to convey? Am I relying too heavily on backstory for explanation? How can I give a particular sentence more dramatic weight (or in Gina-speak “oomph”)? And, perhaps most importantly, is the scene and/or chapter both moving the plot forward and starting in the right place?

Let’s take a look at our example…

Eliza Baxter had not survived the past four months to be daunted by the jeers of two hatchet-faced guards.

“Ey, would you look at this fine bit o’ muslin?”

“Hullo love, fancy a bit of leg-over once we make the high seas?”

Already, I’m intrigued by this seemingly unsavory situation the heroine is in and the mention of the “high seas.” Though, for effect, I would suggest opening with the dialogue and scrapping one of the two guards’ comments. Dialogue, when concise, direct and strong, often packs more punch when setting the scene.

She had shivered against Newgate Gaol’s underground stone walls, kicked brazen rats, and stopped her ears to the delirium during the typhus outbreak.

She had crouched in a dank corner of her cell, breathing through her sleeve to evade the miasmas that killed with a relentless efficiency, and reviewed her options. Until she decided or rather, accepted.

In these two paragraphs, the author loses me a bit with the list of all the indignities Eliza has suffered. Her past sufferings should be hinted at while still keeping the reader focused on the present. Also, what options was she reviewing? Someone who’s spent months in a cell with rats seems to have run out of them.

There had never really been a choice once she stepped into the Hunt’s carriage and traveled to London last May. Escape was the only alternative to-no don’t think of it. She couldn’t get much further than where she was now going.

Ah-ha, a mystery. I’m curious to know who the Hunts are and how they may have contributed to her current situation. However, the interrupted thought “Escape was the only alternative to—” isn’t used to its best advantage. The author could possibly be suggesting that there’s an option the heroine would rather rot in a cell than consider—an improper proposal, perhaps?—but there is not enough to go on to make that suggestion clear.

I’ve had just about enough. She dodged between the suggestive stances of the leering guards; their breath stained with the odor of stale gin as she stepped onto the gangway. And it’s not even started.

Instead of viewing masterpieces at the grand opening of the new National Gallery, she had blinked into the daylight streaming though the high courtroom windows of the Old Bailey. A judge with the same unhappy mouth as her father picked his nose. The jurors had whispered through the false charges. One dozed but woke in time to help deliver the sentence. Guilty. The thirteen other hollow-eyed prisoners knew what she was only just gleaning. All paths for a desperate woman eventually pass through the blackened archway of the Newgate Gaol.

Her sentence was read. The gallows.

Just as quickly her sentence was commuted. Transportation to Parts Beyond the Seas.

As she was escorted down from the dock, a few whistled bars rose up from the throng clustered in the balcony. The cheerful tone belied a menace that rendered her bones to jelly. The Grand Old Duke of York, He had ten thousand men, He marched them up the fields and then He marched them back again. She couldn’t find him in the crowd but her suspicion was confirmed. Jeremiah Hunt was indeed behind this.

Before the fatal trip to London last spring, she had never ventured more than thirty miles from her family’s small parsonage in the downlands of South Hampshire. Now here she was sailing for the backwater of the British Empire. Australia.

Here, my thoughts about revision changed from polishing this scene to restructuring it altogether. Aside from the technical line editing concerns, these paragraphs proved the most problematic because they bring up the question: does this scene start in the right place? The fact that a flashback takes up almost half the original word count says no. The drama of this court scene has overtaken the initial opening on the ship’s gangway and, to me as a reader, is much more interesting in both action and details. Perhaps that is the true beginning of this story.

Taking this into consideration, if we were to rework the book’s opening, it might look something like this…

“Hang the whore!”

Eliza Baxter had not survived the past four months crouching in a dank, rat-infested cell to be daunted by faceless jeers from the courtroom gallery.

I’ve had just about enough. And it’s not even started.

She blinked into the daylight streaming though the high windows of the Old Bailey. The thirteen other hollow-eyed prisoners awaiting their fates knew what she was only just gleaning. All paths for a desperate woman eventually pass through the blackened archway of Newgate Gaol.

She’d come to accept her lot. There had never really been a choice, not since she stepped into the Hunts’ carriage and traveled to London last May. Prison, though harsh, proved a better alternative to Jeremiah’s—No, don’t think of it.

A judge with the same unhappy mouth as her father picked his nose. The jurors whispered through the false charges. One dozed but woke in time to help deliver the sentence.

Guilty.

Her sentence was read—the gallows—and just as quickly commuted.

Transportation to parts beyond the seas.

A nervous laugh scratched her dry throat. All the times she’d dreamed of escape… She couldn’t get much farther than where she was now going. Before the fatal trip to London last spring, Eliza had never ventured more than thirty miles from her family’s small parsonage in the downlands of South Hampshire. Now here she was, sentenced to the backwater of the British Empire. Australia.

As she was escorted down from the dock, a few whistled bars rose up from the throng clustered in the balcony. The cheerful tone belied a menace that rendered her bones to jelly.

The Grand Old Duke of York, He had ten thousand men, He marched them up the fields and then He marched them back again.

She couldn’t find him in the crowd, but her suspicion was confirmed. Jeremiah Hunt was behind this.

Granted, without knowing the full details of the plot, I made up a lot of the backstory implied here. This is simply a rough sketch of one way the scene could unfold. The author, who better knows her story and characters, could further enhance it with descriptive details to clue the reader in on the physical and mental toll the heroine’s experience has had on her, or dialogue and narrative that further enlighten the reader’s understanding of the situation—what she’s accused of, etc. In fact, I’d strongly suggest this in order to beef up the bare bones I’ve come up with.

Overall, the goal of this close line-by-line read was to identify not only places to polish the writing but also to root out and fix any weaknesses in the scene itself. Do you think that was accomplished?

  ***

 RU Crew, what do you think about Gina’s suggestions? Can you apply some of Gina’s tips to your own scenes?

 Thank you to Gina for the valuable feedback! 

 Gina’s Bio: Gina Bernal has over eight years of publishing experience in both editorial and marketing/sales. She is currently a freelance editor for Harlequin’s digital imprint, Carina Press, for which she is actively seeking romance of all subgenres and heat levels, urban fantasy, and suspense/mystery novels with strong female leads. Gina loves books that make her laugh, books that make her cry and books that do both. She’s a sucker for tortured heroes, badass heroines, unusual settings and classic themes with new twists. She holds a B.A. in History and Literature from Harvard University and resides in the Boston area.

You can follow her on Twitter @GinaBernal

Welcome back to RU, Cris!

Hello, RU!

Cris Dukehart here… audiobook gal.

Before we begin, I really must apologize;  I fear that I may be a bit rough around the edges…

For some time, you see, I have been recording Shiloh Walker’s Ash Trilogy,  three gripping romantic suspense audiobooks released by the marvelous folks over at Tantor Media and, now, four weeks later, I smell suspiciously of the green apple slices I use to de-goop my mouth, Throat Coat tea and Chapstick.   My head is wrapped unceremoniously in a bandana and I am rather concerned that my favorite mismatched socks, (one gray and white stripedy and one lime green and white polka dot, both, you will be pleased to hear, with happy hot pink toes and heels) have been on my feet so long that, once removed, they might run away from me of their own accord never to be seen again.

I am a vision… and absolute vision!

More disturbing than this, however, is that for at least part of the last four weeks, I have lived inside the head of a serial killer.   I have hunted young girls, their futures bright with promise, and I have brought them down in their prime.  I have played horrible, frightening games of cat and mouse, committed shocking acts of brutality, and I have done it all with an almost pleasant ambivalence.

I have lent my voice to a monster.

The concept of “voice” is a tricky thing.  It’s a chameleon among words, isn’t it?

It can mean the power of speech, an expression, an utterance or vocalization.

Merriam Webster suggests that a voice is also an opinion or a view, a vote or role, or even a mouthpiece or a champion.

Wikipedia defines an author’s voice… your voice… as “the literary term used to describe the individual writing style of an author”.   It goes on to say that an author’s voice is “generally considered to be a combination of a writer’s use of syntax, diction, punctuation, character development, dialogue, etc., within a given body of text (or across several works).”  There are whole books devoted to this sort of voice; websites dedicated to it.  It’s a good thing to have apparently, a distinct author’s voice.  You may even have attended seminars and conferences on finding and developing yours.

But what if… for argument’s sake, they are all one and the same?

Every author has their own voice, by definition, a way of utilizing syntax and diction and punctuation.  But what happens when those words, that syntax and diction and punctuation are vocalized?  E.E. Cummings, for instance, was known for scattering words all over a page with little notice it seemed, to punctuation or capitalization.  In fact, some of his work appeared, at first glance, to make little sense… little sense, that is, until it was read out loud.   Mark Twain and Charles Dickens used dialect to such an extent that unless it is read aloud, it is often difficult to recognize the near phonetic spellings found within their dialog passages as English at all.

Now, I don’t know much about anything of importance, but it seems to me that when a book changes points of view within the story, the voice alters as well.  Though it may do so subtly, I’ve found that particularly in dialog, but also in description of scene and people, characters seem to use the author’s language in their own unique ways.

Because the point of view in Shiloh Walker’s Ash Trilogy changes, even within chapters, it seemed of particular importance to discern the different character’s voices.  Ms. Walker, (a spunky lass with a Kentucky twang of her own), was invaluable in this task.  She told me things about each character that had little, it would seem, to do with how they actually SOUND, but that mattered a great deal to how they were HEARD.

This was never more important than in zeroing in on the voice of the killer.

Within the text of the first book, “If You Hear Her”, we learn that the killer has a slow, deep, almost patient drawl.  We read that he is amused with his games, that he feels a sort of affection for his victims.  And that, for the most part, is the extent of his vocal description.

Enter Shiloh Walker.

From the first, Ms. Walker was clear… the killer’s parts should be read “without emotion”… he “is a monster”.  (It is only fair to report here, that only the first book was made available to me when I began recording.  I finished it a few days before speaking with Shiloh.  I was able, using AMAZING feats of restraint and prudence, to refrain for nearly 5 whole minutes into the conversation, from positively BEGGING her to tell me who the killer was.  In my defense *indignant sniff*, it was for entirely professional reasons that I needed to know.)

We then had the fun task of deciding who would be the vocal red herrings.  Who amongst the other characters, exhibited enough similarities in habit and personality to the killer to share vocal characteristics with him… we needed to be able to auditorily mislead the listener, just as they were mislead in the text.

Which takes me back to lending my voice to a monster.

Recording his parts with “no emotion” took on its own life… a flippant, bored, slightly pleased and entertained sound… a sound that over the course of the three books, began to reveal a cruelty and disdain for human life and a disturbing apathy that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

I developed a disturbing tendency, while recording his parts, to raise one hand in caress of a cold cheek or a flippant gesture… to mimic an indifferent half lidded stare.

Leaving my studio late one night, I walked casually through the inky black.  (This wouldn’t be of note at all except for the fact that I have, since childhood, had a wild fear of the dark.  I was (and still am) the gal who flees one lit space for another, dashing willy-nilly through the dark.  I have even been known to outrun my children in my flight, leaving their small selves to the mercy of the boogyman!) This particular evening, however, despite the unlit night, there was no sign of my usual dash from lighted interior, through scary monster-laden dark, to the car.

“How curious.” I puzzled. “What is THIS?”

For some time, as I drove, I pondered this new and unusual ennui for the dark until it occurred to me quite suddenly that there was a very simple reason why I wasn’t afraid of the monsters.  I wasn’t afraid because somewhere in my mind, I was the monster… I had indentified with the boogyman.

And while that scared me enough that I stopped on my way home and bought a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia, it did occur to me that just maybe I had found the killer’s voice.   That perhaps in finding his voice, his story, Shiloh Walker’s story would do what we all want a good story to do… to transport us into the world of the book… into the world of the author.

In Shiloh Walker’s syntax, her diction, her development of character and use of punctuation…

In the casually apathetic vocalizations of horrors…

In analyzing the killer’s role… not just how he sounds, but how he is heard by others… In this, I hope, we find a monster… and in voice we most certainly find a champion.

***

RU Crew, have you ever listened to a book where the villain was given away (or well-concealed) by the narrator? Also, feel free to ask Cris questions about voiceover or how she purged Shiloh’s monster from her body. Don’t forget Cris and Tantor Media have generously offered to give away a CD set of Shiloh Walker’s If You Hear Her, the first in Walker’s romantic suspense Ash Trilogy. 

Don’t miss Friday’s lecture when editor Gina Bernal will return to teach us more about line editing!

***

Bio:

Dear Ms. “Editor”,

Marc’s Rock is a finished, 70K word, Mystery Romance. Take out the commas and use lower case for the genre. Romantic suspense might be the genre you’re going for here?

Carly James is running from her past and headed in a direct path that collides with her future.  What she has failed to see, is that her future is in the hands of Marc, the lead singer for an up and coming rock band.  We need to care about Carly and feel a connection with her. Give us who she is in a nutshell. “Carly James—__insert three adjectives or nouns that describe her__–is running from her past.” We don’t need “and headed in a direct path…” because no matter who we are, our pasts are bound to collide with our futures so that loses impact. You don’t need a comma after “see.” We need to connect with her, know that she’s running, and we need to understand what her agenda is—one sentence telling us her goal so that we can understand how Marc wasn’t part of the plan.

Marc Sanders has finally achieved his dream and is well on the way to becoming a successful rock band singer.  Suffering from a recent heartbreak; Marc fights with himself to lead his band and struggles with new lyrics. Use a comma instead of a semi colon after heartbreak. Why does the heartbreak cause him to fight with himself and struggle with new lyrics? Go deeper. And once we understand his struggle, tell us his agenda before Carly messes it up. J

After coming along on Carly’s vehicle – which is stranded in the middle of Death Valley – Marc and his band take Carly in while they continue on their tour across North America. Marc is running from a broken heart, while Carly is running from the law. Your last sentence is great!! Way to sum up each character’s reasons for running. Your first sentence needs some trimming. Say this in the simplest way possible. And then give us a sentence letting us know WHY Marc and his band would decide to do something as outlandish as take in a stranded motorist for the remainder of their tour. We need motivation and believable reasons here.

The chemistry between Carly and Marc is almost immediate; however, both have hidden secrets, some larger than the other.  Can they open their hearts to one another? Or will the law finally catch up with them and ruin any chance of a happily ever after? I suggest cutting “some larger than the other.” I think we need to know in paragraph one what Carly did to get the law after her. You don’t have to go into details, but maybe when you give us words to describe her, one of those can be “thief” or “murderer” or whatever it is she did. Good job summarizing the things that stand in the way of their happiness!

I am a member of the Romance Writers of America and the Liberty States Fiction Writers.  I have spent the past twelve years serving in the Air Force and (am) now investigating crimes in the financial world.  Throughout it all, I have been an avid reader and writer, often bringing the stories in my head, (delete comma) to life on paper.

If you are interested, I will gladly send you the entire manuscript.  I hope you will consider me for your list (comma) and I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,

Deserie Comfort

Thank you for sharing your query letter! I really love the idea of a girl running from the law and a boy running from a broken heart who are destined to meet. Sounds like so much fun! I think once you bring your characters to life a bit more and get rid of the proofreading/punctuation errors, you’ll have a much stronger query on your hands. Best of luck to you with this!

***

Readers, what questions do you have for C.J. regarding queries? We’d love to hear from you.

Thank you to Deserie for submitting to Query Writing 101. We appreciate you allowing us to use your work.

Stop by Wednesday when Voice over artist Cris Dukehart will share insider secrets with us – how finding a unique narration voice for each character is critical. She will also give away a CD set of Shiloh Walker’s If You Hear Her, the first in Walker’s romantic suspense Ash Trilogy!

***

Bio: C.J. Redwine is an author of young adult novels and an experienced teacher. After teaching high school for several years, she turned her love of using innovative teaching strategies to the publishing field and began creating materials designed to equip writers with the skills necessary to succeed. Her book QUERY: How to get started, get noticed, and get signed is available now for Kindle and Nook. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband, four kids, two cats, and one long-suffering dog. To learn more about C.J., visit her website: http://cjredwine.blogspot.com.

Weekly Lecture Schedule for May 7 – May 11, 2012


http://www.RomanceUniversity.org

As usual, we have a fabulous line-up this week, including two of our regular columnists, C.J. Redwine and Gina Bernal. Another not-to-miss lecturer is the fun (and funny!) voiceover artist Cris Dukehart.

Mon, 5/7– Monthly columnist C.J. REDWINE is back with another fantastic lecture! http://cjredwine.blogspot.com

Weds, 5/9 – Voice over artist CRIS DUKEHART will share insider secrets with us – how finding a unique narration voice for each character can cleverly camouflage or give away the killer! She will also give away a CD set of Shiloh Walker’s If You Hear Her, the first in Walker’s romantic suspense Ash Trilogy! www.crisdukehart.com

Fri, 5/11 – On Friday, our line editing series continues with GINA BERNAL editing reader submitted pages.

All Romance University lectures are generously provided by our Visiting Professors. RU is a tuition-free zone!

All our best,

Kelsey Browning, Adrienne Giordano, Robin Covington, Carrie Spencer, Tracey Devlyn, Jennifer Tanner, and Becke Martin Davis

Hi all—it is always a pleasure to return to RU for lively discussions on writing. Thank you, crew, for having me back!

Chaos? Tame It So You Can Write.

I’ve always loved the Friday theme here, because chaos is how I start every manuscript. Literally. Look up chaos in the dictionary and you’ll see one definition states: “the formless matter supposed to have existed before the creation of the universe.”

Now, let’s be honest—when you write a book, don’t you feel a little like the all-knowing Creator? There’s joy in the creation of a story, fleshing-out the characters, unfolding the plot, the revelations of evolving emotion. It’s thrilling and cathartic. But it can be hard to break through from total chaos to the point where that story begins to really take shape.

It’s that shape that makes all the difference. Because a well-structured story speaks to readers. Don’t misunderstand—I’m not going to give you the magical formula for a story structure. I don’t believe there’s just one. Every story is organic, but just like every plant and animal that breathes life, every story will have a structure of its own that defines the shape.

How do you know when you’ve found it? The key evidence of structure is clarity. This means clean writing, well-chosen, powerful words strung together to weave a story that not only engages the reader, but succeeds in making the reader believe that every choice made at every turning point was absolutely the right and natural choice. It’s clear descriptions, clear actions, a voice and style that are natural to the story and engage the reader.

I’m not prescribing an info dump at the beginning of your book. But as each piece of information is revealed, it must be a clear and logical fit with the character’s previous actions. It must have meaning (even if the reader isn’t clear yet what the full meaning is). Highlight useful information to build clarity and cut the extraneous details that muddy the story.

Often, I find, clarity is lacking from my first draft. It comes with the revising and the polishing. That’s because I need to see the whole story before I can decide what elements need to clarified, what points need to be revealed when, what aspects of the characters will speak to the reader. I storyboard my story after the first draft to find all the lumps and bulges and sags in its shape. This is when I structure the story—again, not to any one formula, but to its natural shape. (See my former RU post on Linear vs Non-Linear Storytelling for a bit more on structure.)

Another important factor I find to achieving clarity with my story is focus. My focus. Focus is clarity’s friend and chaos’s worst nightmare. Focus allows us to immerse ourselves in the world of our story.

Ever been snorkeling or scuba diving? Try this analogy. Chaos is being thrown into the water with a mask and some sort of breathing apparatus (snorkel or tank). You have to get your bearings, clean your mask/visor. You have to come to terms with not breathing through your nose. You have to acclimate to water temperature, waves, wind, sun. I swear, it takes me fifteen minutes or more to even dunk my face below the water.

But when I do, I immerse myself in that world. The filtered light, the sounds of bubbles (yes, you can hear bubbles beneath the water) and splashes, the power of my limbs moving me through the water. I lose myself and simply exist while I watch fish and plants, corals and turtles, eels and starfish. I become one with the habitat and cease to think about anything that happens above the water.

Total immersion with your story leads to faster, cleaner drafting and better clarity of the final draft. But in today’s techno-speed, multitasking world, that kind of focus can be hard to achieve. Email and social media beckon us. We may have current releases to promote, blogs to write and read, a web site to update. We have contracts to review, negotiations to consider, readers we want to connect with, reviews we want to celebrate or wish we could ignore. An author’s life requires more than just writing fiction these days.

We want to immerse ourselves, but there’s always something making us bob our head above the water line, break focus, get slapped with a wave and forget how to breathe. Some authors learn to adapt and happily churn out pages in the midst of household chaos. Others, like me, flail about, trying to control the chaos (or ignore it) long enough to get in a few thousand words here and there.

If you’re a fellow flailer—or perhaps a debut author or someone who weeps every time technology changes—I invite you to visit Author E.M.S., a new online community for authors that I’ve started to build with the instrumental assistance and great advice of Kelsey Browning. The web site acts as a resource library filled with tools and tidbits to help answer your business questions so you can get back to writing fiction. Save Time. Reduce Stress. Improve Focus. Watch our intro video.

You may not always conquer chaos, but you can tame it in both your fiction and your life as a writer. Take the time to build structure in your writing day, find the organic shape of your social media interactions and clarify a plan that balances new fiction with necessary promotion.

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What do you find to be the most chaotic part of your writing life or writing process? Have you experimented with different structures?

On Monday, May 7, C.J. Redwine returns with her monthly column. Join us!

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Bio:

Amy Atwell worked in professional theater for 15 years before turning from the stage to the page to write fiction. She now gives her imagination free rein in both contemporary and historical stories that combine adventure and romance. When not writing, Amy runs the WritingGIAM online community for goal-oriented writers and has recently launched the Author E.M.S. online resource library. An Ohio native, Amy has lived all across the country and now resides on a barrier island in Florida with her husband and two Russian Blues.

Visit her online at her website, Magical Musings, Facebook, Twitter and/or GoodReads.

Adam Firestone takes questions at the OVRWA workshop

Romance University: At an Ohio Valley RWA workshop in April, you demonstrated how to set up a timeline charting the sequence of events in an action scene (this applies to action scenes in any fiction genre). The key, as I recall, was to determine if the timeline supports the required plot element. I think you called this the Dynamic Entry Sequence. Could you elaborate on that for us?

Adam Firestone: Sure! I think that a bit of explanation as to where this comes from may be useful. I’ve worked in the defense industry for many years as a “systems engineer.” Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering that focuses on the design and management of complex engineering projects over their entire life cycle, from concept to retirement.

I’ve designed systems involving naval mine warfare, amphibious warfare, countermine and demining operations and cruise missiles. All of those systems have a temporal component that is critical in determining system validity, or suitability for use in the intended environment. That is, a system may operate perfectly, but simply take too long a time (or, too short) to do the job it’s meant to do.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say we have an air to ground missile system designed to kill air defense radar. The missile system has to do a number of things to make this happen. For example, it’s got to acquire the target’s emissions, provide an indication that it’s ready for launch, get launched from the attack aircraft, start the motor, ride the target emissions and successfully detonate when it hits the target. The prototype does all of this beautifully, and the engineers throw a wild party to celebrate. Well, as wild a party as engineers ever throw. Wouldn’t want to bend the slide rules too much…

Meanwhile, the program manager, a former Wild Weasel pilot (Wild Weasel pilots flew missions expressly intended to suppress enemy air defenses.) walks in with a very dour look on his face.

“What’s wrong, Burglar?” says one of the engineers. (Former pilots, by the way, always go by their call signs…)

“Exactly,”says Burglar. “For your information, it takes a Greyhound twenty seconds to acquire, two to launch, and one point five to get to the target aircraft. That’s twenty three point five seconds. That means that while your missile is still attached to my wing, thinking about what the *$&#!!@ it wants to do, the bad guys have put a missile right into my air intake, and I’m flying with the angels. Epic FAIL.”

In this case, while the system worked as advertised, it was unsuited for the job because the functional timeline failed to support the operational reality. Similarly, when a writer creates scenes, she may get the detail exquisitely correct, but, due to the cumulative real-world time elapsed for each detail, wind up with a scene that doesn’t ring true, or worse, derails the plotline.

Adam with members of OVRWA

RU: You used the term “Sequence Analysis” to describe this process. “Violent action,” my notes say, “is rapid action, a complex sequence of events.” This process includes decomposing the sequence into Atomic Events, analyzing each event for components and deciding what has to happen first. What sort of components should an author look for?

AF: You do this every day without thinking about it. When you want to make sure there’s food in the fridge, you “Go grocery shopping.” But really, grocery shopping is a collection of a number of atomic events, each of which can have plot impacts. A simple decomposition of the Grocery Shopping process might look like this:

1. Grab list from fridge.
2. Walk to garage.
3. Get into car.
4. Open garage door.
5. Exit garage.
6. Drive to supermarket.
7. Park car.
8. Enter store.
9. Collect products.
10. Checkout.

One or more of these may be broken down into sub-events. We could probably break down “collect products” into another ten (or if you’re a particularly picky shopper, more) sub-events. The important thing for writers to remember is that each sub-event both takes time and is the entry point for a plot element.

In the case of the former, this helps to avoid situations where a character’s back is figuratively turned for fifteen minutes and an hour’s worth of story happens. In the case of the latter, it provides the author a number of potential springboards. For example, the car keys could be dropped when the heroine is getting into her car, and as she unexpectedly bends over to retrieve them, she might spoil the assassin’s sight picture and dodge a bullet.

Becke Martin Davis with a US M-4 Carbine - holding it all wrong, of course!

RU: You cautioned us not to brush off tricky details in an action scene, assuming it will all come together in the end. “They can just…”, you said, isn’t a satisfactory answer, particularly if it breaks the law of physics. My notes include process model, over watch scenario and other mysterious terms. Can you give us an example of a “They can just…” plot twist that ignores natural laws?

AF: It’s a longhand way of pointing to Occam’s Razor. Paraphrased, Occam’s Razor says that the simplest answer to an issue is usually best. For our purposes, this means that authors shouldn’t make characters do inexplicable or extraneous things. For one example, a character (other than in a paranormal story) can’t traverse a three mile distance in five seconds. For another, unless it’s absolutely necessary for the story, a character shouldn’t need to load her pistol at superhuman speed before she uses it.

RU: In a recent post on your blog, you noted that handguns aren’t very good at what they’re intended to do—which is not to kill, but to defend. Timing, as you noted, is critical:

Handguns aren’t especially good at providing effective personal protection. Let’s look at an illustrative example:

It gets worse, by the way. The average person can run seventy yards – that’s most of the way across a football field, folks – after being fatally shot with a handgun. Given that, in the above case, Bert may very well die after Alice shoots him, but not before he carves Alice like a Thanksgiving turkey. From the example and the timing (all of which is real, by the way), we can equate “effective personal protection” with “near instant incapacitation.”

Bearing that in mind, what defensive weapon and ammunition would be optimal for our heroes and heroines in a similar situation?

AF: I’m going to assume that you won’t let me arm your heroine with an AT4 antitank rocket or an M4 carbine with an underbarrel M203 grenade launcher , and that we’re limiting things to handguns. It’s important to realize that with handguns, as can be seen from my blog excerpt above, it’s really about multiple hits and shot placement.

It’s an article of faith in defensive handgun training that the threat is engaged with two rapid shots (a “double tap”), assessed to determine if it is still a danger, and either engaged again or attention is shifted to a new threat. Given that I’m a belt and suspenders kind of guy, I’m more a fan of what is called the “Mozambique Drill.”

This tactic, according to legend, derived from an experience by a Rhodesian mercenary during the Mozambican War of Independence. The Rhodesian, armed with a 9mm Parabellum pistol, turned a corner and bumped into a terrorist with an AK-47. The Rhodesian double tapped the terrorist, two rounds to the chest, but the terrorist didn’t go down. Taking deliberate aim, the Rhodesian shot the terrorist in the head. This time he went down and stayed that way. A Mozambique Drill, then, is a quick double tap to the chest followed by a deliberate aimed shot to the head.

It isn’t about being bloodthirsty, it’s about stopping someone who wants to do very, very bad things to you. Useful in plot situations where the bad guy is wearing a vest!

Anyway, the “best” is a combination of the largest and most potent caliber the character can carry that’s consistent with the story – it may be a pistol in some cases and a rifle in others, the most effective defense ammunition available – usually some form of jacketed hollowpoint and effective control of the firearm.

Author Kay Stockham at the OVRWA workshop

RU: In a sequence diagram, time is vertical—I think I’ve grasped that concept. In the workshop, you discussed breaking the diagram components into the technical and operational aspects of the scene. How does an author determine which category an event falls under?

AF: Operational refers to the character’s or the story’s goal. The character might need, to, oh, I don’t know, kill a dragon with a pistol. The technical refers to the means by which the goal or objective is achieved. Continuing the dragon killing example, the technical means would be the pistol itself. The writer should compare the technical means to the operational requirements to see if the two mesh.

For example, a 9mm Parabellum Glock, given the currently popular crypto-biology of dragons, wouldn’t work, and would likely turn off readers who are knowledgeable paranormal fans and gun buffs. A modern incarnation of the Confederate LeMat revolver firing a custom shaped charge shell would fulfill the scene’s technical requirements and resonate well with a wide spectrum of readers. To reiterate, operational equals the “what,” technical is the “how.”

RU: In the example I quoted earlier, you noted that an average man can run 21 feet in about 1.5 seconds. Is it necessary to know this kind of information, as well as details like the time it takes to shoot a gun or the speed of the bullet before we can create an accurate timeline?

AF: The short answer is “yes.” Timelines are as much a product of the “how” as the “what.” If you don’t have a handle on the mechanism by which the scene is effected, then the scene fails. This spans genres and historical periods. For example, a realistic description of transportation by horse requires at least some understanding of the horse’s carrying capacity, average speed, food and rest needs and the effects of terrain. Taking that a step further, you have a system consisting of horse, rider and environment and writing effectively requires familiarity with all three.

RU: Do you have any other tips for choreographing action scenes?

AF: Can I be shamelessly self serving for a moment? The best tip I can give is to retain me as a consultant to help with your novels.

Following that, the answer is to learn as much as you can as often as you can. Knowledge of the “how” makes the vision of the “what” much easier to convey. In the end, writing is about creating and sharing a vision with the reader, and the more you know, the richer, more complete and more plausible that shared vision will be.

RU: Thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us!

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Do your stories include action scenes? Do you plan them out step by step?

Join us Friday when author Amy Atwell discusses taming chaos in story structure.

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Bio:

Adam Firestone brings more than 25 years of experience with weapon systems including small arms, artillery, armor, area denial systems and precision guided munitions to Romance University. Additionally, Adam is an accomplished small arms instructor, editor, literary consultant and co-author of a recently published work on the production of rifles in the United States for Allied forces during the First World War.

Adam has been providing general and technical editing services to authors and publishing houses specializing in firearms books since the early 2000s. Additionally, Adam provides literary consulting services to fiction authors including action scene choreography, technical vetting and technical editing. In this line of experience, Adam has had the fortune to work with well known authors including Shannon McKenna and Elizabeth Jennings.

You can read Adam’s full bio here. Check out Adam’s blog, Arma Virumque Cano. He’s also on Facebook

I’d like to thank Romance University and Becke Davis for inviting me to blog today. What author doesn’t love getting a chance to chat with readers!

For those who don’t know me, I’ve been published for going on eight years now. I started out in ePublishing then progressed to traditional New York publishing. I still have my feet in those two venues, but I’ve just recently started releasing my old eBooks via the self-publishing route.

Self-publishing. It’s changing the entire publishing landscape. Authors have more freedom and readers have more choices. However, a quality read is one thing every reader wants in a book. Quality means different things to different people, but one thing’s certain, a competently formatted and edited story makes for a better book. It’s a criterion the reading community reiterates on a consistent basis.

When a reader buys a book, they want to be entertained. When they’re deep into the story, readers get really irritated when they’re continuously stumbling over typos, misused words, or other issues that an eye for detail would have caught. In other words, readers want to enjoy a great story uninterrupted, but finding a good read is like mining for gold. Word-of-mouth continues to be a primary source of readers finding a great story, but another way is an author brand.

One such author brand is Rock*It Reads whose members include Monica Burns, Pamela Clare, Lila DiPasqua, Cheryl Holt, Vanessa Kelly, Kris Kennedy, Margo Maguire, Mia Marlowe, Elisabeth Naughton, Sharon Page and Joan Swan. We are traditionally published authors committed to producing the best quality self-published reads possible. We do that by ensuring our self-published books receive a strong editorial review, go through a solid copyediting process, and are properly formatted for a multitude of popular eReaders.

Branding isn’t a new concept in marketing. It’s about creating a recognizable product. For instance, Ellora’s Cave is known for eErotic romance. Harlequin is another brand readers recognize. When you pick up a HQ Intrigue, Presents, SuperRomance, etc. you know the exact type of read you’re buying. It might be written by an author you don’t know, but as a consumer, you’re thinking, hey I enjoyed the last Intrigue I read, let me try this new one.

While branding isn’t a new idea, an author brand is groundbreaking in the self-publishing industry. Rock*It Reads is the first group of its kind to develop a specific logo for our self-published books. We each publish our individual works, contract with cover artists; copyeditors, content editors and formatters; and we set our own prices. But once we’re ready to release our self-published works, we add the Rock*It Reads logo to the cover and put it up on our website. We are not a publisher. We’re just creating a recognizable brand readers can trust when it comes to a quality read.

The Rock*It Reads logo is a visual representation of quality. It says the Rock*It Reads authors care deeply about giving readers the best possible reading experience by taking into account the little things that drive readers crazy. While you might not like the story, you’re getting a read that is strong on the basics of self-publishing. These are reads that can go toe to toe with any book a traditional publisher puts out.

One of the really positive outcomes the Rock*It Reads group has seen in its growth is our partnership with Barnes and Noble. We approached Barnes and Noble about the possibility of doing a column promoting the gems of self-publishing romances that might appeal to readers. Barnes and Noble were enthusiastic about our proposal, and as a result the Love Rocks column at BNReview.com was born.

We’re not a review column, and we don’t want to be. We’re not about analyzing books. We’re just a group of readers, who happen to be authors, chatting about self-published romances we’ve found and fell in love with. We want to build a community where we chat with readers about the self-published romances they’ve enjoyed reading. And like those readers, we’ll talk about books we’ve pulled out of cyberspace and fell in love with.

There were a great many puzzle pieces to work through before Rock*It Reads became what readers see now. It took a lot of hard work, but we believe it’s worth it. We also fully expect other groups to form and develop their own brands. We see that as a good thing for readers. Readers’ expectations for a quality read is what drove us to start Rock*It Reads.

As other groups catch onto the idea of author brands, readers can expect to find even more self-published gems they might not have found otherwise. Author brands that are committed to quality make it easier for readers to find books they’ll enjoy without the major pitfalls of books that don’t have a recognizable seal of quality. So check us out at RockItReads.com, I think we have a few of those gems you’ve been looking for in self-published romance.

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How many of you read e-books? Have you wished for higher quality standards in self-published books?

On Wednesday, weapons expert and literary consultant Adam Firestone answers questions about choreographing direct action scenes.

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Bio:

Monica Burns with Charles Paz (Mr. Romance 2009) at RT earlier this month.

From the days when she hid her stories from her sisters to her first completed full-length manuscript, she always believed in her dream despite rejections and setbacks. A workaholic wife and mother, Monica believes it’s possible for the good guy to win if they work hard enough.

Monica is a survivor, and it’s a topic she has become well versed in. A survivor of date rape at the age of 19, writing erotic romance has aided her in the life-long process of healing. Her writing has helped her reclaim some of her self-worth, and you can read her story here.

Find Monica at her website, on Facebook and on Twitter. Monica also blogs at Barnes & Noble Review, Love Rocks.