OK. Maybe a bit cliche.
Blog about writing, post about querying. Ha, ha. Didn't see that one coming, except... did.
But this is really important to me. While I'd love to blog about Quails and Quests and Quartz, Querying is something huge in the world of publishing and you don't really realize that until it occurs to you that maybe, just maybe, the only thing standing between you and a publishing contract is two hundred and fifty words.
That is, if your manuscript is really great. But the thing is, you can never know for sure what your manuscript is like if agents and publishers don't read it, and chances are, they won't read it unless they're grabbed by your letter.
And how do you know if it's your query letter writing or your novel content that's holding you back if you keep getting form rejections?
It's also tough because it seems like everyone has different rules for a query letter. Some say to make it stand out somehow. Others say that anything gimmicky is an automatic No. Some love for the voice to shine through, but some want straight-up information. The blog Query Shark gives great examples of what to do and what not to do, but even she admits that not every rule always applies.
I finally had mild success with one when I revised a query letter because I won a free query critique in a contest. The contest host gave me constructive comments, but way less than all the other times I'd gotten feedback from others. If I had a quarter for ever time I've given my query letter content a total upheaval... well, I'd have a bunch of quarters, and wouldn't have to worry about laundry money.
Query Letters. They're like the Queens in a game of chess. The better you can play your queen, the better your chances. But if it's gone, if it's down for the count, well... you can fight hard, but it's going to make everything more difficult.
Is it a coincidence that they both start with 'Q'?
What are some of your query wonders and woes? I'd love to hear about your experiences!
-Tome-
Friday, April 20, 2012
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
P is for Plotfest
Today is Plotfest, which is a blogging event hosted by Scribble and Edit at http://scribbleandedit.blogspot.com/ . I found out about this through Dianne Salerni, who I follow here: http://diannesalerni.blogspot.com .
Plotfest is a day where different writerly bloggers discuss how they plot their stories! Well. I have a few things I can say on this matter, 'cause I have tried maaaaaany different methods.
1) Literally just writing names and drawing lines. For my first NaNoWriMo novel, I decided to write a murder mystery based on this basic premise: what if the man holding a community together was suddenly removed? And, even worse, what if it was because he killed himself? Of course, it was a murder mystery so you learn pretty quickly that he didn't kill himself. But because the community I had in mind was a knotted web of people, I knew everything had to connect and a plot had to still shine through. So I wrote out a web of characters and then drew lines between them without knowing much about them. Then when I went to write the novel, I had a lot of material because I just had to come up with the reason why Person X was connected to Person Y and why Person Y was connected to Persons A and B. It was a really fun method. Did the novel make much sense? Not at first. But I went back and edited it about a year later, and I think it actually became decent. Or at least fun, and comprehensible.
2) The bell graph. The cousin of my previous method, this is the graph that you probably had to draw in school. You know, Conflict, Climax, Resolution - and when you got into the higher grades, they started throwing around words like "denouement." I'm a very visual person, so graphs like these help me out. If I know my character needs to go from A to B to C, then getting there isn't as hard. Everything that happens has more purpose than if I let the characters wander aimlessly for a while (which is also a method I tried, and will not be making the list). Often my story changes from the chart. In a novel I'm working on now, I scrapped the final scene, which I'd written a long time ago, because it didn't feel like the right ending anymore. Instead, I wrote a similar scene with a different result - and put it back in the Conflict, near the start of the novel, not as the end. Funny how things turn out like that.
3) Faulkner-esque stream of consciousness. This is honestly the closest method to how I compose music. You just kind of channel the emotions into your fingers and let go. But with novel-writing, I get stuck more easily on this method. Unless it's really helping me build a character or a landscape, I tend to feel a pointlessness to the whole thing eventually if I start like that. But, it is a good place to start. Sometimes you don't know what the good part of your novel is until you have a lot of bad stuff to cut out of it.
4) Drawings. As I've mentioned before, I find it helpful to draw (er, maybe more like doodle) my characters if I'm having trouble visualizing them, or if I just want to feel more connected to them. Sometimes I'll draw characters in whatever situation I feel like. If I like the drawing enough, I might work it into my plot by creating a story around that scenario I've just drawn them into.
5) "Name, age, place of birth.." A few years ago, I discovered the wonders of the character sheet. They're those fill-in-the-blank questionnaires for your characters so you can learn all the trivial background stuff about them, in case it ever comes up. One time I was doing this for a farm boy character, and I knew that his least favorite food was escargot. "But when would he have ever been in a situation where he could have tried that?" A story began to bud from there...
Those are the methods I have found most effective. They might not work for everyone, but I like having options in case I ever get stuck.
Which of these have you tried? What else do you try to do?
Tome
Plotfest is a day where different writerly bloggers discuss how they plot their stories! Well. I have a few things I can say on this matter, 'cause I have tried maaaaaany different methods.
1) Literally just writing names and drawing lines. For my first NaNoWriMo novel, I decided to write a murder mystery based on this basic premise: what if the man holding a community together was suddenly removed? And, even worse, what if it was because he killed himself? Of course, it was a murder mystery so you learn pretty quickly that he didn't kill himself. But because the community I had in mind was a knotted web of people, I knew everything had to connect and a plot had to still shine through. So I wrote out a web of characters and then drew lines between them without knowing much about them. Then when I went to write the novel, I had a lot of material because I just had to come up with the reason why Person X was connected to Person Y and why Person Y was connected to Persons A and B. It was a really fun method. Did the novel make much sense? Not at first. But I went back and edited it about a year later, and I think it actually became decent. Or at least fun, and comprehensible.
2) The bell graph. The cousin of my previous method, this is the graph that you probably had to draw in school. You know, Conflict, Climax, Resolution - and when you got into the higher grades, they started throwing around words like "denouement." I'm a very visual person, so graphs like these help me out. If I know my character needs to go from A to B to C, then getting there isn't as hard. Everything that happens has more purpose than if I let the characters wander aimlessly for a while (which is also a method I tried, and will not be making the list). Often my story changes from the chart. In a novel I'm working on now, I scrapped the final scene, which I'd written a long time ago, because it didn't feel like the right ending anymore. Instead, I wrote a similar scene with a different result - and put it back in the Conflict, near the start of the novel, not as the end. Funny how things turn out like that.3) Faulkner-esque stream of consciousness. This is honestly the closest method to how I compose music. You just kind of channel the emotions into your fingers and let go. But with novel-writing, I get stuck more easily on this method. Unless it's really helping me build a character or a landscape, I tend to feel a pointlessness to the whole thing eventually if I start like that. But, it is a good place to start. Sometimes you don't know what the good part of your novel is until you have a lot of bad stuff to cut out of it.
4) Drawings. As I've mentioned before, I find it helpful to draw (er, maybe more like doodle) my characters if I'm having trouble visualizing them, or if I just want to feel more connected to them. Sometimes I'll draw characters in whatever situation I feel like. If I like the drawing enough, I might work it into my plot by creating a story around that scenario I've just drawn them into.
5) "Name, age, place of birth.." A few years ago, I discovered the wonders of the character sheet. They're those fill-in-the-blank questionnaires for your characters so you can learn all the trivial background stuff about them, in case it ever comes up. One time I was doing this for a farm boy character, and I knew that his least favorite food was escargot. "But when would he have ever been in a situation where he could have tried that?" A story began to bud from there...
Those are the methods I have found most effective. They might not work for everyone, but I like having options in case I ever get stuck.
Which of these have you tried? What else do you try to do?
Tome
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