In Which I Introduce Team Maries and Share Some General Thoughts

The teams are set, and #TeamMaries is looking pretty great:

Clarissa Hadge and JETSTAR FIGHTER PILOT (#109)
Fataima Ahmad and THE SHAPE OF THE MANGO (#169)
Katelyn Larson and WHISPERMAGE (#29)
Kristin Reynolds and THE LAST PAPER DAHL (#69)
Maria Hebert-Leiter and REVELATION (#81)
Sarah Adair and THE DREADFUL GOOD (#67)
Triona Murphy and MONTANA GOLD (#140)
Wendy Daughdrill and TRUE NORTH (#159)

And last but not least, the other half of #TeamMaries, Anna-Marie McLemore, my brilliant guest coach!

That gives us two MGs (a fantasy and a contemporary), five YAs (a sci-fi, a fantasy, a historical, a mystery, and a romantic adventure), and one adult project (which is literary fiction). I always try to spread my teammates' entries out on the age/genre spectrum, but I was especially pleased with how this group turned out.

Before I go any further, a disclaimer: I'm not an agent, so I'm in no way an expert on queries, the market, or publishing in general. In other words, please take all these thoughts for what they are--my thoughts. These are just a few of the things I noticed as I whittled down my list:

1. A good comp title can signal that you know the market, but an overused one may do just the opposite. Quite a few of the YA fantasies in this batch compared themselves to GRACELING or THRONE OF GLASS, so it wasn't long before my eyes glazed over every time I spotted one of those titles. The best comps aren't so obscure as to be unheard of, but they probably also aren't the best-selling books in your genre.

2. It's really easy to sum up your characters or underscore your themes at the end of your query, but resist the temptation! If your summary's done its job, you won't have to tell agents what your story's really about. You might also want to avoid laundry lists of plot points. If we can't tell how the pieces will fit together, we probably won't care about them as much as you think we should.

3. I thought there was a ton of intriguing sci-fi in this bunch. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's good to be aware of what other people are writing so you predict how the market might shift.

4. I'm still leery of anything that smacks of dystopian. If your futuristic thriller mentioned a revolution, it probably didn't make it onto my lists. Which isn't to say futuristic thrillers can't sell-- they've just got to bring a new hook to the table. It seems like a rebellion should immediately raise the stakes, but because we've seen so many, they typically serve to LOWER a story's stakes. There are a thousand and one other ways to inject conflict into a plot, so at least for the time being, pick one of those. Seemingly small, deeply personal stakes can often end up being the biggest stakes of all.

5. There were quite a few entries I was really excited about--until I discovered that they'd been in three other contests. Overexposure is real--agents get ornery if they have to keep reading the same entries over and over--so picking and choosing your contests might be a good idea.

What stood out to you as you went through the entries?

Help! Bonnie Needs a Real Title

Help! I'm almost finished with Bonnie, and I still haven't come up with a title. I feel like I'm stuck in a bit of a rut, so I thought I'd throw some ideas out and see what you guys think:

BEFORE AND AFTER

BEFORE AND AFTER YOU LEFT

BEFORE AND AFTER YOU WENT AWAY

FROM HERE ON OUT

ME AFTER YOU

WHERE WE GO FROM HERE

I know it's tough to evaluate a title when you have no idea what the story's about, so here's a query-style summary I came up with on the fly as well as the first page:

The Summary When seventeen-year-old Karina Hart gets a text from an unknown sender--at pearl st bridge. its over--she doesn't assume a race ended. She assumes the sender's about to jump. And sure enough, when she gets to the bridge, she finds Matthew Singer, who's standing on the railing, considering the drop. Before their lives went down the toilet, they used to be friends, and Karina sees Matthew as a chance to redeem herself.

Fifteen-year-old Karina Hart knows as soon as she gets home that her sister is dead. Still, she can't quite believe it when she finds Lily in the bathroom, an empty bottle of sleeping pills clutched loosely in her hand. Lily promised her she wouldn't kill herself, and like a fool, Karina believed her. If Karina hadn't been so stupid, Lily would still be alive.

As the front story moves forward and the back story moves backward, Karina realizes why she feels compelled to save Matthew from himself and, more importantly, where she needs to go from here. But knowing and doing are two very different things, and Matthew's life isn't the only one that hangs in the balance. If she can't figure this out, she might lose her mind, literally.*

The First Page I get the text on Monday night, in the locker room at the Y. My phone chirps in my pocket, but I don’t pull it out. My parents would assume I’m either in the pool or on the road, and none of my friends bother to contact me anymore. I towel off my hair, then stuff my things in my bag. It isn’t until I’m trudging out the door, the last one to leave (as always), that I slide my phone out of my pocket. I don’t recognize the number, but the message makes me trip:

at pearl st bridge. its over

A dozen explanations race through my head--a car died, a race ended, someone just had a baby on the side of the road--but the only one that makes sense is also the only explanation I can’t think out loud.

I flick back to the number and remind myself to breathe. The digits gleam in the dim light, but I still can’t place them. The number isn’t in my contacts, and the sender didn’t sign.

Whoever sent the text didn’t mean to send it to me.

At least that’s what I tell myself as I half jog, half stumble across the parking lot to Lily’s car--my car--the car she left behind. For the first time since I inherited it, I have a hard time getting the key into the lock.

“Stupid key,” I mutter even though I know my hands are trembling. As I climb into the car, the only things I can think about are those six little words: at pearl st bridge. its over.

I know it's almost as tough to evaluate a title based on a few hundred words, but if you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear them! (And if you have any other ideas for the title, feel free to throw them out!)

*Please note that I realize how vague and mostly unhelpful that third paragraph is. It's just hard to summarize two diverging plotlines in a single paragraph, and since this isn't an official query, I don't want to give myself a headache:)

Introducing Team Krista 2013! (Plus a Few Thoughts on the Entries)

And here's my awesome team (in alphabetical order)!

Alexa D. and FUTURESHOCK (#19)
Catherine Lo and THIS IS HOW IT ENDS (#136)
Heidi Lang, Kati Bartkowski, and MYSTIC COOKING (#35)
Jenny Kaczorowski and THE EXTRAORDINARY ART OF FALLING (#41)
Jerilyn Patterson and WISHING (#94)
Jessie Oliveros and A PRETTY PIRATE PICKLE (#14)
Laura J. Moss and WATER LILY (#127)
Mackenzi Lee Van Engelenhoven and DEATH AND THE GLASSMAKER'S DAUGHTER (#124)

with Ashley Turcotte and LUMINARY (#3) as my alternate

That gives me two MG projects and six YA projects, with a YA alternate. Interestingly, that breakdown matches last year's breakdown almost exactly (though I did have a few adult projects on my team last year as well).

To be honest, I found redeeming qualities in a lot of entries (though I did spot problems, too). In the end, it came down to my personal tastes, which is what it's always going to come down to. Hopefully, you'll find an agent--and especially an editor--whose tastes will match your own, but if you don't, there's always the next manuscript. That was my mantra for so many years: "There's always the next manuscript" (assuming, of course, you really want to go traditional, which, admittedly, not everyone does, and that's okay).

Before I go any further, a disclaimer: I am in NO WAY an expert on queries, the market, or publishing in general, so please take all these thoughts for what they are--my thoughts. These are just a few of the things I noticed as I whittled down my list, and they say a lot more about me than they do about any of the entries.

A few things that stuck out to me as I was reading through the entries (in the order that I wrote them down):

1. There was a lot of fantasy in this group, and the queries didn't always match the first pages. A lot of the summaries seemed to describe high fantasies, but when I got to the pages, they were obviously set on our world, in our time. That disconnect was jarring and made me worry that the writer didn't really know what they were writing.

2. The plot points in a query need to build on each other. This is especially true for contemporaries. Real life is something we can all relate to, but contemporary stories still need to have an inciting incident, rising action, a climax, and a denouement. Of course, you don't need to summarize all of these plots points in your query, but you do need to show a strong cause-and-effect relationship between the events you do mention.

3. It was weird when a query would summarize the whole plot in a few sentences at the beginning, then go back and summarize it again in another two or three paragraphs. I know some agents and industry sites encourage writers to develop loglines, but I don't think you're really supposed to squish loglines and queries together. (Some queries do start off with taglines, one-sentence (or less) hooks of the sort you might see on book covers. I'm not a huge fan of these, either, but at least they flow a little better with the query itself.)

4. Several of the entries suffered from what I call the bait-and-switch. The queries described one project, and then the first pages seemed to start another. This is related to point one above, but it's not restricted to fantasies. You want your query and first scene to flow together. Readers should be able to immediately see how they relate.

5. Some concepts blended fantastical and normal elements for no apparent reason, and I had a hard time getting excited about those. That's mostly just my own personal preference, though I do think everything in a query--and a manuscript--should serve a specific purpose. If you can't show how the pieces fit together in the query, then it makes me think you haven't put them together in the manuscript very well, either.

6. I noticed a lot of ghosts and a surprising number of werewolves in this batch of entries. That's not necessarily good or bad; it just means you're going to have to compete directly against all the other people writing about ghosts and werewolves, so your project has to be that much better.

7. I came across several well-written projects that I actually loved; the only problem was that they were several years too late. In one case, the premise was too similar to a recently popular book (and movie), and in several others, the genre was off. It's all but impossible to sell a dystopian right now, but then, you wouldn't want to launch a dystopian series at the moment, as it would look kind of derivative and probably not sell many copies.

That's it from me! What stood out to you as you perused the entries?

Bullies, First Days, and Magical Realism

After poring over Pitch Wars applications for the last couple of weeks, I had a few thoughts I wanted to share with you. Keep in mind, I was reading applications for MG manuscripts only, so I don’t think these points necessarily extend to writers in other categories (except for the definition of magical realism, of course).

 

On the whole, I was quite impressed with the MG applications in this contest. Of the 49 applications I received, I ended up hanging on to about 25% of them, kicking another 50% into the “Up for Grabs” folder, and flagging the other 25% as not quite there yet. I can’t remember the last time I thought 75% of the queries I read had potential, so that’s quite a feat in and of itself. And now for a few more trends I noticed:

 

1. A TON of the opening pages involved bullies or first days of school (or both), so if you’re going to use one of those motifs, you shouldn’t rely on it to be your hook. I’m not saying you can’t have a bully or a first day of school in your first chapter; in fact, several of my favorite applications involved bullies or first days of school in one way or another. Just know that, if you do, you’re not alone, so you’re going to have to do something special with it.

 

2. A query needs more than a paragraph-long summary. I know a lot of websites, including some prominent agency ones, encourage writers to use this query formula: one paragraph for business (title, category and genre, word count, etc.), one for summary, and one for bio. But I found I didn’t get a very good sense of the plot if the summary was only a paragraph long. Specifics are the lifeblood of a query, and you don’t have enough room to cram very many into a single paragraph. So I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the summary in a query should be at least two paragraphs and, in some cases, maybe three or four. So long as everything fits on one single-spaced page (and you haven’t overly adjusted your margins), you’re good.

 

3. No one really knows what magical realism is. I’m not sure I do, either, but I feel like I have a better handle on it than I did even six months ago, so I wanted to share some of the ideas that have been bouncing around in my brain. I’m pretty sure none of the magical realism applications I received actually fit within that genre, so hopefully, this will help.

 

The problem is, magical realism is a misnomer; magical realism is NOT a realistic story with magical elements. Well, it is, but the definition has more to it than that. In general, magical realism involves an Unexplained Phenomenon--hereafter known as the UP--that actually exists outside, not inside, the story. Put another way, the UP creates a frame for the story that affects the main character’s perspective while leaving everything else unchanged. Here are a few other characteristics of magical realism:

 

--The main character is usually the only person who can even tell the UP is happening. She could try to explain it to the people around her, but since there’s no evidence of the UP outside her own head, they probably wouldn’t believe her.

 

--Even though the main character can tell the UP is happening, he can’t control it. By the end of the story, he understands it no better than he did at the beginning, though he’s probably learned something from this change in perspective. That’s one reason why magical realism is a really tough genre to write in: because you have to get your readers to completely suspend their disbelief without ever finding out why or how the UP was occurring.

 

--If your story involves an object, a creature, a physical transformation, or superpowers, it’s probably NOT magical realism. Contemporary and/or urban fantasy, certainly, but not magical realism.

 

By those criteria, the best examples of magical realism I’ve encountered are Lauren Oliver’s BEFORE I FALL and Gayle Forman’s IF I STAY. And that old movie with Bill Murray, Groundhog Day. I saw it again on TV a few weeks ago, and I was like, “Holy cow! This is magical realism!” :)

 

That’s all I’ve got. Hope you have a great weekend!

Gearing Up to Write a Query?

I’ve read a lot of queries. When you’ve spent as many years in the query trenches as I have, that’s just what happens. I’ve written probably two dozen drafts of queries for my own manuscripts, and I’ve done my time at sites like Absolute Write and Nathan Bransford’s forums, reading, learning, critiquing. Hosting “An Agent’s Inbox” has also exposed me to mountains of queries, and I can assure you I’ve read every single one of them. (You can thank Gmail and Blogger’s inability to preserve each other’s formatting for that.)

All of this is the roundabout way of saying I’ve had a little time to figure out what works and what doesn’t, and as I read through the “Gearing Up to Get an Agent” entries last week, one thought kept running through my head:

I don’t think these entries are as good as some of the other judges seem to think.

Now I only read the entries on my assigned blog (and as you read on, it’s going to become pretty apparent which blog that was if you followed the contest), and I really, really, REALLY don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I only want to point out a few of the overarching problems I noticed in the hopes that, someday, somewhere, this might help someone make it through the hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing experience that is writing a query.

1. Contemporary queries, perhaps more than any others, have to showcase compelling, unique hooks. So many of the contemporary entries I read relied too heavily on a hot-button topic to draw the reader in. If you’re hoping your current, edgy subject matter will carry your query (“SUICIDE!” “ADDICTION!” “SEXUAL ORIENTATION!”), you’re probably going to be disappointed. The vast majority of the contemporary entries in this contest addressed one of these issues, so the issue in and of itself isn’t a strong enough hook. You need to do something more with it.

2. Historical queries must entrench us in their time periods and, at the same time, introduce us to timeless characters and/or problems. Historicals are tough, no doubt about it. You have around two hundred words to introduce us to a world and character we won’t immediately relate to, and yet you have to do it in such a way that we’ll see the parallels to our own lives. Most of the historical queries in this contest didn’t quite rise to this standard, at least in my opinion. I either didn’t buy the voice (because I thought it sounded too modern), or I didn’t buy the world.

3. When everything is said and done, tastes really are subjective. After I finished my first read-through, I had exactly ten entries on my short list but only felt strongly about three. I ended up crossing a few of those off and adding a few others, but one that I kept coming back to was also one that didn’t have the strongest hook. Still, I had a personal weakness for that type of story, so even though I knew it had some problems, I voted for it, anyway, and I stand by that vote. An agent may very well do the same.

Last but not least, I’ll add that there’s no one right way to write a query--and that there’s certainly no one person who has all of this figured out. So take this with a grain of salt, and keep plugging away. All the blog posts in the world won’t teach you what you’ll learn simply by giving it a try.

In Which I Introduce Team Krista and Share Some Thoughts About the Entries

First off, allow me to introduce my awesome team (in alphabetical order)!

Anna-Marie and THE COIN DIVER (#35)
Ben Spendlove and DRIVERS (#149)
Carla Cullen and THE FALLEN PRINCESS (#152)
Erin Petti and THELMA BEE (#117)
Jennie Bailey and SILO (#64)
Lisa Koosis and THE ROAD OF THE DEAD (#45)
Michelle Mason and DUET WITH THE DEVIL’S VIOLINIST (#75)
Noelle Henry and FACE THE MUSIC (#50)
Ryan Hancock and AN UNCOMMON BLUE (#122)
Sarah Henson and PLAYING WITH FIRE (#146)

with Lori Eastep and CHRONICITY (#101) as my alternate

That gives me two MG projects, six YA projects, and two adult (sci-fi) projects, with an MG alternate. I like the balance of my team, and the truth is, most of it evolved on its own. I did go in thinking that I needed to have more YA projects than anything, just because it’s the most represented category among the participating agents, but these really were the projects I loved most.

As I was building my team, I originally divided the entries that caught my interest into two groups--“Contenders” and “Strong Contenders”--then realized that I was going to have enough strong contenders as it was and that I didn’t need to keep two lists. I ended up with thirty-nine strong contenders total, and of those, eleven ended up on my team (obviously), at least five or six on someone else’s, and another withdrew just yesterday after receiving an offer of representation. (Congratulations, Andrea Berthot!)

Before I go any further, a disclaimer: I am in NO WAY an expert on queries, the market, or publishing in general, so please take all these thoughts for what they are--my thoughts. These are just a few of the things I noticed as I whittled down my list, and they say a lot more about me than they do about any of the entries.

A few thoughts I had along the way:

1. After reading through a batch of entries (say, twenty or thirty), I sat back and asked myself, “Now which ones do I remember?” And the truth was, not many. Quite a few of them sounded like something I’d read--or heard of--before.

2. And speaking of things I’d read or heard of before, I’ll admit that words like “guardian,” “demon,” and “angel” immediately made me pull back. In all of those cases, the writing really had to stand out to make me take a closer look. Angels and demons are the new vampires--a lot of agents have blogged/tweeted about how they’re overwhelmed with those creatures--so you might be facing an uphill battle when it comes to querying a manuscript with those elements.

3. When I did remember an entry, it was almost always because the concept had captured my attention.

4. At least in my opinion, writing followed concept. If the concept stuck out to me, the writing usually did, too. (I’m still trying to decide if that’s because I was giving the high-concept folks the benefit of the doubt or because the people who did the best job explaining their storylines were also the best writers.)

5. I passed on several entries--including several great entries--simply because I knew the writers had been querying them for a while and worried that our agents might have seen them before. In a few cases, I knew the writers and their querying histories, but in a few others, the writers specified in their introductions that they thought the manuscript was on its last legs. I wouldn’t do this. You want every agent to think that she’s the first agent you’re querying, so I’d keep your manuscript’s battle scars to yourself.

6. So many entries seemed to have a good story buried in there somewhere, but I had a hard time picking it out from all the subplots/extraneous words in the query. I thought a lot of the queries were trying to do too much. (“Then this happened, then THIS happened, then THIS happened, and now here’s a list of all the other interesting elements that I couldn’t work into the summary.”) If you don’t think your main plot is strong enough to hook an agent, then your problem isn’t your query or first page--it’s your manuscript.

7. I noticed a lot of huge stakes without much explanation. Almost every other query ended with some line about how the world was on the brink. You can dangle the fate of this world and every other on a string, but if I can’t tell how exactly the world is in jeopardy--and more importantly, if I can’t tell why the characters care that the world is in jeopardy--then I’m probably not going to care, either. As I learned back in high school debate class, you can link pretty much every story to nuclear holocaust, so huge stakes for huge stakes’ sake might not hook an agent.

8. I sat up a little straighter every time I stumbled across an entry for a YA or MG contemporary, and to be perfectly honest, quite a few of these impressed me. However, I worried that the agents would find most of them too quiet. Quiet novels are the opposite of high-concept ones, so if your YA contemporary doesn’t have a strong hook (think French boarding schools for ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS or backpacking for WANDERLOVE), then even if you do land an agent, he or she is going to have a hard time selling it.

All right, I think that’s all for now. This post is already way too long:) What stood out to you as you read through the entries, and which ones would you have picked?

Steve's Query and First Page

I'm half excited and half nervous to share Steve's query and first page with you. Gives me a new appreciation for how you "An Agent's Inbox" entrants must feel, and this isn't even a contest!

Anyway, here they are (for the time being, at least). Feel free to leave your feedback in the comments. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Steve's Query Twelve-year-old Ella Mae is a sensible girl. She believes in the Good Lord Jesus Christ and tunes in once a week for that new television show I Love Lucy (but only when Dragnet isn’t on). So when some egghead scientist starts spouting nonsense about deoxy-something-or-other and how he can regenerate her auntie Mildred’s long-dead son from the blood on his old dog tags, Ella Mae doesn’t believe him. Or at least she doesn’t until a man steps out of the bio-pod and drips yellow-green slime onto the floor.

Problem is, the man who steps out of that bio-pod isn’t her cousin. He’s a Japanese.

Ella Mae knows that she should hate him, but when he can’t remember his own name, she feels more pity than hate. Ella Mae gives the man a name and, like any good mama, vows to protect him from the world. She spits at the reverend for calling him an abomination and even tells off her loose-lipped cousin for trying to kiss him. But when the man’s memories resurface, memories about the war and what really happened on the day his blood splashed on her cousin’s dog tags, Ella Mae has to learn the hard way that she can’t protect him from some things.

[TITLE], complete at 52,000 words, is an MG historical with a dash of science fiction. [Agent-specific comments]

I am a BYU graduate, a stay-at-home mom, and a blogger. My blog, Mother. Write. (Repeat.), receives an average of 8,000 pageviews a month.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Steve's First Page Mama said it was plum foolishness to keep my cousin’s dog tags like that, with his blood still stuck between the ridges of his name. “Don’t know why Mildred won’t wash ’em,” Mama muttered one day while scrubbing dishes. “It’s like she thinks that blood will keep Robby alive somehow, like it’ll keep him with her. And we both know that’s plum foolishness.” She shook a soapy finger in my face. “That’s foolishness, Ella Mae, and don’t let anyone tell you any differently. Especially Auntie Mildred.”

But that was exactly what Mildred told me. “It’s not foolishness, Ella Mae,” she said one day while sweeping floors. “It’s science.” She gave the broom a flick. “And one of these days, those eggheads who invented the atomic bomb are gonna figure out how to create life instead of just destroy it.”

I never told Auntie Mildred what Mama had said, and I never told Mama what Auntie Mildred had said, either. Those two already had enough to fight about, seeing as how they were sisters and all. In fact, when Mama answered the telephone that Saturday afternoon, I figured it was Auntie Mildred calling to resume their ongoing argument about Ajax.

But I was only half right.

“Settle down, Mildred,” Mama said, since she wasn’t the sort to stand for anyone’s shenanigans (especially Auntie Mildred’s). “Now what’s this about Robby?”

I stopped chomping on my asparagus. Something told me I’d want to hear every word of this particular conversation.

An Announcement and a First Page

No interview today (spring must be a busy time in the publishing world, as agents have been taking a little longer to get back to me), but I did want to let you know about next week's interactive interview with Victoria Marini of Gelfman Schneider Literary Agents, Inc. Ms. Marini will be here to take your questions next Thursday, March 31, and we'd love to have you here, too.

Also, I thought I'd share a bit of the new, new Bob with you. This rewrite has been consuming me, and I'm happy to report that I'm just as excited about it now as I was when I first started. So without further ado, here's the new, new first page (so far):

Wynn High School had to be the snappiest-looking hellhole in the country’s entire public school system, but then, what did they expect from a high school that had started out as the snappiest-looking casino on the Strip? Everything was decades old, from the leaky roof to the even leakier plumbing, but thirty years ago, so they said, it had all been really nice. The desks were leftover nightstands from the tower suites upstairs, and the golden details in the frescoes had supposedly been painted with actual solid gold.

Of course, the frescoes were all so pockmarked they were completely unrecognizable, and Adair was pretty sure actual solid gold wasn’t actually paint-able. Still, she liked the idea that Wynn was sort of a metaphor for her life. Once upon a time, it had all been pretty posh, but now everything about it pretty much sucked.

Adair sank into her threadbare seat in what had once been called Encore Theater but was now known as Plunkett Auditorium, so named because Mr. Plunkett was the first principal who’d been brave enough to use it since the Last Recession. The others had been too afraid of creating a Toothless mob, but that, of course, had been before her time.

The mood in the auditorium was trippy, all nervous anticipation and pent-up energy. The teachers, transplanted sharks from the southeast and northwest quadrants, probably thought they were excited to find out who would have the chance to hang out with all the rich people at Old Man Hermes’s annual Symposium for Kids and Old People on Biomedia, Nirvana, and Discovering Just How Screwed You Are Because You Don’t Have a Wingtooth (or something like that).

Little did they know that Adair wanted to do a whole lot more than hang out with Old Man Hermes and his brainless sharks.

I'm still smoothing things out, of course, and I'm not entirely convinced that this is the absolute best place to start, but I do like the imagery in these lines and this first taste of Adair's voice. If you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear them. And if you'd like to share a snippet of whatever you've been working on, I'd love to hear that, too.

The "Help! Bob Needs a Title" Blog Contest

Hooray! It’s the day we’ve all been waiting for! (Okay, maybe I'm the only one who's been waiting for it...) The “Help! Bob Needs a Title” Blog Contest is here!

As many of you know, I’ve been calling my work-in-progress Bob for almost a year now, and while it’s an affectionate nickname, it’s not a very useful title. I’m thinking you can come up with a better one.

To enter, simply read Bob’s query and first page below, then leave your suggested titles in the comments section of this post. You’re welcome to include feedback in your comment, but make sure you clearly identify your entries so my trusty sidekick (read: Honey Bear, my husband) doesn’t miss them.

I plan to judge the entries blindly, meaning I won’t know who submitted what. My trusty sidekick will transfer all the entries into a separate document, no names attached, and I’ll make my picks from there.

The Rules

1. Anyone may enter.

2. Everyone who enters may submit up to seven entries. (You don’t even have to do anything to get those extra entries--I just don’t want you to have to choose between several equally good titles.)

3. In the unlikely event that the same title is entered more than once, every entry but the first will be disqualified (although the disqualified entrants may submit other entries).

The Prizes Four lovely agents have agreed to offer query and/or first-page critiques to the winners:

Amy Boggs: Query plus first-page critique
Sarah LaPolla: First-page critique
Andrea Somberg: Query plus first-page critique
Marissa Walsh: Query critique

I plan to name three winners, so the first-place winner will get to pick two of these prizes, the second-place winner will get to pick one of the remaining prizes, and the third-place winner will receive the remaining prize.

And here’s the kicker: If I like the first-place winner’s title enough to actually use it AND this manuscript lands an agent, the first-place winner will also win a fifty-dollar Amazon gift card. In addition, if said agent likes the title enough AND the manuscript lands a book deal, the first-place winner will also win a Kindle (or another comparable e-reader of his or her choice).

The Query The 2046 International Biomedia Conference is the most celebrated event for high school students on the planet. But when Seth receives an invitation to attend, the last thing he wants to do is celebrate.

Seth hates biomedia, especially his Wingtooth, the tooth-shaped implant that links his brainwaves to the Stream. The too-smooth voices give him headaches, and he’s never found much use for a Camera that takes pictures with his eyes or a Music Player that blasts its sounds straight into his brain. His parents, though, are less concerned about his health than they are about his chance to meet Marvin Hermes, the industry’s reclusive founder. He has to go--and use his Wingtooth, which he hardly ever does.

Not ten minutes off the shuttle, Seth introduces himself to the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen by accidentally dumping his breakfast on her. Worse, the girl is Toothless, part of the recession-ravaged class unable to afford Wingteeth, and probably took the dumping as an insult. Little does Seth know that wearing his breakfast on her sleeve is the least of Adair’s concerns.

Ever since her mother died in an overcrowded Wingtooth factory, Adair and her father have been masterminding a Toothless takeover. Their plan is simple: Shut down the Stream, assassinate Marvin Hermes, and make the whole thing look like an accident. Then install one of the Toothless as chairman of the board. But their plan collapses when Adair doesn’t go through with the assassination--and when shutting down the Stream leaves the city’s Wingtoothers unable to think or even eat for themselves.

Now Seth and Adair are the Wingtoothers’ last hope. Seth will do anything to save his parents, but Adair isn’t so eager. Can she really abandon the cause she’s worked so hard for? But is she willing to let the Wingtoothers just die?

The First Page The principal’s office was bad, but the principal’s office waiting room was much worse. Seth shifted in his toothpaste-colored seat and tried to concentrate on his homework (Problem number eight. Find the limit as x approaches e of the natural log of x, b-Reader droned inside his head), but his own thoughts were so loud he could barely hear the words.

What could Ms. Mahoney possibly want with him?

The secretary looked up, almost like she’d read his mind. “Sorry for the wait.” She flashed him a phantom grin. “But I think you’ll find it worth your while.”

Problem number eight. Find the limit as x approaches--

Seth pushed the words aside, out of thought. “What do you mean?”

She cupped one hand around the corner of her mouth. “Don’t tell her I said anything, but … congratulations.”

Problem number--

“Congratulations?”

“Not so loud!” The secretary leaned over her laptop, bleached blond curls bouncing stiffly, like she was going to say more. But then something on the screen caught her attention, and she forgot all about him.

Problem number eight. Find the limit as--

Seth closed the calc book with a thought and exited b-Reader with another. But that only made way for a new flood of sounds and pictures, which burrowed into his brain with almost no thought at all. In the quiet of the waiting room, without his homework to distract him, Stream Surfer’s smooth-talking voices were impossible to ignore.

Phew. I think that’s everything. The contest closes on Monday, August 23, at 11:59 p.m. PDT. The winners will be announced no later than Friday, August 27. Good luck, and happy titling!

If You're in a Critiquing Mood...

...Check out the latest in-house critique session going on over at the Miss Snark's First Victim blog. The entries are all 250 words from a first-kiss scene, so I KNOW that sounds intriguing to you. Bob's #19--feel free to rip him apart. He needs it:)

And if you just have to read more (wink, wink), here are a few other Bob excerpts that have appeared on Authoress's blog: his first 25 words, and another 250-word blip (keyword: danger).

A (Showing and) Telling Example

I got to thinking about yesterday’s post, about stripping a scene down to just those bits of information a movie would convey, and decided to give it a try with Bob. So I hunted down the shortest scene I’ve written (why experiment with ten pages?) and pruned it of every bit of telling I could find. I’m sure I missed some, but if you can ignore that, and remember that this is a rough, ROUGH draft, I’ll let you read it:) Here it is:

Two hours later, they were strolling back across the parking lot. Adair had fallen behind the others, and Seth was matching her pace.

“Your dad seems nice,” he said.

“He is.” She sent him a sidelong look. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

Seth looked sideways at her, too. “For a shark, you mean.”

“No,” she replied, looking away. “For a person.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry about your…tissue,” she said after a pause.

“Oh, that’s all right,” he replied, giving his blazer pocket a weak pat. “It should come out in the wash. Maybe.”

“I’d buy you another one,” she went on, grinning slyly, “but I don’t think they sell anything like that in the Strip.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” he said again, with a small smile of his own. “I’m sure you could try Myron’s or something.”

“Can’t,” she replied, still grinning that sly grin. “No time. I’ll be getting ready for the Last Banquet tonight.”

He relaxed. “Tomorrow, then.”

Her expression slowly drained. “I don’t think we’ll be seeing much of each other after that.”

His smile faded, too. “Oh. Right.”

They were nearly to the limo now. He grabbed her elbow.

“How about dinner sometime, then?” he asked. “Or a movie? Or, I don’t know, cactus tipping? Or all three?”

Her eyebrows crinkled. “Cactus tipping?”

He shrugged. “My parents sent me to Wyoming for summer camp one year. The counselors up there talked about going cow tipping. But we don’t have any cows.”

“Oh.” She looked down at her elbow, which was still clenched inside his fist. “Right.”

He let it go. “Well?”

She glanced up at his face, then over at the group--or maybe just at her father--then down at the ground, then up at his face again. “Sorry, Clumsy,” she said at last, only able to meet his eyes for a moment. “But I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

His shoulders drooped. “I guess you’re right,” he mumbled. “Cactus tipping could be kind of dangerous.”

A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, but it was gone before it reached her eyes.

“And what about the movie? Dinner?”

She just shook her head.

“Why not?”

She chuckled without much humor. “Because in my neighborhood, sharks are about as common as cows--and Toothpicks aren’t harmless bits of wood.”

Seth swallowed hard.

Adair started to walk away, toward the rest of the group, and he didn’t stop her. As he watched her glide away from him, long red hair swaying gently as she moved, he couldn’t help but call after her, “We could still make it work.”

She stopped, looked over her shoulder, and flashed him a sad smile. “No, Clumsy,” she murmured, just loud enough to reach his ears. “We couldn’t.”

What do you think? No, really, you can say it, because I think it’s missing something, too. For one thing, we hear none of Seth’s thoughts, and since I’m writing from a close third-person point-of-view, that’s a problem. Also, as agent Kristin Nelson mentioned in her post yesterday, there are times when telling is warranted, even required, to communicate vital pieces of information. Plus, all the sparkle’s gone. So here’s the un-pruned original, now with the telling bits in blue:

Two hours later, Mr. Hermes had run out of things to blather about and they were strolling back across the parking lot. Adair had fallen behind the others, and Seth, like an ever-faithful guard dog, was matching her pace--and grasping madly at some topic of conversation.

“Your dad seems nice,” he said at last, since that was the best he could come up with.

“He is.” She sent him a sidelong look. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

Seth looked sideways at her, too. “For a shark, you mean.”

“No,” she replied, looking away. “For a person.”

“Oh,” was all he said. It was the best he could do with his insides fluttering the way they were.

“I’m sorry about your…tissue,” she said after a pause. But she sounded like she was trying to hold off a snort.

“Oh, that’s all right,” he replied, giving his blazer pocket a weak pat. “It should come out in the wash. Maybe.”

“I’d buy you another one,” she went on, grinning slyly, “but I don’t think they sell anything like that in the Strip.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” he said again, with a small smile of his own. “I’m sure you could try Myron’s or something.”

“Can’t,” she replied, still grinning that sly grin. “No time. I’ll be getting ready for the Last Banquet tonight.”

He actually felt himself starting to relax. “Tomorrow, then.”

Her expression slowly drained, like a smiley face balloon deflating. “I don’t think we’ll be seeing much of each other after that.”

His smile faded, too. “Oh. Right.”

They were nearly to the limo now, but he didn’t want to be. He wanted to see her smile again and know that he’d been the one to put it there. And he didn’t want tomorrow to be the last time he ever saw her. So he grabbed her elbow.

“How about dinner sometime, then?” he asked, letting the words tumble off his tongue before he had a chance to think better of them. “Or a movie? Or, I don’t know, cactus tipping? Or all three?”

Her eyebrows crinkled. “Cactus tipping?”

He shrugged. “My parents sent me to Wyoming for summer camp one year. The counselors up there talked about going cow tipping. But we don’t have any cows.”

“Oh.” She looked down at her elbow, which was still clenched inside his fist. “Right.”

He let it go. “Well?”

She glanced up at his face, then over at the group--or maybe just at her father--then down at the ground, then up at his face again. “Sorry, Clumsy,” she said at last, only able to meet his eyes for a moment. “But I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

His shoulders drooped. “I guess you’re right,” he mumbled. “Cactus tipping could be kind of dangerous.”

A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, but it was gone before it reached her eyes.

“And what about the movie? Dinner?”

She just shook her head.

He’d already come this far; he might as well go all the way. “Why not?”

She chuckled without much humor. “Because in my neighborhood, sharks are about as common as cows--and Toothpicks aren’t harmless bits of wood.”

Seth swallowed hard, felt his Adam’s apple bob. He’d heard of Toothpicks, of course, dirty weapons used to kill a Toother with the electric pulses from his own Wingtooth, but he’d never seen one. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to.

Adair started to walk away, toward the rest of the group, and he didn’t stop her. He wanted to tell her about his Wingtooth--and the headaches--but he couldn’t, not without going back on his word. Still, as he watched her glide away from him, long red hair swaying gently as she moved, he couldn’t help but call after her, “We could still make it work.”

She stopped, looked over her shoulder, and flashed him the same sad smile his mom had used to tell him there was no Santa Claus. “No, Clumsy,” she murmured, just loud enough to reach his ears. “We couldn’t.”

Still not satisfied? Me, neither. The scene needs trimming, as it could still do without some of this telling, and because there are always words to cut. Like I said, though, this is a very rough draft, so I’ll be coming back to it. The version I end up with will likely be somewhere in between these two, if I don’t scrap or rework it altogether.

My final word, then, is that a scene needs both showing and telling, though much more show than tell. And getting the balance right takes practice--but doesn't everything?

Miss Snark's First Victim's Drop the Needle Critique Session

Check out the Drop the Needle critique session Authoress is hosting over the next few days (including a few lines from Bob--he's #11). These submissions are 250 words that represent danger in some way, and critiques should focus on the tension and pacing--and of course, whether (or not) you want to read more.

Definitely head over there and share a comment or two. Or ten or twenty. Every comment will be helpful; I know I'll be looking for all the feedback I can get. And if you're a regular reader of mine, don't feel like you have to sugar-coat anything you might say about Bob. He's pretty tough--and we both know that any criticism you have you only share out of love:)

Revisions : Krista :: Kryptonite : Superman

All right, I’ll admit it: Revising is by far my least favorite part of writing. I love that first draft. I love constructing each sentence, yanking each word out of my cerebrum or up from my toes. I love the story’s newness in that first draft, and I love getting to know the characters, seeing how they emerge.

The second draft is all right. Cleaning up my tendency toward verbosity is always a good thing, and scene management is easier once there’s actually something to manage. But then the third draft comes along…and the fourth…and the fifth. By then I’ve pretty much memorized every chapter word for word, the story sounds about as original as a TWILIGHT rip-off, and the characters’ eccentricities are starting to get on my nerves.

Still, I persevere. I do everything I can to make it the best it can be, I get some readers to give me their suggestions, I revise again. I force myself to write a query letter and (much, much worse) a synopsis, and then I stop, hold my breath, and hope that some small voice at the back of my head starts screaming, “All right! Be done with it! Send it off now!”

So I send it off. I close that abominable file for good and let out a very large breath. But then something really terrible happens: Someone likes it enough to request pages--but not enough to offer representation. And I find myself wondering, “What do I change now?”

If revising is my least favorite part of writing, revising during the query stage has got to be one of my least favorite parts of life. Because I usually don’t know what Agent A didn’t like, and Agent B might not agree, anyway. And even if a consensus about a specific problem begins to emerge, what if I start work on a major revision and Agent C stops by my inbox to request more material? Do I send them the (apparently) flawed original manuscript, or do I rush through the changes? Or do I just pitch the keyboard across the room and go find some chocolate?

The truth is, my rational side already knows the answers to these questions. One agent’s opinion is simply that. Many agents’ opinions are probably as good as a divine manifestation (assuming they agree). And just send those pages, flaws and all, with a brief note perhaps about the planned changes. But the rest of me still has a hard time dealing with all the emotional peaks and troughs. Sigh.

At least writing this blog post has been a bit therapeutic. Still, I think I’m going to take a break now and go look for that chocolate…

Miss Snark's First Victim's Secret Agent Contest

Check out this month's Secret Agent contest, which features an entry from yours truly (I'm #7). Each entry is the first 250 words of a completed manuscript, and the readers are supposed to decide whether they're hooked and would like to read more. It's called the Secret Agent contest because one actual agent is also in the mix; he or she offer constructive criticism, and the ones the agent likes best get to submit sample pages. It's a great idea, and kudos to Authoress for setting it up each month. I hope I win (say that in your head the way Mr. Bean would say it--if he ever talked, that is).