20 Tips on Query Letters

This is another great post that came across the Guide to Literary Agents blog. Since we were talking about queries, I thought I'd share it.


Agent Janet Reid of FinePrint Literary Management gave an intensive workshop on queries at the South Carolina Writers Workshop. Here are 20 tips to writing an effective query, according to the Query Shark herself.


FOR STARTERS

• Be professional. It’s a business letter—not a personal letter.

1. Regarding salutation and tone, err on the side of caution because formality is never out of place.
2. “Dear Agent” or “To Whom It May Concern,” however, is too impersonal.
3. Pet peeve: If you’re querying an agent’s direct e-mail (i.e. “janet@” and you address the query “Dear Agent,” you don’t come across as being too smart.

• Be comfortable with computers. Publishing is moving toward the electronic age, so move with it.

1. Have an e-mail address with your name in it (e.g., SuziWriter@gmail.com). This shows her you are professional. How is she to take you seriously if your e-mail is cutiepiehoneyface@aol.com?
2. Have your own e-mail account—not one you share with a spouse.
3. Have a Gmail or Earthlink account. She says AOL is bad for queries because its spam filters sometimes eat e-mails without your knowledge, and you could be missing a reply.
4. Also, add the agents to your “safe senders” lists to ensure you receive their replies.

• Use a referral. Agents always move referrals to the top of the stack if someone they know vouches for the writer.

1. Do not, however, quote your rejection letters, friends, critique partners, paid editors, or conference critiques. These comments are not the same as referrals.

THE NITTY GRITTY

1. Don’t start with a rhetorical question. You’re talking to really sardonic people in New York City, and they’re not going to answer the question how you expect.
2. Get right to the main character—by name.
3. Tell who he/she is, and do it in as few words as possible.
4. Tell what happens to him or her—the initial point of conflict in the book.
5. Show two choices the main character faces as well as the consequences of those choices. The stakes must be high.

SUREFIRE QUERY KILLERS

1. “Fiction novel.” A novel is fiction, so when someone writes “fiction novel,” not only is it redundant, it makes the writer sound ignorant.
2. “Surefire bestseller.” Let the agent be the one to decide that. Declaring your work to be the next best thing shows you know little about the industry—and that you’re probably too arrogant for the agent to want to work with you.
3. “Film potential.” Janet says, “First of all, you don’t know shit.” (See arrogance comment above) Also, she’s not a film agent. She just wants to know what the book is about.

KEEP IT OUT

1. Inspiration. You only have 250 words, so don’t waste them. Stick to showing her what the book is about because how you came up with the idea does not interest agents in the query. “It’s the equivalent of making sausages,” she says. “I do not want to see you do it.”
2. Personal information. It doesn’t matter to agents where you live or how many cats you have.
3. Sometimes work information is relevant to you being the only person able to write a particular book; however, sometimes the worst people to write certain types of books are those who actually do those occupations (e.g., cops hate cop shows, doctors criticize medical dramas). They know the reality of the job too deeply, and it doesn’t make for good fiction.

TAKEAWAY

1. A query letter is the foundation upon which your publishing career rests, so remember: You can query too soon; you cannot query too late.


Janet Reid's publishing background includes 15 years in book publicity with clients both famous and infamous. She specializes in compelling fiction, particularly crime fiction, and narrative non-fiction, and she keeps a blog about agenting as well as a query critique blog.

Cold Querying Still Works

After locking myself away, secluded from society like the pictured monk, cold querying the entire state of New York and half the Atlantic Seaboard to find an agent to represent my medical thriller, I wondered how much trouble other writers had cold querying agents.

Then, like a streak of light, this was an interesting post that came across on the PubRants blog, which I found from the Guide to Literary Agents blog.

Guest blogger Megan Crewe, writing on agent Kristin Nelson's site, explains how she polled 270 successful fiction authors and asked them if they broke in with a referral (a personal connection with someone in the business) or whether they cold queried an agent with success.

The results came back and 62% of the authors got their agent with just a cold query. Pretty amazing - but more than that: encouraging! As agent Dan Lazar once saying that "A good query trumps all else - every time."

Don't know how good my query was, but I did get several requests to read the novel or for partials before I settled on the Bob DiForio Agency.

Now keep your fingers crossed on that sale!

So take hope!

One of my favorite writing blogs

I only subscribe to two writing blogs, and this is one of them. As writers, we're all operating ont he borderline of desperate to get our books published. Desperate and gullible. That's where Writers Beware comes in. Constantly, there's a feed of information on scams, traps, gimmicks, and other unsavory stuff we don't want to get involved in.

Here's an example from their latest post. Check them out at http://accrispin.blogspot.com/


Here are eight words you never want to hear from a publisher that is considering your manuscript for publication:

"How many books are you planning to order?"

Many writers are aware that it's a major red flag when a publisher's contract includes a clause requiring authors to buy their own books, or to commit to some kind of sales guarantee. Since an outlay of cash is a condition of publication, this is vanity publishing--what we at Writer Beware call "back-end" vanity publishing, since you're buying into the end of the publication process (finished books) rather than the beginning (paying for the book to be produced).

Stealthier back-end vanity publishers rely on pressure and encouragement, rather than contract clauses, to get authors to purchase their own books. They may produce "author manuals" that extol self-purchases with promises of huge profits, or employ "publicists" whose sole job is convincing authors that buying their books for re-sale is essential to success, or offer frequent special deals and discounts (buy 50 books, get 10 free!) to make self-purchases as attractive as a sale on canned soup at the grocery store. Since inexperienced authors may not know a lot about how publishing is supposed to work, they can be easily ensnared by this kind of deception.

Still other publishers that focus on author self-purchases are well-intentioned amateur efforts run by people who have no professional publishing experience, little or no financing, and, often, no concrete business plan. Because of their lack of capitalization and marketing expertise, it's very tempting for such publishers to settle into a business model where they rely on their authors as their principal customer base and sales force. This creates a closed loop, in which published books are marketed mainly to the books' creators--all but eliminating the publisher’s risk, and even possibly, guaranteeing a small profit. It’s this kind of publisher that’s most likely to ask you the question with which I began this post, rather than surprising you with contractual purchase requirements or bombarding you with special offers post-publication--since its intentions are basically benign, and it's not consciously trying to deceive or screw you.

Intentions aside, the author is the loser in all three of these scenarios. A publisher that relies on its authors as a main or major source of income is considerably reducing--if not entirely removing--its incentive to market and distribute the books it publishes. Why should it bother trying to sell books to the public, when it can turn its authors into customers? Why should it expend money and effort on getting books into the hands of readers, when it can persuade writers to function as an unpaid sales force, buying their own books and then re-selling them?

In each case, the publisher is failing to do what publishers are supposed to do: get books out into the world. While it's certainly true that authors nowadays are expected to self-promote, the self-promotion an author can do and the marketing a publisher should do are two different things--and without your publisher's active marketing and distribution support (I'm not talking here about writing press releases or getting books listed on Amazon), you have very little platform on which to build your self-promotion efforts. You're likely to wind up in much the same position as if you'd self-published--except that you'll probably have a more restrictive contract, a less professional product, and, in the case of the more unscrupulous back-end vanities, a considerably smaller bank account.

So if a publisher asks you about your plans for buying your own book, be on your guard. Even if the publisher isn’t obviously a vanity, even if it assures you that it's only collecting preliminary data and declares that your answer will have no bearing on its decision, the mere fact that it's thinking about author self-purchases at this early stage of the game is reason enough to move on.

(This post, by the way, was inspired by a real example: Black Rose Writing, which recently moved from just asking about authors' purchase plans, to actually including a purchase requirement in its contract.)

ThrillerFest in July - Will You Be Going

If you're writing a thriller, odds are you know about this already, but just in case you don't, here's a little update on ThrillerFest. I'm not sure yet if I'm going. My beautiful wife and I are working hard to see if we can fit it into our schedule. But if you're writing a thriller, you probably ought to give it a shot.

The place to be for thriller lovers is New York in July. It'll be hot outside but inside ... it'll be hot, too! Hot bestsellers, hot topics, hot authors. Better than going to the beach with your favorite new thriller book! You can mingle with your favorite thriller authors instead.

A preliminary schedule is available now at www.thrillerfest.org. CraftFest, held July 8-9, 2009, is devoted to writers of all levels, including aspiring writers working on their first books. AgentFest, on the afternoon of July 9th, will thrill you in a different fashion if you're looking for an agent. Over forty top agents will be available to hear your pitch.

Best Blogs by Literary Agents

Right now, I'm knee deep in the Literary Agent quest. The novel is being reviewed by a few agents in New York, and I'm waiting to see where my future lies.

I need to get started on writing the next novel, but I keep tweaking the opening to the last book, constantly trying to find a way to make in unputdownable. (that's a word right, to not be able to be put down? Anyways, it is now.)

In the meantime, as I've been browsing so many agents pages, I thought I'd share with you this list that came from the Guide To Literary Agents site. It's a very informative, helpful list of insider information. Hope it helps you on your quest. This is the list of the Writer's Digest 5 best agent blog pages.

1. Pub Rants

Denver-based agent Kristin Nelson of Nelson Literary has kept this blog up for several years, and has covered just about every topic - contracts, queries, book covers, you name it. It's one of the best all-around agent blogs out there.

2. Nathan Bransford

Sure he looks young, but Nathan, an agent at Curtis Brown in San Francisco, knows a lot about publishing, and his blog is wide in scope. He hosts small contests, talks queries, discusses the craft of writing, keeps writers' spirits up, and does it all blogging through the night. Each week, he has a roundup news post that links to dozens of stories and happenings in the publishing world.

3. Rachelle Gardner

Rachelle, at Wordserve, hasn't been agenting that long - just two years or so, and her blog was very new last year when it ended up on our 101 short list. So why did we include it last year? Because we saw potential and wisdom, and Rachelle has only upped the ante by blogging more and more. Although she specializes in Christian/inspirational works, her advice is universal and practical - dissecting book proposals and sharing query tips.

4. Query Shark

There are more "query critique" sites now, but this site was one of the first and still the best. Agent Janet Reid of FinePrint Literary invites writers to submit queries for dissection and criticism/praise. If you wonder what a query looks like - or, more so, what a good query looks like, just visit Query Shark.
The site isn't updated as often as the others on this list, but there's a reason for that. (See No. 5)

5. Janet Reid

That's right. Janet Reid runs not only the Query Shark blog but also her own blog about agenting and publishing. She talks about all things agenting and publishing, and her brutal-honesty style is like no other.

Although there was only room for five, there are several other great agent blogs to visit. Off the top of my head, I would encourage you to visit The Swivet (Colleen Lindsay of FinePrint), Dystel & Goderich (a community agent blog), and BookEnds.

Again, too much time has passed since I last posted. All for good reasons though. The research on my new novel is mostly completed and the outlining process has begun. I'm also in the process of forming a record label with my wife and "other brother from another mother." So my time has been sapped.

I've gone back and am re-evaluating my first few chapters of the prior manuscript, looking to see if I can make them even better.

Along those lines, I found this advice over Feed Blitz and thought I'd share it with you all.

This is titled, "Advice on Revising From Your Peers," and falls nicely in with my Ten Point Revision Strategy. Let me know your thoughts on these pearls and if you find this useful.

"As you work your way through each scene in a novel ask yourself:

• What is happening in this scene?
  
• Why is it important?
  
• Is it believable?
• What is the conflict? Who wants what, and who or what won’t let them have it?
• What does this scene contribute specifically and integrally to the plot? How does it drive it?
  
• Can it be cut, partially or completely, and not effect the plot?
• Can the integral part of the scene be folded into another scene, and the rest eliminated?
• When does the scene occur?
• Would the plot be better served if you moved the scene to another place in the unfolding of the story?
  
• From whose point of view is this scene experienced?
• How does this character contribute to the plot? Can another character do it so you can eliminate this one, or combine the two into one character?
• Where is this person?
• What is the POV character in the scene doing?
  
• What is he/she feeling emotionally about what’s happening in the scene?
  
• What is he/she feeling emotionally about things outside the scene?
• What is he/she seeing? Hearing? Touching? Even smelling and tasting?
• Can you exchange “he said”s and “she said”s with action?
• Can you exchange passive verbs with active ones?
• Can you exchange adverbs (“ly” words) with action?
• What does each paragraph within the scene contribute? Can it be eliminated?
• What does each sentence within the scene contribute? Can it be eliminated?

How're You Doing with Your Writing?

Busy, busy, busy.

Got lots of things popping around in the hopper right now.

The trick, I've found, is to stay obsessively organized when multiple projects are working.

My novel is currently being read by an agent in New York. Please cross your fingers for me, and I'll do the same for you when yours is ready.

I've done a lot of work on query letters, short synopsis, and full synopsis. We'll talk more about that stuff in later posts.

In the meantime, I've been outlining and researching the next novel. Love that part. More posts to come.

So, while I'm waiting to get to all that, how're you doing with your writing? I'd love it if everyone who pops on over to this blog, dropped a little comment on where you are in your writing, what's working and what's holding you up. We're all in this together!

Summing it Up - Writing the Novel Synopsis

I was going to write a post today about the art of writing the novel synopsis, but then I came upon this eloquent article that just says it better than I ever could. I've taken this from FMWriters.com, which I've found to be an excellent source of information.

You can find them in my Resource Guide to the right, and a direct link to this original post is

http://fmwriters.com/Visionback/Issue%2015/workshop.htm

I hope you find this as helpful for you as it has been for me. And thank you Sheila Kelly for writing it.

We'll rejoin later and talk about the two page synopsis versus the longer, full-novel synopsis. You will definitely need them both when submitting to agents.

Facing the Facts - Dealing with Rejection

I'd like this post to be more interactive than my last several posts. So to do that, I'd like to ask all of you a question.

How do you deal with rejection?

With my work currently making the rounds through New York, it's a fact of life that not everyone's going to love it. Lot's of form letters will come back, lot's of terse answers and lot's of rejection.

We all develop our own strategies for dealing with this. My preferred strategy is blissful denial and unbridled optimism. I've heard of writers who wallpaper their entire room with rejection letters. This, me to seems defeatist and bizarre. I handle my rejections differently. When a rejection note comes, I read it, trying to gleam any useful information that it may contain (if it is a personal letter with direct references to my work. Form letters are of no value) then I file the letter away in a file clearly labeled "Try Again."

Now, this might seem Pollyanna or sugar-coated to you, but I'll tell you it's a lot more positive and focused to get a letter, call it a try-again letter and file it accordingly. And truth is, I've gone back to the try-again file, pulled out a letter, contacted that person and had success at a later date. Persistence pays off. Never take "no" for an answer. Just keep pushing straight ahead.

As Robert Dugoni, the best writing teacher I've ever had says, "Be a bulldog."

So I'm a bulldog, and bulldog's don't accept rejection.

What's your strategy?

Formatting Issues

Now that the novel is finished, I have my most dreaded task still ahead; writing the two page summary. Honestly, I hate this part. What could be harder than summarizing your years of work into 2 short pages?

I'll have some tips and techniques for summaries coming soon, but before we get there, I wanted to clean up on final aspect of the Final Read: format.

I get asked lots of questions on word count for a thriller, font to use, etc. The basics of writing. The same stuff I had so many questions about. So in this post I wanted to clarify issues of page format, as taught to me by a New York agent. I wanted to do this in proper novel format, but blogger won't let me. Still, the information below is correct.

left margin: header: your last name/title

right margin page # at right, or in footer

(four or five lines)

Chapter Title (centered)

(two or three lines)



One tab indent (five spaces) --start first paragraph. Everything in a standard font, i.e. Times New Roman, or Courier. Always 12 point. DO NOT add an extra space after sentences. One space, that's it. Do not underline lieu of italics. Left justify only. Double space.

Indent each new paragraph with tab key.

Do not add extra double space between paragraphs, just indent.

One inch margins minimum.


Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Keep writing

Final Read and Final Changes

I don't usually take space in this blog to talk about personal affairs, but I did promise in my sub-header text that I was going to share everything with you as this novel heads towards completion, publication and it's eventual Nobel Prize :)

Anyways, I'm happy to report that this morning I put the finishing touches on the final read through (and there was much rejoicing!) After going through the Ten-Point Revision Strategy, incorporating the extra few points, I can honestly say that this is the tightest version of the novel yet. My final act, other than one last spell check, was to use the search command to help me incorporate my last revision point; eliminating "feeling" words.

Setting the search for "felt" 95 entries came up where I used the word felt. Such as "he felt his heart begin to race," etc. After re-reading each entry, there were times when I wanted to keep the "feeling" word, whether for cadence, pausing, or an intentional distancing of the character from the act, ie., when one of my character's is dying and he can feel his oxygen content dropping in his blood. But about half the time, I rewrote the sentence to remove the word. "She felt her anger rising," became "her anger surged," or such.

Tomorrow, I write the cover letter and the book goes off to my agent. On the off chance, she is no longer interested, hates it or puts out a contract on my head, I'm going to write a new query as well. I imagine then, my next few posts will be on query writing, which is always a fun and challenging thing to do.

Moving forward feels so good.

Of Key Importance - Saving Your Work

I used to have a dog named Sara (well, I have three of them right now, all Lhasa's, but what I'm talking about was many years ago.) Sara, a yellow lab mix, was a rescue, previously badly abused and terrified of men. For some reason, she bonded with me instantly, crawling across the lawn on her belly before placating herself at my feet at the doggie adoption day. She looked up at me with those big brown eyes as if to say, I know you're a nice man, please take me home. So, I did.

Sara was a wonderful dog, by my side every instant of every day. Her favorite place to hang out with me when I was writing was at my feet, underneath my desk. She'd lie down on my toes and patiently wait for about 2 hours of writing time, before she'd pop her head up onto my lap saying, "that's enough, let's go walk." I'd ignore her for a while, and she'd nudge me harder, and harder. Eventually, she'd jump her front paws onto my lap and start scratching me. "Let's go," she'd say. No more writing, let's play!"

It was a game we played every day, and I loved it.

Which brings me to the subject of today's post.

One morning, after a particularly inspired bit of writing, Sara started her routine. I'd cranked out 15 pages of beautifully (in my mind) written first draft, moving through some key scenes and solving some difficult problems. I was flying. It was the best nonstop run of writing I'd had in a long time.

Then it disappeared.

Sara, per her routine, moved to plop her head onto my lap and in doing so, her butt sat on the on/off button on my surge protector, shutting it off. My eyes gaped. My jaw dropped. But no amount of praying was going to solve this problem. I'd lost it all. Wanting to scream, instead, I looked down into the lovely brown eyes of my dog, smiled, and took her for a walk.

But I learned my lesson that day. Now, I'm compulsive about saving my work, and I'd like to encourage you, if you aren't already, to do the same.

When I'm writing, my hand instinctively guides the cursor to the save icon every page. Never, will I let more than one page be finished without saving. It's become an unconscious habit for me. At first, I thought that this repetitive stopping of writing to save the work would slow down my writing or inspiration. It doesn't. As I said, it's unconscious for me now, and perhaps the security it gives makes writing easier.

When I'm revising, rereading, I save my work after every single change. Each sentence that is modified, I hit the save icon. Every single time.

And it doesn't stop there. After each writing session, I back up all my work on a series of flash drives. I hope you're all doing this, but I didn't learn of it before too long ago, so maybe some of you haven't done this yet. Flash drives are now amazingly inexpensive, hold a tremendous amount of data, and can bring you a wealth of security. I have three flash drives that I save my novel onto after each morning session. One drive goes into my desk. One drive goes into my briefcase, which is always with me when I leave the house, and one drive is attached to my keyring, which always goes with me when I travel.

Flash drives can be fun, and you should have fun with it. Writing is fun, but it's also your love, your passion. Let the flash drive be a reflection of that fun, that love. Not that I'm into hamburgers or anything, but that picture sure makes me laugh.

It may sound strange, but I like having my novel with me at all times. In my pocket, in my case. That way, should anything ever happen to my home, the novel is safe.

Compulsive, I know. But I've worked too hard for too long on this to lose it now.

Besides, Sara would want it that way.

Revision Strategy - Choose the Right Words - Eliminate Feeling Words

A nice little tidbit that I picked up the other day. I've always know this, seen it in my own writing, but never actually put it down as a strategy point before. So today we're going to rectify that.

Here's our new point to consider in our revision strategy.

Eliminate Feeling Words.

Now what does that mean? Quite simply, eliminate the words that we use to describe our senses, but not the words that describe the sensory experience. This process will tighten your writing, force you to choose better verbs, tighter sentences, better descriptors.

So what's an example? How about this?

He felt the cold barrel of the gun pressed against his temple.

Now remove the "sense" word, and it becomes. The cold barrel of the gun pressed against his temple.

Which one do you feel is tighter? Which one conveys more drama? Which one seems more sensory?

I'm back adding a paragraph here, based on the excellent comments this post has received, but the points brought up are too important to leave to a chance finding in the comment section.

By using the "feeling word," as a writer, you are distancing the reader from the character's POV by telling them what the character is feeling, rather than putting them inside the character's body and letting them feel it themselves. Saying, "he felt the . . . " takes away from the immediacy of the moment, creating a pause that pulls the reader back.

In other words, don't tell the reader what the character felt, describe the sensation. Again, the "cold barrel of the gun pressed against his temple," is much more immediate, sensory evocative, and threatening. It is what's happening.

Of course, there's always exceptions, and there are plenty of times when I may really want the "he felt," in the sentence, but I'm trying to really look at my sentences, my length, my tightness, and this can be a simple, powerful and effective tool.

What are your thoughts?

Writing the Novel - Which Font is Best?

This is a question I get asked a lot, and as simple as it seems, it can create a lot of confusion.

What is the best font to use for my novel?

The simple answer is to use whatever works for you, is appealing to your eye, and most importantly, easy to read.

The more involved answer is that agents do have preferences. They don't want anything flashy or creative or flamboyant. Beginning writers often try to play with different fonts as a way to express their individuality or creativity. Nothing screams out amateur greater than this. The font is not where you will stand out to an agent, it's the writing. A flamboyant font is enough of a red flag for agents to toss your manuscript into the trash.

What agents want is a professional looking (and reading) manuscript that follows strict format. They also want a font that is easy to read.

Originally, I wrote in Courier because I was told it was the most neutral. I've since switched because the spacing between the letters creates too many pages for the word count. After speaking with Robert Dugoni, I now use exclusively, Times New Roman, and have since learned that this is a very commonly used, accepted font with professional writers.

Other basic fonts should be acceptable, but the beauty of Times New Roman is that the page count you'll get using this font is nearly identical to the page count for the finished product. In other words, my novel at 102,000 words is 454 pages, just as it will appear when printed (or close to it.)

Save the standing out for your writing. When it comes to font, it's best to blend in with the rest.

That All Important First Chapter - Six Tips to Getting it Right

Nothing in your book will work if you don't get that all important first chapter off the ground. No agent will read it if you make mistakes right off the bat. So, as we're heading into our final revisions, here's somethings to watch out for to avoid that first chapter clunker.

1) Description: Don't start your book off with page after page, or even paragraph after paragraph of description. Not even sentence after sentence. Don't describe the characters in detail, or the setting, or the mood. There's time for all that later. Introduce the characters, preferably in action, at or just before a big moment. Then you'll get your story off the ground. Description can come later, but even then, with modulation. There's no room in today's writing for endlessly, long, leisurely descriptive passages. I skip over reading those. Don't you?

And no matter what else you do, don't start your book with descriptions of the weather.

2) POV: From the get-go, make sure your POV is tight and clear and your voice firm and strong. Don't be wishy washy, you'll lose the reader.

3) Action: As I said before, get the action going right away. There's no room for a chapter where nothing happens. Readers respond to scenes that start in media res.

4) Avoid Chiches and Cheesy Hooks: Draw the reader in naturally, with your story, not some prefab cheesy hook you think will get their attention. Avoid dream scenes, completely if possible, but certainly in the first chapter.

5) Backstory: We talked about this in the dreaded info dump. Don't launch into backstory on characters or place before you get into the plot. Readers don't care about your character until you make them care. You make them care by their actions, not their story.

6) Dialogue: Right from the start, make sure your dialogue is tight and strong. Again, don't be afraid to show strong voice. It's the only way.

The Final Read Through

Happy New Year, everyone. I hope you all find this year to be happy, healthy, and successful.

I'm back from my research trip and have volumes of material socked away in my mind for location, people, culture, texture. There's nothing like going someplace fully with the intention of researching for a novel to help you see all the little nuances you'd miss as a tourist.

Traveling has set me back a bit on writing here, which I plan to rectify this year. Look for an update at least once a week as my novel is completed, goes off to the agent, to the publisher and beyond. I'll keep you all posted on all the tricks and tips I learn along the way.

The other set back was on the goal of finishing the book by 12/31. I'm a touch off, but not too bad. Which brings me to the all-important subject of today's post: The Final Read Through.

After going through the whole novel, following the Ten Point Revision Strategy we've discussed, there's still one, immensely important task to do. The Final Read Through.

In order to do this, you must get some distance from the book. Many authors suggest putting the book into the desk drawer to let it cool. For me, the trip to Turkey was perfect. I didn't bring my computer, I didn't work on anything else. I didn't read novels or book or magazines on writing. I let my brain cool. With that, I knew that when I got home, I'd be able to re-approach the novel with fresh eyes.

The goal of this read is to really check for language flow. By this time, after completing the Ten Points, character should be solid. Premise should be like a rock. Major description, flow, pace, all of it should be where you want it. With this read, you're just trying to see how the book. . . reads.

I make little changes to sentences. One thing I really try to do is to limit the amount of times that I back into a sentence. An example:

Sitting on the back porch, Doug reached for his glass of wine.

That phraseology is called, backing into a sentence. the subject is Doug, the action is reaching for the wine, the first clause is purely descriptive.

Now there's nothing wrong with occasionally backing into a sentence. The grammer is ok, and it's nice to use this phraseology to break up the constant; subject-verb sequence. But it can be over done. Check your writing. Occasional is ok, too much is too much.

I also focus on length of sentences, which usually tend to be too long. For the most part, shorter is better. Keep the book moving along with well clipped sentences.

Word selection we've already gone over with the Ten Points, but here again is an opportunity to make sure each word is really working for you. Saying exactly what you want it to do, as powerfully as possible without the need for modifiers to strengthen it.

I'm on chapter 8 of this read. Hopefully I'll be done by next week.

Then it's off.

I'll keep you posted.

Traveling and Research

Well, I can't believe how long it's been since I last posted. To all of you who continue to write comments, thanks. I definitely haven't given up on the blog, in fact, soon I'll have a whole new bunch of posting ideas for us to discuss.

As far as the novel goes, I'm on track to finish the revision by my deadline of 12/31. I have one more minor change to make then truthfully, just the final read through. Soon it will go back to my agent.

Which brings us to the new and exciting stuff and why I've been gone so long. You've all heard the adage "write what you know." Well, in truth, the adage should be "write what you can learn about." We can't all write about what we know and make it interesting, but we can all do research and bring new and interesting ideas and information into our lives and writing. To that end, I intend to do several posts coming up on research, how, where, when and why.

As for me and why it's been so long between posts? I've been doing my own research, in Istanbul. My next medical thriller will take my hero there so I went away for a few weeks to live in the City and gather the vibe. Details, sights, sounds, smells, sensations. People, places, foods, drinks. Tourists and locals. I have detailed notes and images to lend veracity to the next novel.

That one, we'll write together.

The Eleventh Point - Kill the Clunkers

As I'm finishing up this (hopefully) final revision of the book, another revision strategy point has come to mind so frequently that I've been tempted to add it as the eleventh point on our Ten Point Revision Strategy.

Unfortunately, it's so simple and basic, I'd be embarrassed to have to remind myself to do this.

Yet, time after time, reviewing the book that I'd worked on, slaved on for such a long time; woke up at 4 am daily to squeeze more hours out of my exhausting day; obsessed over in the waning hours of night, story ideas coming to me instead of dreams, I've realized I don't always do this one particular thing.

What is it you ask? What daunting discovery have I made that could have such magnitude that it deserves consideration as the 11th point of our strategy?

It's really very simple.

Write well.

Yes, that's it. The new 11th point of our revision strategy. Write Well. Or as I'll rename it and gussy it up; Kill the Clunkers.

It's stunning to think that after all the times I've gone through the novel, how many clunkers remain hidden in the text. What happens is that our eyes get immune to our own bad writing. When we re-read it, our brain nods "yes, that's what I wrote. That's what I intended to write," without ever realizing that what we wrote was bad.

Sometimes it takes an external eye, like a writing group, to help point out these bastards of the English language. If you don't have a group, then the best thing to do is to read your book out loud to yourself. Not in your mind or in a whisper, but out loud. Belt it out. Imagine you're giving a book reading in front of 1,000 of new, unfamiliar readers. Talk loud, with emphasis, and listen to your own words. See how they hang together in this context.

You may find a few clunkers.

What's a clunker? Simply a really badly written sentence. It may be cliche. Melodramatic. Flat. Overly reaching. Whatever, it clunks when it should purr. It's a clunker.

Since I've never been embarrassed to show the horror of some of my own writing, I'll offer a few examples of clunkers I found on this draft that somehow survived all my other reads.

1) What are you going to do?" she asked, drawing on her cigarette. (how can you ask something when you're sucking on a cigarette? You either ask, then suck, or suck then ask. Not at the same time.)

2) Malcomb's eyes widened like a terrified doe's. (that's just bad)

3) Memories he'd spent his entire life running away from were now chasing after him, like a rabid dog biting at his heels. (What? Doggy memories biting me? Ouch!)

4) A tear fell onto her cheek. (cliche)

Other things I've noticed is using the same word too many times in short bites of the book. For example, I have a character who has a "familiar toothless grin." Darn if I didn't write toothless three times in three paragraphs.

These are all clunkers. Examples of bad writing. I found them in my book. I killed them.

Now I'm hunting for more.

Getting Back to Revisions - Rewrite or Start Over

Time to get back to revising.

Heard from my writing group in a fillet session, er. . . constructive criticism session. Actually, they were quite kind and actually very complimentary, which was unusual. Must have been the wine.

But their comments brought up one very important point that's worth discussing and getting your thoughts. Rewriting or Starting Over.

Before we get there, let me explain. My current novel is actually a revised version of a revised version of an earlier work. Essentially, I took concepts and basic plotlines from an earlier work and deconstructed the novel, re-concepted the plot and characters, wrote new story arcs for each character and wrote a new outline for the new story. I did however make one major mistake that has come back to haunt me over and over, which is the title of this post.

Whenever possible, in order to save time, energy and writing, I reused some of my old book parts. At the time, I thought I was being clever. If I could reuse a chapter here or a plot line there, make some minor changes, I'd make my writing faster. Turned out to be wrong.

Here's the problem. In reusing some of the old stuff, I ran into a few instances where the character motivation for doing a certain thing was actually no longer valid. Since I wanted to reuse the part, I simply changed the motivation in my current form, thinking it would solve the problem, but it didn't, it created new problems.

Let me give an example. In my first version of the book, after the police come to the lab and my hero and his research partner make a daring escape, they go back and meet at the hero's apartment. At the time, this was crucial, because my hero desperately needed to do something with their research project and time was of the esscence. It had to be done right then. Afterward, they went on the run before the police found them at the apartment. Are you following this?

In the new version, after they escape the police I decided they would still go back to the apartment and do the same repair of the research project. The problem is, the reason they desperately had to do it before, no longer existed. Now, they just did it, to which my entire writing group could only ask "why?" And my answer? Well, there really isn't one, is there. My characters did it because I was lazy and wanted to keep some old scenes rather than rewrite them. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

I violoated one of my own ten immutable laws of revising: Know each character's motivation.

My advice then, when confronted with a similar situation in your rewriting, is not to reuse old scenes. Rather, it's always best to rewrite them. When you rewrite them in the flow of your current writing, the character's motivation is more organic from the story, not contrived by the author just to be able to reuse some segments. And this is the key lesson from this experience. Each action that the character performs, each motivation, has to be organic to the current book. If you're going to reuse some scenes, make sure that the motivation and action still makes sense in your current writing. If there's any question, it's probably best to just rewrite it.

I'm doing that now. Fortunately, I'm very near the end of the novel, and this is a quick fix for me, but I'm going through each line, making sure that any old vestiges from the last novel still make sense now, that the reasons are organically grown from the current state of the characters.

Then I'll be done and it's off to the agent!

We'll write about query's and synopses then.

I'm Back!

Wow! Hard to believe so much time transpired since my last post. But it did.

In case you were wondering, I've been fine. In fact, your great comments of encouragement and the growing number of readers who've found some value from this blog keep me motivated to keep on going forward.

Over these last three weeks, I simply took a break. After completing the novel and waiting for my writing group to come back to me with their final recommendations (which will happen this Thursday) I decided to take some well-deserved time away from writing or writing about writing. Instead, I focused on The Ripple Effect, which has been incredibly busy of late.

But with my writing group meeting coming later this week, soon I'll be launching back into the novel. And with that, I'll begin updating here again as well.

I intend to finish our discussion of outlining. And with the novel just about ready to go back to my agent, I thought I'd write about the all-important query letter and the extremely difficult novel summary. Both essential topics if you hope to get published.

Please keep your comments coming. It's nice to know that all of my blabbering may actually be helping some body.

Back to the updating and novel after my meeting Thursday!