Agent Questions: Please share a favorite sentence from the manuscript you are submitting.

When an agent asked me to share a favorite sentence from my manuscript, I blanked. I could come up with a favorite scene, but a favorite sentence? I don’t even remember the great movie lines. When I hear them, I might be able to identify the movie, but it doesn’t work the other way around. And how do you isolate a sentence from the story itself? Even the most memorable lines fall flat if you don’t know the context.

Besides, I’d like to think that each of my sentences is brilliant. If I didn’t like it, why would I put it in? Well, I will admit to an occasional dud, but not on purpose.

Seriously, though, I believe in simple, direct writing that challenges my middle-grade readers but doesn’t frustrate them. Ornamentation is not my style. So after scanning my manuscript, I chose this sentence.

“As I swam, the water acted like a mirror, reflecting the curve of the approaching shore, the black trunk and branches of the lone tree, and the green of its leaves.”

So is it my favorite? Probably not. But it does reflect my writing style.

And that will have to do.

Agent Questions: What is the last book you've read?

As mentioned in the last post, I’m commenting here on a series of questions asked on one agent’s submission form. The question for this week is, “What is the last book you’ve read?”

At the time, the last book I had finished was One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia, so that’s what I said. Not only was it an honest answer, but it may also have been a fortunate one. After all, I was querying middle-grade historical fiction, and One Crazy Summer is middle-grade historical fiction. That wasn’t unusual, either, since I often read within my genre.

If I had filled out the form two days later, I would have had to say that the last book I had read was Chestnut Street by Maeve Binchy, which is adult literary fiction. Several weeks earlier, the answer would have been the P.D. James mystery A Certain Justice. And right before One Crazy Summer, I read The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, a humorous YA by Julie Berry.

It was an agency submission form, and I don’t know what the agency was hoping to discover. Does it want me to be a well-rounded reader or to stick to my genre? And I question the usefulness of the question. What can an agent tell from a single book title?

When I filled out the form, my answer indicated that I had been reading within my genre.

But I don’t always.

Agent Questions: Which writer has most influenced you?

As I continue to search for an agent, one thing is clear: they all want something different. That’s why it’s important to read the submission guidelines on their websites and customize each query. A few want just a query letter, although most want a query letter and a certain number of pages or chapters. Others also ask for specific information about the author. While some of these questions are straight-forward, others are perplexing. I’m going to spend the next three weeks looking at questions from one agent’s online form, starting with “Which writer has most influenced you?”

Many writers have inspired me, and I can’t pick out the one with the most influence. But saying that wouldn’t answer the question, so I put down Lucy Maud Montgomery, who wrote Anne of Green Gables, Emily of New Moon, and dozens of other books.

Here are just a few of the many authors and books that I loved as a child:

·       Louisa May Alcott, with favorites including Little Women, Rose in Bloom, and An Old-Fashioned Girl;

·       Laura Ingalls Wilder’s entire Little House series;

·       Mary Norton’s Borrowers series;

·       A series of childhood biographies that I called “blue true books” because of they had blue cloth covers at the time (now branded as “Childhood of Famous Americans”); and

·       Alice Turner Curtis’ Little Maid books (e.g., Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony). My mother owned them as a girl, and I found them in my grandparents’ storage room.

During junior high and my first two years of high school, I read George Elliot, Grace Livingston Hill, and Charles Dickens as I curled up on the couch on our enclosed back porch. Then we moved, and my reading tastes went with me, supplemented by Ellery Queen and Rex Stout. Later, I discovered Agatha Christie, Jane Austin, and C.S. Lewis.

But who influenced me most?

It’s anybody’s guess.

Finding the Right Agent

I’ve spent the past few days researching agents for Dark Waters, a middle-grade novel that takes place in 1850. This isn’t the first book I’ve submitted to agents, and it won’t be the last, so why don’t I just use the same list as last time?

Several reasons. First, it is always good to expand the search, especially since I haven’t yet found an agent I click with and who clicks with me. Second, agents move from one agency to another, and a letter sent to their former employer ends up in the wastebasket. Third, even if they are at the same agencies as before, their wish lists can change over time, the submission guidelines may change, or a particular agent may close (or reopen) the submission process. Then there is the possibility of finding someone new. Independent agents who are just starting out rarely have the right connections, but new agents with established agencies can draw on existing relationships and expertise. And sometimes I come across someone I simply didn’t know about before.

So what do I look for when searching for an agent? I need to know which age groups and genres the agent is interested in and which ones the agent won’t consider. Some concrete descriptions of what he or she is looking for can be useful as well (e.g., character or plot driven, importance of humor). I also appreciate information I can use to judge the agent’s personality. That’s important because the agent-client relationship is just that, and if we can’t connect with each other, the relationship won’t work.

One thing I don’t like is the lack of creativity that many agents show when they describe the types of books they are looking for. It isn’t helpful for an agent to tell me that he or she is looking for strong voices; fresh, creative, imaginative, or inventive plots; well-crafted stories; or memorable characters. Those are givens. All agents want them whether they say it or not. And most writers think that’s what they are providing, even if they aren’t. If everything else is a good match, I may submit to that agent anyway, but if there is another decent choice within the agency, I’ll send my query to that person, instead.

When an agency has two or more agents who match my criteria, another question arises. Often, one is experienced and another is still building his or her book. So do I submit to the veteran agent or the hungry one? That’s a question I’ve never been able to answer, so I usually ignore it and pick the person who feels like the better fit.

No amount of research guarantees that I will find an agent. In fact, I’ve gone through this process several times before with no success. And sometimes no research is necessary. I have a friend who sold his first book after an agent approached him. But researching before submitting is the most effective route to a good author-agent relationship.

So I’ll keep it up as long as I need to.

Agent or Reader: Whose Opinion Counts Most?

After several rewrites of the opening scene of my Civil War manuscript, Learning to Surrender, I decided to begin with action: my protagonist and her family ran for shelter as Union shells fell around them. Then I paid for an agent critique of the first two pages, and she didn’t like the scene. She told me that action isn’t always the best place to start and she wanted to know more about the characters and the situation first. So I revised the opening paragraphs to do that and started the action a page and a half into the book.

Then I gave the manuscript to my middle-grade beta readers. My first question was, “Did the beginning of the story make you want to continue reading?” Six beta readers answered “yes.” However, it was clear from their comments that they were referring to the entire chapter (which included the action scene) and not just the first page and a half. But a fourth-grade beta reader answered the question with a “no,” stating that “It was boring and too random.”

Yes, I realize that we are talking about one agent and one reader, and everybody has different tastes. Still, what am I supposed to do? Do I listen to an agent who comes from the group of people who can get my book published or a fourth-grade reader from my target audience?

I’m going to try to find a middle ground where I begin with the action but weave in more information about my characters and the situation while the action is going on. And hopefully it will be a better opening than either of the two previous attempts. But the underlying question remains. Should I write for potential agents/publishers or for my readers? And I’m not alone. Most writers face the same dilemma.

I want to sell my books but not my soul. I need agents and publishers to accomplish the first, so I can’t ignore their criticisms and suggestions. But I won’t put my readers second, either.

It’s a quandary.

I Give In

Once upon a time, I queried agents for an early chapter book. They all rejected it, and they should have.

Later, I tried with Christian women’s fiction. I happen to think that these novels were and are as good as many (although far from all) of the ones published by Christian publishers, and hopefully that isn’t all hubris. But again I found nothing but rejection.

My writing has continued to improve, and I have now found my true passion in middle grade historical fiction. So is it time to try again?

My past experience looking for agents and the wisdom gleaned from other writers has taught me two things.

(1)   First, it’s almost as hard to find a good agent as it is to find a traditional publisher and, as a corrolary, those agents that are easy to find don’t have the necessary connections.

(2)   Second, author and agent need to click together like puzzle pieces. An effective author-agent relationship is also a close one, and personality matters.

Since I don’t need an agent to review my publishing contract and tell me what to negotiate, I was hoping to get away without one. But there is more to an agent’s job than just understanding and negotiating a contract. I’m not a good salesperson, and the larger, more-established publishing houses don’t take unagented submissions. They make exceptions for people who attend conferences where they appear and I take advantage of those opportunities, but that still leaves a number of closed doors. So I have given in and am searching for an agent again.

Let’s hope it goes better this time.