D. Lee Jackson

Words and Music

Rewrites, Queries, and Synopsis Tweaking

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In case I haven’t mentioned this previously, I’m a member of a Scribophile group called “The Ubergroup.” It is a group of teams, each having around five members, and each having approximately the same genres. The idea behind this is critique swapping: generally, everyone in a team critiques everyone else’s works and receives critiques on their own works. It runs in cycles of six weeks working and one week resting (ha!).

I added that “ha!” in above because this week (supposedly an off week between cycles) has been anything but a week of rest for me. I have spent it by going through Tapper with a fine-toothed comb, trimming bits and rewriting other parts of what is now a 98,000 word long, 33 chapter novel. On top of that, I’ve rewritten my agent query letter and tweaked it based on out-of-team critiques. I’ve also tackled one of the most dreaded parts of the book writing process—the synopsis.

An ideal synopsis is supposedly close to 650 words in length. Insert another “ha!” here. I’ve never been able to get mine down below 750 words and still have it make sense. I’ve received out-of-team critiques on it and brought it down from its previous approximately 850 word length. Still, I’d like to at least get it to a length that won’t chase a potential agent away. As a result, I’m still soliciting critiques from Ubergroup members on it. Wish me luck, please.

The next critique cycle begins on Labor Day. I’ve been assigned to a team of mostly sci-fi writers who I hope will have some great insights to share on how to get Tapper as polished as possible. Again, wish me luck, please.

Comments? Questions? Please feel free to use the Contact page. Thank you for reading!

Very Busy Query Morning

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I’m not getting my hopes up. I’m not getting my hopes up.

Okay, maybe I’m getting my hopes up a little. Why? I got a nibble on a query letter I sent to an agent!

In this agent’s case, they originally wanted to see just the query letter. My sci-fi story apparently made it past that test, because late last night I got a request for an e-mailed synopsis and first 50 pages of my manuscript.

As you can imagine, I didn’t sleep well. In fact, I woke up around 4:00 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. So, I tackled my manuscript and formatted it for e-mail submission.

If you’ll remember the “Herding Cats” video from a couple of days ago, that’s a bit what it’s like when gathering information on how to format a manuscript for e-mail. I also wrote a blog post about this some time back. My conclusion was to just send what the agent requested. In this case, the agent didn’t specify a format for either the synopsis or the manuscript, so I single-spaced the synopsis and fell back on a format for the manuscript that had been requested by another agent: double-space the manuscript. All 50 pages.

This is not the hell that it sounds like. Here’s how I did it, using LibreOffice and a rather powerful text editor called VEDIT Pro 64:

First, I made sure that all of the characters that don’t translate to plain text well—specifically em dashes and “smart quotes”—were replaced with plain-text-friendly alternatives. I used a “double-dash” for em dashes and told LibreOffice to use straight quotes, then did a find and replace for both. Note: you’ll have to dig into LibreOffice’s find and replace dialogue to get it to do a separate search for italicized em dashes and quotes. It’s under “Other options” at the bottom of the window—expand that, click on the “Format” button, then select “Italic” under the “Style” column on the Font tab (leave the other columns and tabs alone).

Next, I did a search in LibreOffice for any italics (using the same method as above, but with nothing in the “Search For” field) and replaced them with an underline before and after. The end result looks like _this_. That’s an understood code for italic text, from what I’ve read. I had to do it manually, one word (or section) at a time. Still, it didn’t take long.

After this, I exported the file from LibreOffice to plain .txt format. LibreOffice will complain about this—ignore it and export to .txt anyway.

This is where VEDIT Pro 64 (a.k.a. VPW64) came into the game. LibreOffice’s exported text put every paragraph on a single line, which was handy. What wasn’t handy was that it included the indents. Fortunately, VPW64 has a columnar marking function. Set the first mark, move to the end of the indent, and drag down the marking. Hit delete, and voila! No more indents. Just be careful that you don’t delete anything that wasn’t indented (not a big problem).

Now comes the tedious part—transforming the single lines into paragraphs. VPW64 has a “Convert 1-line to paragraph” function under its User menu. I had to do an Alt-U followed by a click on the Convert function for every line in the first 50 pages.  This wrapped the single lines to the width of my window (which was 73 characters—play with it yourself in Notepad++, VPW64, Boxer, or whatever you use) and put a newline marker at the end of each paragraph line. Repetitive work, but thanks to VPW64’s speed, it didn’t take very long.

Finally, I double-spaced the text. This was the easy part: do a global search for the newline character and replace it with two newline characters. I tweaked one or two lines around the chapter breaks, but that’s about all I had to do outside of the search.

After saving, my 50 pages were ready to be pasted.

I use Thunderbird as my e-mail program. It has the same kind of “about:config” tweakability that Firefox has. In this case, I suggest you tweak the “mailnews.wraplength” setting to something between your manuscript’s line length and 80 characters. I set this to 75 characters, just to give myself a buffer on both sides. Once you’ve got this set, simply select the entire document (all 50 pages in my case), copy, and paste the text after your synopsis.

This is not a perfect method. I’m not even sure it’s what the agent wanted. For that reason, I give you two other links to other articles on formatting queries/manuscripts for e-mails. These were suggested to me by my Query critique group on Scribophile (Thanks!):

http://www.literaryrambles.com/2009/12/how-do-i-format-my-e-query.html

http://querytracker.blogspot.com/2014/09/formatting-email-query-letters.html

Questions? Comments? Other links? Please drop me a line on the Contact page!

Theme and Query Variations

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Pardon me while I vent for a few moments. (assumes stance upon soapbox)

There is a part of the novel publishing process called the “query.” That’s where you send what amounts to an advertising packet to an agent or publisher with the intent of getting them to take on what you’ve created. It’s the most important thing you must do for your work (after the actual writing). You could have the next blockbuster #1 best seller on your desk, but if you don’t present it to agents or publishers in a way that catches their eye, then what good is it?

(Note that I am not going to discuss self-publishing. That’s an entirely different animal, and one that I haven’t studied.)

I’m learning rapidly that the query process is a seriously confusing business.

I’ve got a few books on how to craft queries. They’re not pamphlets, by any means. No, they contain a couple of hundred pages of info aimed at getting a query going for your article/poem/short story/novella/novel …

Hang on a minute. (approximates pages for each section)

They are a bit like pamphlets after all, when you break them down by type of writing. They get even smaller when you sort out the pages for each individual genre. One book’s section on “Speculative” novels (which includes the Science Fiction genre, my own area of writing) contains around a page and a half of direct genre information. They apparently want you to apply the other examples they offer for things like Romance, Cookbooks, and Children’s novels to your genre.

Good idea in theory. In practice, I’m not so sure.

You see, very little of the information I’ve found is consistent. There is no formula printed in a book or posted online that’s going to get you to the perfect query package. What works for a Romance doesn’t necessarily apply for Science Fiction. The same goes for the type of writing—a magazine article query differs from a novel query.

There are even disputes about what the query package should include. Most resources say you need a query letter, a synopsis of the content of your novel, and x number of pages from your novel. But, when you get out into the real world with the intent of sending out said packages, you’ll find that not all agents want all three elements. Some want just a query letter at first, while others might want a query letter, a “short” (again, a point of contention) synopsis, the first five pages of your novel, a biographical write-up, and so on.

The makeup of these elements is another point of contention. Take the synopsis, for instance—my own personal bugbear. I’ve been told that they should average around 650 words total. I’ve also seen that there should be x number of synopsis pages for every y number of pages in your novel. Other advice slaps a page limit on them, ranging from a single, double-spaced page up to ten or so double-spaced pages. Still other advice says single spacing is okay, as long as you don’t go beyond two pages.

Then, there’s the query letter itself. Some say you should start your query letter with a “hook” designed to grab the agent’s attention, while others say you should treat your query letter exactly like a business letter. I’ve even found disagreement about that: do you put a comma or a colon at the end of your salutation? Do you introduce your novel in a formal fashion that shows you’ve researched the dickens out of your intended market, or do you try and “WOW!” your intended recipient with a high-energy example of your writing style?

E-mail submissions are even more confusing. They’re almost treated as an afterthought in the books I have, but I’ve found that almost every agent wants (or at least prefers) e-mailed query packages now. How do you translate all of the above advice into an e-mail, especially when almost everyone wants everything pasted into the body of your e-mail and refuses to take PDF or other attachments? Do you double-space everything (I’ve seen this requested)? Do you send plain text, or a Rich Text Format e-mail that uses a 12-point Times New Roman font throughout?

In the end, it all boils down to one simple phrase—”Send what the agent requests.” Therein lies the rub. No two agents want the same thing, and most expect you to know exactly how to format your query package with scant advice from them. Not the easiest thing to do, especially when you’re new to the business.

If I stand on a soapbox for anything today, it’s for the cause of doing more to brace aspiring writers for what to expect when confronted by the chaos that is the Real Publishing World. Authors of “how to query” tomes, please update your next editions to include significantly more information about e-mail queries. Even concentrate solely on e-mail. It’d be better than what’s out there now. Expand your books to include information on more genres. If you aren’t an expert in, say, Speculative Fiction, consult a few publishers, or even invite an expert guest author to collaborate with you. Online forums, see if you can snag a mentor that will work with groups learning how to query, and make the process less like studying for a test. Nothing is more frustrating than studying and passing Spanish, only to learn that your dream job requires that you be fluent in Japanese, Russian, and French as well.

You may have your soapbox back now, good sir. Thank you for letting me use it.

Comments? Questions? Feel free to connect with me via the Contact page!