Pub Rants

Author Archive

Zeroing in on Comps: Part II

by Angie Hodapp

Last month, in Part I of this article, we explored comps (comparable titles and authors) and how crucial they are not only to getting an agent’s attention, but also to getting your query letter’s pitch read through the right lens. This month, we’ll dive deeper into how you can choose the best possible comps for your manuscript.

First, let’s revisit the idea that your comps have one job, which is to identify an existing audience for your book by filling in the blank in the following sentence:

  • “My book will appeal to readers who enjoyed ___.”

That’s the simplest wording, and it’s perfectly fine, but you can certainly mention more than one comp. Something concise like this is also perfectly fine:

  • “My book will appeal to fans of Kristin Hannah and Jodi Picoult.”

You could take it up a notch by giving a little teaser about how or why each comp is relevant to your manuscript:

  • “My book will appeal to readers who love the richly imagined worlds of N. K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor.”
  • “With the wry voice and deep science of The Martian by Andy Weir and the fast pace and crime-thriller elements of Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey, my sci-fi novel…”
  • “This WWII-set novel will speak to fans of the heartfelt poignancy of Jamie Ford’s Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet and the heart wrenching friendship story of Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity.”

The key is to keep it brief: two or three comps and, if you choose, one or two elements of each that that are relevant to your novel. Think snapshot, not photo album. Avoid the temptation to waste valuable space in your query letter pontificating about your comps.

Another pitfall is listing too many comps. More than three muddies the waters, and the slush reader will struggle to understand the thread you think connects them all. And more than three means more potentially wasted query-letter space you could have devoted to your pitch.

Yet another pitfall is comping books that have become canon. The Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, Harry Potter… These series loom so large they blot out the sun, and, as such, will do little to cast light on a more easily identified targeted audience. The fandoms of canonized works are so vast that they spill over and spread out across marketing and genre categories used by the book industry (publishers, marketers, publicists, sales reps, booksellers, librarians) to get the most books into the most hands of their most interested readers. It would be great if every book transcended categorization to become part of the literary canon! But canonization happens years or decades after the book is on the shelf; it most definitely does not happen at the query stage. So comping canonized titles or series is often a missed opportunity.

Let’s look at some other examples. One thing we see often and that works well is a comp mashup. That’s when a writer positions their manuscript at the intersection of two comparables:

  • “It’s X-Men meets To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.”
  • “Think Killing Eve meets Outlander.” (Or: “The sexy international intrigue of Killing Eve meets the epic scale and time-traveling cast reminiscent of Outlander.”)
  • “Imagine Ferris Bueller­ as the protagonist of an Agatha Christie–style murder mystery written for middle-grade readers.”

I’m making these examples up as I go along, and it’s kind of fun to imagine how such mashups might work in a completed novel. But I hope they’re helping you think of ways to comp your own manuscripts!

The Importance of the Reading Experience in Choosing Comps

The point of all of this—and I mentioned this in Part I—is that comps should cast a spotlight on your audience. Comps are reader focused, which means they are market focused. Therefore, strive to comp the experience of your book.

Think of your top-ten, all-time favorite books. What is it you remember most about them? Why did they make it onto your list? Because you experienced something. A revelation. A connection to a character who came to feel like a real person to you. A sense of joy or surprise or satisfaction or wonder or exhilaration or even sorrow or fear. The experience of a story is why readers return to their favorite authors and series time and again.

So if you’re writing a work of upmarket women’s fiction about a divorcée who works in a museum and finds herself talking through her problems to the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex that towers over the museum’s foyer, are you going to comp Jurassic Park? No! Please don’t! Why? Because for an audience, the experience of this novel is not going to be anywhere near the experience of Jurassic Park—the novel or the movie. The two stories are simply not going to appeal to the same audience.

When you’re choosing your comps, think first about what experience your novel will deliver to its readers. Be able to articulate that experience. Write it down on a sticky note. From there, it will be easier to think of other books or authors that have already provided a similar experience, hopefully with some degree of visibility or success in its genre’s market.

Creative Commons Photo Credit: Philippe Put

Zeroing in on Comps: Part I

by Angie Hodapp

When you’re pitching or querying, comps are critical. But poorly chosen comps can work against you. How can you make sure you’re picking comps that increase your chances of getting your manuscript requested? Here are a few tips.

What are comps and what should they do?

“Comps” is industry speak for comparable titles or authors. Your two or three (but not more) comps should work together to do one job and one job only, which is fill in the blank in the following sentence:

“My book will appeal to readers who enjoyed ____.”

Your wording might be different, and that’s fine. We’ll come back to that next month, in Part II. For now, look at that sentence and pay attention to what it does: It identifies an existing audience who will enjoy your book.

  • It doesn’t say, “I write like Bestselling Author X.”
  • It doesn’t say, “My book is about themes of love and loss, like Bestselling Title Y.”
  • It doesn’t say, “My book features dinosaurs, like Big Blockbuster Movie Z.”

All it does is say, “There is an existing audience who loved something, and my book will appeal to that existing audience.” As such, well-chosen comps are more about the market than they are about your book’s literary merit.

Now, if your comps speak to your book’s literary merit, that’s better than not having comps at all. So don’t go ditching them yet! Furthermore, the best comps pack a one-two punch, speaking to both merit and market. That’s another thing we’ll come back to next month.

As a slush reader, I like to say that good comps give me the right lens through which to read your pitch. I can’t even guess at how many query pitches I’ve read over the years that left me completely befuddled, scratching my head and asking myself, “What is the author trying to do here and who is the intended audience?”—until I got to the author’s comps and the light went on. Suddenly, I got that the author was reaching out to the existing readership of Christopher Moore or Arundhati Roy or the Dublin Murder Squad series. And suddenly I could see the connection, and that I (having likely just read twenty consecutive YA fantasy queries) had been reading this particular pitch through the wrong lens.

What can you comp?

In the world of novels, comps are most often books, series, and authors. But they don’t have to be. You can also comp movies or movie franchises; TV shows; comic books, manga, or anime; and documentaries or docuseries. Anything that has captured the hearts, the minds, or even the voyeuristic fascination of a large group of people can be a useful comp.

Comps should be recent and relevant.

How recent? There’s no useful way to stamp an expiration date on a comp. Some books (movies, TV shows, etc.) simply live longer in the Zeitgeist than others. So if you’re going to choose an older comp, make sure it’s one that’s still exerting considerable influence on today’s story consumers—at least those within your particular niche or genre.

Relevance has more to do with why and how your book will appeal to your comp’s existing audience. I mentioned above that comping writing style, themes, or story features (like dinosaurs) might be a wasted opportunity. Why? Because those alone are not generally the building blocks of audience, and comps should be all about audience. I’m going to go deeper into what I mean here next month in Part II of this article, so stay tuned.

For now, let me leave you with this image. Think of readers’ tastes as the globs of goo inside a lava lamp. They’re constantly on the move, floating around, rising falling, speeding up, slowing down, splitting apart, merging with other globs. It’s difficult to predict what those goo globs are going to do next or how long they’re going to stay a particular size or remain on a particular course. Yet that is exactly what career writers, agents, editors, and publishers are constantly trying to do, albeit with varying levels of success and sometimes by accident. A well-chosen comp tells industry folks, “Hey, look at that glob! It exists right now! And the reason it’s a glob is because all its particles enjoyed Only Murders in the Building. I’m telling you, that glob is going to love my book, too.”

Creative Commons Photo Credit: Ged Carroll

Kishōtenketsu and Non-Western Story Structures

by Angie Hodapp

American fiction writers are all too familiar with the Hero’s Journey and the classical three-act story structure. Or the seven-point plot structure. Or Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat beat sheet. These structures share a lot of features, and they are The Law; to deviate is to accept inevitable exclusion from the hallowed halls of Literary Representation and Big New York Publishing. Yet if you’re well read in recent fiction across a variety of genres (especially by non-white or non-Western authors), then you’ve probably encountered extraordinary stories that unfold in ways that have nothing to do with heroes or journeys or three tidy acts.

Such encounters might kick off a nasty bout of cognitive dissonance. If our ubiquitous structures aren’t adhered to, then these stories shouldn’t work. So why do they? The answer is simple: Because different types of stories and different ways of telling them have, over centuries, evolved all over the globe. Learning, using, teaching, or critiquing others’ work based on only one of several similar structures is painfully limiting to both storytellers and their audiences.

Let’s look at an example of an ancient, non-Western structure.

Kishōtenketsu is a four-act plot that can be traced back through the centuries to several countries of East Asia. Though the word is Japanese, the structure itself originated in China. (We’ll circle back to China in a minute.) Author Kim Yoon Mi explains that, in Japanese, Kishōtenketsu describes the four acts as follows:

  • kiku (ki): introduction
  • shōku (shō): development
  • tenku (ten): twist
  • kekku (ketsu): conclusion

She goes on to explain that in Kishōtenketsu, “tension isn’t the heart of the story…the twist is the high point. The climb to the realization point can have many shapes as long as the twist is the high point of the story.” Further, what drives such a plot is characters’ self-actualization, self-realization, self-development, and introspection, and “because the conclusion can amp up conflict or completely deescalate it into nothing, [Kishōtenketsu] gives [writers] a lot more options and allows for open endings.”

In contrast, Western structures centralize tension and conflict. American writers are clubbed constantly with the following rules:

  • You must have tension on every page.
  • You must develop both internal and external conflicts and resolve them at the end.
  • If you have no conflict, you have no story.

But with Kishōtenketsu, the writer has more latitude to explore character growth as a phenomenon not catalyzed by conflict.

How did this come about? To answer, Kim Yoon Mi cites episode 6-04 of Wes Cecil’s Human Arts podcast, “Chinese: Languages and Literature” (2015). In summary, China endured centuries of brutal famine and war, and as such, conflict was never a good thing; therefore, Chinese stories decentralized conflict. So while stories that followed the Chinese qǐ chéng zhuǎn hé structure (the precursor to Kishōtenketsu) certainly included conflict, conflict often took a definitive back seat to characters’ personal development.

Here’s another difference. In our familiar Western structures, writers are expected to wrap everything up at the end, to leave no questions unanswered (unless they’re setting up a sequel, in which the expectation is still that cliffhanger questions must eventually be answered). But of Kishōtenketsu, Kim Yoon Mi says, “the conclusion isn’t always a resolute solution to everything….It’s more like a wrap up for that particular issue, while indicating the story still goes on beyond that…often with notes about the occasional backslide.”

Will Western audiences understand a Kishōtenketsu story? That’s a good question, one Kate Krake of Three Pillar Authors tackled on their blog back in 2016. Krake writes:

Western audiences are accustomed to a central conflict that is defeated. It’s central writing advice; I read it, I follow it, I advise it. For this reason, stories written with this four-act, no-conflict structure may risk not engaging with Western audiences. They may risk being dubbed a poor story, risk being criticised as not engaging, lacking development, or some other negative criticism.

I think it’s a risk worth taking.

A judgement that all plots need conflict to engage is a judgement based on inexperience. We’re indoctrinated by this Western way of thinking. It’s insular. It creates the idea that there’s only one way to write a story.

That’s how Western stories are written. It’s not how all stories are written.

Kishōtenketsu is only one among many non-Western structures. (Please visit Kim Yoon Mi’s excellent article “Worldwide Story Structures” to explore myriad others and see examples.) I would argue that American agents, editors, publishers, and slush readers, if they are truly committed to making space at the table for diverse voices, have a duty to educate ourselves on the vast alternatives to our comfortable old “acceptable” story structures.

Examples of Kishōtenketsu

Photo by Aaditya Arora from Pexels

Reactive Goals vs. Proactive Goals

by Angie Hodapp

You’ve heard it a million times: Your character needs a goal. Something to want. Something to strive for. Something they can’t have until the end of the story, if at all. Something readers can relate to or get invested in. But here’s the thing: There are two types of goals that drive a character forward, and one type is far more compelling than the other.

Reactive Goals vs. Proactive Goals

A character with a reactive goal is reacting to forces outside her control, while a character with a proactive goal makes a plan and carries it out. Reactive goals are flight, while proactive goals are fight. Characters with only reactive goals are more passive; their stories happen to them. But characters with proactive goals happen to their stories.

Here’s an example. On one hand, we could tell a story in which the protagonist’s goal is “to hide from my stalker.” That’s a reactive goal because the character acts only once acted upon. On the other hand, we could tell a story in which the protagonist’s goal is “to learn hand-to-hand combat and, if necessary, fight my stalker to the death.” That’s a proactive goal.

Proactive goals are more compelling than reactive goals; however, reactive goals still have their place in fiction—typically somewhere in the first half of the manuscript. Keeping with our example, in the movie ENOUGH (based on the novel BLACK AND BLUE by Anna Quindlen), Jennifer Lopez’s character, Slim, must survive her obsessive, murderous ex-husband. She spends the first half of the story in reactive, survival mode and the second half in proactive, fight-back mode. What causes the switch? Somewhere around the story’s midpoint, Slim realizes no one on the right side of the law will help her. She’s on her own, and sooner or later it’s going to come down to her and her ex, and only one will survive. She decides it’s going to be her.

The Midpoint Reversal

The term “midpoint reversal” refers to an event that occurs around the 50% mark that sends the story off in an unexpected direction. It’s a twist. A surprise. An earth-shaking revelation. The gain or loss of knowledge, skills, or resources.

James Scott Bell, in Write Your Novel From the Middle, calls the midpoint a “mirror moment”—the moment the protagonist is forced to take a long, hard look at herself and realize she must change or die. (“Change” can be a change of plan, heart, attitude, effort, or direction, and “die” can be a literal, physical death or a figurative death—often a spiritual, emotional, or situational fate worse than death.)

Larry Brooks, in Story Engineering, explores the four-act structure. At the midpoint, between quadrants two and three, the hero shifts from “wanderer” to “warrior.” They are no longer drifting, confused, trying to figure out what’s going on and who’s on their side. At the halfway mark, they are ready to go on the offensive. The endgame/motivation might stay the same (in our example, to survive), but the goal changes from “run away and hide” to “train for the inevitable confrontation.”

Whatever event happens at the midpoint of your story, it’s a great place (though not the only place) to have something happen that forces your character to switch from a reactive goal to a proactive one.

Where To Establish the Proactive Goal

Despite a relatively limited number of narrative structures the human brain recognizes as “story” (see Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story for more info on story and brain science), every story itself is unique and requires its own telling. So you’ve got options.

  • On page one. Lots of stories establish the main character’s proactive goal right away. Think of stories about endeavor: athletes who want to win the race, dancers who want to make the company, musicians who want to get the solo, academics who want to earn the scholarship. The audience knows right away what the goal is, and the protagonist is driven to achieve that goal from the get-go. Often the thing that drives these stories is the conflict that keeps getting piled on. Therefore, the question becomes, “How much more proactive can these characters remain in the face of such obstacles?” The athlete is injured. The dancer can’t master that one skill. The musician can’t afford the necessary lessons. The academic is up against twenty others for only one scholarship. They try and they try and they try, until they hit the dark night of the soul, the all-is-lost moment. Which they then overcome, digging deep one last time to win the day.
  • At the inciting incident. A good inciting incident is a lightning-bolt moment. A big “things will never be the same” moment. In typical structures, this usually happens no later than 10% of the way into the story, though tons of agents and editors will tell you 10% is too late—the earlier the better. Generally, the protagonist is given some time after the inciting incident to fall back, think, assess, analyze. In three-act terms, this is known as the debate. That fall-back-and-think moment is as good a time as any for your protagonist to get clear about what they want and to resolve that nothing will stand in their way.
  • At Plot Point I. After the setup (or ordinary world), the inciting incident, and the resulting debate, the protagonist decides how to proceed (internal)…and then they proceed (external). This first active step into the unknown is usually Plot Point I, or the transition from Act I to Act II, and it’s a great place to give us an active moment that reveals the hero’s agenda and shows us what sort of gumption they’re working with. If yours is a story in which your hero must work up to their gumption, then the midpoint (see above) might be where your character first establishes a proactive goal.

A Caution About Reactive Goals

I wouldn’t recommend that you delay establishing your hero’s proactive goal much beyond the midpoint. The problem we see in the slush pile isn’t that characters have reactive goals. It’s that they have reactive goals for too long.

In many cases, this is an issue of too much setup—too many opening chapters with too much backstory and ordinary-world exposition. Look at that first 10-25% of your total page count and be ruthless in trimming and tightening.

A character who wanders too far into a manuscript before taking the story’s reins waits too long to command readers’ attention and investment. If you wait until the third act to give us a character who proactively enacts her agenda, you risk reader attrition. Remember that this is your hero’s story. As such, don’t let too much of the story happen to your hero—give us a hero who happens to his story. He is the prime mover, and watching him take matters into his own hands is exactly the sort of thing readers sign up to experience.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

Pitch Language vs. Book-Review Language

by Angie Hodapp

There’s pitch language and there’s book-review language, and each has a unique vocabulary. Pitch language sells, but book-review language tells. If you’re working on your query letter, here’s a quick tip to help you keep the tone on track: Avoid using book-review language in your pitch.

Here’s a quick list of book-review vocabulary:

  • Absorbing
  • Action-packed
  • Addictive
  • Ambitious
  • Awe-inspiring
  • Breathtaking
  • Captivating
  • Dazzling
  • Dynamic
  • Engaging
  • Enjoyable
  • Gripping
  • Haunting
  • Heart-wrenching
  • Juicy
  • Memorable
  • Moving
  • Page-turning
  • Poignant
  • Powerful
  • Scrumptious
  • Spellbinding
  • Suspenseful
  • Tear-jerking
  • Tense
  • Thought-provoking
  • Thrilling
  • Touching
  • Yummy

These descriptors and others like them, while wholly appropriate for book reviews and cover blurbs, should be avoided in your query letter. Why? There are two reasons.

First, when you tell an agent in your query letter that your manuscript is “a breathtaking page-turner full of juicy, spell-binding prose” and that your beta readers told you how “haunting and moving and tear-jerking” it was, the agent has no idea what your story is about. Your query letter’s pitch should be 100-percent focused on your story.

Can’t you do both? That is, why not pitch the story and also say a few glowing things about it?

Because (and this is the second reason) your query letter should be no longer than one printed page. It’s the equivalent of an old-school, ink-on-paper business letter. That’s not very long, which makes every line valuable real estate. The more lines you put to work immersing the agent in your story’s premise, characters, conflict, stakes, plot, and the like, the greater the likelihood they’ll be interested in reading your sample pages or requesting your full.

Your pitch is not a review you write about your own book. Once more for the back row, pitch language is sell copy, but book-review language is tell copy. The query letter, like back-cover copy, exists to sell. So keep that pitch focused on your story’s Five W’s to increase your chances of selling:

  • Who is your character?
  • What do they want? (Goal)
  • Why do they want it? (Motivation)
  • Why can’t they have it? (Conflict)
  • What happens if they don’t get it? (Stakes)

Photo by Ekrulila on Pexels

Your Best Daily Writing Goals

by Angie Hodapp

Many writers familiar with NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) have a complicated relationship with the number 1,667. That’s how many words one must write each day for 30 days in order to hit the goal of writing 50,000 words in a month. Some writers blow right past that number every day of the year in their sleep—and, kind of annoyingly, like people who do CrossFit, they won’t hesitate to work their generative abilities into conversation or humblebrag about their daily word counts on social media. For others, that number is too far out there, and missing that goal time and time again becomes demoralizing and demotivating, as does comparing their output with that of those high-daily-word-count superstars.

Should You Do NaNoWriMo?

I bring this up not to discourage anyone from participating in NaNoWriMo. Rather, it’s to encourage you to consider how the challenge can help you grow as a writer. The short-term and extrinsic rewards are definitely worth it: bragging rights, a sense of personal accomplishment, fun swag, and opportunities to meet other writers during in-person and online write-ins. But the long-term benefit is what you’re really after. NaNoWriMo is about creating a brain change. It’s psychological. It’s about fostering the practice of turning off the analytical, judgey, editor part of your mind so that your creative mind can more effectively and efficiently do its job. You need both, but you need to learn how to let them take turns.

That brain change is more important than 1,667.

Yesterday, I came across an excellent Facebook post by my friend, prolific science-fiction author James Van Pelt. With his permission, I’m sharing his thoughts and experience with with setting daily word-count goals with you here.

James Van Pelt says:

“When I finished grad school in 1990, I set myself the goal of 1,000 words a day (because I’d read that’s what Stephen King did). I was teaching high school English full time and raising a family. If I was on a roll, a thousand words could take an hour. Unfortunately I wasn’t on a roll all the time, and that one hour could stretch into four. Obviously I couldn’t get a four-hour session in with the rest of my schedule, so what happened is that if I didn’t think I could hit the 1,000 I wouldn’t write at all.

“This was disturbing.

“At the end of the year I would tally my words. The number was always disappointingly low, and a low-grade self loathing lingered for weeks.

“I’m a slow learner. It took me until 1999, when at the end of the year my total looked like it would be around 35,000 words that I decided the problem wasn’t in my motivation or will power; it was the damned 1,000-word goal. It was just too much.

“I asked myself what I needed to be happier. I was going to be finishing the year at 35,000 words. Would I be happier if I did twice that much? Sure, way happier! The math on a 70,000 word year is about 200 words a day. That’s less than a page. That’s one conversation or setting description or moment of action. I could do 200 words before school started or during lunch/planning period, or during a staff meeting (plus it looked like I was taking notes).

“This was a doable goal, but it would only work if I didn’t skip days like I did with the 1,000-word goal. So, starting in November of 1999 I’ve been writing 200 words or more a day. If I’m on the road or at a convention, I’ll write at 5:30 in the morning or in the last half hour before going to sleep. What I try to do is not tell the people in my life, “Sorry, can’t join you. I have to write.” I haven’t missed once.

“Different systems work for different people. This is what works for me. I like streaks and they motivate me. I’ve written and sold a lot of fiction since 1999 and I always carry that pleasant buzz of knowing that I’ve written recently, and that I’m going to be writing soon.

“Between living a creative life or thinking that I’ll lead a creative life someday, I choose the first one.”

Connect with James Van Pelt on Facebook or check out his website.

Your Best Daily Writing Goals

Setting goals is important. Studies across all disciplines tell us over and over that people who set goals and then use those goals to guide the ways in which they spend their time are far more likely to accomplish desired outcomes than those who don’t. Furthermore, we know that breaking long-term goals down into digestible chunks is a key to success. As you make a plan for NaNoWriMo, or for next year, or for your next big writing project, or whatever, here are some ways to approach setting goals that are right for you.

Start by observing your writing habit.

Before you set word-count goals, spend two or three typical weeks writing when you can at a pace that feels like something you can sustain. These should be weeks representative of your life in terms of work, family, chores and errands, and other non-writing responsibilities. Don’t choose weeks that you are on vacation, laid up with a broken leg, entertaining your in-laws, or dealing with an unexpected project or crisis. At the end of those weeks, tally your total word count and tally the total hours you spent writing. Which makes you feel more positive about your efforts?

Decide whether to track word count, time spent, or both.

Some writers, like James, have dialed in to a realistic, sustainable daily word count. But there are others who find greater success tracking time spent. You can also track both! If you do, pay attention to the ratio of time to words when you’re drafting versus when you’re plotting or revising. These will not be the same ratios. You might be a writer who tracks word count when drafting and time spent when revising. Whatever the case, having a solid idea of your volume and rate of output under various circumstances will help you over time to develop even more realistic goals.

Practice positive self-talk based on what’s realistic and sustainable.

You’re going to get derailed. You just are. Suddenly you’re not putting gold-star stickers on that progress chart you made back at the beginning of the project or coloring in the “I did it!” squares in your bullet journal anymore.

When that happens, adjust. Instead of thinking “great, now I have to double my output tomorrow, and that probably won’t happen, so then I’ll need to triple my output two days from now, and that’s never going to happen,” take a realistic look at your calendar and set new goals for the next three, seven, ten, or X-number of days. A gold star or checkmark is still a gold star or checkmark, regardless of whether the goal was 2,000 words or 200.

Another strategy: Switch from a word-count goal to a time-spent goal or vice versa. That way, your self-talk switches from the negative “no way can I write 2,000 words tomorrow” to the positive “it’s not realistic for me to write 2,000 words tomorrow, but it is realistic to spend 30 minutes with my fingers on the keyboard before work tomorrow.”

Off track? Look back before looking ahead.

If you feel like you’ve fallen so far behind in your daily progress that you need to adjust your final deadline, don’t make a new plan for moving forward until you’ve looked backward. What derailed you? Was it something within your control, like spending too much time scrolling through social media or saying yes to projects or favors you could have said no to? Or was it something outside your control, like an unexpected work trip or a sick child?

Either way, I have good news. If it’s the former, make a list of all time-sucking behaviors that derailed you, and then make a plan for saying no. No to wasting time staring at screens. No to Aunt Betty who wants you to help her alphabetize her recipe cards. Yes to yourself and your goals.

If it’s the latter, recognize that the hiccup is temporary. Depending on the severity of the crisis, it might not feel temporary, or you might not know when your life will be back to normal, if ever. Again, it’s time to adjust. Do you need a break from the project? Take one! But schedule it. Make a date with yourself, even if it’s only one hour next Saturday afternoon, to keep your head in the game. If you’re used to getting two or three hours a day to write, but suddenly that can’t happen, adjust. Try writing in ten- or fifteen-minute increments. Try writing three sentences instead of three pages. All progress is progress.

At the end of the day, writing is hard, whether it’s your full-time job, part-time job, or avocation. Setting goals is important, but so is setting the right kinds of goals for you, at the right time in your life. Be flexible and positive, and keep your focus on what is realistic and sustainable, not for anyone else, but for you.

Photo by MART PRODUCTION from Pexels

Genre Isn’t Everything and High Concept Isn’t King

by Angie Hodapp

In the writing world, there’s a lot of emphasis placed on genre. After all, knowing what you write, who it’s for, and how to reach your market are critical elements of many a successful career, and so much of that boils down to understanding genre. There’s also a low, constant buzz about concept. What does high concept mean, is it necessary, and how does it play into an author’s potential to achieve bestseller status or sell into Hollywood? This month, I present a new way to think and talk about fiction—one that argues genre isn’t everything and concept isn’t always king.

Conceptual appeal gets a lot of positive press, and high-concept stories do tend to rise to the top of any given slush pile. Why? Because they feel new and fresh and pitchable and buzzworthy. If you’ve ever received a rejection that says your manuscript is “too quiet,” what the person doing the rejecting is most likely commenting on is your concept. Or lack of concept. They want an idea that feels bigger, something that’s going to stand out on its genre’s shelf rather than conform to it.

But is high concept really the only way to get your book published? Absolutely not. In fact, concept is just one of four ways that stories appeal to readers. In addition to conceptual appeal, there is also emotional appeal, experiential appeal, and literary appeal.

Conceptual Appeal

A story with conceptual (or high-concept) appeal is built on a clear, easy-to-pitch premise.

That’s a definition you’ll find floating all over the Internet, but it’s about zero-percent helpful to writers trying to wrap their creative brains around the idea of conceptual appeal. That’s because the pitch for a high-concept story must be much more than clear and brief. (In other words, you can deliver a clear, one-sentence pitch for a story that doesn’t carry a single hot ounce of conceptual appeal.) So what’s the missing ingredient that will make a highly pitchable story truly conceptually appealing?

Stories with conceptual appeal deliver something unique—some fresh twist or never-been-seen-before what if…? that makes people’s eyes light up. If your pitch gets strangers (not friends and family) saying…

  • That’s a million-dollar idea!
  • How in the world did you come up with that?
  • I can’t imagine how your story is going to resolve that problem!
  • I wish I’d come up with that idea!

…then congratulations! You have a story with conceptual appeal.

Here’s another key feature of stories with conceptual appeal: They will only be new and unique once. After they explode onto the scene, they get broken down into tropes that get reimagined by writers writing to the market, hoping to capture the vast readership you’ve amassed. (Ask any agent who was in the biz in the wake of Harry Potter how many query letters they received for middle-grades featuring magic boarding schools. Ask how many they’re still receiving.)

This is not a judgement statement by the way; it’s merely a description of how high-concept books cause genres to shift as readers develop appetites for new types of stories they never knew they were missing.

Emotional Appeal

The emotion-driven story engages our hearts, our primal selves, maybe even our very souls. It promises to make us Feel Something Big that will stay with us long after we finish reading. Whether that something is joy, sorrow, or terror, authors whose stories are foremost an appeal to emotion do their best work when they’re tapping into the human condition. These stories often dive deep into the following:

  • Connection (family, friendship, love, reconciliation, redemption)
  • Endeavor (conflict, struggle, indomitable spirit, triumph against insurmountable odds)
  • Separation (failure, pain, loss, death)

Experiential Appeal

Stories with experiential appeal must be experienced to be felt or understood. They are difficult to describe (and even more difficult to pitch), and any attempts to do so often end with, “You just have to read it to get it.” In the movie world, there are plenty of great examples of experiential appeal: Memento, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Inception, and The Matrix*, to name a few. Experiential fiction often intersects with the speculative genres—especially science fiction, magical realism, and horror—but it doesn’t have to. You can write a story in any genre that unfolds in a “you just have to read it to get it” sort of way.

*Before we move on, let’s chat about The Matrix, which many might argue is high concept. I disagree. Remember that stories with conceptual appeal are based on a clear, easy-to-pitch premise. Can you write a clear, one-sentence pitch for The Matrix? Can anyone? Sure, you can briefly encapsulate the core premise: “What if all humans were living comfortable but virtual lives, and the cost of waking up to the truth meant living in a dystopian hell?” But this concept as pitched doesn’t even come close to the experience of the movie itself. So although the writers landed on conceptual appeal, it was their choice to let the story unfold in an experiential way that truly blew moviegoers’ minds. Therefore, the conceptual appeal of The Matrix is secondary to its experiential appeal.

Literary Appeal

Writers who aim to appeal to readers’ sense of literary excellence put the writing itself first. The artistry of the style, voice, rhythm, meter, lyricism, phrasing, use of poetic devices, and so on, are as important (if not more) than plot, action, or a snappy pace. In other words, these are stories readers find worth reading for how they are told.

A term adjacent to “literary” is “upmarket,” which you might see on agents’ and editors’ wish lists. Upmarket refers to works that employ familiar features, tropes, or structures of genre or commercial fiction but that are told in a more literary writing style. So if you’re a writer striving to appeal to readers who appreciate the artistry of language, but you also want to play in the sandbox of a favorite genre, then you are an upmarket writer. Hooray!

The Genre-Appeal Grid

Now that you know the four ways fiction can appeal to readers, what’s next? Check out the grid below, which features the four appeals across the top and a few (but definitely not all) genres down the side. Where does your current work-in-progress fit? Keep in mind:

  • Knowing your story’s genre as well as its primary appeal can help you figure out how you want to approach the telling of that story.
  • A story can appeal to readers in more than one way. Maybe, like The Matrix, your book has a primary appeal and a secondary appeal.
  • More isn’t better. Trying to write a story that appeals to readers in all four ways is like trying to write a story that crosses too many genres: you’ll end up with a muddy mess that in its manic attempt to be for everyone will actually be for no one.
  • Whichever square on the grid feels most like home to you can help you define your niche and author brand. You’re the one who writes experiential historicals! You’re the one who writes literary westerns! And you! You’re the one who writes high-concept romance!
  • Or every book you write can belong to a different square. You decide!
  • Every square on the grid is valid. None is better than any other. Your success lies in how you execute the story you want to tell, for the readers you want to write for because they value the same things about story that you do.

Photo by Gratisography from Pexels

Premise, Plot, Prose: What Happens When One Is Missing?

by Angie Hodapp

A few years ago, I presented at the monthly meeting of a writing organization that wanted to know more about what agents are (and aren’t) looking for when they read submissions. I ended up talking about how premise, plot, and prose make a three-legged stool, and how when one leg is missing, the stool falls over—and the submission is likely to get a rejection. I’ve always wanted to expand on that idea for a more general fiction-writing audience. So this month, that’s what I decided to do.

+Premise +Plot -Prose

A manuscript that falls into this category promises a cool, unique premise, hook, or concept, and it’s well structured, moving along at a good, genre-appropriate clip…or at least it appears to be at first. Agents aren’t going to make it very far into this manuscript because the prose itself is a problem.

When I say prose here, I’m talking about two things. I’m talking about craft: spelling, grammar, semantics, syntax, mechanics, punctuation, etc. I’m also talking about art: voice, style, rhythm, imagery, symbolism, use of poetic devices, and so on.

A writer’s mastery of craft is relatively easy to assess. There are rules and standards about such things, after all, and a writer’s ability to demonstrate functional knowledge of those rules and standards should be requisite for professional-level publication. However, judging a writer’s mastery of art is far more subjective. One human’s Elmore Leonard is another’s Cormac McCarthy. Furthermore, the relative artistry of a writer’s prose is examined differently through the various lenses of genre and intended audience.

Style aside, what agents are looking for when they’re reading sample pages is the feeling that they’re in good hands. They want the sense that the writer knows what they’re doing, that they’ve both mastered craft and delivered artistry that will satisfy the expectations of a particular market.

Improve Your Prose

+Premise -Plot +Prose

This manuscript is built on a mind-blowing, never-been-seen-before idea, and the prose is gorgeous, but there’s no plot. No sequence of events leading one into the other in a logical, plausible way that builds suspense, raises stakes, and keeps readers turning pages. No cliffhangers, turning points, or reversals. No artfully planted clues that give the reader a fair shake. No satisfying sense of wholeness or completeness. No connections between the first half of the manuscript and the second.

This manuscript can often be summarized “characters doing stuff, having conversations, and thinking thoughts.” It rambles. It indulges the author’s whims. It feels like an early draft.

Plotting a novel is not the same thing as writing down a list of things that will happen in your story or summarizing scenes on stacks of notecards. No, plotting a novel is like trying to solve a puzzle. It’s a painstaking back-and-forth between working on the whole and working on its parts. It’s about making connections and ensuring that every character, scene, description, internalization, line of dialogue, etc., has a job to do and earns its real estate on the page. Even pantsing (writing by the seat of one’s pants) is a method of plotting—pantsers, too, must eventually arrive at a structure that the human brain recognizes as “story.” It’s just that a pantser’s process is to get there by writing multiple drafts.

Agents will read further into this type of manuscript than they will the previous type. If you’ve hooked them with a great premise and masterful prose, then they’re more likely to stick with your story to see if the plot is sound—if the story hangs together and if you nailed the landing. But if you haven’t, you’re likely to receive a pass.

Improve Your Plot

-Premise +Plot +Prose

This manuscript is well written with an airtight plot, but it feels bland. Derivative. Predictable. A little too tropey. Like it rolled off the assembly line into a bin marked “Stories We’ve All Seen Before.”

Of all three types of manuscripts in this article, this one is most likely to get represented and published. It’s a “good” book, a “competent” book. That makes it a safe bet for a lot of agents and editors. But will it be a standout or become a bestseller? Will it earn out its advance (if an advance was offered)? Will its sales bring you subsequent contracts with improved terms? Without a twisty, unique premise, probably not.

Note that for the sake of this article, I’m using “premise” as a synonym for “concept,” which brings the idea of “high concept” into play. There’s lots of info online about high concept (what it is and why it rises to the top of slush piles), but I’m not going into that here. What I do want to say here is that if you’ve mastered prose and plot, don’t stop there. Do the work—and it is work!—of developing one-of-a-kind ideas, premises, hooks, or concepts. As Larry Brooks writes in the book I’m recommending below, “At the professional level to which you aspire, you really cannot, with great confidence, sit down and write just any old thing that appeals to you.”

Improve Your Premise

This month, take some time to assess where you are with all this. Rank premise, plot, and prose in order of your greatest strength to your greatest opportunity. Pick up one of the recommended books and commit to exploring how you can give your next manuscript the best possible chance at becoming a bestseller!

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

Four Ways to Create Inter-Character Conflict

by Angie Hodapp

I was reading a manuscript recently that featured a strong, interesting protagonist and a strong, interesting antagonist. Off to a good start, right? Well…

As I continued to read, I realized there was a problem. While both characters were developed well on the page, I couldn’t nail down why they were experiencing such conflict with each other. More to the point, the conflict playing out between them was inconsistent, seemingly about Thing A in these chapters, but then morphing into Thing B in those chapters, and later on, it was all about Things C, D, or E with Things A and B abandoned and unresolved.

Eventually, as a result, the plot fell apart, and the inter-character conflict devolved into nothing more substantial than snarky dialogue…all the way up until one tried kill the other for no apparent reason other than the author couldn’t figure out how to wrap up the manuscript. (Nothing like a tacked-on climax to reveal that a story needs revision!)

This was a case of an author who started out with a solid sense of how to create good characters and scene-based conflicts, but who hadn’t yet figured out that scenes are the building blocks of a central story line. With no central story line, conflict exists merely for conflict’s sake—and it often comes off as contrived or melodramatic.

As you outline, draft, or revise, remember that conflict drives your plot, or central story line. Therefore, to improve your story’s cohesion, focus on developing a single conflict-driven through-line. How? The following are four easy ways to set two characters at compelling odds with each other:

  1. They want the same goal but only one of them can have it. There is only one piece of pie, gold medal, promotion, throne, whatever.
  2. They want the same goal but have different motivations. Jane and Ben both want to steal the diamond, but Jane wants to return it to its rightful owner, and Ben wants to sell it on the black market.
  3. They want two different goals that are mutually exclusive. If one achieves their goal, then the opportunity to attain the other goal disappears. Sally wants to be promoted to partner at her Colorado law firm, but her husband, Mike, wants them to move to the coast and live on a boat. They can’t both attain their goal and keep their marriage, so either one or the both of them must abandon their goal.
  4. One has a vested interest in preventing the other from achieving their goal. If one achieves their goal, the other will lose something of importance. Sam bets Carrie $500 that she won’t spend the night in the haunted house, but now it looks like she’s going to do it—that is her goal—so Sam’s goal becomes to convince her the house is actually haunted so he can keep his money.

Take a look at your work-in-progress and articulate why your main hero and main villain are at odds with each other. If you have an ensemble cast, then nail down the various types of conflict that exist between various pairs or groups of characters. In all likelihood, there will be all sorts of conflict going on throughout the manuscript, but what I’m asking you to do here is distill the primary nature of your story’s conflict down to a central story question in the form “Will A happen or will B happen?”

  1. Will Ann or Ian win the race?
  2. Will Jane return the diamond to its rightful owner or will Ben sell it on the black market?
  3. Will Sally accept the partnership in Colorado, or will she give up her career to move to the coast and live on a boat with Mike?
  4. Will Carrie spend the night in the haunted house and win Sam’s $500 bet, or will Sam succeed in scaring her away?

Now make sure that whatever distilled, central-story question you came up with here is the question that gets answered at the end of the manuscript. You might be surprised to learn how many manuscripts we read in which the author loses sight of their original story question. (It’s a lot!) Preventing that misstep can be as easy as re-orienting yourself around your story’s conflict.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

Ten Tips for Virtual or In-Person Pitching

by Angie Hodapp

The writing world is transitioning back to in-person conferences, and we couldn’t be more excited! But the unexpected benefits of virtual events means they’re probably here to stay. Whether you’ll soon be pitching in-person or over Zoom, here are ten tips to help you present as professional, knowledgeable, and ready to take on the publishing industry.

1. Practice.

Run through your pitch a few times in front of the mirror (if you’ll be pitching in person) or in front of your computer with your camera on (if you’ll be pitching virtually). You can even record yourself and play back your practice pitches until you feel like you’re nailing it. If you’re super nervous, start by pitching to a sweet-faced stuffie or your least judgy-looking pet. Work up to your friends and family. But know that you’re going to get the best feedback from other writers. They can give you tips on the pitch itself as well as on your delivery, so when you’re ready, ask your critique group if you can practice on them. (See #6 below for another practice tip.)

2. Avoid reading off a piece of paper.

Have you ever attended a lecture or keynote where the speaker read word-for-word off their PowerPoint slides or note cards? Of course you have. Everyone has. It’s a little monotonous, right? The speaker’s lack of interaction with the audience is awkward and yawn inducing. The same can be true of a pitch appointment. Reading the agent your query letter or synopsis isn’t your best move, and there are several reasons why. First, imagine what the agent or editor will be looking at while you read: the top of your head. Second, it can be difficult to hear you if you’re aiming your voice at the paper in front of you, especially in a crowded pitch room. If you’re pitching on Zoom and reading off your screen, speaking right into your mic, that’s not as bad, but your reading-aloud voice might still be a little flat. Which leads me to the third and most important thing: a verbal pitch should be an engaging conversation starter. As such, it should be shorter than your query letter’s pitch paragraphs. Therefore…

3. Avoid talking the whole time.

Pitch appointments average eight to ten minutes, and those minutes go by fast. The best pitch appointments for both the writer and the agent are those that turn into personable dialogues about the book, comparable titles, and the writer’s inspiration, journey, and career goals. Yet my colleagues and I have taken tons of pitch appointments over the years that end with the writer still talking—either because they haven’t practiced their pitch and are kind of wandering through a vague recounting of their story’s events, or because they’re still explaining their backstory, world building, or themes. There’s just not time during the average pitch appointment for that kind of elucidation. Therefore…

4. Encapsulate your premise or concept.

Lead with your story’s title, genre, word count, and character- or concept-based “person with a problem” proposition. You can expand a little, but not as much as your query letter does. Then give the agent an opportunity to ask you questions…or better yet, to just go ahead and request your manuscript.

5. Make eye contact.

Whether in person or on screen, eye contact conveys confidence and commands the attention of the listener. Without it, it’s easier for the listener to zone out.

6. Avoid memorizing your written pitch.

Maybe you’re making stellar eye contact and not reading off a piece of paper. That’s good! But the word-for-word recitation of a memorized pitch also risks being humdrum—especially when the writer forgets to breathe. And let me tell you, pitch memorizers are the most likely to forget to breathe! You’re much better off knowing what you want to say and then letting it come out naturally and personably in the moment. How do you practice that? Here’s something a writer friend of mine did: Write “tell me about your book” on a dozen notecards or stickies and have a friend post them around your world (on your toothpaste, washing machine, fridge, rearview mirror, TV remote). Whenever you come across one, pretend it’s an agent or editor at a conference, and right then and there, deliver your pitch impromptu style.

7. Have paper and pen ready.

Unless your project is too far afield from what the agent is currently looking to represent, the agent is probably going to ask you for sample pages. That’s the only way they can assess whether the idea you pitched is executed well and ready for representation. So be ready to write down (a) what they want you to send (pages, chapters, full manuscript) and (b) how they want you to send it. This is especially important during virtual pitches. In person, an agent can hand you their business card. But over Zoom, you’ll need to be sure to write down their email address or the link to their submissions portal or online query form. When I’m taking virtual pitches, I post these things to the private chat window, so besides paper and pen, also have a document already open on your computer where you can copy-paste. What often happens is that the writer is so flustered by the request that they end up scrambling for something to write with and on…and then later, they can’t remember what they’re supposed to do. So they contact the event organizers, who then have to get in touch with the agent, who then has to reiterate the request, which then has to be re-communicated to the writer. Best practice? Expect a request, stay calm and collected when it comes, and have pen and paper (or an open document) ready.

8. Respect agents’ social-media boundaries.

In our more virtual world, it seems professional boundaries have become a bit more blurred. Resist the urge to slide into an agent’s direct messages on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., whether to pitch them, send links to your content, or follow up on a pitch or other submitted materials. It’s simply not professional, and frankly, it feels a bit off. I don’t know a single agent who has ever been impressed by a writer who doesn’t follow the submission guidelines outlined on their websites. So unless an agent explicitly invites professional interactions via their personal media, it’s best not to go there.

9. Remember in-person hygiene.

This one’s a little uncomfortable to talk about, and you might be wondering if we need to talk about it at all. But every agent who’s ever taken in-person pitches has stories. Hey, I’m sure writers have stories about agents’ hygiene, too. No one wants that to be the thing they’re remembered for. So as we all return to in-person life, some grudgingly trading yoga pants and slippers for tailored slacks and hard-soled shoes, here are some tips. First, forego perfume or cologne the day of your pitch. A few years ago, Agent Kristin ended up sneezing and mopping her eyes all the way through a pitch appointment because she had an allergic reaction to whatever scent the writer was wearing. Second, slip some mints or hard candies into your conference bag. These aren’t just for your breath—they also help remedy anxious dry mouth in the moments before your appointment. To that point, have a bottle of water in your bag as well. Finally, I know several conference regulars who carry a little travel-sized deodorant or antiperspirant in their conference bags. Great to have on hand for pre-pitch anxiety, sure, but also for surviving long breakout sessions when the hotel air-conditioning is on the fritz. (Why is the hotel air-conditioning always on the fritz?) Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

10. Don’t be nervous.

Ha! Like it’s that easy, right? Of course there are nerves involved in pitching. The only way to combat the anxiety is to be practiced and prepared, and to keep signing up for pitch appointments every time you have the chance, both in person and online. Once you know what to expect, there will be fewer surprises, and you’ll be a pitching pro in no time.

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels