Writer's Weekend, Day 1--Thurday 6/9/05

[annathepiper]

As promised to cats_haven, here's the first of my blow-by-blow writeups for all the days of this year's Writer's Weekend! I haven't had the time yet to do this before now, so apologies for the delay on this, folks.


This year's WW was in a Quality Inn in downtown Seattle, on the busy highway sometimes known as 99 and sometimes known as Aurora. My plan had been to do all of my packing and suchlike the night before, so that solarbird could get me down there reasonably early and that I'd be able to get registered for the room I was sharing with seimaisin. It came as no surprise whatsoever that this plan went awry--such things often do. But I place the blame for it squarely upon the shoulders of the jerks who broke into our carriage house at MurkSouth, a situation which required Dara to remain down there all Wednesday evening awaiting mamishka so that new keys could be given out, and which required me to come fetch Dara between 11 and midnight. We didn't get home until late, so packing had to be put off until the following morning.

The packing was only one of several things I wound up having to take care of, but fortunately none of it was terribly difficult. I made a point of calling Jaime so that she'd know what was going on, and to know to expect me at the Quality Inn between noon and one. It worked out, though. Her plane had been late getting into Seattle, so she was running behind getting from her hotel near the airport up to the Quality Inn herself.

But I got everything I needed to do done, got Dara to stop at the Albertson's on the way so that I could buy snackies and soda, and off we went.

One other thing threw us awry, though--a lesson both of us had learned in the past, but which we'd forgotten this time around. That lesson: Mapquest blows. More specifically, Mapquest blows so many goats that every time you use it, there are no unsatisfied goats in a three-state radius of your immediate location. This time around, its fault lay in directions that took us south into downtown Seattle and then made us swing slightly north again on 99 to try to get to our hotel. Which would have been fine, except that at that point on 99, there is a HUGE FARKING DIVIDER in the road that made it impossible to actually get over to the Quality Inn at that point. So we had to spend many extra minutes wandering around to try to find a way over to the other side of 99, and what we wound up having to do was to drive north all the way up into Queen Anne, nearly to Fremont, before we could find a way to get turned around and onto the side of the road we wanted.

But we got there. And I hugged Dara as she dropped me off, and found Jaime waiting for me in the lobby! As I was getting registered at the front desk as well, mizkit showed up. There was much hugging between Kit and me, much grinning and glad-to-meet-you-face-to-face yakking between Jaime and me, and in general a lot of good "AWRIGHT! We're finally HERE!" feeling. I informed the delighted Kit that I had books she needed to sign. She informed me that she'd be participating in the scheduled book signing, so I let her off the immediate hook. We bumped into dr_pretentious as well, and I introduced Jaime to her.

She had other things to do and other people to see, though, so once Jaime and I got our room we went up to drop off our stuff and decided to go and get some lunch while we waited for the Thursday afternoon and evening programming to start. Our immediate lunch options were few, and mostly all over at the food court in the Seattle Center right by the Space Needle. It was a little weird for me to come in to there on foot, since I was used to getting there by monorail for Folklife, which is usually the only time I'm ever AT the Seattle Center. But we trotted the short distance over there, got some food, and cheerfully yakked all the way. It didn't take us long to get going with the musicgeeking, lots of Graet Big Sea and Carbon Leaf, and it didn't take long to get going on the geeking about each other's books, either.

After lunch we headed back to the hotel to get registered for the conference. We spotted Sarah again, as well as Dee, who I'd remembered from last year's WW and who was working as a volunteer for the conference this time around. We actually showed up a little early for registration, but they got us signed in anyway and gave us the Nifty Loot that went with our registration. This year's Nifty Loot was various types of carry bags that conference participants were receiving. Jaime and I both got the black messenger bags of the sort that are ideal for geeks, and about perfectly sized for carrying around laptops. We agreed that they were nifty indeed and pronounced ourselves likely to actually use them on a regular basis.

Once we got signed in, we could actually start on the programming!



alg and Kassandra Sims gave a nifty panel on Fanfic and how it can affect your writing. Since I've dabbled in fanfic, and have certainly had to work to overcome problems I had writing fanfic when I made the hop over to writing publishable original fic, I totally had to go check this panel out.

Anna and Kassandra are both very fanfic-friendly, but they warned that not all publishers, editors, and agents are. If you're a ficcer, you need to be careful about how you might express this to someone to whom you're pitching your professional work. It all goes back to the ongoing debate about whether fanfic is a good thing or a bad thing--so it behooves one to pay attention to the opinions of various folks in the industry on this, and to tailor your talking about your fanfic dabblings accordingly. (From what I've gleaned off makinglight, Tor Books in general has fanfic-friendly people on its staff--Teresa Nielsen Hayden has posted in the past about the interesting things coming out of the fanfic community, and what may well happen when more and more fanficcers make the jump to being pro. The whole 'beta reader' concept is a really good example of this.)

But there are some things you'll need to look out for when you want to make that jump, and this panel was about those things.

One thing was what Anna called 'fanfic disease', which amounts to a fanficcer forgetting to put in necessary worldbuilding and background in an original fic. In fanfic, you don't have to do this; your readers, assuming that they too are familiar with the canon on which your fic is based, know this stuff already. So you don't have to spend time setting up the world. Anna spoke of an example of this where someone sent in a submission to her and she told them it was a great book--but that they needed to write the other half of it, the part that involved that necessary background.

Another huge gotcha covered in the panel was the trap I personally have seen several ficcers--as well as MUSHers, which are a similar breed--fall into, which is the trap of thinking, "Oh, I'm not good enough to be a REAL writer. I'll just write fanfic all my life." Anna and Kassandra's opinion on this, an opinion with which I agree, is that if you're capable of writing several thousand words of a 30-part fanfic, you are damned well capable of writing a novel. I myself have been told something similar, back when lyonesse once told me that if I could have several thousand words flowing out of my fingertips in MUSH roleplay scenes, I absolutely had it in me to write a novel.

The last big interesting thing they went over was the value of critique groups, whether they are online or offline. This goes back to the aforementioned 'beta reader' thing--and again, this is something with which I've had direct experience, since my beta readers (HI FOLKS! *waves wildly at any of them who might be reading this*) have been invaluable to me. They are the people who will ideally tell you what works for them and what doesn't work for them in your story, point out any continuity errors you might make, point out any trends in your prose that you need to polish up (e.g., "a deep and abiding relationship with the comma", as Anna put it ;) ). The thing to keep in mind with a critique group, though, is that if you join a critique group you need to be prepared to give critiques as well as receive them. It shouldn't be all about you.

(You'll notice that this is why I don't ask people who are themselves working on their own writing projects to beta read for me!)



The second really useful panel that Jaime and I attended was run by Alisa McKnight, who I have since learned is the wife of kaseido on my Friends list! She owns and runs Loose Id, a publisher that specializes in erotica (so be cautious about when you click the link), and she described for us how she's done the book thing from all standpoints: writing, editing, pitching, agenting. She turned out to be a funny and informative panel moderator, and the panel itself was extremely useful.

We'd gotten in some useful practice at last year's Writer's Weekend with working on pitches--but what stood out for me this year was the difference in approach between what I learned last year and what I learned this year. Last year, the method described to me was a kind of "snowflake" method, where you try to describe your book in a single sentence and expand it out from there into a paragraph, a page, four pages, etc. You can use the paragraph as a query letter pitch, the four-page version as a synopsis to go with a partial or full submission, and such.

Alisa's method was somewhat different. She described it as a sort of six-slide Powerpoint version of your pitch, and emphasized in general that you want to put into a pitch only the most vital information--tell the agent or editor just enough to entice them and make them ask for more. It's easier to unsell a book than to sell one, so when you've said those vital bits of information, shut up and let that stand! She also talked about "code words" that are easy little words and phrases that you can use to concisely and clearly summarize what you've got going on in your book. Some examples of this that I tried to use in my Faerie Blood pitch: "an old woman who is not what she seems" and "a young wanderer running away from his past". As Alisa described, you can find more examples of these all over the place: back cover book blurbs, reviews, ads. Look for the words or phrases that summarize character roles: cowboy, drifter, desperado, unrepentant rake with a sister he adores, whore with a heart of gold. That kind of thing.

She then proceeded to talk about the six "slides" involved in her pitch method, encouraging us to visualize them with maybe about five bullet points per slide, and something that can give you what would come out to about a ten-minute pitch. If you hit one bullet point per slide, it condenses down to about two minutes--and if you can condense it down to 30 seconds, you've got what she called the "elevator pitch", which is what you'd say to an agent or editor if they turned to you in the elevator and said, "So tell me about your book." (I tied this in with last year's "snowflake" method by equating the elevator pitch to the one-sentence description of your book.)

Slide #1: The Basics. Give your name--names, if applicable, if you're writing under a pseudonym. The title of your book, its genre and approximate length, and the targeted line or imprint for a given publisher if you happen to have any thoughts on that. (E.g., if you're pitching to an editor at Tor, you might specify that you're targeting their paranormal romance line.) Above all, Alisa emphasized, remember to show your passion for your work. Be as confident and excited as you can, because if you're on top of it, you can make the person you're pitching to interested and excited as well.

Slide #2: The Setting. Be brief about this. Very brief. Try to be evocative, say something about the time period and a few other pertinent points, but brevity is vital here. Think "Summer of 1802 in the Arizona desert" level of detail here. Or "a frontier outpost in space, in the 22nd century".

Slide #3: The Heroine. (The heroine doesn't always have to be first, but Alisa put this slide first since if you're writing romance, that's generally the character the readers are likely to identify with the most.) Here you want to focus on character points that attract attention and which are absolutely vital to the story--things like name, age, race, religion, class, anything that might set her off against other characters and be critical to what's going on. Talk about her goals and desires, and the action or situation that begins her arc in the plot. My example of this from Faerie Blood: "Kendis Thompson of Seattle thinks she's as normal as the next computer geek, and up till now she's been right. But her world is about to turn on its ear, for she is the daughter of a Seelie Court mage and her mortal husband--and her faerie blood is awakening."

Slide #4: The Hero. Same stuff as for the heroine, pretty much.

Slide #5: The Villain and Conflict. If the villain is really vital to the story, he or she might need a slide of their own. Otherwise, talk about the villain in terms of the overall clash between the principal characters, or the key quest/goal that's necessary to begin the plot. Talk about the resolution of the story--demonstrate you actually have an ending planned out. Again, be brief--you just need to convey the sense of the conflict, and what the critical moment of resolution is. And if you do your slides right on your protagonists, you don't have to talk about their goals and desires in the plot here. Again, my example of this from Faerie Blood: "She will need those allies, for the power rising within her is calling her fey kin to the Emerald City to find her. And kill her."

Slide #6: The Hook. Alisa acknowledged that this is a hard one. You need to show why your book is similar to OR different from other books. Play off your title, or play off movies or books with similar titles. Think of the "high concept", e.g., "Harry Potter Meets the X-Men". But if you try this approach, be sure to pick things that people will immediately know and recognize, otherwise it won't work. (Just as a general datapoint, I didn't try this with the Faerie Blood pitch, but it seemed to not be an issue. Your mileage may vary!)

Other bits of advice she gave:

• Ask questions. Ask what the agent or editor is looking for if they don't take your current book.
  
• Be prepared to hear no.
  
• If you can, have a couple of pitches ready in case they ask, "What else are you working on?"
  
• Practice your pitches! Especially to friends who haven't read your book!
  
• A query is a pitch on paper. Remember that the purpose here is still the same, though: get the agent/editor interested. Be BRIEF, and for god's sake, be sure to get the name, gender, and title of your editor/agent right! ;) And if you don't know the gender of the party to whom you are pitching, open your letter with Dear <Full Name>.
  
• If you have applicable writing credentials, include them in your query. But ONLY if they are applicable to your story. You don't really need biographical details about yourself.
  
• Tell the agent/editor why you are specifically querying them. If applicable, mention any previous meetings or agreements; e.g., 'I pitched my book to you at Writer's Weekend, and you requested a partial'. You might also mention how you found out about them.
  
• It helps a lot if you know the sorts of things that a given publisher might look for, so that you can better tailor your pitch to them. For example, if you are pitching to Tor, you might focus on the worldbuilding in your story. If you're pitching to Baen, you might focus on battles.
  
• Tell agents who has the book right now, if applicable.
  
• Do your homework, be truthful, be brief!
  
• ALWAYS thank them for their time. Politeness is gold!
  
• Completion status, if need be; say if the book is done, or what your targeted completion date is. Give the approximate length and whether you want your manuscript back.
  
• Key thing about a synopsis: if in doubt, leave it out. Be brief, brief, brief!

Once Alisa got done talking, she invited attendees to stand up and practice their pitches. I had the paragraph version of the Faerie Blood pitch handy on my frob, and I've practically memorized it, so I stood up and started in on it. She cut me off mid-way, grinned, and said, "Send it to me!" Which would have been a lot cooler if I'd actually been pitching it to her for real. ;) I'd have actually gone and pitched it to her for real, except she doesn't handle what I'm writing! Doh!

Jaime also practiced her pitch, and got much handy advice from Alisa. Others were shakier and clearly nervous; one poor schmoo was clearly so rattled that he forgot the name of one of his own characters. Which is a shame, since when he actually managed to talk about the key concepts of his book, it sounded fairly interesting. But he was so nervous about speaking in front of others that he was shooting himself in the foot.

All in all, though, an incredibly helpful panel, and it helped me out immensely once I did my pitches on Saturday. More on this later.



The last big interesting thing Jaime and I did was to participate in the Five Minute Slam--readings out of our own original pieces. We hadn't planned on doing this, but Sarah cornered us in the Food Nook, charged up to me, and blurted, "Do you have your manuscript for Faerie Blood?" I blinked and said I had it on my laptop. She said, "Get it! And come read!" So Jaime and I both went and got our laptops, and participated in the readings. It was fun! I chugged my way through most of Chapter 1 of Faerie Blood--I didn't make it all the way through before Sarah called time on me, though.

Two readings in particular stood out for me, though I didn't catch the names of the pieces or the names of the ladies who read them. But I made a point of finding them later and telling them I really liked their pieces. One was a very subtle, low-key sort of piece about an old woman with a textiles shop, who is asked by a regular visitor if she can work some magic for him. The other was a more whimsical, almost fairy-tale-esque piece about a humpbacked girl asked by the town council of her town to serve as the schoolteacher for a group planning to move up the coast to settle a region reputed to be haunted--by elves. Muaha. No wonder I liked it.


More to come!

Comments

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Slams for me will now be forever contaminated by "This next one's called 'The Wanton Folly of Me Mum!'" :-)

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

well, and i was write about the novel thang ;)

As Alisa described, you can find more examples of these all over the place: back cover book blurbs, reviews, ads. Look for the words or phrases that summarize character roles: cowboy, drifter, desperado, unrepentant rake with a sister he adores, whore with a heart of gold. That kind of thing.

this is exactly why i think the werewolf novel is utterly unmarketable. consider my characters:

. pacifist, bicycle-riding graduate student pursued by werewolves
. chaos magician with a cellphone
. girlfriend with a welding torch
. omega werewolf with a knack for engineering
. cranky, poetry-quoting landlady with a motorcycle

....."they fight crime!"

but i doubt they sell a novel. oh well; they're still fun for me.

[annathepiper]

You were indeed right!

As for your novel being unmarketable, well--what immediately leaps to mind here is that when you're actually pitching the novel, you can and in fact should condense those bits down further. For example, 'bicycle-riding' is not a vital attribute for your guy when it comes to describing the sound-bite version of the story. If it were me, I'd strip that down to 'graduate student'. The 'pursued by werewolves' part comes in with talking about the overall conflict of the story. All of the phrases you list here are great character summations but not necessarily the kind of thing that editors and agents are going to be asking for in pitches.

For example, just off the top of my head based on what I've read of your novel, I'd do a one-sentence pitch to the effect of "A graduate student is pursued by werewolves who seek to stop his research into the science of lycanthropy." That's it. That little soundbite is, from what I've been hearing from the pros showing up at WW, the one little nugget of the heart of your story that they'd be looking for. You don't have to tell them all the little quirky details of your characters, no matter how near and dear they are to your heart. That sort of thing is for longer synopses, if not the novel itself!

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

ah, i see; that makes more sense :) perhaps i shall have to hire you on to write my soundbites :)

[annathepiper]

If at some point you want to try to actually pitch this novel to someone--or hell, if you just want to practice pitching it for your own edification, whether or not you actually send out any queries on it--I would be delighted to offer suggestions and assistance. I feel almost honorbound to, after all the nifty help I've gotten on my own pitch practice posts on my journal. :) mizkit and shadowhwk have been EXTREMELY helpful to me in that regard, and I feel like I should pass on the Good Karma. :)

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

thank you kindly :) first of course i have to finish the danged thing -- i think i am about 90% done, which means i must have 90% of the time remaining ;P

[annathepiper]

Indeed, 'finish the book!' seems to be a vital component of preparing to pitch it!

Some of the WW pro types sometimes fudged that a bit, and suggested that if you're on top of your book well enough, you can sometimes get away with pitching it before you're done. But in general, it seems that if you've finished it, you'll be a lot better prepared to pitch it.

Which is doubtless why trying to write a pitch for Lament of the Dove so far has been a major bitch. ;) I STILL pretty much have NO IDEA what's going to happen in the second half of that thing!

*waves writer pompoms for the l'il orc!* Go Vicka go! ^_^

[cats-haven.livejournal.com]

Thanks!!

Wow, this really has me putting even mroe thought into Way of the Comet. But, I must say, I did actually get a publisher to take a peek at Changing Times that I have posted on fictionpress.com. Believe it or not, I met him through a chat group and did some research on him to make sure he's legit. A little revising and he'll see about getting it placed into a Sci-Fi magazine.

I can't wait to hear more about the rest of the weekend!

[annathepiper]

You are most welcome, and I'm glad to hear that this post has been good reading for you. :) Congrats on talking to the publisher, and good luck with the magazine placement!

More posts will definitely be coming as I get time for them this week! I hope to finish them up in the next couple of days!

[annathepiper]

*chortle* One of the finest Spike moments EVER. >:)

And I haven't even gotten to the Fanfic reading panel, either!

[cats-haven.livejournal.com]

Its a lot of revising to do within the style it is currently in, but, it should turn out well.

I can't wait for the rest.

[annathepiper]

Revising is a bitch, but it can be done! *waves pompoms to cheer you on*

And I'll type as fast as I can! ;)

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

You want geek slam, try Ernie Cline (http://www.ernestcline.com/). It may not be uber-literate, but if you're any kind of a geek, you'll get him. My favorite one is "Technical Support".... dang, he took that one down. "Airwolf" is probably the best of what he's got up.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Actually, if I saw that blurb on the back of a novel, I'd buy it without hesitation. I love books with large casts of eccentric characters.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

hee! thanks :)

[annathepiper]

Okay, that's got to be one of the geekiest web page layouts I have ever seen in my life. VERY well done, though! :) Thanks for the link!

[technosage.livejournal.com]

The second really useful panel that Jaime and I attended was run by Alisa McKnight, who I have since learned is the wife of kaseido on my Friends list! She owns and runs Loose Id, a publisher that specializes in erotica (so be cautious about when you click the link), and she described for us how she's done the book thing from all standpoints: writing, editing, pitching, agenting. She turned out to be a funny and informative panel moderator, and the panel itself was extremely useful.

*blushing* Thank you. And I'm SO sorry I'm only now getting around to here. I did comment on all the pitches on your practice thread to make up for it. *g*

Be as confident and excited as you can, because if you're on top of it, you can make the person you're pitching to interested and excited as well.

Also, if you're not excited, why should we be? It's kind of a catch-22. But one of the best pitches our editors ever got came after she asked "why should we like your characters?" The author said, "Uh." Then in desperation, she said, "Well, I love them. They're fantastic. And you should just love them too!" It wasn't a pitch, but the editor asked for the book on the spot. Because the author clearly believed in the characters. I wouldn't advise it as a pitch strategy, but if you get stuck, your passion for the characters can help you a lot.

Great job summarizing, and thanks for all the kudos. Anyone who has questions is always welcome to chat me up on my blog, website, or e-mail. I'm slow, because I'm busy, but I'll try to answer everyone. :)

[annathepiper]

You're very welcome, and no worries about being slow on answering stuff--happens to me all the time, and I expect that if I get anywhere trying to sell something, my response time on my journal and email will only continue to plummet. ;)

Thanks for chiming in!

[technosage.livejournal.com]

My pleasure.

Would like to be doing more writing. Loose Id keeps me *very* busy. Once I get rid of the day job, then maybe I'll write more.

I've got Batman and BSG fic I owe people. Oy. LOL.

[annathepiper]

"Once I get rid of the day job..." Is this not the mantra of every writer since time began? :)

Me, I shall be happy to get back to regularly making my daily quota of 500 words!

[technosage.livejournal.com]

Ja, but I'm actually getting rid of the Day Job in mid-August. I'll keep LI.

When I'm not just back from three Cons in a row, I usually manage 1K to 1500 per day. I'd *love* to get back there!

[annathepiper]

A-ha! Is this a deliberate move over to give LI your full time attention, then? (My current day job actually goes away in October, but that's a 'because my contract expires' thing rather than 'because I'm starting to write full-time' thing; I still have to keep looking for another day job.)

I would like to do that sort of daily word count myself. I pulled it off during Nanowrimo 2003, and may pull it off again during Nanowrimo this year as it'll be during my mandatory break from Microsoft contract jobs.

[technosage.livejournal.com]

Well, no, technically, it's a deliberate move to give LI enough attention so that I can prepare it for someone else to do the work and I can sit back, take money, and write. :-)

Ugh and more ugh for the contract thing.

I'm seriously thinking about Nano this year. We might do it on my author list. It'd be cool. You should come hang out. :)

[annathepiper]

A-ha! Yeah, sitting back, taking money, and writing sounds good. ;)

What is this author list of which you speak?

[technosage.livejournal.com]

:)

Worlds_of_Pleasure@yahoogroups.com

[annathepiper]

Ah, okay! I don't know if I should take on another list, though--I barely keep up with the email I've got, as well as my LJ comments. How much traffic does it tend to get?

[technosage.livejournal.com]

LOTS. But mostly it's people doing the weekly writing challenge and getting praise for it. I show up a couple of times per week and say something authorial and, if I have time, I'm interesting and charming. Otherwise, the inmates run the asylum. ;-)

[annathepiper]

Heh, gotcha! Sounds like it's a bit too much for me to keep up with right now--see previous commentary re: barely able to keep up with the email I've got. Maybe when my contract expires, though!

Thanks for the invite, anyway! :)

[technosage.livejournal.com]

You'll always be welcome!