Queries: It's not about the details

In my agent travels, I find that most of the questions I get from aspiring authors are about queries. And that makes sense: everyone (including myself) will tell you that your query is an important weapon in your agent-getting arsenal. So, having been told that the difference between publishing superstardom and form-rejection comes down to one page, authors obsessively work on their queries. But that’s not quite right: what they do is obsess. And I think a lot of times they can’t see the forest for the trees. They ask agents what font or paper stock they should use, whether HTML email or plain text is better, or if their bio should be longer or shorter or more personal or more formal. They receive conflicting advice from different websites, agents, editors, author friends, and spouses. And then they have a nervous breakdown.

Ok, that last part may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but I don’t think it’s that far off. Writers, who tend to be obsessive anyway, get downright crazy about query details, and I really don’t blame them. We publishing professionals haven’t helped the situation, what with all of our dire warnings about doing it perfectly or else. So I want all of the writers out there to pay attention: if you’re reading this blog, if you’re paying attention when publishing pros give you advice, if you’re going to good, appropriate conferences, you don’t need to panic. This is the catch-22 of it all: when agents go on and on about bad queries and what-not-to-do, they’re preaching to the choir! Anyone savvy enough to be paying attention is probably doing it right in the first place. I don’t mean that all of you have winning queries that will score them an agent and publication, but I doubt any of your are going to wind up the cautionary query tale that you hear at conferences.

But, the question the remains: what am I looking for, if it’s not all of those little details? What I’m looking for is a unique idea and good writing. I’m looking for an authentic, interesting voice--yes, voice in your query. I’m looking to get a feel for your style in just a couple of paragraphs. I’m looking for you to describe your book, whether it’s commercial or literary or in between, in a way that makes me want to keep reading. In October, I linked to a great query example, the one that Lisa McMann had written for Wake that was recently in Writer’s Digest. It was exactly I’m looking for: it was unlike any query I’d received before (or since). How so, you ask? It was entirely unique to Lisa and her book. It didn’t follow any formula or template. It gave me the information I ask for, but it did so in a way that was different. And I can promise you, all of the successful queries I’ve read have done the same thing.

I’m sure this will spur many questions, but I’d like to have a saner, more humane query discussion with aspiring authors, one that focuses on ideas, narrative, and writing instead of on boring details like font and word count. A little common sense in putting together a presentable query, plus a killer idea and great writing, and you’re all set!


- Michael

Jim McCarthy on having a voice

At a writers’ conference in Myrtle Beach this past weekend, I did two “slush fests.” Writers brought transparencies of the first two pages of their novels to be projected in front of a room, read aloud, and critiqued by two agents. The first, which I did with Holly Root of the Waxman Literary Agency, focused on paranormal and urban fantasy. We worked at a deliberate pace and weighed the pros and cons of each first page. The second, which I did with Scott Eagan of the Greyhaus Agency, was about romance and women’s fiction. We did not work at a deliberate pace. We whipped through more than two dozen first pages and gave very quick critiques that offered a peek into how an agent is really reading as they move through their slush—how quickly decisions are made and for what reasons.

I hope both panels offered a lot of information to those brave souls who opened themselves up to criticism. The paranormal folks all seemed to walk out with smiles on their faces. The romance writers…well, no one poisoned my soup. It wasn’t pretty, but it was honest, and the feedback I got was positive. Everyone who came up to me said they felt they learned a lot. That said, I did notice that no one who thanked me for my honesty had actually had their material we had read aloud. On the plus side, no one cried! I try to be kind and supportive at conferences (I swear!), but I can’t say I haven’t made writers cry. But I only saw one writer in tears at this conference and felt a totally inappropriate sense of joy when I realized I hadn’t met her, so it couldn’t be my fault. Go team!

In any case, one of the things that kept coming up at the slush fests was that there are a lot of things we have our eye on--we’re looking at grammar, tone, and structure; keeping an eye out for clichés; and ultimately looking for that one element that grabs us and that cannot be taught: voice.

Teaching someone to have a distinct voice would be like teaching someone to have a personality. You can coach them on how to pull it out and make it resonate more distinctly, but you can’t actually create it for them. I want to find writers whose work is so distinctive that I could recognize a sentence of theirs out of context. It’s miraculous that anyone can convey enough personality in a handful of words that they make them completely their own. And isn’t that the wonder of great writing? I once got a bottle of scotch in the mail with a note attached but the sender’s name was nowhere to be found. But it only took a note card for me to recognize Phoebe Kitanidis by her style. [Side note: Phoebe is the author of the absurdly fantastic YA debut WHISPER which comes out next year.]

I was able to snag a copy of one of my favorite memoirs last night. It’s a little tough to find, but Diana Vreeland’s D.V. is the ultimate triumph of voice over content. The woman ran Vogue, operated the costume institute at the Met, and traveled the world. Her memoir is less than 200 pages and she takes up the first pages talking about back plasters. I couldn’t care less about half of what she writes about, but damned if I didn’t eat this book up. She’s irreverent, hyperbolic, bitchy, and pithy. She’s one of a kind, and even when she makes you hate her, you can’t help but being transfixed. It takes some serious nerve to open a memoir with, “I loathe nostalgia.” Oh, realllllly. Well, then, we should have a great time going through your past together. “Nostalgia—imagine! I don’t believe in anything before penicillin.”

Vreeland is the crazy aunt prattling on at Thanksgiving dinner. She might not have anything to tell you, but damned if she’ll stop talking. Her whole book reads like it was written in a single go. And I mean that in the best of all possible ways.

“We both knew there weren’t any marble staircases west of the Mississippi in those days—let alone in Elsa’s father’s house. But that was Elsa—she was just putting on the ritz, keeping things up. Why say you were born in a hovel? Who wants to hear that?” The exaggeration and tone (and her response to her friend’s lies) tell you so much more about this woman that anything she actually says. And while that’s tricky to pull off in nonfiction (since you have to be all honest and everything), it’s hugely admirable in fiction.

If how you’re telling the reader something says more than what you’re telling the reader? Heaven. Because then you aren’t just a writer; you’re an artist. Or in the case of Vreeland, a nutball (not that these terms are by any means mutually exclusive).

I’d love recommendations from anyone who can think of writers with particularly strong voices. I’m always looking for more books to add to my reading list. Call me Sisyphus.