Category Archives: Writing Tools

Rhythm and the Hook

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Well everyone, yesterday was my husband’s birthday, so I was out of the office (side note, if you are ever in Glendale, AZ for whatever reason and you like German food, do yourself a favor and stop by Haus Murphy’s. Amazing food and beer delivered by thickly-accented blonde waitstaff — pretty much perfection.). Today’ I’m back in the saddle to talk about queries.

A query letter is comprised of three paragraphs.

1. explain why you’ve chosen to contact this agent

2. The Hook

3. A courteous close, where you list any sales or relevant credentials you may have.

I think paragraphs one and three are fairly self-explanatory. Sure, you will torture yourself over them, and you should, because every word counts, but salutations and bios are not the hard part. The hard part is The Hook.So I’ll be talking more about that in a hot minute.

Salutation, hook, bio/close. That is what comprises a query letter. But that doesn’t define the whole. What a query letter actually IS: a writing sample. It is an attempt to intrigue the reader, in this case a prospective agent. Your goal is to interest them enough to get them to ask for more.

How to do that? Here’s the practical advice I’ve gleaned over the years from blogs and conventions like Pitchapalooza (hosted by the always awesome Changing Hands Bookstore). I’m going to assume y’all already have had some exposure to this stuff before, but I just want to share what’s made the biggest impact on me.

Regarding The Hook:

You can’t glom your whole plot into a few sentences. So don’t try. Instead, give a taste of the plot. Touch on it, but don’t be summary. Write in your own, particular style. If you try to cram the whole book into a few sentences, you will not be able to give the agent a sense of your style. Instead you’ll have something reminiscent of a high school book report. Use telling, vivid details to show what makes your hero stand apart from the pack. Try starting with action. Start with the whistle of falling bombs, whatever the equivalent is in your book. Be sensory.

Keep in mind that you will be drafting this query dozens of times. That’s cool. Embrace it. Get crazy, get out of the when/then box. This falls under “totally unverified opinion of a non-professional”, but I have a particular dislike of the when/then after/but before/yet formula. Because it’s formulaic. Because it’s soooo popular that the agent has to see a zillion when/thens a day, you know what I mean? And because the when/then combo sets you up for a droning rhythm of iambs. Prose has meter too, guys, and it really shows when you only have a page. Let me hit you with an exaggerated example:

When Riven Dumbname gives his cat the gun, he never dreams of what is yet to come.

Yeah I rhymed it too, but seriously I could go on for pages of when truffle humple scoodle poodle naddle do; flibber flobber tibby wobber hoopty hoo. DO YOU HEAR IT? I CAN’T UNHEAR IT. I have no proof, (again, this is Opinion Time) but my gut tells me this construct is a really good way to get an agent ready for a nap.

So let’s try that opening line in a more immediate manner. This is just total spitballing; I have given myself permission to be as wack as I want to be.

The cat has the gun and Riv has the kibble.

Riv Dumbname has three regrets: these damned chinos, that fourth boilermaker, and giving his cat the gun.

“Drop the nepeta cataria and nobody gets hurt.”

Riv Dumbname is staring down the barrel of a Colt .45. The slinger? His eleven-year-old poly-dactyl tabby, Sir Throckenbrock Percival Mittens.

"FalcomPSX"'s cat, "Bullet". Just so you know, I always image search AFTER I write my posts, and can I just say I love the internet so much? Seriously, what are the odds?

Five minutes on the crazy train and I’ve already got a couple of ideas to play with. The second pitch is strongest imho — the chinos and the fourth boilermaker tell us a lot about Riv, and even hint at the setting, the construct of the sentence has some flavor, some punch. Of course I’d tinker and tweak and write a dozen drafts, but that’s the name of the game. Now I’ve probably got room for two more sentences to flesh out Riv, the cat, and the actual conflict, but the stepping stones are there.

It’s ugly because it’s true; for any given project, you get ONE SHOT with any particular agent, and you are in heavy competition. Yes, there are lots of agents out there, but some of us write in particular genre niches where honestly there really aren’t that many fish in the sea, certainly not the mythical “hundred agents” we’re told to query. So rather than writing just one hook, write twenty and tweak and rewrite the best of those twenty. I can hear you groaning from here, but I am in the middle of this process right now myself and I promise you it does get easier the more you do it. Blind poll your friends and have them select what hook they like best (NOT while you stand there looking like a hungry dog, for goodness sake). Do that and you’ll soon start to get a feel for what draws attention, what entices, what leaves them asking for more.

500 Club (3/15)

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Pssst. It’s Thursday. Time for the 500 Club.

*silent squee*

Before we get to today’s prompts, here’s a quick recap of the rules.

  1. Choose one of the prompts below.
  2. On your blog, write a 500-word story or scene based on the prompt.
  3. Post a teaser to your story in the comments below with a link to where we can read the rest.

Easy, right?

Here are today’s prompts:

1. Write an action scene with just enough dialogue to establish character. Whatever action you choose — car chase, fist fight, peeling a potato — use the physical world to solidify the blocking/movement of your character(s). Avoid making your piece read like a list, e.g., he did this and then this and then this… 

…or…

2. Write a flash fiction story with the opening: “After [CHARACTER NAME] put out the fire…”

Happy writing!

500 Club (3/8)

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What will your journey be like?

Dust off that keyboard, and sharpen those pencils. Today we’re going on a trip. More accurately, we’ll be writing about a trip, the journey. Here lies the heart of the heart of your story. A and B might be really cool points, but it’s how they get connected that will make the story memorable.

Road Writing rules for the trip:

  1. Write 500 words based on one of the two prompts below.
  2. Post it to your blog.
  3. Give us a small taste in the comments below along with a link to the full text.

For today’s prompts you can create whatever kind of character you like, and all points can relate to places or a specific life event, whichever you choose:

1. Take two seemingly unrelated points and connect them. Examples: A monastery and dangling from a parachute; spelling bee finals and USMC sniper; Bunk bed and Niagara Falls.

2. Take two easily relatable points and connect them in a way that you would NOT expect. Examples: Your house to the neighbor’s house via submarine; Your house to China via the center of the Earth; childhood to adulthood via a wormhole through Pangea.

500 Club (3/1)

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It’s the first of March, so let’s bring this 500 Club in like a lion. Prompts wait below, warm in their lair and ready to play.

The Rules:

  1. Write 500 words based on one of the two prompts below.
  2. Post it to your blog.
  3. In the comments below, drop the first line or two along with a link to the rest of the story.

The prompts today have a qualifier. Think of your default protagonist. White, male, adult, straight? Today I want you to change at least two of those defining characteristics. If you always write men, try a woman on for size. If you always write about straight characters, hit up the LBGT spectrum. If you always write about white people, try slipping into the POV of an asian, or native american, or black person. And if you always write about people in their mid-20s, try an elderly or very young perspective instead.

(If you get absolutely stuck, try this: write as you normally would, then go back and change Paul to Pam, but leave in the girlfriend. The point is to stretch as a writer, and to realize you CAN write from the perspective of X Y or Z. Just write a person, know what I mean?)

1. Billy found the body in the river. 

OR

2. It all started when the cat came in. I knew it was bad luck, but nobody listened to me. God, I hate being right.

Happy writing!

500 Club (2/23)

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Happy Thursday! It’s time for the 500 Club!

Before we get to today’s prompts, here’s a quick recap of the rules.

  1. Choose one of the prompts below.
  2. On your blog, write a 500-word story or scene based on the prompt.
  3. Post a teaser to your story in the comments below with a link to where we can read the rest.

Easy, right?

Here are today’s prompts:

1. Create a character who is the opposite of you and write a scene from his or her point of view. Be sincere. Honest. Don’t judge your character.

…or…

2. Write a flash fiction story with the opening: “The day the sun went dark…”

Happy writing!

500 Club (2/16)

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Feel like you’re dragging today? Finding it tough to tackle that blank page? Sounds like you can use a little stretch, some creative calisthenics. A quick writing prompt will get you going in no time.

Here’s what to do:

  1. Write 500 words based on one of the two prompts below.
  2. Post it to your blog.
  3. Give us a small taste in the comments below along with a link to the full text.

And now on to the prompts:

1. Your Senses: Write 500 words focusing on the sense of touch.

2. Writing Challenge: Break outside of your comfort zone. Write 500 words from the point of view of someone unlike yourself. Examples: Little person, amputee, autistic, or deaf.

*Feel free to change the name or sex of the characters as needed.

And then we came to the end… UGH

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Endings are tough. They make or break your story. A poor ending can utterly spoil an otherwise serviceable story, while a great one elevates it, making it more than the sum of its parts.

I really, really struggle with this. Sometimes everything in the story comes together and your ending is happy, sometimes things fall apart and your ending is tragic, sometimes you’ve got an unsettling mix of the two. But that doesn’t change what the ending needs. That an ending must fulfill whatever you’ve set up on the first page is obvious — without that fulfillment, it’s not an ending at all. But when you’re writing an ending, you’ve also got to ask yourself: does this hit all the right notes? Does it leave the reader with resonance? Is it logical and evocative? Sometimes the ending just falls into your lap and comes out perfectly the first time you type it. But if you’re like me, most of the time writing a decent ending is a serious undertaking.

I don’t have any sort of easy answer for this. My best solution is to simply open a new file, copy the climax from the original file and paste it in, several times in a row. I put in page breaks between each ctrl+p so I don’t get visually overloaded, and then I riff. I write an ending. I scroll down past the page break and write a different ending. And so on.

It might take me six or seven tries to get close to what I want. But I find that if I keep myself noncommittal and open to possibilities, and write the most obvious thing just to get it out of the way and then ask myself a torrent of questions in the vein of: what else could I say here? Where else can we go? And what am I saying anyway? And how else could I say it? that eventually I’ll come up with something that resonates the way I want it to.

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. That’s why I subscribe to partial insanity instead. I write my endings over and over, changing them a little each time, until I finally get what I want. I wish I had a clever, EZ, lazy way to do it.

But I don’t.

500 Club (2/9)

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It’s time once again for the 500 Club, the little flash-fiction game that could!

How to play:

  1. Choose one of the two prompts below.
  2. Write a 500 word flash based on the prompt, and post it to your blog.
  3. Drop a link in the comments below so we can read the rest. Give us the first line or two to bait the link.

Today’s prompts are based on misunderstandings:

1. Everybody thought Mary was the nicest girl.

…or…

2. Dear John. Let me clear up a few things for you.

 

Oh dear! Have fun and happy writing!

Working the Middle

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It’s easy to get lost in your own story. After all, you’ve created these wonderful characters to spend your time with, and sent them on incredible, if sometimes unbelievable, adventures. You might also have painted lush settings ripe for exploring. Then there comes the day when you pull away from the story, look around and say…

“Where the hell is this all going?”

If you can’t answer this question, you need to stop right where you are and figure it out. Otherwise, you’ll write yourself in circles with material that will all end in your Deleted Scene File (You are keeping a DSF, aren’t you?)

I’m going to throw you a couple of suggestions to help you answer that question. For this next part, I’ll be speaking mainly to the pantsers out there. The outliners don’t seem to struggle as much with this part of the story. Although that shouldn’t stop you from trying it. Just because you have an outline doesn’t mean you have to stick to it.

1.

Try going back to a key turning point in your story. Change what happens, and write about 1,000 words based on the new outcome. Does it work better? Does it resolve the wall you might have bumped into? Whichever scene you decide to go with, throw the other in your DSF. That way you can change it back without the extra work.

2.

Try a character interview. In separate document, throw out a bunch of questions to one of your characters. Of course you’ll ask important questions related to motives and personal goals, but don’t forget to throw in some random questions, too. Ask things like “What is it about your favorite junk food that keeps you snacking?” or “What is your most useless talent and how did you develop it?” Just make sure it’s an open-ended question, and you might be surprised at the gold that can surface. Maybe a character has a talent you didn’t realize that would take you to the next part of the story. These random questions also help jog your brain to look at your story from a new angle. That’s always helpful.

3.

Put the story down and write something else for a while. The worst thing you can do as a writer is to stop writing. If you come to an impasse and can’t find a way out, you probably need more time to find the right solution. That’s okay. It happens. In the mean time, don’t let your craft suffer by not writing at all. That will guarantee a prolonged wait to your ending. Maybe even indefinitely.

These are several things that I’ve used and found helpful. If you have tricks of your own, please share them in the comments. I’d love to try them.

500 Club (2/2)

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Hello. Welcome to today’s 500 Club. We’ll be taking off for our destination momentarily. Today’s cruising speed will be 500 words and we’ll be flying at an unlimited altitude. The sky is the limit. As we taxi away from the gate, we’d like to review the guidelines for flying with PLC airlines.

  1. Write a 500 word response to one of the prompts below.
  2. Post your story on your blog.
  3. Put a teaser in the comments below, and include a link to where we can read the rest of your story.

Now, please fasten your safety belts and secure your tray in its upright position.

Prompt #1: Write a story involving flying. The concept of flying is open to your interpretation. Focus on description.

…Or…

Prompt #2: Write a story about a missed flight. What is the consequence of missing the flight? Focus on emotional content.

We hope you enjoy your flight. And thank you for choosing PLC airlines.