The Stab in the Dark Contest Has Come to a Close

Hi all!

Thank you very much for taking the time to participate in our Halloween A Stab in the Dark Agent Contest! For those with requests, congratulations and go on and shoot them off to your respective agents (proofread first! ya know, just in case). Thank you again to all those who participated and put their work out there. Never an easy feat.

A big thank you to our agents Pooja Menon, Danielle Smith and Olga Filina. Feel free to query them through the regular channels.

Cheers,

~Liz

News! And an AGENT CONTEST! :)

Wanna know what’s coming up on the blog? Sure you do, and I’m gonna tell you. Cuz I’m cool like that.

Next week, we have an INTERVIEW. From a Reject reader who has some exciting news to share. On September 12, S.R. Johannes (author of Untraceable and the upcoming Uncontrollable) will be joining us for an interview about indie vs self-publishing.

ANNNND!

We have an agent contest coming up! :) Mark your calanders or phone or what have you, for Friday September  7^th. We will begin accepting submissions at 9am and will be a little different from our previous contests. Some quick notes:  

• We will take the first 30 entries.
• You must be a follower of the blog to enter.
•  The entries WILL BE POSTED ON THE BLOG.
•   Entries will be open to peer critique, and we (the Rejects) will be stopping by and offering thoughts. (You are not guaranteed a crit from a Reject).
• IF YOUR ENTRY IS ACCEPTED, you must critique at least 5 others.
• Our super awesome-sauce agent will be reading and selecting her favorite
• This is for FINISHED POLISHED manuscript
• You’ll need a tagline and the first 250 (ish) words.

So here’s how to format it

Name:

Book Title:

Genre:

TAGLINE:

1^ST 250 WORDS:

Simple enough, yeah?  Genres are:

Fantasy

Historical Fiction

Middle Grade

Science Fiction

Women's Fiction

Young Adult

Posts will go live on the blog for critique on Monday the 10^th. Questions? Ask in the comments! :)

Pitch Critiques #5 & #6

            It’s time for our last set of pitch critiques. Hopefully they help everyone. Please remember that this is very subjective, as is pretty much everything within the writing world.

            Without further ado, let’s get to it.

            Critique #5

Two teenagers on opposite sides of a magical war must find and kill each other to bring it to an end. 

This is a very interesting beginning. Not only is it the best part of your pitch, but it’s really your whole pitch in a nutshell.

Arianna finds Shane without realizing who he is, and she’s falling in love with the nemesis she has been hunting her entire life. Until he tries to kill her. Now they each have a choice – follow their hearts or follow their destiny.

The problem with the rest of this is that it’s telling me the same thing as your first sentence. I would have been more interested if it told me why the war would end if one of them kills the other. Then maybe a bit about how they begin to fall for each other.

Speaking of how they fall for each other, that’s a bit confusing to me. Does Shane know who Arianna is before he tries to kill her? If so, does he fall for her before or after he tries to kill her? These are vital issues that could help this premise really hit home.

Critique #6

As a Pure, sixteen-year-old Alphi McClure is told she can't befriend the dark Grey species, but when one small child in the underwater village breaks into her heart, Alphi will do anything to protect him -- even attack the village's Pure leader.  Desperate for the open-mindedness of a larger civilization, Alphi flees to her uncle’s magical city, but when he turns his wand on a defenseless Grey, Alphi has no place to turn -- until the Grey rebels attack her uncle; and when they do, she joins them. Fighting alongside the rebels is like a breath of fresh water, until her own mother joins the opposing side. Alphi scream for peace, but peace is no longer an option; war will come, and when it does, she will have to meet the bloodshed head on.

I’ll be frank here. This could have been a rockin pitch, but by time I finished reading the whole thing I felt like I had mental asthma. The whole thing is riddled with commas, semicolons, and dashes. Typically we use these to combine alike sentences and or allow the reader a small pause. In fact I use dashes myself for that all important dramatic effect.

What this tells me is that the writer has what I call Mini Synopsis Syndrome (MSS). Basically they’re too close to their story to see the basic premise.

Now before anyone starts grumbling about this, here’s an example of how this could read as a pitch:

Alphie is a Pure and has been taught her whole life to hate and distrust the Greys. After rescuing a small child that turns out to be a Grey, Alphie does what she can to protect him. However the cost of that secret turns deadly and Alphie will have to hurt those she’s grown to love in order to save the child she just met.

Is it perfect? Hell no, and I probably got a lot of things wrong about the premise of the story. However I hope this does show everyone something. Simpler is usually better when it comes to pitches. Not only does complex exhaust readers mentally, but it can also give the wrong idea of your story.

Auzy

Pitch Critique 3 & 4

Hi, all! It's my turn to crit some pitches and here are our lovely volunteers. Up first we have, Relic:


Eighteen-year-old Princess Far is a Relic, someone who has visions from their past lives. In Aether, her so-called demonic abilities would constitute execution if her secret were exposed. When a dark group of magi pushes her kingdom into the world war, Far realizes she is the only one who knows the magi’s secret. But they also know hers. She must decide to stay quiet at the expense of thousands of lives or speak up at the expense of her own.


I like the first sentence. It's the second that I get hung on--this is a demonic ability? She's a demonic princess? I'm not sure if that's accurate but that's what I'm getting. I'm also not sure how she came by these deadly abilities as she is a princess. 
The dark magi push her kingdom into world war...how? As a princess, doesn't she have some control over the nation's politics? I know it's a short pitch, but referencing secrets that Far knows that no one else does--maybe tell us what the secret is? I do like the last sentence--I like the succinctness of your stated stakes. 
The only thing that I'd like to see more of is Far's personality. As is, we don't get much of that, and I think she'd have to be a complex character juggling her royalty with the demonic abilities. Show us that. :)




Okay, our second pitch! 


 Charley is a fifteen-year-old “one date wonder."   Plenty of boys like her, and she likes them, too, until they get too close.  Stricken by her parents’ bitter divorce, Charley won’t let anyone past her flirtatious, wisecracking exterior...except her best friend, Cat, so when Cat needs help from hundreds of miles away, she calls Charley.   Charley rallies friends, old and new, for a road trip rescue, but the journey leads them somewhere altogether different.  Forced to face her fears, her flaws, and her friends in the confining space of a station wagon, Charley cannot make her usual escape.


This first sentence pulls me right in. I also love the glimpses of Charley's personality. I'm not sure what the driving force is though--I want to know what Cat needs, and why Charley from so far away. I do like the stakes, but I think they could be more clearly stated--what her fears and flaws are. As it is, it's slightly vague. Give us more stakes and I think you have a solid pitch here. Good luck! 




As you all know, this is a subjective business. The thoughts here are my personal ones, and you can use or discard at your discretion. And thank you, ladies, for being brave enough to volunteer for this! :) 


N~

Pitch Critique--Call for Subs!

Hey all!

So after our pitch contest this past week we thought it would be a great idea to critique some pitches (3-5 sentences!) and show people why some worked and why some didn't.

Thing is, we would love submissions to critique. SO if you'd love a constructive critique on your pitch feel free to submit your pitches via our email:

writerlyrejects (at) gmail (dot) com

**Note that these will be posted on the blog as an example to others. Not all will be selected, but a few will be used**

Thanks guys!

~Liz  

Mini Synopsis Syndrome

            Congratulations. You’ve finally finished writing that all important query letter, and you have a great list of agents you’d like to send it to. After looking up their submission guidelines, you notice that want a full synopsis and a query letter. Shrugging, feeling like it’s kind of redundant, you do as they ask and send them both out.

            Then wait…..

            After what seems like an agonizing amount of time, you finally get a reply. It’s a rejection.

            Crushed, but resilient, you ask a critique partner to take a look at your query. What they say could be one of these things:

1.    There’s way too much telling in here.

2.    Whoa, information overload.

3.    It kind of reads like a synopsis.

If you’ve ever had this happen to you, you might have Mini Synopsis Syndrome (MSS for short). Don’t fret. It’s curable, and thankfully not contagious.

So what is MSS and how can I avoid it in the future? I’m so glad you asked. *wink*

Remember how redundant it felt to send a full synopsis along with your query letter? It’s because the query really isn’t the place to have a synopsis. This is where our symptoms for MSS come into play. When it reads like a synopsis, you’re probably telling the agent the story instead of showing them it. That means it’s really packed full of as much info as you can get in an itty bity space. That’s our three symptoms: Telling, Overload, and Synopsis.

An agent doesn’t want to be told everything about our story in the query. That’s what the synopsis is for. What they want is to be shown that we have a story, and that they really, REALLY, need to read it. It’s short, sweet, and hard to forget. This is referred to as the pitch. Sometimes it’ll be called the blurb, sound bite, or the premise

In other words, MSS is what happens when an author is too close to their own story. So close that they can’t see its basic premise.

If you or someone you love has MSS, here are a few things you can do to cure it.

1.    Ask a beta reader what they think the premise is.

2.    Break the story down to its bare bones.

3.    Use your logline as a guideline.

4.    Find the catalyst (what propels your character on their journey) and work backwards.

5.    When all else fails, take a break and write something else.

Have you ever had MSS? Please care enough to share your story, and together we can beat this affliction.

     Auzy

How to Write a Good Log Line

 

            For any screen writer, the log line is what will make you or break you. This is because the movie moguls will only buy a script that they’re sure a mass target audience will pay to see, or in other words, a High Concept story. It’s a very smart way to do business, and lately it seems the book publishers have caught on to this nifty trick. That means that not only do we need to write a kick-ass query letter, but we also need a log line that bangarangs.  

            A lot of what we need to write a great log line can be learned by watching Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail, and once the laughter dies down a little bit, I’ll explain. There is a scene in the movie where King Arthur and his knights have to cross the bridge of death, but only if they can answer three questions. These three questions are:

1.    What is your name?

2.    What is your quest?

3.    What is your favorite color?

These questions are quite brilliant for the writer to ask when writing the log line. Don’t believe me. Okay, lets’ take them one by one, shall we.

Question 1, what is your name? I’m sure we can all agree that a good log line will need the protagonist’s name in there somewhere. Would you read a novel with a log line of “The world is about to end and only one person can stop it”? Not likely.

Question 2, what is your quest? This is the conflict. What is the protagonist’s main goal for the story? Will they need to survive a deadly night of vampire attacks or do they need to master their ability before they cause the end of the world? Figure out the quest and we’re almost done.

Question 3, what is your favorite color? Okay, I know what you’re thinking. What’s so important about a characters favorite color when writing a log line? Look at it from another point of view. The color that the protagonist prefers does tell us a bit of their personality. We want to identify with the protagonist, and that’s easier if we know something about them.

With these questions three, we almost have the basics. Only thing missing now is what’s at stake, because let be serious, every story needs something at stake. Add that in, and we have a nice, clean, and simple log line.

When (insert hero and include personality) is forced to (insert quest), they have to (insert opportunity for growth) or (insert what’s at stake).

Of course we can put more in it. We just need to remember that it gets more complicated with everything we add. In fact, the only thing that should never be in a log line is the ending. This is a rule that should never be broken. Remember we want to tease the agent in to wanting to read out story.

Now that we have a few rules, anyone want to take a stab at writing a good log line?

      Auzy