Do you change your style?

First off, I don't think it's that simple to know what will or won't sell. What is popular now was not popular ten years ago. And even considering what is popular is complicated because there are so many genres. So, my first question is, do you have a genre or have you started a new one?

And I think if you're thinking about style changing as conformity, it probably isn't a good idea to do it. If you write something you don't want to write, it isn't all that likely to be great. But then I guess the real question is what's most important to you, writing what you want or being published? There's no guarantee that changing will get you published, of course.

I write mostly fantasy. It's not high fantasy but it's not urban, so that's made it a little complicated but I don't regret writing it. I have a few stories that I know will be harder to sell but they're still stories I want to write.

At least for me, the writing is first and the selling is second. I'll do everything I can to polish them up and get them in shape to offer my work the best possible chance of getting out their in the world, but I'm not going to write something I don't love just in hopes of selling it to a market I can't really predict.

There are a lot of agents and publishers out there looking for different things. But if my book were to be completely outside what anyone was willing to publish, I suppose I would have to learn to self pub.

I am pretty curious about what it is that you write! What theme/genre has given you so much trouble in the agent hunt?

My early mss. were kind of genreless and, far more damningly, loosely plotted and meandering. The prose was fine, I think, but not quite wrought enough to be "literary," so the meandering qualities couldn't be excused on those grounds.

Ever since I realized those works wouldn't cut it, I've focused on finding the overlap between what I want to write and what agents and publishers can sell.

For instance, I saw that the kind of high-concept, genre-crossing books I like were selling in YA, far more than in adult commercial fiction or SF. I love YA anyway, always have, so I aged down my characters. Writing shorter, more action-driven YA novels really helped me with my plotting issues: now I understand how to get to the point.

It's limiting, in that I can't write directly about adult experiences. But it doesn't make me break my cardinal rule: I have to love what I write. I have a day job, and I don't know how to cynically engineer the creation of a huge bestseller (if anyone ever actually does that). I write what I love, but I try to favor the portion of what I love that the market doesn't hate.

To anyone in a similar position, I'd suggest looking around till you find at least one book comparable to yours published in the past few years. What is the category/genre? Why did this sell when yours didn't?

That said, if I'd decided my book wasn't marketable after a "couple or so" agent rejections, I wouldn't be preparing that book for publication right now. Sure, it varies by genre, but I sent 26 queries for this book before getting an offer of representation.

If you're only aiming at a particular handful of agents, I'd look very hard at what those agents already represent and how likely they are to take on new clients right now.

If it's only about sellings or mainstream I think It's the wrong thing to change your style. It seems like you're betraying yourself.

I thing the main goal of a person as a writer is to find his overall writing voice, which is the key to unlocking your creative potential, and don't let anyone to take it away from you.

kdaniel171 said:

If it's only about sellings or mainstream I think It's the wrong thing to change your style. It seems like you're betraying yourself.

I thing the main goal of a person as a writer is to find his overall writing voice, which is the key to unlocking your creative potential, and don't let anyone to take it away from you.

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Eh.

When I first started writing, I wrote the sake of writing. I had stories that I wanted to tell, so I told them. The joy of creation was in and of itself enough.

But as I'd written more, I realize that i don't want to just write for me to read anymore, or just to get the words out. I wanted other people tor read it and appreciate it. So I gave out copies of what I'd written to pals and others, and liked the appreciation they gave my work and me. And for a while, that was enough.

But you see, it's masturbation -- self satisfaction, pleasuring yourself with your skill set. Nothing wrong with it, of course, but if you're not writing to get published by someone, somewhere, then that's all it is. And I did a lot of it.

These days, I want not just affirmation from people who knew and liked me, but from strangers. When asked what i liked to do, I'd answer "I like to write." I want it to be a vocation. And in order to do that, I need someone else to purchase what I write. So if I have to alter my style -- or my subject matter -- a bit to do that, it's what I have to do.

My current MS has been passed on by a bunch of publishers. My agent still loves it. still wants to rep it, but we both now admit that maybe it needs some changes, maybe the tone or the pacing needs to be different in order to entice those other people, then I'll do it, happily, because the goal isn't just to put words on a page anymore; it's to put words on a page that strangers want to read. That's a long way from where I started, but it's where I'm headed, and I'm glad I reached the realization that changing what you've written only changes what you've written. It doesn't change you.

In other words, to paraphrase the great philosopher Marcellus: You might feel a slight sting. That's pride f--kin' with you. F--k pride! Pride only hurts, it never helps.

whiporee said:

These days, I want not just affirmation from people who knew and liked me, but from strangers.

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This is a sentiment that has got me into all manner of nasty trouble from other major gurus on this site.

caw

Deborah F Anderson said:

Hiya,

So when you get rejected a couple or so times and you've come to the realization that your stuff is just not mainstream or easy to sell etc, that's it's just not something that will appeal to enough people, it's not genre specific or outside of mass experience, do you conform and change your style/subject?

Or do you stick to your guns and keep writing your own way, in spite of knowing it's never gonna blaze?

I'm interested to know how other people deal with this. I am guessing it's individual and that you have to decide based on what matters most to you, writing what you love or having other people love what you write.

I'M not really on about rejection but more about finding where your stuff belongs. What do you do with your books if they fall outside of what agents consider a viable prospect?

Click to expand...

I write what I feel like writing and if it's too niche-y for the trade publishers, I just self-publish it. I agree, when what you like to write doesn't match up with what sells well, you have to decide based on what matters most to you.

Also, you only have to decide on one book at a time. I mean, if you're split on it, there's no reason you couldn't write a book in a popular sub-genre, then write a book of poetry or whatever.

Yes - my first person present tense fantasy had no subgenre. Agents liked it enough to comment on the original story, the great writing, the well built characters etc They didn't like it enough to risk it. Those that were willing to take a chance on the lack of genre weren't willing to do it with the present tense.

So my new story is a murder-mystery set in Edwardian times and it's first person past tense. I can point to murder mysteries set in historical times that have sold and "The Murder At The Vicarage" was first person past tense and so are several other more modern ones.

Deborah F Anderson said:

Hiya,

So when you get rejected a couple or so times and you've come to the realization that your stuff is just not mainstream or easy to sell etc, that's it's just not something that will appeal to enough people, it's not genre specific or outside of mass experience, do you conform and change your style/subject?

Click to expand...

Well...the premise is hard to establish in the first place

I've gotten more than a couple rejections now, and it's extremely rare that anyone tells me why, so I have to guess, which is a dangerous game, since there could be a million reasons. Possibly, I'm just not good enough. Possibly, what I'm trying to do will work, but I'm just not there yet. These are the most common reasons, I think, so why should I think myself an exception?

But, possibly, the market I'm aiming at, while visibly existent, is much smaller than I realize, and I do some odd things, and the wider marketability of all that is questionable, so even if I *was* good enough craft-wise, I'm just aiming at something not enough people want to jump on.

Or I haven't written the right book yet.

Or all of the above.

I honestly don't know.

I have tried shifting my style around. I can do it to some extent, but the things that I think make it weird still bleed through, and it seems to be really hard to control...

And, honestly, if it's not sorta weird, I lose interest in writing it much more easily, so if it doesn't get written at all...well. I struggle enough with getting things written, let's just say. Reading's different--it's not hard to amuse me--but amusing myself is so much worse.

I don't know if all this is because I am limited--I believe I have some functionality issues in my brain --and not experienced enough. I can't say. But I have a hard time getting away from the things that I think make my writing harder to sell--or, maybe, a hard time conceiving of stories in a way that would make it easier? I don't know.

Maybe if I had definite indicators that weirdness was the main reason no one shows any interest, I would try harder to change. I don't know how one gets a definite affirmative in that, however, and everything is so subjective...

Rejectomancy is murky

I'M not really on about rejection but more about finding where your stuff belongs. What do you do with your books if they fall outside of what agents consider a viable prospect?

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Well, there is a book I've written recently that I'm fairly sure I won't pitch to agents or large publishers, because it's somewhat ridiculous, and because I can't even tag it with an appropriate category...

Plus, my curiosity about SPing has been growing. So that book...I'm now thinking it will be self-published. Partially because I want to know what it's like, to see if it's for me or not, and partially because I don't think that book has very wide marketability.

This means a lot more work, though. Or, rather, other kinds of work, things I haven't thought about or done before. It will be a while before I'm ready, and there are a lot of considerations. (Luckily I have a super-awesome internet wife who has done it before [and done it like a boss] who can help me )

SO, all this to say: it's hard to know why your stuff isn't getting picked up, and one can't usually tell based on a couple rejections alone. (Or a hundred...) If you have good reason to think your market is a small niche, it might be beneficial to look at smaller publishers or think about self-publishing. But all these things can be different animals, so do some research before you decide. If you have reason to think that just a shift in your approach is the key, though, as with some of the above posters, you don't necessarily have to choose between tossing everything out the window and sticking to your guns--there can be a middle ground.

buzhidao said:

Well...the premise is hard to establish in the first place

I've gotten more than a couple rejections now, and it's extremely rare that anyone tells me why, so I have to guess, which is a dangerous game, since there could be a million reasons. Possibly, I'm just not good enough. Possibly, what I'm trying to do will work, but I'm just not there yet. These are the most common reasons, I think, so why should I think myself an exception?

But, possibly, the market I'm aiming at, while visibly existent, is much smaller than I realize, and I do some odd things, and the wider marketability of all that is questionable, so even if I *was* good enough craft-wise, I'm just aiming at something not enough people want to jump on.

Or I haven't written the right book yet.

Or all of the above.

I honestly don't know.

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Meh, you have to be applying to the wrong places. Your stuff has originality and quality, which isn't the most common combination.

You might want to look at smaller presses. Selective, reputable small presses that publish good stuff.* There are a lot of indie lit presses where stuff that's not quite right for mass appeal gets published, but I don't know much about the landscape for the genre(s) you write.

Also, get crits outside of SYW, if you aren't doing that already. Every established writing community trends towards a predominant "house style", a popular set of techniques that's all the rage (some of which suck, I think, but whatever), so it's important to get diverse opinions.


*Looks like we both said this.

Deborah F Anderson said:

Hiya,

So when you get rejected a couple or so times and you've come to the realization that your stuff is just not mainstream or easy to sell etc, that's it's just not something that will appeal to enough people, it's not genre specific or outside of mass experience, do you conform and change your style/subject?

Or do you stick to your guns and keep writing your own way, in spite of knowing it's never gonna blaze?

I'm interested to know how other people deal with this. I am guessing it's individual and that you have to decide based on what matters most to you, writing what you love or having other people love what you write.

I'M not really on about rejection but more about finding where your stuff belongs. What do you do with your books if they fall outside of what agents consider a viable prospect?

Click to expand...

My guess is that your inability so far to net an agent is not a matter of having an unusual style. It's certainly tempting to think that, as opposed to concluding that the material is not yet up to snuff, but that would assume that agents are averse to originality in fiction. The agents I know (and there are a lot, since I used to be one myself) would KILL for something original; they're sick to death of reading clones of successful books. On the rare occasions that something new and unique comes in, it can make their whole year.

If you doubt it, look at the fiction being published today. I'm not talking about strictly genre fiction, which is by nature imitative, but about more literary works. I am constantly amazed by the liberties some writers take. Lately I've seen a lot who take outrageous liberties with chronology--David Mitchell springs to mind, but there are many others. Then you have writers like Lydia Davis, whose work hardly resembles traditional fiction at all but is weirdly effective; and other writers who play with language and punctuation or defy various conventions of fiction-writing.

Of course there are some editors and agents who want nothing to do with pushing the boundaries; but there are plenty who are hungry for just that. It's possible that you just haven't found the right person yet, in which case I hope you'll keep searching.

Another possibility is that the work isn't strong enough yet, regardless of its unconventionality. A so-so writer who's good at genre fiction can often sell his/her stuff (although nothing is "easy to sell;") but an unconventional writer who aims higher will be judged by the highest standards. If that's the case and the book is falling short, agents won't tell you. They'll say the book doesn't suit their lists, or something along those lines. Any agent who's been in business for a while has learned not to engage in correspondence with writers they've rejected.

I apologize in advance if this sounds preachy, but the best answer to rejection is not to change styles but to keep working on your craft--vigorously, with critical feedback---and to let the content of your stories arise from your passions, not the market.

As Alice discovered in Wonderland, sometimes you have to walk away from your destination in order to get there.

Barbara R. said:

I apologize in advance if this sounds preachy, but the best answer to rejection is not to change styles but to keep working on your craft--vigorously, with critical feedback---and to let the content of your stories arise from your passions, not the market.

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I second this if writing straight literary fiction is your goal. As a reviewer, I've seen so many self-published or micro-published literary novels that showed ambition and talent, but were just not there yet in terms of craft and readability.* Often the writer lacked an ability to self-edit.

But I do believe it's possible to be original (rather than purely imitative) within genre confines, and that many great authors have done so (Raymond Chandler, P.D. James... the list goes on). Of course, that too requires a lot of craft, a lot of brutal feedback and practice.

I firmly believe there's a place for "weird," buz. Many of my favorite books could be described that way. I've even heard weird described as an author's "brand" (I know, I know, but what can't be branded?). Selling "weird" is super-tricky (I suspect any given focus group will disagree on good-weird vs. bad-weird), but it happens.

*What is readability? Who knows? I just know that Pynchon is readable (for me), and that most of the authors who imitate him just produce impregnable walls of text that are thick with wordplay and allusion. And the less skilled they are, the less their prose flows, and the more impregnable they become.

How to make "challenging" prose flow is the great question, but I think it starts with knowing where to stop, self-edit, and not overload the reader. The average reader doesn't want to puzzle over one paragraph for an hour, just savor it for a few minutes at most (again, we're talking lit fic readers here). It can be hard to tell when your prose is too dense, which is why you need ruthless betas if you lean that way.

Having a plot and clearly motivated characters also helps. But if your prose is hypnotic, you won't need those, either.

I've changed style over the years, as I changed and grew. Heck, sometimes I change between stories, in the same way an actor switches characters between films.

Deborah, just be careful that 'style' isn't style at all, and is just plain ol' sucky writing you're too stubborn and/or naive to change. Make sure you know the basic fundamentals. I say this because I've seen so many newbie writers wailing about their style and voice being assaulted by an agent or in a critique ... when the writer had virtually no voice, and hardly any style to speak of!

SomethingOrOther said:

Meh, you have to be applying to the wrong places. Your stuff has originality and quality, which isn't the most common combination.

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Meh, it might not be qualitous enough, yet, though it's very kind of you to say so Can't say.

I've subbed to a few smaller pubs. I have critters off SYW, too; I could hunt around for more if I get too lost. Didn't mean to hijack the thread any, though...

Fuchsia Groan said:

I firmly believe there's a place for "weird," buz. Many of my favorite books could be described that way. I've even heard weird described as an author's "brand" (I know, I know, but what can't be branded?). Selling "weird" is super-tricky (I suspect any given focus group will disagree on good-weird vs. bad-weird), but it happens.

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Absolutely; I didn't mean to imply that weird is not acceptable My bookshelf has plenty of examples of those that got published, yanno, so I know that market is there...

I just wonder if it's smaller than I thought it was, or as you say, harder to break into than I thought it was, or if I just am not that good at it, which I'm not saying isn't the case

Are you sure you're getting rejections (or no answer) because your work is too bizarre for an agent to rep? Could it be something wrong with your query letter, your first ten pages, or perhaps even a flaw in your plot?

Most agents would love to get something original--they get hundreds, if not thousands of submissions every week and a surprisingly number of them are very similar.

You should also make sure you are querying the right agents for your work. Most agents are very clear what they do and do not represent. Do a little research, check them out on Twitter and other places to see what they are talking about. Make sure that you aren't submitting your high fantasy romance crossover to an agent who says in an interview that high fantasy romance crossover is overdone these days.

Now, there ARE some topics that a lot of agents aren't interested in seeing. Westerns are a very small market right now--they're a hard sell. I've also heard a lot of agents say they want to gouge out their eyeballs if they have to read another vampire romance or see another zombie apocalypse.
If your work is an erotica manuscript about a time-traveling transgender geriatric vampire alien who has a love triangle with Caveman Ogg and Cleopatra, then yeah, very few agents are going to look beyond the query letter.

As someone else on here already wrote, there is writing for yourself and then there is writing for an audience. For yourself, there is no limit, but for an audience, you do have to give the audience what it wants.

Deborah F Anderson said:

Hiya,

So when you get rejected a couple or so times and you've come to the realization that your stuff is just not mainstream or easy to sell etc, that's it's just not something that will appeal to enough people, it's not genre specific or outside of mass experience, do you conform and change your style/subject?

Or do you stick to your guns and keep writing your own way, in spite of knowing it's never gonna blaze?

I'm interested to know how other people deal with this. I am guessing it's individual and that you have to decide based on what matters most to you, writing what you love or having other people love what you write.

I'M not really on about rejection but more about finding where your stuff belongs. What do you do with your books if they fall outside of what agents consider a viable prospect?

Click to expand...

I might considering tackling a different subject matter.

I don't know if I COULD change my style in any meaningful long-term way. That is, if by style, you mean voice. I've done it for short stints within my WIP when I'm writing something that's not part of the main narrative (i.e. a "quoted" newspaper article), but even then, it's a newspaper article as I would have written it, were I a reporter.

It's like faking an accent. It's fun to do for a little while, but it would quickly grow tiresome. I suppose it's possible to fake for so long that it becomes habitual. You might even fool some people. However, no matter how good the imitation, the accent will never be genuine.

I'd say stick to your guns, style-wise. Just because it hasn't happened, doesn't mean it never will. When I start thinking like this, I just remind myself of all the oddballs who did well once the audience "got" it. Using TV shows as an example, look at "South Park," "Arrested Development," or "Adventure Time." They're all bizarre in their own way, but they've each gained an enthusiastic following. Heck, "The Simpsons" was, long ago, considered way out in left field. People just didn't know what to make of it.

It's possible to adjust your style without losing your voice — or rather, you can have multiple voices. In fiction, I've switched from third-person past tense to first-person (past or present) and discovered a whole range of new and interesting tactics. I used to find writing in first-person confessional and kind of icky — but there's a lot of fun, artful stuff you can do in that mode (the unreliable narrator, for instance). My scholarly articles are written in a completely different voice from my film and book reviews and other journalism. My Twitter voice is yet another animal.

Not everyone has to develop a range of voices — sometimes what writers need is to develop a single voice until they can make it ring out loud and clear. But for others, a bit of experimentation opens up new possibilities.

A friend told me about a recently published Irish (?) coming-of-age novel that is told in a unique, very odd voice, full of neologisms — Joycean, almost. I can't recall the title, but if that got published, there's room for unusual voices out there.

Deborah F Anderson said:

Hiya,

So when you get rejected a couple or so times and you've come to the realization that your stuff is just not mainstream or easy to sell etc, that's it's just not something that will appeal to enough people, it's not genre specific or outside of mass experience, do you conform and change your style/subject?

Or do you stick to your guns and keep writing your own way, in spite of knowing it's never gonna blaze?

I'm interested to know how other people deal with this. I am guessing it's individual and that you have to decide based on what matters most to you, writing what you love or having other people love what you write.

I'M not really on about rejection but more about finding where your stuff belongs. What do you do with your books if they fall outside of what agents consider a viable prospect?

Click to expand...

Frankly, I think this is all silly. "Changing your style" has no mraning at all. If agents, editos, and general readers don't want it, it's always because you write it poorly. Period. There is no story, no subject, no type of story that editors, agents, and general readers do not want, as long as it's well-told.

It's not about changing your style, it's about being a good writer and a good storyteller, or being a bad writer and a bad storyteller.

Writers are wonderful at making excuses, at coming up with reason for others not liking their writing and their stories, but there's only one reason why the majority doesn't like what you write, and that reason is lousy writing and bad storytelling.

I believe a writer can become a better storyteller. Or a worse one. Sometimes a shift in style or genre helps people get past certain literary tics and tap into their native storytelling ability. If we're talking change for the better, hard work is always a factor.

I don't know how else to explain that I've had dramatically different results with different manuscripts and approaches over the years. I am the same writer. I can only hope I've gradually gotten better or found a groove through my experimentation, as opposed to getting lucky.

Yes, some people just don't write well and never will. Others benefit from hard work and branching out. You don't know which you are until you try, and only you know whether that effort is worth it to you.

People generally make "excuses" for not changing, not experimenting, not working on their craft. Not the opposite. If giving yourself the benefit of the doubt and getting down to work is making "excuses" for yourself, I'm happy to do so.

ETA: Based on my experiences as a college teacher, I would say that the "majority" these days doesn't like the works of Henry James or Dostoyevsky. Has zero use for them. Does this make them bad writers? Context and expectations have changed. For that matter, expectations and evaluations vary from genre to genre in modern writing. That doesn't make everything relative, no. But the writing that might make it into a stellar academic literary magazine might not even get considered at a stellar genre magazine, and vice versa, because those are two different audiences. Finding your audience is part of finding your writing voice.

Not all of us start writing in the voice that ultimately ends up working for us. This stuff is not fixed for all time at birth.

Jamesaritchie said:

Frankly, I think this is all silly. "Changing your style" has no mraning at all. If agents, editos, and general readers don't want it, it's always because you write it poorly. Period. There is no story, no subject, no type of story that editors, agents, and general readers do not want, as long as it's well-told.

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Wow that's a sweeping statement. Can you provide some documentation for this, or is it just an opinion?

Because I've been to talks by industry professionals who say that good writing is necessary, but not sufficient for them to take on a manuscript. Style, voice, subject, personal tastes, their own personal feelings about what they can likely sell something right now all play into whether they agree to rep or publish a manuscript.

Logically, I think style might count for a great deal. Sure, someone might be able to sell a manuscript written in a very out there or experimental voice or style, one that's completely different from what readers in its genre expect, if they're a literary genius and do an extraordinary job with it. But for someone who is merely "very good," writing in a voice or style that lies within the current norms for their genre is probably a better bet.

I'm trying to write something so damn good that they can't not take it. It's easy to think "they" are the ones who aren't getting it. Much harder to take full responsibility and make the manuscript better.

"Changing your style" is not a quick fix for the problem of rejection. Done right, it is a way of making the manuscript better.

So maybe the real answer to the OP's question is that trying to write "more commercially" when your heart isn't in it is not the answer. Chances are, if you don't like what you're writing, no one else will. There are no quick or magic fixes, but sometimes changing your style or genre is one key step in improving your craft. You have to believe in the change, though, and not do it cynically as a concession to some imaginary "mainstream."

does it have to be all or nothing?

Being rejected a couple of times is nothing. Being rejected a few hundred times might mean something.

But assuming you've been rejected a significant amount of times, it's probably your writing. But writing has a number of components, and style (whatever that means) is only one of them. You could have great technique, a unique style, and a poor sense of pacing. Great pacing, and unlikeable characters. Wonderful characters and weak endings. The problem comes from identifying what's stopping you from progressing.

I used to coach pee-wee basketball. Many of the athletic kids would immediately start shooting like Michael Jordon--only unlike him, they'd miss every shot. It was almost impossible to discourage them and have them take the high percentage shot. Many of those kids were highly motivated and athletic, and as they grew older, began to make those shots, and became spectacular high school players. They had the sense of style from day one, but had to earn the skills to use them.

I don't think of it as changing your style, more taming your style. Giving it direction and purpose with more underlying strength. Looking at published works over history, there's always been a market for creative and unique novels. Personally, I've reached the viewpoint that I'm simply not good enough at this time. But while sad, it's also liberating, because it gives you the freedom to change and grow.