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Additional Info (which I forgot about when I typed these comments up) in post 33
****Something I forgot to mention below, but which is really quite important. Soooo many queries are TOO long. What happened in my case when I got a really long query was I immediately started skimming. You may think you're helping your odds by giving the agent a more detailed account of your plot, but in reality, at least in my case, you were hurting yourself, because quite frankly I wasn't paying as much attention to your query as I was to shorter, more succinct ones.****
I had the opportunity not too long ago to intern with a literary agency in NYC for a period of 2 weeks during my winter break. I ended up only showing up for 7 of my 10 days due to snow (I was making a significant commute.) I thought it might be helpful for people if I posted some of the things I saw/learned, some of the impressions I got out of the experience, etc.
A little bit of background info. Mostly, I read queries, though they did have me do some other stuff. The agent I was interning under was requesting prospective clients submit, in addition to the standard query letter, the first five pages of the manuscript and a synopsis.
- My general impression of the paper queries, which I read through on my first day, was that they tended to be weaker than the email queries. I admit, however, that the sample size I dealt with was rather small (after the first day, I was dealing only with email queries.)
- On the first day, the agent showed me an example of two queries + sample pages that she ended up requesting and eventually offering representation on. I liked the first one, but probably would have passed on the second one (though I admit, I was reading very fast/skimming because she was sitting behind me, waiting for me to finish and I didn’t want to keep her waiting.)
- Queries, in general, tended to be universally mediocre. The handful of queries that I thought were good did not necessarily have good (to my taste) sample pages included below.
- However, even if I didn’t like the query (and I admit to skimming queries), I always gave sample pages a chance, if they were included.
- In the event sample pages weren’t attached, I emailed authors and asked them to include the pages + synopsis in the body of the email.
- After the first day or so, I stopped reading synopses. There were several factors in my decision to do so. First of all, some synopses were absurdly long—as in, as long or longer than the sample pages. Second of all, like queries, after a while they all start to sound the same (even the literary agent admitted to me, only half-jokingly, that pretty much nobody can write a good synopsis.) Thirdly, if you don’t like the sample pages, it’s kind of pointless to read the synopsis. Lastly, and this is a personal factor—I am a slow reader. I read even slower when I don’t like what I’m reading. I’d never have gotten through what I did if I was reading every synopsis.
- I noticed when authors included more sample pages than asked for. The longest someone included was 20. You’re not necessarily going to get rejected for this, but it is kind of annoying, and it contributed to my decision to stop reading sample pages in their entirety before coming to a verdict.
- I got through, don’t remember exactly, probably around 300-350 queries + sample pages during my time at the agency.
- Out of all these manuscripts, I found one (on my second day) that I stuck in the YES folder.
- I stuck around 40 queries in the “maybe” folder. Most of these sample pages, I thought, were pretty good. They had a sense of voice, gave me a sense of their characters/settings, etc. There were a few maybes I would probably have rejected if not for their credentials. If an author was coming off a former literary agent, had been previously published be a reputable publisher before, or had been published in a major mag then I tended to err on the side of caution and stick them in maybe, even if I wasn’t a huge fan.
- Personally, I would have probably ended up requesting pages from 5 or so of the maybes myself.
- The agent in question rejected my YES (she said it was hilarious at points, but too over the top for her.)
- Out of my maybes, she requested pages from one, and left two others as maybes. The rest were rejects. Can’t remember exactly, but I think none of them had previous credentials.
- Regarding the one she ended up requesting pages from—neither of us liked his query.
- One of the reasons queries start to sound the same is because certain terms pop up a lot. Guardian comes most readily to mind. There were a lot of guardians.
- A lot of queries were like, Main Character is just your average kid/just wants to be your average kid, EXCEPT HE SHOOTS LIGHTNING OUT OF HIS BUTT WHEN HE FARTS.
- A lot of queries, especially YA Urban Fantasy queries, read like they’re all written from the same template. Off the top of my head.
- Credentials did, however, make me feel a little more comfortable when it came to recommending things (even if they weren't the most prestigious, though prestige certainly didn't hurt.) Seeing, for example, that my YES (which the agent rejected) was previously published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show and was personally chosen by Orson Scott Card made me feel all that much surer about recommending.
- Regarding sample pages, after a couple days, I started looking for an excuse to reject. Reasons for rejection
- Humor.
On voice. I’ve thought about this a lot and decided that when pro writers write, they generally come out with one of two types of voice. There is perhaps, an intermediary style of voice between the two.
overt/stylized voice. Sometimes this voice is really over-the-top, but more generally, it’s just the kind of voice that grabs you by your throat, smacks you upside the head, etc. The kind that leaves you thinking, “You just don’t come across characters like this, characters like this just don’t exist in the real world, they’re too good for the real world.”
Examples:
Coen Brother’s The Big Lebowski, Chuck Palahuik’s Choke, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Doestoevsky’s Notes from The Underground, Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian.
The key here is that all these works focus on characters who are exceptional, truly one of a kind, and so their voice is exceptional and one of a kind. These stories leap right off the page.
The second kind of voice is what I’ve taken to calling a subtle/realistic voice. This voice usually comes from characters who are more ordinary than extraordinary. It is more down to earth—at it’s best, still too good for this world, yet, it feels more grounded, more real. You look at the people around you in the supermarket and you could imagine a story being written about them in that style, that voice. You see this a lot in literary fiction.
Examples: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Lois Lowry’s The Giver, anything by Hemmingway, John Knowles’s A Separate Peace, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Orwell's 1984, a lot of classic plays like The Glass Menagerie, and Death of a Salesman.
What I want to say is that for novels going for that subtle voice, the 5 or even 10 pg cut off/the need to whittle down queries as fast as possible may be working somewhat unfairly against you.
When you read a book with a subtle voice, you need to sit down, be relaxed, and just be taken along for the ride. You need to have PATIENCE, which is the complete opposite of what you’re getting when your novel is being read by a harried intern/agent.
That said, perhaps this also has to do, to a certain extent, with genre. Agents repping literary maybe be more patient and/or better at judging subtle voice in a short space of time than a two week intern primarily getting genre queries.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got, off the top of my head. Hope some of this rambling is of use.
****Something I forgot to mention below, but which is really quite important. Soooo many queries are TOO long. What happened in my case when I got a really long query was I immediately started skimming. You may think you're helping your odds by giving the agent a more detailed account of your plot, but in reality, at least in my case, you were hurting yourself, because quite frankly I wasn't paying as much attention to your query as I was to shorter, more succinct ones.****
I had the opportunity not too long ago to intern with a literary agency in NYC for a period of 2 weeks during my winter break. I ended up only showing up for 7 of my 10 days due to snow (I was making a significant commute.) I thought it might be helpful for people if I posted some of the things I saw/learned, some of the impressions I got out of the experience, etc.
A little bit of background info. Mostly, I read queries, though they did have me do some other stuff. The agent I was interning under was requesting prospective clients submit, in addition to the standard query letter, the first five pages of the manuscript and a synopsis.
- My general impression of the paper queries, which I read through on my first day, was that they tended to be weaker than the email queries. I admit, however, that the sample size I dealt with was rather small (after the first day, I was dealing only with email queries.)
- On the first day, the agent showed me an example of two queries + sample pages that she ended up requesting and eventually offering representation on. I liked the first one, but probably would have passed on the second one (though I admit, I was reading very fast/skimming because she was sitting behind me, waiting for me to finish and I didn’t want to keep her waiting.)
- Queries, in general, tended to be universally mediocre. The handful of queries that I thought were good did not necessarily have good (to my taste) sample pages included below.
- However, even if I didn’t like the query (and I admit to skimming queries), I always gave sample pages a chance, if they were included.
- In the event sample pages weren’t attached, I emailed authors and asked them to include the pages + synopsis in the body of the email.
- After the first day or so, I stopped reading synopses. There were several factors in my decision to do so. First of all, some synopses were absurdly long—as in, as long or longer than the sample pages. Second of all, like queries, after a while they all start to sound the same (even the literary agent admitted to me, only half-jokingly, that pretty much nobody can write a good synopsis.) Thirdly, if you don’t like the sample pages, it’s kind of pointless to read the synopsis. Lastly, and this is a personal factor—I am a slow reader. I read even slower when I don’t like what I’m reading. I’d never have gotten through what I did if I was reading every synopsis.
- I noticed when authors included more sample pages than asked for. The longest someone included was 20. You’re not necessarily going to get rejected for this, but it is kind of annoying, and it contributed to my decision to stop reading sample pages in their entirety before coming to a verdict.
- I got through, don’t remember exactly, probably around 300-350 queries + sample pages during my time at the agency.
- Out of all these manuscripts, I found one (on my second day) that I stuck in the YES folder.
- I stuck around 40 queries in the “maybe” folder. Most of these sample pages, I thought, were pretty good. They had a sense of voice, gave me a sense of their characters/settings, etc. There were a few maybes I would probably have rejected if not for their credentials. If an author was coming off a former literary agent, had been previously published be a reputable publisher before, or had been published in a major mag then I tended to err on the side of caution and stick them in maybe, even if I wasn’t a huge fan.
- Personally, I would have probably ended up requesting pages from 5 or so of the maybes myself.
- The agent in question rejected my YES (she said it was hilarious at points, but too over the top for her.)
- Out of my maybes, she requested pages from one, and left two others as maybes. The rest were rejects. Can’t remember exactly, but I think none of them had previous credentials.
- Regarding the one she ended up requesting pages from—neither of us liked his query.
- One of the reasons queries start to sound the same is because certain terms pop up a lot. Guardian comes most readily to mind. There were a lot of guardians.
- A lot of queries were like, Main Character is just your average kid/just wants to be your average kid, EXCEPT HE SHOOTS LIGHTNING OUT OF HIS BUTT WHEN HE FARTS.
- A lot of queries, especially YA Urban Fantasy queries, read like they’re all written from the same template. Off the top of my head.
NAME, a [number] teen year old at [school name] has enough to worry about with [insert generic school/teenage problems], without [insert discovery of paranormal abilities, an ancient conflict, discovery of paranormal abilities AND an ancient conflict]. It will be up to Name to [stop conflict, learn to control abilities]. That is, if he doesn’t get [insert fantasy problem and/or generic school/teenage problems,] first.
Jake, a thirteen year old at springwood high, has enough to worry about with not making the base ball team and getting dumped by text message, without a sect of ancient warrior chipmunks bringing their civil war to his town of Springwood. As the prophesied Tailless Peace-Maker it will be up to Jake bring peace to the chipmunks—if he doesn’t get his heart broken by text message again first.
- A surprising amount of people have some kind of credentials. Usually it didn’t help, unless it was something I’d heard of, in which case, as I said, I tended to err on the side of caution. - Credentials did, however, make me feel a little more comfortable when it came to recommending things (even if they weren't the most prestigious, though prestige certainly didn't hurt.) Seeing, for example, that my YES (which the agent rejected) was previously published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show and was personally chosen by Orson Scott Card made me feel all that much surer about recommending.
- Regarding sample pages, after a couple days, I started looking for an excuse to reject. Reasons for rejection
o Lots of typos (fairly rare, actually)
o Grammar issues, tense issues
o Blandness, generally not being very interested
- cliches
Reasons for Requests
- Voice. o Grammar issues, tense issues
o Blandness, generally not being very interested
- cliches
Reasons for Requests
- Humor.
On voice. I’ve thought about this a lot and decided that when pro writers write, they generally come out with one of two types of voice. There is perhaps, an intermediary style of voice between the two.
overt/stylized voice. Sometimes this voice is really over-the-top, but more generally, it’s just the kind of voice that grabs you by your throat, smacks you upside the head, etc. The kind that leaves you thinking, “You just don’t come across characters like this, characters like this just don’t exist in the real world, they’re too good for the real world.”
Examples:
Coen Brother’s The Big Lebowski, Chuck Palahuik’s Choke, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Doestoevsky’s Notes from The Underground, Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian.
The key here is that all these works focus on characters who are exceptional, truly one of a kind, and so their voice is exceptional and one of a kind. These stories leap right off the page.
The second kind of voice is what I’ve taken to calling a subtle/realistic voice. This voice usually comes from characters who are more ordinary than extraordinary. It is more down to earth—at it’s best, still too good for this world, yet, it feels more grounded, more real. You look at the people around you in the supermarket and you could imagine a story being written about them in that style, that voice. You see this a lot in literary fiction.
Examples: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Lois Lowry’s The Giver, anything by Hemmingway, John Knowles’s A Separate Peace, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Orwell's 1984, a lot of classic plays like The Glass Menagerie, and Death of a Salesman.
What I want to say is that for novels going for that subtle voice, the 5 or even 10 pg cut off/the need to whittle down queries as fast as possible may be working somewhat unfairly against you.
When you read a book with a subtle voice, you need to sit down, be relaxed, and just be taken along for the ride. You need to have PATIENCE, which is the complete opposite of what you’re getting when your novel is being read by a harried intern/agent.
That said, perhaps this also has to do, to a certain extent, with genre. Agents repping literary maybe be more patient and/or better at judging subtle voice in a short space of time than a two week intern primarily getting genre queries.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got, off the top of my head. Hope some of this rambling is of use.
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Thanks for the insight, Mr. A!
