74 Reasons an Agent Won't Read Your MS Beyond Page One

kkbe · Nov 1, 2012

EDIT: ~~Per mod,~~ I must delete some of the list, even though I provided a link back to the source. Deleting every third reason. You may read the list and associated comments at Posted Halloween, 2006 ( http://www.annemini.com/?m=200610 Author! Author!:: Anne Mini's Blog).

Let the chopping begin. . .

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I just stumbled upon this and found it pretty interesting. Enjoy. (Wait, maybe that's not the right word. . .

)

At the Surrey International Writers' Conference in British Columbia, writers anonymously submit the first page of their manuscripts to a panel of agents and publishers. Following are 74 reasons those agents and publishers gave for rejecting an ms after reading the first page (and 8 reasons why they'd keep going; not sure if we should read anything into that. . .

) :

Why I Would Not Read Farther:

1. An opening image that did not work.

2. Opened with rhetorical question(s).

<List goes on, at the link given. Visit the author's blog for more. This post was snipped by admin, because we must respect other people's copyrights -- and removing every third item isn't the way to do that.>

Posted Halloween, 2006 ( http://www.annemini.com/?m=200610 Author! Author!:: Anne Mini's Blog)

seun · Nov 1, 2012

Interesting. I'm reasonably sure I haven't made any of the more obvious mistakes there although I know my earlier stuff was guilty of being boring and/or unclear.

And I have to admit to laughing at 42 and 43.

Torgo · Nov 1, 2012

They're certainly pickier than I am. In real life as I know it, we don't reject based on something in the first paragraph.

Kerosene · Nov 1, 2012

kkbe said:
8. ”There was something going on beyond just the surface action.”

Ooo... that's a good one.

Gilroy Cullen · Nov 1, 2012

Don't #3 and #68 contradict each other?

Oh, and why is making the reader laugh (#66) a bad thing?

Perhaps this goes to show that tastes vary and what one agent says is horrible, another may think is fine...

jeffo20 · Nov 1, 2012

Torgo said:
They're certainly pickier than I am. In real life as I know it, we don't reject based on something in the first paragraph.

Do you think the 'standards' are higher in the 'first line/para/page' crit sessions, contests and workshops than they might be in the office? And is there a difference between 'give me a reason to keep reading' vs. 'give me a reason to reject'? It seems like these types of sessions are more geared to finding what's wrong than finding what's right. Or, quite possibly, there's just a hell of a lot 'wrong' out there.

Torgo · Nov 1, 2012

jeffo20 said:
Do you think the 'standards' are higher in the 'first line/para/page' crit sessions, contests and workshops than they might be in the office?

And is there a difference between 'give me a reason to keep reading' vs. 'give me a reason to reject'? It seems like these types of sessions are more geared to finding what's wrong than finding what's right. Or, quite possibly, there's just a hell of a lot 'wrong' out there.

I think the bolded bit is the key. I know that the first page or first para is often indicative of the overall quality of the book, but then I also know that quite often it's the worst bit of the whole thing.

If the game we are playing in the office were 'give me a reason to reject' then quite a few things we buy and then fix wouldn't make the cut. A few of the reasons given above seem kind of arbitrary to me.

Rufus Coppertop · Nov 1, 2012

WillSauger said:
Ooo... that's a good one.

Seconded.

Johncs · Nov 1, 2012

Alt thread title: 74 ways to define (or not define) obscenity.

A fun game might be "name 74 published novels that disagree with these 74 reasons."

An agent's tastes are the subjective views of a single person, and "Too gross" for one might be "not too gross enough" for another...

I bet every author at a contest could use matching opening pages, and be rejected for different reasons.

I'll return to my sour grapes now

Chris P · Nov 1, 2012

These lists always make me paranoid. It reminds me of the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld; one misstep and "No soup for you!"

Many of those are helpful, but reasons like "just didn't grab me" don't tell me what I can do differently to be a better writer. As has been mentioned, I can go to the NYT best sellers list and find examples of nearly all of these. It made me as a new writer think there is some secret code that only the cool kids got to learn. So, I try to learn what I can from these lists but don't take them as gospel.

Hip-Hop-a-potamus · Nov 1, 2012

I heard one in Surrey last weekend during our "Siwc Idol" where Jack Whyte reads anonymous first pages, and a panel of 4 agents listen. They then raise their hands when they would stop reading. Once they get 2 up, they tell what wasn't working for them.

The one agent line that made me laugh was, "I don't like hearing body parts compared to food."

So there ya go. That puts me out of the running for her.

kkbe · Nov 1, 2012

Jeffo20: Do you think the 'standards' are higher in the 'first line/para/page' crit sessions, contests and workshops than they might be in the office? And is there a difference between 'give me a reason to keep reading' vs. 'give me a reason to reject'? It seems like these types of sessions are more geared to finding what's wrong than finding what's right. Or, quite possibly, there's just a hell of a lot 'wrong' out there.

Good points raised there. I just checked back to see if your suspicions had been addressed and, lo and behold. . .

First of all, it's a real trip how this goes down:

Well, picture this, my friends: brave souls submit (anonymously) the first page of their novels, which are read out loud by a perfectly wonderful reader (the excellent Jack Whyte, who could make the telephone book sound gripping). During the readings, as the uncredited writers quake in their chairs, the three agents on the panel shout out “STOP!” at the point where they would cease reading the submission.
It’s definitely not for the faint of heart.

Here's the writer's take on the quick rejections:

Brutal, true, but what better way to see just how quickly agents (and their screeners) make up their minds about a submission? Most aspiring writers don’t want to believe that work is rejected on partial readings, but here, there was no doubt about how and why these agents were moving submissions into the reject pile within a paragraph or two. Their judgments are stunningly quick.

You could feel the air in the room change palpably as the writers there got it at last: the quick rejections are not really born of meanness, but the fact that they see so very many manuscripts that are so very similar. . .it became very apparent just how stultifying all that similarity can be. Originality leapt out at the numbed crowd like a flame from Godzilla’s mouth, often startling everyone into spontaneous applause.

Then, there's this:

. . .think how much greater both the cumulative effect of boredom and the pleasing electrification of something honestly different would be to an agency screener who reads hundreds of first pages in a day.

And that’s without the addition of the possibility that the screener is having a bad day. . .a writer simply can’t assume a charitable reading for a submission. To get a realistic sense of how your work will fare on an agent’s desk, you really do have to look at that opening with the assumption that the agent will be looking for reasons NOT to read the rest of the submission, not reasons to read on.

Finally:

Naturally, this looking-to-dislike attitude does not continue for the entire reading, of course. If an agent decides to keep reading, eventually, she does start looking for reasons to like it. How far in, you ask? Well, I’m not sure that there is a common breaking point, but the last agent I asked, a very good one who likes writers a lot, said that he is routinely looking for reasons to reject a manuscript up to page 175. After that, he says, he begins reading for reasons to sign the author.

Page 175??!! :censored

Shoestring · Nov 1, 2012

kkbe said:
15. The opening had a character do something that characters only do in books, not real life. Specifically singled out: a character who shakes her head to clear an image, “he shook his head to clear the cobwebs.”

I actually do that all the time, so this one isn't particularly accurate for me. xD

But this is an interesting list, and something good to keep in mind in future writing. As with every other 'personal list of guidelines' though, it's something I think that should only be taken into consderation, and not used as 'writing commandments'.

Thanks for sharing! ^^

leahzero · Nov 1, 2012

A lot of these are, frankly, ridiculous. There is so much great fiction that flagrantly violates huge swathes of these rules. The people who said things like:

3. The first line is about setting, not about story.

5. The first line’s hook did not work, because it was an image, rather than something that was happening in the scene.

6. Took too long for anything to happen (a critique, incidentally, leveled several times at a submission after only the first paragraph had been read); the story taking time to warm up.

have clearly never read--or appreciated--a work of literary fiction.

And they contradict advice like:

68. “It’s not atmospheric.”

This is all subjective. You can't please everyone, and you shouldn't try to. Just write well.

WeaselFire · Nov 1, 2012

Yes! I passed 44, 45 and probably 50! Only 71 possible issues to address!

Little things excite me sometimes...

Jeff

jeffo20 · Nov 1, 2012

Torgo said:
I think the bolded bit is the key. I know that the first page or first para is often indicative of the overall quality of the book, but then I also know that quite often it's the worst bit of the whole thing.

If the game we are playing in the office were 'give me a reason to reject' then quite a few things we buy and then fix wouldn't make the cut. A few of the reasons given above seem kind of arbitrary to me.

Thanks for the response, Torgo. Interesting that you find the opening para/page is often 'the worst bit of the whole thing'. Given how we writerly types have it beaten into our heads about hooks and first lines, etc., I would have expected the opening page to be the most highly-polished for most submissions.

Chris P said:
These lists always make me paranoid. It reminds me of the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld; one misstep and "No soup for you!"

Many of those are helpful, but reasons like "just didn't grab me" don't tell me what I can do differently to be a better writer.

Yeah, 'just didn't grab me' can really be anything, can't it? Story, style, voice, poor writing, who knows? But you can't really expect the agent to go into great details about it.

Torgo · Nov 1, 2012

jeffo20 said:
Thanks for the response, Torgo. Interesting that you find the opening para/page is often 'the worst bit of the whole thing'. Given how we writerly types have it beaten into our heads about hooks and first lines, etc., I would have expected the opening page to be the most highly-polished for most submissions.

Polished, maybe, but a lot of people just start the story in the wrong place. Too early is the usual mistake. Beginnings are difficult.

Buffysquirrel · Nov 1, 2012

Gilroy Cullen said:
Oh, and why is making the reader laugh (#66) a bad thing?

They were more specific than that--making the reader laugh *at* the writing or the character is the problem, not making them laugh per se. As in, the writing's so bad the reader laughs at it.

Shaking your head to clear it doesn't happen in rl? It does in mine!

kkbe · Nov 1, 2012

Gilroy C.: Don't #3 and #68 contradict each other?

Oh, and why is making the reader laugh (#66) a bad thing?

#3 is: The first line is about setting, not story. #68 is: "It's not atmospheric." I'm guessing #3 refers to physical description of setting, and #68 refers to mood.

# 66. “Makes the reader laugh at it, not with it.” I took that one to mean the narrative was laughable, not intentionally so.

Yep, this list is subjective, for sure, but then, when an agent reads our stuff, reaction is subjective. Whether or not these agents were representative of the whole, who knows, but one of the agents was Daniel Lazar from Writers House, one of the largest literary agencies. . .

BethS · Nov 1, 2012

I was at that workshop in Surrey. Many of the items on your list I don't recall ever being mentioned, though I have no doubt that those reasons do figure in to the generic list of reasons why agents reject.

Also, while watching agents reject manuscripts in real time can be instructive, it's also an artificial situation. They would normally be reading the work, not having it read to them. As a few instances proved, hearing something read can lead to confusion that wouldn't happen if the agent could see the words on the page.

Then, too, in reality, the agents would've already seen a query with a brief description of the story, so they'd have some idea of the setting and premise, and wouldn't make the mistake of labeling a story as paranormal when it's actually just fantasy.

kkbe · Nov 1, 2012

re: 2006? At the bottom of the o.p. is the source: Posted Halloween, 2006 ( http://www.annemini.com/?m=200610 Author! Author!:: Anne Mini's Blog)

Mr Flibble · Nov 1, 2012

I think all the items on this list are saying pretty much the same thing (with the exception of fairly subjective stuff like how gross is too gross)

The writing isn't good enough.

A good writer can open with setting for instance, and the agent will read on because it's done well enough to make them want to. When the writing isn't good enough, they look for reasons why, and this is what they say. But the basic reason is - this wasn't done well enough to hold them.

kkbe · Nov 1, 2012

Okay, ~~just informed by mod that~~ I have to delete some of that list, even if I provide a link back to the source, which I did. Poo. Ergo, deleting every third. . .

You may read the post in it's entirety, including the narrative:

Posted Halloween, 2006 ( http://www.annemini.com/?m=200610 Author! Author!:: Anne Mini's Blog)

ArachnePhobia · Nov 1, 2012

44. There is too much violence to children and/or pets.

Wouldn't that put the kibosh on entire genres of MG, YA, or Anthropomorphic? Even if it's for kids or the MC is a prairie dog, if it's action, thriller, or horror, they're going to have to be in real danger at some point.

Torgo · Nov 1, 2012

ArachnePhobia said:
Wouldn't that put the kibosh on entire genres of MG, YA, or Anthropomorphic? Even if it's for kids or the MC is a prairie dog, if it's action, thriller, or horror, they're going to have to be in real danger at some point.

Danger =/= violence.

74 Reasons an Agent Won't Read Your MS Beyond Page One

Huh.

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