What not to do at an online writing conference!
To be honest, at first I didn't really understand what it was all about, although I had attended one before. I recalled that it had been helpful. Everyone had had their query read by an agent, and mine said she needed to know more about what my central character wanted and the story reminded her of Ella Enchanted.
So when I received an email, last week, telling me about the two day event, I thought, "Why not have a go? You're not going to get published, yet, but it'll be interesting and you might even learn something."
First of all, I had to enrol. Luckily, I remembered my name ( ha, ha) and password from last time.
The conference had a new format: you could write a query in 250 words, then the first 250 words and first 5 pages of your manuscript. You could also comment on other people's posts and edit yours whenever you wanted. Mind you, it took me a while to work this out. And I never managed to find out how to link all my posts at the bottom of my profile. It also took me until nearly the end of the second day to work out how to load a photograph for my avatar and it was so small you could hardly see me.
First I had to post a query (which means a kind of summary of your book) in 250 words for a literary agent to read. I decided to submit my work in progress, known as my WIP, and once again wondered what the plot was. Don't get me wrong, there is a plot, but it's long and complicated so that what started out as a simple book about a student magician with an aged mentor, had now developed into an epic tale with loads of characters, back stories and time travel. Yes, my little fantasy now included Steam Punk. My cp's didn' t see that one coming! (For the uninitiated, cp's are Critical Partners.) Mine usually are happy to read whatever I write and rarely criticise.
I had to decide what category to post the WIP under. Last time I posted it as Young Adult, (YA), but a friend, who's studying for a creative writing degree, had said it's definitely Middle Grade (MG). She said it's funny and not dark enough for YA. I was inclined to agree, as lots of 10 year olds had read extracts and said they love it. The problem was that I wanted my protagonist to be 16 so, for the purpose of making it MG, I lopped a couple of years off her age.
Then I had to summarise it for the query. I figuratively chewed my pencil, (it tasted better than the mouse), and came up with a simplified aspect of the plot that hardly referred to the aged mentor. By then the Forum had started and there were hundreds of entries online. After numerous attempts, each worse than the last, and leaving out nearly all the plot and characters, I wrote the required 250 words. I managed to post it by typing it all out again on the form as I wasn't sure how to copy and paste. Rather annoyingly, every time I did something I had to log in again.
Of course what I wanted to write was,
"Dear Agent,
My brilliant book is influenced by The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Lost Horizon, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Witches, Gone With the Wind, Rebecca, The Time Machine and the Narnia books. Also, Frankenstein, I Robot, Snow White, Mallory Towers and every book I've ever read. Although it's derivative it's also highly original. I'm not sure what genre it is, but I call it Fantasy. If you like reading any of the above mentioned books, or indeed, any book, you will enjoy this!
As adults and ten year old children enjoy reading my book, I hope that you will too! I think it is MG and YA. I would just like to add that several old people with dementia have enjoyed reading it lots of times.
Yours sincerely etc"
But then, there would have been no room for the plot.
To my surprise, I actually got a couple of comments on the thread. One asked if it was about magicians or wizards. The attendee was confused because I had referred to a missing magician whose disappearance was reported in the "Wizards' Gazette". If it was wizards, that would be bad, she wrote, because no one wanted to read or write Harry Potter any more. Agents would think it was just fan fiction. And why was I using both Wizards and Magicians? It was confusing for the poor reader. I pondered this: I had both wizards and magicians in my book. I thought the WIP was very different to Harry Potter but some CP's said it does have a Potter vibe. I saw it more as Ghormenghast.
I edited my query, and changed "The Wizards' Gazette" to "The Magicians' Gazette," although I wasn't convinced. By the end of the conference I'd altered it to, "The Magicians' and Wizards' Gazette", and I was teetering on the brink of closing the magazine altogether!
Then I decided to post the first 250 words of my WIP. Well, by now as you've probably guessed, a bit of back story had recently become a Prologue, featuring the missing wizard/magician, (or shall we just call him a person who does magic.) So I posted that, and a few people looked at it. It was rather a boring chapter as everything of note happened after the 250th word. No one left a comment. Then I read somewhere that Prologues are not good. They are frowned upon. Agents hate them. So I deleted the post, which took ages as I had to keep logging in. Instead, I posted my original first chapter, which is in 3rd person. I had changed it from 1st person when I started working on the second draft of the book. This is the scene where my main character pulls a duck out of a hat instead of the expected rabbits. 250 words is not much, and had run out before the main protagonist could say much.
Now I received a few comments of criticism. My first line stated that my central character was feeling depressed. Oh, no! You mustn't write that! You are telling not showing. An agent will not read past that first line, wrote the attendee. I think it probably was an agent in disguise who told me that. Another attendee agreed with her. My dream of being the next JKRowling was already over...
I deleted the first line. I had to log in several times...
Another attendee wrote that my description of the teacher merged with the next sentence, so that it suggested that the duck was looking glamorous in a blue satin dress and a long purple cloak. Hmmm...I reread the sentences. She was right. More edits, more logging in.
Every time you edit, your post goes up to the top of the list, so it was being read a lot, but not many people left comments.
Another attendee was confused because I had referred to the teacher in three ways: Miss Blank, Miss First Name Blank, and just her First Name. How do you resolve that if she's a main character? I mean she's a person as well as a teacher. But maybe it was a bit much to give her three forms of address in only 250 words...
However, everyone said they would want to read on, which was encouraging. The most helpful comment advised me to delay the producing of the duck from the hat: "She reached in and produced...a green and brown duck?" Apparently the dot, dot, dot, and the question mark made it dramatic: dum, dum, dum, and here comes a ...duck! ?!?
Then I read some other people's posts as the rules of the conference stipulated that you have to make comments on at least 5 threads for each of your postings. This is hard because you don't want to be mean if you think the writing's awful: "This is terrible but good luck with it anyway!"smiley face.
As a teacher, I tend to mark my own pupils positively.The lowest mark they get is an A-. If it's reasonable they get an A. If it's good, they get A+. If it's brilliant they get A++++++ to infinity. In my experience, no one gets encouraged by getting D-. They just give up!
On my thread, I replied to all the attendees who left comments on my 250 words and thanked them. They were all very helpful and correct. If you are reading this blog, thank you again.
I began to take their advice and change things. At one point, I started to worry that there would not be many of my original 250 words left.
I traced the threads of the people who had commented on mine to read their queries and extracts, and comment on theirs. I was kind and said I would love to read their books and wished them luck. Probably not that helpful, then?
Other people seemed able to reproduce a whole passage and comment on it in different colours, line by line. How did they do that? How did they know what to change? Some people had so many red highlights and crossed out bits from different attendees that they rewrote their whole 5 pages. Then one attendee returned and commented that she preferred the original version after all.
I decided to post my first 5 pages and spent several hours laboriously typing and editing it onto the form. At last, around midnight, it was done. I pressed the button to post it and ... I expect you've guessed what happened next? Yes, I was asked to log on again and when I did ...the whole 5 pages had disappeared, just like the rabbits in the hat! I later found out, I should have ticked the "remember me" box. As I was working the next day, I did not get time to post the 5 pages.
However, I have learned so much from this. My first 250 words now are polished and brilliant. I've had to think about how to address the teacher. I've made the difference between wizards and magicians central to the plot. I've discovered that people enjoyed the bit they read and one of them guessed that the teacher was evil because she "croaked". YES!
I 've also learned to hold back and not give too much information to the reader. Let them discover things slowly as the story progresses. Make each chapter exciting.
I also learned a lot by watching all the videos of the agents reading YA twitter pitches on vlogs and saying which ones they'd like to see. The agents seemed really nice and friendly, but with strong opinions. It all seemed amazingly fun and arbitrary and I tried to guess which queries they'd like. They were munching pies while they decided. I liked the decor of their office and the fact that a small child could be seen wandering around in the background.
I learned that writing is a business but no one really knows for sure what is going to be successful and sell.
The main thing I learned is that you can't please everyone. You can listen to advice and then try things out, but ultimately it's your book and you make your own decisions. I also learnt that there are really kind, intelligent people out there, who adore books and writing. They will take the time to help you, but are desperate to get their own work published. Overall it was a positive experience and I'm grateful to the organisers and hope they do more of these events.
Today, I'm rereading the WIP. Tomorrow, I will continue writing the second draft and I will be asking my CP's what they really think...
Jacqueline Miller
