I’m fairly well-informed on this subject- I’ve had one published science fiction author as a housemate, another as a good friend, and I’m on a first-name basis with multiple editors at Tor.
You will find it very challenging to get direct feedback from any professionals in the industry at this stage, short of relationships like personal friendship. This is because at any given time, there are tens of thousands of unpromising authors making exactly that request.
If this is your first novel, or even your third, don’t expect too much. The bar for minimum quality is extremely high, and author skill does not peak at a young age. If you’re still early in the process, and you’re still enjoying the practice, keep writing your second and third and eighth books while you look around for your first to be published. As a general rule of thumb, if you don’t have a novel that’s now vaguely embarrassing to you, then you probably aren’t good enough yet. Do not put all your eggs in one basket by writing one very long series; try out a variety of settings, and experiment with your craft.
Often, it is heard that writing short stories to build up a reputation first is a good way to break in to the industry. This is false.
Be aware that no matter which route you take, multiple years will pass before your book is accepted. Be aware that when your first book is published, you will not be paid enough to live on.
Rather than chasing publishers immediately, the first thing you need (need) is a good agent. Being accepted by an agent is a kind of ‘slush pile lite’ challenge- agents usually have their own slush piles and their own interns to read through them, but their overall volume and turnaround time is much more manageable. You’re also much more likely to get real feedback from an agent, explaining any potential problems that they see with your work. Another advantage of having multiple novels written is that you can send a particular novel to a particular agent, depending on their stated preferences. These can be quite specialized- gay and lesbian characters in fantasy settings, hard sf alternate history military adventures- depending on the goals of the agent in question, and it helps to maximize the number of niches that you accidentally fall in to by writing a variety of stories. Make sure that you are aware of your chosen agent’s reputation, since there are predatory impostors. Once you have this agent, you will be able to bypass the publisher’s slush pile entirely, and your chances improve dramatically.
I wonder if a novel-length piece of fanfiction starring a bovine secret agent counts…
a good agent
I know even less about agents than I do about slush piles—I don’t know where to even begin looking for a list of them, whether there are agent-focused online forums or subreddits, agent review sites, or what-have-you. Where might I start looking to discover agents’ reputations?
This resource seems quite good. It gives a few websites that compile lists, but your first step is going to be a bookstore- go find books that are likely to appeal to the same sorts of people as your own, and look inside them. Agents aren’t usually listed in the title pages or published information, but it’s good form to mention them in the acknowledgments, so that’s where you’ll get your initial list of names.
I wonder if a novel-length piece of fanfiction starring a bovine secret agent counts…
Ha! Possibly. Are you now skilled enough to rewrite it, better, in 30,000 words without losing anything?
One of the most common signs of an author that has yet to mature is a conspicuously low density of language (especially so in fan fiction). I actually wouldn’t be surprised if you could cut it to a ninth, although I suppose a third would be a bit more realistic without my having actually seen it. If you want to try this out without taking on an unreasonably large project, try cutting your old blog posts in half. Just as an example, I pulled a random paragraph from S.I. (which I might have mangled due to a lack of context):
“I never actually caught sight of Charles—he seemed to either be running errands, or hanging out with a few other guys aiming to create some sort of “Last of the Summer Wine” pastiche. After the second ladder crash, I suspected he married into the House household simply to have ready access to medical care.”
“Charles was nowhere, probably off playing ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ with his buddies. No surprise- after the latest ladder crash, I’d bet he married a House for the insurance.”
All this is just a heuristic, of course. The ability to compress language doesn’t make you a good author, it’s just something that most good authors can do.
If I was given a goal of cutting my verbiage in half, I think I can do that reasonably well. The question is, what’s the meta-heuristic here? When should an authour go to the effort of aiming for shortened prose as opposed to longer text?
The reason that you want to be able to compress language is, in a broader sense, to be able to use words with extreme precision. An author that can do this is in a good position to decide whether they should, but someone that defaults to the more expansive writing is probably not using individual words conscientiously.
is probably not using individual words conscientiously.
I would go further: an author who has not edited down their prose to something tighter and with more bang for the buck is probably too in love with their writing to have carefully edited or considered all the other aspects of their story, such as the plot, pacing, content, or character voices.
It’s a yearly publication. You can probably find the latest copy in the nearest library of any size. If not, they can certainly loan it from another library.
It lists publishing houses, agents, online markets, magazines, everything useful to a writer looking to get published.
I would suggest grabbing a copy and just surfing through it. It’s a great start.
I’m fairly well-informed on this subject- I’ve had one published science fiction author as a housemate, another as a good friend, and I’m on a first-name basis with multiple editors at Tor.
You will find it very challenging to get direct feedback from any professionals in the industry at this stage, short of relationships like personal friendship. This is because at any given time, there are tens of thousands of unpromising authors making exactly that request.
If this is your first novel, or even your third, don’t expect too much. The bar for minimum quality is extremely high, and author skill does not peak at a young age. If you’re still early in the process, and you’re still enjoying the practice, keep writing your second and third and eighth books while you look around for your first to be published. As a general rule of thumb, if you don’t have a novel that’s now vaguely embarrassing to you, then you probably aren’t good enough yet. Do not put all your eggs in one basket by writing one very long series; try out a variety of settings, and experiment with your craft.
Often, it is heard that writing short stories to build up a reputation first is a good way to break in to the industry. This is false.
Be aware that no matter which route you take, multiple years will pass before your book is accepted. Be aware that when your first book is published, you will not be paid enough to live on.
Rather than chasing publishers immediately, the first thing you need (need) is a good agent. Being accepted by an agent is a kind of ‘slush pile lite’ challenge- agents usually have their own slush piles and their own interns to read through them, but their overall volume and turnaround time is much more manageable. You’re also much more likely to get real feedback from an agent, explaining any potential problems that they see with your work. Another advantage of having multiple novels written is that you can send a particular novel to a particular agent, depending on their stated preferences. These can be quite specialized- gay and lesbian characters in fantasy settings, hard sf alternate history military adventures- depending on the goals of the agent in question, and it helps to maximize the number of niches that you accidentally fall in to by writing a variety of stories. Make sure that you are aware of your chosen agent’s reputation, since there are predatory impostors. Once you have this agent, you will be able to bypass the publisher’s slush pile entirely, and your chances improve dramatically.
I wonder if a novel-length piece of fanfiction starring a bovine secret agent counts…
I know even less about agents than I do about slush piles—I don’t know where to even begin looking for a list of them, whether there are agent-focused online forums or subreddits, agent review sites, or what-have-you. Where might I start looking to discover agents’ reputations?
This resource seems quite good. It gives a few websites that compile lists, but your first step is going to be a bookstore- go find books that are likely to appeal to the same sorts of people as your own, and look inside them. Agents aren’t usually listed in the title pages or published information, but it’s good form to mention them in the acknowledgments, so that’s where you’ll get your initial list of names.
Ha! Possibly. Are you now skilled enough to rewrite it, better, in 30,000 words without losing anything?
If I had a reason to, yep.
I think I could manage that.
… tricky.
I don’t think I can shrink it by a factor of 9 without losing quite a lot—even summarizing just the best bits might take more than that.
One of the most common signs of an author that has yet to mature is a conspicuously low density of language (especially so in fan fiction). I actually wouldn’t be surprised if you could cut it to a ninth, although I suppose a third would be a bit more realistic without my having actually seen it. If you want to try this out without taking on an unreasonably large project, try cutting your old blog posts in half. Just as an example, I pulled a random paragraph from S.I. (which I might have mangled due to a lack of context):
“I never actually caught sight of Charles—he seemed to either be running errands, or hanging out with a few other guys aiming to create some sort of “Last of the Summer Wine” pastiche. After the second ladder crash, I suspected he married into the House household simply to have ready access to medical care.”
“Charles was nowhere, probably off playing ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ with his buddies. No surprise- after the latest ladder crash, I’d bet he married a House for the insurance.”
All this is just a heuristic, of course. The ability to compress language doesn’t make you a good author, it’s just something that most good authors can do.
If I was given a goal of cutting my verbiage in half, I think I can do that reasonably well. The question is, what’s the meta-heuristic here? When should an authour go to the effort of aiming for shortened prose as opposed to longer text?
The reason that you want to be able to compress language is, in a broader sense, to be able to use words with extreme precision. An author that can do this is in a good position to decide whether they should, but someone that defaults to the more expansive writing is probably not using individual words conscientiously.
I would go further: an author who has not edited down their prose to something tighter and with more bang for the buck is probably too in love with their writing to have carefully edited or considered all the other aspects of their story, such as the plot, pacing, content, or character voices.
Any thoughts or resources about the right amount of redundancy?
As a reader, it’s less work for more reward.
Writer’s Market.
It’s a yearly publication. You can probably find the latest copy in the nearest library of any size. If not, they can certainly loan it from another library.
It lists publishing houses, agents, online markets, magazines, everything useful to a writer looking to get published.
I would suggest grabbing a copy and just surfing through it. It’s a great start.