Sometimes Those Workshops Are Not Teaching Writers Correctly

I decided to help out a group of writers with some submissions. No, I was not teaching the process, but offering to read the submissions. The coordinators believed that some writers were not able to get their work in front of an agent. (NOTE: I really am not sure what reality the coordinators were living in when they thought of this considering all agents are pretty much online 24/7/365... but I digress). In any case, as I looked over the material they sent, I was totally confused.

Now let me just stress that I did let the coordinators know that I expected the authors to follow the guidelines for submitting to me. This information is clearly listed on my website and I provided that link to them. 

No one followed the guidelines.

Instead, they had put together a query letter of sorts that was simply a post with a logline, and the first page of the writing. All of this was embedded into the email.

I do understand that many agents prefer to have the document embedded into the email and that part was fine. But the biggest issue is that what they sent, no one, and I mean no one could make a quality decision of whether or not they wanted to see more. 

The loglines were formulaic and really said nothing about the book. Clearly those who taught these authors said to come up with something totally creative. Sure, it was creative, but it gave the reader noting to really hold on to. Try something like this:

A widower finds a way out of his darkness after moving back to his hometown to find the girl he liked in high school. 

Honestly, this is pretty much a line that describes so many stories out there. The problem is that we have no idea what the conflict is or anything else about the story. It is just sitting there. 

Let's take this a step further. I want to go back to a comment another agent made on a panel I sat on several years ago. She stated that if she had questions about the project, that turned into a maybe and that maybe was always a no. 

We need a synopsis of the ENTIRE story!

Many of these submissions were lacking even a word count. While this might seem small, it really does dictate where an agent might consider sending that story. If I see something and it sounds like a series romance, and then I find out that it is 110,000 words, then we have a problem.

Finally, the first page of a story is not going to give us much of a sense. Normally, when we ask for a partial, we are looking for anything from the first three chapters to even the first 100 pages or so. This gives us a sense of the writing and how much the story actually sticks together once we get going. 

I am going to restate something that I have said before. THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS. While the intent of this approach by this group seemed noble, it is teaching the authors nothing and really walking them into a ton of rejections. Did they get their writing in front of an agent? Sure. Was it effective? Far from it!