Whew!
I just got back from a fun-filled, inspirational weekend in Dallas with my husband and good writing buddy Rose. Out of all the conferences in my local area, this one appeared to be the best investment . . . and it did not disappoint.
The quality and number of agents, along with the variety of classes provided, was almost enough to make my head spin. While I couldn’t make all the sessions and panels, I attended as many as I could. Here is a quick run down of the classes I did go to, and some of the highlights of the weekend:
Saturday began bright and early with Colleen Lindsay’s “High Concept” discussion. While this is a very hard topic to define or teach, Colleen did give some great pointers and spent the rest of the session helping us determine if our own pitches were high concept or not. Basically, she said the strongest high concept plots can be described in 10 words or less, but definitely no more than 25. In a high concept plot, premise is the plot, and it can be summed up in one sentence.
I missed the next session because I was meeting with Jessica Sinsheimer for my first ever in-person pitch session! Jessica is as sweet and personable as her blog suggests, and really made the whole nerve-wracking thing easy for me. I totally recommend querying her if your project matches any of the genres she is looking for. And she is so funny! Definitely worth the price of admission.
The next class I attended was Planning, Plotting and Characters by Anna DeStefano. If you haven’t checked out her blog–in particular the Wednesday series she does with Jenni Talty–you must do so! This class was an hour and a half and it flew by . . . I would love to attend one of her in-depth sessions. While I enjoyed every single session I attended, the knowledge gained from this class is something I started using right away with my current work in progress and know I will be using going forward.
I can’t give this topic the justice it deserves, but in a nutshell Anna uses a nifty excel spreadsheet that appears deceptively easy. It isn’t, but the work is so worth it! The spreadsheet has 3 columns: Beginning, Middle and End. The point of filling this out is to give you a visual map of your character’s emotional journey, although you can certainly use this tool as a map for setting, theme, symbolism, and more throughout your novel.
Under the Beginning column, you describe as succinctly as possible your character’s emotional motivation and goal during the Inciting Incident. Then you skip over to the End column and describe what you want your character’s motivation and goal to be during the Black Moment, when all hope is lost and they must change as a character. The Black Moment is a reflection of the Inciting Incident. Then you go to the Middle column. Often this is where your character fails, where his method of achieving his goal has to change because he realizes it is actually preventing him from achieving what he wants/needs. By filling out the beginning and then the end, you can better determine what needs to happen in the middle to get your character where you want to go, and what obstacles you must put in his path for him to overcome/learn from. Like I said, this class ROCKED!
Next up I was blessed to have a second agent pitch session. Each attendee was able to have one agent pitch session with their registration. Since my husband came with me and paid for a ticket but is not a writer at this time, they allowed me to have his session. This time I met with the lovely Kate McKean. She was a true Southern girl and made me feel completely comfortable the entire time. It was obvious from the beginning that she had a lot of passion and knowledge of the industry and it would be a blessing to work with her. I couldn’t be more pleased with the outcome of my pitch sessions . . . they weren’t nearly as scary as I made them out to be!
After my session, I snuck in a few minutes late to Jessica Sinsheimer’s “It’s a Matter of Taste” class. This was a very informative, behind-the-scenes look at the life of an agent and how to better present your queries and submissions so they stand out from the crowd. One shocking statistic–Jessica received 158 manuscripts in January! HOLY COW! Yeah, standing out is pretty important, I’d say. She also gave advice on checking in with agents after submitting (always check the agent’s typical response time. Hers is about two months), and when there is other interest (if others are interested, it’ll move it up in the pile) BUT never fake an offer! Apparently this happens more often than we think, and agents often do find out.
That was the last session for the day and we quickly grabbed a bite to eat and freshened up for the evening party. This was a great time to mingle with other writers, along with the agents, in a more relaxed, social setting. I had the opportunity to talk with Uwe Stender, Louise Fury, Weronika Janczuk, and Dawn Frederick, along with chatting more with the wonderfully talented Anna DeStefano and Jenni Talty.
The first class on Sunday happened way too early for my sleep-deprived mind, but Amy Boggs‘s “How to Break the Rules of Writing” class was refreshingly upbeat and fun. The perfect start to the day. She began by listing both Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing and Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Basics of Creative Writing, before giving us her own. She then had people from the class read examples that did break the rules and did so successfully (Wrinkle in Time, A Long Way From Chicago, The Help, Dogs of Babel, The Gun Seller, The Demon’s Lexicon, Dead Beat, and The Hunger Games).
Amy’s Six Rules of Writing–almost all of which can be broken if done successfully:
– Show Don’t Tell
– Don’t address the reader directly
– Backstory and detail description bog story down, especially in the beginning
– Start with Action
-Don’t philosophize or lecture
– Don’t start a book in bed, dreaming.
After Amy’s class, I ran down for Jenny Martin’s “Interiority: Bringing Your Pages to Life” class. This was a class I decided to check out at the last minute, and I am so glad I did! Jenny is so much fun and I can’t wait until her YA book hits the shelves (she is repped by the awesome Sara Crowe). Basically, interiority is the inside, inner-life, and pulse of the novel. A series of this happened, and then this happened type writing. Jenny believes the life blood of the novel lies in the narrative, and that is where the reader can connect with the character by seeing how they relate to others, what they want, their recollections and their memories. While some of this can be done in dialogue or action, the life is in the narrative. She gave a list of things to look for in your own scenes to make sure you are bringing life to your writing, and then went through four examples where she stripped the first page of the author’s rich narrative so we can see the difference when she read the real deal. AWESOME! The books she used to illustrate wonderful opening pages filled with rich narrative are: Take Me There by Carolee Dean, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, and the upcoming Wither by Lauren DeStefano.
The last session I was able to attend before heading back to Houston was the YA Panel with Jessica Sinsheimer, Weronika Janczuk, and Elana Roth. There was so much information given in this panel that I can’t begin to cover it here, so here are just a few highlights. Sexy historicals are selling now, but it is important to apply it to today. Let it be about something universal, where teens are teens regardless of time. As for dialect of the time period, it is still a teen book so it is okay to maybe have a few words sprinkled in, but don’t stress about completely authentic period dialogue. As for sex in YA, or drugs and swearing, always ask yourself if it is gratuitous or if it is really needed. There is a wide range of YA, some editors will keep these things in, some will take them out. Most of these agents appear to be hands on, but they do look for clients who are hard working, gracious, well intentioned and grateful, and are not annoying! Let them do their job 🙂 As for social media, the YA writing community is very active but it is all writers. As a marketing tool, it doesn’t really reach your readers. You need to do more to get in touch with teens, possibly stepping back from Twitter to go out into your local community. Get to be best friends with your local librarians and book sellers!
So, there is my conference wrap up. I have a feeling I will be processing all of this information for quite some time. If you have any questions based on things I mentioned here or hinted on, please leave them in the comments. I am a crazy note taker, attempting to jot down almost every word uttered, so chances are I might be able to help!
Happy Writing!
