Literary Agent Rejections that Might Mean You Need to Rewrite Your Novel | iWriterly

if you have ever queried a literary agent you are probably all too familiar with rejections most of the time as writers we hope that it's simply a matter of our book not being a good fit for that particular literary agent but the worst kind of rejection is the one that hints at your book being in rough shape in this video i'm going to talk about literary agent rejections that might mean you need to rewrite your novel stay tuned hey book nerds i'm meg latorre i'm the author of the cyborg tinker which comes out november 17 2020. if you pre-order a copy and fill out the pre-order giveaway form in the description below you'll be entered to win one of more than 30 prizes some of those prizes include signed copies of the cyborg tinker tct merch tct bookmarks character art books by authors you know and love and much more stay tuned to the end of this video to hear if you won this week's prize i also formally worked at a literary agency on this episode of iwriterly we're going to be talking about literary agent rejections that might mean you need to rewrite your novel now before we get into today's content hit that subscribe button and ring the bell if you haven't already here on iwriterly we create videos about how to be a successful modern-day author including self-publishing and traditional publishing because i know i'm going to get this question in the comments yes yes indeed i cut my hair off it is a pixie cut i'm having a good time it's a lot of fun it was on my bucket list of things to do but yes i cut off my hair and if you have nothing nice to say please don't say anything at all this haircut is not for you it's for me one other quick announcement i am going to be hosting a goodreads giveaway for the cyborg tinker in the month of august 2020. if you enter you will be eligible to win one of three signed copies of the cyborg tinkerer it is limited to individuals in the united states so if you want to sign copy from me the link to enter the goodreads giveaway is in the description below in this video i'm going to run through the five types of rejection and possible verbage you might actually hear in those form rejections if you receive a rejection at all the ones that specifically might mean that you need to rewrite your novel as ever this conversation is geared toward genre fiction authors if you're writing nonfiction poetry short stories we don't specialize in that here at iwriterly so you'll have to go somewhere else to research that number one i'm not the right person to champion this story in my opinion this is kind of a generic rejection one possible reason for this rejection is that maybe your character's plot concept setting pitch world building magic system etc is not unique or isn't as unique as you think it is examples of why it might not be unique are things like tire tropes overuse of cliches there is no hook the market is saturated with that particular type of story or maybe you're writing a book that is similar to one that was published 10 or 20 years ago so you're writing for a market that kind of no longer exists anymore versus the current market the modern day reader another reason you might get this rejection is maybe your plot or the story itself just isn't working this specifically could be a synopsis rejection so what do i mean by that a lot of times when you're querying agents will ask for your query letter which is that one page cover letter that pitches your manuscript to literary agents if you want to learn more about query letters i have a course on skillshare all about it i'll leave a link in the description below you will also be asked for usually your opening pages maybe the first couple chapters of your novel and then sometimes you're asked for a synopsis which is a one to two page document that summarizes everything that happens in your book you give away all the spoilers from beginning middle to end you tell the agent everything and the reason that i used to ask for this other agents ask for this is because it is an easy way to spot plot issues if there's big plot holes or structural concerns you can look at beginning middle and end and be like oh i don't think that's going to be resolved at all there's some big issues there and so that might be a synopsis type of rejection because you look at the structure of the book and something's wrong something's not working the last reason for this type of rejection at least that i can think of at this moment is that maybe you wrote this book as the first book in a series rather than a standalone with serious potential and so this book is essentially just a set up for the books later in a series but nothing really happens in book one again it's just a setup there's no plot there's some character development but there's no big question that's asked at the beginning of the story and you follow that plot arc to the end there's none of that if it's just set up that hints at a story and a book that needs a ton of editing so this might be one more reason why you received this type of rejection of course there's going to be more but these are just a few examples and when i say a standalone with series potential when you are querying literary agents in the modern day this is kind of how it works if you've written rather if you have a series in your head and you want to publish a series traditionally you pitch book one to a literary agent and if the literary agent likes it they're going to take on book one and then hopefully pitch it to an an editor at a publishing house but that book one needs to be a full and complete novel to stand on its own that you don't need books two three four whatever to finish that story whatever that one story adventure whatever it is it needs to be fully wrapped up in book one but then you leave threads for books two three and four if the series happens to continue a lot of times this means things like no cliff hangers and stuff like that number two i didn't connect with the character in the way that i'd hoped for this that might mean your character voice isn't strong enough might mean you have a lack of character agency and character agency i have a whole video on it it's a little bit older at this point so whatever if you want to check it out it still has good stuff in it but it's essentially when a character takes action and those actions move the plot if the plot is moving the character then they are lacking agency another reason for this is maybe you have too many side characters the plot is getting bogged down by the sheer quantity of characters in your story maybe you have povs from every single person but your protagonist or just too many povs in general and then that's gonna bog the plot and the pacing down and prevent a literary agent from connecting with your particular story and the person leading your story aka your protagonist keep in mind you only have a few pages or maybe a chapter to hook that agent's attention before they're moving on to their next submission literary agents get hundreds of queries per week maybe even more than that and thousands per month they don't have time to wait for the story to get started so if your story starts with the scene that makes a protagonist unlikable or doesn't give the reader a chance to bond with the protagonist that gives them a reason to keep on reading to find out what's gonna happen that's an easy way for an agent to say thank you but no thank you and send that rejection you want to make the reader especially if the reader's a literary agent want to follow your story they need to want to follow your protagonist and now when i say unlikable i'm usually referring to things that are like unredeemable i've read certain stories where they kill a baby in the first paragraph and it's violent and gruesome and disgusting and in my opinion you can't come back from that if you're killing a baby in the first paragraph i don't want to read that story it's okay to have an unlikable character but if they're unredeemable in like chapter one paragraph one page one whatever the literary agent's not gonna keep reading the third type of rejection you might hear is the story didn't hold my interest this is probably gonna hint at plot structure or pacing issues in your manuscript maybe your story doesn't start in the right place it starts too soon or too late maybe the beginning is too slow or too fast it starts in the right place but you're not doing enough of certain elements or the right elements to keep the story at a good pace in the beginning maybe you have a saggy middle maybe they requested a partial or a full request and the story just drags in the middle and they couldn't get to the ending or maybe your issue isn't with the beginning or middle of your story maybe you have all this great build up but just a resolution an ending of a story that just is not satisfying for the reader you set up all these questions all these big things in the beginning of the story and to the middle and then you don't actually address any of those things by the end of the story another thing that it could indicate is maybe your inciting incident isn't impactful enough maybe it didn't hook the reader or maybe there's a complete lack of stakes maybe you have big world stakes so the world is at stake for sci-fi and fantasy if they don't defeat the bad guy darkness will spread over the world and consume everyone in it or whatever but although yes you do want world specific stakes and it doesn't have to be epic stakes it could just be like maybe town specific community specific whatever you need to have stakes that tie into the protagonists as well so they need to be making a decision that impacts the plot whatever that decision is they need to have personal stakes in that scenario whatever it is along with the stakes for the world itself there need to be both to keep an agent or reader interested number four this isn't your story to tell for this one you're probably gonna be hinting at some problematic issues in the manuscript itself i know a lot of people don't like to hear this and it's a controversial thing to say but sometimes a certain story is simply not your story to tell if you're writing a contemporary story from a culture or identity etc that you yourself are not from probably is not your story to tell there's a difference between writing a story diversely to include diverse characters versus writing just for the sake of diversity in general be careful writing really harmful stereotypes i think a really easy example of this and something that i see a lot is when there is an author from the opposite gender writing sexist stereotypes about the gender they themselves are not from number five is the word count is too high or too low we'll start with a two-high word count if the book is too long you need to do some big cutting i'll give a personal example for this one because i totally made this mistake too my first novel that i ever queried was a young adult fantasy that was 200 000 words so that's an age category and genre that at best should be like 95 000 words so it was an auto rejection to everyone i queried because of the word count it was too big that meant i had to cut out sections of the book remove characters remove subplots kill the darlings if you will the same might be true for you there's tons of reasons why you must remain within the expected word count for age category and genre and it must be combined it's not just here's the word count for fantasy it's no here's the word count for young adult fantasy from middle grade fantasy for adult fantasy you have to combine the two because there's going to be a big difference between middle grade fantasy and adult fantasy but the short of it is if you are a debut author especially you are a risky investment so to print a large book it costs a lot more money and the publisher makes less money when they publish this large book because they are paying more to physically print and ship the book so unless you are a proven author with a big audience they're probably not going to be interested in a long book you need to hit that word count expectation especially when you are an untested new debut author but the reason if the book is too long a literary agent doesn't have time to work with you to go from 200 000 words to a hundred thousand words and hope that the story is going to be good at the end of it literary agents do not have a ton of time and most of them work on commission only and so they are too busy working with their other clients to be able to edit your book tons of times back and forth they need a book that is almost ready to go on submission if they're an editorial agent maybe they take one pass on your book and then they send it out on submission they really don't want something that needs tons and tons and tons of editing you should be doing that on your own with critique partners beta readers etc now let's talk about if your book is too short for that intended age category and genre if your book is let's say 20 to 30 000 words below what is expected for your age category in genre that might mean you don't have enough character development you don't have enough world building maybe the plot moves too quickly and you need some stuff in the middle more than likely you're going to have to beef up those areas so the overwriters are going to have to cut a ton of stuff but you are going to have to go through and write things back in all right guys that is all i have for this video it's time to announce the winner of this week's pre-order giveaway for the cyborg tinkerer the winner of this week's pre-order giveaway is this person you'll be going home with a first page critique from maria heater who works for the nelson literary agency thank you so much to everyone who's pre-ordered a copy of the cyborg tinkerer and stay tuned for when i announce the next winner in an upcoming video thank you for tuning into this episode of iwriterly literary agent rejections that might mean you need to rewrite your novel the cyborg tinker is available for pre-order in hardcover paperback and e-book on most major retailers the link is in the description below if you pre-order a copy and fill out the pre-order giveaway form in the description below you will be entered to win one of more than 30 prizes some of those prizes include signed copies of the cyborg tinker tct merch tct bookmarks character art books by authors you know and love and much more if you want to support what i do join me on patreon i currently have six tiers with a bunch of different perks including early access to weekly videos discounted merch and an exclusive patreon discord server hit the like button subscribe and ring the bell so you're notified every time i upload a video if you have questions or requests for future videos please do drop them in the comments below let's be friends on social media i'm on twitter and instagram i also have a monthly newsletter when you subscribe you'll receive free copies of how to format your manuscript for submission which is a word document template a querying checklist a self-publishing checklist and a book marketing checklist you will also have first access to any information about the publication journey and status of my novels all the links are in the description below that's it for today as always keep [Music] writing [Music] [Music] you

Channel: iWriterly

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Keywords: writing tips, best writing advice, writing advice, literary agent, why books are rejected, why do books get rejected, why literary agents reject manuscripts, rejections from publishers, book publishing, how to get published, writing a book, getting published, publishing advice, how to get an agent, meg latorre, iwriterly, authortube, traditional publishing, slush pile, querying, query letter

Id: aVhW5wD5zWg

Length: 14min 5sec (845 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 10 2020