Pitch Wars LIVE: Young Adult Mentor Chat

hi everyone thank you for joining us for today's pitch young adult mentor chat i would just double check i was like this is young until right um sorry okay if you don't know what pitch wars is pitch wars is a annual um mentoring event for writers where uh authors and industry professionals choose a writer to mentor they go through a round of edits with them and then it ends in an agent showcase and if you'd like to learn more about it you can go to pictures.org you all can go ahead and start asking questions in the comments and we'll get to them in just a minute um just a heads up we don't ask any questions on this chat that's like super specific to a writer's manuscript so if you want to ask something like that you should probably do it either through the the mentors wish list or through some of the twitter chats we have coming up because we like to keep it as helpful as possible to as many people as possible so we try to keep it to kind of more general questions um today we have on the pitch wars account carly heath is uh handling the pitchers account if you're watching on twitter embedded if you can click through to youtube that's going to be the best way to participate in the conversation and ask questions and stuff but if you can't carly will be able to bring your questions over if that needs to happen so thank you carly for volunteering to do that all right cool i'm going to have all of the mentors introduce themselves we'll just go around the circle here starting with skyla so just say um what you write and if you want to mention your day job that's fine too and then also uh your history whatever it is with pictures so i'm sarah by the way i'm uh i'm on the board and i'm the agent liaison currently and uh i actually have been with pitch wars since 2012 and i write young adult actually so i'm skyla and i'm co-mentoring with alex brown um we both do young adult horror and i was actually a pitch wars mentee last year with allison staff and ava reed and they were amazing so naturally i was like you know pictures i can't get rid of me i'll be back this year as a mentor so i'm really excited about that and then for a day job i do marketing hello i am jamie mchenry i white i write y a uh thrillers and mysteries um i was a mentee in 2017 so it's been a fun fun time and on my day job oddly enough i do i.t let's go with rosie didn't know if we were going clockwise or counterclockwise um i'm rosie thor i'm co-mentoring with emily gray uh and i write science fiction and fantasy um i was a pitcher's mentee in 2016 and um that was a wonderful wonderful experience that totally changed the trajectory of my career so i hope that that can be something that will change it for you too and uh for my day job i have a ged advisor hi i'm hannah sawyer i am co-mentoring with olivia liu i write why a contemporary and i was also a pitch wars mentee i like this trend uh in 2020 um i'm a full-time graduate student i go to the new school uh for poetry actually uh yeah hi everyone i am oh i'm not mute okay i'm okay i'm not good hi everyone i am atheist bessa my iranian author artist editor and translator i am a commenter in this year with mighty designer who um i'm working on several projects actually on the manga darian on the comic white setting and novel time a dozen and i was also a pitchforks mentee in 2017 and it was one of the best experiences of my life so hopefully you will have the same experience yay awesome oh look it's we have a lot of former hi okay thank you my cat um all right so the first question we actually have another question about it so i'm going to kind of ask them together when do you read the synopsis do you always read the synopsis and then the second question is i've read conflicting info and synopsis what do you prefer to see i'll go first i'll i'll always read the synopsis whatever anybody is sending i am i'm reading and so you know there we go uh and uh what do we prefer to see synopsis give us the story tell us what it is um you know you've got three elements you have the pitch the the query letter you have the synopsis which tells us the outline of the story and then you have the pages yeah so go ahead i'm definitely looking at all of the material too but i think i put more emphasis on the pages themselves because i know the query and the synopsis they're kind of hard and um so i'm not putting too much stock in how ready they are because we'll go through and edit it so it's more the pages for me but i will read it so i'm totally different i don't read the synopsis unless i'm going to be requesting more material um i i don't look at the synopsis unless i've gotten through the query and the pages and still want to read more um the synopsis for me is the least important part of the package it's usually not something that determines whether or not i'm going to request something unless there's something in the synopsis that is like a trigger for me or something and i need to not request it but i really just use that as just kind of a jumping off point just to make sure that there's a story there um usually i can tell that from the query letter but the synopsis is just kind of a way to double check that for me yeah it's the same for us actually we read the query and then the pages and synopsis is actually the last one if you like the pages i don't think the synopsis is going to be a problem for us because we can actually edit it later a lot of people have problem with writing synopsis we understand that i think i think for me the synopsis is really important because i want to see where the story is going i don't think it's in terms of like if it's like well written like we can fix that but i just want to see like where the story is going um so for me it's important not how it's written but like the actual content like do i want to work with the story yeah we see a lot of questions about synopsis and i think people worry that they need to be like works of art and they don't a synopsis is a very functional document it's not an artistic document um and i used to not read the synopsis and this was back when we had like two or three weeks to read our submissions and i got um halfway through a 90 000 word novel and it it was like the genre just completely changed like it was a completely different book like it went from this like steampunk thing to like a horror thing and ever since then i started reading this before reading the full we didn't require synonyms back then though um all right a question about age of the protagonist does it have to be in a certain range or can hawaii manuscript be sold with main characters of multiple varying ages so i feel like that's all that's kind of gradually changing you're seeing older mcs in young adult but i still think there's a range like for example if your character is like 75 or something i think obviously i think that's out of um young adult um for the most part i still think it's about 17 to well 16 to 19 at the moment i think so as long as it's kind of the main characters in that age bracket i think it's fine but that's just i think that's my opinion on that i think jamie and i are going to stand off here all right go first okay thank you um well i was gonna agree with skyla i do think that we are seeing a slight shift in um upper age ranges but um i don't want to discount the lower end ranges as well i know that you know there's a lot of emphasis on upper way right now but for me personally i'm very very happy to see slightly younger ya um in my inbox um i'm excited to see protagonists as young as 15 and young adult um i probably this will be very different from other people i'm not accepting new adult so i'm probably not the best fit for someone who's got main characters who are over 19. um unless there's you know a very good reason for that um but generally i would say that the the age range does tend to be on that there's like a five year age range really that's that's nya um the one example that i would give that might be slightly different um and this is a friend of mine is pitching a book i won't say any specifics um about two characters one who is the child of you know a parent and it's in dual pov between their two childhoods and so there are two characters who are different ages in the present but they are around the same age during their particular narratives that are being told side by side so that would be a case where i would be interested to see something where there's two different protagonists who are different ages in their same timeline but when we're following them they'd still both be in the young adult range yeah i think you're gonna you're definitely gonna see a range on the current novel that i'm editing or in revisions on my main character is 15 and then i have novels that are why a that they are just out of high school and going into college and so you know it's really about when it comes to y.a and about the age think about what your reader is going to want to what experience are they going to want to read about and who's telling that story and whatever age that person is then there you go yeah i wholeheartedly agree um with everything everyone said i'm wondering if this person is asking if they have like multiple characters that are different ages um but that i think that's okay too because i remember i got a couple questions about multi-pov stories and having like some characters who are teenagers and some who are not but i think if you are asking that then i think that's okay too also one side note like if you mean like a 110 year old like vampire or something maybe if if they're supposed to be 17 um i think um if they if that's their appearance but they're some immortal that's fine too for example 110 year old vampire for example hypothetically um addie is connecting view vpn so she may be having some issues but um we'll just keep adding her when she comes in oh excuse you i don't know if you all heard that how's it going my kitty who's sitting right here heard that and is very disgruntled about it so connie asks in fantasy will you accept a manuscript that has little to no romance big yes big yes for me please send that to me i would like to see things like that um i'm a i'm an aromantic asexual person and i like to read books that have characters who are among those identities or books that just would be friendly to people who have those identities so if you have little to no raiments in your book that's definitely up my alley if it fits the rest of my wish list that sounds like something that would be really along along my uh my lines i know that won't be the same for everybody but definitely there will be mentors who are looking for things like that on the flip side um i definitely want to see this is probably my attention span here but i definitely want to see a small romance subplot um i think that actually is for alex and i requirement just it's just it doesn't have to be the whole book but we just like to see a subplot of it i guess i'll answer um since olivia and i are taking contemporary fantasy we're not taking high fantasy but um i i'm going to say for olivia and i i don't want to speak for her but i'm going to say that we would like a romance subplot as well even if it's like small i think this is a lot of pressure because i'm speaking for two people but i'm gonna say yes for us uh little romance is cool but no romance we probably wouldn't or your chances wouldn't be that high with submitting to us for that and for me you're pretty safe uh all varied so i'm not the greatest romance writer but um it's it's going to be everything from no romance to you know something heavy even if it's just building uh in the story i'm gonna be fine with so i'm open all right i don't uh oh we lost another one okay um i'm gonna ask this next question i'm gonna go put her on her cat tree and hopefully she'll stay there okay oh hannah is back i'm sorry i'm so sorry i literally like canceled out like with my mouth i've done that before yeah yeah all right jace asked uh what are your top tips for the first line of the first chapter how important is it to hook from the very start so it's definitely something we can work on but i really like for me at least a short um one line opening that that gets me off the bat if you can come up with something that could stand on its own and get you to want to read the rest of the book you're in a really good place but again if you're the rest of your first page is compelling and we're still working on that first line that's not a make or break but um it's a good way to draw attention i would agree i think that the first line of the first chapter can be i don't think it's necessarily make or break in this stage but i do think that it can be really powerful um i have found in past years that i've mentored for other programs um i have almost always known what books i want to pick from the first line maybe even the second line um i i don't always pick at that moment but i have known oh this book sounds like it's going to be my jam and then as i read on i i prove myself correct so there is definitely power to that first opening um there's a an exercise that i did at a workshop that has always been really helpful for me and has stuck with me and i teach it as i'm teaching um you know if i'm teaching voice or something like that um and it's it's a fun one that you can all do in not a lot of time if you want to um take some books off of your bookshelf i always recommend picking books that are um tonally in line with your book or books that you think thematically are kind of similar um and just read the first line and i identify everything that you learn from just that first line it'll really show you the power of a first line and what a first line can can really convey even in just really small details small word choices it's a really cool exercise definitely recommend i love the first line i think i think a lot of writers spend so much time on the first line that then it doesn't transfer to the second line in that opening paragraph and so one thing that i'm definitely looking for is did they incorporate that to make the beginning great versus did they just have a snappy first line uh but i'm the i'm the kind of person that when i go into a bookstore i'm gonna read the back of the back copy and then i'm gonna open it up and see what i i've got and i'm gonna make that decision based on the the first read and and that's going to affect me as i'm reading submissions uh yes it will agreed but also i think like when i critique i look for things like that and i sometimes i'll critique something and i'll be like i feel like your first line might be like three paragraphs down so if your first line isn't like everything that it needs to be like we can we can fix it so all right um athena appreciates all the love in the comments she is um she's not a normal cat she needs constant affection and attention like a dog so and amanda loves your 20 21 goals jamie all right there was a question it was fluffy as the question asker how long until after one submits do they request the entire manuscript so i will say they can request looks like addie was able to make it back hello um they can request starting from a couple hours after submission window closes up until kind of the last minute so it does vary quite a bit but if any of y'all want to chime in with your actually we can go ahead and do this because i think this will answer a lot of questions and we always get a question like this what is your process going to be like in reviewing your submissions like from the time you get in your inbox to when you pick your mentee what is your process like so with alex and i we're going to want to read all of our submissions first um alex has been a mentor before with different programs so she told me what usually works with her is i mean because you you want to send out so many um request right off the bat that it's helpful to kind of read everything first and then narrow it down um so we're definitely it might be a week or two out for us because we want to read everything first talk about it because we're called mentors and then decide which ones we want to send it out every year i have this process that i start reading the queries first all of the queries first and um i it has worked well for me so probably this year with my mother too we're gonna keep the same process because uh when we read any queries we can like put them in priorities and then start reading the pages and if needed the synopsis and everything else so the queries go and make a whole list of prioritized lists for us first so i intend to to really dig into the um the query letters first and see what uh what fantastic ideas are hit me um it's uh as timing goes i'm actually taking a trip to las vegas right when we can first read queries and so my intention is to read a lot while i'm in vegas and so i'm gonna i'm gonna have uh have a good time just kind of absorbing uh what's been sent in and so i may not the first few days after um after those submissions are available to us i may not send any requests just out of out of the the fun of vegas but um i'll be reading and and preparing sorry about that cat situation she decided to make some noise so i'll make some noise too um my my process is going to be very different this year than it has been any other year i've done mentorship um because i'm co-mentoring for the first time and so i am a complete spreadsheet fiend and so i will probably make a spreadsheet for us um we will both be going through everything and comparing notes and making our decisions about what to request um so kind of like skyla it's probably gonna be a week or two before we start requesting um unless we have you know a very clear specific you know couple that we for sure want to request but we'll probably be requesting more than just a couple of manuscripts so we'll see ditto um team devious will have a spreadsheet okay um but yeah i agree with everyone who's co-mentoring um yeah don't count don't count it out if you don't get a request right away especially with co-mentors because it's like two people have to read them and sometimes schedules don't align so yeah i will say when you're um co-mentoring with lee i mean both years we had a spreadsheet and we had we both put in there like yes no or maybe and basically if as long as there was one yes and the other one was a yes or maybe we we took a look at it but um one year i'm still going through i'm slower reader than her i'm still going through just reading the queries and stuff and she was like i found it i found our mentee i requested the full and i was like what i was like you know it's kind of like how dare you like you know my opinion matters too and then i read it and i was like oh yeah that's it that's the one so it can happen all and then the other year it was like it really was kind of a a serious conversation we narrowed it down to like five and we we could have chosen any one of the five and so yeah it varies even with the same people all right uh so this seems like a specific question but we actually get this question several times a year every year so i'm a feeling it will help more than one person um i'm debating between two manuscripts one has been heavily queried and needs more help then my critique partners and me can give it the other is a totally new hopefully stronger manuscript any advice for which one to submit to pitch wars yeah i would say that submit the manuscript that you feel like the mentors you're sending to are going to to give you the best help and you know you might need to ask some questions uh about that um you know if you're one of those writers like this person sounds like our um who has a lot in your you know in your pocket a lot of different projects that you're working on and you just want to get in and you want to have that chance and and you want to you know find the best find the best solution for your book to get you an agent and to get published and and um just do some research and and make that decision have some fun with it too i think i i can only tell you what i would have done if uh if i were in this situation i would probably go with the new one the new mastery stronger one because um when you query a landscape over and over again you start um usually not be being the best judge for that book anymore for a while at least you keep changing it and you keep judging it and you you get tired of that book and imagine you have to work on the same work that you have probably advised a lot if you're like it has gone through a lot of queries and you have to go through it again with each word i would i would personally just let it rest for a while and go with the new manuscript to feel like more refreshed and if you as you said you think it's stronger why not go with the new one the last one is not going anywhere you can always go back to it later so i would go with a new one actually i would totally agree with that and and for an additional reason which is that if you've queried the first one extensively um depending on the you know the revisions that you end up doing if you're chosen by a mentor um you may or may not even be able to re-query that book um it really depends on the type of revisions that you're doing and you know there's there's definitely differing advice that will come from different mentors about how to do that but for me um if i were to be sent a book that had been heavily queried basically out you know queried out um and the revisions that i had in mind were not substantial enough to completely change the query maybe even change the title like i would hesitate to choose that book because i would know that it would have a limited run after the showcase the showcase itself maybe it'll get some requests which is great but a lot of those agents will have already been created the book and may or may not be willing to take a second chance on it so that's definitely definitely a concern although the showcase does provide a kind of an additional boost for that which is really nice um but yeah if you have if you're choosing between two manuscripts and one of them hasn't been queried yet and do you think it's stronger i think that that's a clear choice unless of course you're not excited to work on it in which case definitely that's that would be a bummer um if you're choosing between two manuscripts if there's other people who are choosing between two manuscripts and there's one that you're excited to work on and one that you're not excited to work on don't send in the one you're not excited about because even if it gets you chosen that's not going to be a fun experience for you yeah i definitely agree with all of that um especially being queried so much it makes it harder unless you're doing a full rewrite it also seems like from the question when you say it's hopefully stronger like i think maybe you're more excited about this one maybe i'm just inferring that but uh i would definitely pick the second one too it were me i think this is really good oh no i was gonna say i think this is all like really really good advice i am curious to know how long ago you queried it because you know like the market changes i would say go with the story you love the most not to be like corny or to like turn this into like some sort of like pbs special but i think people can tell like when you really love something so depending on how long ago you queried the first one i would say go with whichever story you feel more connected to and love the most yeah i was just going to add that i i think it's important to remember that even if you so if you sign an agent with that second book um you can then be like oh i have you know talked to the asian i have this other book would you like to take a look at it um i know uh so on my podcast queries qualms and quirks i talked to writers about their publication journey and mike chen did that he had a book that he acquired and it didn't go anywhere and then once he signed his agent he had his agent take a look at and that was actually um one of the books that they sold so they did a revamp on it so just keep that in mind just because you put it away from now does it mean you put it away forever um all right so we have a couple questions about uh category definitions so i'm gonna put both of them up because they're very similar and they're they were asked like basically at the same time um what would you say defines young adult what's the best way to decide whether to pitch a middle manuscript as young adult versus middle grade versus adult and then when does the manuscript shift from new adult to adult so i'm i'm going to say i'm famous for saying this i got i went viral and got trolled for saying this but like read widely in your category is going to be one of the best ways to figure that out but um if the mentors want to jump in and offer any definitions i definitely think age is a big factor with middle grade if your character is 12 i don't think that's young adult obviously there's a spectrum with young adult where you have lower and upper but for me personally if your character is in middle school that's middle grade to me um and usually um readers like young younger readers like to read about characters older than them so i don't think um young adult particularly would want to read about middle grade um in middle school so definitely age also i think subject matter i think as stories get darker or they have more intense subject matter by degree i think that's a good way to place if it's what audience bracket it is but definitely look at your character's age i agree um i was talking at parents day at my son school when he was in elementary and they said well what do you write and i said i write for young adults i write mysteries and thrillers people die and one of the girls on the front row she she asked me and this is a a sixth grader and she asked me okay well tell us about your book so i told her about the book and all the little girls are oh cool and these are elementary kids school school kids all excited about a young adult you know murder mystery book so they definitely read up so i think sarah gave great advice and skyla gave great advice that look at you know whether it's online or in a bookstore look at what books you want your book to fit in with and that's the age category that you should go for i fully agree with what sarah said um you know they went viral for that tweet which was a great tweet by the way um and really the thing is you should be reading widely in your category and if you don't know what category you are um read some comparable books in each category if you're not sure if it's middle grade or young adult read a couple middle grade and read a couple young adult that are in that same genre area and see what it vibes with a little bit more um you're gonna see certain themes pop up in middle grade that don't pop up as much in young adult you're gonna see things in young adult that don't pop up as much a new adult um as much as i wish it were slightly different a new adult was its own like real marketing category um new adult implies a very heavy dose of romance um whereas young adult doesn't necessarily require that so that might be an indicator for you between young adult and new adult um with middle grade and young adult i find that middle grade is often about things like um you know very internal stories that are told sometimes through very external ways and young adult can be a little bit of both um really depends on what you're writing and so you'll see that there's a vast variety of different types of stories that can be told in those categories so just because the first book you read in that category doesn't match up with your book doesn't necessarily mean that it's not um one or the other you know i know that for me personally i'm trying to dabble in middle grade lately and i thought that middle grade always had to be big sweeping adventures because i read percy jackson first and that's not necessarily the case there's a lot of middle grade that is very character-centric very internal story-centric um and uh you know you can find a lot of stuff across the genre so keep looking for stuff that that vibes for you because there's going to be a lot of it yeah i agree with everyone and i just add something that um i think a lot of people who talked to me in the past few years and also my writing students um usually people forget a lot of people forget that they're writing for young adults people and they just like we we get so immersed in impressing agents and publishers and tell me wow look at this great story that i have that we sort of sometimes forget who will be writing for and the target audience that we actually have i know we want people to read our books and i know that all of us are like no we want everyone to read our books especially like the parents and then the adults and everyone but that's not for target audience we're writing for young adult people so we just don't forget that so yeah just don't forget that because i myself sometimes forget this and it's just yeah no for sure i i would also add approach um because i think you can write about um like the same theme in like middle grade uh y.a or adult um but there's certain things that you you can't put it in a middle grade novel so i think think about the approach to the theme uh one example is um salvage the bones by justin ward that's one of my favorite books the it's the main character is a young person but that is definitely an adult novel so just think about the approach and the content in that in that way i'm glad you mentioned that because there are definitely adult books with younger characters and someone a couple years ago i wish i knew who remembered who it was they told me and this was like what made the most sense to me is that the difference in young adult and adult is what the story what viewpoint this story is filtered through so if it's filtered through a person as a teenager then it's young adult if it's filtered through like an adult looking back on being a teenager than it's adult and that's a good thing um aleister had added a comment um sorry okay there it is um the main characters are 12 41 and 36 i feel like that's firmly adult you're not going to sell a book in a young adult or middle grade with a 41 year old character um all right so let me scroll back up and find where we were okay so we are questions asked at 1206 by the way so that's where we are in the in the chat it's easier for you to help mentees get their word count up or to cut it down also easier for me to cut down than to add count but that's also for me personally as a writer um it can really depend on what is going to be easier for you personally as a writer i definitely help with figure one um i really like cutting word counts like honestly so um that's kind of like a fun experiment but um but it definitely depends on what you're more comfortable with as well and what you're gonna have because whatever you're going to have more more fun with whatever's going to be easier for you is also probably going to be easier for you for mentoring i think it really also depends on how much because we have such a short time span so if you're 30 000 words below or above that's going to make it hard especially for you because you don't have that much time to add words and then polish them or figure out how i think i agree with rosie it's easier to cut than it is to add um but i'd really look at the manuscript targets like young adult being 75 to 85 000 words so if you're 120 or you're 30 000 words i'd look at that because it's going to be hard for you especially during that time to get that done i will add that there's a big difference in genre as well so it does depend on if you're writing young adult contemporary or young adult fantasy young adult fantasy the upper limit that i would be comfortable sending somebody out into the world to query with is about 100k but i would be comfortable helping somebody cut down from like 105k like that's fine but again like 120 130k that's going to be a lot more work so yeah but yeah keep in mind that there's a different genre range for depending on your genre within the age category as well um is it easier to cut cut the words or at the outdoors um i always thought that cutting down work was easier but until last year my mentee melanie's superhuman she writes so fast and she actually taught me that not everyone like is like me so it also depends on you if you can write so fast it's going to be easier for us to add words if you can't it's going to be hard for us to head words it's not like a rule i think because like i said last year melanie just i told her something tomorrow she had two chapters and i was so disappointed myself as a writer she i was like okay bye goodbye you meant for me please show me the ways yeah i think in terms of the uh what's easier it's easier to cut it's definitely easier to cut but if if you're adding if you're adding to a novel through pitch wars there's probably pacing that you're working through and and trying to uh to meet those beats and and you know it depends on really what your uh what you enjoy the most i love that both addie and jamie said my very favorite phrase it depends because the answer to so much of this is it depends because even though your book is 120 000 words there's there's a wide range in like how easy it would be to cut that down right like sometimes it's like oh you just have this superfluous b plot and we can just cut all those scenes and that's super easy it's just like a chop right and other times it's a lot harder than that so it yeah it definitely depends all right uh elise asked if the query letter and synopsis intrigues you how far into the first chapter do you read before deciding it's not for you any immediate flaws red flags that can put you off i'd say for me i think i'll know in the first three pages um i think i can get a good sense of the the voice if it's their um writing style so i'd say pretty early on i'll know if that's something that pulls me in or that i don't connect with yeah i'm going to know very very quickly i've said it before i'll say it again the most important thing for me when i'm looking at submissions it's going to be writing style and voice there's uh you know it's a it's very um subjective and i know i know what i'm looking for i'm looking for you know a manuscript that's going to have that figured out i'm gonna have some i'm gonna want to we'll be working with someone who has writing that i like to say writing that is confident in what it is um and that can be a lot of different things it can be literary it can be very economical prose it can be very voicey it could be um you know distance it's just going to be something that feels very safe and very confident in what it is and i feel like i'm in the hands of a good storyteller um who i can feel comfortable with what they're going to be bringing me um now whether or not the story all adds up that that can be fixed for me but um i have a hard time teaching small voice things and so i'm gonna know pretty quickly in the first chapter um whether or not that's something that i want to put in my potentially to be requested pile um i i feel like it it can be a little bit scary to say this but i usually know within the first couple of paragraphs yeah i think this is just something that teaching and mentoring writers gives you a lot you read so many stories that you just get get it you read it and you're like okay i i'm not into this voice i can't i can't help this person and again please remember it's not about literally most of the times it's not about you or your book it's about how we can help you if we can't help you even if you're like in love with your book and even your personality everything about you if we can't help you you're not the right choice for us and we're not the right choice for you so if you're reading your book and we're like no i don't think i'm connecting to these pages like usually the first like five pages i can tell because you know i've been mentoring writers for years now and it's not about the writer it's not about even the story it's about if i can help this writer work on their work yeah so the first couple of pages usually don't get freaked out please what is true i'll get excited about a book um in the first paragraph um especially if it's uh something if the query and the synopsis intrigue me then and i read that and and if i get excited then i know okay keep me going but if i'm not excited i'm not going to make a decision you know right away uh because obviously the other elements of the package have have uh caught my interest but um i i agree with everybody else it's a matter of personal taste and and what really gets us you know motivated to want to spend several months with that project and that that beginning is is a big part of that i think if um if the synopsis and the query intrigued me i think i would give it up to 10 pages if the synopsis in the query were just kind of like oh i'm like like i feel like there are levels to the word intrigue here so if i'm like super interested i i think i would give it like the first 10 pages if i was just kind of like let me see then maybe like the first couple all right yeah i agree with rosie i mean i started i was reading slash before pictures and you definitely start developing kind of this sense and you can usually tell in the first couple paragraphs and it's not even like like i know people worry about like starting in the right place and stuff and that's important of course but it's not even that like if if a writer has a good voice and a good writing style they can start in the wrong place and still you're you're still interested in reading more absolutely agree with that and it can really help for people who haven't been necessarily mentors before they they might have been like assistants to agents or something like that or done slash reading for other mentors and stuff and you can learn so much from that experience it can really just teach you exactly what you are looking for and it's really learning more about yourself than it is about anything else so it's a definitely something that you can make that snap judgment and kind of know what you're talking about yeah and when i started reading slash we i think we got three chapters and slash and i like i would read all of it right and then after about a year it was i was not reading all of it of every submission um you hone your your skills that way uh okay how polished do you expect a manuscript to be obviously no first drafts i love this question because there's no way i'm an engineer there's no way to quantify this but people always want us to quantify it right um but if you want to chime in on this question i'd say obviously not like you said not a first draft have um a couple revisions under your belt have some other trusted betas read over it um i it doesn't need to be ready to query but it needs to be something realistic within the time span that we can get it ready to query um ideally so if i have to put a number six and a half maybe it just feels weird to put a number on it but something that you feel like you've made it as good as you can on your own also just keep it yeah just keep in mind that your two might be someone else's like six because when i submitted my pitch wars manuscript i really thought it was a two i told dante and liz who were my mentors i was actually like i had an email drafted like about to like ask pitchforks to like withdraw the application because i thought it was bad and i just thought like i was gonna like embarrass myself and i was like these are authors whatever but just keep in mind that your two might be like you might just be a really harsh critic on yourself um but yeah obviously we wanted like a completed manuscript not necessarily like query ready but like just just keep in mind it's probably not as as low as you think it is why does everyone keep saying six i'm getting so cautious because i don't think we can put a number on it like okay 100 guys 200 no seriously i can't there's no number the truth is that um maybe i think something is ready and like hannah doesn't think or vice versa it just really depends but if you can't put a number on it but like i said just please um finish manuscript because we have um sometimes mentees hopefuls who send manuscripts and then especially in graphic novels because not a lot of mentors take graphic novels i know that but so many times i get so excited for a program finally i can i can like mentor a graphic novel i just and then i i send them an email and they're like no it's not ready i'm just testing out no you don't test i hope you don't test your book through pitch words we we spend time and energy reading these submissions and our people take it very seriously and they have they have like stayed up nights and nights to revise and get their books ready for this so we you can just test your book and and take the mentor's time anyway um finish the manuscript and remember that there have been times there have been times when a manuscript was too ready like curry ready and i i have told that that hopeful that i don't think your manuscript means in my opinion it doesn't need pitchforks you can start querying it if it's your if your manuscript is like perfect and i can't help you you don't need me to help you so you can start querying like vishwas is a way to find agents it's not the way to find agents so yeah i'm glad hannah said it was so subjective that someone's two could be someone else's six or ten or whatever and it's true and that's actually so a picture is we actually ask the mentors not to tell people you don't need help or your query ready because the thing is like i can think i can see a book and say there's no way i can help this i think this is great whereas another mentor who has different strengths than me can find a way to take it to the next level and they may choose they may choose a book that i think is perfect and still do a significant revision on it um and so yeah it's it's super subjective which is like a really frustrating thing and everyone says it and you don't really understand what you mean and what it means until you like you see something like that happen i agree with that sarah the the choice not to tell people if it's query ready unless you're prepared to help them query i think um and that's my personal philosophy not everyone's gonna have that philosophy but i i've had a friend who was told that they were query ready when they were not query ready and those mentors did not read the full and did not spend the time to provide query assistance to that author and the book did not succeed in querying because it wasn't ready and so in my in my experience i never tell an author that they are query ready and that's why i didn't choose them unless i am then prepared to take on a partial mentorship with them and help them query that book because i just think that that does the author a disservice it tells them they don't need to continue to work on their work and that's almost never the case i feel like everyone can always be improving their craft so i i don't think that that's necessarily advice that i would want to give unless it's like something that i'm then going to help you do um but yeah i fully agree with with everybody about the scale it's it's impossible to to scale and what hannah said is exactly right somebody's two might be somebody six um and i agree actually um i actually disagree with the obviously no first drafts um a lot of people's first drafts are going to be a six a lot of people's first drafts are gonna be a seven and if that's you if your first drafts really are that well crafted it can happen if you had a lot of practice if you've written a lot of manuscripts before then you can get better at that and it might be that your first draft or even your second draft is equivalent in maybe skill level or you know readiness to someone else's tenth draft and so you know don't don't not submit if you've just finished your first draft and you go oh i shouldn't do that still submit if you feel like you're ready for that next step yeah so on my podcast queries clemson quirks i talked to abby collette one of the questions i asked are you on the first draft are you more of a get it down kind of person or get it right kind of person and abby colette basically said she's never written a second draft like all her first drafts are just like so clean and i'm just like teach me your ways um all right so jenna asked i've seen cinematic fantasy as a wishlist item before what does that mean so obviously i'm horror which we accept dark fantasy so it might be a little different but for me it means atmosphere um and i as much as i mean i i love atmosphere so you could just talk forever about the setting but don't feel like you have to do that it's just i'd say a good thing to keep in mind is making sure you're grounded so every scene we know where we are it's not just like a floating empty room um so really being able to paint a scene that the reader can envision that's what it would mean for me um it's just the atmosphere all right um this one i feel like it's going to be a very quick answer so i'm just going to answer it but i think if if any of y'all have uh conflicting advice let me know um what would you say to uh i'm not gonna read all of it but a male main character 25 years old and a female character 23 years old i feel like that's pretty firmly in adult territory okay um how do you feel about a portal fantasy where fantastical elements appear a few chapters in we almost wouldn't see that if it's a few chapters in so if you query us a portal fantasy uh and we're expecting fantasy and then it's beyond you know whatever the submission package is we probably won't see it and so that's the challenge and that's the challenge that you would run into with uh you know querying an agent so my answer definitely depends on type of portal fantasy and the type of contemporary elements that are used in it um it's really really going to depend on the contemporary threads the internal threads that you're weaving and how much of that is going to be important for later chapters um i am not personally i i portal fantasy is not necessarily something that i'm super drawn to all the time i can definitely be proven wrong and have been proven wrong um but that's not my expertise so maybe somebody else wants to answer but my my thought is unless you have incredibly strong contemporary themes that need to be explored in that contemporary setting um getting us to the fantasy world in chapter one is a great idea um unless you're dealing with a lot of contemporary threads that need to be established first um i think one of the things that writing manga really helped me understand and reading manga japanese comics really helped me understand was the importance of the fantasy element or the big thing happening at the end of the first chapter um a lot of the novels don't do this a lot but when you're talking about um something totally changing the genre or like walking from reality to a fantasy world um i would say it's better to happen at the end of the first chapter because like i said i learned this i learned this from the mom from manga is that if you put this in later chapters everyone's gonna like every nobody's gonna like see this book and this story as the genre that it is even if you put a lot of poor chatting's everyone's like where is the fantasy where is the fantasy board that you promised me and and it's it's not going to really work with the pacing either so yeah i learned this one because it really helped all right i just want i looked it up because i i remember reading this book a while back and um it's for the first i don't know good portion of it maybe third it reads kind of like a contemporary thriller and then all of a sudden you find out there's like a supernatural element and um i am not a serial killer by dan walls and so that's an a good example of of a way that it's done well like it reads contemporary at the beginning um granted serial killer contemporary but still that's uh and then you find out um there's something a little supernatural going on so that might be a good uh reference for you to check out i will also note dan has talked about this extensively on his podcasts and interviews and stuff but he actually got a lot of blowback for that a lot of readers did not like that and a lot of readers loved it and so it was very much a polarizing thing which could be the case for some portal fantasies in how you introduce that fantasy element be prepared that not everyone is gonna like the way you do it and that that's an okay thing i'm not a serial killer did incredibly well it's an incredibly successful commercial book and especially in germany um but it did really really well and people really liked it and some people really didn't so it's it's okay if your way is not everyone's way it's okay i had i had both emotions i hated it and then and then i was furious and then i went back to it yeah um all right so we are almost out of time for this first hour so we're gonna bring on the next five mentors in just a minute but before that i'm gonna ask each of you to give us a parting query letter tip and also let us know where we can find you on social media and we'll just go around the clock so we'll start with skyla again so a query letter tip i would have um it's definitely having character stakes with especially with the ending um so if your big global stake at the end is the world will end make sure that that connects to your character how will that affect them personally that's a thing that i see missing from a lot of queries um and it's really a way to make the reader root for your character and see the course that they're going to take throughout the book and then you can find me on pretty much any social media as aren't skyla i think on a query imagine you have 30 seconds to get somebody excited about your book and you're going to highlight about you're going to tease them and that's that's really what the the query is meant to do tell us about your character tell us what's going on what's keeping them you know from getting whatever goal they have and and what do they risk to lose and if you capture that on a query page you're you've done most of the hard work and uh you know the rest is just technical uh and you can find me on twitter and uh instagram i'm jamie mchenry at jamie mchenry uh real quick i just want to say um if anyone has a way of contacting hoda i see that she's trying to get up um and i she knows this but hopefully just as a reminder as soon as one these mentors leave you'll be able to come back in um rosie yeah so my query tip um is to rethink your tagline um a lot of queries will start with a one sentence tagline and then go into the first paragraph of the query that tagline is almost always going to be more confusing and rather than drawing in so consider if that tag line is actually your last line of of the query and try putting it somewhere else in the query because it might be more powerful and make more sense once we've been introduced to the characters and the world building that you're going to be establishing in your query and you can find me on social media at rosie thor almost everywhere and remember that rosie is filled with 2ds yeah in addition to what everyone said i would say when all else fails follow the formula um eric smith from ps literary has i believe it's still on his website um he has sample queries from some of his clients and he like breaks them down when all else fails just follow the formula like queries do not have to be funny they don't have to be gimmicky if that's not your strength follow the formula and you can follow me or find me you don't have to follow me on twitter and instagram at h a n n sawyer s-a-w-y-e-r-r and fun fact the second r and my last name is not a typo double letter buddies um i think the advice i would give is not try to put everything about the word building and the word of the story into the query because i see it a lot and focus on on the character rather than the word building and you don't need to give us like back a story before like telling us what's happening in the actual story don't put back a story in the query unless it's like absolutely necessary and it's like a small sentence that's all yeah that would be my life wise don't don't try to put too much into the query just focus on the main story happening and um you can find me anywhere just search ikea special in google literally you can find me on instagram you can find me on telegram you can find me on twitter i'm everywhere i'm everywhere all right well thank you all so much for coming out today and answering everyone's questions thank you of course for volunteering as pitch wars mentors and we're gonna say goodbye to this batch and we'll bring in the next batch bail oops i accidentally clicked dante on instead of clicking someone off all right and hoda if you're listening you can log in now um but we'll start introductions and hopefully hoda can join us all right let me find where i was in the question sorry there's a lot of comments um okay hello everyone um so thanks for joining us for this one so i'm gonna have each of the mentors introduce themselves again so um just say okay hoda's here cool perfect hello hi all right so if everyone could just say you know who you are um what you write if you want to mention your day job you can you don't have to and uh your your history with pitchforks so we'll start with dante hi i am dante miedema i am mentoring with liz lawson this year as i did last year team nemesis and i write contemporary young adult books like the truth project and message. and you've been a pitcher's mentor for how many years this is my second year okay yeah fiona oh hi yeah take me off uh i'm fiona mclaren i um write anything that's like scottish folklore or spooky creepy things um i've been a pitch wars mentor in the past i had a little break and i'm really really excited to be back so and my day job is i work as a full-time editor with both traditionally and indie published authors and i'm excited all the time and we'll go around the clock so we'll do justine next hi i'm justine patella winans i write why a contemporary mystery primarily i this is my first time as a pitch wars mentor but i was a mentee back in 2014 so probably like one of their earlier years of pictures i shall i just jump in go ahead okay um i'm brianna bourne um and i'm the author of you and me at the end of the world which i'll just there for a second um which is a contemporary y romance with a speculative twist this is my first year mentoring for pitch wars but i just finished a summer mentoring for wright mentor which is a uk based mentorship program um and yeah i can't wait to read the stories that hit my inbox later this month uh hi my name is hoda i was a mentee in 2017. i write y a this will be my fourth year mentoring and coutures but my first time co-mentoring with uh lisania smith who was actually my first mentee all right welcome everyone so we're going to jump right in we are at questions asked at 12 21 so heads up there was a lot of conversation about age and category definitions and stuff like that so i think this is kind of an extension of that um and this is a question carly brought us from twitter so carly is meaning um staffing the pitch wars twitter account today so my character is 13 but experiences things more mature for a middle grade audience what are what are your opinions on that for a young adult sorry you could go first no go ahead okay i do write a little bit of middle grade as well and i'd say it would depend kind of on what the maturity level of these things are i think in middle grade if when it comes to like horror or kind of spooky things you have a little more leeway of like getting into some of those topics um because there are a lot of like upper middle grade horror that will still like be super creepy for people um but if it is kind of more intense in like other aspects or sort of you really feel that it crosses over into you know why a territory i think it definitely could still fit is younger y a also depending on if the character doesn't really know their age or if that's something that you could age up a little bit just to make it slightly more marketable is why it might be something to look into aging up the character to like 14 15. i don't have anything to add after that that was perfect um i have a little bit to add um and it's about tags on what you say about um going into lower y a it's to bear in mind that there are such things as easy readers for like why so if you find that your tone perhaps feels a little more in keeping with mg not your voice the actual tone and the language that you're using you might find you've actually written a lower y a easy reader which can be very accessible to that audience that is looking for a bit more mature content but they also are needing the the reading level to be a little lower so i would suggest looking at a few of the books that fall under that category and seeing whether yours is in that category it might not be you can't tell if you don't see the book but it is worth picking up a couple of books that are in that area and seeing if your book matches in the same kind of tone and the language but does have that kind of more mature content so that would be my suggestion just to check it out just in case yeah this is definitely one of those things that's hard to tell without saying it um but i think y'all gave some great advice all right um this is an interesting question if a manuscript contains something on multiple wish lists but it's not an insignificant spoiler should we list it in the query or let mentors discover it if they read the synopsis i can take this one if that's okay um i actually had this kind of issue when i was querying because there's a massive like spoiler in my book and it and it makes it sound much cooler if i could just say that to people i think the traditional advice is to not put that in the query um if it's especially if it's late in the book um but if it is on like your you know on the mentor wish lists um there might be a case you know to add that now um if it's something they're really looking for and if they might not make it to that point um in the synopsis it might be worth putting it in the query letter if you can yeah um but i think traditionally like when you're acquiring agents i think you're kind of not supposed to to spoil like the ending if if that's what it is or if it's like a last minute kind of twist yeah i would say definitely put it in the synopsis um but traditionally uh like it's been said already you kind of avoid spoilers and queries so i would kind of follow that general rule also and mentors will see if you hit elements on their wish list like they'll see it as they read the synopsis and the pages all right um dante you requested athena and she answered you we have a question from pitch war's mentor anna kaling in the comments for fianna have you seen the loch ness monster yes yes on a regular basis we go for picnics up by loch ness um always comes by where do you think i get my stories from they're not mine that's where they're from definitely all right i love mentors and the comments trolling each other so all right um so amanda asks is asking a question about starting in the right place some betas told me to go straight to chapter two as that's where things get exciting but others have said that the action then starts too early and want more of an intro um just kind of i guess general advice on on where to start a story at so we can make it helpful to um people without because i it's impossible to answer this question without actually reading it um but just advice on where to start a story at would be great um for me for me if your betas are telling you to go to chapter two it's because they're not compelled by chapter one um and the reasons can for that can be various it might be that you've chosen the wrong place to start too soon um however if you're getting consistent feedback that your betas genuinely don't want to read chapter one first that means that you really want to look at revising and looking if you can actually start a chapter two and it doesn't need to necessarily be big action but what needs to do is raise questions that the reader really wants answered and i think if your chapter one's not doing that i would look at seeing if you can cut it or if you can amend it to really bring in those questions for the reader alternately if something's not working in chapter one typically it for me if i was a mentor and i was mentoring a chapter like that i would say find a way to add tension to the first chapter without it being the inciting incident so it should set up the character it should show you where they are who they're from like who they are um where they are in life before this inciting incident happens but there still should be tension uh it doesn't have to be a i woke up and looked in the mirror situation it should be something exciting is happening but it isn't quite the inciting incident yet but leads us up to it um i don't think there's a rule that ever applies a hundred percent of the time but some guidelines i like to go by uh like if you remove your first chapter does that change anything to the story uh if it doesn't it's probably an indicator that you can cut it i know a lot of people say the first chapter needs action and i think that's true to an extent but action doesn't necessarily mean like a battle scene for me like i try to open my chapter with okay something is changing in the protagonist's life in this chapter something is moving the story forward so i think those are usually good little indicators to say that your chap your first chapter is working or if it's necessary really and just kind of off of this because i know it's a question people get a lot and everyone says to start on action i'm one of those people that actually really likes to see a little bit of the character's stasis in normal life before the inciting incident but i think it is um important that you know you you set up the story but still have that hook so we need an we need to get a sense of where the character is at in their arc that leads to the sense that they can change later and so i don't think it has to be like some big exciting thing but there has to be some sort of hook and some sense of the possibility of the inciting incident happen happening after that point so i'd say if you know it's not that you necessarily just have to cut your first chapter if chapter two sort of would start too quickly it might just be reworking that first chapter to better lead up to your second chapter all right y'all are giving great advice today i'm loving this okay um dakota asked does the story have to be outright scary and gory to be considered horror or what a basic premise like monster hunters that isn't super gory make it horror if anyone wants to define horror for us today i mean i guess i could go because i am accepting um horror and i'm pretty spooky right now with all of my halloween stuff nearby but um i definitely don't think it has to be super scary and gory to be horror like pretty much anything in the element that you're gonna be like invoking a sense of like fear or questioning ask asking like what are people afraid of kind of like going in that element is still horror it doesn't have to be scary to every single person like i'm a huge scaredy cat so if you even have spiders in your book i'm probably gonna be a little scared but like most people don't care about that you know or they it won't bother them so it's hard to say like what would necessarily be super scary because it's gonna depend on person to person like i might be more freaked out by psychological horror where other people might just if if there's a lot of blood they're like this is great you know so i think that there's such a huge range of horror books that it's not like you have to surpass some level of extreme gore um just to make it horror i love comedy horror and more like kind of cozy fun horror stories as well you know as much as i love like slasher and thriller stuff so i think there's a great range and you don't just kind of write the book that you're excited about you don't have to worry about reaching some like blood threshold in your story um i'm happy to tag on that because i really like quarter and dark work um and i find that it actually varies really significantly you can go from things that are more psychological that just kind of constantly keep the reader on the edge of their seat and i find that particularly scarier and really completely really compelling but there are some books that are very gory because young adult does that range of like 15 to 19 and that's quite significant difference on ages that some people might pick up something gorier um but it's also personality as well i'm more inclined towards things that are spooky hauntings gothicky stuff and things that will have me waiting to find out what something is but you might find another mentor who is quite into the gore and the monster hunting and things like that so i think there's quite a lot of room in wyatt's it's really one of those genres that welcomes a lot of things i think it's one of the more diverse genres for inviting things in so i would say that in order you've got a lot of scope all right dante was supposed to be my backup in case i got disconnected so now i i don't know what's happening all right i was like you're no you're supposed to be my backup in case i get disconnected you can't leave the alaska internet i'm sorry it's okay i live in the country i understand um so this is kind of a call back to a conversation we're having with the first set of mentors they were talking about um someone had asked whether they should enter kind of a newer book or a book that had been heavily queried and so um this is i think a response to that how much would be too heavily queried um a manuscript that's been queried to 30 or 50 agents more than 100 et cetera i will add just before i let the mentors answer that this of course depends on genre so like if you're acquiring why a fantasy there are just a lot more agents that accept that than something like you know like a literary horror adult or something so um it will vary on genre but go ahead and chime in i can jump in i i think personally 30 50 is not that many again depends on genre depends on what you're writing um also i feel like a lot of people when they're querying they do not uh especially the first a couple times they're not as selective in their querying process as they should be um and so i think it would one depend on the project it would depend on if it was something i thought i could uh heavily influence or liz and i could heavily influence and get you to a point where you could re-query people and say i had some transformative revision notes and this is a very different project now would you be open to looking at it now um so it just again i feel like this is one of those subjective things it depends on the project it depends on um a lot of things i would not be afraid to enter with a heavily queried book but that's me personally yeah i'll add on to that as well um because you know writing a query is a very different skill than writing a manuscript and um like so it may be that that your manuscript is is amazing and the the query letter just doesn't really do it justice so so entering with um something that has been heavily queried like if if the mentor connects with it and chooses you then they'll obviously help you to get the query up to the right level i guess so so i wouldn't i wouldn't be too afraid and definitely 30 to 50 is is still totally low um yeah so all right um if a story is set in another time period but isn't really a historical that's a very confusing statement to me um do you want to know in the query that is set in another time period i will say and just because the first book i queried um it was a urban fantasy but in the opening pages is it wasn't clear what time period it was set in when i first started querying it and that was some of the major feedback that i got is like in those opening pages they couldn't tell whether it was modern or other world fantasy or whatever and so i added in like an um random reference to an ipod just to set it in the current day but um yeah so it can definitely be disorienting if you're if you're not sure what what time period you're in when you start reading i mean you could maybe put it as like a pitch at the beginning of the query maybe because i'm not sure exactly what person is referring to but maybe like a short pitch that maybe contextualize it a little bit i think any time that something is important for you for your reader to know or a mentor to know it should be either in the query or in at least the first pages because it's it's part of world building this is going to be part of this setting so i would say you put it in your query in some way put it in your purchase in some way that both the read and uh the paradigm your query are gonna get from the get-go also i just wanna say especially with why a i feel like if it like if it is in another time period like it's pretty much gonna be considered um historical like even if it's like 90s early 2000s now like most teens weren't alive for that like that time period so like it's historical to them because like you don't know what that's like so i think that it is important to mention because there are a lot of mentors like i don't really accept like historical fiction so i think it's good to note that just so people kind of know what they're going into and it's not like reading something and then realizing like i don't really know how to help you with this because like that's not my area of expertise um but i think yeah it's kind of important to note like with who you're writing for a lot more is actually historical than like you might think just when you hear the word historical fiction i heard a teacher say that their students referred to the 80s and 90s as the late 1900s which i found particularly offensive so all right um for why fantasy are there things that are considered too dark the example given was um content warning by the way cutting can i jump in on this one and the reason i wanted to is one of my favorite y books is forbidden by tabitha suzuma came out several years ago but she actually very and content warning on this one she very delicately handled the topic of incest and it was a very dark topic but she would best sell her with her book it does beautiful critical acclaim but i think if things are tastefully done and it's done with consideration respect and there is content warning that is given i think that's the most important thing and that's something i would really urge people to look at as well in their mentor wish lists i know that nearly every mentor has put up content warnings i did myself i put up trigger warnings of work that is not suitable for me and i know a lot of mentors have as well but yes there can be very dark content and there is a market for that and why but it really needs to be respectfully done and i think that it also needs to be done that you have if it's not your direct experience i think it behooves you to actually research and speak to people that are open to speak to you about that to make sure that you're handling it appropriately so that's my biggest thing for dark material um acceptable but make sure you're doing it respectfully yeah anytime anyone says ask me about darkness and why it like dark matter and why a i always suggest that they read tiffany d jackson's books and then come back um because uh i think yeah obviously there are some really dark subjects um covered in her books and um they're i mean they're in why a they're doing well in y a and they're they're very well well written so um all right oh i just saw this i wanted to show that that's that's so nice okay i have very supportive yeah all right so connie asked do you feel that witchy magic is overdone would you pass it up um also do you need a romantic some plot in your section selection so two two part question here i'll jump in i love witchy stuff and i personally do like a romantic subplot um because i'm like you just answered something so stop saying but i love love love witchy stuff i don't need a romantic subplot i am asexual i'm not a romantic but i am asexual so i don't care if there's romance or not people should know that romance is not my strong suit as an editor um i don't know how to do it well so i would hope that if there is romance in a book that that's one of my mentee strengths but i do not need romance whatsoever but i i love witches yeah i i think wit witch stuff is great i'm good with all types of magic i also think that a lot of like a lot of us get worried about things being overdone but you're gonna be telling your story in a different way and especially when it comes to books by like marginalized authors like you can't really say anything's overdone if a lot of people didn't even get the chance to step up to the plate and write it yet you know so i don't think anything's going to be overdone until like everyone's had their own take on it you know so um and when it comes to romance stuff like i love romance but i also love books that don't have romance and i kind of feel like we need a lot more of those in y a so i think especially stories that focus on like um sibling relationships found family friendships um i love all of that kind of stuff so i think if there's romance great if there's not romance also great so it just depends on the story uh same for me we i mean which is stories we love uh we prefer i think a hint of romance in our stories but it's not a deal breaker so if we really love the story uh we're not gonna not take it just because there's no romance yeah for me personally um i i'll take something that's got witchy magic if it's um still kind of based in a more contemporary world that's um part of what's on my wish list um and i'm also so here for the romance um and that's actually kind of like one of my my specialties as romantic tension so um if you if you have something that you you feel the romantic tension needs work i might be the right mentor for you all right did we get everyone who wanted to speak okay um ej asked i'm gonna answer from like a technical like rules based perspective and then let y'all ask answer from the more kind of artistic perspective how would one pitch a book that falls between two genres it is better pick one genre or pick pitch a book as a genre splice um so you do have to select from a drop down list on genres when you submit your form and that is primarily for statistic purposes so if there's not something that's exactly your genre just pick whatever fits it best and then you can be more specific in the query and that's because people wanted statistics on genres but then people would put their genre as like mystery with romance and also some supernatural elements and like i can't that doesn't work in excel sheet so um yeah so we had to do the the genre drop down but you are welcome to add more details in your genre and the query letter and techno thriller is a legit genre so it's a whole it's a whole sub genre any other additions this is where your comps are important this is where your comp titles shine if you have something that's kind of a splice i definitely played with format in my first book and when i was querying i chose books that kind of one side of that format playing and the other side of the format playing and use those because i i thought it helped show what the book was about uh and so i think that would be your best place to let that happen instead of trying to over explain what your genre is use your comp titles yeah i i also in the book that i queried that i signed with my agent um it was kind of a cross genre so it was like like a comedic contemporary but also a murder mystery and so i was kind of put in that position and i think it is important to pitch it as the genre splice because if if you're just pitching say like in the case of my book as a contemporary when like the murder happens people reading are gonna be like okay wait a second like this is not what i was expecting um but i'd say to keep that really concise so like i i believe ipitch is like a contemporary thriller or you know something where it's like just get the genres across and then you you can then use like your cop titles to show one each like don't go on for like a sentence about what the genre is of like oh it's a fantasy but it has contemporary elements and also there's a little bit of like science fiction up like it's like you can make it as short as possible but i would say if you really feel that it's a cross between two different genres don't only pitch to the one because then you're setting up reader expectations a certain direction that you're not really going to deliver on i think that's the beauty of why a versus adult is um we can cross genres a lot more than adult because they don't have to go on a mystery shelf or a science fiction shelf or whatever so that's fun just to know there's that magic word in a query that's mashup where you just like it's a sci-fi thriller mashup and that's you like if you're heavily one genre put it one before they all it gets more sci-fi than thriller for instance i would just say it's a sci-fi thriller mashup if it's the other way around it's a thriller sci-fi mashup all right um this is another question i'm just gonna answer real quick because we've been answering this question um from pitchford's perspective for trigger warnings and inquiry so we ask that if if whatever your whatever content you're running for is in the sample pages that you definitely do include a content warning in the query if there is content later in the manuscript you could either put it in the query or you could wait until you receive a request and just put it in the email whenever you respond to the request so that's what we've been asking it doesn't matter where it goes in the query anywhere really okay okay what are your opinions on past tense versus present tense people have strong feelings i don't so it's fascinating to me that other people have strong opinions on it um i mean i'm good either way i think i don't i think i've read more present tense recently but like past tense doesn't bother me at all i think it depends on the story because it depends on if the reader okay one i think that it's true present tense does kind of root the reader immediately and it brings the reader in as though it's my story too it brings the reader in as though like you're a part of this with that character but past tense if it is a story where your character needs um to have information or insight that they've already experienced this that is where that comes in and is helpful so i think it just depends on the book it depends on the story you're trying to tell so i don't think either liz or i care about whether or not it's past or present tense um i know and why it is a big trend to have it present tense though um and sometimes that can make it more relatable i must admit i do have preferences i am that person um if it's in first person point of view i like a present tense uh for me it's more immediate however if it's in third person close um i like it in past tense um and that's just just subjectivity is just personal taste i wouldn't i wouldn't rule a book out if the tenses are different but i do know in my day job as an editor quite often if i'm dealing with books sometimes there will be a discussion about tense because of what i found might work well with the book so it doesn't necessarily mean that some books need their attention changed i would say that that is preferences of mine and it might be a discussion that i may have with the future mentee depending on what the book sounds like when i read it some will work perfectly fine as they are but those are definitely my preferences yeah i'm open to past or present tense um and as a reader i kind of sometimes don't even notice consciously what it is um but for for when i work i write in first person present and um i i might i don't i will have to see i might connect with a manuscript that is in the same tense um but yeah um pastor present you can query me with both or submit to me with both i'm sorry i was i just wanted to see dante's puppy oh my gosh i was like why is it focusing on me i don't did i break them did i mess up no we just wanted to see a puppy um yeah and i i like that brianna said sometimes i don't even notice because yeah sometimes i don't even notice and i feel like even people have strong feelings sometimes they don't even notice because i remember there's a person in in our local like sci-fi fantasy community and she had told me previously that she really loved my first book dragons for people too like she talked about a lot how much she loved it blah blah and then there was like a time a little while later when she was like i hate present tense books i can't read anything in present tense and i was like i thought you like dragons for people too and she's like was that on premise intense i was like yeah yeah so you know i feel like people have these like ideas of what things are and aren't and then um they uh they don't realize okay brittany asks what are your thoughts on cliffhanger endings um if we're willing changes would this be an auto no i think with anything if it's done right and if it if it makes the story better then go for it um i know that i the first book that comes to mind is a courtney summers book sometimes she just stops writing the book and you're like what what just happened and it works uh other times you're like i needed more i needed closure so it just depends on the book i don't think for us it would be an automatic no um i think it just depends on the book and depends on the story you're telling because if you're writing like a romance it's not gonna you gotta have the happily ever after you can't just stop writing like it just can't be a cliffhanger so um as if you're talking about a book that is like a part of a series or you anticipate hopefully one day this could be a series you still need to have a complete arc for that book um and then have something dangling at the end that could lead into a second book especially as a debut they don't really want you to say this is part of a series it's this has serious potential and so i would utilize that make sure you have a strong arc in that story and it's complete before you're querying and i'll just add to um that that you know part of pitch worse is to revise so i don't think at least not for us it's not going to be an automatic no uh a lot of times when mentors request they'll also come with questions so for example in this case we might just be like hey would you be willing to revise the ending to this novel and then if they say no you know that's completely fine it's your book um but yeah so it's for us it wouldn't be an automatic no we might just like ask questions and it might completely work too and not need changing yeah 100 agree with hoda yeah all right so we have a question about whether to um include prologues in your original submission that's actually answered on our submission faq page so i'm dropping that link in the comments um because there are a lot of questions there that are answered there um um but basically this is what it says uh you can send prologues there are no more than five pages along with your first chapter if your prologue is longer send in your first chapter if the mentors want to read more they'll send requests at that time include your prologue um do you want why books that have a moral or even subliminally or could it just be fun and entertaining um well i could say off of this i feel like especially like when you're writing for kids and teens like if your moral feels super preachy it's gonna like kind of be really like annoying to people which might be bad to say but i just feel like a lot of times like these themes if it's like you want you really want to say something with your thematic lesson like it should be done in a way that is kind of just picked up along the storyline and isn't like okay here's my opinion that i'm like forcing on to you because that's it kind of it makes it difficult for like especially i feel like younger people to really resonate with the story then um and also i would say that like what the stuff that i write is very like i kind of joke around where like i don't know if i write like good books but it's a great time like it's a lot of fun you know and i feel like even if you're writing like that joking wise or not like there's gonna be some theme that you say throughout the book like i feel like it's very hard to write a book and not have like any theme inside the story so like i don't know if you necessarily have to you know worry about like showing your theme so much but a lot of times like even if you look back at the story and be like okay like what was i trying to say here um there will be something there because i love like fun entertaining stories just like nice beach reads or like stay up in one night and finish it but i don't think that there really is going to be a lot of stories that are just fun and have like nothing at all to say thematically um i'd like to jump in that as well um and the word for me that is the one that worries me is also the word teach i think it's explore theme when you're writing you should explore the theme and the best books for me actually look at the whole of that theme as opposed to just one side and that lets the reader as the pages go by they explore the themes you explore the whole universe of that theme that you're wanting to discuss because the reader should be the one that makes the decision of which parts they resonate and if you've done your job as a writer and you really did want them to fall in line with you that's their choice if they do fall in line with what you've written but give them the whole play let them see um it's like kind of like when you have people that want to convince others into their line of politics or their line of religion you're never going to get anywhere if you just give one dialogue let the dialogue be on the page let the reader look at it young adults in particular are super super smart they have enough teaching at school rather than to come out and be taught in a book i would really just give them everything and let them make their own decision on it i have an almost teenager she reminds me every day uh the worst thing you can do is tell them what they should think about something it it's gonna be like a bad day for you they're gonna say well i'm gonna think the opposite uh but also i think it's important to remember especially nya there's a lot of gray area human beings are not black and white human beings are filled up with a lot of gray space and sometimes you make a good decision and sometimes make a bad decision and doesn't make either one bad or like wrong or evil sometimes uh you're just making a a choice that you can with what you have in front of you and i think uh especially with teens they want to feel like you're having a conversation with them not like you are telling them what they should do yeah and i just want to jump off of um what justine said um about even fun and entertaining books which i'm absolutely open to um you know your character will need to grow and they have to come from you know who they are at the start of the book to the end of the book and there will be a theme in that even if it's fun and light-hearted um so so yeah i'm open to what books that are issue driven um as long as they are exploring like fiona said and not teaching um or fun and entertaining books all right y'all are so smart will you all mentor me this is this has been really good you all have given great answers um all right katherine asks if you've been part of a mentorship program or are currently should that be mentioned the query just the rules um notes you can't be an active participant in another mentoring event at the same time as pitch wars but if it's over before mentors are chosen that's fine which i think right mentor is but um yeah go ahead and do you want to see that in a query oh my gosh we got another dog um i mean you can put it in the bio if you'd like yeah right mentor will be over by then so um it is over so so yeah it might be if you feel like mentioning that that you know you were a part of that then stick it in if not you don't have to sorry as we did um i love this question ebony how do you feel about books written in today's time that don't mention the pandemic any thoughts on that all right i'm gonna jump in uh so my life was very impacted by the pandemic uh most people's was in some form uh personally think that kids right now are going to need pandemic books i think that publishing might not be ready but i think kids are i think they're going to need a way to process what's going on and i think ignoring it doesn't make it go away and it doesn't help us process or get through it so i am definitely open to books that mention the pandemic for sure or even address some form of the pandemic i think um i'm on both sides like i agree i think we need some books that mention the pandemic because i think it would help but i also understand people who would need an escape from that so i'm also open to books who don't mention it so either way i'm good with it and definitely remember that you know the books that are coming out today um were complete two years ago in most cases so you what you're seeing on the shelf you know they didn't the people who wrote those don't didn't know that there was a pandemic coming so um yeah just bear that in mind as well but there might be more little small mentions of pandemics in the books coming out in the next year um i agree with hoda i like both sides assigned by me also as well is very dependent on area if you have a very rural area in a rural country like i've got a small country i stay in that isn't impacted heavily then you might not have it mentioned very much but if you are in a big contemporary city that is this timeline then you might find that you're going to have to address it a bit but for me it very much depends on the work the setting and what you're trying to get across but i think if you're in a big contemporary city at this time period and you've not got any speculative elements i think it would be difficult to avoid it completely but i'm open to both it's interesting i heard on a i can't remember what but uh which but a history podcast or science podcast and they talked about how literature and even non-fiction um in the like in 1920-ish none of them mentioned the pandemic like everyone just kind of like moved on and like pretended like it didn't happen there's like no literature very very few not know but very very few like mentions of pandemic and literature and non-fiction so i think it's really interesting um to see what happens in the next couple of years i'm i'm running a contemporary set in a very small town in texas and so i mention it once because i needed a reason for the parents to have moved there and so that's the reason and so it's convenient for me but also it's a small town in texas so they pretty much pretend like the pandemic doesn't exist anyway so you know whatever whatever works for your story i think i definitely mentioned it because it was happening as i was writing uh my second book which comes out in march and i definitely mention it in quiet ways like uh i mentioned the friend dropping off something during quarantine at the doorstep so quiet ways so it exists but it's not a central part of the theme and it is not addressed in a wide way yeah all right um ebony asks is a mystery that deals with today's social injustices a turn off for any of you i'll jump inside and say i would love it i like anything that looks at current day social injustices or in the past or any injustices is right up my street i want to i would definitely want to see it 100 do you all remember back in the day when angie thomas asked a very similar question on twitter but um it's just i think it's so interesting to think back about that about how she was owned so unsure that people would want a story like that and then it's one of the biggest books we have um all right so we have a question about comps it's very specific to this person so i'm going to ask it in a more general way um if you can't if you're having trouble finding a comp for your book what advice do you have for people i think uh you could go first this time all right so a few years ago back when i was clearing i was at a conference and i remember hearing from one of the agents that if you can't think of a comp for your book within the last five years then there might not be a place on it or there might not be a place for it on the shelf right now so either one maybe you're not reading widely enough in your genre and you need to do a little bit of research or two maybe there's something that's not quite working with the story itself and needs a little tuning but that's all subjective it just depends comps are not going to make or break more often than not you just need some help finding the right comps for me um most people i think attach themselves to a comp and think it needs to be an exact fit and it doesn't it can be tone it can be a format i used format because i play with that uh the i use the poet x for message not or for the truth project that's in no way even a similar style but it's written in verse um as far as like themes and stuff like that so it just depends on uh the project and your mentors can definitely help you with that and i will say like it is good to use recent you know titles in your category it's really great it shows that you know you know the market and stuff but it's like you don't necessarily only have to limit yourself to that because when i queried my book i actually used two movie titles which may be like you should try to use one book in your category at least but it isn't bad to look at movies or even like really popular video games and tv shows um i know some people like cop manga and anime which like i would love because i'm a huge fan so like that'd be awesome to get some comps that you know are more like well-known titles that people might still know so i think like you don't necessarily have to just look at like one specific you know like list of books to try to find one that's similar to yours like you can expand a little bit if it's if it really does match you know an aspect of your book because you don't also want to just like take like a huge title that everybody likes and just to throw it in there if it's not actually you know a good representation of what you're writing yeah and you can also be specific to like you could be like oh my book has the family dynamics of why and the humor of x if there's like a particular aspect of a book that you want to come to um that's that's also a possibility i also think if you're really unsure um i'm assuming most people would have had their drafts better read or critiqued talk to your critique partners ask them if it reminds them of any specific things any books that they've read recently and because you can be really close to your work and maybe not be as objective as you can be and your critique my writer must might just say oh it reminds me of this book and you're like oh yeah of course it is kind of like that style of booger it's got that same sort of tone so make sure you write you reach out to your writing community that have read your work and ask them their opinion because you might find there's just something that you're not quite kind of thinking of because sometimes if someone asks me my favorite ten books i'll just freeze and think of two um and you can get that so i would say ask your critique or beta readers and see what their thoughts are because it might just kick start something i did a video recently for my libraries youtube channel on comps um and so i posted it in the comments and it's got my um my secret sauce for finding the right comp it's a exclusive tip um so go watch that it i i think it's really fun and um so go check that out if you're having trouble finding your comps um all right from twitter carly brought a question over from twitter uh any tips for navigating the wishlist and prioritizing one mentor over another um i think usually what i did as a mentee and what i usually recommend is starting well first making sure that the mentor is in your age category uh then going to the wish list to make sure they're accepting uh the genre that you're pitching but also like what do you need um what do you think your manuscript needs help with like if you think i need help you know building the romantic tension and there's a mentor who's like i can help you with this or if you want a mentor who's going to do extensive line edits a lot of mentors will say whether or not they're going to do that so i would first think okay what do i need what am i looking for in a mentor and then looking afterwards who seems to be a good fit in terms of what you need to strengthen your manuscript i would add in anyone who has a dog a cat or a horse should be your mentor but on the serious side i would really look at sitting down and looking at the wish list fully because a lot of times people get excited they skim the wish list they go oh yeah i've got a rom-com they like rom-coms that's great i like that book they like but actually you'll notice that although the post for the wish list the mentors actually usually make them quite long because they're trying to give you all the information you're going to need so none of it's really there just to waffle on a lot of it is this is my experience and background like i work as an editor so i've linked to my editor's job to say these are the projects that i've worked on recently so you can see where my skill set lies you can see what appeals to me in a broad genre other mentors are like these are the tv programs and the tropes that i like so sit down and look at those and say okay that mentor likes these tropes do i have these in my book genuinely not do i wish i have these in my book i'm going to kind of squish it there because i really like this mentor's personality so some mentors are really um charismatic and you might go i really want that matter but sit down and look at all the aspects of your wish list to make sure that they tied together so i would just say take your time and if you're unsure of anything um if the mentor says they're open to ask questions all right um we got a question about middle grade this is a young adult chat and i do want to focus on young adult staff um but i'm going to put a link in the um chat to the all the scheduled chats we have coming up because we still have another middle grade uh twitter chat coming up as well as two all category chats coming up so make sure you ask your your middle grade questions at that time um ebony wants to know how y'all feel about cussing give me all the swears i have a funny story because like when i first signed with my agent a big revision of my manuscript was literally just cutting out swear words i think i caught the word from my manuscript like a hundred sometimes it was a lot um but i will say like cussing is great especially in y a i think a lot of teenagers cuss when i was a teenager it was like 50 of what i said probably like when i was by myself or with friends especially so i think it's fine like definitely there there might be a point where like we have to dial it back and you have to do the revision i have to do and be like okay what are the most important shits of this story you know and which ones like matter the most which ones can i like actually not use so it's not just like too much um but i think it's definitely fine to include in why a especially and it's a lot easier to just cut them out later so it's like as i feel like you don't really have to worry about it when you're writing and revising until you get to the point of like okay i'm cleaning this up and getting it like ready to query then maybe there will be a few that were like okay pull back on this slightly but um i talked about this last year too i think a lot of people didn't realize it the only time i think about cussing like limiting cussing i guess i should say is if your book is a kind of book that might be considered for library and school lists um they do have pretty a lot of them have pretty strict rules on what cussing can be in that book but that's a conversation you're probably going to have with your agent or editor once you get to that point if your book is that kind of book that might be added to those lists because sometimes you cut an effort out and that means like tens of thousands more sales because you're then eligible for a lot more of these lists but that's like a purely like mercenarial marketing like viewpoint on cursing all right um we are almost out of time brenda stopped by and said this is such a great chat thank you mentors for being so awesome and generous with your time brenda drake is the founder of pitch wars in case you all in case people didn't know um and i'm gonna ask the mentors to close this out with their single best query letter tip and also let us know where we can find you online okay um i get a lot of queries every day maybe every 10 to 20 a day and the biggest trip i have is be clear i don't look for fancy like you can if you've got a clear query and you can add voice great but it doesn't matter be clear about who your character is what they want what stops them and what the stakes are i know it's really hard to think there's this huge big book that you boil down to 300 words but quite honestly if you cannot know what your story is without all of those subplots and all the extra things then sit down until you do read your book think about your book sketch out your ideas just be really clear uh as for you can get me you can get me at fionamcladdenrights.com or you can find me on twitter at fiona underscore m underscore mclaren because i use too many underscores i think a big thing with queries it's kind of based off of what fiona says is like really specifics are key i feel like a lot of times people try to in their queries use like almost like cinematic like movie trailer language and be like you know and then something really terrible will happen or like and they'll face their biggest issue yet you know or some like thing that it's kind of like okay that's that's cool but like i want to know what that is like i don't actually understand what is happening so i think just really being specific about those details and what like is actually happening in the query like it's gonna sound cool when we know what's actually happening you don't have to worry about making the query language like super enticing in that kind of way because it usually just leads to more confusion and kind of will get agents to just like stop reading um and you can find me on twitter and instagram at justinep winans you're muted sorry right that's the first time i've actually ever done that anyway so my query advice is um to read it out loud um and that goes for manuscripts as well i find that so helpful um and i think a lot of times you try to in a query letter you try to put so much in there and sometimes like you have a complicated setup but you need to to boil it down to like really what it what it the core of of everything is like what um i can't remember who was saying it fiona i think um who the character is what they want um what's in the way and what happens if they don't get it um and you really have to boil that all back and then if you read it out loud you can kind of hear where you're starting to kind of go on a little bit too long i think um so it's really helpful um and then you can find me on twitter briannabornya and instagram brianna underscore born underscore rights yes um so yeah that's where i am um i think a lot of my advice has been already said but i think one thing i would maybe add is to i see a lot of queries that focus a lot on background information i think focusing maybe on the main uh main plot and one suggestion i would give is have someone who hasn't read your book read your query that's when you'll know if it's working because if you already you already know what's going on uh your cps probably already know but someone who hasn't read the manuscript will be able to tell you okay i understand what's going on in this query so i guess that'll be my tip and you can follow me on twitter at todazy all right my feedback my query tip would be aside from because i was gonna say i have someone who hasn't read it read it uh but also uh treat it workshop that too if people under a writer's group get that in front of a group of people who are good at queries i know there's a lot of pitch wars hopefuls groups and when i was applying for pitch wars i did not get in but i did do a lot of those hopeful groups there's a facebook group um there's a gal named morgan hazelwood that used to run one i don't know if she still does but there's just a ton of resources out there and people out there who are willing to share pages back and forth within this community so utilize that um and share with one another and also help critique other people's queries because that's how you get good at them too uh you can find me usually on tik tok because i'm a child uh at dante medium of books uh same in instagram and then on twitter i think it's just at dante mitama all right and i'm gonna add in an aquarium tip and that is specificity is key um so the more i'm almost always when i critique corey is my most common note as be more specific be more specific and i'm sarah i'm on the board sorry i just saw brianna's comment in the private chat um yeah i'm on the board for pitch wars and um i also have a podcast called queries clones and quarks where authors share their uh publication journeys so you might want to check that out there's been several interviews with pictures people and um of course all of y'all if you want to be on the podcast let me know and we'll schedule it um and that's everything so to uh let's see tonight we have a chat with our adult science fiction fantasy mentors on twitter um i posted the the link to the other chats above so make sure you go check those out and uh yeah everyone stay safe wash your hands and um happy bitching bye y'all

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Id: ZS4tcF0jhdk

Length: 122min 48sec (7368 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 18 2021