Last week I posted a discussion about classifying your writing into the right genre in order to target the crafting of your manuscript, the agents you query, and the market you focus on.  Here’s a little follow-up on that with a blog post by very-wise-literary-agent Jessica Faust of BookEnds Literary.

A very important point to remember in all similar discussions is that the information is there to enlighten you and help you form your own thoughts about the subject.  Not every piece of advice is right for everybody.  Not every writing rule is set in stone.  Not every work of art, including that masterpiece you just might be working on right now, fits neatly into a genre compartment.  But all the advice and rules have been wrung out and verified as helpful by the blood, sweat, and tears of thousands of writers and agents and editors before you, so it’s wise to go ahead and listen, ponder, and evaluate what it all means to your own career and potential masterpieces.

Kurt Vonnegut said, “Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”  Considering his fame and success, it’s probably a good idea to listen just a little harder.

I’m not exactly sure what I think about such a tight focus on your audience.  I’m hard-headed, I know.  I have a huge urge to try to appeal to as wide a fan base as possible.  But there’s a balance somewhere between reaching a wide audience shallowly and reaching a narrow audience deeply, and I’m not sure where that balance is.  I’d love to hear more thoughts on that, so please let me know what you think.

And it would do you good to wander around Ms. Faust’s blog and website a little and see what other good nuggets she has to offer.

Stop Writing for Everyone

Agent Jessica Faust
Apr 1, 2021

I’m not everyone’s cup of tea and neither are you and neither is your book. So stop trying to write for all readers.

Write Your Genre

I think one of the biggest mistakes authors make, especially early on, is worrying too much about what will make their book appealing to everyone. You won’t. You can’t. Even today’s biggest selling books have their detractors. Heck, they have haters as much as they have lovers.

Your book is YA or it’s adult. It’s not both. If you’re super lucky you’ll have some crazy breakout book that will sell to all audiences, but when writing and querying the book you are appealing only to one. Harry Potter was not written for adults, neither was Twilight or Hunger Games. They were read by adults, but the authors never wrote them trying to make them appeal to everyone. They just did.

Your book can’t be a romance and a mystery and SFF and a memoir. It is one of those things. It might absolutely have elements of the others, but at the end of the day you’re writing a book with an eye toward one of the audiences above.

Writing Your Book

The same holds true of writing the book itself. Too often I see writers confined by the so-called rules (often passed along in writing groups) that keep them from really just writing a great book.

Even when choosing a genre, you will still not appeal to every reader within the genre. Not every romance reader likes romantic comedy, or bad boy heroes, or historical. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write them, that just means your book won’t be every romance reader’s cup of tea.

Choose Your Agent

The same holds true when choosing agents. I am not the agent for every writer. I don’t represent SFF or middle grade and I wouldn’t know where to start, I’m not great at hand-holding, and, whether you want it or not, you’re going to get (potentially) tough editorial feedback from me. Some of you might think all of those things are great. Others would rather find someone else. Either choice is great and perfect.

When searching for an agent I can’t stress enough how important it is to find the right fit for you. That’s not necessarily your best friend’s agent, your sister’s agent, or your professor’s agent. It’s your agent. Your business partner.

I would give the same advice to any reader choosing the only book they get to take along on a deserted island. Find the book that’s right for you. It’s not your friend’s, your mom’s, or your sister’s. Its the one you can happily read many times and love.

Honestly, I long ago embraced that I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. I long ago embraced the idea that not everyone likes me. I’m good with that. I can’t please everyone and if I did, I think I’d be doing it wrong.

Just the thought of classifying your beloved novel into a specific genre can throw your brain into a psychic maelstrom. I tripped all over myself trying to classify my first novel, and ended up sending queries to a few agents with it tagged as an action-adventure-mystery-suspense-thriller. Even that didn’t seem to excite them, but it did seem to cover most of the bases. I probably should have prefaced it with “cozy.”

It turns out that most agents and publishers…and, strangely enough, your readers…want to know pretty much what it is you’re peddling to them. Not everything fits into neat little boxes, and that’s as it should be. However, knowing what niche you’re shooting for and where your end result might best be marketed can give you a lot of help in the best way to craft the nuances of your tale.

So here’s a helpful article by former-private-investigator-turned-award-winning-novelist, writing guru, and contributing editor for Writer’s Digest (from which I snagged this post), David Corbett. It’s a little guide on wending your way through the labyrinth and coming out with a clear idea of how to construct and properly market your novel. A little perspective from someone who’s been there and was quite successful at it. Worth a look!

The Differences Between a Crime, Mystery, and Thriller Novel

To pitch the right agents, you first need to know exactly what it is you’re pitching. Learn the subtle differences among the many subgenres of suspense—and how to meet and exceed expectations in every one.

DAVID CORBETT
MAR 13, 2019

One of the first things to consider when setting out, therefore, is what kinds of expectations your story creates, so you can go about gratifying readers in surprising ways.

This is particularly true of writing in a genre, where conventions can seem ironclad—or all too often degrade into formula. And formula, by definition, surprises no one.

The suspense genres in particular have a number of seemingly hard and fast rules that a writer defies at his peril. And yet the most satisfying mysteries, thrillers, and crime stories find a way to create a new take on those rules to fashion something fresh, interesting, original. In other words, while you don’t want to mistakenly pitch your cozy mystery to an agent who wants only high-octane thrillers, you also want to make sure that when you connect with that cozy-loving agent, she’ll be jumping to sign you because your cozy stands out from the rest.

Here’s a map to help you navigate subgenre subtleties.

Mystery Novels

A crime is committed—almost always a murder—and the action of the story is the solution of that crime: determining who did it and why, and obtaining some form of justice. The best mystery stories often explore man’s unique capacity for deceit—especially self-deceit—and demonstrate a humble respect for the limits of human understanding. This is usually considered the most cerebral (and least violent) of the suspense genres.

Thematic emphasis: How can we come to know the truth? (By definition, a mystery is simply something that defies our usual understanding of the world.)

Structural distinctions: The basic plot elements of the mystery form are:

1. The baffling crime
2. The singularly motivated investigator
3. The hidden killer
4. The cover-up (often more important than the crime itself, as the cover-up is what conceals the killer)
5. Discovery and elimination of suspects (in which creating false suspects is often part of the killer’s plan)
6. Evaluation of clues (sifting the true from the untrue)
7. Identification and apprehension of the killer.
   

Additional Reader Expectations:

The Hero: Whether a cop, a private eye, a reporter, or an amateur sleuth, the hero must possess a strong will to see justice served, often embodied in a code (for example, Harry Bosch’s “Everyone matters or no one matters” in the popular Michael Connelly series). He also often possesses not just a great mind but great empathy—a fascination not with crime, per se, but with human nature.

The Villain: The crime may be a hapless accident or an elaborately staged ritual; it’s the cover-up that unifies all villains in the act of deceit. The attempt to escape justice, therefore, often best personifies the killer’s malevolence. The mystery villain is often a great deceiver, or trickster, and succeeds because she knows how to get others to believe that what’s false is true.

Setting: Although mysteries can take place anywhere, they often thematically work well in tranquil settings—with the crime peeling back the mask of civility to reveal the more troubling reality beneath the surface.

Reveals: Given its emphasis on determining the true from the untrue, the mystery genre has more reveals than any other—the more shocking and unexpected, the better.

Mystery Subgenres

➤ Cozy: One of the ironic strengths of this subgenre is the fact that, by creating a world in which violence is rare, a bloody act resonates far more viscerally than it would in a more urban or disordered setting. Reader Expectations: A unique and engaging protagonist: Father Brown, Miss Marple, Kinsey Millhone. The crime should be clever, requiring ingenuity or even brilliance on the hero’s part to solve. Secondary characters can be coarse, but never the hero—or the author. Justice triumphs in the end, and the world returns to its original tranquility.

➤ Hard-boiled: The hero is a cop or PI, tough and capable. The moral view is often that of hard-won experience in the service of innocence or decency. The hero tends to be more world-weary than bitter—but that ice can get slippery. Reader Expectations: A strong hero who can “walk the mean streets but who is not himself mean,” as Raymond Chandler once put it. A realistic portrayal of crime and its milieu, with detailed knowledge of criminal methods and investigative techniques. The style is often brisk and simple, reflecting the unpretentious nature of the hero, who is intelligent but not necessarily learned. Although the hero almost always sees that justice prevails, there is usually a bittersweet resolution. The streets remain mean; such is the human condition.

➤ Police Procedural: A cousin to the hard-boiled subgenre, with the unit or precinct taking over for the lone cop. Reader Expectations: Much like the hard-boiled detective story, but with a larger cast and special focus on police tactics, squad-room psychology, station-house politics, and the tensions between the police and politicians, the media, and the citizenry.

➤ Medical, Scientific, or Forensic Mystery: A refinement of the police procedural in which the protagonists—doctors, medical examiners, forensic pathologists, or other technical experts—use intelligence and expertise, not guns, as their weapons. Reader Expectations: Similar to the police procedural, with extra emphasis on the physical details of analyzing unusual evidence.

➤ Legal or Courtroom Drama: The crime is seen through the eyes of the lawyers prosecuting or defending the case. Reader Expectations: A meticulous rendering of criminal court procedure and politics, along with how police and prosecutors work together (or don’t).

Cool!  More advice!  I can always use advice, seeing as how I haven’t reached a whole herd of Best Seller Lists quite yet.  One of these days, I may not need it as much, but I’m still always gonna listen to the World’s Greatest Editor.  Actually, I’ll pretty much always listen to all advice, as long as it’s free, ‘cause I know I don’t have to follow it if it sounds goofy but it just might be valuable.  But when it’s the World’s Greatest Editor, I’m paying a lot closer attention.

The World’s Greatest Editor, according to Dana Isaacson, was Maxwell Perkins, book editor at Scribner’s for 37 years.  The evidence backing that up is pretty overwhelming, considering he brought names like Hemingway, Wolfe, and Fitzgerald into the mainstream of the literary world.  Mr. Isaacson is also a widely-experienced editor, writer, and literary agent, and posted the following article on the Career Authors website.  I found it through the Facebook page of the most-excellent literary agent, Gina Panettieri. 

So here I am, faced with writing advice by a very wise and experienced editor, that’s being pushed by a couple of very smart people who have had a lot more experience and success than me, so I’m thinkin’ it would be a good idea to take this to heart.  It’s a short and easy read, but there’s a lot to think about in understanding the business, framing your approach to your task, and keeping principles in mind.

And it’s free!  So you can take it or leave it without pressure, but I suspect that if it’s good enough for Hemingway, it just might do me some good.  Ya think?  Maybe you, too!

Writers’ Master Class: 7 Lessons from the World’s Greatest Editor

Posted by Dana Isaacson | Mar 15, 2021 | Publishing

A French literary critic once said that a great editor is an artist whose medium is the work of other men. Despite its inherent sexism, there is wisdom in that statement. Certainly Maxwell Perkins, considered by many the greatest book editor ever, left a monumental legacy in his thirty-seven years at the publisher Scribner’s, helping shape literature and guiding writers from Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dawn Powell to Ernest Hemingway. 

Editors at book publishing houses play a variety of roles. Lamented Perkins, “What are we supposed to be—ghostwriters, bankers, psychiatrists, income tax experts, magicians?” We could add cheerleaders and nursemaids to that list. After Thomas Wolfe declared that he was quitting writing because of rotten reviews, Perkins wrote him, “If I really believed you would be able to stand by your decision, your letter would be a blow to me.” Writers today would be amazed to hear that editor Perkins even spent time negotiating down Wolfe’s dental bills.

Bibliophilic me treasures my tattered first edition collection of Perkins’ editorial letters, (Editor to Author, The Letters of Maxwell E. Perkins), sadly out of print but full of gems for writers.

How publishers choose

In a rejection letter to an unknown author, Perkins explains that book publishers must make money to stay afloat. But even as they strategize and carefully decide what to publish—and despite commercial motives—their role in society is significant:

“There are certain rules of quality and relevance, which can only be determined by some sort of selection, and this the publisher, representing humanity, attempts—with many mistakes—to make. Or, to put it differently, artists, saints and the other more sentient representatives of the human race are, as it were, on the frontiers of time—pioneers and guides to the future. And the publisher, in the capacity mentioned, must make some sort of estimate of the importance and validity of their report, and there is nothing he can base this on but the ability to judge that God has given him.”

LESSON 1: Like authors, publishers are gamblers, hoping for the best.

Live life

In one letter, Perkins recalls a conversation with author John Galsworthy:

“He said these writers who become writers right from the start are invariably disappointments. It is much better for a man to have been something else than a writer, so that he has viewed the world from a fixed position.” 

LESSON 2: Skip your MFA, get life experience, then write about it.

I enjoyed this article from Hannah Guy at Kirkus Reviews.  I subscribe to their newsletter and it wouldn’t hurt anyone else to check that out, too, because that’s how I find great thoughts on occasion.  Sometimes I stumble across them, and sometimes they leap out and smack me on the noggin, but they won’t do either if you don’t give them some access to you, so look for the ones with value and invite them into your email.

You can even subscribe to my blog!  (hint, hint…)  There are things of value in it from time to time, mostly culled from people much smarter than me, I’ll admit, but at least I’m smart enough to recognize awesome things I wander into, so there’s that.

This is a discussion on writing advice that exploded across Twitter a while back, so there’s another good thing about finding it on Kirkus Reviews because Twitter has revealed itself to be too much of a GuanoStorm for me.  So far, at least.  Maybe if I grow another head to help store and filter and analyze that enormous fire hose of opinions…

Take a look and enjoy, and realize that a lot of the “harsh” part is just wit and deep thoughts.  Some pretty superficial, but at least enjoyable.  And sometimes the truth might sound a little harsh, but you need to hear it anyway, don’t you?

Our Favorite #HarshWritingAdvice Tweets

BY HANNAH GUY
February 11, 2021

Normally we don’t pay too much attention to tweets that go viral. But there is almost always an exception to a rule.

On January 29, 2021, author A. M. Hounchell tweeted the following: “HARSH WRITING ADVICE: Your writer friends are also your competition. Sorry.” Immediately, the writing and publishing Twitterverse responded in kind, igniting a weekend of arguments, discussions, and retaliatory tweets under the hashtag #HarshWritingAdvice. A ton of folks from various parts of the writing community, including some heavyweights, weighed in and shared their own writing advice. 

Even a few Hollywood folks chimed in. Seth Rogen (@SethRogen) dedicated an entire thread to answering questions about writing. Some of his advice included, “Do lots of loose notes and outlines and lists that are low pressure and if you do enough of that thinking on paper, before you know it you have stuff” and “I firmly think you have to LOVE your idea or else you’ll burn out on it.” (Rogen’s response to dealing with writer’s block? “I smoke weed and watch movies that inspire me and remind me of what effect I’m trying to deliver to the audience.”)

The trending topic has, of course, faded in popularity, but we wanted to share some of the best advice and wisdom left behind by well-known, bestselling, and/or popular writers and authors. 

Are other writers your competition…or your friends?

A number of folks didn’t waste time dismissing the notion that other writers are competition. Instead, they emphasized that the writing community benefits when we all support each other. “The actual HARSH WRITING ADVICE is that it’s really hard a lot of the time and your fellow writers are the other people who understand this and will help you get through,” tweeted Food and Wine senior editor and author Kat Kinsman (@kittenwithawhip).

Other authors agreed, adding: 

HARSH WRITING ADVICE: Writing a book is hard and lonely, and if you treat other writers like competition instead of the community, inspiration, and co-conspirators they really are, the whole process will be miserable and your book will probably fail.

                        —Lilly Dancyger (@LillyDancyger)

Harsh writing advice: Your writer friends are an amazing source of support, and all your lives will be better if you appreciate and encourage one another.

            —Jennifer Wright (@JenAshleyWright)

Naturally, there is always someone who sees “competition” and takes it a little further than one might expect.

“HARSH WRITING ADVICE: You have to hunt and eat your fellow writers,” was Chuck Wendig’s (@ChuckWendig) offering. “They will taste of Cheetos, pink wine and despair. But this is how the Publishing Gods are fed. Sorry.”

Less competition, more writing

Others were quick to remind writers (especially aspiring ones) that worrying about competition was less important than focusing on the actual writing you do. After all, the best way to create a great book isn’t by competing for it but by writing it. 

“HARSH WRITING ADVICE: Thinking of your friends as competition isn’t going to make you a better writer, because no matter what imaginary horse race you invent, you can only write what you write,” tweeted writer/director Jessica Ellis (@baddestmamajama). “So write it.”

HARSH WRITING ADVICE that a Black woman writer gave me nearly 20 years ago: Stop worrying about getting your writing published; worry about getting better at writing.

                        —Deesha Philyaw (@DeeshaPhilyaw)

HARSH WRITING ADVICE 

You actually have to write.

 Sorry.

                        —Jenna Guillaume (@JennaGuillaume) 

My contribution to HARSH WRITING ADVICE: Writers write. That’s it. One word at a time on the page. There’s no romantic, mysterious force or beguiling muse that will inspire your genius. Sit, write, sweat, cry, self pity, edit, revise, finish, and then get up and do it again.

                                    —Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli)

Lay off the social media