Please Guide Me… Which Seminars Shall We Do This Year?

[AgentPete]

The intention behind our Seminars series is to get writers up to speed, as efficiently as possible, with practical, timely & useful core information that will make a real difference to your writing life and chances of success. A lot of what we cover draws on my own real-world experience.

We’ve evolved an interesting and productive way of working. The seminar first goes out live (as we did last Saturday) which gives me a chance to road-test it and to get all your valuable feedback and comments. I then take a little time to polish it, incorporating your input, and it finally gets recorded and posted here in the Colony.

We’ve already looked at Blurbs, Titles and Synopses / Book Proposals / Sell Sheets. The latter two (Titles and Synopses / Book Proposals / Sell Sheets) are currently in the process of being edited prior to final recording.

The question I’d like to ask you is – what else shall we tackle this year?

I estimate that we can realistically look at about about six to maybe eight topics.

Let me know your thoughts

 

[Dorm Ant]

Defining genre.

I've seen so many discussions on here about what's MG and what's YA? Where's the dividing line? What's "Literary"? What's the dividing line between Fantasy and SF? How important is it, to clearly define your story's genre, both before you begin writing, during editing, and on submitting it?

 

[Hannah F]

Defining genre.

I've seen so many discussions on here about what's MG and what's YA? Where's the dividing line? What's "Literary"? What's the dividing line between Fantasy and SF? How important is it, to clearly define your story's genre, both before you begin writing, during editing, and on submitting it?

To muddy the waters further, I've read agents specifically looking for young MG as opposed to older MG, or teen YA as opposed to upper YA. I know it's about the understanding, at that age, regarding the subject matter, but reading books aimed at older MG (e.g, Finbar Hawkin's "Witch") and those aimed at teen YA (e.g. Kesia Lupo's "We are Blood and Thunder"), I don't see the difference other than the age of the protagonist. The voices of those two authors are very different, but both, to me, would suit 10 to anything-year-olds. There's also a very blurry line (including sexual content) between some upper YA and adult (e.g. Hannah Whitten's "For the Wolf") other than age of protagonist.

 

[Hannah F]

Query letters? We do them a lot in huddles.

 

[RK Wallis]

High concept?

 

[AgentPete]

Defining genre.

I've seen so many discussions on here about what's MG and what's YA? Where's the dividing line? What's "Literary"? What's the dividing line between Fantasy and SF? How important is it, to clearly define your story's genre, both before you begin writing, during editing, and on submitting it?

There's quite a lot we could do on and around that topic, yes. I would probably want to get a senior publisher to do it with me.

 

[Vagabond Heart]

Beginnings. How to grab in the first line, first para, first page.
Xx

 

[Rich.]

It might be interesting to talk about which kinds of fiction best suit agented and independent authors. Can general distinctions be made? Is it, for example, better to be an independent author if you write popular genre fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, romance, etc.)?

 

[Vagabond Heart]

Oh, and following on from Rich, what criteria to apply in choosing an agent? What to look for?

 

[E G Logan]

High concept?

In one, easy to get-head-around sentence, please.

 

[E G Logan]

Oh, and following on from Rich, what criteria to apply in choosing an agent? What to look for?

And, how it might be better to wait than to bite the hand off the first offer. (That's my head speaking. Make me an offer and see what happens...)

 

[Dorm Ant]

Oh, and following on from Rich, what criteria to apply in choosing an agent? What to look for?

A pulse?