Dennis Cass Wants You To Be More Awesome

A reader writes:

I have a complete fantasy novel manuscript, but no one wants it yet. Slush piles have turned up nothing, so I’m trying agents. The only problem is, my Writer’s Market doesn’t have agent listings, and I have no idea where to start looking! Where should I start looking for spec. fiction agents? Do they have their own directory? Is there a reliable agent directory with a sub-listing for fantasy and sci-fi market agents? Is there a way to get a feel for an agent before querying them? My story is somewhat unusual compared to most fantasy novels, and I have no idea how to make sure the agent I’m sending to is the sort who is willing to take a chance on something new. Any advice on the matter of speculative fiction agents would be tremendously appreciated and would go a long way towards my further awesomeness. Thank you very much for your time.

I put “speculative fiction” agent into our friend Google and got this nifty link right here as the first return. I hope this gets you started in terms of the information you need.

But, as always, what I’m really interested in is the question behind the question, or the problem behind the question, which in your case (and correct me if I’m wrong) is that you’re out there doing this entirely on your own.

If you were part of a network (virtual or otherwise) of speculative fiction writers, then you wouldn’t be asking me about finding an agent. You’d be asking them.

I’m happy to help, but I’m no substitute for a group of like-minded peers. We recently discussed ways to find people to give you feedback on your work. Writers who are ready to publish or are starting to get published might not need the feedback, but they still need the community.

Some things to consider:

Take an excerpt from your novel and rework it as a short piece

Short pieces aren’t going to make you rich and famous, but they do build audience, mark territory and send secret messages to your peers.

Start a writing group

You don’t have to read each others work. Get together, talk about stuff (or things) and stay in touch. Then help each other out when your careers start to break.

Make something happen

If you’re not interested in going to a conference, perhaps you’d like to work at one. Contributing to your genre’s scene (even if it’s just taking tickets at the door) gets you in front of people and behind the scenes.

As I’ve said before (and if I haven’t, please pretend that I have) the road to publication is painfully long. The worst thing you can do is passively wait. What’s more, if you’re out there stirring things up, you just might find that the agents will start coming to you.

A reader writes:

I want to submit an essay to the NYT Magazine’s “Lives” page, and the only way I can find to submit is via the lives@nytimes.com. I hate submitting pieces to generic addresses, but I’m wondering if it’s worth my time to dig further and try to track down another address for an actual person with an actual name. If they haven’t heard of me, would it even help to send it to a specific individual? The real question (perhaps for the blog) is: Are generic addresses just a black hole, a sucker’s shortcut to the rejection bin?

The editors at the Times aren’t sadists. They don’t have a dedicated “Lives” account just to torture aspiring writers like you.

What fun would such a black hole be anyway? If you really wanted to make writers feel bad, then you’d want to find away to string them along. You’d assigning stories you had no intention of running; send out contracts that you’d never sign; offer notes on drafts without reading them; say you’re scheduling their piece for two months from now and then never run it. (I imagine you’d also want to a webcam to figure into all of this.)

The “Lives” e-mail address is real, but if you submit you will still want to keep the following in mind:

1. A lot of those pieces are shopped by agents and/or are adaptations from upcoming books.

2. A good number of them also possess a sneaky yet potent newsworthiness. (Ever noticed how the woman writing about the strange connection she has with her twin sister also happens to be a psychiatrist who counsels Army Rangers in Afghanistan?)

3. The rest are either crazy emotional, or off-hand funny, or mystifying in their pointed lack of anything I’ve mentioned so far.

I have written for any number of major magazines, but I’ve never been able to crack the code on sections like “Lives” or “Shouts & Murmurs” in The New Yorker. That doesn’t mean you won’t, or you can’t, or that you shouldn’t try. But if you do, my guess is that the e-mail address will be the least of your worries.

Good luck.

Thanks to one of our readers for the heads-up on this story about Dan Baum, a writer who detailed his hiring and firing by The New Yorker on Twitter. I’ve always said that if you’re going to burn a bridge, burn it trendy!

Of more interest is Dan Baum’s website, where he generously offers .pdfs of proposals he’s written for various national magazines.

Here are the proposals that worked

Here are the proposals that failed

Two things I hope you take away from reading Baum’s proposals:

1. You write the piece in order to get permission to write the piece.

Notice how many facts Baum already has at his command in these proposals. So if you’re pitching a story about Twitter, you can’t just say, “Twitter is really hot right now so it would make a good story.” Better to put a number on the hotness (there are X million people on Twitter). Even better to make some calls and find the fact that won’t immediately show up in a Google search (people are joining Twitter at a rate of X people a minute). Better still to contextualize that more pointed fact (at a rate of X people a minute, Twitter achieved in three weeks the user base it took AOL three years to build).

2. The difference between a proposal that sells and one that doesn’t is that the proposal that sells sells and the one that doesn’t doesn’t.

If I mixed up all these proposals and asked you to pick the ones that turned into paid stories and the ones that didn’t, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Even if you’re an excellent writer like Dan, you only control part of your destiny. There are countless other factors—editorial mandates, competitive works, the Coriolis effect—that determine the outcome. Do your best—and by all means learn and grown and all that—but most of all get yourself out there and pitch. Quality matters, but it’s also a bit of a number game. Act accordingly.

A reader writes:

Any tips, references, links that would help me learn about composing a pitch for a documentary film? In this instance to the Major League Baseball Network. Similar in approach to a compelling magazine query?  And thanks for sustaining your blog!!

Firstly, you’re welcome for the blog. I do it all for you.

As for the question, my first reaction was to send our reader a follow-up:

Do you make documentaries?

Here was his (prompt) response:

No. Which I guess raises the obvious. What exactly do I have to sell?

His delightfully insightful and self-aware answer reminded me of an equally self-aware and insightful question that a student recently asked me:

Do people buy ideas or do they buy you?

The answer is a mixture of both, depending on the stakes. To use a magazine example, if you’re pitching a cover story then they’re buying you, because if you mess it up then the whole issue comes crashing down. If you’re pitching a 500-word tidbit for the front of the book, then they’re less concerned about you, because if you flake, then it’s easy enough to compensate for your incompetence, you worthlessness swine.

Major League Baseball Network may very well be starved for ideas, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they’re not waiting for pitches from strangers with no documentary film experience.

Ideas are cheap. Execution is priceless. Become the person who can execute and the ideas will take care of themselves.

Still rolling with our query lessons. Check out this one for ANAGLYPH TOM:

The experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs revisits the 1905 Edison film that was the source of his 1969 structural analysis “Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son,” this time in 3-D video.

Beyond the words “experimental filmmaker” I have absolutely no idea what this means. Never heard of Ken Jacobs. Not interested in late-60s structural analysis. 3-D leaves me cold.

But this synopsis means something to somebody, and that’s the only thing that matters.

• You could try to make this pitch more universal.
• You could try to convince a broader audience that this story is relevant to them.
• You could try to (through lengthy, parenthetical, infinitive-splitting digressions) educate the populace about anaglyphs, Thomas Edison’s film career, etc.

But is that really the best use of your time?

The wise writer not only knows their audience, but also know the limits of that audience. Sometimes that audience is going to be irrevocably small. Better to connect with those people fully than to reach beyond them and miss on all counts.

An anaglyph:

Image taken from www.stereoscopy.com

Monday’s breakdown of WHEN IN ROME was such a success I’m doing another one.

Today’s synopsis—for a film called THE MERRY GENTLEMEN—presents more of a challenge for reasons that (I hope) you’ll see:

Two lost souls, played by Kelly Macdonald and Michael Keaton, warily become friends during a bleak Midwestern winter in a drama that marks Mr. Keaton’s first feature as a director.

Unlike WHEN IN ROME, we have no exotic locale, no magic fountain, and no plucky heroine in need of a change. More importantly, we’re missing the transformative (and story-moving) power of romantic love.

Instead, we have individual components that taken on their own are flat and vague. What exactly is a lost soul? How does one “warily” become friends? And why not put a state (Michigan? Minnesota?) to that generic Midwestern winter?

Put all these elements together, however, and they start to sing. The story this synopsis suggests is more driven by mood and tone than plot, but I still feel like we can make some safe bets:

1. Everything happens on a human scale

The story takes place at kitchen tables and on bar stools. If there’s a scene at the hospital, it happens in the waiting room. Time unfolds naturally (no montages here). Politics, social status, etc. are muted. (If one of the supporting characters is the mayor, then he’s someone’s hunting buddy.) People may talk about extraterrestrials, but the aliens they do not land.

2. Winter is a character

At the very least, there are scene breaks that feature still shots of fence posts poking out of snowbanks. At the very most, the ice, cold and snow frustrate our protagonists’ basic needs and desires. (For some reason I’m seeing icy roads that force them to improvise a place to stay for the night.)

3. Said souls are lost for small-scale reasons

Neither of these guys is a neurosurgeon on the retreat because he botched an operation on the President. Instead they are divorced, or have estranged children, or they drink. Furthermore, said drinking is not epic, rock star drinking (otherwise the story would be set someplace like L.A.). Life has slipped away because of small traumas and neglected obligations.

4. Their fragile friendship will be tested

Stories like these trade in simple heartbreak. I’m picturing a Sudden Unforeseen Event in the third act. Perhaps there’s a car accident, or someone almost chokes to death in a diner. Our lost souls, who seem to have been progressing, are faced with a simple but intense challenge, and fail to rise to the occasion. Cue strings.

5. The ending will lack resolution

No way these guys end up moving to Florida and starting a successful real estate business. If both of them survive this story (there’s a strong possibility one will not) then the ending suggests more of the same. The final shot is extra wintry.

You might think from this rundown that I’m making fun of THE MERRY GENTLEMEN, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with anything I’ve described. Movies like YOU CAN COUNT ON ME have worked similar territory to great success.

The big question in my mind is what this story is going to say about friendship. We’d need another line or two to tease that out. Given what we think we know so far, anyone care to take a guess?