So I was at a writers’ conference this past weekend and I mentioned the blog to Brianne Johnson, an agent at the respected Writers House, and told her the question that comes in fairly regularly here, about how teens can get published. She said she’d be happy to look at manuscripts from teens, and I leaped six inches into the air.
If you decide to submit to Brianne, send her a cover letter describing the book and send the first 25 pages in a Microsoft Word document, as an attachment. Brianne prefers to receive submissions via e-mail, at bjohnson@writershouse.com. In your e-mail, say you got her name from my blog. Your writing sample should be double-spaced in 12-point type and the typeface should be easy to read. Your name, address, phone number, and email address should appear on the left above the title. Your last name and the title of the book should be in the upper left hand corner of every page that follows, like this: Levine/Ella Enchanted. This is in case a page gets separated from the rest.
After you send it, be patient, patient, patient. And good luck!
And here are some questions for everybody. Are you writing poetry? Would you like some posts on the subject? Do you have questions? I’m not as experienced a poet as I am a fiction writer for kids, but I have been published, and I love to read and write poetry. Right now I’m reading a fascinating book of essays about poetry called Structure and Surprise, Engaging Poetic Turns, edited by Michael Theune, on a pretty advanced level, high school and above, I’d say. Anyway, I’d welcome poetry questions. I probably won’t have definitive answers, but we can explore together.
Now for the regular post. On June 1, 2012, Michelle wrote, I’m homeschooled, and recently in one of my school books I studied novels/novelists. The book talked about ‘range’: an author’s limits and experiences, and his or her ability to work with them. They used Jane Austen as an example, saying that even though the Napoleonic Wars took place in her time, she chose not to write about them because wars were outside her range. Now, after pouring my heart into a fantasy series for over three years – a series that does include numerous battles – I’m wondering if I tried writing way outside my range. I know nothing about fighting other than what movies and the many books I read tell me. Do you think I was wrong to write outside my range? Can books like that still be successful?
The old adage is, Write what you know. If we all followed it, there would be no fantasy genre, no sci fi, no horror, no paranormal, no historical fiction earlier than its author’s childhood. So, no, I don’t think you were wrong.
However, if the books you’ve read and the movies you’ve seen are entirely fictional, you might want to supplement that with some nonfiction and documentaries and see if the wider reading changes or confirms what you’ve written. You may find first-person accounts particularly helpful, even if you’re writing medieval fantasy and the weapons are swords and pikes, or if it’s a space drama and the soldiers fire ray guns and wield energy shields. You’ll learn how it feels to be in the middle of a battle, what the after effects are, what the relationships are in the unit, and more. Surprises will come along that you’ll use.
If any of you are writing realistic fiction, readers who are familiar with the weapons you include, for example, will notice if you get a detail wrong. If you’re writing historical fiction, to take another example, readers will hope to learn about the period, and it would be a shame to let them down.
When I write fantasy often I avoid elements that are too closely tied to our world. I made an important dog character in A Tale of Two Castles be a Lepai mountain dog, a breed that doesn’t exist outside my book. If I’d made him a poodle, that would have brought up associations with contemporary life. On the other hand, when I made Kezi in Ever be a gifted weaver, I learned about weaving. It didn’t seem to me that a made-up process would have been good enough.
The book you cite said that Jane Austen chose not to write about the Napoleonic Wars as outside her “range.” I suspect she knew a lot about the subject, which must have been much in the news and much discussed. “Range” may merely mean the kind of writing that suited her temperamentally. Narrow domestic concerns – marriage, family, fortune, local characters – were what interested her. You, Michelle and many others on the blog, unlike Jane Austen, may be more into the broad canvas of war, at least at this point in your writing.
Let’s consider the adage. It’s been around for a long time and, I suspect, must have some truth. What we all know most fundamentally is ourselves, our emotions, thoughts, physical sensations. We know what it’s like to feel well and to have a fever. We know our environment, the late afternoon sun shining slantwise on the street outside our house, the smell of a parent’s closet, the cell phone ring tone, and a zillion other details. Next level of distance, we know friends, family, pets pretty intimately. After that it gets more and more remote.
If you bring what you know well into your fiction, if you use a losing game on the soccer field last week in a battle between your heroine’s battalion and the invading aliens from the seventh planet circling a distant star, you’ll still be writing (partially at least) from what you know.
Complete knowledge is often impossible. Yesterday I shopped for groceries and asked a young woman if the store had any more of the ice cream my husband loves. When she came back with a case, she called me Sweetie. I’m about forty years older than she is! Where did that Sweetie come from? I didn’t mind. It was affectionate, so maybe it came from an excess of benevolence. Or maybe from a cheeky testing of the boundaries. I can guess, but I can’t know. Still, I see nothing wrong with putting her in a story and giving her a motive. I can call her Della Louise and make her live with an adored grandmother, or a hated one. I can turn her into a mermaid who’s living among humans and is really two hundred years old, so I’m a youngster to her. Not knowing, being outside my range, is a gateway to opportunity! If Della Louise comes across as real on the page, readers will slip inside her as easily as she slips into her scaly tail at midnight every night.
Here are three prompts:
∙ Your main character is lost in a forest filled with bears. Write what happens, and make sure the bears are part of the story. If you know a lot about bears and not much about aardvarks, make the forest full of aardvarks. Do no research! If you like, make the story fantasy.
∙ Read about bears or aardvarks. Write again, either a new scene or a revision, using your research. Compare. (I’m not thinking one will necessarily be better.)
∙ Write about an inventor, inventing an anti-gravity machine.
∙ Your main character parachutes into a battle in progress. Write what happens. Again, this can be fantasy.
Have fun, and save what you write!
Julie says:
Structure and Surprise is a fantastic book; I'd recommend it to anyone interested in poetry. My college poetry professor, Christopher Bakken, authored a chapter for it…so I'd be happy to help out with clarifying his thoughts, in particular! 🙂 And thank you for the contact in Brianne Johnson. I will tuck that info away for (hopefully) future use.
gailcarsonlevine says:
Thanks for the offer! I read Christopher Bakken's chapter and loved it. How great it must have been to study with him. I hope you'll comment if there's interest in a poetry post or more than one.
Q says:
Make sure your book is FINISHED before you submit twenty-five pages to an agent!
gailcarsonlevine says:
Thanks! If Brianne wants to see the rest, you want to have it ready.
Finished and revised, with no typos or grammos or spellos. (One of these can creep in because you failed to catch it, happens to everyone, but your manuscript shouldn't be studded with goofs.)
Caitlyn says:
Ms. Levine, is Brianne Johnson only interested in manuscripts from teens, or will she take submissions from anyone?
gailcarsonlevine says:
I only discussed teens with her. I'd suggest looking at the Writers House website for general submissions info.
E.S. Ivy says:
Caitlyn, I'm *way* passed being a teen as well. Although, I am shorter than most of them (including my own kids!)
writeforfun says:
Gail – I would love a post on poetry! What makes good poetry, how to find the best rhyming words, how to keep good meter…plenty more that I can't think of right now. Actually, that's my biggest problem – meter (am I spelling that right?). I tend to "Fudge," as I call it, the meter so I can fit in the words or syllables to finish the thought, sacrificing rhythm for rhyme. I try not to let it become too extreme, although very few of my poems are consistent enough to be turned into songs. I also do have a hard time with rhyming, usually only using approximate rhyme, but that problem isn't quite as extreme as the meter.
Also, I just had to say it is so nice of Miss Johnson to agree to do that! Did she set a time frame that she wanted to receive the manuscripts within? My stories are woefully un-edited.
Oh, and I'm terrible with names, so I call just about everyone "Sweetie" or "Honey" or "Dear" or "Buddy." Just another motivation for Della Louise:)
gailcarsonlevine says:
Wonderful! A poetry post coming up. I'm putting it on my list, so it will have to wait its turn, although I'm eager to get to it.
gailcarsonlevine says:
No, she didn't give a time frame, but I'd say, Start editing. People forget, change jobs, move.
E.S. Ivy says:
Here's another idea for Della Louise – she may have just moved there from the South.
Melissa says:
Gail- I've got a question, well sort of, about poetry. It seems that all the poems we read in class are full of symbolism and double meanings. I don't enjoy it because it seems that it's written from the author's experiences in a way that only they can understand. I'm not one to go looking for symbolism so I tend not to write with it because I know other kids don't like it. Especially in class we dissect the poem until it seems that we're looking for symbolism that isn't or wasn't meant to be there. I know there are other types of poems you can write but why do most famous poets have deep meaning to their poetry?
gailcarsonlevine says:
Your teachers may be murdering poetry for you. Some people like to puzzle over poems. Others like to just let them come in. I'm more in the second camp. Some I get. Some I don't. Lots of poems are full of feeling and detail and light on the symbolism.
E.S. Ivy says:
My favorite college English teacher told us not to look for symbolism in poetry; it was what it was. 🙂 It was a relief to me to find an English teacher with that mindset.
Michelle Dyck says:
Thanks so much for answering my question, Mrs. Levine! It's appreciated. I definitely plan to use your advice. (Oh, and yes, I would appreciate a post on poetry. I recently realized that the poetic prophecies in my books need some work. Apparently the meter needs to be more consistent.)
Thanks again!
gailcarsonlevine says:
I'm pairing your question with writeforfun's.
Michelle Dyck says:
Okay, thanks!
Charlotte says:
on the poetry front, I'd be interested to hear about your own experience with poetry: do you do it intentionally or just when the mood strikes? What kinds of poems do you usually write? Do you switch things up? How do you edit your poems? How is your process for poetry different from fiction?
gailcarsonlevine says:
Sure thing! I'm adding your questions to my list.
writeforfun says:
Oh, and, while you're at it, could you address the subject of publishing poetry? I mean, nowadays, it seems like the only thing poems are good for is song lyrics. Of course, you wrote "Forgive Me, I meant to Do It," which is poetry, but aside from that, do people publish poetry? Or is it a dying art form? And if it is still alive and kicking, how does one go about getting published?
E.S. Ivy says:
A post on poetry would be a great writing exercise! I confess to not being overly fond of poetry, but I started noticing that many of my favorite writers tended to have poetry included in their novels. It made me think that writing poetry may improve their prose skills.
So I decided I should practice poetry. In my notebook I ended up writing "Really bad poetry" at the top of the page, just in case anyone happened to read it and was under the false impression that I thought it was any good. 🙂 The result wasn't any good poetry, but I did come up with a couple of songs that I included in my last book. I even wrote the melody sheet music to go with one of them. A fun diversion from plotting!
gailcarsonlevine says:
There will be prompts!
alyssabcole says:
Hi there! I recently finished a few rounds of editing on a novel and it is very close to feeling polished enough to send to an agent. However, as I have been researching, it seems that the bigger publishers are the only ones who really require agents. Furthermore, some articles I have read say that it might be better to stick with smaller publishers, particularly if one's just starting out in the industry (I have two self-published works under my belt, but that probably doesn't count for much).
Should I try to find an agent and attempt to get published by one of the bigger publishers with this novel, or should I stick with a smaller publisher for this book and try to publish with one of the bigger publishers when my name is already out there in the industry (God willing)?
Thanks,
Alyssa
gailcarsonlevine says:
If you're sending out query letters, I don't see why you can't do both at once. See who bites.
alyssabcole says:
Just to clarify, so if I send out query letters to multiple parties, and more than one party expresses interest, it does not look bad if I turn down Party A in favor of Party B? I wasn't sure if I needed to send one query letter because the parties might prefer exclusivity even at these beginning inquiries, although now that I think of it that seems like a silly way to do it.
Thank you for taking the time to answer!
gailcarsonlevine says:
I don't think you have to be exclusive with a query.
alyssabcole says:
Great. Thank you so very much for your help!
carpelibris says:
One thing I'd suggest would be to look up publishers, agents and editors under Preditors and Editors before submitting, because there are both honest and dishonest ones out there.
Also remember: "Money flows to the writer." You should never have to pay to have something published.