FOR EDITORS, PROOFREADERS AND WRITERS

​Are you looking for literary representation? My guest Rachel Rowlands has some helpful advice on how to find an agent, what to submit and to whom, and dealing with rejection professionally.

Literary agents hold the golden ticket that will get you into the chocolate factory. If you want to get published traditionally, they’re essential.
 
Getting an agent is competitive, and it isn’t easy, but if you’re stubbornly passionate about your work and don’t give up, it can be done.
 
I hope my journey and what I’ve learned along the way will inspire you and help you. Buckle up, because it’s a bumpy ride. 

The process starts long before you even think about submitting to agents. Write. Abandon projects. Start new projects. Finish projects. Learn about the craft. This can take years. You may even develop a few grey hairs along the way.
 
I’ll rewind a bit and give you an example: I’ve always written stories. I wrote my first ‘novel’ when I was 16. It was about angels of light and darkness and doors to other planets, and it was heavily inspired by Kingdom Hearts, a game I was obsessed with.

​But I had fun, I loved writing it, and it taught me how to plan and finish something. I wrote three other books before writing the one that led to me signing with an agent – at 27. 
 
You need time to develop as a writer, to hone your craft. Your first book most likely won’t be the one that gets you where you need to be. Your second might not either, and that’s okay. No one becomes an expert overnight.
 
Here are some other things that you might want to do before you start hunting for that elusive agent, aside from writing books until your fingers nearly fall off:

• Take creative writing courses. Many have workshop elements, which are super valuable for developing your craft.
• Find beta readers/critique partners. Twitter is great for this – there’s a big community of writers hanging out there (try the #amwriting hashtag). You could also join a local writing group.
• Get involved with the community. Befriending other writers will give you a support network. You’ll need people to share your struggles and successes with!
• Read widely. It goes without saying that reading is essential for a writer. You’ll learn about what’s marketable and what makes a good story … and you’ll be inspired, too.
• Work with an editor. You don’t have to do this but working with an editor can be a great way to learn about storytelling, particularly if you commission a professional critique or developmental edit. 

Do your research
No agent should charge you money – they work on commission. Any agent who wants you to pay upfront is a scammer and you should run far, far away.
 
A great place to hunt for agent details if you’re in the UK is the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook.

QueryTracker is great, too; it lists agents from all over the world (although some UK-based agents are missing from the database). You can even use it to track your submissions and the replies you receive. Otherwise, I recommend doing your own tracking via, say, a spreadsheet.
 
It doesn’t matter where in the world you’re based in terms of who you submit to – many agents work with foreign co-agents. So, for example, if you’re based in the UK it’s perfectly fine to query both UK and US agents.
 
Follow submission guidelines
Every agency has different guidelines ­– some want you to send a cover/query letter and three chapters. Others might just want an initial query letter. Treat these guidelines as law.
 
Also, be professional in your letter (read Query Shark, a blog on writing query letters, like your life depends on it). Get someone to critique your query letter before it goes out. Don’t make it easy for someone to say no!
 
Don’t send your book to everyone at once
Submit to a small batch of agents first, somewhere between 5 and 10.
 
If you get any feedback, rework your manuscript and then send out a new batch. Note, however, that this strategy can be problematic because you won’t always know why an agent rejects a book; it might be purely subjective.
 
Still, you don’t want to exhaust all your options in one go! Try to keep it balanced. Don’t get keyboard-happy and send your book to 200 agents.

​Be in it for the long haul and be prepared for rejection
I submitted two manuscripts over the course of two years, racking up a couple of hundred rejections. It wasn’t easy.
 
The first book I queried got standard, copy-and-paste rejections almost across the board (also known as ‘form rejections’), although two agents did ask to read it.
 
One asked me to send it back after doing some revisions, sometimes called an R&R or a revise and resubmit (sadly it doesn’t mean rest and relaxation). I never heard from that agent again, even after several polite nudges.
 
As for the second book I sent out, there was a flurry of interest. Suddenly, lots of people wanted to read my book. But then … the standard rejections started rolling in.
 
I even had an agent ask to meet me when she was halfway through my book. Then she called and rejected me after she’d finished reading. A phone call from an agent is generally a sign that they want to work with you, so that was pretty crushing.
 
Some days, I wanted to quit because it felt easier than carrying on. But in the wise words of J.K. Rowling, ‘It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously you might as well not have lived at all.’
 
I kept going. Another agent called me up. We talked revisions. I worked on them for six weeks and we bounced ideas back and forth. She really got my book and what I was trying to do, and she loved my edits.
 
After two and a half years of submitting, five manuscripts, and many I’m-going-to-quit-writing-forever threats, I signed the contract.
 
Don’t reply to rejections
Really, don't, unless the agent personalized your rejection and mentioned your book/characters specifically. In that case, feel free to send them a quick thank-you note.
 
Never send sassy or scathing replies like, ‘You don’t know what you’re missing out on’ or ‘Your loss, sucker’, even if that’s what you’re thinking. Vent in private. That’s what writer friends/cats/brick walls are for.
 
If an agent sends you a rejection, but invites you to submit future work, do it!
They haven’t slammed the door shut, they’ve left a gap for you – and it means they see potential. Keep their name and email address, and when you have a new project ready, send it to them and remind them who you are.
 
All in all, remember that no project is ever wasted. You’ll learn something from every manuscript, and even if you don’t land an agent straight away, you’ll be making connections and putting your name out there.
 
Treat your rejections as badges of honour because they mean that you’re still in the game, and one day you’ll get to the next level.
 
Good luck!

• Online writing courses for self-publishers and independent authors
• Query Shark
• QueryTracker
• Self-publishing resources
• Should a writer hire a freelance editor before submitting to an agent? And should editors accept the work? (Blog post and ebooklet)
• The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi)
• Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook

Rachel Rowlands is an independent editor and an author of young adult books. With her editor hat on, she works for a growing list of publisher and author clients on both fiction and trade non-fiction. She has a degree in English and Creative Writing and is represented by Thérèse Coen at Hardman & Swainson. She can be found at www.racheljrowlands.com and on Twitter: @racheljrowlands.

If you’re not sure what a first-person narrative point of view is, or how to use it effectively in your fiction writing, this post is for you.

Point of view (POV) describes whose head we’re in when we read a book ... from whose perspective we discover what’s going on – and the smells, sounds, sights and emotions involved.

There can be multiple viewpoints in a book, not all of which have to belong to a single character. And to complicate things, editors’ and authors’ opinions differ as to which approach works best, and what jars and why.
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POV can be tricky and my aim is to keep the guidance as straightforward as possible, not because I think you should only do it this way or that way, but because most people (myself included) handle complexity best when they start with the foundations and build up and outwards. ​

Pro editors and experienced writers agree on one thing: it’s worth the beginner author’s time to understand POV so that they can make decisions about which to use, where, and why. Consider the following:​
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• A better read: The right POV in the right place enriches the reader’s experience; the opposite will mean your book is not as immersive as it might have been. It might even confuse or frustrate your reader. I’m assuming you want your book to be the best it can be, so understanding how narrative POV works, and how to use viewpoint with intent, will help you in that endeavour.
• A better price: If you’re working with a professional editor, whether a story-level editor (developmental, structural editing) or a sentence-level editor (line editing, copyediting, proofreading), there’ll be less to fix if your POV doesn’t jar.
• A better fix: Some beginner authors, for reasons of budget, choose not to work with a developmental editor. This is the shaping stage in which decisions about how POV will be handled are made. If you go straight to working with a line editor or copyeditor, and they encounter major POV problems, it’s likely that their editing will have to be more invasive than either of you would have liked. Plus, the fix might not be as elegant as it would have been if any problems had been attended to before the sentence-level work began.

There are multiple ways in which to narrate a novel. Some are more popular than others, and some easier to master. What you choose will shape not only the story you tell but also your readers’ understanding of it. The options are as follows:
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• First person
• Second person
• Third-person limited (also called third-person subjective)
• Third-person objective
• Third-person omniscient

First-person narrative POVs are the most intimate, the most immediate, but they’re less flexible. The pronouns used are ‘I’ and ‘we’. The reader is privy to an individual character’s thoughts, emotions and experiences, all told through a distinctive voice.

We can only see, hear, smell and feel what the character sees, hears, smells and feels. We are compelled to move through the story knowing only what they know, and at their pace.

However, used throughout an entire novel, from on character only, it can be problematic for the following reasons:
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• Readers can access only one version of events, which can render the prose restrictive if it doesn’t allow for the telling of other interpretations; we are forced to trust that the narrator’s telling is reliable. Furthermore, if the unveiling of how, why and when is too slow, the story could begin to drag.
• Too much ‘I’ can be laborious to read and can result in a told, reported narrative rather than shown prose (see also the chapter on filter words)

Example: Not relying on ‘I’
In To Kill a Mockingbird (p. 5), Harper Lee keeps ‘I’ to a minimum and yet the prose oozes with first person. Note in particular how the voice is rich and distinct, rather than the more neutral tone we’d expect from third-person objective narration.

Because Lee doesn’t append ‘I’ plus a verb to much of the prose, we are given a shown narrative that we can experience rather than being told how the narrator experienced the world being described.

​Compare it with the ‘I’-heavy made-up example below and consider how the narrator’s told experience keeps the reader at a distance.

​Let’s rewrite this with a less invasive first-person narration in which the reader can experience the action as it unfolds.

​Example: Sustaining interest with other interpretations
In The Word is Murder (p. 208), author Anthony Horowitz is one of the characters! The viewpoint is first person (his). The author is like a floating camera; we see the protagonist – the detective (Hawthorne) who solves the crime – through Horowitz’s eyes as he accompanies him to interviews with suspects and on visits to crime scenes.
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The author-character offers his own theories, even pursues his own lines of investigation, and interjects with stories about his life and career. This adds interest but, ultimately, it’s the detective who grounds the crime story, brings reliability to the narrative, and drives the novel forward; it’s through him that we access the procedural elements and the answer to whodunnit. Here’s an excerpt:

First-person narratives introduce depth and explain motivations but can be difficult to sustain if not sufficiently interesting and there’s too much told narrative. Watch out for filter words if you think you’re over-telling. 

Consider whether your whole novel needs to be in first person. Perhaps limiting this approach to specific characters in dedicated chapters would be more effective. If you decide to stick with first person throughout, think about voice and how your viewpoint character (and therefore the reader) will discover the how, when and why of the story at an engaging pace.
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And, finally, if you’re basing your whole novel in the first person, be cautious about using the present tense throughout. The past might give you more flexibility, particularly if you’re writing action-heavy scenes where, in reality, the character wouldn’t have time to give much thought to the consequences and motivations of their behaviour.

• The Word is Murder, Anthony Horowitz, Arrow 2018
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, Arrow Books, 1989
• What is a second-person narrative point of view?
• What is a third-person narrative point of view?
• What is an omniscient narrative point of view?
• What is head-hopping?
• Making Sense of Point of View (Transform Your Fiction series: 1)

Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

• Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Crime Fiction & Thriller Editor
• Connect: X @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
• Learn: Books and courses
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