Timothy's Thoughts

Today, I’m continuing our talk about Mark Twain’s eighteen rules of writing. We begin with his third rule. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. Have you ever had a character that doesn’t stand out? The character has a name, but we might as well have name her, Woman #5 since no one is going to remember her anyway. Maybe we put her in the story to give another character someone to talk to and all Woman #5 does is say, “I agree.” The other character might as well be talking to a corpse. We can fix Woman #5. First, let’s give her a name, like Barbara. Next, let’s make her interesting by giving her a peg leg. Lastly, let’s give her some thoughts and motives of her own. Maybe Barbara secretly hopes the other character’s boyfriend will break up with her and ask Barbara out. That’s a lot better than a corpse. The personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient ...

Authors, agents and editors talk much about the rules of writing . Most of us will agree that these rules are more like guidelines than laws set in stone. What we can’t agree on is what the rules are and what they mean. Oh well, such is life. Mark Twain said there are nineteen rules, though some people say there are twenty-two. He doesn’t say what the nineteenth rule is, though I doubt he knew since he mentions it in a critique of James Fenimore Cooper’s work . I think he chose the number nineteen to bring attention to how poorly written he believed Deerslayer to be. Twain does give us the eighteen he said Jame Fenimore Cooper violated. I see among them some of the same rules we keep spouting today, so I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look at Twain’s eighteen rules governing the literary art in the domain of romantic fiction over the next few days. As we do, I will say that knowing the rules and understanding them is a far cry from being able to apply them to our own...

One of the most influential men in my life passed away last month. It made me think about some of the other people who have influenced me. I think about some of the people who I look at and think, “I ought to be more like that.” These are the people that make me feel guilty because I don’t live at that high of standard. The thing I have noticed about these people is that they all love people. It’s easy for us to love some people, like our family and friends, but what about other people? What about people we might see as being in the way of our dreams? In a blog post announcing the sale of his novel , Richard Mabry writes “there are bound to be some of my readers who are thinking, Why him? Why not me? ” Read his post and you’ll see that he has paid his dues, but the simple truth is that, if I had been asked to make a list of the authors I think deserve a publishing contract, I would have put Richard Mabry right at the top of the list. What isn’t so easy is to have that same attitude wit...

This is the last post about searching for an agent (I think) and then I’ll get back to more interesting stuff. Originally, I planned to post something about how much I hate searching for an agent. I was going to talk about all of the rules we are supposed to follow to keep from offending an agent. I was going to say something about how some agents treat their potential clients in an unprofessional manner, even calling them kids . I’ve decided instead to talk about metrics. It sounds boring, doesn’t it? But authors seem to like metrics as much as engineers do. The difference is that engineers keep meaningful metrics. Authors track Amazon Sales Rank (a completely useless metric) and the number of rejection letters they receive (which is almost as useless). At what point are we supposed to count a rejection? If I send out a query and a literary agent writes back, “I don’t represent fiction,” is that a rejection? I would say not, unless you sent him a memoir. In that case, it isn’t only a ...

As I talked about yesterday, I’ve been sending out query letters. Some literary agents want a synopsis sent with the query letter, while other do not, but it’s a safe bet that an author is going to need one eventually. The nice thing is that writing the synopsis is one of the few fun things we get to do while we’re searching for an agent. The synopsis is like the soul of the story with all of the external packaging torn away. However long a novel might be, whether it is 80,000 words, 120,000 words or just over 50,000 words, we reach the end and we have all these little details running through our heads. Did I change her eyes from green to blue everywhere? Would he be watching a football game on television at that time of year? Is there enough time to have the whole story take place during summer vacation or do I have to send the kid back to school before it’s over? We lose track of the story and we ask ourselves, if it is any good or if we just wasted twenty dollars by printing off all...

I’ve been sending out query letters. The jargon is different, but sending out query letters is equivalent to the government or a business making an announcement that they are looking for a contractor to do a job for them. Government agencies and businesses put announcements on websites and in newspapers. Authors attend conferences and send out query letters. With both processes, there is the possibility that no one will submit a bid, or in literary agent jargon, offer representation. This is probably more common with literary agents, but there are often government sponsored projects where a bureaucrat dreams up a project that no one knows how to implement. Likewise, publishers are especially reluctant to take a risk on authors without a proven track record and a recognizable name, so agents are reluctant to represent them. Some agents know they aren’t going to offer representation to unknown author and have published notices saying so on their websites. I am trying to respect that, so ...

This blog has been something of an journal of my writing activities, I thought it appropriate to post my form query letter for my latest novel. This is the letter that I am sending to agents. If you happen to be a literary agent and you haven't gotten your own personal copy with all of the information filled in then there are several possibilities. I may not know about you. I may know about you but I read the statement on your website that says something like "I'm making so much money with my existing clients that I don't want to look for more." Of course it could be that I just don't like you very much. If you want your own copy, you're welcome to ask for one, but for the rest of you, this is all you get. Timothy Fish [My Address] ...