Belletrinsic

Who: Writers struggling to perfect their query letter and synopsis

What: Query and Synopsis Workshop

When: Saturday, June 12, 2010

10 am–12:30 pm

Where: Fire Petal Books

386 North Main

Centerville, UT 84014

Why: To tame those beastly queries

How: Reserve your spot by clicking on the PayPal link at the bottom of this post and paying the $45 workshop fee. Then email michelle .witte @firepetalbooks .com with your contact information.

Questions? Contact Michelle:

michelle .witte @firepetalbooks .com

801.992.3776

Note: Bring multiple (at least 3) copies of your query and your 4–5 page synopsis. We will be discussing and critiquing the queries/synopses you bring.

No question that writing a book can be hard. Even worse is writing the query and synopsis. Without a great query, however will you get an agent or editor to take a further peek at your story?

To help writers with this seemingly daunting task, Fire Petal Books is hosting a Query and Synopsis Workshop, taught by owner Michelle Witte. Seating is limited, so reserve your spot early for the workshop.*

During the first 45 minutes, Michelle will teach the principles for writing a good query followed by a discussion on crafting a synopsis. The rest of the time will be spent workshopping queries and a few synopses.

Learn the art of the query and synopsis. Your book will thank you.

Michelle is the owner of Fire Petal Books, a children’s bookstore opening in Centerville, Utah. She has worked as an editor for the past 6 years, first with the Deseret Morning News and then 3 years with Gibbs Smith, a national nonfiction publisher located in Layton, Utah. In addition to helping writers craft better books and stories, she writes books for young adults. Working in multiple aspects of publishing—from editing, publicity, writing, and sales—has given her a better understanding of the process a book travels before a reader cracks the book open for the first time.

*Depending on demand, we may schedule another class either this week or next.

With thanks to Nathan Bransford and Molly O’Neill for spreading this lovely video.

Sports metaphors are widely used, and tonight I realized why. It takes a strong person to compete in such a public way with a huge risk of failure and embarrassment.

The first jump of his performance, U.S. figure skater Jeremy Abbott fell. He got up, kept skating, then fell again. I can’t imagine the discouragement he felt. On the Olympic stage, in from of the world, and his friends and family, and it seemed as though all he could do was fall.

But he kept going. Each time he fell, he got up and skated. As the performance continued, his confidence grew, and his skating became beautiful.

I imagine that, after the first two falls, he knew he wasn’t getting a medal. And so he got up and performed with all of his heart. The pressure was off, and so he skated like he did it just for himself to prove that he could do it.

I’ll avoid waxing eloquent, but I would like to say that I applaud his determination. There have been times when I’ve fallen, been knocked down, and maybe even dragged through the mud. But after each time I got up and kept skating.

The memorable lesson from Abbott’s performance is the improvement he made after those initial mistakes. He could have let those early falls shake his confidence. Instead, he used them to strengthen his resolve, and so he finished beautifully. He didn’t win gold, but that’s okay. He ended better than he had started and did something amazing in the process.

I hope I’ll remember that as I embark on new adventures. Some things may not work out the way I want and others may fail spectacularly, but I’ll learn from those mistakes, realize that I won’t win gold, but it’s okay. I will do something beautiful with my work so long as I

keep skating.

If you found your way here looking for the Fire Petal Books auction, you can hop on over to www.firepetalbooks.com/blog and see the amazing selection of items you can bid on.

You can also email info@firepetalbooks.com for more information.

See you there!

*Author/transcriber’s note: I’ve kept the original spellings intact so you can truly enjoy the following play. At ten years old, I had more than enough experience to write a number of plays, but this was always my favorite.

2nd farie: We need to hide in the forest. Quick!

1st witch: I have called this meeting of witches and ghosts for a special reason. To destroy this Halloween for everyone!

(Witches and ghosts cheer.)

1st ghost: But what are we going to do?

2nd witch: Yes, those good fairys always stop us.

1st witch: I have a plan that this time I know will work.

2nd ghost: What is that paper you are holding?

1st witch: Ah, this is my plan that I have so skillfully made. It is a recipe for a magical brew that will stop Halloween forever! Did you bring the things I told you to bring?

3rd witch: Yes, we did, are they for the recipe?

1st witch: Yes, bring them forth one at a time.

2nd witch: I have the spiders web.

1st ghost: I will put in the black cat’s fur.

3rd witch: Dried pumpkin seeds is what I brought.

2nd and 3rd ghosts: We brought the worst thing of all, A DEAD FARIES WING!

(All the witches and ghosts scream with delight.)

3rd farie: Oh no! Not a fariy.

(The witches and ghosts go and get the faries and bring them to the 1st witch.)

2nd witch: Kill them!

1st ghost: No, lets put them in the brew.

1st witch: No. Keep them alive. We’re going to let them see the kids with no fun on Halloween night!

2nd farie: Let us go, Now!

1st farie: Shh! I’ve got a plan.

(Witches and Ghosts start to chant, while 1st witch stirs brew, “Witches brew start to bubble, on Halloween night make lots of trouble!”)

3rd farie: What are we going to do? I can’t move my feet.

2nd farie: They must have put a spell on our feet.

1st farie: I am going to put a spell on them, that will make them know it is bad to be evil.

(First farie waves magic wand, and witches and ghosts fall to the ground.)

1st witch: We were wrong. Evil is bad. Now everyone, get rid of that brew! (Song)

(Witches and Ghosts say, “Turn to punch witches brew, so that we can have a drink of you.”)

And now for some analysis:

The key theme of good versus evil is universal and appears throughout literature. In this case, however, the good triumphs over evil too easily. The protagonists are not tried nearly enough, making the end putter out instead of having a distinct climax and resolution, bringing down the level of tension with it.

The obvious errors of punctuation and inability to spell “fairy/fairies” aside, the play does have a certain charm to it. There is drama, of course, but by eliminating the obvious descriptions of action in dialogue and making those directorial notes instead, the piece would flow more smoothly in addition to amping up the intrigue.

As well as the characters are portrayed, there is a certain lack of depth considering none of the characters have names. They are all drones, with none clearly set as leader. As with all evil plans that antagonists declaims to the audience—and to the hidden protagonists—they are doomed to fail. The shortsightedness of the plans—in this case, the misstep in not removing the fairies’ wands—is an opportunity for the hero to triumph. But we see in this play that though evil is vanquished, the villains are not destroyed. Instead they are converted to the side of good, a death-bed repentance, if you will. How this will play into the other 3/4 of the act are yet to be seen as the author never wrote more on the subject.

Due to me being down with Giardia (don’t ask), I’ve slacked off a bit on posting on my regular schedule. Next week I should be back up to snuff but until then, feel free to browse the archives.

I’ve been sick—really sick—these past two weeks. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say I’ve been to three doctors within that time period. Each of them had the same thing to say. “Tests came back normal. It’s probably just the stomach flu and will go away soon.”

Well, I got tired of waiting, so I took my health into my own hands. Yesterday I went to a naturopathic doctor, i.e. someone who combines traditional holistic healing with modern scientific medicine.

The thing that made me appreciate this approach was the desire of the doctor to understand my overall health, not just what was bothering me at the moment. He asked many questions to get to the root of my health so we could bring my body—and thereby my health—back into balance.

As you probably know, I like to relate things from my personal life to writing. You might be asking how this could possibly relate.

Let’s think for a moment about a book that you’ve written. When you’re revising and editing, do you use a checklist of items to look for? Passive voice. Check. Spell check. Yep. Consistency of protag’s hair color. Got it.

That’s good. I’m glad you have specific things you look for, but sometimes I think writers forget about the big picture, just like those doctors concerned only about the present problem instead of the overall health of the patient. We’re so involved in finding all the nitpicky little problems with grammar, punctuation, and plot that we forget to look at the general health of the story.

Is the overarching story interesting? Does the plot make sense? Are your characters realistic and act according to their personalities? Is there tension, involvement, and genuine emotion?

To answer some of the bigger questions I’ve taken to reading my story as a story, just like I would any other book. Does it grab me and keep me reading? Yes, it does, and that’s a good thing.

Sometimes we let ourselves get bogged down in the details of writing and publishing, forgetting why we started the journey. Telling stories. Communicating. Sharing information. Making connections.

So today, I want you to think of the overall health of your story. Look at the big picture. Take a holistic approach to your writing and see if you can’t make the overall story better.

Yesterday was too much fun, owing to a particular meme on Twitter. Wait for it . . . wait for it . . . #publishingpickupline! Yes, you guessed it. Book nerds and people working in the industry got together and created some of the funniest pick up lines this side of distribution.

I’m not sure how it started, but the results are so hilarious, I had to capture the best of them here for your perusing pleasure. Some of them you have to know about the publishing process (and the terms used) to understand them. If they’re really hard to understand, leave a comment and I’ll interpret for you.

I tried to weed out the really dirty ones, so these are all fairly clean, and most of them had me laughing hard. So enjoy, and maybe add your own at the end. Though remember, we keep a fairly clean blog here.

I’ll start off with my own offering: I wanna see my name written on your spine.

adamgaumont I want you blad

jo_words Five minutes with me and you’ll be sans serif!

WheatmarkSusan I’m not just another pretty typeface. Take me home and try me in layout.

corpuslibris I’d thumb your index any day.

adamgaumont Once you see my em-dash, you’ll never go back to hyphens.

@janinelaporte I’d like to deckle your edges.

kaiwan I know I shouldn’t judge by the covers, but baby I like what I see.

NickDuring With a backlist like that it’s going to take a long time to make up your advance

EGDeedy “how about you get comfortable and slip out of those indies…”

bsandusky You had me at “Winner of the National Book Award”.

AnnKingman Wow, check out the blurbs on that one!

lauramazer i’m dying to shelve you in current affairs.

lauramazer with case specs like that, you should be shelved in erotica

s_m_bailey wanna work my text block ragged?

WorkmanPub You’d look good in the chains, but even better in bricks and mortar

WorkmanPub Don’t worry, the children are in a different catalog.

@hkdimon: What’s a nice girl like you doing with a cover like that?

KatMeyer oh baby, that is one well-built author platform!

@NickDuring: Baby what’s your discount? I want to order in bulk

NickDuring I saw you in the catalog and had to pick you up

@bookoven: i’m feeling naughty: how bout you split your infinitives, and i’ll end this on a preposition.

bostonbookgirl I can help you extend your deadline.

bostonbookgirl I’d swap spot gloss with you any day.

bsandusky Didn’t I see you at the top of the NYT Bestseller list?

bsandusky I don’t care what anyone says, you’ll always be leather-bound, hand-sewn in my mind.

AnnKingman C’mon, give me a little peek under your french flaps …

bostonbookgirl Wanna proof my bluelines, Sweet Cheeks?

AnnKingman Let’s go in the back room and strip off our covers

RandomHouseCA You must have just come from the printer cause you are hot!

kalenski It’s embargoed, but I’ll let you take a peek.

Well, I finished the first draft of Jessamine in three and a half weeks. Woo. I had planned a big blog post about how I’d done it, yada yada yada. But I’m so tired after being sick this week, it’s all I can do to write. I ended at 48,000 words, which is just under what I was aiming for. But with the revisions, I’ll be filling out a lot of places that I skimmed over while writing the first draft. It should be a decent length for a YA novel, though.

So now it’s onto the sequel, which I’m calling Lady Jasmine for want of a better name. It’ll work for now. I’m about 4,000 words in, and I want to keep writing. That’s always a good thing, in my book. That means I’ll be signing off here and get back to writing. Let’s see if I can get this one onto the computer screen in even less time. (I did take about a week off as a break, so no breaks equals more productivity.)

Here we go . . .

Yes, I am guilty. I am very mean to my characters. Unbelievably mean to them. First I make them fall in love when they don’t want to, and then I break their hearts. How cruel is that?

The funny thing is, I’m feeling really guilty about it as well. I think with all the intense writing I’ve done these past week and a half (33,000 words and 125 pages in that time), I’ve gotten so emotionally involved with the characters. Too involved, actually, to the point where it makes me cry to think of what I’m going to do to them.

I really am a sap. I bawled while writing certain scenes in my last book, and even cried again while revising. Now I’m crying just thinking about what I’m going to do to the new characters.

Really, it makes me think of the movie Stranger than Fiction. I can completely understand the writer agonizing over killing her characters after realizing that one of them is real. My characters feel real to me. They become like myself, probably because they are a part of me.

Am I alone in this? Do any of you writers get so attached to your characters that it wounds your heart to break theirs?

Maybe I’m too emotional, but I’m thinking that it probably is a benefit as a writer. When I become part of the story, live the story, it makes it better in the end. At least I think so.

So I’m off to cry some more as I think of all the horrible tricks I’m about to play on my characters. But, being the soft-hearted person I am, I can remind myself that it will all work out well for them in the end. They may hate me, but I can live with that.