DFWCon Query Gong Show: early morning edition

 Another great DFWCon literary conference in the books, with lots of classes and panels. But probably what readers are awaiting most anxiously are the results of the conference's famous -- maybe infamous -- Query Gong Show. 

For those unfamiliar with the conference this is a riff on the 1970's TV talent show in which contestants performed until judges stopped them by striking gongs. DFWCon's version with anonymous entries is less brutal.

The rules: writers submit their anonymous literary queries to a panel of agents and editors who strike table-top gongs to signal the point at which they would stop reading if receiving one of these queries in their own emails. Writers can get gonged once, even twice, without stopping the reading by DFW's mellifluously voiced George Goldthwaite. But three strikes and they're out!

The query contest has typically been the final day's afternoon event of the conference. This year, it was moved to first thing in the morning. Perhaps organizers hoped panelists would be less alert to query faults before they were adequately caffeinated.

If so, that hope was vain. Of the 10 queries read this past weekend, none survived the final gong.

Possibly because they read these posts, writers avoided some stumbling blocks from prior years. Queries for gazillion-word books were rare (or at least, less outrageous). Most writers seemed aware of their books' genre. In hopes of preventing still more literary tears, here are the most-frequent issues that doomed 2023's query hopefuls.

First -- the panelists. These were five agents, and one acquisitions editor: Cathie Hedrick-Armstrong of The Purcell Agency, T.S. Ferguson of Azantian Literary Agency, Lynnette Novak of The Seymour Agency, Jacqui Lipton of Tobias Literary Agency, Sara J. Henry of Crooked Lane Books, and Eloy Bleifuss of Janklow & Nesbit Associates.

By far the most gongs rang because the query took too long to get to what Lipton described as "the beating heart of the story."

"What's it about?" Henry asked about a similar query. "It just kept going."

Image by Prawny for Pixabay

Writers are understandably eager to get as many words as possible before an agent.

 But as Hedrick-Armstrong noted, she once received 1,000 queries in three days after accidentally opening, even though she posted no notification of accepting queries.

 Even if none of these exceeded the 300-word maximum I once heard a writing coach describe, reading them all would be the equivalent of getting halfway through War and Peace (described as nearly 600,000 words, although that may depend on the translation).

For literary queries, be short to be kind. Bleifuss suggested using no more than two short paragraphs to describe that "heart of the book."

This should include what Hedrick-Armstrong noted as the five essentials (also available at her Manuscript Wish List site):

1. Who is the main character?
2. What does the main character want?
3. What or who is standing in the main character's way of getting what they want?
4. What must the main character overcome to get what they want? 
5. What are the consequences of reaching that goal? What might they gain or lose?

Somewhat similar to these "stakes of the story" issues were failure to mention the story's genre and word count in queries. (Agents differed -- some wanted this information upfront; others were content to see it nearer the end.)

Excessive length was such a major sticking point, some agents said they would have kept reading despite additional issues, if only the query had told them what they needed to know more quickly. Among the tips, despite sheer wordiness, agents noted, "don't start with setting," "cut out filler words," and "no flowery language."

Issues gonged less frequently included:

• Querying for sequels or series of books. "Don't write the sequel if the first book doesn't sell well," Novak cautioned. (Most panelists were OK if an author mentioned that a first book was a stand-alone "with sequel/series potential.)
• Excessively high word counts for the genre, although agents varied. However, in debut novels, word counts outside of norms may indicate problems with pacing, Lipton said.
• Stories that seemed too familiar/stale/tropey. "Try to find a fresh perspective," Bleifuss urged.
• Objectification of female characters. 

Although panelists realized Gong Show entrants had no way of knowing who they would be addressing, the salutation "Dear Agent" hit sore spots from agents who've received similarly addressed queries too many times.

When addressing agents/editors, please use their names. And get them right.

Ferguson bemoaned the number of times he's been addressed as "T.J." (He's properly T.S. Ferguson.) And "don't call me Mr.," Henry said.

In fact, honorifics are tricky, especially if an agent/editor has not specifically indicated which they prefer, or if they are nonbinary individuals. Better to use simply "first name + last name" as indicated on the individual's or agency's website.

Again, all queries were anonymous. So, here's to revamping and sending to appropriate agents. (They probably won't even remember seeing the first version after doing their half-W&P worth of subsequent query readings.)

A smorgasbord of info from 2018 DFW Writers Conference

Hungry for the feast of information from this year’s DFW Writers Conference? Here’s sampling, starting with YA author Scott Westerfeld’s keynote address.

“Teenagers are the strangers among us. A couple of hundred years ago the term did not exist. In the U.S. Civil War, an 11-year-old got the Medal of Honor. A 13-year-old commanded a ship at Trafalgar.” Although the word “teen” didn’t appear in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1921, and “teenager” until 1941,” during the 19^th century, partly sparked by the Industrial Revolution, “a space expanded between being a little kid and being an adult.”

Co-existent with the evolution of teendom was the emergence of novels as “the supreme methods of storytelling.” The superpower of novels is their ability to lay out “agony, limits, feelings, beliefs, fears and hatred on the page.” Humans also have a superpower – empathy.

image: pixabay

“The novel is the outgrowth of this ability. Readers don’t just bond with our characters, they become those characters.” And the supreme time for that becoming, that trying on of different ways of thinking and being is during the teen years. “Novels exercise our empathy and strengthen it.” Is this a scary process? Yes, “and scarier for teens because they are the strangers among us. So I hope you keep making more books – and more readers!”

***

Or maybe you wanted to know what agents really like (or not)? Try this discussion from the "Ask An Agent Anything" panel with agents Malaga Baldi, Amy Bishop, Uwe Stender and Maximilian Ximenez.

Q. Is it OK to resubmit to an agent after a rejection?
A. Absolutely, kind of, depends.

“The agents are rejecting the book, never you,” said Uwe Stender of Triada US Literary Agency. “Feel free to offer another work.”

Maximilian Ximenez of the L. Perkins Agency noted he’s even OK with resubmitting the same work after extensive revision. 

Q. What are you looking for in a query letter?
A. That depends. . . 

“Really know your enemy,” said Malaga Baldi of the Baldi Agency. “Know what they represent. We all have our own bugaboos and our own strong points. (However, note that she hates letters addressing her as Mr. Baldi!) 

And on the “knowing the enemy” front, “Please be upfront with relevant data, genre, word counts, etc.,” Ximenez said. “I don’t want to read the whole query before realizing it’s not something I can represent.”

“Do your research, like everyone says,” was the advice of Amy Bishop of Dystel, Goderich & Bourrett LLC. (Among the things she looks for are comparison titles.)

Q. What turns you off from a (potential) writer client?
A. Forgetting we’re in a business!

“If I get the feeling that you’re unreasonable,” Stender said. “What I want from you is someone smart and professional.”

“I really want your relationship with your agent to be a long-lasting one,” Bishop said.

“I have had to, unfortunately, drop a lot of clients because of their rejection of what I suggest. It’s like a job interview. You need to know what you’re willing to compromise about.”

Baldi agreed. “I’m not your best friend. It’s a business relationship.”

Q. What’s the current market zeitgeist?
A. Do you really want to ask?

“It’s scary,” Baldi said, claiming she loves fiction but finds it a hard sell. “My bread and butter is nonfiction.”

“The word that’s been rising lately is platform,” Ximenez said. “Generally, it’s social messages but also the bonafides of the writer, especially in YA (young adult literature), themes of social justice and deconstruction (a method of questioning and revising received ideas). There’s deconstructionist cycle in all genres about every 15 years.”

“A lot of fantasy in a non-Western setting,” Bishop noted. 

And then there was Stender’s take. “I really don’t pay any attention to the market currently. I’m fully aware of what people want, but I will not respond to that when I get the book. The U.S. is always decades behind everybody else. It’s not like I’m ignorant of (the current market). I just don’t care.”

***

And if that doesn’t explain everything, agent Patricia Nelson’s workshop, “Avoid Rookie Submission Mistakes,” dealt with some definite no-nos. 

·       Targeting the wrong audience. Think middle grade, young adult, or adult. Nothing is one size fits all! (See the next no-no also – where is it shelved?)

·       Wrong genre. Think – where would the book be shelves in a bookstore?

·       Wrong agent. Research sites such as Agent Query, Query Tracker, and Literary Rambles (for YA and MG client lists).

·       Wrong comp titles. These can include comparison titles that are too old, too famous, outliers of your genre, or just plain from the wrong genre. Comp titles preferably should have been published within the last 3-5 years, be well-known but not necessarily long-time New York Times best sellers. Comparisons, for instance, to the Harry Potter series simply can’t be taken seriously. Nelson’s rule of thumb: If it was made into a TV show or a movie, it’s probably too big.

Wordcraft -- What agents & editors hit the gong for

One of the most anticipated events at each year’s DFW Writers’ Conference in Hurst, Texas, is the Gong Show. That’s the chance for writers to submit sample query letters anonymously for feedback by literary agents. Each agent has a small gong at hand. As the mellow baritone of reader George “The Voice” Goldthwaite intones each entry, agents may strike their gongs at the point in the query where they would stop reading if it appeared in their inboxes. If queries elicit three gongs, as they usually do, the reading ends, and the agents explain what provoked them.

Last year, for the first time in the history of the conference gong show, a writer avoided gonging out. This year, two avoided the common fate, two writers who have taken past gong show lessons to heart, crafting their queries to avoid the pitfalls. Goldthwaite was able to read one query from start to finish with only two gongs. And one, one golden query, made it all the way without drawing the sound of even a single gong.

What worked? What didn’t?

“It was so different I had to hear how it ended,” was the consensus of agents about the no-gong query, for the story of an elderly gardener who finds her precious tomato plants uprooted by a vintage Bentley conjured through an alien transport system. In a world overpopulated by stories about paranormal beings, teenage angst, and magical objects, this was something new.

The other query to escape gonging out, although by a narrower margin, was a young adult historical fantasy set in China. And every agent on the panel who handles fantasy wanted it. The query letter “went into clichés occasionally, but it worked,” said agent Donald Maass. Eddie Schneider of JABberwocky Literary Agency said he struck his gong because of some lack of clarity in the query letter, not because of problems with the underlying story, “which sounds awesome. I would be delighted to take a look.”

That lack of clarity and descent into clichéd statements, in fact, were two of the most common problems agents cited. Even some queries that received the dreaded three gongs had fans among the agents. But in most cases, if the stories behind the queries didn’t sound as wonderful as the Chinese fantasy, a signal for writers to polish their queries, and possibly their manuscripts.

Other common complaints included flat characters, excessive back story, and lack of apparent conflict in the plot description.

And then there was the “seen too much of it” complaints. These included ghosts, demons and the afterlife; magical objects; “chosen one” protagonists; boarding schools for wizards or other paranormal beings; and anything to do with mermaids, which agents say they see too often or know to be already clogging the publishing pipeline. And to that list, add extraterrestrial beings. Unless, of course, they mess with a crochety gardener’s tomato patch.

In addition to Maass and Schneider, panel participants were Emily M. Keyes of Foreword Literary, Sarah Negovetich of Corvisiero Literary Agency, Laura Zats of Red Sofa Literary, and editor Amanda Rutter of Angry Robot Books, who says, no matter how her colleagues feel, she’s “still on board for vampires, werewolves and angels.”

(Next Monday -- more from DFW, including tips from agent Donald Maass’s pre-conference workshop based on his latest book, Writing 21^st Century Fiction.)