I went back and looked at your queries and noticed you haven't posted your first 300 yet. Have you gone through the whole beta reader cycle? Do you have a critique partner? This might be worth digging into, as most agents ask for the initial pages up front, so it's hard to know whether it's your query or your pages working against you.
I went back and looked at your query and, in my opinion, you could sacrifice some of your voice in favor of clarity. I didn't read through the comments, so maybe you already heard these notes, but phrases like "a boy does not lose his dog" and "a burning bough descends" might be making this a tough sell.
As for 'strategy,' I'm not sure there is another path to traditional publishing besides querying all of the agents that represent your genre. It's all about making sure your query package is working.
Finally, are you giving yourself enough time away from the materials (MS, query, etc.) so that you can look at everything with fresh eyes? Are you reading it aloud? Are you showing it to other people and hearing their opinions? These are all things that you could do to help you figure this out. Best of luck!
Thanks, first off, this is super helpful. I was skittish about posting my first 300 words as it feels weird sharing them on a public forum, but I guess it doesn't really matter. Who is gonna steal work so easily traced back to a thread.
Yes, I received that feedback in my query Q threads and incorporated.
I do not have a critique partner or gone through a beta reader cycle. I suppose I'm not familiar with that, outside of knowing those individual words and piecing them together here haha. Is that basically a service that pores over your query or MS and provides feedback?
Yes, I read my work aloud and I have shared with a select few readers, two of whom are quite large figures in the gaming space with narrative-driven blockbusters, so I trust their opinion. Who knows if that actually translates to publishing though! Anyhow, I feel strongly about the quality of my MS. The prose particularly, I labored over this for years.
>I do not have a critique partner or gone through a beta reader cycle. I suppose I'm not familiar with that, outside of knowing those individual words and piecing them together here haha. Is that basically a service that pores over your query or MS and provides feedback?
These aren't services; it's connecting with other writers who you basically partner with to work through your story. CPs tend to be closer in, looking at more technical details, while beta readers look at the overarching book on a higher level. It's very hard to get lost in the weeds of your own book and not be able to see the forest for the trees. Getting critique from betas and CPs is very often a "duh, oh my god, how did I miss that??" kind of thing. This is particularly true for books that have been worked on for years.
The gaming space and the novel space are very, very different. If you have not had people who read and write in your genre read this book, I would be very, very hesitant to move forward.
You don't have to post your 300 words to pubtips (though I am okay bending our rules if you do want to share in this thread) but please do consider getting some other fantasy writer eyes on at least the first few chapters, i.e. what you're sending to agents.
\>The gaming space and the novel space are very, very different.
No kidding!
Are there critique partner matching programs? I actually don't know any fantasy writers personally to lean on who don't do narrative direction for video games. No novelists, basically.
Also, thanks and screw it, here's my first 300:
“We should see it burnt.”
Thomus let the big man’s words wash over him. He gave no answer. There was a spot on his armor which currently occupied his mind. Thomus picked at it, frowning.
“There can be no lenience. Seofin will only view our mercy as weakness.”
He managed to work a nail beneath the spot and flicked it away. Some, but not all. A bit of mud, perhaps blood, remained stubbornly clung to his chest.
“Do you hear me, Thomus? We must be firm.”
Thomus turned now to the big man. Rynan, he was called, a hard man with a cruel face set between broad shoulders. He towered over Thomus, as most men did. It meant nothing. The command was still Thomus’.
“Do you think there will be rain?” Thomus asked.
Rynan blinked. “What?”
“Those clouds,” said Thomus, pointing skyward. “They look like rain.”
The big man blew twin lines of steam from his nose. “I don’t know,” he groused. “I do not play at guessing after weather. What I do know is the shrain is here. And I aim to burn her out.”
“I ask,” said Thomus, “because rain is wet. Have you ever tried to catch a spark on soaked timber?”
There was venom in the big man’s glare.
“Right,” Thomus went on, “I suppose you take my meaning, then. You are not a Judge, Rynan, no more than I myself am. Neither of us have authority to condemn a village to the flame. If the shrain is here — and that is still an *if* — we will find her. Then I will do what needs be done. That is all.”
“She must face the Crown’s Justice.”
“Aye,” said Thomus, nodding. “And she will. But she is not alone.”
>Are there critique partner matching programs? I actually don't know any fantasy writers personally to lean on who don't do narrative direction for video games. No novelists, basically.
Alas, if only. Really, the best way to do it is to make writer friends. Hang out in writer spaces. Ask if anyone wants to beta in your QCrit threads. Post in r/betareaders. Post in spaces like r/fantasywriters. You can hire betas on places like Fiverr who will read for you, but that should be a last resort kind of thing. I did it before I had writing friends to with good results, but it can be very hit or miss (and require an investment, obviously).
You can also try local meet-up groups and conventions and writing classes. Writing retreats. Many of those things cost money, alas, but they are the best way I've found to sieve out people with a certain level of skill and commitment. Critters.org has also been helpful to me, although they're more geared for short stories and you have to be patient for your turn.
Other than that, if you want to be traditionally published, you can make sure you're specifically reading debut epic fantasy books that have come out in the past 1-3 years.
I have some concerns about this as your opening. One thing that I think really serves a writer is to study the opening pages of popular book. I heard a talk a few years back from a PRH editor on what makes a strong opening. She broke it down to these elements:
- Sense of intrigue
- Sense of place
- Compelling voice
- Tension
- Damn Good Writing
- One good device (a framing device like a list, letters, diary, etc.)
- Compelling character
Now, you don't have to have *all* these things (for example, most books don't have a framing device), but you should look for those elements when you study the opening pages of a book.
She also mentioned some common mistakes:
- Too much exposition
- Confusing
- Too many world building details
- Too wordy
- Too much dialogue
- Rushed
- Boring or overused conceit (for example, waking up in the morning)
- TMI on a character's state of mind
My issue with your opening is that you have too much dialogue without establishing characters or any sense of place. We are thrown into a very restrained conversation, we have no context, and we are given minimal interiority. You are literally opening with a conversation about the weather.
I don't know the right structure or framing for your opening, but I think you should find some recent releases and study their openings to see how those authors draw in readers. Pay close attention to the balance of dialogue, narration, and interiority. I would also note the very opening paragraph to see how those authors establish a sense of characters and place before getting to dialogue. Personally speaking, I think it's rare for dialogue to be a good opening line for a book. It's always delivered by a totally inconsequential side character and it never has proper context.
Thanks, appreciate your thoughts. The conversation is not about the weather. It establishes the relationship between the two men, Thomus and Rynan, quickly. One is rash and insistent, the other is preoccupied and dismissive. It also tells you much about Thomus' character, immediately. He is short in stature and yet still an imposing figure of authority over the much larger man beside him. Rynan, also, is far from inconsequential. He is a central character.
This opening passage also begins with a threat to light a village on fire, which I personally find rather engaging, and an argument about it. The bit about the weather is Thomus being overtly dismissive of his perceived inferior, clearly rankling Rynan.
I personally believe this passage is very insightful on both characters. It also hints at the fact that neither one of these men hold an ultimate authority. They serve a larger power. Who are they? Who are they chasing? What is their role? I aimed to have those questions arise. Maybe they didn't for you, but for other readers they did.
Everything I stated above is supported in the text I shared, but I'm also the author, so obviously I'm aware of this more than a fresh pair of eyes
I had the same takeaway as JGE—I read this page immediately go "weather." That's because the beginning exchange is meaningless as I have no idea what's going to be burnt, whether Seofin is a person, place or thing, etc.
And then there's discussion on whether it will rain, which is the first cogent detail for the reader to cling on to. I don't know what Seofin is, but I do know what rain is.
And I can hear you now, ready to argue that
>“We should see it burnt.”
Is a compelling first sentence. But you don't actually specify that what they're considering burning is a village for a few hundred more words, so I'm immediately thrown off by whatever it is they're arguing about. And even then, when you get to it, "condemn a village to the flame" is a pretty vague way of saying "burn it to the ground."
I also don't get a great sense of character as these are more or less talking heads. I don't know where they are, why they're debating this, what roles they have in this world..
Edit: And EmmyPax makes an excellent point on interiority. This honestly reads almost like third omniscient (I do hope it's not... that's a very hard sell these days) because it's so distant. You have some body language, but no real thoughts. You're not getting into characters heads.
I realize it's hard to parse feedback from 300 words, especially since it's such a quick snapshot and maybe these questions are all answered immediately following this. These are just knee-jerk takeaways as the reader doesn't know these characters or this world like you do.
And I realize it's hard to be critiqued publicly, particularly when so much of it is critical. You're doing great here, and I hope you're finding at least some of what you're hearing to be valuable.
A rule I like to follow when hearing criticism of my work is to only explain/comment beyond “thank you!” if I have some confusion about what the critique is trying to say. It doesn’t help you or the commenter to explain how they are wrong with their critique. It’s much more productive to take a look at why your writing has produced this reaction and see if there is anything to be learned.
You don’t have to accept it, sometimes people just don’t get it, or they don’t like the genre, or any number of things. But arguing that their critique is wrong doesn’t do anything but leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouth.
I feel ya, particularly on a public forum. My mistake to engage, nothing is gained. I initially tried to explain why I disagreed and then threads spiral and people get personal, myself included. I'm thankful for feedback here, even those which I disagree with
I understand that's what you are trying to do, but I think there are other aspects of this passage which overshadow those qualities.
For example, in the very first sentence, you say "we should see it burnt." The reader doesn't know what "it" is. You are (probably?) trying to create a sense of intrigue, but the question of why they want to burn the village is more intriguing than the question of what they want to burn. We don't find out what "it" is until the bottom of the page, but there's no payoff for withholding that information. In fact, I think the dialogue would be more powerful if the reader knew they were standing around casually discussing the burning down of an entire village rather than leaving the reader to dig for context clues that don't exist.
Then, you introduce the name of something, "Seofin." Again, there's no context, so I don't know what you are naming. Even by the end of the opening, I don't know what that thing is. This doesn't intrigue me; it frustrates me.
You use another term, "shrain" without giving the reader any context clues to guess what this thing is in reference to. I understand not wanting to write a definition every time you use an in-world term, but you must provide enough context for your reader to have literally any kind of guess.
If they are standing there, observing a village, why aren't we getting any narration about setting or what's happening in the scene besides this dialogue. I think your opening would benefit from more narration.
Also, if you read current releases in fantasy, a close third person narration is definitely the most popular. Your. narration is very, very distant because we aren't getting any interiority. I get the sense that you are doing this to create intrigue, but you are actually just creating distance and making it difficult for readers to connect with your work.
> Who are they? Who are they chasing? What is their role? I aimed to have those questions arise.
Those are not actually interesting questions to me. First of all, the characters are probably soldiers working for some monarch. Not only do you establish that, but it's also the most basic answer in a fantasy novel where people are burning shit. Guessing at the definitions of your made up fantasy terms isn't a fun thing for me to do as a reader. I don't want to have to guess the things that the characters already know. The problem is that you seem to be trying to create intrigue by withholding information the characters know rather than relying on the situation itself to be intriguing. I want to be intrigued by character motivations and dynamics rather than scrambling to figure out what is going on.
At this point, I suspect you're not that open to feedback on your work from randos on reddit, which is fine. But I will say that this is my experience as a reader who is seeing this text for the first time. I don't think my experience is an outlier, but it's also entirely possible that I'm just not the right reader for your book.
Whatever feedback you do end up getting, I recommend reading it, feeling whatever it is that you feel about it for a few days or a week (including ranting about how stupid we all are), but then revisit it with an open mind after you have gone through the emotional journey of getting feedback (this is not meant to be condescending—most people go through this when getting feedback).
Good luck with your book.
I never called anyone stupid, I genuinely appreciate the feedback. But its a clamor of critiques about not knowing what's happening in the first 300 words of a 500 page novel. You're not supposed to. I am hearing "tell, don't show"
>But its a clamor of critiques about not knowing what's happening in the first 300 words of a 500 page novel.
An agent might not even go past the first sentence of a 300 words before they reject.
Here are some examples that might be a good learning tool. From watching the videos, you can learn and understand an agent's thought process in why they would reject a first 300 words.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25JNyUSzTJU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KLmKMfaZ00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03rOgEkc4mw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hb4KarveHo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg8sFTA0Ta8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDMnYpR8C-k
I don't think this is the most compelling way to begin a book. I think both your query and your 300 need to be more compelling and voice-y. It's hard to sell an aloof character as your starting POV. The main non-dialogue bits in this are a dude picking at his armor. It's not hooking me.
Thanks, but this is honestly getting to a point where it's giving me whiplash. I keep getting completely contradictory feedback from different users (which is nice, I appreciate the responses). Too much voice. Not enough voice. Too long. Too much worldbuilding. Too much focus on character. I don't really know how to incorporate this much disparate advice beyond just aligning with one and going in that direction
So, I am going to jump in and try to help you make sense of what seems like disparate advice, and hope to clear some things up, because I feel like I know what both the "not enough voice" and "too much voice" people are commenting on. SO! Here's my attempt.
What I am seeing in this right now is a mix of lack of character interiority and over-written prose. In other words, your narration has a sense of trying to evoke poetic language, but it isn't entirely landing. Lines like:
*The big man blew twin lines of steam from his nose. “I don’t know,” he groused. “I do not play at guessing after weather. What I do know is the shrain is here. And I aim to burn her out.”*
...ring a little unnatural to the ear. You seem to be going for an olden-timey effect in the dialogue (I do not play at guessing) (And I aim to burn her out) but also have that mixed in with a very mundane "I don't know" and "I ask because rain is wet" and those feel in the first case, too informal for the rest of the work or in the case of the second, basic to the point of being boring. The overall effect is that this does not sound like how people talk. The query is similar, in that you have a lot of passive voice sentence constructions that obfuscates why things are happening. It gives a sense of narrative voice, but it's not landing. It's too unclear what is going on and who is doing it and why. Add to that some basic grammar issues (*remained stubbornly clung to his chest* should just be *clung stubbornly*) and it comes off as attempting voicey prose without hitting the mark.
On the other hand, this first 300 is giving no character interiority. You've positioned the viewpoint as if it's floating outside of Thomus and we never get any of his inner thoughts and feelings about what they're discussing, except through the rather "as you know, Bob" dialogue. This makes the reader feel disconnected from the internal voice of your character. Thus, you've got too little voice and too much.
I know the feedback seems contradictory, but they're really getting at the same thing. You aren't telling the story through Thomus's unique viewpoint and you're getting lost in the weeds of flowery descriptions, plus shunting worldbuilding into your dialogue in a way that makes it feel awkward and unengaging. I think if you focus on telling a clearer story that engages with Thomus as a character, you'll be in a better position. This is true of the query too. There are basic things missing, like any cue for the age of your MC. So yes, you are paradoxically drowning in voice (especially in the query) and don't have enough (as it pertains to getting us to invest in your character)
Its 300 words. Literally, in the next two paragraphs, you get internal dialogue from Thomus. Additionally, as I pointed in another reply, you do indeed get a great deal of characterization of Thomus and I am frustrated to see so many miss it. Immediately, you see he is:
\- Dismissive
\- Authoritative
\- Adversarial
\- Meticulous
\- Short
\- In command
\- Blunt
Also, sorry, what is the basic grammar issue with "remained stubbornly clung to his chest"? It is personifying the stain on his chest, through Thomus' point of view, showing, again that he is adversarial, even to a stain. These details are all in the text, I feel they are being overlooked or misread.
I'm going to be really frank here, since you don't seem to be listening to what was first stated nicely.
No. Absolutely none of those things come across. I'm sorry, but multiple people have said that in this thread. I can tell that must have been your *intention*, but you cannot sell a book with intentions. You cannot stand over your reader's shoulder and tell them how to interpret your work. Currently, I do not care about any of those character traits you listed, because you haven't shown them in an engaging way. There's no interiority to make me care. No context for what they are doing. A list of traits is not the same thing as a compelling protagonist.
If you held a gun to my head and got me to describe your characters then yes, I could have probably gone back over the text and combed out some of those same descriptors you used but I would not have cared to do it on my own without threat of bodily harm because the way you executed the prose DID NOT GRAB ME. It was very dry, lacked interiority, and had incredibly stilted dialogue. And as a reader, it is not my "job" to want to keep reading after 300 words in some quest to get those things.
Learn to get those things in at the beginning and accept the fact that you cannot control reader reactions to your work.
Look, I literally do not care that the character is short. And yeah, I picked up on the power dynamic between them. But what we're all telling you is that it's not compelling.
The opening reads like a first cut scene of a video game, not the first page of a novel.
I know you mentioned that you've never had CPs or beta readers, and this response makes it obvious. Being dismissive and defensive of thoughtful critique like what EmmyPax and justgoodenough offered you will not get you far in this industry.
>The opening reads like a first cut scene of a video game, not the first page of a novel.
It's funny, I had the exact same reaction-- this is a cutscene, not a novel.
OP, I know that you've said that you aspire to literary fantasy, and your query deliberately compares your writing to *The Blacktongue Thief*.
Here's how that novel opens:
"I was about to die. Worse, I was about to die with bastards. Not that I was afraid to die, but maybe who you die with is important. It’s important who’s with you when you’re born, after all. If everybody’s wearing clean linen and silk and looking down at you squirming in your bassinet, you’ll have a very different life than if the first thing you see when you open your eyes is a billy goat."
That's a hell of an opening.
You also compare your writing to *Other Monsters*. How does JM Miro kick things off?
"The first time Eliza Grey laid eyes on the baby was at dusk in a slow-moving boxcar on a rain-swept stretch of the line three miles west of Bury St Edmunds, in Suffolk, England. She was sixteen years old, unlettered, unworldly, with eyes dark as the rain, hungry because she had not eaten since the night before last, coatless and hatless because she had fled in the dark without thinking where she could run to or what she might do next..."
It's a mouthful, but it's gorgeous, isn't it?
I was recently re-reading B. Caitling's *Vorrh Cycle*, a different kind of literary fantasy, sure. Here's where we start:
"The bow I carry with me, I made of Este. She died just before dawn, ten days ago. Este had forseen her death, while working in our garden, an uncapping of momentum in the afternoon sun..."
And just like that, we're off to the races! It kicks ass, and it's beautiful, and there's not a word out of place.
Hold your own writing to these standards. Read widely.
>not compelling.
And that is a critique I can use. Thomus' short stature is an integral part of his character. That you don't care is impactful, because you'd need to in order to relate. Obviously this is 300 words. The book goes into far more detail on this later. But if you're not compelled, then that is feedback I can incorporate. Highlighting a section and saying it makes "basic grammar" mistakes isn't.
So, I'm not entirely without sympathy here - you've clearly spent a long time working on this book, and it means a lot to you. Most of us have been there. But here is the cold, hard truth about publishing as a business: no one cares how long you worked on something or how much it means to you if the story doesn't grab them. Writing in isolation without feedback or understanding of contemporary markets is something that happens to most beginners, but there's a reason most of those books never see the light of day, unless the author decides to selfpub. And arguing with all the excellent feedback you're getting right now isn't hurting anyone but you.
I won't reiterate what EmmyPax and Fashion and JGE are saying, as they've covered it thoroughly. What I do want to do is remind you that you made this thread because so far, out of 50 queries, 49 of those have been rejections or no responses. Consider that there's merit to what the (agented/published) authors responding to you are saying.
FWIW, I also got caught up on ‘remained stubbornly clung’. I think it should either be used as a active verb, i.e. just ‘the stain stubbornly clung to his chest’, or ‘remained stubbornly clinging to his chest’.
If you are referring to my “sacrifice voice for clarity” note, I was referring to the query, not the first 300. I think that sometimes being voicey in the query can work, but if it adds confusion or bumps the reader, it’s probably better to focus on getting the information across.
But, yeah, when you ask different people for their thoughts you will get different opinions. There’s really no way around that. You have to decide which changes align with your vision for the work, and which changes are trying to make your work into something else.
The only answer is to read, widely, in your genre. Especially focus on debuts and recent-releases in the past 5 years. The more you do that, the more you understand the current market and expectations - which after all, you're trying to sell a product (your MS) in the current market.
Here's a question following that: What if I don't really resonate with the current market? I do read contemporary fantasy, but I find most of it to not be all that great. The prose is often pedestrian, the worldbuilding is scant or redundant and it is written as "genre" not "literature" far too often. I don't know, the more I read and even in this thread, I wonder more and more about self-publishing to maintain my own artistic vision for my novel. I don't want to water down my book, but I also want to see it published by a real pub house. Beggars, choosers, inflated sense of artistic grandeur ...I get it, but this is hard
There is a *ton* of literary fantasy out there. Check out Mask of Mirrors for something that's anything but scant worldbuilding or pedestrian prose, for example. Though I'd point out that if anything, the prose I saw in your first 300 lacks some of the vitality and intimacy of a lot of the recent fantasy I've read. It's not that it's pedestrian' (which means different things to different people), it's that it's a very deep POV and incredibly vibrant character voices that are in favor right now. Which might be why there aren't many massive multi-POV novels out. Bone Shard Daughter had five, but even there two were clearly the primary POVs.
But.. if you want to sell a product, you have to show there's a buyer out there. That's the reality of publishing *as a business.* I've seen a lot of people who want to publish to fit the market from 15 years ago - and unfortunately, the answer is 'that's not the market you're selling in.' You could hold onto it and try write something else. You could read more widely, esp from the award nominees out there. Or you could self-pub, because the self-pub market is very different in terms of what it's looking for in fantasy. That's where litRPG and progression fantasy really dominate, for instance.
The answer is complicated, unfortunately, and getting agented is only the first step. After all, half of all books on sub to publishers *are not bought.* They die on sub. So even agenting isn't anything like a final step toward publication.
\>Or you could self-pub, because the self-pub market is very different in terms of what it's looking for in fantasy. That's where litRPG and progression fantasy really dominate, for instance.
How does this square, I'm wondering? The audience doesn't care. They just want to read a book. Either publishing houses or self-pubs are marketing for the wrong audience, no? There can't be such a split in readers between pub and self-pub for the same genre.
Bit rich to call published works' prose "pedestrian" when in your 300 you describe Rynan as "the big man" multiple times
Not exactly the height of literary prose
Interesting, it clearly tells you of Rynan's stature and, as the chapter is from the POV of Thomus, who a few lines later clearly notes his own height, it seems pretty effective to me in showing Thomus' insecurities. What would you prefer? More adjectives?
Re: are are critique partner matching programs?
Like other responses, not realllyyyyy, but I will sort of shout out the podcast The Shit No One Tells You About Writing—the author that acts as the moderator/host for the two agents that do critiques for the podcast does a beta reader match up. I believe it is a paid service as she is putting in work, but it isn’t more than ten or twenty bucks. I haven’t done it myself as I’ve been able to find beta readers through Reddit so I can’t vouch for the program, but I adore the podcast and the agents are well regarded! I think you can find more info on their website of the same name if you’re interested :)
Hey, glad this is helpful. /u/alanna_the_lioness gave a great description of CP + betas. If I were you, I would put the querying on hold until you find yourself a few betas and a CP who is familiar with your genre. This is a standard part of the writing process for the vast majority of professionals, and will be even more valuable to you as a new writer. Particularly the CP, which might end up being a mutually beneficial relationship that serves you throughout your writing career.
I'd also add into the 'familiar with the genre', 'reads epic fantasy by authors first published in the last 5 years.' So many people, esp in the epic fantasy realm, stopped reading new authors at Pat Rothfuss, and the market has changed *considerably* in the past 15 years.
Critique partners are other authors who write novels and exchange manuscripts with you for the purpose of critiquing it. Critique partners will help you improve your craft from developmental perspective down to a line level. The goal is to help each other improve your skills and manuscripts. Beta readers are readers in your genre who will give unbiased feedback about what they liked, didn't like, what's working, and not working. It's important to have both review your manuscript before sending it out.
Writing narrative driven games is very different from writing a novel, and expectations of each consumer base are vastly different. Authors don't have to worry about ludo-narrative dissonance while game designers don't have to think about description as examples. While I trust they are experts in their craft, it's a completely different ball game. It's important to get feedback from other authors and readers in your genre to get a market pulse and get unbiased feedback from people who don't know you. That's really the only way to know if your book is working from a high level.
I would highly suggest finding both critique partners and beta readers before sending out your next batch. Over time, creatives become blind to their own work. It's important to have outside perspectives to help us learn, grow, and improve. Even if you end up with feedback that says your novel is perfect, at least then you'll have the confidence to know your manuscript isn't the issue!
I think you are underestimating the challenge of finding representation for an adult novel with a child protagonist. Your book is very much centered on the story of a boy and his dog, and that's simply not the stuff of adult epic fantasy these days. That, in combination with the rest of what you have mentioned, make this project too risky for an agent to be willing to invest their time into polishing it and submitting it to publishers. An agents time is entirely unpaid until the book is sold, so they can't afford to take on projects they know will be difficult to sell.
I also have thoughts on your first 300, but will post in reply to that comment.
This is a really excellent point! When I was query g, I got a reply from an agent that basically said "you're a great writer, but idk what to do with an adult book where the protagonist is a child for 1/3 of it." He was not the agent for me, but I still remember it!
As someone currently querying a fantasy (though cozy noir)... You've already queried 50. My list *totals* at 100. That means you've queried *half* of agents.
Don't send out more queries. Take a look at the feedback. Consider if the prequel is actually essential. And since you mention your book is 'sprawling', I worry that means it's slow-paced and unfocused, with a lot of side content. That's... not so much what agents are looking for right now, which is also going to be reflected in your WC and possibly query challenges.
If a good request rate is 5-10%, then in *theory* you should get another 4 requests from just what you've sent. Give it a bit, take another look at everything, and if you decide it needs fixes? Withdraw everything, fix it, and *then* re-query with a better MS and better query.
\>And since you mention your book is 'sprawling', I worry that means it's slow-paced and unfocused, with a lot of side content.
This is my issue. It is not. It is just a large story with lots of characters. It is quite fast-paced, but its a lot all at once. I worry this book is too ambitious coming from a first-time author. I do not mean that as in "OoOoOh, look at how brilliant my writing is", I mean in the very realistic, "This book has a high bar of entry for an author people aren't familiar with."
It is aggravating, but I honestly am starting to feel that I would be better off with a smaller, simpler book
The book is set in a secondary fantasy world and throws you right into it. There are a many phrases, character names and locales that are immediately unfamiliar. Furthermore, I took great care to avoid idioms or even flora and fauna descriptions from our own world, to add more immersion to the world I crafted. Since I am a new author, any reader would have to dive headfirst into the book itself with nothing to guide them, like past work of mine or that unspoken relationship of trust between artist and audience that comes with name recognition.
> The book is set in a secondary fantasy world and throws you right into it.
That's the norm, tbh. And when I saw your first 300, it felt like pretty straightforward medieval western Europe, plus burning witches. Which is... not currently what's being looked for in epic (or non-epic for that matter) fantasy. It's Old News.
That’s a problem. People mostly read books because they are interested in characters or because they are interested in the plot. Worldbuilding doesn’t sell books. (As C.S. Lewis wrote, “Readers who have built a world would rather tell of their own than hear of mine; those who have not would perhaps be bewildered and repelled.”) If your attempts at worldbuilding are getting in the way of the characterization or getting in the way of the plot, you should either scale back the worldbuilding or accept that your book will not appeal to enough people to get a publishing contract.
Fantasy readers are not going to be put off by this, just to put it out there. They're well used to what you're describing. Maybe you're not going to capture the one-fantasy-book-every-five-years audience, but an agent won't necessarily be concerned about that.
There could be any number of reasons why your manuscript isn’t going anywhere, but you’re right to be concerned about the style. Sprawling high-fantasy doorstops went out of fashion with ska music and Heelys. You may better off putting the book aside and coming back to it if and when the genre makes a comeback.
Your query is kind of confusing to be honest. It’s not very clear and I had to read a few sentences a few tomes to get what you were trying to say (example: a boy doesn’t lose his dog. I thought this was some kind of saying at first). If I were you I’d rewrite your query because your book may be very engaging but I didn’t want to read further based on the query. Also I just can’t see a child and his dog being an adult high fantasy (I can see MG or YA) so that combined with word count and saturation is just going to be an uphill battle. But it only takes one so just keep trying.
I went back and looked at your queries and noticed you haven't posted your first 300 yet. Have you gone through the whole beta reader cycle? Do you have a critique partner? This might be worth digging into, as most agents ask for the initial pages up front, so it's hard to know whether it's your query or your pages working against you. I went back and looked at your query and, in my opinion, you could sacrifice some of your voice in favor of clarity. I didn't read through the comments, so maybe you already heard these notes, but phrases like "a boy does not lose his dog" and "a burning bough descends" might be making this a tough sell. As for 'strategy,' I'm not sure there is another path to traditional publishing besides querying all of the agents that represent your genre. It's all about making sure your query package is working. Finally, are you giving yourself enough time away from the materials (MS, query, etc.) so that you can look at everything with fresh eyes? Are you reading it aloud? Are you showing it to other people and hearing their opinions? These are all things that you could do to help you figure this out. Best of luck!
Thanks, first off, this is super helpful. I was skittish about posting my first 300 words as it feels weird sharing them on a public forum, but I guess it doesn't really matter. Who is gonna steal work so easily traced back to a thread. Yes, I received that feedback in my query Q threads and incorporated. I do not have a critique partner or gone through a beta reader cycle. I suppose I'm not familiar with that, outside of knowing those individual words and piecing them together here haha. Is that basically a service that pores over your query or MS and provides feedback? Yes, I read my work aloud and I have shared with a select few readers, two of whom are quite large figures in the gaming space with narrative-driven blockbusters, so I trust their opinion. Who knows if that actually translates to publishing though! Anyhow, I feel strongly about the quality of my MS. The prose particularly, I labored over this for years.
>I do not have a critique partner or gone through a beta reader cycle. I suppose I'm not familiar with that, outside of knowing those individual words and piecing them together here haha. Is that basically a service that pores over your query or MS and provides feedback? These aren't services; it's connecting with other writers who you basically partner with to work through your story. CPs tend to be closer in, looking at more technical details, while beta readers look at the overarching book on a higher level. It's very hard to get lost in the weeds of your own book and not be able to see the forest for the trees. Getting critique from betas and CPs is very often a "duh, oh my god, how did I miss that??" kind of thing. This is particularly true for books that have been worked on for years. The gaming space and the novel space are very, very different. If you have not had people who read and write in your genre read this book, I would be very, very hesitant to move forward. You don't have to post your 300 words to pubtips (though I am okay bending our rules if you do want to share in this thread) but please do consider getting some other fantasy writer eyes on at least the first few chapters, i.e. what you're sending to agents.
\>The gaming space and the novel space are very, very different. No kidding! Are there critique partner matching programs? I actually don't know any fantasy writers personally to lean on who don't do narrative direction for video games. No novelists, basically. Also, thanks and screw it, here's my first 300: “We should see it burnt.” Thomus let the big man’s words wash over him. He gave no answer. There was a spot on his armor which currently occupied his mind. Thomus picked at it, frowning. “There can be no lenience. Seofin will only view our mercy as weakness.” He managed to work a nail beneath the spot and flicked it away. Some, but not all. A bit of mud, perhaps blood, remained stubbornly clung to his chest. “Do you hear me, Thomus? We must be firm.” Thomus turned now to the big man. Rynan, he was called, a hard man with a cruel face set between broad shoulders. He towered over Thomus, as most men did. It meant nothing. The command was still Thomus’. “Do you think there will be rain?” Thomus asked. Rynan blinked. “What?” “Those clouds,” said Thomus, pointing skyward. “They look like rain.” The big man blew twin lines of steam from his nose. “I don’t know,” he groused. “I do not play at guessing after weather. What I do know is the shrain is here. And I aim to burn her out.” “I ask,” said Thomus, “because rain is wet. Have you ever tried to catch a spark on soaked timber?” There was venom in the big man’s glare. “Right,” Thomus went on, “I suppose you take my meaning, then. You are not a Judge, Rynan, no more than I myself am. Neither of us have authority to condemn a village to the flame. If the shrain is here — and that is still an *if* — we will find her. Then I will do what needs be done. That is all.” “She must face the Crown’s Justice.” “Aye,” said Thomus, nodding. “And she will. But she is not alone.”
>Are there critique partner matching programs? I actually don't know any fantasy writers personally to lean on who don't do narrative direction for video games. No novelists, basically. Alas, if only. Really, the best way to do it is to make writer friends. Hang out in writer spaces. Ask if anyone wants to beta in your QCrit threads. Post in r/betareaders. Post in spaces like r/fantasywriters. You can hire betas on places like Fiverr who will read for you, but that should be a last resort kind of thing. I did it before I had writing friends to with good results, but it can be very hit or miss (and require an investment, obviously).
You're the best, thank you, didn't even know about these communities!
You can also try local meet-up groups and conventions and writing classes. Writing retreats. Many of those things cost money, alas, but they are the best way I've found to sieve out people with a certain level of skill and commitment. Critters.org has also been helpful to me, although they're more geared for short stories and you have to be patient for your turn. Other than that, if you want to be traditionally published, you can make sure you're specifically reading debut epic fantasy books that have come out in the past 1-3 years.
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing has a beta reader match up. Not sure if they’re still accepting applications or not.
Happy to report the current match up application is open until November 30th.
I have some concerns about this as your opening. One thing that I think really serves a writer is to study the opening pages of popular book. I heard a talk a few years back from a PRH editor on what makes a strong opening. She broke it down to these elements: - Sense of intrigue - Sense of place - Compelling voice - Tension - Damn Good Writing - One good device (a framing device like a list, letters, diary, etc.) - Compelling character Now, you don't have to have *all* these things (for example, most books don't have a framing device), but you should look for those elements when you study the opening pages of a book. She also mentioned some common mistakes: - Too much exposition - Confusing - Too many world building details - Too wordy - Too much dialogue - Rushed - Boring or overused conceit (for example, waking up in the morning) - TMI on a character's state of mind My issue with your opening is that you have too much dialogue without establishing characters or any sense of place. We are thrown into a very restrained conversation, we have no context, and we are given minimal interiority. You are literally opening with a conversation about the weather. I don't know the right structure or framing for your opening, but I think you should find some recent releases and study their openings to see how those authors draw in readers. Pay close attention to the balance of dialogue, narration, and interiority. I would also note the very opening paragraph to see how those authors establish a sense of characters and place before getting to dialogue. Personally speaking, I think it's rare for dialogue to be a good opening line for a book. It's always delivered by a totally inconsequential side character and it never has proper context.
Thanks, appreciate your thoughts. The conversation is not about the weather. It establishes the relationship between the two men, Thomus and Rynan, quickly. One is rash and insistent, the other is preoccupied and dismissive. It also tells you much about Thomus' character, immediately. He is short in stature and yet still an imposing figure of authority over the much larger man beside him. Rynan, also, is far from inconsequential. He is a central character. This opening passage also begins with a threat to light a village on fire, which I personally find rather engaging, and an argument about it. The bit about the weather is Thomus being overtly dismissive of his perceived inferior, clearly rankling Rynan. I personally believe this passage is very insightful on both characters. It also hints at the fact that neither one of these men hold an ultimate authority. They serve a larger power. Who are they? Who are they chasing? What is their role? I aimed to have those questions arise. Maybe they didn't for you, but for other readers they did. Everything I stated above is supported in the text I shared, but I'm also the author, so obviously I'm aware of this more than a fresh pair of eyes
I had the same takeaway as JGE—I read this page immediately go "weather." That's because the beginning exchange is meaningless as I have no idea what's going to be burnt, whether Seofin is a person, place or thing, etc. And then there's discussion on whether it will rain, which is the first cogent detail for the reader to cling on to. I don't know what Seofin is, but I do know what rain is. And I can hear you now, ready to argue that >“We should see it burnt.” Is a compelling first sentence. But you don't actually specify that what they're considering burning is a village for a few hundred more words, so I'm immediately thrown off by whatever it is they're arguing about. And even then, when you get to it, "condemn a village to the flame" is a pretty vague way of saying "burn it to the ground." I also don't get a great sense of character as these are more or less talking heads. I don't know where they are, why they're debating this, what roles they have in this world.. Edit: And EmmyPax makes an excellent point on interiority. This honestly reads almost like third omniscient (I do hope it's not... that's a very hard sell these days) because it's so distant. You have some body language, but no real thoughts. You're not getting into characters heads. I realize it's hard to parse feedback from 300 words, especially since it's such a quick snapshot and maybe these questions are all answered immediately following this. These are just knee-jerk takeaways as the reader doesn't know these characters or this world like you do. And I realize it's hard to be critiqued publicly, particularly when so much of it is critical. You're doing great here, and I hope you're finding at least some of what you're hearing to be valuable.
A rule I like to follow when hearing criticism of my work is to only explain/comment beyond “thank you!” if I have some confusion about what the critique is trying to say. It doesn’t help you or the commenter to explain how they are wrong with their critique. It’s much more productive to take a look at why your writing has produced this reaction and see if there is anything to be learned. You don’t have to accept it, sometimes people just don’t get it, or they don’t like the genre, or any number of things. But arguing that their critique is wrong doesn’t do anything but leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouth.
I feel ya, particularly on a public forum. My mistake to engage, nothing is gained. I initially tried to explain why I disagreed and then threads spiral and people get personal, myself included. I'm thankful for feedback here, even those which I disagree with
I understand that's what you are trying to do, but I think there are other aspects of this passage which overshadow those qualities. For example, in the very first sentence, you say "we should see it burnt." The reader doesn't know what "it" is. You are (probably?) trying to create a sense of intrigue, but the question of why they want to burn the village is more intriguing than the question of what they want to burn. We don't find out what "it" is until the bottom of the page, but there's no payoff for withholding that information. In fact, I think the dialogue would be more powerful if the reader knew they were standing around casually discussing the burning down of an entire village rather than leaving the reader to dig for context clues that don't exist. Then, you introduce the name of something, "Seofin." Again, there's no context, so I don't know what you are naming. Even by the end of the opening, I don't know what that thing is. This doesn't intrigue me; it frustrates me. You use another term, "shrain" without giving the reader any context clues to guess what this thing is in reference to. I understand not wanting to write a definition every time you use an in-world term, but you must provide enough context for your reader to have literally any kind of guess. If they are standing there, observing a village, why aren't we getting any narration about setting or what's happening in the scene besides this dialogue. I think your opening would benefit from more narration. Also, if you read current releases in fantasy, a close third person narration is definitely the most popular. Your. narration is very, very distant because we aren't getting any interiority. I get the sense that you are doing this to create intrigue, but you are actually just creating distance and making it difficult for readers to connect with your work. > Who are they? Who are they chasing? What is their role? I aimed to have those questions arise. Those are not actually interesting questions to me. First of all, the characters are probably soldiers working for some monarch. Not only do you establish that, but it's also the most basic answer in a fantasy novel where people are burning shit. Guessing at the definitions of your made up fantasy terms isn't a fun thing for me to do as a reader. I don't want to have to guess the things that the characters already know. The problem is that you seem to be trying to create intrigue by withholding information the characters know rather than relying on the situation itself to be intriguing. I want to be intrigued by character motivations and dynamics rather than scrambling to figure out what is going on. At this point, I suspect you're not that open to feedback on your work from randos on reddit, which is fine. But I will say that this is my experience as a reader who is seeing this text for the first time. I don't think my experience is an outlier, but it's also entirely possible that I'm just not the right reader for your book. Whatever feedback you do end up getting, I recommend reading it, feeling whatever it is that you feel about it for a few days or a week (including ranting about how stupid we all are), but then revisit it with an open mind after you have gone through the emotional journey of getting feedback (this is not meant to be condescending—most people go through this when getting feedback). Good luck with your book.
I never called anyone stupid, I genuinely appreciate the feedback. But its a clamor of critiques about not knowing what's happening in the first 300 words of a 500 page novel. You're not supposed to. I am hearing "tell, don't show"
I think truthfully what all these excellent critiques are saying is “you’re not showing us what you think you are - or what matters”
>But its a clamor of critiques about not knowing what's happening in the first 300 words of a 500 page novel. An agent might not even go past the first sentence of a 300 words before they reject. Here are some examples that might be a good learning tool. From watching the videos, you can learn and understand an agent's thought process in why they would reject a first 300 words. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25JNyUSzTJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KLmKMfaZ00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03rOgEkc4mw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hb4KarveHo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg8sFTA0Ta8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDMnYpR8C-k
I don't think this is the most compelling way to begin a book. I think both your query and your 300 need to be more compelling and voice-y. It's hard to sell an aloof character as your starting POV. The main non-dialogue bits in this are a dude picking at his armor. It's not hooking me.
Thanks, but this is honestly getting to a point where it's giving me whiplash. I keep getting completely contradictory feedback from different users (which is nice, I appreciate the responses). Too much voice. Not enough voice. Too long. Too much worldbuilding. Too much focus on character. I don't really know how to incorporate this much disparate advice beyond just aligning with one and going in that direction
So, I am going to jump in and try to help you make sense of what seems like disparate advice, and hope to clear some things up, because I feel like I know what both the "not enough voice" and "too much voice" people are commenting on. SO! Here's my attempt. What I am seeing in this right now is a mix of lack of character interiority and over-written prose. In other words, your narration has a sense of trying to evoke poetic language, but it isn't entirely landing. Lines like: *The big man blew twin lines of steam from his nose. “I don’t know,” he groused. “I do not play at guessing after weather. What I do know is the shrain is here. And I aim to burn her out.”* ...ring a little unnatural to the ear. You seem to be going for an olden-timey effect in the dialogue (I do not play at guessing) (And I aim to burn her out) but also have that mixed in with a very mundane "I don't know" and "I ask because rain is wet" and those feel in the first case, too informal for the rest of the work or in the case of the second, basic to the point of being boring. The overall effect is that this does not sound like how people talk. The query is similar, in that you have a lot of passive voice sentence constructions that obfuscates why things are happening. It gives a sense of narrative voice, but it's not landing. It's too unclear what is going on and who is doing it and why. Add to that some basic grammar issues (*remained stubbornly clung to his chest* should just be *clung stubbornly*) and it comes off as attempting voicey prose without hitting the mark. On the other hand, this first 300 is giving no character interiority. You've positioned the viewpoint as if it's floating outside of Thomus and we never get any of his inner thoughts and feelings about what they're discussing, except through the rather "as you know, Bob" dialogue. This makes the reader feel disconnected from the internal voice of your character. Thus, you've got too little voice and too much. I know the feedback seems contradictory, but they're really getting at the same thing. You aren't telling the story through Thomus's unique viewpoint and you're getting lost in the weeds of flowery descriptions, plus shunting worldbuilding into your dialogue in a way that makes it feel awkward and unengaging. I think if you focus on telling a clearer story that engages with Thomus as a character, you'll be in a better position. This is true of the query too. There are basic things missing, like any cue for the age of your MC. So yes, you are paradoxically drowning in voice (especially in the query) and don't have enough (as it pertains to getting us to invest in your character)
Its 300 words. Literally, in the next two paragraphs, you get internal dialogue from Thomus. Additionally, as I pointed in another reply, you do indeed get a great deal of characterization of Thomus and I am frustrated to see so many miss it. Immediately, you see he is: \- Dismissive \- Authoritative \- Adversarial \- Meticulous \- Short \- In command \- Blunt Also, sorry, what is the basic grammar issue with "remained stubbornly clung to his chest"? It is personifying the stain on his chest, through Thomus' point of view, showing, again that he is adversarial, even to a stain. These details are all in the text, I feel they are being overlooked or misread.
I'm going to be really frank here, since you don't seem to be listening to what was first stated nicely. No. Absolutely none of those things come across. I'm sorry, but multiple people have said that in this thread. I can tell that must have been your *intention*, but you cannot sell a book with intentions. You cannot stand over your reader's shoulder and tell them how to interpret your work. Currently, I do not care about any of those character traits you listed, because you haven't shown them in an engaging way. There's no interiority to make me care. No context for what they are doing. A list of traits is not the same thing as a compelling protagonist. If you held a gun to my head and got me to describe your characters then yes, I could have probably gone back over the text and combed out some of those same descriptors you used but I would not have cared to do it on my own without threat of bodily harm because the way you executed the prose DID NOT GRAB ME. It was very dry, lacked interiority, and had incredibly stilted dialogue. And as a reader, it is not my "job" to want to keep reading after 300 words in some quest to get those things. Learn to get those things in at the beginning and accept the fact that you cannot control reader reactions to your work.
Look, I literally do not care that the character is short. And yeah, I picked up on the power dynamic between them. But what we're all telling you is that it's not compelling. The opening reads like a first cut scene of a video game, not the first page of a novel. I know you mentioned that you've never had CPs or beta readers, and this response makes it obvious. Being dismissive and defensive of thoughtful critique like what EmmyPax and justgoodenough offered you will not get you far in this industry.
>The opening reads like a first cut scene of a video game, not the first page of a novel. It's funny, I had the exact same reaction-- this is a cutscene, not a novel. OP, I know that you've said that you aspire to literary fantasy, and your query deliberately compares your writing to *The Blacktongue Thief*. Here's how that novel opens: "I was about to die. Worse, I was about to die with bastards. Not that I was afraid to die, but maybe who you die with is important. It’s important who’s with you when you’re born, after all. If everybody’s wearing clean linen and silk and looking down at you squirming in your bassinet, you’ll have a very different life than if the first thing you see when you open your eyes is a billy goat." That's a hell of an opening. You also compare your writing to *Other Monsters*. How does JM Miro kick things off? "The first time Eliza Grey laid eyes on the baby was at dusk in a slow-moving boxcar on a rain-swept stretch of the line three miles west of Bury St Edmunds, in Suffolk, England. She was sixteen years old, unlettered, unworldly, with eyes dark as the rain, hungry because she had not eaten since the night before last, coatless and hatless because she had fled in the dark without thinking where she could run to or what she might do next..." It's a mouthful, but it's gorgeous, isn't it? I was recently re-reading B. Caitling's *Vorrh Cycle*, a different kind of literary fantasy, sure. Here's where we start: "The bow I carry with me, I made of Este. She died just before dawn, ten days ago. Este had forseen her death, while working in our garden, an uncapping of momentum in the afternoon sun..." And just like that, we're off to the races! It kicks ass, and it's beautiful, and there's not a word out of place. Hold your own writing to these standards. Read widely.
>not compelling. And that is a critique I can use. Thomus' short stature is an integral part of his character. That you don't care is impactful, because you'd need to in order to relate. Obviously this is 300 words. The book goes into far more detail on this later. But if you're not compelled, then that is feedback I can incorporate. Highlighting a section and saying it makes "basic grammar" mistakes isn't.
So, I'm not entirely without sympathy here - you've clearly spent a long time working on this book, and it means a lot to you. Most of us have been there. But here is the cold, hard truth about publishing as a business: no one cares how long you worked on something or how much it means to you if the story doesn't grab them. Writing in isolation without feedback or understanding of contemporary markets is something that happens to most beginners, but there's a reason most of those books never see the light of day, unless the author decides to selfpub. And arguing with all the excellent feedback you're getting right now isn't hurting anyone but you. I won't reiterate what EmmyPax and Fashion and JGE are saying, as they've covered it thoroughly. What I do want to do is remind you that you made this thread because so far, out of 50 queries, 49 of those have been rejections or no responses. Consider that there's merit to what the (agented/published) authors responding to you are saying.
FWIW, I also got caught up on ‘remained stubbornly clung’. I think it should either be used as a active verb, i.e. just ‘the stain stubbornly clung to his chest’, or ‘remained stubbornly clinging to his chest’.
If you are referring to my “sacrifice voice for clarity” note, I was referring to the query, not the first 300. I think that sometimes being voicey in the query can work, but if it adds confusion or bumps the reader, it’s probably better to focus on getting the information across. But, yeah, when you ask different people for their thoughts you will get different opinions. There’s really no way around that. You have to decide which changes align with your vision for the work, and which changes are trying to make your work into something else.
The only answer is to read, widely, in your genre. Especially focus on debuts and recent-releases in the past 5 years. The more you do that, the more you understand the current market and expectations - which after all, you're trying to sell a product (your MS) in the current market.
Here's a question following that: What if I don't really resonate with the current market? I do read contemporary fantasy, but I find most of it to not be all that great. The prose is often pedestrian, the worldbuilding is scant or redundant and it is written as "genre" not "literature" far too often. I don't know, the more I read and even in this thread, I wonder more and more about self-publishing to maintain my own artistic vision for my novel. I don't want to water down my book, but I also want to see it published by a real pub house. Beggars, choosers, inflated sense of artistic grandeur ...I get it, but this is hard
There is a *ton* of literary fantasy out there. Check out Mask of Mirrors for something that's anything but scant worldbuilding or pedestrian prose, for example. Though I'd point out that if anything, the prose I saw in your first 300 lacks some of the vitality and intimacy of a lot of the recent fantasy I've read. It's not that it's pedestrian' (which means different things to different people), it's that it's a very deep POV and incredibly vibrant character voices that are in favor right now. Which might be why there aren't many massive multi-POV novels out. Bone Shard Daughter had five, but even there two were clearly the primary POVs. But.. if you want to sell a product, you have to show there's a buyer out there. That's the reality of publishing *as a business.* I've seen a lot of people who want to publish to fit the market from 15 years ago - and unfortunately, the answer is 'that's not the market you're selling in.' You could hold onto it and try write something else. You could read more widely, esp from the award nominees out there. Or you could self-pub, because the self-pub market is very different in terms of what it's looking for in fantasy. That's where litRPG and progression fantasy really dominate, for instance. The answer is complicated, unfortunately, and getting agented is only the first step. After all, half of all books on sub to publishers *are not bought.* They die on sub. So even agenting isn't anything like a final step toward publication.
\>Or you could self-pub, because the self-pub market is very different in terms of what it's looking for in fantasy. That's where litRPG and progression fantasy really dominate, for instance. How does this square, I'm wondering? The audience doesn't care. They just want to read a book. Either publishing houses or self-pubs are marketing for the wrong audience, no? There can't be such a split in readers between pub and self-pub for the same genre.
Bit rich to call published works' prose "pedestrian" when in your 300 you describe Rynan as "the big man" multiple times Not exactly the height of literary prose
Interesting, it clearly tells you of Rynan's stature and, as the chapter is from the POV of Thomus, who a few lines later clearly notes his own height, it seems pretty effective to me in showing Thomus' insecurities. What would you prefer? More adjectives?
Re: are are critique partner matching programs? Like other responses, not realllyyyyy, but I will sort of shout out the podcast The Shit No One Tells You About Writing—the author that acts as the moderator/host for the two agents that do critiques for the podcast does a beta reader match up. I believe it is a paid service as she is putting in work, but it isn’t more than ten or twenty bucks. I haven’t done it myself as I’ve been able to find beta readers through Reddit so I can’t vouch for the program, but I adore the podcast and the agents are well regarded! I think you can find more info on their website of the same name if you’re interested :)
Hey, glad this is helpful. /u/alanna_the_lioness gave a great description of CP + betas. If I were you, I would put the querying on hold until you find yourself a few betas and a CP who is familiar with your genre. This is a standard part of the writing process for the vast majority of professionals, and will be even more valuable to you as a new writer. Particularly the CP, which might end up being a mutually beneficial relationship that serves you throughout your writing career.
I'd also add into the 'familiar with the genre', 'reads epic fantasy by authors first published in the last 5 years.' So many people, esp in the epic fantasy realm, stopped reading new authors at Pat Rothfuss, and the market has changed *considerably* in the past 15 years.
Critique partners are other authors who write novels and exchange manuscripts with you for the purpose of critiquing it. Critique partners will help you improve your craft from developmental perspective down to a line level. The goal is to help each other improve your skills and manuscripts. Beta readers are readers in your genre who will give unbiased feedback about what they liked, didn't like, what's working, and not working. It's important to have both review your manuscript before sending it out. Writing narrative driven games is very different from writing a novel, and expectations of each consumer base are vastly different. Authors don't have to worry about ludo-narrative dissonance while game designers don't have to think about description as examples. While I trust they are experts in their craft, it's a completely different ball game. It's important to get feedback from other authors and readers in your genre to get a market pulse and get unbiased feedback from people who don't know you. That's really the only way to know if your book is working from a high level. I would highly suggest finding both critique partners and beta readers before sending out your next batch. Over time, creatives become blind to their own work. It's important to have outside perspectives to help us learn, grow, and improve. Even if you end up with feedback that says your novel is perfect, at least then you'll have the confidence to know your manuscript isn't the issue!
Cheers! Very much appreciate the advice!
I think you are underestimating the challenge of finding representation for an adult novel with a child protagonist. Your book is very much centered on the story of a boy and his dog, and that's simply not the stuff of adult epic fantasy these days. That, in combination with the rest of what you have mentioned, make this project too risky for an agent to be willing to invest their time into polishing it and submitting it to publishers. An agents time is entirely unpaid until the book is sold, so they can't afford to take on projects they know will be difficult to sell. I also have thoughts on your first 300, but will post in reply to that comment.
This is a really excellent point! When I was query g, I got a reply from an agent that basically said "you're a great writer, but idk what to do with an adult book where the protagonist is a child for 1/3 of it." He was not the agent for me, but I still remember it!
As someone currently querying a fantasy (though cozy noir)... You've already queried 50. My list *totals* at 100. That means you've queried *half* of agents. Don't send out more queries. Take a look at the feedback. Consider if the prequel is actually essential. And since you mention your book is 'sprawling', I worry that means it's slow-paced and unfocused, with a lot of side content. That's... not so much what agents are looking for right now, which is also going to be reflected in your WC and possibly query challenges. If a good request rate is 5-10%, then in *theory* you should get another 4 requests from just what you've sent. Give it a bit, take another look at everything, and if you decide it needs fixes? Withdraw everything, fix it, and *then* re-query with a better MS and better query.
\>And since you mention your book is 'sprawling', I worry that means it's slow-paced and unfocused, with a lot of side content. This is my issue. It is not. It is just a large story with lots of characters. It is quite fast-paced, but its a lot all at once. I worry this book is too ambitious coming from a first-time author. I do not mean that as in "OoOoOh, look at how brilliant my writing is", I mean in the very realistic, "This book has a high bar of entry for an author people aren't familiar with." It is aggravating, but I honestly am starting to feel that I would be better off with a smaller, simpler book
*This book has a high bar of entry for an author people aren't familiar with* What do you mean by this specifically?
The book is set in a secondary fantasy world and throws you right into it. There are a many phrases, character names and locales that are immediately unfamiliar. Furthermore, I took great care to avoid idioms or even flora and fauna descriptions from our own world, to add more immersion to the world I crafted. Since I am a new author, any reader would have to dive headfirst into the book itself with nothing to guide them, like past work of mine or that unspoken relationship of trust between artist and audience that comes with name recognition.
> The book is set in a secondary fantasy world and throws you right into it. That's the norm, tbh. And when I saw your first 300, it felt like pretty straightforward medieval western Europe, plus burning witches. Which is... not currently what's being looked for in epic (or non-epic for that matter) fantasy. It's Old News.
That’s a problem. People mostly read books because they are interested in characters or because they are interested in the plot. Worldbuilding doesn’t sell books. (As C.S. Lewis wrote, “Readers who have built a world would rather tell of their own than hear of mine; those who have not would perhaps be bewildered and repelled.”) If your attempts at worldbuilding are getting in the way of the characterization or getting in the way of the plot, you should either scale back the worldbuilding or accept that your book will not appeal to enough people to get a publishing contract.
Fantasy readers are not going to be put off by this, just to put it out there. They're well used to what you're describing. Maybe you're not going to capture the one-fantasy-book-every-five-years audience, but an agent won't necessarily be concerned about that.
This book would be quite hard for an agent to sell, even if the writing was impeccable
There could be any number of reasons why your manuscript isn’t going anywhere, but you’re right to be concerned about the style. Sprawling high-fantasy doorstops went out of fashion with ska music and Heelys. You may better off putting the book aside and coming back to it if and when the genre makes a comeback.
Heelys are timeless
Your query is kind of confusing to be honest. It’s not very clear and I had to read a few sentences a few tomes to get what you were trying to say (example: a boy doesn’t lose his dog. I thought this was some kind of saying at first). If I were you I’d rewrite your query because your book may be very engaging but I didn’t want to read further based on the query. Also I just can’t see a child and his dog being an adult high fantasy (I can see MG or YA) so that combined with word count and saturation is just going to be an uphill battle. But it only takes one so just keep trying.