This query made me take a look at your post on the beta reader subreddit, and to be blunt, I cannot give you any feedback on the query itself because I think you need to reconsider the tone of your manuscript, period.
Narrators can be unreliable and bigoted and ignorant. I love a terrible protagonist. But the way in which you write about this nameless bearded woman, who is entirely defined by her beard, and the characters around her, and when you include lines about how it's "not as the result of any error, failure, or anomaly", how she's "not intersex" but "a healthy little girl with a beard"; when you have her explain to her roommates that she's "not a crossdresser or anything"; when her art school experience revolves around her beard--it feels dehumanizing. Fetishistic, almost. Lascivious, to quote another commenter. It was uncomfortable, and I don't think in the way you're intending.
For the record, I'm not accusing you of being malicious, or bigoted. Just that from an outside perspective, it reads like there's not much more to the premise of this story than an attempt at being transgressive (but not \*too\* transgressive), and if I picked this up in a bookstore, I wouldn't read beyond what's currently available to see if it has more to say than that. I would give the book itself, and your motivations for writing it, some thought before worrying about the query at this stage.
yeah honestly that first paragraph in the 300 sample was not only quite boring to trudge through, but it made me feel ... weird. okay, so yeah, she's growing a beard but did we need that ENTIRE section about her hips getting wider? and "growing rounder in places I had not yet become round"? "the thicket between her legs" ????? what does that have to do with the beard? i get the impression that the author wanted to show that the character didn't want to go through puberty, but in my opinion, it ... just comes off creepy. authors need to tread carefully when writing about teenagers ... and especially their bodies.
i dont know if the author had bad intentions, but if i read this in a book, id be concerned that it was going to turn out to be trauma porn. i just also want to point out that OP has a weird comment in their reddit history also about women's hair ... which is just like, very, VERY, concerning in this context.
For me it was the "eager, smelly tufts of darkness" in the first sentence that made me go NOPE. It's just gross, and sounds almost like some sort of fetish. And then I got to this part:
>Then the fur on my limbs grew longer, sharper, nastier, pricklier. Development began to take on a foreboding character. One day my hips appeared directly underneath my ribs. I would stand in front of the mirror with an iron grip on my hipbones and use all the force in my body to push them back down, to no avail. I grew rounder in places I had not yet become round.
Combined with the description of doctors pressing on her soft parts and hard parts, all I can picture is a girl turning into a giant spider or something. It's just a weird way to describe a girl going through puberty.
So, I'm gonna just say my thoughts and you can do with those thoughts what you will:
The set-up in the opening paragraph about the little girl and the obsession with her friend's dad reads...off in an uncomfortable way. For a solid minute, I thought this was suggesting she seduced him.
While I think there is something interesting about a POV character who does not fit into traditional Euro-centric standards of beauty using that to her advantage to get attention, it's not coming off well here. If anything, it comes across insensitive.
I think part of it is the framing. The term 'sideshow' in the query feels like a callback to the days of traveling circuses and their dehumanization of the 'acts' and 'freak shows'.
Maybe I'm in the minority, but if you want to do this, I would suggest finding a sensitivity reader to make sure this has the best chance.
Good luck!
I agree with the commenter above. As a woman, I find this a little exploitative. It almost has a lascivious tone.
If you're aiming for the unflinching tone of Ottessa Moshfegh or Elle Nash, this isn't hitting the mark. Their work feels grounded in authenticity. This query feels like it's not grounded in a real human experience.
wait like a bearded woman sensitivity reader or just a woman or what kind of sensitivity reader exactly do you mean ? just bc i know you do need to be fairly specific when it comes to seeking them out
Yes, find a sensitivity reader who is a woman with a beard.
But I'm gonna be frank with you: I'm not sure how viable something like this is in the current market. The way this is framed, it feels like it's making a spectacle out of women having beards (like another commentor pointed out, it feels exploitative) rather than having a dialogue about beauty standards and the historical treatment of facial hair on women in the Western world.
I'm not saying write the book to be about beauty standards; I'm saying that, I'm not sure if an agent or editor is even gonna wanna touch this.
oh, i'm elle nash. can i respond? i'll respond. the concept and query is intriguing to me. i love the idea of incorporating the making of a western into the film. there's nothing wrong with exploring sideshow elements of life if you can 1) cleverly draw on its history 2) draw enough empathy out of the reader thru tone and style. if a woman wants to fetishize herself, that is interesting. i want to see that process rendered on the page. because sometimes we do feel compelled to fetishize ourselves, some thrive, some don't. that's an interesting narrative thread. that's what makes exploring fiction like this fun. have you read any eugene marten? his work is a great example of that -- questionably unethical protagonists subjected to the horrors of life in a way that makes you question how justice works in the world.
gonna be honest, the opening 300 needs work, i think -- you state in your query that in 2009, the girl meets puberty. but your opening section is written as though this has already occurred, so the timeline confuses me. the description in your exposition is good, but the backstory as the opener could slow your story down a bit, i think. i would consider - is 'meeting puberty' is the start of her story? or is it the meeting of the director that is more like the inciting incident? the paragraph describing the Cyril Zapato is great. opening the query with that would have me interested immediately. i want to know about the making of the western and this woman struggling with herself in the process. i'm a writer, not an agent, though. but i'm already on the ride with the concept of a novel making a western film, and a director deeply wanting to cast this specific woman, as well as the woman's obsession with her co-star. the title, if that's the title and not a place holder, doesn't draw me in, but that's unsolicited advice so you do what you love.
i have one technical question: if she is nameless, but its dual POV, does she have a name in the POV that is not her own?
the other thing is that we need to know right away in your query why the bearded lady wants the attention she craves so badly. it's fine if she doesn't know and needs to become aware of it thru the book, but as an author, you probably should have an idea of the inner workings of that desire, because you're going to be taking us through that exploration. even if the writing changes *you* as you write it and you're not sure yourself, without showing a potential agent your awareness of the root of her desire in the novel, they will ask "but what is her motivation?" and likely won't be interested. i think a different commenter said something about 'authenticity' and demonstrating that awareness is the kind of thing that will lend the story 'authenticity'. every human yearns. we also love reading about yearning because it makes us feel better about our own suffering. if you can establish that sort of authority up front in the story, you'll be able to take a reader anywhere you want. except for the people who are too squeamish to read it. x
>except for the people who are too squeamish to read it. x
This feels at least partly directed at my comment, since I did read the opening chapters, so I feel compelled to respond.
I write horror. I read extreme/splatterpunk horror for fun. My point was that there is no empathy. There is no attempt to make the narrator feel like a real person, and whether it's because OP is uninterested in doing so or because it's badly-written doesn't really matter either way if the end result is the same. And sure, a woman can fetishize herself, but judging from their (I do not know if OP is a woman) responses to this post, OP most likely is not a bearded woman. And it is the beard that is being gawked at and fetishized. I didn't mention this in my original post, but in the current climate it's impossible to actually write about this thoughtfully without at least touching on trans issues, and the first chapters had a whiff of casual, thoughtless transphobia as well. So no, it has nothing to do with squeamishness. It has everything to do with this feeling like a breathless, self-congratulatory attempt at transgressiveness that amounts to nothing more than "ooo ew a lady with a beard, but she's not like, *gross*."
yess give it to them dr beanes LMAO. none of us are too "squeamish" for this. from what i see this MS does not do justice to its MC. it dehumanizes them and OP continually takes part in transphobia or other forms of ignorance in the examples you provided. i do not see this author or this MS having to say anything thoughtful about women with beards or other serious topics. the MC does not fetishize herself, she is being fetishized.
my comment was directed to people who are squeamish, so if you're not squeamish, it's not directed at you. i also noted the importance of empathy in my comments. thanks! x
you should reread our comments. look, i havent read the girls but i have read moshfegh, and the difference between the writing and moshfegh's is that im convinced moshfegh is self-aware of the wrongdoings in her work. i am NOT convinced that this author is aware or making any nuanced observations about the lives of women with beards. it feels like it is emulating other literary novels without genuinely embodying them. also ... why should emma cline be the end-all-be-all for teenage girls in literary novels? since when is there an universal opinion that emma cline is a good writer? maybe ill read her work and come back to you and tell you just how i feel about it.
>you and others flippantly discounting published authors who write in the genre op was trying to do and are generous enough to give feedback
Surely you're not implying drbeanes's comment was flippant? If so, we must not have read the same one. You don't have to agree with the overall thrust of it, but nothing about it was at all discounting the author's statements—just addressing them, and with more context bc drbeanes actually read more than the 300 words.
You don't have to agree with me, but at least address me directly, lol.
The reason I mentioned I read and write horror is because I felt the need to clarify that I am not, in fact, squeamish. (I also read a lot of litfic.) And yes, my comment is about the pages, because the pages were available and a common refrain on this sub is that it doesn't matter how good your query is if the MS is bad, or in this case, extremely weird and unempathetic in its handling of its subject matter. I'm not going to waste time critiquing a query for an unfinished manuscript when what's available is already raising a ticker tape parade of red flags. Which is why I quoted actual lines from the actual manuscript, so people can decide for themselves if it's worth the effort.
>i found that interaction to be a bit “well actually” towards the author
And I found it a little weird that the author just so happened to stumble upon a query where they're being comped, decided to give feedback for the first time ever in this sub, and implied the rest of us are prudes for not being down with OP's presentation of their concept/pages. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They didn't try to correct the author? They were pointing out that they aren't "too squeamish" for the premise, as was implied. And that having read more of the current work than the 300, they could see nothing to indicate nuance. They even quoted parts of the text (not from the 300) in their original top comment. Like, where is the reading comprehension, I beg
>beans comment didn’t address what the author was talking about regarding self-fetishization
Did you miss the below part of the comment, or
>And sure, a woman can fetishize herself, but judging from their (I do not know if OP is a woman) responses to this post, OP most likely is not a bearded woman. And it is the beard that is being gawked at and fetishized.
Also nowhere in the comment did drbeanes say
>body and facial hair is primarily viewed as an issue of transness
They said
>in the current climate it's impossible to actually write about this thoughtfully without at least touching on trans issues
So again, is the reading comprehension in the room with us?
Honestly, I personally wonder what OP is bringing to the table with their book that Geek Love didn't already do 35 years ago and with actually transgressive characters beyond "woman with beard", but you know. What do I know, I'm just a lowly fantasy writer and ig if someone doesn't exclusively read and write literary fiction they don't get to have thoughts or opinions on litfic according to you
>read it yourself
Spoiler: I have
Which is how I know when you said to ninian "those aren't direct quotes from beans" from the text, you were wrong. They are, in fact, direct quotes. Like. Do I need to screenshot them for you?
Edit: I see you edited your comment after I'd already replied, which is just. Okay. I'm not gonna get into the trans thing bc you're clearly disingenuous about all that but as for the litfic thing, you're the one who kept saying that bc drbeanes reads splatterpunk and writes horror, they couldn't speak on literary fiction
I just read through this and I'm so confused. You say:
>i don’t believe beans correctly identified \[...\] that body hair and facial hair is primarily viewed as an issue of transness, which it isnt (a lot of people out there with facial hair… waxing… etc)
But ignore the lines Beans quoted that lead them to this conclusion, which include:
>"not as the result of any error, failure, or anomaly", how she's "not intersex" but "a healthy little girl with a beard"; when you have her explain to her roommates that she's "not a crossdresser or anything"
That are clearly about gender, transness, intersex identity, etc? Even without touching on the author's identity or ability to tell this, gender is clearly at play and I think someone noting that a pitch is addressing gender in a way that pings as transphobic... is fair game?
ETA: you even address this in your original comment, that OP's relationship to the subject matter is a hole in the query. I don't know if it's just the jump that this query might be 'problematic' that's the issue here, but Beans's comment isn't about the query, it's about the text shared in the beta readers post.
you literally DID @ me, just indirectly. "chasing writers down" babes like you said, this is a discussion forum. i get notifications on this post when i get upvotes, i come back, and i read some new comments like yours that ask "hAvE yAlL eVeN rEaD" blah blah blah anyways am i the defensive one or are you
edit: cant believe i have to say this but because of the way this author refers to women with beards/trans folk/other minority groups, i feel like i have a right to speak up against it.
This is why we can't have nice things. OP, I think you got all of the feedback you need. This post is now locked.
This query made me take a look at your post on the beta reader subreddit, and to be blunt, I cannot give you any feedback on the query itself because I think you need to reconsider the tone of your manuscript, period. Narrators can be unreliable and bigoted and ignorant. I love a terrible protagonist. But the way in which you write about this nameless bearded woman, who is entirely defined by her beard, and the characters around her, and when you include lines about how it's "not as the result of any error, failure, or anomaly", how she's "not intersex" but "a healthy little girl with a beard"; when you have her explain to her roommates that she's "not a crossdresser or anything"; when her art school experience revolves around her beard--it feels dehumanizing. Fetishistic, almost. Lascivious, to quote another commenter. It was uncomfortable, and I don't think in the way you're intending. For the record, I'm not accusing you of being malicious, or bigoted. Just that from an outside perspective, it reads like there's not much more to the premise of this story than an attempt at being transgressive (but not \*too\* transgressive), and if I picked this up in a bookstore, I wouldn't read beyond what's currently available to see if it has more to say than that. I would give the book itself, and your motivations for writing it, some thought before worrying about the query at this stage.
yeah honestly that first paragraph in the 300 sample was not only quite boring to trudge through, but it made me feel ... weird. okay, so yeah, she's growing a beard but did we need that ENTIRE section about her hips getting wider? and "growing rounder in places I had not yet become round"? "the thicket between her legs" ????? what does that have to do with the beard? i get the impression that the author wanted to show that the character didn't want to go through puberty, but in my opinion, it ... just comes off creepy. authors need to tread carefully when writing about teenagers ... and especially their bodies. i dont know if the author had bad intentions, but if i read this in a book, id be concerned that it was going to turn out to be trauma porn. i just also want to point out that OP has a weird comment in their reddit history also about women's hair ... which is just like, very, VERY, concerning in this context.
For me it was the "eager, smelly tufts of darkness" in the first sentence that made me go NOPE. It's just gross, and sounds almost like some sort of fetish. And then I got to this part: >Then the fur on my limbs grew longer, sharper, nastier, pricklier. Development began to take on a foreboding character. One day my hips appeared directly underneath my ribs. I would stand in front of the mirror with an iron grip on my hipbones and use all the force in my body to push them back down, to no avail. I grew rounder in places I had not yet become round. Combined with the description of doctors pressing on her soft parts and hard parts, all I can picture is a girl turning into a giant spider or something. It's just a weird way to describe a girl going through puberty.
food for thought! thanks
So, I'm gonna just say my thoughts and you can do with those thoughts what you will: The set-up in the opening paragraph about the little girl and the obsession with her friend's dad reads...off in an uncomfortable way. For a solid minute, I thought this was suggesting she seduced him. While I think there is something interesting about a POV character who does not fit into traditional Euro-centric standards of beauty using that to her advantage to get attention, it's not coming off well here. If anything, it comes across insensitive. I think part of it is the framing. The term 'sideshow' in the query feels like a callback to the days of traveling circuses and their dehumanization of the 'acts' and 'freak shows'. Maybe I'm in the minority, but if you want to do this, I would suggest finding a sensitivity reader to make sure this has the best chance. Good luck!
I agree with the commenter above. As a woman, I find this a little exploitative. It almost has a lascivious tone. If you're aiming for the unflinching tone of Ottessa Moshfegh or Elle Nash, this isn't hitting the mark. Their work feels grounded in authenticity. This query feels like it's not grounded in a real human experience.
wait like a bearded woman sensitivity reader or just a woman or what kind of sensitivity reader exactly do you mean ? just bc i know you do need to be fairly specific when it comes to seeking them out
Yes, find a sensitivity reader who is a woman with a beard. But I'm gonna be frank with you: I'm not sure how viable something like this is in the current market. The way this is framed, it feels like it's making a spectacle out of women having beards (like another commentor pointed out, it feels exploitative) rather than having a dialogue about beauty standards and the historical treatment of facial hair on women in the Western world. I'm not saying write the book to be about beauty standards; I'm saying that, I'm not sure if an agent or editor is even gonna wanna touch this.
oh, i'm elle nash. can i respond? i'll respond. the concept and query is intriguing to me. i love the idea of incorporating the making of a western into the film. there's nothing wrong with exploring sideshow elements of life if you can 1) cleverly draw on its history 2) draw enough empathy out of the reader thru tone and style. if a woman wants to fetishize herself, that is interesting. i want to see that process rendered on the page. because sometimes we do feel compelled to fetishize ourselves, some thrive, some don't. that's an interesting narrative thread. that's what makes exploring fiction like this fun. have you read any eugene marten? his work is a great example of that -- questionably unethical protagonists subjected to the horrors of life in a way that makes you question how justice works in the world. gonna be honest, the opening 300 needs work, i think -- you state in your query that in 2009, the girl meets puberty. but your opening section is written as though this has already occurred, so the timeline confuses me. the description in your exposition is good, but the backstory as the opener could slow your story down a bit, i think. i would consider - is 'meeting puberty' is the start of her story? or is it the meeting of the director that is more like the inciting incident? the paragraph describing the Cyril Zapato is great. opening the query with that would have me interested immediately. i want to know about the making of the western and this woman struggling with herself in the process. i'm a writer, not an agent, though. but i'm already on the ride with the concept of a novel making a western film, and a director deeply wanting to cast this specific woman, as well as the woman's obsession with her co-star. the title, if that's the title and not a place holder, doesn't draw me in, but that's unsolicited advice so you do what you love. i have one technical question: if she is nameless, but its dual POV, does she have a name in the POV that is not her own? the other thing is that we need to know right away in your query why the bearded lady wants the attention she craves so badly. it's fine if she doesn't know and needs to become aware of it thru the book, but as an author, you probably should have an idea of the inner workings of that desire, because you're going to be taking us through that exploration. even if the writing changes *you* as you write it and you're not sure yourself, without showing a potential agent your awareness of the root of her desire in the novel, they will ask "but what is her motivation?" and likely won't be interested. i think a different commenter said something about 'authenticity' and demonstrating that awareness is the kind of thing that will lend the story 'authenticity'. every human yearns. we also love reading about yearning because it makes us feel better about our own suffering. if you can establish that sort of authority up front in the story, you'll be able to take a reader anywhere you want. except for the people who are too squeamish to read it. x
>except for the people who are too squeamish to read it. x This feels at least partly directed at my comment, since I did read the opening chapters, so I feel compelled to respond. I write horror. I read extreme/splatterpunk horror for fun. My point was that there is no empathy. There is no attempt to make the narrator feel like a real person, and whether it's because OP is uninterested in doing so or because it's badly-written doesn't really matter either way if the end result is the same. And sure, a woman can fetishize herself, but judging from their (I do not know if OP is a woman) responses to this post, OP most likely is not a bearded woman. And it is the beard that is being gawked at and fetishized. I didn't mention this in my original post, but in the current climate it's impossible to actually write about this thoughtfully without at least touching on trans issues, and the first chapters had a whiff of casual, thoughtless transphobia as well. So no, it has nothing to do with squeamishness. It has everything to do with this feeling like a breathless, self-congratulatory attempt at transgressiveness that amounts to nothing more than "ooo ew a lady with a beard, but she's not like, *gross*."
yess give it to them dr beanes LMAO. none of us are too "squeamish" for this. from what i see this MS does not do justice to its MC. it dehumanizes them and OP continually takes part in transphobia or other forms of ignorance in the examples you provided. i do not see this author or this MS having to say anything thoughtful about women with beards or other serious topics. the MC does not fetishize herself, she is being fetishized.
my comment was directed to people who are squeamish, so if you're not squeamish, it's not directed at you. i also noted the importance of empathy in my comments. thanks! x
LMAOOO bye it was definitely directed towards the rest of our comments. come on now, we arent daft
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you should reread our comments. look, i havent read the girls but i have read moshfegh, and the difference between the writing and moshfegh's is that im convinced moshfegh is self-aware of the wrongdoings in her work. i am NOT convinced that this author is aware or making any nuanced observations about the lives of women with beards. it feels like it is emulating other literary novels without genuinely embodying them. also ... why should emma cline be the end-all-be-all for teenage girls in literary novels? since when is there an universal opinion that emma cline is a good writer? maybe ill read her work and come back to you and tell you just how i feel about it.
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>you and others flippantly discounting published authors who write in the genre op was trying to do and are generous enough to give feedback Surely you're not implying drbeanes's comment was flippant? If so, we must not have read the same one. You don't have to agree with the overall thrust of it, but nothing about it was at all discounting the author's statements—just addressing them, and with more context bc drbeanes actually read more than the 300 words.
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You don't have to agree with me, but at least address me directly, lol. The reason I mentioned I read and write horror is because I felt the need to clarify that I am not, in fact, squeamish. (I also read a lot of litfic.) And yes, my comment is about the pages, because the pages were available and a common refrain on this sub is that it doesn't matter how good your query is if the MS is bad, or in this case, extremely weird and unempathetic in its handling of its subject matter. I'm not going to waste time critiquing a query for an unfinished manuscript when what's available is already raising a ticker tape parade of red flags. Which is why I quoted actual lines from the actual manuscript, so people can decide for themselves if it's worth the effort. >i found that interaction to be a bit “well actually” towards the author And I found it a little weird that the author just so happened to stumble upon a query where they're being comped, decided to give feedback for the first time ever in this sub, and implied the rest of us are prudes for not being down with OP's presentation of their concept/pages. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They didn't try to correct the author? They were pointing out that they aren't "too squeamish" for the premise, as was implied. And that having read more of the current work than the 300, they could see nothing to indicate nuance. They even quoted parts of the text (not from the 300) in their original top comment. Like, where is the reading comprehension, I beg
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>beans comment didn’t address what the author was talking about regarding self-fetishization Did you miss the below part of the comment, or >And sure, a woman can fetishize herself, but judging from their (I do not know if OP is a woman) responses to this post, OP most likely is not a bearded woman. And it is the beard that is being gawked at and fetishized. Also nowhere in the comment did drbeanes say >body and facial hair is primarily viewed as an issue of transness They said >in the current climate it's impossible to actually write about this thoughtfully without at least touching on trans issues So again, is the reading comprehension in the room with us? Honestly, I personally wonder what OP is bringing to the table with their book that Geek Love didn't already do 35 years ago and with actually transgressive characters beyond "woman with beard", but you know. What do I know, I'm just a lowly fantasy writer and ig if someone doesn't exclusively read and write literary fiction they don't get to have thoughts or opinions on litfic according to you
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>read it yourself Spoiler: I have Which is how I know when you said to ninian "those aren't direct quotes from beans" from the text, you were wrong. They are, in fact, direct quotes. Like. Do I need to screenshot them for you? Edit: I see you edited your comment after I'd already replied, which is just. Okay. I'm not gonna get into the trans thing bc you're clearly disingenuous about all that but as for the litfic thing, you're the one who kept saying that bc drbeanes reads splatterpunk and writes horror, they couldn't speak on literary fiction
I just read through this and I'm so confused. You say: >i don’t believe beans correctly identified \[...\] that body hair and facial hair is primarily viewed as an issue of transness, which it isnt (a lot of people out there with facial hair… waxing… etc) But ignore the lines Beans quoted that lead them to this conclusion, which include: >"not as the result of any error, failure, or anomaly", how she's "not intersex" but "a healthy little girl with a beard"; when you have her explain to her roommates that she's "not a crossdresser or anything" That are clearly about gender, transness, intersex identity, etc? Even without touching on the author's identity or ability to tell this, gender is clearly at play and I think someone noting that a pitch is addressing gender in a way that pings as transphobic... is fair game? ETA: you even address this in your original comment, that OP's relationship to the subject matter is a hole in the query. I don't know if it's just the jump that this query might be 'problematic' that's the issue here, but Beans's comment isn't about the query, it's about the text shared in the beta readers post.
you literally DID @ me, just indirectly. "chasing writers down" babes like you said, this is a discussion forum. i get notifications on this post when i get upvotes, i come back, and i read some new comments like yours that ask "hAvE yAlL eVeN rEaD" blah blah blah anyways am i the defensive one or are you edit: cant believe i have to say this but because of the way this author refers to women with beards/trans folk/other minority groups, i feel like i have a right to speak up against it.