Interview With Rachel Soloman and Her Path to Landing An Agent

I'm so excited to announce that my friend and writing buddy Rachel Lynn Soloman has recently signed with literary agent Molly Jaffa at Folio Lit!

Rachel and I met at a writing critique group a little over a year ago. Since then, we've met regularly to support and encourage each other as we stare at the dreaded blank page. Rachel is just so smart and dedicated to the craft that I knew it was only a matter of time before she found success as a writer. Here's the scoop on her novel TWITCH and how she landed her agent.

What's your genre and one-sentence pitch?

TWITCH is YA contemporary. It’s about a sixteen-year-old girl with Tourette’s syndrome who gets wrapped up in a small-town political scandal, while trying to balance her politically obsessed family and a romance with a boy with OCD.

What inspired you to write about a character with Tourette's?

One day last year, I got sucked into a YouTube black hole watching videos of teens with Tourette’s talking about their tics. It was so fascinating! Some of the girls were very nonchalant and open about it—“this is me, and if you have a problem with it, I don’t care”—and one burst into tears while explaining how it affected her life. I think my main character, Elliott, is somewhere in the middle. Image is so huge in high school, and growing up with a disorder that affects the way you look and sound is going to complicate things.

There are also a lot of misconceptions about Tourette’s. I think the biggest is that it’s often viewed as a disorder that causes people to involuntarily yell out swear words. This is called coprolalia, and it actually only affects about 10 percent of people with Tourette’s. (My character doesn’t have this.) I talked about Tourette’s a lot with a friend of mine who has it because I wanted to portray it accurately. It was also important to me that, while the book features a protagonist with Tourette’s, it’s not a book about Tourette’s.

How did you initially pitch to Molly (contest, conference, old-fashioned querying)?

I sent my first (and only) batch of 10 queries at the end of February, and Molly was the first to request. She read over a weekend and offered an R&R, along with some amazing, amazing notes. The revisions were major, and we talked on the phone about how to implement them. I reworked the manuscript for a few months and sent it back in April. Last week, she emailed asking if we could talk on the phone again!

How did you feel when you got “the call” from Molly?

Thrilled doesn’t even begin to describe it! Afterward, I was chatting with my boyfriend, who was at work, and I was so excited I couldn’t spell anything correctly. Molly and I have the same vision for the book, and I’m just ecstatic to be working with her!

What is your favorite YA contemporary book and why do you love it?

One of the books that affected me the most was SPEECHLESS by Hannah Harrington. I read it in one sitting, and in it, the main character Chelsea takes a vow of silence after blabbing a secret that caused someone to get seriously injured. After I put down the book and started to talk to some friends, my voice was hoarse and I could barely speak because I’d been inside Chelsea’s head for so long. For a book to make you feel exactly what the character is feeling—that’s incredible.

Which authors have influenced you the most?

As far as contemporary YA writers, I admire Courtney Summers, Hannah Harrington, Huntley Fitzpatrick, Colleen Clayton, Stephanie Perkins, Miranda Kenneally. They all write characters and situations that are so real and flawed and beautiful. And Meg Cabot—I lived for Meg Cabot books when I was in junior high and high school.

Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process?

Sitting across from you in a coffee shop while we each stare at our computer screens? ☺

In addition to our weekly writing dates, I try to set goals for myself every time I sit down to write. I’ve also recently fallen in love with outlining and writing synopses before I start a new project. I generally draft very quickly, then spend months revising and polishing. I also really love editing on hard copies.

What advice do you have for querying writers?

“Don’t give up” is really cliché, isn’t it? I queried two manuscripts before this one, sending out more than 100 queries total. That translates to a lot of rejection. But the reason I kept at it was because I knew I was improving as a writer. Read absolutely everything you can in your genre, enter contests, meet beta readers and CPs—basically immerse yourself in the writing world as much as possible!

Great advice from Rachel!

If you're interested in learning more about her, you can follow her on twitter @rlynn_solomon
and check out her blog here: http://rlynnsolomon.blogspot.com/

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The 20K Roadblock and Discovery Writing

There appears to be a consensus among writers that 20K is the magic word count where they hit a roadblock. This just happened to me. I was sailing along, content with hitting my word count goals, not worrying too much if everything I was writing was terrible. Hey, it's a first draft, right?

And then I couldn't go on anymore. I mean, I could, but I wasn't sure that I should.

I had gone far enough to realize that too many things weren't working. I didn't like the tone of the novel—it was getting too dark. I hadn't introduced enough complexity and subplots so it seemed like it was going to end too quickly. And quite frankly, it was boring. I write YA science fiction, and it definitely needed more cool world building.

I could have continued with the daily word count and pushed forward with my rocky first draft anyway, but I decided to hedge my bets and revise. With my previous novel, the second half of the my first draft ended up in the garbage. I had forced myself to finish the draft, but nothing about the ending worked. And I think that was because I didn't have a solid enough beginning to go forward with.

That's how I know I'm what Brandon Sanderson calls a discovery writer. I think his term is a lot more accurate than the traditional “pantser” v. “plotter” designation. A discovery writer discovers the story as they write. And they tend to revise a lot, especially the first three chapters. That's because they're molding the these chapters, trying to get a sense of their characters, world, and what the plot really is.

Don't think this applies to you? Sanderson says that most people are actually somewhere in between a discovery writer and an architect/outliner. In fact, I wrote an outline for this WIP, but I always give myself room to stray and to discover. Very few people outline to the extent that nothing needs to be decided at go time.

(By the way, Sanderson has an awesome lecture series posted here, which I highly recommend.)

The conventional advice to writers is to keep moving forward at all times. But personally I don't see a lot of sense in moving forward if I haven't figured out my tone, my characters, my subplots, and my world. All of those things must come together in order to create a truly resonant ending, an ending that is, as Robert McKee advises in Story, both unexpected and inevitable.

That's my goal. I don't want to spend a lot of time heading into a false ending which I will have to scrap completely. Therefore, I'm returning to my first chapter. Has this happened to you? How did you deal with it?

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Query Tips: End With the Heart of the Conflict

What is the heart of the conflict in your book? What's truly at stake? It's bigger than just defeating the bad guy—there's the battle that your MC is facing within herself, the battle to become the heroine she is meant to be.

In my previous post, we discussed the MC's internal goal versus the external goal. I think the heart of the conflict, the true conflict, is usually found in the relationship between those two goals. The internal goal might be in direct conflict with the external goal, or perhaps the external goal simply doesn't help with the internal goal. Sometimes, they do go hand in hand, but not in the way the MC expects. Exploring this relationship is a strong way to end a query because it's often the very thing that motivates readers to keep reading the manuscript.

Let's return to our Harry Potter example from the previous query tips posts. Harry's internal goal is to find family. He actually has two external goals: a long term goal of defeating Voldemort, but a short term goal of discovering the mystery behind the three-headed dog. He suspects that the two external goals might be related when his lightning-shaped scar burns at various points.

But how do his external goals relate to his internal goal of finding family? For one thing, Harry has quickly realized that Hogwarts is a sort of family. Part of his motivation behind unraveling the mystery is simply to protect this school he's found a sense of belonging at. And as Harry works with Ron and Hermione to stop the villain, his two good friends become closer to him than any of his true family ever were.

Let's try to end with a statement of conflict that reflects these ideas:

When his lightning-shaped scar begins to burn, Harry wonders if he should heed the warning to keep his friends out of danger. But perhaps true friendship means they must risk everything together—including their lives—to keep their newfound home at Hogwarts safe.

Here I've tried to show the inherent conflict between his internal and external goals. To solve the mystery (external goal), Harry must risk his friends (internal goal). But if he backs off to keep his friends safe, he might end up losing Hogwarts and his new family anyway.  The only way he can actually keep Hogwarts safe is to work with his friends, which makes them even more tightly knit.

Now let's take a look at how the three sections from this HP example work together:

Eleven-year-old Harry Potter has been sleeping in a cupboard ever since he arrived on his relatives' doorstep as a baby with a scar on his tiny forehead. Although his aunt and uncle spoil their own son Dudley with thirty-seven presents on his birthday, Harry receives something far more special for his. A letter from a school called Hogwarts, claiming that Harry is a wizard.

The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry introduces Harry to a world of potions, magic wands, and quidditch, a sport played on flying broomsticks. But when Harry discovers a three-headed dog guarding a trapdoor in an area forbidden to students, he realizes that his teachers aren't telling him everything. Now Harry and his friends are determined to find out what might be valuable enough for such drastic security measures—and what it might have to do with a break-in at the wizard bank, a professor's mangled leg, and a troll set loose in the school.

When his lightning-shaped scar begins to burn, Harry wonders if he should heed the warning to keep his friends out of danger. But perhaps true friendship means they must risk everything together—including their lives—to keep their newfound home at Hogwarts safe.

This clocks in at 200 words. We've covered the major themes and conflict in Sorcerer's Stone, but left quite a bit of mystery. Notice we haven't mentioned Voldemort directly, but by including the scar in the first and third paragraph, we've brought everything full circle and indicated that there might be a connection between the three-headed guard dog's mystery and Harry's past. Again, we're teasing the reader.

There's no one formula to write a query—in fact some of the best ones break all of the rules. For HP, I think you could have written a query that focuses solely on the inciting incident, when Harry receives the letter.  Still, I hope these examples give you some ideas on how to break down the most compelling aspects of your book and have the agent or editor begging for more.

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Query Critique Winners Announced!

Thanks so much to everyone who entered my query critique giveaway! The three winners are...

Marlene M.! Zoë M.! And Heather D.!

Winners should have received an email from me.  If not, feel free to contact me via my contact form or tweet me @mayaprasadwrite.

To all of the other participants, I do hope that my query tip posts are helpful to you.  Go forth and query boldly.  Thanks again, everyone!

 

 

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25 Ideas to Freshen Up That Query

Today, I'm guest posting over at kick-butt urban fantasy writer Tina Moss's blog.  I've got 25 ideas to help you freshen up your query and look at it from a whole new light.  Check it out!

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Query Tips: Be A Tease Without Being Vague

So, you have a great plot twist in your novel.  How can you best utilize it to capture the agent's attention?  How can you frame the big secret so that she just has to read your book?

Let's continue with last week's Harry Potter example. What if our query read:

At Hogwarts, Harry enters a world of magic and mystery. When he and his friends discover a three-headed dog in a forbidden area of the castle, they realize that something strange is going on. It's up to the three of them to stop it.

While this might accurately describe the plot, it's also pretty vague and boring, right? We might as well have written “Harry discovers a shocking secret.”  Unfortunately, readers aren't going to take your word for it that your secret is shocking—you'll have to be a lot more specific than that to grab their attention.

But we don't want to give everything away either (um, spoiler alert in case anyone hasn't read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone!):

At Hogwarts, Harry and his new friends discover a three-headed dog in a forbidden area of the castle. They soon realize the dog is really guarding the Sorcerer's Stone, which gives its bearer powers of immortality. When Professor Snape appears in class with mangled limbs, Harry suspects that the teacher was trying to steal the coveted stone. The kids decide to stop the scheming professor by going after it themselves, only to come face to face with Voldemort, the very wizard who murdered Harry's parents.

That reads a lot more like a synopsis than a query, don't you think? You don't have to reveal the ending to give away too much. By bringing in Voldemort and revealing that Snape wasn't the true threat, we've given away the major plot twists in the book. Instead, we just want to intrigue the agent or editor.

So how do you do be a tease without being completely vague in your query? Well, as you would in the novel itself, you should drop clues and use subtext to create suspense. Let's try it again, this time with specific clues but without giving away the twists.

The Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry introduces Harry to a world of potions, magic wands, and quidditch, a sport played on flying broomsticks. But when Harry discovers a three-headed dog guarding a trapdoor in an area forbidden to students, he realizes that his teachers aren't telling him everything. Now Harry and his friends are determined to find out what might be valuable enough for such drastic security measures—and what it might have to do with a break-in at the wizard bank, a professor's mangled leg, and a troll set loose in the school.

Here I didn't even mention the Sorcerer's Stone.  Instead, I pointed out that a three-headed dog is a pretty drastic security measure, and left the object being protected to the reader's imagination.  I also included three clues that might be related to the mystery, but again without going into detail about how.  The connections are in the subtext -- our mind can put together that a dog might result in a mangled leg, for example. When you include clues like this, take care that the reader can make some mental connection between the clues and the mystery.  I added the first line about Hogwarts for setting purposes, because one of the things that makes HP so special is the backdrop of whimsical magic.

Hope those examples will help you balance the suspense and level of detail in your query!

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Query Tips: Introducing Your Character With Subtext

Why is your character the main character of your story? Why is he/she the person that can kill the bad guy, love this man, or overcome whatever your main obstacle is?

Very often, I see writers begin their queries with a statement about how ordinary their character is. I understand they want to make their character relatable and an “everyman.” However, your space is better utilized if you skip to the good stuff.

After all, your character is not truly an everyman. There is a reason why she is the protagonist of the story, why she is uniquely situated to overcome the conflict.  When you introduce your character in your query, try to hint at this. Also consider her internal goal. Regardless of whether your character even realizes what her internal goal is, there are probably things you can establish that will help the reader guess at it.

For example, we know that Harry Potter's internal goal is to find family, as evidenced by the Mirror of Erised. His external goal is to stop Voldemort, and he is uniquely situated to do it because a) he's a wizard and b) he's stopped Voldemort once before, as a baby.

Therefore, we might introduce him in our query like this:

Eleven-year-old Harry Potter has been sleeping in a cupboard ever since he arrived on his relatives' doorstep as a baby with a scar on his tiny forehead. Although his aunt and uncle spoil their own son Dudley with thirty-seven presents on his birthday, Harry receives something far more special for his. A letter from a school called Hogwarts, claiming that Harry is a wizard.

A lot of what we've included is subtext, something that tells the query reader that there is more afoot than what's on the surface. While we don't specifically call out that he longs for family, it's something you might guess at because he is an orphan and his aunt and uncle have him sleep in a cupboard while they spoil their own child. And although we don't yet state that he's stumped Voldemort before, we've established that baby Harry survived something that gave him his scar. Finally, when we mentioned the inciting incident, that Harry received the letter, we also introduced what makes him so special: he's a wizard.

With subtext, you can provide a sense of depth to your character that will hook the agent/editor you're querying.

What's special about your character?

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