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We’re working on a major revamp of our courses programme at the moment. Lots to do but, in due course, plenty to announce. One of the things that we’ve been thinking about a lot is simply: how do we learn?

A good, obvious first stage answer is simply: deliver useful information appealingly presented.

Hence, our blogs, our books, our (premium) video courses. Those things obviously appeal, because the blogs get read, the books get bought, the courses get taken.

But?

The learning model that underlies that basic approach feels, in some ways, a bit Victorian. It feels like I’m a Victorian schoolmarm, sweeping up and down a dais in my long skirts, telling a whole room full of silent pupils what they are meant to do. And that’s the issue: the pupils in this model are silent, not doing.

So we adapt our model.

We combine instruction with doing. So, here’s a particular topic (characterisation, or plotting, or prose style or whatever) and here is an assignment which will help you develop the skills in question.

And good, that’s already better. My How To Write video course (available to Premium members) doesn’t have homework assignments exactly, but it does hugely emphasise the practical. The approximate message is, “Here’s an easily learned technique which you can apply to your manuscript right now and which will definitely improve it.” The feedback I most appreciate on this course is anything which says, “I had to stop watching the video so I could mess around with my manuscript.” That’s perfect. That’s exactly the kind of reaction I wanted to generate.

But …?

Our schoolroom has got better, but it’s still imperfect. The ranks of kids (grubby-kneed boys, some alarmingly pinafored girls) are now bending over their schoolbooks and practising their skills, but isn’t there something strange about the silence?

A modern classroom isn’t quiet. It’s noisy. It’s productive. It’s social.

It’s a commonplace to say that writing is a solitary activity, and I suppose it is. But writers are generally a tad introvert (I am) and the idea of a solitary activity being a bad one has never really made much sense to me. I like writing. That’s why I do it.

But writing is one thing, learning is another. The social element in learning brings a kind of glue. My kids run off to school eagerly each morning, not because they’re desperate for another spelling test, but because they want to see their friends. If learning becomes a social task, it becomes easier to do. Less an act of will than a pleasure in itself.

There’s something else here as well.

Analysing weaknesses in your own book is an emotional endeavour. Your instinct is to avoid finding fault. But with your friends and fellow students? Ha. Let’s be honest, finding fault is part of the pleasure. “Ah yes, love that extract, but I did wonder if maybe …” (Insert knife, twist, repeat).

The opportunity to look at work other than your own gives you a kind of safe-play area. The more you practise, the better you get. That’s why our peer-to-peer courses (like our Write With Jericho one, again just for premium members) offer a step-up on the basic model. We have instruction, we have assignments, we have a social, interactive peer-to-peer element as well.

Great.

But …?

There’s a reason why we have teachers, not just classrooms. My kids’ teachers are not about to replaced by robots spewing videos and homework assignments.

And what is the teacher there to do?Yes, they’re there to deliver the course material, but what else?

The easy answer is that they’re there to give feedback on the students’ work. And, OK, that’s important. But the thought which has been most enlightening for us is this one:

What if the teacher is largely there to give feedback on the feedback?

In a peer-to-peer course, people will be offering advice to one another, but the quality of that advice is vastly important. Compare these two comments:

GENERIC: “I loved your piece because I thought it was very atmospheric, but I didn’t really get the feel that your character was really scared.”

SPECIFIC: “Great. There were some lovely words here (mullioned, brocade, umber) which lent a really rich, somewhat creepy atmosphere, but your character’s emotions were indicated entirely through rather cliched bodily responses (her teeth chattered, hairs rising on the back of the neck). I wonder if you could reduce or get rid of those bodily comments and just describe exactly what your character was feeling.”

It's obvious that the second type of comment is of greater value to the recipient. But it’s also helpful to the giver.

The more you practise the effective (detailed, specific) analysis of text the more instinctively you’ll bring those skills to your own book.

There’s a comment from James Mitchner which gets a lot of play on the internet: “I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.”

That’s helpful, but in truth these skills merge. Writing, editing, rewriting: there comes a point where all those things blur together. You start out by writing a sentence on the page, coming back to it two months later, rewriting it, and so on. As you get more experienced, you edit the sentence as you lay it out on the page – tweaking it multiple times before you hit that full-stop.  And then you find that the edits happen in your head before you even hit the page. Yes, of course, you go on editing afterwards, but it’s the same basic activity.

So, for our courses, we’re going to work to see that people learn feedback-giving skills as well as what looks more obviously like writing-skills. Giving great feedback and writing better – it turns out that’s more or less the same thing.

And yes: courses are a great place to learn that stuff, but you don’t have to take a course. Any time you read a book, or a chapter, or a page, or a line that doesn’t quite hit the mark, just ask yourself why. The right answer will follow the SPECIFIC model above. The GENERIC one is next to useless.

That is it from me. I have a schoolroom to tidy and a cane to polish …

Til soon.

Harry

Good morning, everyone!

Julie is an agency assistant at Bell Lomax Moreton who has recently begun to build her own list while supporting fellow agents at the agency. She also has experience in author scouting and editorial work.

Julie is primarily looking for dark and lyrical literary writing across a range of genres including historical, horror, dark academia, retellings of folklore and mythology, low fantasy, and grounded speculative and science fiction. She is not the right agent for children's or young adult fiction, and is not looking for high fantasy or spacefaring sci-fi.

You can find Julie on Twitter @literaryfey, where you can learn more about her interests. She also offers Agent One-to-One sessions with Jericho Writers - book now to hear her feedback!

"Detailing how you work best and what you need can help agents identify whether there will be synergy in the partnership."

Hi Julie, thanks for speaking with me today!

What brought you to agenting?

I had quite a roundabout way into agenting. I started my publishing career with a sort of boot camp with the Columbia Publishing Course in Oxford in 2016, and through that I connected with the Cornerstones Literary Consultancy. I was there for about two and a half years doing admin work as well as editorial work, and then I left to go freelance as an editor… right before the pandemic hit.

During this time, I provided editorial support for some agents I knew, including John Baker from Bell Lomax Moreton. I was looking for a full-time job in the publishing industry by that point, and I listed John as a reference on a job application I was submitting. As it turns out, he happened to take the reference phone call while in the same room as Paul Moreton, our Managing Director, who liked the sound of me enough to invite me for an interview!

So, Bell Lomax Moreton is the first agency I’ve been with but not the first group of agents I’ve worked with.

After joining Bell Lomax Moreton, you co-agented an author with John Baker. What did that teach you about your preferences as an agent?

It actually taught me quite a lot! When I first started working at the agency, I realised that John and I had very similar reading tastes - he represents mostly science fiction and fantasy which I really love. Because our submissions reader doesn’t read a lot of SFF, I offered to read some of the submissions in John’s inbox and I quickly found one that I was very excited about. I sent it to John and we ultimately decided to work on that project together.

However, reading John’s submissions did hone my preferences and make me realise that while I really enjoy reading high fantasy and science fiction, I don’t think it’s what I want to focus on as an agent. It can be very develop books with (for example) really expansive worldbuilding, and unlike John, I just don’t think I’m best equipped for that. My tastes have skewed over the years towards more grounded works set in our world or a world very closely adjacent to ours – I prefer speculative over high fantasy or hard science fiction. I also like literary writing which isn’t always the best match for science fiction and fantasy.

What’s a day in the life of an agent like for you?

I’m still very much an agency assistant while I build my own list, so a lot of my time is spent doing whatever is required of me by the rest of the team. I joined as essentially the jack-of-all-trades of the agency: I do a lot of admin work, but because of my editorial background, I also provide editorial support to agents who need help working on their submissions. So, reading other agents’ submissions and providing editorial feedback is a big part of my job. At the moment, in the lead-up to Bologna and London Book Fair, I’ve been looking at our rights tables. I also spend time upkeeping our database of editors and checking social media for industry news.

Speaking of social media, how have you found the experience of putting yourself out there as a newer agent?

I use Twitter fairly avidly and I find it a useful tool for connecting with publishing professionals and the huge writing community that exists there. I enjoy pitch events and there are a couple of authors I have connected with from seeing them on Twitter.

Sometimes I’m a little wary of crossing boundaries by following back authors that I don’t represent, even if it’s just because I like the content they post and would enjoy chatting with them. Because I use a personal account, I try to approach social media as human-first – i.e., I’m interacting with people in my capacity as a human rather than in my capacity as an agent. This is something that other agents have really effectively built their brand around: take Juliet Mushens, for example, who I would say spearheaded this approach of identifying yourself as an industry professional while maintaining that human-first mentality. It's an approach that is important for me, and I think any other would lead to some difficult power dynamics that would be quite knotty to untangle.

That said, I would like authors to respect this boundary too. If I post something on my personal Twitter like “Just came back from a walk,” I don’t particularly enjoy seeing “Julie, I sent you a query on Monday” in the replies. I’m a human being and sometimes I just want to talk about a nice walk!

What’s at the top of your wishlist?

I would describe my tastes as ‘literary plus’ – literary writing that encompasses a wide variety of genres. As above, I like grounded speculative fiction. I also love anything strange or Gothic; writing that might make you close the door behind you a little quicker at night. Equally, I can appreciate a contemporary story!

If someone has a sharp, toothy, dark academia novel, I would love to see it, especially if it’s set in Edinburgh.

Would you ever consider non-fiction?

I am working on two non-fiction projects at the moment, but it’s more the case that they fell into my lap. One of them, for example, came about because an editor I knew was looking for a specific project and I happened to know an author who I thought would be a good fit, so we ended up working on it together.

I would potentially be interested in developing my non-fiction list further, though I’m not actively looking for any just yet. I’m particularly interested in accessible academic works – things like The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan or Strangers in Our Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild, that take academic concepts and treatises and apply broad, commercially viable assessments to them. Anthropology, history and political science would be the kind of space I might be interested in.

Things you like and dislike in a query letter?

I’m not very precious about query letters. People tend to stress about every last word and assume their query letter has to be perfect for it to be accepted – but that’s not how I approach things. The things that would put me off would be glaring errors: addressing the letter to ‘Dear Sir/Madam’, mistaking me for somebody else, not containing information about the word count and genre, etc.

I have received query letters that start with something like: “Dear Ms Gourinchas, I have long admired you and your client list…” Of course, five minutes of research would tell you that I’m a new agent who doesn’t really have a client list yet. I try to extend grace because I know how hard the querying process is, but I do think that those few minutes of research can make a real difference.

Something I would like to see more often is authors including in the query letter the way they want to work with an agent. For example, “I am looking for an agent who is very hands-on editorially,” or “I am looking for an agent who will let me take the lead on developing my story.” Detailing how you work best and what you need can help agents identify whether there will be synergy in the partnership.

How about synopses?

Not all agents like to read synopses, but I do – with my editorial background, I like to see the overall structure of the story and how agency, plot, tension and action move together. It’s also a good way to check that the author can communicate their ideas concisely. I tend to read the synopsis after the first pages of the manuscript; if I’m hooked by page five or so, I’ll read the synopsis before going back to the rest of the submission.

A good synopsis should convey the main conflict of the story and how the main character or characters confront it. Some synopses lay out the events of the story but fail to identify the central conflict, which can be quite confusing. An agent who reads a synopsis but isn’t given that clear sense of the central conflict is probably going to be harder to sell on the manuscript itself.

Is there anything in the opening of a manuscript that tends to hook you?

I am a sucker for beautiful writing. My tastes lean more towards the poetic, literary, flowing style of writing. Anything evocative and atmospheric is great. My favourite stories are ones where I read a single sentence and know exactly where we are – we’re on the rain-slicked, cobblestone streets of Victorian London, or we’re burning under a desert sun – anywhere with a strong sense of place will immediately catch my attention.

Any books you’ve enjoyed recently?

Over the holidays, I read Kala by Colin Walsh, which is coming this year from Atlantic Books. It’s a dual timeline narrative from three different points of view and the conceit is a classic thriller plot: someone returns to their hometown and learns that their high school best friend, who disappeared as a teenager, has been found dead. I really enjoyed the way Walsh wove together the different character threads, and I appreciated how distinctive the voices of each of the point-of-view characters were.

In speculative fiction, over the summer I read Brother Alive by Zain Khalid, also from Atlantic Books. It’s got such beautiful writing that stuck with me, and again has that focus on character dynamics while weaving together the past and the present.

And lastly, I’ll mention Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, which – like almost everyone under the sun – I found to be an absolute delight.

What are your wishes for 2023? They can be for your personal career, for the agency, or for the industry as a whole?

My personal career goal is to handle my first book deal completely on my own. While I do co-represent an author with John Baker, I’m looking to sign and then sell my own first client – that would be an amazing way to start the year.

For the agency, I’d love to see continued growth. I’m really excited for the deals my colleagues are making and we have some very exciting books coming out this year.

Other hobbies and passions?

I love video games – recent favourites include Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Hades, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Horizon Zero Dawn. I’m playing three Dungeons & Dragons games at the moment as well. I also like to play pool, and like anyone who works in publishing, I like to read. In my spare time, I also like to do graphic design and web design. And lastly, two of my personal goals for 2023 are to work out and to travel more.

Any last pieces of advice?

It’s common advice but be sure to read within the genre you’re writing. There are some authors who feel very passionate about their project – as they should! – but have misconceptions about the genre or have created something that already exists. I’d also advise you to do your research into the agents you’re querying to make sure you know the genres and authors they represent.

Finally, social media is a tool; use it wisely. By all means, use it to grow your following and connect with other authors and agents, but make sure to respect the boundaries inherent there.

The full interview can be found on Julie's AgentMatch profile.

Want to hear more from Julie? Why not watch our New Agent Panel (available to Premium Members) or book a personalised feedback session through our Agent One-to-Ones service. Or, if you’re struggling with your query letter and synopsis, do check out our free resources on our website. We have lots of info to help you on your way.

Last weekend, I went to a friend’s birthday party. The friend’s husband works in the music industry, as band leader for a number of very well-known pop acts. He’s toured everywhere and played at every stadium and venue you can imagine.

The result, inevitably, is that the standard of live music at the party was insanely high. Also inevitable: the number of genuinely cool people at the party was insanely high. Also inevitable: I was not amongst that number.

A short housekeeping digression begins …

I’m going to talk more about Cool People in a moment, but a couple of spots of housekeeping first, if you don’t mind.

Number one, next week, on 21 February, I’m introducing a webinar, hosted by the good folks from the Self-Publishing School on How to Write the Story You Were Meant to Tell. The presenter, Ramy Vance, started writing seriously in 2014, and has since published over 60 books on Amazon.

That’s a bewilderingly huge number, of course, and it made me realise that we at Jericho have really very little experience of that kind of high volume writing and publishing. So partly I wanted to hear from Ramy about how that experience works for him. But also, and mostly, I want to know whether this is an area that you guys are interested in. If you are, it’s an area we’ll develop in the future. If not, we’ll leave it mostly to one side. More details in the PSes. But if you’re even half-interested in that model, then do show up. I’m going to be intrigued to hear what you think.

That one point. The other is that we’re in the process of hiring a new marketing whizz. If you whizz and market, and can do both things at the same time, then please take a look at the PSes to see more about the position and the applications process. Thankee kindly.

And ends.

Right – back to the party.

I suppose the very first marker of Cool is what people are wearing. My wife is cool in some strange way that’s at complete right angles to what anyone else wears, so she rocked up in a vintage 1960s dress with white fur cuffs and white fur collar and a general whiff of Marilyn and Jackie and Audrey and Dusty and all that.

I’m just a middle-aged bloke with no depth of cool at all. So I wore nice jeans, a clean pink shirt, some nice shoes. Done.

Things I did not wear:

• A pork pie hat
• A shirt that looked like it was made of cheesecloth
• Jeans that looked like they had been shaped for some quite other person
• A tweed waistcoat, worn open
• Actually, any sort of waistcoat, worn any way at all
• Jewellery
• A shirt unbuttoned to the mid-chest
• Exotic facial hair
• Glasses that looked like installations from a design museum

I wasn’t all that fussed about my lack of hats / beards / waistcoats / cheesecloth. In fact, I thought the opposite.

I tried to imagine myself as these others were, supposing I had access to the exact right kit. Not a new tweed waistcoat, but one aged and worn to the exact right degree. The right kind of shirt. The right trousers. The right everything.

If I’d had all that stuff, and worn it – I still wouldn’t have passed for one of the Cool Hordes. I wouldn’t have moved right. I wouldn’t have spoken right. Honestly, and this sounds daft to say, I don’t think my face would have been right.

There was one person there in an old blue shirt worn over a T-shirt and a pair of vaguely sculptural glasses. I do have shirts in my wardrobe much like the one he wore, so I could in theory have rocked that look. Except, his face said, “I am at home with gigs like this. Indeed, I have a huge stock of gig-experience, a world of knowledge and a depth of understanding. When I move my head gently to the beat, I do so in a way that betokens deep music wisdom.”

I’m not saying that with any sarcasm. He did have that experience and I did not. I couldn’t have faked that sense of being at home in this world.

Now, none of this bothered me at all. On the contrary, we had a nice time at the party and came away happy. As we drove home, I said to the missus that I thought I was probably the least cool person there.

She said – and these are the words of wisdom on which this email centres – “It’s not what you wear. It’s whether you wear it with confidence. That’s what being cool is.”

And she was right! She always is, bless her. She always is, damn her.

And in fact, it made me realise that the clothes have nothing to do with it. Those music industry types weren’t cool because of the clothes they wear. They just are cool. They are, roughly speaking, the group that our culture uses to define what it is to be cool. The equation, in fact, is roughly this: These people are cool; they wear what they wear; the result is that people think that those type of clothes are cool.

But in the end, what appeals to people is a kind of centred confidence, that has nothing whatever to do with dress.

OK And the relevance of all this to you, your manuscript, your anxious pen?

It’s simply this. You can’t fake what you’re not. You shouldn’t even try. The trying and failing is way worse than not trying in the first place.

So let’s say you want to write a thriller. You think, yep, Lee Child is as good as it gets. His style is pared back. His hero knows everything about guns and military techniques and police procedures and all that. So I need to write like that.

And, OK, maybe. That’s one route to a good thriller, for sure. But is that your style? Or your imitation of someone else’s style?

If it’s yours, then fine. Thrillerland is easily big enough to accommodate a few Lee Child type series.

But what if that style isn’t really you? Then you’re making the mistake of being a Nice Pink Shirt wearing type rocking up to a party in a look stolen from somebody else. You won’t suit that look. Somehow, in ways you can’t even describe, you’ll betray it. At some surface level, it’ll look like you’re ‘doing Lee Child’, but you’ll never fool the reader. Not for long.

At that party, I wasn’t one whit uncomfortable in what I wore. People would have looked at me and thought, “He’s clearly not a music industry type, but he looks completely confident in his own skin.”

That’s what you want to aim for. When I wrote my Fiona series, I was obviously very conscious of what other crime writers were doing. But as often as not, my crime series turned its back on their choices and happily did its own thing. That wasn’t dissing their choices – simply they weren’t mine.

I think, roughly, that’s the model for how any writer needs to write. You need to know your landscape. You need to know what the classic books of the genre are. You need to know what’s being written today. You need to know something of what’s going on in your genre’s nearest neighbours.

But then you put all that aside and Just Be You. If that’s a pork-pie hat and a beard, then be that person. If it’s a Nice Pink Shirt and Proper Shoes, then be that person.

The full confident expression of your vision will always work better than any attempt to imitate someone else.

That’s not a licence to break the rules. You still need an elevator pitch that appeals. You need to understand where you fit in the market of today. Your plot still needs to cohere. Your witing needs to be strong, or not less than confident.

(Why do I feel the need to add that caveat? Because we still get manuscripts that are clearly unmarketable for one or all of the above reasons. When challenged the writer often says, “yes, but this is how I want to write. This is my personal vision.” And, OK. It’s your personal vision. But you’ll never get published.)

That’s it from me – your very own Mr Cool.

Til soon.

Harry

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PS: That Ramy Vance webinar. It’s titled “How to Tell The Story You Were Meant To Tell Without Taking Years to Do So (or Compromising on Quality).” But really, for me the bit that’s intriguing here is the scale of Ramy’s output. He’s been writing seriously since 2014 and he’s authored, or co-authored, over 60 books.

Clearly, my own output is nothing remotely like that. But no question, that high-output, self-publishing approach is a proven way to make a good living as an independent writer. It’s not an area we know a ton about. Ramy does. And I’m really looking forward to what he has to say.

I’m introducing the webinar. Self-Publishing School is hosting it. The webinar kicks off at 6.00pm London time, 1.00pm EST.

If you want to register, the link is here: selfpublishing.com/jerichowriters

And if you attend, do please let us know what you think. I’m intrigued to know whether you think this kind of model we should be exploring more than we do.

PPS: We’re hiring a new marketing manager. If you’re interested, there’s more information here: https://jerichowriters.com/jericho-writers/about-us/meet-the-team/#current-vacancies

We’re a damn nice bunch to work with, and we look forward to welcoming the right candidate on board soon.

PPPS: If you’d be interested in being Cool at some parties – we have TWO face-to-face meetups happening in the coming months. The first takes place in London on April 21st, the second in Leeds on April 28th. Both run from 18:00 to 23:00. More information here.

Forty years ago, A British TV network produced a major TV adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. The show was named after and centred on a family living in a vast stately home. The series was an international smash hit and regularly features on a list of greatest TV shows of all time.

A dozen years ago, the same network brought Downton Abbey into the world. It was also an international smash hit, earning a record 27 Emmy nominations in its first two seasons. That show is also named after and centres on a very large house. (Highclere Castle is the real-life Downton. When asked how many rooms it has, the countess of Carnarvon, whose home it is, says, “I’m not sure. I suppose if you know how many rooms you’ve got, you haven’t got a very big house.” So, there you go, you small-house-owner, you.)

Now obviously, Brits are good at wandering around giant houses in corsets. Quite obviously, the rest of the world likes watching Brits wandering around giant houses in corsets.

That’s hardly an end of the similarities. Both shows had a kind of love for their big house, and for the community and continuity it represented. Both shows made much of their love stories. Both shows had a basic decency to them: a sense that the people at the top, however flawed and fallible, fundamentally wanted to do the right thing.

Yet I think there is one very telling difference between Brideshead and Downton, and one that really does tell us something about our changing cultural landscape. The issue I have in mind is this:

Downton’s interests were essentially romantic, social and psychological. It was happy to ask emotionally searching questions about (say) the Lady Mary / Matthew Crawley relationship. It was perhaps even more nuanced and careful in piecing together the Mr Carson / Mrs Hughes one. The landscape of servants and served in a changing Britain was carefully and intelligently done.

Now, Brideshead was hardly idiotic in psychological terms, but it was strikingly less inquisitive. The most memorable relationship in Brideshead was between Sebastian Flyte (young, beautiful, wealthy, drunk, gay) and the Jeremy Irons character, Charles Ryder. Ryder was young, not as beautiful, infinitely less rich, and infatuated, for sure, but not gay. Was there a struggle for Ryder in this relationship? Well, if there was, it was hardly shown. What underlay that relationship? Why did Ryder fall where others didn’t? The show paid that question very little interest. Why was the gifted Flyte a confirmed drunk? It would be easy to say that being gay in a homophobic age was hard, and surely it was. But we didn’t see Flyte struggle with the issue at all. It wasn’t raised.

Instead, Brideshead presented the relationship of its two central male characters as more or less a done deal – “it just is”. Flyte’s challenges weren’t analysed. They just were. Neither the book nor the show made any real attempt to provide an explanatory architecture behind those things.

Instead of psychology, Brideshead placed something else at its very centre: God. Or perhaps not God exactly, but morality, honour, soul, religion – a broader and deeper sense of the Good than anything Downton cared to offer.

Indeed, the story at the heart of Brideshead is, in today’s terms, almost perplexing. Without giving away too much, Brideshead turns on the fact that Mr X loves Ms Y, and Ms Y loves Mr X, and there is no earthly reason why they shouldn’t live together and be happy forever – except that God says no. The result is that both parties end up renouncing their happiness for essentially religious reasons – and one of the two wasn’t even religious.

You could perfectly well imagine some story like that appearing on Netflix today. You could imagine scripting, for example, a drama about a romance in the New York orthodox Jewish community, in which the two principals refused to marry for essentially similar reasons. But that Netflix drama would inevitably focus on the psychology lying behind that refusal. (Parental pressure? Fear of commitment? Fear of exclusion?) Brideshead doesn’t give a damn about the psychology. What it takes seriously was the religious morality lying behind its refusal.

If you want to characterise the shift that’s taken place, it’s from soul/morality to psychology.

And no, I don’t mean that there weren’t psychologically focused and highly intelligent dramas before Brideshead. And no, I don’t mean that there aren’t any soul-focused dramas now. But for all that, I think the shift is a real one. We now have a tendency to think that psychological exploration just IS the point of higher-end fiction.

And it isn’t. It’s one possible purpose of higher-end fiction. There are others.

In my own fiction? Well, I don’t know. Mostly, I just like writing the best entertainment I can. But on that soul versus psychology issue? Well, I probably lean as much towards soul as I do towards psychology.

Soul may not be a fashionable theme, but Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy and the rest are beyond fashion. They’re forever.

And Brideshead vs Downton? Brideshead is better.

Til soon.

Harry

Good morning, everyone!

Emily Glenister is a Director and Literary Agent at DHH Literary Agency. Prior to agenting, Emily trained as an actress and worked as a theatrical agent and assistant.

In fiction she represents female-led commercial and book club fiction, smart and quick-witted historical fiction, and original horror novels/ghost stories. In non-fiction she represents history, pop culture, memoir, and true crime.

Some recent and upcoming books Emily represents include: The Truth About Her by Annie Taylor (June 2023), Eighteen Seconds by Louise Beech (April 2023), She Had It Coming by Carys Jones (January 2023), So Pretty by Ronnie Turner (January 2023).

Emily can be found on twitter at @emily_glenister.

“If you are meant to be doing this, then you will get there; I firmly believe that.”

Hi Emily, thank you so much for speaking with us today! We’re excited to hear about your role as an agent and what you’re looking for in submissions.

Q. What brought you to agenting?

I’ve always been a voracious reader and knew I wanted to do something related to the written word, so I decided to try and be an actress and went to drama school. I graduated in 2010, and worked steadily in both theatre and television, before realising it just wasn’t for me. I then became an agent for actors, before finally landing a PA job with David Headley of Goldsboro Books, a beautiful independent first edition bookshop in Covent Garden. This was in 2016 and for the next four years, I worked alongside David, reading submissions, helping pitch books – basically doing everything and anything I could legitimately stick my oar into. Towards the end of 2020, David asked me if I’d consider starting my own list, and of course I jumped at the chance and have managed to build up a successful list of very talented authors since. I count myself very lucky!

Q: What is a day in the life of an agent like for you?

I’m at my desk between 9.30 and 9.45am, coffee in hand and catch up on the emails that have come in since I downed tools the night before. This can be anything from catching up with clients who have sent in their manuscript for edits or a once-over before it goes to their editor, emails from foreign publishers or scouts asking about a manuscript and its rights status. I tend to spend the morning doing the admin side of my job (aforementioned emails, paperwork, invoicing for clients etc) and then, after lunch, I will edit and / or read client manuscripts, read submissions, or prepare a pitch for a book I am soon going out with on submission. This usually takes place with a hot water bottle on my lap, a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits, and my dog, Lola, at my feet. It sounds serene, and quite frankly, it is lovely to be able to do this – but I’m also a firm believer in your surroundings affecting one’s productivity, so I try and make it as “zen” as possible. If I’m in the office however, it’s totally different as this is when I have the opportunity to have meetings with editors, clients and of course, my colleagues. When I get home (or indeed if I’ve WFH), I tend to edit and / or read until bedtime (breaking for dinner) and then try and sneak in a few chapters of a “non-work” book before lights out.

Q. What do you want to see in a query letter? And what do you hate?

My name, for starters! I know it sounds a tad pompous, and the lack of an agent’s name doesn’t indicate bad writing; but it does indicate a lack of care – and one has to think “if you can’t be bothered, why should I?”. It’s not a deal-breaker, but certainly something I notice – though that being said, “Dear Sirs” is an instant no from me, and I’m not sorry about it!

I like query letters to be short and snappy – let your writing do the talking for you. For me, the best query letters come in three parts: short paragraph about why you’re writing to me (your name, title of book, genre, word count and why me / the agency; then another paragraph, slightly longer, pitching the book – and I love it when these start with a hooky, elevator pitch; and then, finally, a short paragraph about you as a writer, including any courses you’ve done, or awards you’ve won / been shortlisted for – this last paragraph isn’t crucial. I’m just nosey).

And in terms of what I hate, there’s nothing I specifically “hate”, but if I do have to regrettably turn down your work, I’d really appreciate not being called horrid names in return

Q. Same question when it comes to the synopsis. What should writers do? What should they avoid?

It’s a pain in the a*** but I would really try keeping the synopsis to one page, and one page only. “But my book needs more than one page!” I hear you cry, and while I totally understand that reaction, it is a really good discipline in pitching your book succinctly, as opposed to waffling, which is a common pitfall when describing the book’s storyline. Agents have to practice this, too! If you can get it to 2.0 spacing even better! But that’s not too important…

Really focus on the key points that push the narrative forward, rather than filling the synopsis with inconsequential instances that don’t contribute to the plot. If it helps, make a bullet-pointed list prior to writing your synopsis, using all of these key points and then build your one-page synopsis around them.

Q. What are you looking for in the opening pages of a novel? What really excites you?

I am an absolute sucker for a hooky first line – I feel like in commercial fiction, it’s almost a requirement to get the reader immediately invested. But then one can run the risk of it sounding clichéd and mass-produced, so choose your words carefully!

I’m also not a huge fan of world-building within the first few pages of a novel, especially as the first three chapters (along with the synopsis and cover letter) are one of your three tools with which to get the agents’ attention. All of the world-building can come a little later in the novel. Focus on introducing me to the protagonist and I want a firm hint as to what this book is going to be about and what potential struggles the protagonist faces. For instance, if the book is about trouble within a marriage, and our MC was the wife, then it would be useful to see a snippet of her relationship with her husband (be it in person, or over text etc) that hints to this “trouble”. It’s called a “hook” for a reason – throw that reel out and catch a fish!

Q. Tell us about a recent deal (or three) that really delighted you.

There are a few I’m not able to talk about yet, as they haven’t been announced, that I am so happy with – these authors are disgustingly talented.

The ones I can talk about, more recently would be Suzie Edge’s second non-fiction book, Vital Organs (Wildfire, September 2023) which delves into the body parts belonging to some of history’s most notorious characters; bestselling author Becca Day has just re-signed with current publishers, Embla, for another two psychological thrillers, the first of which, The Secrets We Buried (Embla, summer 2023) is about to be delivered and is just astonishing; finally, Talia Samuels’ joyous queer Christmas rom-com, The Christmas Swap (Michael Joseph, October 2023), which is absolutely everything you’d want it to be. Talia was the winner of a competition I judged, along with Michael Joseph, and she is a real find!

Q. Any final words of advice for authors in the querying process?

DON’T GIVE UP.

You have to have a really thick skin in this business, and I am under no illusion that that’s actually quite a big ask. But it’s also a marathon and not a sprint, and if the first, second or even third book you query doesn’t get picked up by an agent, persevere until you really think you’ve exhausted each option and variation of what you are capable of. It rather feels like new agents are popping up all the time, and we all have different tastes. If you are meant to be doing this, then you will get there; I firmly believe that.

Before you go out on submission, have beta readers – that aren’t your friends or family – read your work and give you honest, constructive feedback. Friends and family are great champions and supporters, but famously “nice”, when what you actually need is frankness.

Finally, don’t send out submissions to everyone you come across on in the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook – be selective, study agents’ lists and work out how / if you fit on to them. This is your career; you’ve got to take it as seriously as applying for a dream job, and that means not using scatter tactics, and sending your work to anyone who will take it. Have a few different tranches and go out in waves – give yourself the best possible shot.

The full interview will be posted to Emily's AgentMatch profile, which you can find here.

In the meantime, if you’re struggling with your query letter and synopsis, do check out our free resources on our website. We have lots of info to help you on your way. Or, better still, if you’re a member with us, our lovely Writers Support team will be happy to offer you a free query letter review!

The start of your book is a delicate, beautiful thing.

It has a joyous quality for sure. Something like cracking open an egg, the peep of new sun, climbing on board a train, feeling the flap of a sail, a rope straining at its mooring. You only get that feeling once per book, and it’s worth relishing.

You can go big, if you want to. You can start in the middle of a bar-room brawl, with bottles flying and chairs thwacking. Or you can start with something apparently small, except that the wriggle of a little story-worm catches the reader’s attention and, dammit, they find they’re hooked.

But, of course, there’s another issue with beginnings, a bothersome one. Because agents, blast them, start books from the beginning too and they are very unusual readers indeed. Partly, yes, they’re unusual in that they’re professionals looking for work they can sell. But also, they start reading literally thousands of novels a year. How many first pages does an average agent read? Maybe two thousand. How many actual books does an average agent read? Well, probably roughly as many as you do – or a few more, because they’re pros.

Because agents read so many opening pages, they are deeply – horribly – familiar with the clichés of the genre. That means, they are exquisitely sensitive to badness in openings.

What’s worse is this: the opening of your novel may well be the first thing you’ve ever written. It’s where you’re at your least experienced, not your most. That’s true in general, but it’s also true of this particular story. Midway through your book, you’ll know your characters better, your story better, your themes better, your voice better – everything better.

Which means that when an agent picks up your book it’s effectively an encounter between a Story Opening Super-Analyser and a scarily undercooked Story Writer. Not fair, right?

And look: nothing I go on to say in this email is absolute. You could pick some horrible cliché to open your novel with but, if you deliver that opening in a confident and well-written way, then any sane agent will read on, with interest. For everything I say below, you should bear in mind that there’s almost certainly a classic of world literature that takes the cliché and rebuilds it into something wonderful.

At the same time, clichés feel wrong for a reason. If you can avoid them, you probably should. And with that said …

Dreams

There’s something horribly schoolchildish about any story that starts with a dream, before, two or three paragraphs later, admitting, “Then I woke up.” It feels cool, but cool in much the same way that my kids think that making pots of green goo out of ordinary kitchen ingredients is cool. Once your age hits double-digits, it’s time to move on a bit.

I think there are also two more specific reasons for concern. One is that dreams are totally unboundaried. Not rule-governed. And that doesn’t just break the laws of life, but of stories too. Even kids’ fantasy fiction has rules that govern its fictional world. Opening without rules feels disappointing – the difference between a park kickabout and a World Cup tie.

The other is that, once you get two or three paragraphs in, you play that limp trick on the reader: ha, ha, fooled you, it was only a dream. That yields a feeling akin to disappointment. “You made me read this, on the premise that it mattered, but it didn’t matter. Oh.” I’d gently suggest that this is not a feeling you want anyone – still less an agent – to encounter on the first page of your novel.

Beds

More generally, one agent once told me that a stunning proportion of all manuscripts she read – she reckoned well over ten per cent – opened with a character in bed. She reckoned she’d almost never, perhaps literally never, offered representation for such a book.

There’s nothing obviously wrong with that. You could imagine some Beckettian novel that opens with a character in bed and keeps that character in pyjamas for most of the story. But … again, I think there are two specific issues here.

One is that you don’t want to bracket yourself with the ten per cent of novels that an agent is most inclined to reject. The other is this: why is it that so many authors start with a character in bed and (usually) waking up?

I think it’s that the writer themselves are warming up. They are aware of embarking on something new. Of introducing a new character to the world. So they start at the beginning: the opening of the day. As they move their character through toilet / shower / coffee / conflakes, they limber up, like your pre-gym warm-up.

And: don’t warm up. Or, if you do, don’t do it on page. Don’t do it anywhere that the reader is going to see it.

Poetry & prologues

The fantasy manuscripts we see start with a snatch of poetry by way of prologue. Or if not poetry, then myth, or incantation, or something similar.

And again, you’re going to tell me that Tolkein did this all the time, and maybe he did. But poetry (and myth and the rest of it) is, almost by definition, harder to penetrate than prose. An opening needs to gently lift the reader into your story vehicle and get them drifting away from the bank, the train gliding away from the platform.

Forcing the reader to wade through a couple of pages of (often quite dodgy) poetry is the opposite of that gently lifting model. It’s like you’ve built a low wall in between the reader and the railway carriage you want them to get into.

I talked about prologues a couple of weeks back, and they usually generate the same kind of issue. The definition of a prologue is roughly, something detached from the main story. That means you are having to gently lift the reader into your prologue and then, in the chapter following, you’re asking them to get out of that first vehicle and into another. You’ve just doubled the obstacles in the way of full reader engagement.

Too much, too soon

Personally, I’d vastly prefer a dream-story, starting in bed, and written in poetry, encased in a prologue, than the beast I’m about to describe.

My least-favoured story opener is with highly extreme emotion of any sort. Often some horrible situation (a prisoner under torture), but really any sort of extreme emotion, conveyed with a plethora of emotional superlatives.

The reason why this doesn’t work is that stories have the quality of new social situations. You’re meeting characters for the first time. If your best friend had a terrible heartbreak sob story, you’d be prepared to listen to the whole thing, dishing out biscuits and tissues as needed. But if you had just for the very first time met a new parent at the school gate and you got the same excessively tearful download, you’d just want to pull away.

A reader doesn’t care about an emotional drama for its own sake. They care because they care about a character. And that means learning them, building them, creating the knowledge that will generate sympathy.

That’s the ‘too much’ error, and it’s a particular bogeyman of mine. But there’s a ‘too soon’ error as well.

That error is giving away your punchline much too early. You have a world where gravity can be rubbed away via a smartphone app? Or memory works only for twenty-four hours? Or your character, a woman, is working, disguised as a man, on board an old three-master?

Then great! I love it! What great ideas!

But don’t tell me about them. Not on the first page, nor even the third, nor anywhere in the first chapter. Yes, of course, you scatter tantalising clues. A coffee machine that has to be pulled down from the ceiling. Reminder post-its on the mirror. Some odd piece of behaviour by a ‘seaman’ apparently remembering a husband.

The clues are what tantalise. They’re what drag a reader through the story. Once you deliver your punchline (“An anti-gravity app! 24 hour memory!”), that particular sequence of clues carries no more force. For sure, other things will come along – you’ll start introducing the full Technicolor complexity of your story – but we’re talking about openings. If you want to get the reader into your story-vessel and pulling happily away from shore, then those tantalising clues are a brilliant way to maintain engagement. In time, as the reader bonds with your character, you won’t need the clues any more. But during this first chapter, don’t give the game away too early. Use the clues, delay the punchline.

***

That’s it from me. My overcomplicated week last week has floated into the past. The first yellow crocus nosed into the garden this morning. It’s probably regretting its impulsive decision: early February on an Oxfordshire hill is a bit unkind, even for croci. But what the heck, m’deario, and what the heck, my dearies? Where one crocus boldly goes, spring will surely follow.

Til soon.

Harry