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Two weeks ago, we went through some of the basics in terms of approaching literary agents. In theory, those basics should be enough to guide you through pretty much any submissions process anywhere. Unfortunately, things do often go wrong and it can be difficult for writers to know how to address those things.

The problems arise mostly because agents are busy people and you, as an unrepresented writer, are not yet someone they have a contractual relationship with. So while general respect for the community of writers should be important at all times, the realistic truth is that the community is apt to get neglected as soon as the agent is bombarded with more immediate pressures.

To put the same thing rather more bluntly, agents can often simply act rudely or unprofessionally towards unrepresented writers and there is extremely little you can do about it.

I just haven’t heard back from my initial request. I’ve already nudged once. What next?

What comes next is that you move on. That agent either doesn't want your work or they've made it clear they are not going to get back to you. Either way that is not an agent you want.

An agent asked for a full manuscript. I sent it in X weeks ago and I’ve still heard nothing. What next?

Here, you can be a little more demanding. I would suggest leaving it three weeks, then nudging. If you still don't hear back after a further 3 weeks, you should probably conclude that agent has lost interest. I think it is fine to nudge again at this point, but you should by now be resetting your Inner Hope-o-meter from “Yay, publication here I come” to “Uh, this doesn’t feel right.”

And, in any event, two nudges is the most. You don’t want to have to chivvy your representative. They should be chasing you.

An agent offered representation, and has just gone silent. What do I do?

There is very little you can do. There are professional associations of literary agents, but those things are created to protect literary agents. They are not there to protect you.

If you got an offer of representation, but not a contract, then chase up on the contract. If things go weirdly slow – or just weirdly – you need to treat that the way you would a creepy date that you arranged online. If it feels wrong, it is wrong. Just get out. Don’t mourn the death of something. It was never really there.

If you got an offer and signed a contract and maybe had a bit of an editorial interchange, and then things go weird? Well, the same basic rule applies: if it feels wrong, it is wrong. Yes, be patient and professional. Yes, call and email. But sometimes agents take a writer on in a flurry of yes-ish-ness, then realise over time that they made a bad call – they’ve reconsidered and now think that this manuscript is not going to fly.

What they should do is to tell you that, politely and clearly and without blame. That’ll be tough to hear, but sometimes tough things are necessary.

Alas and alack, mercy me and mercy you, the chance of an agent telling you that thing politely, clearly and without blame is smaller than the fraction defined by:

Mass of gnat

Mass of sun

What is much more likely to happen is that the agent just Goes Weird. Your emails will go unanswered. Your calls will not be responded to. Then, after a bit, the agent flares up at you for some supposed unprofessionalism on your part and huffs off in a storm of petticoats and ‘Well, if that’s the kind of author you are’ type remonstrations.

At this point, you need to:

• Pour yourself, and drink, a glass of wine / beer / elderberry tea
• Remind yourself that it’s not you, it’s very definitely them
• And drag yourself wearily back to Square 1.

I’m on holiday this week, so there’s no FF challenge from me specifically. However, if you have other questions about agent etiquette, I'd love to hear them. Head over to Townhouse and add your question to the thread, which will inform a future email.

When you are ready, add your question to this thread. 

Researching agents is one of those tasks that would put anyone’s head in a spin. If you’ve got as far as being in that position, it means you’ve almost certainly spent years writing your book, editing your book, and planning the potential future of your book through a series of elaborate daydreams. The job, then, of working out who to actually send it to is, to put it lightly, rather overwhelming. 

I began querying in 2021, after having spent ten years (at least) writing a middle-grade fantasy in between getting married, having children, moving houses etc. I spent a year sending this work of a decade to a list of carefully researched agents, and the same year being roundly rejected. So far, so normal. 

After shelving this middle-grade novel, I decided I’d write a psychological thriller. This was, after all, the genre I mainly read in. And after completing and editing it (in only a year this time!) I was ready to start querying again. I drew up a comprehensive list of agents based on Google searches, The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, and the acknowledgments section of any thriller I could get my hands on. 

This research is incredibly longwinded and time-consuming if you want to do it properly, and get a real sense of what an agent is like, what they’re looking for, and the reasons why you think you’d be a good match for each other. So after a few months of more rejections, I decided to give Jericho Writers’ AgentMatch a go. And I found it completely addictive. 

Not only could I search for relevant agents, but I could filter by things like how many years’ experience they had, whether they were actively looking for new authors, or how many clients they had. And it was amongst this treasure trove of information that I found Jo Williamson of Antony Harwood Literary Agency.  

I’d queried Jo before with my middle-grade novel, so knew I liked the sound of her as an agent, but I had no idea she represented anything other than children’s books. It turns out she had only recently begun looking for adult books, and Jericho Writers (being so well connected to agents) had sniffed out that vital piece of information and fed it into their AgentMatch feature. They also had very helpful sections where they’d collated interview transcriptions, and links to relevant videos, so you could browse information about agents gathered from more than one source, all from the AgentMatch page. 

Jericho really helped me home in on the agents I wanted to approach, and gave me the confidence to know I’d done my research properly, and had been provided with up-to-date information. I also used their Agent One-to-One to get feedback on my query package before I began querying. This gave me a fifteen minute phone call with Phillipa Sitters of DGA, which was really useful, and meant I felt confident in the pages I was about to put out there, as well as the information I’d included in my query letter. 

 In the end I received three full manuscript requests and two offers of rep – and obviously chose the amazing Jo Williamson, who is still my agent four years and three books later!  

My debut, The Perfect Guest came out in 2024, followed by Home Sweet Home a year later. My third thriller, The Family Break was published 30^th July 2026 by Zaffre Books. 

Top tips for querying authors: 

• Research your agents properly – there’s no point querying agents who aren’t representing your genre, or who aren’t even accepting submissions at the moment. 

• Query in small batches. If you get the feeling something isn’t working in your letter, synopsis, or pages, you then have the chance to change it before sending out the next batch. 

• Write other things alongside querying. You probably won’t get an agent overnight, and it can be very disheartening sending emails into the void and getting no encouragement back. Write short stories and flash fiction, enter competitions, and find writing partners. Who knows, the idea for your next novel might come to you in the form of a short story whilst you’re querying your current book - that’s what happened to me when I was querying my first novel, and that was the book that got me my agent. But that’s another story! 

In summary, a lot of work goes in to writing a book, but anyone who’s querying knows that the work doesn’t stop there. And I will be forever grateful to Jericho Writers for their help in finding me my perfect agent!  

Stop Querying Blindly. Find the Agents Most Likely to Say Yes. Search 1,400+ literary agents by genre, location, and submission preferences, and build a targeted query list in minutes with AgentMatch.

Use code SAVE50 for £50 off when you spend over £500 across editorial services or courses at Jericho Writers.

‘Show don’t tell’.

We’ve all heard it – probably (definitely) more than we’d like. But how does it actually translate into writing? I thought I had a pretty solid idea until this month’s lesson on ‘Emotions and Senses’ with the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme...

As someone with a background in wellbeing, my go-to is helping others name their emotions. Naturally, that meant I did a lot of emotion-naming in my writing too - aka ‘telling’. That didn’t mean I neglected ‘showing’, in fact, I'd developed a rather unhelpful habit of doing both for the same feeling. I wasn’t putting enough trust in the reader or in my writing and felt I needed to explain (tell) what I showed. Now this isn’t to say you shouldn’t do this – there are no set rules in writing, after all - but I was doing it a lot, and it was putting distance between the reader and the story, so something had to change. This month for me was about letting go of the reins a little and trusting that my ‘showing’ would do the work.

The content has been my favourite to date, so for this month’s takeover, I wanted to share three of my biggest takeaways:

1. Use setting to convey emotion.

When I first started writing, I would write out a scene based on what I thought the reader needed to picture it. This is fine and does the job well enough. But I’ve since realised that setting can do so much more! When you start to think about questions like; ‘What would your character notice in the setting, given their current emotional state?’ and ‘How would they interact with this setting based on their feelings?’, you start to get some really interesting answers. When you write these answers, a clever thing happens. You a) show the character’s feelings without naming them and b) get across setting without loads of exposition. It’s a win-win situation!  

2. Know what a character would show vs. hide 

Sometimes, a character's feelings will match their outward presentation exactly, but that is often not the case. Characters and emotions begin to feel especially real in those moments of discrepancy – e.g. the man telling his wife that he’s fine, while his fingers tighten around the cutlery and his foot taps beneath the table. We know he’s not fine, but we don’t need to be told. That tension sparks intrigue, particularly if we don’t have context. Now add in what happens when his best friend asks him if he’s fine? Does he react differently? Showing not only character emotions but how they choose to conceal or reveal them adds so much depth! 

3. Use ‘showing’ to immerse the reader – but with intention! 

All the things that make for good ‘showing’ - sensory details, actions, sometimes dialogue - throw the reader right into your scene. This is great BUT must be used with intention. The ‘show don’t tell’ advice could be misconstrued as meaning a story should be all show. If that were the case, we could struggle to move through plot. Showing – especially with senses – can slow down writing. Just getting the character some breakfast could be a five-page description of cereal tumbling out of the packet and the gentle cascade of milk into the bowl. If this is crucial to your story, great. If it’s not, we don’t need to hang around. We probably don’t even need to know they’ve had breakfast; we'll probably just assume it. 

Showing is excellent for the moments when you want the reader to linger. Big twists, revelations, gut-punching news, the moment when the enemies finally FINALLY become lovers and all that yearning pays off. Showing makes for a great reader experience, but it’s not the answer to everything. For things like moving swiftly from one scene to another – a different time period, a different setting - sometimes telling works better.

In other course news, I’ve completed the first draft of my psychological thriller – woohoo! The structure of the course, the learning topics and regular meetings have all spurred me on to make progress. In the past, edits have been a daunting prospect, but using takeaways like the ones above, I know I’ll be going in much better prepared. Also, having monthly feedback from my tutor and weekly feedback from the tutor group on the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme means there have been more eyes on this first draft than any other before. This is so reassuring! Suffice to say, I’m much less frightened of the edits stage now!

So – my one piece of advice from this month? Look at where you convey emotion in your writing and play about with how you can use ‘showing’ devices to really draw this out. As always, and most importantly, remember to have fun with it!

Want to follow in Rachel’s footsteps? You can learn more about the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme and how it can help you on your writing journey.

On Tuesday, I did a live edit session for our friends in Premium Membership. (And yes, I’m going to come back to the agent etiquette thing soon. Just wanted to hit this editing theme while it’s fresh in my mind.) 

During the webinar (which Premium Members can replay here), I found myself using a technique for the first time and I found it strangely useful. I found it helpful as a way to explain what I was thinking editorially. But I realised that it can also be really valuable for solving editing problems on one's own manuscript. 

Here's what I mean. 

Let’s take a chunk of made-up text. In the edit session, we reviewed a piece involving a funeral, so here’s my version of something similar. 

The ground was iron, frost glittering wherever the sun hadn’t found it. 

One group had come in matching pink T-shirts worn beneath dark coats. My dad was in the middle of it somehow. That unsteady walk of his, those trusting spaniel eyes. How did he always get looked after? The T-shirts were advertising some charity thing that the Aunt Jem must have been involved in, but the attempt at buddiness felt a little breathy, a little forced. My dad always gets looked after, somehow. I didn’t know why. I stood apart from the other mourners, drinking coffee from a paper cup. 

A few snowflakes fell. Funeral weather. 

My dad found himself in the middle of the pink T-shirt mob. A couple of people hugged him. 

I’m wearing dark jeans, a black shirt. It feels like clubbing gear, not proper funeral wear. 

Now I hope that feels like there’s something alive in that piece – but also muddled. None of the sentences feel bad, but we don’t quite know where to look when. The flow is missing. 

The technique I used in the webinar was simple: I just started colouring different bits in different ways. 

So, we’d apply one colour for PLACE / WEATHER. 

We’d have another colour for PINK T-SHIRT GANG. 

We’d have another colour for DAD. 

We’d have a fourth colour for SELF-REFLECTION. 

So our Crayola-ed up text now looks like this: 

The ground was iron, frost glittering wherever the sun hadn’t found it. 

One group had come in matching pink T-shirts worn beneath dark coats.

My dad was in the middle of it somehow. That unsteady walk of his, those trusting spaniel eyes. How did he always get looked after?

The T-shirts were advertising some charity thing that the Aunt Jem must have been involved in, but the attempt at buddiness felt a little breathy, a little forced.

My dad always gets looked after, somehow. I never knew why.

I stood apart from the other mourners, drinking coffee from a paper cup. 

A few snowflakes fell. Funeral weather. 

My dad found himself in the middle of the pink T-shirt mob. A couple of people hugged him. 

I’m wearing dark jeans, a black shirt. It feels like clubbing gear, not proper funeral wear. 

What that does – apart from creating an eyesore – is make it incredibly clear how the text is / isn’t flowing. 

Our task isn’t necessarily to make all the colours join up. For example, it’s perfectly normal if references to physical place / weather etc are dotted throughout the text. And not just normal, but positively good – constant small references keep us rooted in place.

Likewise, fragments of personal reflection ought to be dotted through the text for the same reason: to keep the presence of reflective self alive throughout.

But that doesn’t necessarily go for the ‘Pink T-shirt mob’ text, and it may not apply to the dad-related text either.

Unless there’s a reason for those things not to join up, they should probably join up. So that turns our text into something like this:

The ground was iron, frost glittering wherever the sun hadn’t found it.

One group had come in matching pink T-shirts worn beneath dark coats. The T-shirts were advertising some charity thing that the Aunt Jem must have been involved in, but the attempt at buddiness felt a little breathy, a little forced.

My dad found himself in the middle of the pink T-shirt mob. A couple of people hugged him.

My dad was in the middle of it somehow. That unsteady walk of his, those trusting spaniel eyes. How did he always get looked after? My dad always gets looked after, somehow. I never knew.

I stood apart from the other mourners, drinking coffee from a paper cup. I’m wearing dark jeans, a black shirt. It feels like clubbing gear, not proper funeral wear.

A few snowflakes fell. Funeral weather.

That’s basically the same text, except that three things have happened:

First, we found some obviously duplicative text and killed it. That just brightens the whole passage – it says the same thing with fewer words and fewer moments of stalling.

Second, we’ve achieved a rational flow here that runs:

1. Physical scene setting
2. Focus in on one group of mourners, but not v intimately. (We don’t know these people, they’re described as though from distance.)
3. Focus in on day (more intimate – he’s dad, we’re commenting on type of eyes.)
4. Consider self
5. Nudge scene setting again.

Notice that the sequence runs from (A) more distant view with no inner reflection through to (B) completely up close and personal view with direct inner reflection. That feels nice.

And third, in doing this, we’ve achieved a small but complete emotional movement, which runs like this:

1. It’s cold, but there’s some sun.
2. Those people in pink – don’t really like them
3. But hey, dad always gets looked after. He gets hugged.
4. I’m alone & wearing the wrong stuff
5. Now it’s snowing.

It’s as though the weather has turned crueller because the narrator comes to feel his own wrongness. The yellow at top and bottom of the revised text is basically telling us, “this emotional movement is now complete – we’re ready for the next emotional beat”.

I think there’s more to say on this, and maybe I’ll pick this up in a future email, but I think there’s quite a lot of power here already.

The takeaway? If a scene is feeling alive but mushy – confused, somehow – then the Crayola technique is a strangely powerful one.

And, guys, if YOU need help with editing, there are two obvious ways to do it.

Number One-ola: Use our extremely experienced, utterly professional editors to make your manuscript better. I mean, we call it a manuscript assessment service, but that’s really not what it is. It’s a MAKE YOUR MANUSCRIPT BETTER service, and you can get it here.

Number Two-ola: Become a Premium Member of Jericho Writers. You unlock all the premium elements of our lovely free community. You get live edit sessions. You get live Q&As with industry professionals, including – where, please, you’re encouraged to blurt out your questions. You get courses, and masterclasses, and query letter reviews, and discounts on pretty much everything, and all of our AgentMatch agent database, and more, more, more. It’s dumb not to give it a go, and you ain’t no dummy.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Outer to inner

Go on then. Give us a scene either that you’ve revised using these techniques or which shows a similar movement from outer to inner and which delivers a short but complete emotional beat.

250-300 words, please. As ever, please provide your title, genre, and any explanation that we need to make sense of the passage. When you're ready, upload your work to this forum.

Til soon.

Harry

As an agent who’s been taking submissions for over ten years, I’ve seen authors make every mistake you can imagine – and a handful of really imaginative ones you honestly can’t. But when it comes to non-fiction, there are a few that crop up time and time again.  

I’ve invaded your regular Jericho newsletter this week to let you know the five mistakes I’d most like all the non-fiction writers out there to stop making. Starting with… 

Writing your book upfront 

Don’t do this, because the vast majority of non-fiction books aren’t acquired off the back of a full manuscript.  

Unlike in fiction, over here in non-fiction we primarily work with proposals. This is a shorter 35-50 page document that is effectively a business pitch for your book. It tells an editor what your book is, what it’s for and who’s going to read it, as well as including a decent amount of sample material to demonstrate that you can do all the amazing things you’re promising to do.  

Save yourself a lot of time by starting here. 

Figuring out your argument as you go 

When you’re writing that proposal, don’t develop your argument in the process. I’ve seen so many proposals that read as the author picking their way towards what they want to say, but there’s nothing harder to edit into a completed proposal than purpose.  

Know what your book is for and use that purpose as the spine of your proposal, everything starts from there. I once turned to two writers co-authoring a book and told them that I loved their proposal, and that I could clearly see the journey they went on to figure out what they wanted to say. Then I told them to scrap it all and start again, with that end point as the new starting point. It wasn’t what they wanted to hear, but the next draft of the proposal was terrific. 

Writing a book that someone else could write 

Don’t write a book that someone else could write. The thoughts, ideas, experiences and arguments have to be content that can’t be found elsewhere. Otherwise, they will be found elsewhere – there’s simply too much out there.  

Your book needs a USP if you’re going to reach your market and a big part of that USP should be you. Maybe not you personally, but your unique research, interest or niche knowledge.  

And as a follow-on to this that I’ve only had to add on in the last few years – don’t write a book that a Large Language Model (LLM – generative AI) could write. If you’re synthesising other people’s ideas and research into an accessible format, and if those ideas are broadly available, then you’re going to struggle. People go to non-fiction for unique expertise. If an LLM could write your book, it’s not going to be easy to ask someone to pay to read it from you. 

Writing a book that’s not ‘actionable’ enough 

Here’s another one I see time and time again. Don’t write a book that only feels useful in the hands of policy makers. Readers want books that are going to affect their lives, they want you to change their minds or change their behaviour, and they want your book to feel empowering. If you write 75,000 words about a specific aspect of how terrible the world is and then 5,000 words about the high-level global policy changes that need to happen to fix it, your reader is going to emerge from your book downhearted and disempowered.  

Instead, give your reader things they can use. If your book is issues-led, let them know what they can do to address those issues (and I don’t mean telling them to vote better!). If you’re looking over your manuscript and can’t see what the reader is meant to take away from it, then you might have more work to do. This needs to be a book that you can imagine every reader pressing into the hands of their neighbours, parents and colleagues. If you can’t imagine them doing that, ask yourself how your book needs to change until you can. 

Focusing too much on social media 

Finally, this one might seem counterintuitive but – don’t build a platform. You’ve probably heard people saying that platform is hugely important in non-fiction. And it is! But the kind of platform we’re talking about is not something you’re likely to be able to build on a reasonable timeframe.  

When we discuss platform, we’re often talking about platform-led books. That is to say, we find an author with a huge platform (a consistently top-ranking podcast, a popular business course, a food-themed Instagram with a hundred thousand followers) and we get them to write a book that appeals to their audience.  

The important thing is that the profile comes first. It wasn’t built for the book, the book was built out of it. If you don’t already have that, there’s nothing you can do about that, and trying to build a profile from scratch will likely work against you. In lots of ways, having no profile is better than having a small one, and profiles in the early stages of being built look a lot like profiles that aren’t doing very well. Your time is better spent making your material so unputdownable that profile stops mattering. 

That was a lot of don’ts. I want to leave you with some positivity. So yes, it’s tough, but yes, you should do it anyway. Do write the proposal. Do edit and redraft and revise until you fall asleep at your keyboard. Do remember why you love this subject and why it’s so important that everyone else falls in love with it too. Do bring us into a world we’d never have access to otherwise and do let your passion for it sing out from every page.  

People will tell you it’s hard – it is. Do it anyway. 

Want more advice from Eli? He is available for one-to-one sessions where you can chat about your book idea, next steps and potential publishing options. Book yours here!  

In my 20+ years as an editor, one of my greatest joys has been working with authors who write historical fiction. For one thing, when I work alongside historical novelists, I get to learn all about the places, people, and events of another era.  

Moments from the past come alive through characters, dialogue, and descriptive detail. Often, I also learn about a lesser-known or hidden history, as was the case with Rhys Bowen’s The Rose Arbor, which featured the sad fate of a Dorset village that was used for military training during World War II, or Caroline Laurent’s An Impossible Return (winner of the Prix Maison de la Presse), a haunting novel about how the inhabitants of the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean were driven from their island home. 

I’ve also realized in my work that as much as history can fascinate an author, to the point they decide to dedicate months or years to exploring it in a story, writing a novel-length work of historical fiction has plenty of frustrations, too. After all, without a time machine, how can you really know if you’re getting it right?  

How much research is enough, and how can you keep moving forward when you feel like there’s so much you still don’t know? What happens when there are gaps in the historical record, or when you want to create a page-turner but the true timeline of events is painfully slow? 

Whether you’re just dipping your toes into a topic or you’ve already got a draft, here are a few tips for writing convincing historical fiction without getting lost down a research rabbit hole… 

1. Don’t let what you don’t know stop you 

For many authors, inspiration for a historical novel strikes when they first visit the place that will become their setting, or when they learn of a little-known fact that sparks a surge of curiosity. How can the world not know about this absolutely astonishing series of events? They nobly take up the charge of adapting it into a story, only to realize just how much they must learn to depict another time and place authentically.  

It’s an overwhelming feeling, and it can arise again and again over the course of drafting an historical novel – not just at the outset. And while yes, you need to do your research, you’ll also need to make progress even when you don’t know everything. (Spoiler alert: You’ll never know everything!) This means managing your writing process with some semblance of a system.  

For Emily Matchar, author of In the Shadow of the Greenbrier and The Lost Girl of Craven County, this meant deciding to draft 500 words six days a week and then researching and revising on the seventh. For Emily, modest goals (500 words is just two pages a day) and a simple system led to steady, consistent progress.  

Beyond setting a realistic goal, to get to the end of a draft, you’re going to need to give yourself permission to do the best you can with what you know for now, and to fill in the gaps in your knowledge at a later point. It’s absolutely okay to write in your manuscript “More research needed here.” Keep going, and add detail later. 

2. Stay organized  

You already know you need to do your research, but you’ll also need to organize it. A tool like Scrivener might be helpful for keeping your discoveries gathered in one place, but you can also keep it simple with a folder on your desktop or in Google Drive. If you’re doing online research, a bookmark folder in your browser can help keep track of links to return to later.  

Document your sources and make sure to note where you’ve found quotes and statistics so you don’t have to chase those down at a later date. If you’re working with primary sources in a library or archive, download a scanner app to photograph and upload key pages to your research folders.  

Dedicate some space to images, maps, and other visual inspiration. Some authors create a physical vision board for this and put it up in their workspace, and others use online tools. Whatever tools you use, set aside some time each month to organize your materials, assess what resources you might still need, and keep chaos at bay. 

3. Let the facts serve the fiction 

Most historical authors run into a sticky problem at least once in their process: sometimes, the facts just don’t make for compelling fiction, and no amount of research will remedy that. Maybe an event that needs to feel important and urgent in the story actually unfolded at a snail’s pace over a series of years. Maybe the king’s key advisor was actually five different people. Perhaps a form of technology your protagonist needs is still a few years off.  

Kelly Scarborough, an alum of the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme and author of Butterfly Games (an IPPY Bronze Medal winner), did extensive research to write her novel (and even learned Swedish!). And yet, some of what she uncovered wasn’t well suited to a story that kept readers turning pages. That meant she had to find her own boundary between being true to the historical record and ensuring she told a great story.  

Every historical novelist makes choices about when to stick to the facts and when to let drama lead the way. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but it’s normal to prioritize, at least to some extent, fictionalization over factual fidelity. After all, you’ve chosen to write a novel rather than a nonfiction account. An author’s note at the end of the book is a great place to let readers in on what’s fact and what’s fiction. 

4. Class is NOT in session 

While one of the things we love about historical fiction is its potential to open our eyes to other moments in time, readers are sensitive to being lectured, taught, or told about something the author has excavated in their research. This is especially true when details are unrelated to characters or key developments, or when it seems like they’re included primarily to demonstrate the extent of the author’s knowledge.  

Exhaustive, pages-long catalogs of the various planes used in World War II, or the full text of a speech made by a famous historical figure, are likely to make the reader’s eyes glaze over. Maggie O’Farrell researched Shakespearean England exhaustively to write Hamnet, but she’s extremely selective about her details. She never lectures, and the result is a credible, cohesive story world.  

Bottom line: Of all the research you do for your book, only a portion of it should appear in the actual manuscript.  

5. Be at peace (well, try…) with not getting it all right  

At the end of the day, even the most meticulous researchers are not going to ensure their novel is 100% accurate to the historical record, and that’s okay.  

Keep learning, keep writing, and keep striving to tell a great story. Your readers will thank you! 

Books mentioned in this post: The Rose Arbor by Rhys Bowen, An Impossible Return by Caroline Laurent, In the Shadow of the Greenbrier and The Lost Girl of Craven County by Emily Matchar, Butterfly Games by Kelly Scarborough, Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. 

Lindsey Alexander is a tutor on the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme. To find out more about the course, visit the web page or fill in this form and we’ll send the brochure straight to your inbox. Want to sense-check your story idea? Fancy meeting Lindsey one-to-one to see how working with her could help you? Book a twenty-minute mentoring session with her here. If you go on to study with us, we’ll credit the cost of the session back to you. 

Ah, me, elsewhere in the world, people take holidays. They lie on beaches, they swim in lakes and rivers, they drink chilled wine looking out at old castle walls and honeyed stone.

That is not the life of a writer, nor should it be. For you, my dear writer friend, the way is hard, high and stony. August is the season where you feverishly complete, edit and perfect that manuscript of yours. September is when you aim to submit that beautiful work to literary agents – after they have enjoyed their holidays, and before they plunge into the madness of the Frankfurt Book Fair.

But Planet Agent is not your planet and you need to know the rules of that strange land before you seek to enter.

How many agents?

I generally recommend that you approach between 10 and 12 agents, all chosen for their openness to your kind of writing. I think it makes sense to have two or three relatively senior agents on that list. But I think the bulk of your list should probably be made up of younger, hungrier agents. (I tried dictating this email, and that sentence came out as ‘younger, Hungarian agents.' And yes, I think every good shortlist needs a few Magyars.)

I really don't recommend a strategy of just going out to 3-4 agents. There's too high a risk that personal taste, or a period of intense busyness, means you will get rejections where you shouldn't.

I also don't like a strategy of just hitting 50 or more agents. I think that is needlessly burdensome on the industry. But even from your own point of view, if you need to go to 50 agents to get one acceptance, it's worth pausing and asking whether the submission pack and manuscript needs another look. There just aren't that many publishers out there, and publishers are even more choosy than agents. So, if you are not getting acceptances from the first 10-12 agents you approach, it may be worth taking another look.

How long to wait?

An Earth day lasts for 24 hours. A day on Jupiter lasts just 10 hours. A single day on Mercury lasts about 2 Earth-months. A single day on Venus lasts more like 8 months, which is why, when you meet Venusians, they’re always tired.

A day on Planet Agent sits somewhere between an Earth Day and a Mercury Day in terms of length – let’s say, around 3-6 earth days in total.

So when an agent asks you to wait 8 weeks to get back to you, you have to remember that in their world, that only feels like 1-2 weeks, which seems perfectly reasonable. Indeed, you should divide all agent-periods by a factor of between 3-6, and adjust your expectations accordingly.

All this is just to say that if you send a book off by 1 Sept, you shouldn’t fret at all if you’ve heard nothing back by 30 Sept.

Loads of agents now say, ‘If you haven’t heard from us within 8 weeks, then it’s a no.’ I do think that’s unacceptably sloppy, to be honest – agents in my view do have an obligation to the vast horde of unpublished writers who form the industry’s feedstock and future – but it is what it is. If an agent says that, then take them at face value. If they don’t mention a cut-off, then it’s OK to nudge gently, and only once, and not before 6-8 weeks.

The art of the nudge

If you’ve had no acceptance or full manuscript request, then your nudge needs to be a short, polite one-off. In effect, “I sent you X on Y date. I’d be very grateful if you could let me know your response. If I hear nothing back, I’ll assume the manuscript is not of interest.”

And honestly? Those nudges are not likely to be answered and seldom secure the outcome that you want. But sometimes you just need to nudge for your own sweet satisfaction.

Someone asks you for a full MS

If you have had a full manuscript request, things are very different. At that point, you fly into action. You write immediately to every other agent who is outstanding on your shortlist, and you say, in effect, “I have just received a full manuscript request from another literary agent. I remain keen to hear your thoughts. I have reattached my submission material here. Do let me know if this manuscript is of interest to you.”

That’s the nudge. Don’t nudge again. But it’s fine to do that. You should do it, indeed.

Someone offers you representation

If you have not merely had a request, but an offer of representation, then tell everyone that, apart from those who have positively rejected you, of course.

Again, the message is, “I’ve been offered representation. I remain very keen to hear from you, however. Please shift your ass and get back to me.” You may want to rephrase some parts of that, of course, but that’s the general gist.

Remember that your Goal #1 is to secure representation. If you hit that goal, you’ve won, but it might be a sketchy 1-0 win on a boggy pitch under fog. A win’s a win, of course, but really you want to secure Goal #2, which is a choice of agents.

If you’re doing work on your house, you might get quotes from 2-3 plumbers, 2-3 carpenters and so on. Only then, do you feel you have a reasonable chance of getting the work done and when and how you want. That should be your goal with agents too. You want to be in the position of interviewing them, not just swooning into their arms, like a giddy maiden with a too-tight corset.

More Etty Kett

I’ll do a second agent-etiquette email next week (or maybe the week after), so do please get back to me with any questions that you want answered.

And if you want to get a bit of an insider’s view before you start approaching agents, we also offer Agent One-to-One Feedback Sessions. By the way: this isn’t about getting an agent to represent you. It’s about making sure you’re putting your best possible submission in front of them when the time comes.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Query letters

Let’s see your query letter then. Doesn’t even matter if you’re not at the query stage. Just draft it up and let’s take a shufti.

(From Google, for baffled non-Brit readers: To "take a shufti" means to have a quick look or a brief glance at something. The phrase comes from Arabic military slang picked up by British, Australian, and New Zealand troops stationed in the Middle East.)

Upload your work here whenever you're ready. 

Til soon.

Harry

With the frightening rise of every sort of -ism out there, the need for diversity, representation and inclusion in MG fiction is more important than ever. We all recognize the power of children seeing themselves, their faith, their cultures, their families and friends, reflected in the books they read, and the publishing industry has made great strides in the past decade or so, but… we still have a long way to go.

This is particularly true in regards to stories which feature diverse representations of children’s abilities and disabilities. With the recent launch of the SEND Inclusive Publishing Pledge, we now have statistics to illustrate what such inclusion should look like. If 1 in 5 students in primary education in the UK have some sort of SEND (special educational need or disability), then surely the books we write need to match this reality.

Brilliant authors, such as Elle McNicholl, Lisette Auton and recent Carnegie queen, Beth O’Brien, have contributed massively to increasing disability inclusion and representation in kidlit. I feel very lucky to have added Mizzy’s voice in the past year or so.

As her name suggests, Mizzy Maypole is a reimagining of Agatha Christie’s little old lady, Miss Marple, who defies all expectations with her brilliant sleuthing. In Mizzy’s case, our unsuspected detective is an almost-12-year-old-girl with Down Syndrome who, although constantly underestimated (especially by her older, cooler cousins), is determined to show the world she’s actually a very brilliant detective (and smash a few stereotypes along the way).

Book three in the Mizzy Mysteries comes out next year and I am one hundred percent committed to writing more books which champion representation and inclusion, not only with neurodivergent main protagonists, but also peopled with a cast of supporting characters which reflects the reality of 1 in 5 children with SEND in every school. However, the inclusion of more disabled characters in books is not enough on its own. These characters must be carefully and sensitively created, whilst also being fully-realized personalities, rather than token stereotypes.

My experience writing Mizzy has taught me 5 key points to keep in mind:

1. Not about me, without me.

This is actually a rule, not a point to keep in mind. Do not write a main character, unless you share their diagnosis, have been invited to co-create, or have a wealth of professional or personal experience. The last thing any of us wants to do is commit cultural appropriation or be guilty of PC window-dressing. Even if you have disability-adjacent experience, perhaps as a parent or a sibling to with a specific SEND, and especially as in my case, professional experience gained through teaching or therapeutic support, choose very carefully whether you can authentically write from a first-person perspective, or even a close-third. Although I benefitted hugely from the support of the Down syndrome community, I doubt I would write Mizzy in quite the same way again.

2. Lift up disabled creators

Wherever possible lift up disabled creators. For example, the Mizzy mysteries have showcased the talents of two creators with Down syndrome: Mizzy’s wonderful family-tree illustrator Lester Magoogan and her bewitchingly talented (and now award-winning) audiobook narrator Poppy Mae-Barret.

3. Don't make it up

I know. Fiction writers make stuff up all the time. But some things need to be real: out of basic human respect but also to make sure kidlit isn’t suddenly swamped with stereotypes, but with authentic, fully-formed characters.

Which means… research. Love it or hate it, if you do not share the SEND in question, in order to write authentic characters, you cannot avoid it. Preferably your research will be in real, live person with actual people who live with whichever disability you want to represent and include. And don’t meet just one person. As with any random group, people with Down syndrome are as endlessly varied as people who don’t have Down syndrome and, a phrase which was burned into my brain during my speech and language therapy training, if you know one autistic person, you know one autistic person (and I’m saying this as one autistic person). Above all, please, please, please, don’t try to make do by rewatching Rain Man…

4. Do make it up

This is not to cancel out what we just talked about, but to add to it (I never promised this would be easy). Just like any other character you write, a character with a SEND needs to be so much more than just a list of abilities and disabilities. Once you have done your research, flesh out the detail with everything else that the character wants, fears, loves, hates. All the stuff you know how to do. The stuff which makes your characters live and breathe and wiggle their way into your readers’ hearts.

5. Sensitivity Readers

Please don’t leave this step to your publisher. Don’t wait till you’ve finished your manuscript either. View sensitivity reads as a collaboration with the individuals and families you connected with during your research. Share chapters, incorporate feedback, share them again. It’s a time-consuming process but a vital component of writing authentic, inclusive characters. 

If you’ve read this far, thank you. Writing authentic, inclusive characters is challenging and there are far more considerations than the five I have flagged up here. But, as they say, if something is worth doing…, Now, more than ever, increasing the empathy and understanding we know comes from reading about other peoples’ realities — not to mention the boost to self-esteem seeing ourselves reflected in a story can bring — diversity, representation and inclusion in kidlit feels more vital than ever.