{"id":162166,"date":"2025-04-11T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/townhouse\/?p=162166"},"modified":"2025-04-11T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T09:00:00","slug":"a-line-of-green-lamps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/a-line-of-green-lamps\/","title":{"rendered":"A line of green lamps"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

All agents have passions. At our Festival once \u2013 late at night and after plenty of wine \u2013 one agent started listing hers. I know there were sharks on her list and haunted houses, and child killers, and twins, and (I think) anything Victorian, and definitely mistaken identity, and\u2026 the list went on. Somewhere out there, a perfect novel exists for her with all those things in one beautifully weird melange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But? Mostly agents want surprise. They want that sense of, \u2018Gosh, I had no idea I\u2019d want something like this, but now that it\u2019s in front of me, I really, really do.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pitch<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote a week or two ago about how the ghost of an elevator pitch needs to glimmer in your query letter. And it does. The ingredients for a compelling story need to be present. The agent needs to feel that intrigue from the very start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because I plappered (my daughter\u2019s chosen verb) about that recently, I\u2019ll say no more now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good writing \/ instant authority<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agents say they want a distinctive voice; of course they do. But if you try to analyse what that really means, I think it comes down to this. Agents want to read the first page of a manuscript and just know that the writer is in perfect control \u2013 of their sentences, their characters, their story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That control will, most of the time, come with a voice that sounds like that specific author, and nobody else \u2013 simply because you don\u2019t normally get that level of control in over text, without putting your own personality into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But does John Grisham, say, really sound so distinctive? Or Stephen King? I\u2019m not sure they do. They are masters of their craft, of course, but it\u2019s not really their voice that you\u2019d want to pick out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I\u2019d focus less on voice, and more on authority. Can a professional reader tell from the first page or two that you are in control, and that good things lie in wait? The answer needs to be yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A plausible story<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most agents will regard your synopsis as the least important part of your submission package \u2013 which is just as well, because synopses are tedious to write and tedious to read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, synopses can be massive time savers. Let\u2019s say I were a busy agent. I\u2019ve read a query letter and I\u2019m intrigued. I\u2019ve read the opening page or two, and I feel the authority of the writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So now what? I read 200 pages, only to find that the story massively disappoints 2\/3 of the way into the book? Or discover that the basic theme is simply not marketable?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I should say that the clues given from the query letter and opening pages are generally more solid than that. Those authority-clues are powerful and they don\u2019t often lie. But still. It takes four hours to read a book. It takes five minutes to read a synopsis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So an agent will mostly want to sense-check that synopsis for the basic story shape. The question is essentially: does this feel like a novel? Could this story fill out an 80,000 word book?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An avenue to market<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But also, through all of the above, any agent will be asking themselves the one key question that will determine their decision: can I imagine how a publisher would market this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What kind of cover? What kind of pitch? What sales messaging to the putative retailer? What comparable books?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, for clarity, you don\u2019t have to be a marketing expert and you don\u2019t need to come up with solutions. Or rather: it may be an asset if you can supply those solutions, but it\u2019s not really your job to do so. (And if you do want to do so, then do so with tact, \u2018In the vein of recent bestsellers, such as Robin Banks\u2019s The Greatest Heist<\/em> and Lottie Lightfingers\u2019 The Wallet That Wandered..<\/em>.\u2019)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the agent is a professional salesperson, and therefore also a marketing expert. They\u2019re a saleswoman (or man) whose job is selling to editors. Those editors will then have the task of selling your manuscript to their team and then, if they\u2019re successful, selling your book to retailers and, through them, to the public. In fact, the number of successful sales needed is significant:<\/p>\n\n\n\n