Tag: literary agents

Underwriting vs. Overwriting: Which Are You?

Do you write too much? Or not enough? And what does that mean for traditional publication?

There is so much advice floating around out there about how important it is to follow the expected and established word counts in the industry. For example, many agents, editors, and publishers will not consider works that fall outside of expected word count ranges, and it may even be a reason to reject the work.

The reason is pretty simple: these word counts have been established based on audience and genre, and falling outside these ranges can be indicators of serious deficiencies in the novel (or that it may not be a novel at all, but rather a shorter story) or a lack of knowledge of the industry by the author.

And honestly, with such an overcrowded market, some agents will look for any reason to reject manuscripts, just because they have so many submissions (at least that’s what I’ve heard… please, feel free to hop in the comments and correct me if I’m wrong!).

So it becomes necessary for those of us seeking traditional publication in any form to pay attention to our word counts. And that can identify your writing tendencies.

Underwriting is when a writer will finish a first draft with a lower word count than they need. So, for example, Sea of Broken Glass was only 74k words at the end of the first draft. For reference, a typical young adult fantasy (the genre for SoBG) is expected to be between 80 and 100k words. Once again, anything outside of that range, and traditional publishers or agents may reject it for not conforming to industry standards.

But when I finished at 74k, SoBG was missing a lot of scenes and details that were needed to pull the story together. And when I rewrote it (draft 2), I ended up adding over 20k words. Right now, while it’s with betas, it’s a little over 96k words long, by far the longest thing I’ve ever written.

It just didn’t start that way.

And then there’s the opposite problem, overwriting. In overwriting, a writer will write WAY more words than needed for a book. So let’s take an example from a friend of mine. She had a YA fantasy that clocked in at near 200k words… twice as much as most agents and publishers will allow. So when she went back to editing, instead of bulking it out, she had to find ways to cut her word count by a lot.

Every writer has their own style when it comes to drafting and editing, and even specific books by the same writer can be different from a writer’s “normal.” But in general, the more works a writer writes, the closer they may get to their target word counts after draft one and the more they will recognize where they tend to fall on the scale.

So that’s me! Underwriters unite!

In the next couple of weeks, we will discuss a few ways to resolve either of these issues, first for the underwriters, then for the overwriters. Hopefully with a few tips and tricks up your sleeve, you can figure out how to drag your novel closer to its target word count.

Until then, let’s talk in the comments! Where do you fall on this spectrum? Do you follow traditional word counts for your works?

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NEWS!

Of the Clouds releases next Saturday, so Friday’s post will be moved to Saturday, and this blog post series will continue after that! Hooray!!!

The Luck o’ the Writer

Yeah, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna make a St. Patrick’s Day-inspired post.

Around this time of year, I tend to watch Leap Year at least once. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a charming, hilarious movie set in Ireland. The main character Anna, played by the fabulous Amy Adams, is tired of waiting around for her cardiologist boyfriend to propose to her, so she calls upon an ancient Irish tradition that may or may not actually exist: if she proposes to him on Leap Day, he must accept. Well, shenanigans ensue, and without any spoilers, things don’t exactly go as expected. There’s a lot of Anna trying to control her life and her relationship and a lot of the world telling her she can’t.

But that movie, and the only holiday in March, got me thinking. As writers, there are so many things out of our control. So many things based in luck (ah, there’s the rest of the St. Patrick’s Day cliche).

We can control our writing. Our editing. Our interactions with readers and potential readers.

But we can’t control when an agent will read our query. How the market will be when our book is ready. What mood a person is in when they read your book.

All of these things influence the success of our work. It can mean the difference between a shining review and a mediocre review. It can mean the difference between finding an agent or not. It can mean the difference between selling a book or not.

And for a lot of people, especially when they start (though it never gets much easier, from what I can tell, particularly if you’re traditionally published), it’s hard not to be able to control how well your book does. Sure, there are things we can try, there is marketing we can do, and we can independently publish. But we can do all the things right and still not see the success we want to.

Today I just want to remind you that even if your book never sells a single copy, even if you never get an agent, that doesn’t mean your book isn’t valuable and isn’t good. Sometimes the luck isn’t on our side. The wrong agent reads it, or another, bigger book releases on the same day as yours.

Don’t let that stop you. Keep working hard, keep learning, keep doing everything you can, but don’t beat yourself up if things don’t work out right away. Do what’s best for you and your book, and don’t take it personally if it fails. Learn from it. Grow with it. In an industry where we only have so much control, take control of what you can. Give yourself every chance for success.

And whatever else you do, make sure you keep writing.