What is it You’re Writing? by Rebecca Seaton

 

What is it You’re Writing? by Rebecca Seaton

Trying to put it succinctly.

This sometimes feels like the dreaded question. We feel like we’re supposed to have an answer. Not any answer either, but a clear, coherent answer on the nature and progress of our current project: this is often easier said than done!

 

This can come in different forms depending on the audience’s needs and expectations. The ‘elevator pitch’ is a common format: if you were stuck in a lift with someone, could you quickly and simply explain your basic premise? It should be about twenty words. A synopsis is more of a summary and this is probably intended more for a deliberate pitch, for example, when submitting work to an agent. For this, we want a bit more detail, it expands on the basic premise, allowing for themes, main events and principal characters to be highlighted.

 

However, not everything is easily defined. How confident are we with describing the genre of our work or its target audience, especially when not everyone holds the same view of content? What one person considers young adult may be children’s literature to somewhere else; there isn’t always a clear boundary, just as there isn’t always with genres. And what about crossover? Is it a supernatural thriller or a fantasy work with a detective aspect? I’m a great fan of writers like James Oswald who blur the lines of genre but it’s not as easy to sell an unusual concept when you’re new to the game.

 

What it comes down to is what do we want the reader to know? If we know what we want our ideal reader to know about our story when they come to our book launch or see our book in the shops (we hope) then we will have the same words on the tip of our tongue when speaking to an agent or publisher.

 

Plans and ideas evolve so it’s important to review what we’re thinking about our own work as we make progress with it. I’ve recently come to realise that my WIP might be just fantasy rather than YA fantasy and that isn’t a problem, so long as I’m clear about that and why it is. Crucially, know what is the core of the work and what is window dressing when you’re talking about it. The person you’re pitching to needs to know it’s a fantasy trilogy centred on a teenage protagonist with a redemptive story arc; they don’t need to know what colour eyes the different goblins tribes have. If they read that far, they’re already hooked.

 

Be prepared, your opportunity may come when you least expect it. I went to a ‘meet the agent’ event fully prepared to speak about my already published work but found agents more interested in what I was currently working on. Naively, I hadn’t really thought as much about that but was lucky that some of what I said resonated with a couple of agents.

 

Practise on a friend if you can and you’ll be ready for interesting conversations in the future, as well as writing more effectively as you remind yourself of the direction you’re going in.

 

 

#amwriting #amwritingfantasy #ACW