The Saturday Slash

Don't be afraid to ask for help with the most critical first step of your writing journey - the query.

I’ve been blogging since 2011 and have critiqued over 200 queries here on the blog using my Hatchet of Death. This is how I edit myself, it is how I edit others. If you think you want to play with me and my hatchet, shoot me an email.

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If you’re ready to take the next step, I also offer editing services.

My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.

It’s just another regular, boring summer Friday night in small-town Upstate New York for painfully average You've done a great job here of using a bunch of words that are going to immediately turn someone off. Introducing anything as boring, regular, or average isn't great language to use in a hook sixth-grader Ben Grishop and his friends Joe and Dana—until they’re abducted by aliens and informed by the Almighty Extraterrestrial Ruler of the Universe (coined by Ben himself) I feel like "coined" isn't great wording to use in an MG query that they, through sheer luck alone, Eh... dumb luck isn't compelling. I know you're probably trying to counteract the "chosen one" trope, but you put a lot of effort into telling us how normal / boring these kids are. So why are they going to save the world? are the only three beings in the universe who can save it from imminent total destruction. Right here is the ending of your hook sentence. All the way down here. Get this quick, concise, and above all - not inferring that anything about the beginning of this book is boring. Reading is an escape. Reading about characters who are bored is not an escape. All they have to do is push a tiny red button constructed by the aliens over the course of millennia within twenty-four hours. Confused. It took aliens a millenia to create a button?

But before they get a chance to, the aliens’ spaceship is attacked by what the aliens call “an immensely powerful, evil force from The Realm Beyond.” In a desperate attempt to save Ben and his friends, the aliens dump them on a random, distant planet full of giant, man-eating, French-speaking crabs. lol, I mean, of course they speak French Now, before time runs out, Ben and his friends must find a way to survive the deadly planet and reconvene with the aliens, so they can push the button and save the universe from oblivion.

I feel like there's a lot missing here. We need more of a goal than "push a button" and we need to have a feeling for who these kids are. Boring, average kids are not compelling characters, and dumb luck isn't what drives a plot, neither is the single act of pushing a button. Give us a better feel of the group dynamic, what's at stake for each kid (not just a generic "end of the world" scenario). The world is always ending these days - why is this version special, and why should we root for this kids to save us?

If what you're going for here is more a of Shaun of the Dead "everyman given an impossible task" / implausible hero, you'll need to get more of the tongue-in-cheek, humorous voice injected into the query. Right now it's coming off as a slightly, rambling SF adventure with characters who are just kind of meh about everything - including the end of the world. If you want your reader to care, the characters need to care, too.

Hybrid Publishing: Tools For Success

Ever since I knew that I wanted to be one of the special people who make magical worlds come alive in books, I wanted to be traditionally published. 

At first, that was the only option I knew about. Then, self-publishing came onto the scene, but that sounded like too much work. You have to find your own cover designer, editor, and market it yourself? Writing the book was hard enough. 

Then, a few years ago at a writer’s conference, I heard about a fairly new way of publishing: hybrid. Someone else can take care of the logistical headaches of making the manuscript into something beautiful but the author gets to keep all their own royalties? Count me in! 

So, when I received an email from Writer’s Digest about Atmosphere Press—a hybrid publisher that was accepting manuscripts—I thought, “Why not?” I sent them The Gift of Dragons, and they accepted the book. 

I enjoyed every aspect of working with Atmosphere. The people who founded it are writers themselves, so they want every part of the process to be enjoyable for the author; they value their opinions. The professional editors pushed me to write the best possible version of the novel. 

But what I valued most besides the people, is how professional and beautiful the designers made the cover. Readers sadly do judge books by their covers, and I knew that without an epic front cover, my book wouldn’t stand a chance in the bookish circles I wanted to be in. 

All the designers’ work has paid off, and now I can’t keep track of the compliments people have paid the cover. Its grabbed people’s attention who wouldn’t ordinarily pick the book up, and it has given me more opportunities. Even local/Indie bookstores don’t want to sell a book that has a cheap-looking cover. 

Atmosphere Press also gives its readers a marketing guide, without which I wouldn’t have made the connection, at least not as quickly, that selling books in-person is much better financially than relying merely on Amazon or other website sales. Thus, I have focused more on in-person events, where, partly due to the stellar cover, I’ve sold out almost every time. 

And through Atmosphere’s list of Indie bookstores, a whole new realm of places to promote has opened up. I’ve already participated in one signing, which did well, and will hopefully have more on the horizon. 

But even more than the physical tools of bookstore contacts, the best way to sell books, connections to other authors, and a beautiful, professional product, are the more intangible tools that working with a hybrid publisher has given me: patience, perseverance, and bravery. These qualities are what lead to true success. 

I’ve always heard that the publication process is slow, and although hybrid publishing is faster, if you want a good product and a good launch, it can still take time. I’ve had to learn to work with editors, copyeditors, cover designers, and fit my schedule to theirs. Learning how to work with professionals in the publishing industry is a quality that I now rely on when communicating with bookstore owners, festival managers, and other authors. This is a business, and I need to be on the same level as everyone else. Patience will also serve me well if I ever venture into traditional publishing (which is still my dream). 

I learned much perseverance through the writing process (you can’t edit a novel twelve times and not learn it), but working with a hybrid publisher reminded me that I have something worth persevering through the difficulties for. The team I worked for put all their hard work into the book, believing in it, and giving me the confidence to keep going during the stress and doubts leading up to the book’s launch. 

The process and the product the team helped me create reminded me that sharing this story was worth persevering through the bad reviews and rough drafts. I now have the confidence to take steps to share this story with the world despite rejections or silence. That perseverance has put me in places—libraries, bookstores, festivals—that I wouldn’t have ventured into without the dedication and confidence of the team I worked with. 

Because I had to do most of the promotion myself, I was forced to take risks like meeting and even talking to strangers at book festivals and conferences. This not only gave me skills I can put in a query letter, but has given me connections to readers I wouldn’t ordinarily have met. And I can now know as humans, not just as readers. Now I get to share my author life with those wonderful people through newsletters and social media and can hear about their lives. What a gift!

Working with this hybrid publisher has been like a gentle hand leading me through the overwhelming, and at times, terrifying publishing process. Although I haven’t sold thousands of copies, I now know how the process works, have relationships and opportunities with bookstores and other events that I wouldn’t have known existed. I also have a product that can stand on its own on shelves and that I can be proud of. 

I’m thankful for the tools that hybrid publishing has given me for future success as an author, and I look forward to what happens from here. 

Rachel A. Greco dreams of being a dragon but has settled instead for being an author, which is almost as fun. Her short story, Fairy Light, won an honorable mention in the Writer's Digest Annual Writing Competition, and her YA fantasy debut, The Gift of Dragons, came out in May.  When not writing, she can be found reading, kayaking, or dancing with elves in the forests of her North Carolina home.

My Career Transition from Writing Instructor to Published Novelist

by Robin Rivers, author of Woman On The Wall

I never, ever considered teaching writing—not once. The mere chance of being forced to re-read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness gave me everything I needed to choose journalism, and then publishing, over the classroom. So, twenty-five years into my career, when my manager at an education company asked if I could teach creative writing to high schoolers, I shook my head.  She finally convinced me that it would never involve Conrad’s novel. That’s when I began to see that guiding teens in discovering their writing voices would educate me in more ways than I could ever teach them.

Let’s face it, even as professional writers, many of us don’t spend significant amounts of time breaking down the foundations of the craft. The act of understanding and then implementing story structure, try/fail cycles, situational irony, or juxtaposition is reserved for those deep in an MFA program or finishing up an English degree. Much of what we do in the process of storytelling is pantsing it. We put words down on paper and hope that typing “The End” after 394 pages means that the story is finally finished.

There is no pantsing it when it comes to teaching. In fact, if you sat in on a class of mine this afternoon, you would hear these very words, “There are no pantsers here, only plotters.” The kids hate it, but they know I am right. Without the understanding of story structure, of how to lay down a path to create situational irony, of how a piece of literature is transformed by the choice of narrative point of view and a dozen other structural choices along the way, you cannot write well.

Teaching forced me, in many ways, to become a better writer. I could no longer singularly rely on instinct or hunch, what felt right, to tell stories. That allowed me to develop a deep respect for the process and the people it NEEDS to involve—developmental and copy editors who see flaws a writer is too close to notice. That is what transformed me, I believe, into a published novelist. 

As I continue to interweave those paths of educator and storyteller in my life, I find myself deeply engaged in a constant learning process. My students challenge me to empower them with diverse and complete toolboxes. They teach me patience and humility. My writing challenges me to lay down the foundations of a good book before indulging in the research and imagination that define my storytelling voice. That combination, for me, is gold. It brings with it a deep respect for student and professional. While there is a structural foundation for storytelling, it is that freshness of ideas and interpretation that keeps the formulas from becoming cliché. To stop learning is to stop creating. As for Conrad, well, he and I have made our peace with the literary wounds he inflicted on me thirty years ago, sort of.

Novelist Robin Rivers obsesses over stories of lost times and nerds out in the realm of all things historical, fantastical, female, and mythological. She spends her days in a literary universe best described as slipstream — a mix of historical, magical realism, and haunting romance.  When not writing, she helps young writers learn the craft as the CEO of Quill Academy of Creative Writing. Her wee family and Hypatia, their sphynx cat, tolerate her most of the time. She lives and writes on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples in Vancouver, Canada. Find her on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.