Kate Brauning's Blog, page 4

Common Publishing Terms and Abbreviations

Below is a list of common terms and abbreviations you might see as you read my posts or other publishing blogs. About a year ago I wrote a similar list, and it has turned out to be one of my most popular posts, so here it is, revised and updated!

Agent: Literary agents are professionals who represent an author’s career. The most well-known task an agent performs is selling the writer’s manuscript to a publishing house and negotiating the contract. Agents do much more than this, however, and function pretty much like career managers.


Beta reader: Usually beta readers are people that an author asks to read his/her manuscript and give critiques and respond to the story. This is not the same thing as a critique partner.


Big 5: Previously the “Big 6,” these are the major New York publishing houses: Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House, and Simon and Schuster. Many other significant, international publishing houses exist, though, such as Bloomsbury, Scholastic, and Harlequin.


Category: a broader term than genre that addresses the age range the book is written for or about. All books fit into one of these categories: picture book, middle grade, young adult, new adult, or adult. Some people separate the younger categories into more divisions than that, but those are the basics. Young adult and new adult categories are a bit different than the others, because while they are written about characters of a certain age, they aren’t written just for readers of that age group–adults make up a huge percentage of their readership.


Crit/Critique. An evaluation (usually from another writer) that aims for showing both the strong and weak elements of a MS. Critiques from other writers, especially authors and agents, can be a great way for writers to improve their writing.


CP/Critique Partner. Writers who critique each other’s work in an on-going relationship. The critiques CPs give can be tougher than a beta reader’s feedback, and CPs often know each other’s writing strengths and weaknesses, and can push each other more. These can be great relationships to establish because of the encouragement, resources, and support writers receive from each other.


Editor: Depending on the type of editor, editors acquire books for their house to publish and guide the book through the editorial process for publication. Like agents, they do much more than this, too.


Form rejection: A copy-pasted rejection from an agent to a writer who queried. Most of the time this is what writers will receive. Most agents receive 100+ queries a week (I’ve seen some agents report 800+), so personal responses are often impossible


Genre: A term to describe the kind of story a book is. When writers are asked what kind of books they write, they often respond with the category and genre– young adult fantasy, for example, or adult romance. Science fiction, contemporary, mystery, thriller, magical realism, and historical are all genres.


MG: middle grade. Writing written for middle grade readers and adhering to certain age group conventions.


MS: manuscript. An unpublished work of fiction or nonfiction. Plural: MSs.


NA: new adult. Characters and plotlines that revolve around situations common to the 19 to mid-twenties age group. Some say this is a subset of adult fiction, and others maintain it’s its own category.


Personalized rejection: A rejection from an agent to a writer who queried, but some element of the letter is personal. A line or two complimenting the work but explaining why it’s not right for the agent may be included. This is an encouraging sign and a compliment from the agent, and is actually a good thing to receive. If a writer is excited about receiving a rejection, this is likely why.


Pitch: A brief description of a manuscript highlighting the main elements in a way that makes others want to read more. Contests sometimes ask for a 1, 2, or 3-sentence pitch. Writers should have one ready for contests and conferences, and many writers create the pitch while they are plotting the manuscript to help keep them focused on the story’s core.


Query letter: A letter, often a professional email, that writers send to agents asking them to consider them for representation. The letter includes specific details about the manuscript the author has written and relevant credentials the writer may have. Some agents want 5 or 10 pages and/or a synopsis included as well. Conventions for queries are very particular.


R&R(or R/R): Revise and resubmit. The request from an agent or editor to have the writer make certain changes to the manuscript and then resubmit the work for consideration. These happen frequently, and are an excellent sign of the story’s potential. The agent’s current list of titles, market trends, and the writing itself may be reasons the agent asked for an R&R, to see how well they can work with the author and how open to feedback the writer is.


Request: An agent (or sometimes editor) requests to see a certain number of pages of a writer’s manuscript. These can be “partials”–generally 30, 50, or 100 pages– or else “fulls”– the entire manuscript. Usually agents request a partial first and then request a full if they are considering representing the writer. A request is a BIG deal, particularly if it’s a full.


Slush/ slush pile: the queries and submissions waiting in the query inbox of an agent or editor.


Small Press: A publisher with annual sales below a certain level, or else one who publishes a small list of titles per year. There can be significant benefits to publishing with a small press, such as increased attention from your publishing team.


Submission: Usually this refers to when an agent takes an author’s manuscript on submission– actively submitting it to editors, hoping to receive an offer of publication. It can also mean the submission materials writers send to agents or contests.


Synopsis: A 1-2 page summary that reveals the main elements of the MS in a cause-and-effect style. Agents and editors often ask for these to see how (and if) an author can wrap up the story.


Twitter pitch: A pitch designed for Twitter contests designed to quickly hook the reader. 140 characters or less. Twitter contests can be a good way to reach agents who may be closed to submissions (if they are participating) or get a request that may move you up in the agent’s slush pile.


WIP: work in progress. The manuscript an author is currently writing.


YA: young adult. Writing intended for a teenage audience, but with tremendous crossover appeal to adults. Publishers Weekly reported that 55% of all YA books are purchased by adult buyers, and 78% of the time, those books are for themselves. Basically, YA is written about teens, but written for both teen and adult readers.

Have you heard any other terms you’d like to know more about or have added to the list? Let me know in the comments!

Revisions, and making the most of them

by Alex Yuschik

One of the cooler things I did in college was take a poetry workshop class. I did it for fun, because I was majoring in math and needed a class not to drive me crazy, but it ended up being one of the best decisions I made for my writing career.

The workshop was led by an American poet, Jim Daniels. (Look him up, one of his poems is actually on the roof of a race car, which is a pretty damn cool benchmark for anyone interested in publishing to achieve.) We did the usual, here’s my weekly poem read-a-loud-and-critique, everyone writes what they think of everyone else’s poems down and hands their thoughts back to the author, and then one of our assignments was to revise.

Not just change a few words, fix up the stanzas, or correct the typoes we’d missed, and make sure we took all our classmates’ comments into account, whether we chose to follow them or not. We were warned that we would not get much credit for doing a revision like that. He wanted us to re-imagine the poem, go back to the seed of the idea and try to reinvent it, change everything to make the poem work smoother, better, and experiment with it.

This was more or less alien and by the time the first revision came around, most people kinda balked at it. I wasn’t sure what to think. I mean, I liked my first draft. It wasn’t as strong as I thought it could be, but I didn’t want to rip it up and have to start over. I changed some things, reworked a middle section, but kept most things the same. When I started looking at what other people did, then I realized where the strength in this approach lay.

My bestie had completely restructured her poem, writing something almost entirely new, and it was awesome. The class knew what she’d been trying to go for in the last draft, and she used some feedback as a springboard to do cool things with it, things that no one had told her to do or suggested, but that she just thought of while she was going through it again. The most shocking thing during this round of first revisions, though, came from a guy who changed two words in his page and a half monster epic. Two. Not two stanzas. Two adjectives. He just shrugged and said that he didn’t think the comments “got” his poem and that he’d changed all he thought he needed to.

When I looked at whose revisions had seen them grow more as a writer, I was really envious of my friend. And then the next time this assignment came around, I made sure that I experimented and re-worked all my stuff, too.

But it’s not like keeping things the same is wrong (it is so not). Sometimes you fight for what you like. But other times, you have to remember that you can just hit “Save As” and let yourself go wild. No one says that you have to keep every revision.

What worries me when I see people being so defensive about their work that they’re becoming afraid to try something new. Don’t be. Never be. Being creative means trying new things. It’s scary, but you have to go for it. That’s why you got into this writing thing, right? You want to create, and creating means taking risks.

After the class ended, my friend and I started referring to revisions in two forms: normal revisions, where you changed what people told you was wrong and corrected obvious things but kept the second draft about the same, and then Jim Daniels revisions, wherein you got crazy and experimented and rewrote the whole thing differently, but in a way that got your idea better than the first. It became an in-joke while we were critiquing each other’s poems to send to literary journals: do you think this needs a revision or like, a Jim Daniels revision?

Working in publishing has given me a sweet opportunity to see this happen in prose, too. I’ve seen an agent suggest edits and seen revisions come back lukewarm and only changing what the edits wanted. And then I’ve seen edits go out that an author nails and then makes the story exponentially better by fixing or improving something that I didn’t even notice before and it blows me out of the water.

This is why people ask you to take your time on revisions– it’s not because they don’t want to read your work again, it’s because thinking all this stuff out, re-imagining and re-inventing stuff takes time.

As always, as the creator, it’s up to you what you want to do. If you think this is the kind of revision where you only need to change a few things, then awesome! it’s great to be that close to being done. But more often than not, I think that it’s important to look at the distance between where the work is and where it needs to be and try to lessen that with a grander gesture. Because when someone gives you a chance for an R&R, or you get edit notes back from an editor you’re stoked to work with, you want to blow them out of the water, right?

Push yourself. Take chances, and see where the revisions take you.

Alex Yuschik has interned for Mary Kole at Movable Type Management and Theresa Cole at Entangled Publishing. Currently, she writes, studies, blogs at letters & numbers and the Secret Life of Writers, and is really liking the cello part in this song. 

World Book Night & Amy Poehler

I was thrilled to read this first thing this morning:

Amy Poehler signs on for World Book Night

The USA Today article quotes the actress and now WBN honorary chairperson as saying, “I grew up loving books. In today’s digital world, it’s more important than ever to know how it feels to have a good book in your hands. I’m thrilled to be part of World Book Night. People who read are people who dream, and we connect through the stories we live and tell and read.”

Don’t know what World Book Night is? They’re a wonderful non-profit that enlists about 25,000 volunteers to give away about 500,000 books each year. Basically, you sign up, get a bunch of copies of an awesome book (for free!) and then everyone hands them out to non-readers and light readers. In the past, I’ve given away The Things They Carried, and Looking for Alaska, and this year I’m giving away Code Name Verity.

It’s a great chance to meet people in your community, share the love of books, and share a really awesome experience with people all over the US and the UK. And it works! The success stories are a great thing to see.

If you aren’t involved in World Book Night, you absolutely should be. Check out their website, follow them on

My Awesome Book News

I have just a tiny bit of news today. News I’ve been sitting on for what felt like a century. News I could not be happier to share. Any guesses? :)

My book sold. A pre-empt, and releasing this November. Yes, it’s fast. Yes, it will be a fall book. Catch me if I pass out.

Merit is a wonderful imprint over at F&W Books, and if Jacquelyn Mitchard’s name sounds familiar, it’s because she’s the author of Deep End of the Ocean (and about 20 other books, including  What We Saw At Night and What We Lost In The Dark.) She’s made a name for herself as an author and an editor, and I am so thrilled to have her as my editor. Merit and F&W are the perfect place for HOW WE FALL, and their enthusiasm for my book has blown me away. I never imagined I’d be dealing with a pre-empt, but I’m so confident in the team at Merit that it’s very much a crazy dream come true.

I love this book with everything in me. It’s a quirky YA taboo suspense about obsession and emotional honesty and not letting the world tell you who to be. And I’m so excited to send it out into the world.

I’m so thankful to my brilliant and wonderful agent, who believed in this book (and me) from the start. Her confidence has kept me going. Thank you for making this happen, Carlie.

My incredibly patient husband, Jesse, has been my biggest supporter. He’s kept up with the writing process, the querying process, and now submission through to a book deal. He’s had to deal with my insanity for years now, and I genuinely couldn’t have done this without him. A bit of who he is works its way into every YA guy I write, so thanks for being my inspiration, Jesse.

My family and friends have put up with my babbling about one day being an author since I was twelve. Evenings making dinner in the kitchen with my mother while I discussed my high school WIP with her gave me the confidence to think I wasn’t crazy in wanting to do this. (And maybe I was crazy, but hey, it happened!) To all of you (Lydia, Rebekah, Trish, Robin, Matt, Jess, Sean, Sam, Jake, Nick, Bree, Hannah, Mark, Rebecca, oh my word, all of you) thank you for the support and encouragement and confidence.

And to my critique partners and writing friends– to everyone who read some version of HOW WE FALL, you guys have been one of the biggest factors in this happening. I love you for it. I love you for being honest with me and tough with your notes, for all the conversations and advice and patience and brilliant ideas. HOW WE FALL wouldn’t be the book it is without you.

Stay tuned, readers- there’s a lot more news about HOW WE FALL coming soon. :)

The Query That Got Me My Agent

Hello, readers!

Yesterday the lovely EM Castellan featured me on her blog with a quick interview on how I wrote my query and advice for querying writers, plus of course the query that got my agent’s attention. It’s a great way for readers to see examples of queries that worked.

Since that’s often helpful for fellow writers, I’m going to post it here today with the query results so you have a bit more info. If you want to see my advice on querying and a few more questions, head over to see the rest of the interview! (And great queries from other authors.)

Here’s my query:

Dear (agent)

After (personal detail) I’m hoping you’ll be interested in my MS. HOW WE FALL, a YA suspense, is complete at 88,000 words.

Making out with your cousin has its pitfalls. Seventeen-year-old Jackie hasn’t been able to end her secret relationship with Marcus since he kissed her on a dare. He’s her best friend, which only makes it harder to quit their obsessive relationship.

Except she has to, because she’s falling in love with him. It’s not like it’s illegal to date her cousin, but her parents would never approve and the families would split up their multi-family home. Afraid of losing her best friend, she calls it off. She can’t lose Marcus right now: the cops just found her missing friend’s body.

Hurt and angry, Marcus starts dating the new girl, Sylvia. But with Sylvia comes a secret and a stranger. The stranger starts following Jackie everywhere she goes, and Marcus is nearly killed in a car accident. When Jackie finds out Sylvia lied about not knowing her murdered friend, Jackie’s certain Sylvia is connected to the man threatening Marcus.

The more Jackie finds out about Sylvia, the bigger the wedge between Jackie and Marcus, but she doesn’t have long to figure out what’s going on. She may have lost both her relationship and her friendship with Marcus, but she can’t lose him for real.

If she doesn’t act fast, Sylvia’s secrets may mean their bodies will be the next ones the police dig out of the Missouri woods.

(bio)

Thank you for your consideration,

Kate Brauning

(contact info)

Query stats:

Queries: 53

Requests: 23 (6 partials, 17 fulls)

That’s a pretty darn good request rate, but I do want to highlight that the agents who didn’t request often wrote back with a polite but definite pass. I’m pretty sure half the publishing community thinks I’m crazy now.

Another thing I think is important to highlight in this kind of post is that it is not your query that lands you an agent. It is your story and your writing. The query serves to catch the agent’s attention. You’ll reuse it in various ways down the road, and you want it to be as sharp as possible, but it’s really not the query that gets you an agent.

That said, the query is your foot in the door. Take it seriously, make it sing, make it reflect your story the best it can.

Have a question about querying? Ask in this post, and I’ll answer! I’ve read slush for a publishing house and a literary agency, and I edit so many hours a week I have trouble counting them– and I’m glad to help!

Contracts and Agenting 101

Today I’m blogging over at Pub Hub on the basics of book contracts– interns, writers who want to be informed, and anyone who wants a glimpse behind the scenes, take note!

Here’s a preview:

I’m a huge advocate for educating yourself and being proactive with your career. Writing is a difficult and complicated career, even when you have a fabulous agent and editor.

Whether you don’t have an agent and are navigating a small press by yourself, or you are agented and are wondering what all these terms you’re hearing mean, or you’re a writer trying to figure out goes on in this business, the resources below can give you a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes.

A note of advice: publishing terms vary from place to place, information quickly becomes outdated as technology advances, and your agent is your greatest advocate. Blog posts can’t hope to cover the scope of publishing contracts; you can read blog posts all day long and still not know how to handle these issues. I’d recommend treating these as one source of information, not a guide to your career.

Nathan Bransford has some older but very helpful introductory posts:

A Book Publishing Glossary

How A Book Gets Published

The Basics of Publishing Contracts

 

Read the rest over at Pub Hub.

Is This The Best You Can Do?

I’m not a particularly clumsy person. But sometimes when I’m thinking, I convince myself my body is just my brain and there’s no need to watch where I’m going or pay attention to my surroundings.

That happened yesterday, and I smacked my elbow on the corner of my upstairs hall. It hurt so bad I sat down there on the floor and gave up all hope of life.

I grew up a farm girl. I’ve nearly been killed in several accidents, I’ve stabbed my hand on sharp wire and lost a lot of blood, I’ve been bitten by dogs, been stung by hornets when they flew up my jacket sleeve, and been chased by snakes in the pond. I’m no weakling. And yet, sitting there in the hall clutching my elbow, it occurred to me that this is what I expect my characters to handle, except much more.

I expect them to take it, process it, handle it, and still win. I take everything away from them– friendships, family, health, resources. I cause them pain (for good reasons, I have to remind myself) and just when they get it handled and get back up, I knock them down again.

In trying to be a good writer, I have to test my characters. I have to throw everything at them, push them to change and become active and either fall or rise. The whole process of telling the story is me asking them, “Is this the best you can do?” I expect the best from my characters. Is this the best fight you can put up, the sharpest thinking you can do, the greatest love you can give, the hardest you can try?

When we expect so much from our characters, we’d better not be expecting less of ourselves. As a writer, are you doing your story justice? In the time I’ve spent editing and writing (not nearly enough) I’ve started to realize the humble writers, the ones who are willing to go back to the drawing board and read books on writing craft and take the harsh critiques, are the ones who make it.

When you’re asking yourself if you’re ready to query, if you’re done with edits, if you need to change this or that, here’s the question to ask: Is this the best you can do? We ask for the best, the most, the hardest things, from our characters. Give your writing your the best, and keep asking yourself, “Can I do better? Is this all I’ve got? Is this the best I can do?”

Find the answers to those questions, chase them down, settle for nothing less. You’ll become a good writer.

Follow Me Around

As I climb out from underneath the heap of writing/teaching/editing/freelancing that accumulated while I was in Costa Rica, I’ve been blogging more lately.

You all know I run the group author/agent/editor blog Publishing Hub, right? We’ve got a fantastic community over there, so check it out if you haven’t yet.

Here are a few of my recent posts from Pub Hub.

Editor’s Eyes: Fixing Flat Scenes

Editor’s Eyes: Fixing Stilted Prose

Editor’s Eyes: How to Get Started in the Writing/Publishing Community

Welcome New Publishing Hub Member, Agent Amy Boggs!

I will also be blogging once a month over at YAtopia, another great group blog. I love YA, and it’s a great way to keep in touch with YA writers and readers. Here’s my very first post for them that went up not too long ago:

Writing A Novel 101

I was also interviewed by writer Natasha Neagle, and if you go check it out, you can hear about my WIP, my writing style, what’s most challenging to me, and what books influenced me most!

Meet Kate Brauning

Happy Tuesday, everyone! I’ll leave you with a photo of my Husky, Charles, that my husband took during this recent snowfall we’ve had.

The Chuck Wendig Writer Evaluation

If you guys haven’t seen yesterday’s post on Chuck Wendig’s blog, you should check it out, because he posted a great post on evaluating yourself as a writer, and gave us these questions to ask ourselves.

So, here is my Chuck Wendig writer evaluation!

a) What’s your greatest strength / skill in terms of writing/storytelling?

Tension– I hope! I love how much character it brings out and how much it adds to the stakes of a moment.

b) What’s your greatest weakness in writing/storytelling? What gives you the most trouble?

Layering. Balancing everything going on in a moment and keeping all of it present in a scene.  I usually write out the action, then have to go back in and increase the tension, add more thought and emotion, foreshadow, fill in atmospheric details, etc., to make sure I hit all the layers that need to be happening.

c) How many books or other projects have you actually finished? What did you do with them?

I have finished three novels. One I have on the back burner for eventual revision, and two are with my agent.

d) Best writing advice you’ve ever been given? (i.e. really helped you)

Oh, man.  It’s hard to say what’s impacted me most, because so many wonderful people have helped me in so many ways. Connect with other writers and listen to what they have to say, don’t give up, realize a first draft doesn’t have to be perfect, finish the book before you judge it, read books on writing, read in your genre, etc.

I think the stand-out advice, though, has been to read a book a week. It’s hard with a writer’s busy life, but we can’t expect to be good storytellers if we aren’t good story consumers. Reading great books has been the absolute number one biggest factor when my writing improves. Want some recs? Read everything in this box.

e) Worst writing advice you’ve ever been given? (i.e. didn’t help at all, may have hurt)

Write what you know. If that were good advice, the world wouldn’t contain most of my favorite genres. I think it’s a much better interpretation of that old piece of advice to write what you emotionally connect with– core human experiences. Betrayal, revenge, guilt, fear, hope, healing, determination, wonder, love. Write that.

f) One piece of advice you’d give other writers?

Read a ton, and when you react or connect, stop and think about why. The writer worked magic (okay, used a psychological principle) in that moment. Stop and think about why you had a reaction and how the writer built that moment. Connections happen sentence by sentence, and it’s all there on the page. Break it down. Figure it out. Use it yourself.

What about you? Fill out the evaluation in the comments! I want to hear from you.

Look What Came Today!

Mondays are awesome when they start off with a box of books. Look what came! (If you read my post on the agony of waiting yesterday, you’ll recognize this as one of my coping strategies.)

Three of these I’ve read. The Fault in Our Stars, The Fifth Wave, and What Alice Forgot are three of my all-time favorite novels, and if you haven’t read them yet, you must go do that as fast as you can. They’re sweeping, gripping stories that will change the way you see the world.

The Art of Wishing and The Infinite Moment of Us are next on my to-read list! I’ve heard fantastic things about both of them. Have you read either of them? Which one should I start with?