The Pacific Northwest Writer’s Conference (PNWA) was last weekend and I must say, it was incredible. Helpful seminars, fantastic agents, and wonderful writers.
Day one started off with an amazing workshop led by the always informative Robert Dugoni highlighting the importance of story structure, character arcs, and narrative promises.
Most important take-away: Make an implicit promise to your readers at very beginning of the story.
That night Steve Berry spoke about story ideas the places he’d gone to research for his novels. He told a hilarious story about being on top of the Eifel Tower: “Now hold on, I need to figure out how to kill someone up here.”
Day Two was panel day – Agents & editors talked about what they wanted, and answered questions. Most of the questions revolved around etiquette regarding exclusivity. The answer to almost all of them: don’t lie to the agents, always be upfront.
In the afternoon, I attended a query critique session that provided invaluable information about not only how subjective the publishing business is, but also what turns agents & editors off. The following are query letter no-no’s: character listing, over done plot description, telling the agent why they should read this novel instead of showing it in the plot description.
The first page critique session was wonderfully harsh. Perhaps it’s because I enjoy cynicism, which all of these agents claimed to have towards new material, or perhaps it’s because my first page wasn’t read and therefore wasn’t ripped apart, but I thought this session was amusing and honest.
The biggest pet-peeves seemed to be (are you ready there are a lot):
-Starting with too much back-story
-Not revealing a location
-dialogue that went nowhere
-too much action before there was a reason to care about the characters
-starting with a character waking up from a dream
-opening with weather (unless there is a hurricane coming)
-over-written setting details (unless the setting is a major plot point)
-using a condescending voice
-using a voice that was too-cute
-taking the reader out of the story using phrases like, “But more on that later.” (To which Ginger Clark replied, “Don’t do that. Only Ferris Bueller gets away with that.”)
We were asked to keep this in mind about the first page critiques: “In publishing, you are guilty until proven innocent.” – Agent, Rayhane Sanders.
Day three I had agent appointments, so even though I’d had the chance to speak to agents during the course of the conference, I could finally sit down with five minutes of my very own and do nothing but discuss my book and whether or not they wanted to read it.
This is what I learned:
1) Don’t quote them, even though you may have some of the info on their blog memorized. It seems knowing an agent’s blog so well you CAN quote it should be a bit impressive, but I’m here to tell you now it’s more awkward than anything else. Luckily agents deal with ‘awkward’ on a daily basis.
2) A subscription to Publisher’s Marketplace – or at least being very, very up to snuff on the industry happenings – will make your agent meetings much more productive. An agent with whom I was meeting referenced a book to be released in 2012 that seemed similar to mine in premise and because I’d seen the book on New Deal’s list, I was able to jump right in and talk about why my book was different – I wasn’t at all thrown off guard. Thank goodness.
The last key note of the conference was the lovely and talented Deb Caletti. If you haven’t read her books you must pick one up right away. I insist. Her speech chronicling the moment she fell in love with books to the day she was published was inspiring. I should have been on my phone quoting her via twitter, but I was just too enthralled.
Probably though, my favorite thing about attending writer’s conferences is connecting with other writers! I met some fabulous writer’s at the conference, and now you should meet them too:
