Nathan Bransford - The Forums

This is an off-hand comment, as I think the posters before me gave you great advice on the query itself. Take this with a grain of salt, but 94,000 words is on the long side for a debut YA novel, and it's VERY long for a contemporary YA novel. I'd just like you to be aware that agents may see that w...

I'm interested, I just wish the announcement had been a little more specific :lol: I've heard that you'll be sorted and receive a unique wand (out of over 30K possible combinations) and will be able to "experience Harry's 7 years at Hogwarts" in a "new, interactive way." I still ...

Based on the publishing news I've read (via Publisher's Marketplace), it actually sounds like Scholastic and Bloomsbury will still be receiving a portion of the sales. In essence, they're still the book packager, Rowling is just choosing the arena in which they sell the books (because she has the ch...

Food and eating can definitely add texture to a scene and more fully immerse the reader. It can also operate as a metaphor or incite certain feelings in the reader. I remember reading somewhere that J.K. Rowling in particular made it a point to describe many of the meals the characters take part in....

Wow thanks for this. This will help a lot! I just have a few comments. -When it comes to the saidisms, they probably need to be removed. What most likely will happen is the saidisms will be changed to the narrator saying describing how it sounded like hissing, rather than saying hissed. Would somet...

Hi. I am rather new to posting on these forums. I used to come by occasionally a while ago, but never stayed for long. I just finished my second manuscript, which is actually just a rewrite of my original. This rewrite follows a whole new style, and in several places it follows a brand new plot. An...

Mostly, I don't think their stories reveal their world much. I was happy and well-adjusted, writing stories about suicide, and I'd say that the vast majority of my students who write about suicide and murder are happy and well-adjusted. Because they are writing about things they know very little ab...

Be careful with using a prologue as a way to inject interesting action at the beginning before having a few slower chapters to follow. That's usually not the best way to begin a novel -- it's sort of considered "cheating." Like, here, let me give you this interesting scene to hook you in, ...

A 12-year old is 100% okay for a MG novel. With kidlit, the target audience of readers is a little different than the ages of the protagonists. Generally speaking, protagonists are usually a little older than their target audience. So, YA target audiences are 12-18 for the entire genre, but you won'...

I understand your concerns completely. And I'll be the first to admit that while I 100% champion YA literature that is both dark and difficult to read because of the nature of the content, I personally have a really hard time with scenes of torture and extreme violence, especially sexual assault. Th...

Congratulations, cheekychook! That's wonderful!

Margo covered all the big stuff ;) Everyone starts out with no audience or a very small audience. Everyone. Unless they were already well-known/famous for something before they started the blog, but I digress. It takes a while to get exposure and have people start following. Many people won't follow...

Actually, 40K to 50K is on the short side, even for a YA novel. An average YA novel is 45K-80K. YA Fantasy does tend to be longer, often in the 80K-120K range. However, a lot of agents and publishers have indicated that they prefer any first-time author to stay below the 90K range. That's usually ab...

It's very, very rare to find a YA character that is under 14 or over 18. Very rare. It's not something that's never been done, but what the others have said is true: the target audience of YA lit are ages 12-18, so the characters have to be relateable to them in a way that "adult" literatu...

Well, I don't use either. My website is run through Squarespace Inc. with it's own independent blogging platform. Oh well, I must live with the mystery I guess. :P CV Do you have access to your blog's HTML code at all? Like, can you access it to change your layout and such? If so, you should still ...