Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Well, I have to disagree that there is no right or wrong or what is the point, really? It doesn't feel like playing it feels like a test. However, I will attempt it. Since I am new to this subject, I will not see things that others might. But, how else does one learn? Let's play. Locate Direct, Ind...

J.T., you are good at this. Personally I don't know if an agent would quibble over the use of "and" or "for". Personally, I like the "and". "And" here's mine - totally stealing from comments Kirrel put on my Query post. Gus Kelman loses his baby boy to death, his wife to depression, and his farm to ...

I think this is pretty good, I get a good sense of what the story is about. But the sentences could be a little tighter. I know how incredibly difficult this is. Good for you for keeping at it. I've rewritten this with the premise-complication-stakes format and then gone over it again and again with...

Thank you to everyone who jumped in. You provided me with exactly the info I needed to consider.

Hi, Nathan: First, thank you for all the work you've put into these Forums. I'm wondering about attempting revisions to my manuscript based on editorial comments made by a reader for an agent. They expressed interest in the manuscript, said it was very moving, but some secondary themes were undevelo...

Does anyone have a sense of humour I could buy? It seems I need one. How does "humanity" work for you guys as opposed to "everyone"? Better, but maybe more - the day all of humanity Should I put the first sentence in present tense: The day humanity dies sucks for Lucy? I think yes, since the rest of...

I once drove three and a half hours to attend a workshop on narrative technique and we spent a very limited amount of time on free indirect discourse. Each of the participants identified a passage in his/her work that could be changed using FID. When I asked the instructor why it was better he had a...

You probably have a couple of options - the goal is clarity and you must use the same formatting throughout the whole manuscript. Have you thought of italics? It could work. This is just an example, you'd want to play with it a bit. “Once, long ago,” Joe said, “Coyote decided to take a wife but did...

I have a terrible time putting a name to my short stories and to my novel. A more seasoned writer suggested that a possible title could be found by identifying something symbolic in the work and then playing with that to come up with something fitting. Or not. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle - not exact...

Hi, Nessa: I have found the query-writing process to be one of the most difficult things ever. Hope these comments help. I haven't looked at the other comments, so these are my impressions. Good luck. Thanks FK7! I have read all the HP books and it's ot like them. More like an urban fantasy where ma...

Hi, K:'

You've got an interesting idea. My only concern is with the tone of the query - it seems kind of fun/light-hearted which doesn't really seem to fit with the events. Is this the tone your novel is written in?

Thanks, Marilyn, for sharing this excellent story with us. How lucky to belong to a group mentored by a writer of this calibre.

An example of a low-concept premise; Captain Ahab's peg leg is made of a tooth taken from Moby Dick to replace the leg that Moby Dick took, showing not telling that the two adversaries are inextriably linked in life and death and in nature. A generic high-concept premise of the novel is a man goes ...

My mom used that expression all the time when I was a kid. If you think that, you've got another think coming. It was usually regarding some wacky idea my siblings (never me) had, and looking back on it, it was really quite generous of her to give them (never me) another think.

This new query is really quite a lot better, I think. Still needs to be worked on, but it's clearer. I might be out to lunch with this idea, but perhaps it will be of some help to you. I tend to feel my way emotionally through a story when I'm writing it. From samples of your writing I've seen else...