Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Dear (agent), Eighteen-year-old Presley O'Connor isn't exactly a mind reader, but reading others deepest emotions works about as well. It's like having your own built-in lie detector. Her life is good, until a letter arrives on her birthday that includes her senior picture with her face mutilated a...

Lexcade - This query caught my attention enough to read all the way to the end of the thread, even with the rough draft. I have to admit, if someone turned me into a panther and wiped my memory, there would be hell to pay. I'm talking about becoming a feline bolt of lightning from above. No memory n...

Thank you both for taking the time to reply! I was looking for just this sort of stuff. The more problems I can strip from it, the better. GeeGee - I agree with you on everything, but specifically about her not being upset enough. In the original she acted out a little bit more, but I discovered tha...

(But when I was 12, we were reading some fairly grown-up books as assigned reading in school. We read To Kill a Mockingbird in 7th grade, as well as Watership Down and Lord of the Flies. The latter two books disturbed me more than anything I've read from the YA section.) Watership Downs disturbed y...

Any thoughts on this chapter would be appreciated. :) ----------- Chapter One Elizabeth Brooke was not spying. She stood in her own backyard, admiring a fine view that anyone could see from the road behind her, trying out a brand new pair of binoculars. If she happened to be pointing them at the fam...

Keep the original also. While the people here are right and you don't want it for queries, a well written synopsis is hard to come by. You've been handed a gift. Take it!

I liked it. You are correct that the manuscript does need tightened, but all of the problems are pretty easy fixes. Aside from the comments other readers made, you may also want to check for excessive adverbs. ^^ If you're using word document, just find all "ly" and there should be a check...

With my all time favorite Wrede quote and a suitable one from Watership Downs...I have nothing to say. You all have covered it.

That's difficult. I'd have to choose between J.K. Rowling, Megan Whalen Turner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Patricia C. Wrede. But maybe I would just hold a dinner for five and spend the entire time being terribly intimidated and internally squeeing at so much brilliance all in one place. EEEE!! You lov...

What an intriguing story. :) This is just the sort of book I would want to read. Not much to critique here, just a few suggestions. Dear Agent: Alice Towne has walked away from what seemed a perfectly rational life. She is eager to leave behind her unfaithful lover, and hoping to avoid the so called...

That's a hard one. I think if they both want your work, you choose which ever one works best with you. I research all of the agents I intend to send my work to extensively. I want to know what books they've sold, I want to see if their writing style is similar to mine, and if I like the agent's atti...

I use www.critiquecircle.com and request line-by-lines on each chapter. I'm impressed and pleased with almost all of the critiques I get.

I'll say this though, if I'd gone on the cover of Patrica Wrede's Dealing with Dragons I'd never have picked it up. It's a horribly ugly dragon staring down at a princess. I bought it for fifty cents at the library, even though the back cover turned out to be misleading. (It read like a romance nove...

Aww, I already have my next book purchase planned. I found out Patricia Wrede's newest book is out, and I'm trotting out to buy it tomorrow.

Awww, and of course you're done with it. >_> This would have been a perfect crit swap with my MG novel.