Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Hi. Pardon my approach; I did small press editing for a few years, so I've got the nasty habit of offering feedback in the form of 'tear out stuff that doesn't work and plug my own words in.' Obviously you want something that has your voice, and some of the changes I made don't actually mesh up with the details you presented in the first draft of the query. Namely, I say Jenni likes the changes, even though you said that she's initially disappointed because she doesn't seem to be changing. But I figure that once she figures it out, she'd be thrilled to no longer be ordinary. Anyway, here are my suggestions.

Cut out the first 'ordinary.' She's an eighth grader in an ordinary life, but you don't want to say she's ordinary. You get the contrast just fine with only one use of 'ordinary.' And for now at least, I like the linkages of 'ordinary,' 'extraordinary,' and 'disorder.'

I worry at the inadvertent drug reference in the gnome's name. Also, in the climax, are you going for a traditional happy "she wants to get home," or more complicated "she's not sure she wants to go back to her boring old life." Actually, in the earlier draft it sounded pretty durned depressing, with people turned into weird critters and unable to go home. So what's the tone? Adventure, self-discovery, or young adult body horror?



Dear Prospective Agent,

Jenni Kershaw is an eighth grader stuck in an ordinary life, and she’s extraordinarily tired of it. When her science class goes on a field trip, though, Jenni and her classmates are transported to a world known as Mother, armed with only their notebooks, mp3 players, and wits.

Together with a little gnomish fellow named Crank they set out for a city of knowledge and learning, in hopes of discovering a way back to Earth. During the journey, however, Jenni's class slowly transforms into various creatures from this new world. Jenni herself becomes something exceedingly rare: a shapeshifter.

Jenni couldn't be happier with all these changes, at least until a centuries-old villain deceives some of her classmates and sets them on a course for disaster. Now she'll need to learn to use her new abilities to save her friends, save the world, and find a way home. But after what they've undergone, will any of them be able to truly go back?

A MEASURE OF DISORDER is a young adult story of fantasy that explores how a bunch of normal kids maintain their humanity when faced with becoming something inhuman.



I'm not quite sure what it is I don't like about that, but if that's actually what the story's about, that sounds like horror, which doesn't match with the rest of your query. If you're going more for a "figure out what it means to be you," you'll want to change it, because as, "becoming inhuman" is kinda heady stuff for young readers.

Thanks so much for all the interesting comments! It's always good to have different sets of eyes and points of view look at your work. I'll try to answer some of the questions without posting the whole book here ; )

The kids (and teachers that are along as well) all get transformed permanently, so most end up staying in the new world (Mother) at the end of the book. Jenni's ability allows her the choice of going back to Earth or staying with her friends. Through the story, she sees everyone else go through major transformations, while she seems to remain the same. While she wants to be different, like all kids, she's at the same time afraid of being different from her peers. When her abilities start to manifest, they happen reflexively, out of her control. Later on, she learns to control what she shapshifts into. The other characters are changed into various types of goblins, fairies and elves, along with what I call "elemental spirits" that don't really have a physical body at all. One of the "gray hats" (I had a creative writing professor describe all plots/characters as westerns— There was always a white hat (good guy), black hat (bad guy) and a number of gray hats (those who start off bad and become good or vice-versa)) becomes a dragon. So, this is what I meant by them becoming "inhuman". Some are happy with their changes, some are not, and they all struggle to find their place and purpose in the world.

As far as why they are brought to Mother that some of you asked about, that is revealed at the very end: Mother (Mother Earth/Gaia if you will) brought them to help restore balance to a world that was tipped too far towards order and law. She needed to inject "a measure of disorder" into the world to bring it back to balance. So, as far as the query is concerned, it's not an element I'd want to bring up— it's not something that drives the plot, other than it's a question they ask occasionally: "why are we here?"

Crank is named for the job he performs in his village: he operates a hand crank on a machine because that's all he's qualified to do. The drug angle never occurred to me. I hope it won't be an issue because it would be a difficult re-write!

Word count: I'm down to about 95,000 and will probably be able to whittle off a couple more, but there are popular books in the genre out there that are even longer. The Septimus Heap series are all quite a bit longer than this and they are geared for a slightly younger audience, so I'm hoping I can overcome any word count bias.

Again, thanks for the ideas! Keep them coming. This has been a fascinating exercise for me and has really helped me tighten up, not only the query but the book itself.

Coach - you may have already tried this, but a quick way to lose several thousand words is to take out every unneeded "that." Ex. - "Jenni liked the fact that this world was new," could be: "Jenni liked the fact this world was new." Terrible example, but you get the idea. This little trick trimmed almost 3,000 words from my MS! (Scary, huh?) I'd also check for extra bulk in the dialogue...not only does this trim the word count but it also keeps the dialogue pithy!

Tara Queries wrote:Coach - you may have already tried this, but a quick way to lose several thousand words is to take out every unneeded "that." Ex. - "Jenni liked the fact that this world was new," could be: "Jenni liked the fact this world was new." Terrible example, but you get the idea. This little trick trimmed almost 3,000 words from my MS! (Scary, huh?) I'd also check for extra bulk in the dialogue...not only does this trim the word count but it also keeps the dialogue pithy!

Yes, that's exactly how I've trimmed nearly 4,000 so far. "That"s, "for a moment"s and other useless phrases now litter my floor = )

First I want to thank you for your advice on my query letter it sounds a million times better now. So thank you. I love the premise of this story, it sounds great. unfortunately I'm still very new to this and don't have a lot of advice to offer. The only thing I would say is don't worry about the word count just yet. If your agent is concerned about it then change it, but don't worry until then. Hopefully your agent hunt will end soon, because I really want to read this