Hello writers. Write On! is a weekly series, mainly on fiction writing, but
all writers (and non-writers) are welcome.
So I'm still deep in the agent search, collecting rejections and a few
odd nibbles of interest. You don't need an agent to get published, but
if you're looking for one, here are some useful sites:
Author Advance
Among other things, this site contains stats for what proportion of
queries an agent rejects.
Query Tracker Among
other things, you can search authors to see whom they're represented
by.
Agent Query You can
search agents by genre here.
Another useful thing is to google the name of the agent and the words "absolute
write". That will usually turn up a thread at the Absolute Write Water
Cooler, where writers have discussed their experiences with the agent.
Moving on.
One agent whose webpage I looked at complained that writers don't
incorporate setting enough. We've talked before about setting about
setting as character: setting that permeates the story thoroughly. It's
not just what the characters walk on, pick up, and eat. It changes the
story. If the story were set somewhere else, it would be a different
story.
Take the movie Titanic, for example. Or Lord of
the Rings. Or Shirley Jackson's grim and indestructible short story
"The Lottery", which you read in high school. (You had to, because your
teacher read it in high school.) Or the equally
grim, equally inevitable "Outcasts of Poker Flat". The setting in each
influences what actually happens to the characters as well as their
choices, their emotions, and their beliefs and habits of thinking.
(Setting means not just place but time period, with all its cultural
baggage.)
So, tonight's challenge:
The setting is a deserted cottage on a windswept hilltop. I don't know
why it's deserted; you decide. It's got the cottage basics: a thatched
roof, a wooden door (which is standing open) a single window with a
wooden shutter, no indoor facilities. Two characters have arrived
there, either together or separately. Who they are (space aliens, a
medieval knight and his peasant leman, a kidnapper and his victim, an
alligator and a detective, etc) is up to you. The third character is
the cottage its surroundings. Make it influence what happens between
your characters.
Be sure to evoke the setting by having your characters experience it
through at least three senses.
(Oh, and pick a point of view. No headhopping...)
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regular Thursday (8 ET) feature until it isn't. Please ignore the
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Never, ever sign anything
with any agent or publisher whom you haven't checked out at
Writer Beware
or
Preditors and Editors .
If you can't find anything on a publisher there, that's not good news.