As
I mentioned in the bio data, I do a lot of work with
writers in many stages of their career, so I know
the kinds of questions they ask One
of the most frequent is whether or not to seek representation,
and possibly a sale, before a book is finished. The
answer is, in the case of fiction, it depends. (With
non-fiction that’s how it’s almost always
done. You start the hunt with a proposal. But
that’s not what concerns us here.)
For a novelist, the critical question is whether
what you’ve got is truly very strong, and if
you’ve got a hefty enough chunk of it to convince
an agent – and an editor – that you’re
something special, a new voice worthy of attention. If
you can get over those very high bars, go for it
once you have something like twenty percent of the
book written. If you do this, however, you
will also need to have available a detailed outline
of the rest of your story.
That’s fine if you’re okay with writing
outlines. I am not. This is a case of
different strokes for different folks, and there’s
no right or wrong way to proceed. I have written
many books and by now have developed my novelcraft
to point where I can rely on it. So I indulge
my taste for working out my story on the page. But
I do give my publisher some sense of where I’m
going (I almost always know the ending of a book.) I
call what I do a matrix. Here is
the matrix for City of Glory.
WARNING
- there are SPOILERS in here. If
you’re the sort who hates to know what happens
until you actually sit down to read, you may want to
skip these, though there’s a pretty good chance
that what I actually wrote/will write is different
than what the matrix says it will be. The history,
however, is always detailed in these things – much
more of it than I will ever put in the book itself – so
my agent and my editor know the bedrock on which I’m
building my story. |
