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All About Twitter Pitches

Query Mastery had a Bonus Session last night with Sharon Grace Pelletier  @sharongracepjs, literary agent at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

I’ve participated in Pitmad a month or so ago and out of my three pitches, received one like from a small publishing firm. I’m still waiting to hear back from them though I’m not confident about getting a manuscript request. This is not me displaying false humility. After sending out the 10 pages of manuscript required, I joined a contest to get feedback on the first 2 chapters. Had the manuscripts been printed out and returned to me, I would have seen a sea of red. On the flip side, the feedback were constructive and helped me revamp major areas of my novel and why I went in search of another editor. Good ones and affordable editors are so hard to find.

Now, on to last night. Four things stood out to me from Sharon’s critique of the sample twitter pitches she did for the Query Mastery members.

Paraphrasing her words, and adding my own explanations for myself, effective twitter pitches:

1. must convey a clear picture of the characters in the story. Who are they? What do they look like or what are their defining qualities? From what I gathered, names of the character unless they’re well-known gods and goddesses for fantasy novels, are irrelevant. Instead, character descriptions like, “A 13-year-old deaf girl finds herself an orphan and the head of a multi-billion dollar conglomerate targeted by competitors, gov’t regulators, and militant activists” or something. I just made that up but that could be a good plot.

2. must include the setting if it’s essential to the story. If the story is set in a Roman arena, mention it. Likewise, if the setting is a random suburb, don’t include. In the Fantasy genre, this would have to be done creatively, I think since the setting could be in an unknown realm.

3. must evoke a sense of stakes. As in, what would be the consequence of certain actions? What is the conflict? What are the obstacles? This would be the turning point of the story. The tweet is not a synopsis. 

4. must use powerful descriptors that match the tone of the story. You only have 140 characters to convince an agent that your manuscript is worth checking out. As such, you need to select verbs that convey what kind of novel you’re selling. For example, Sharon used the following word to compare and contrast: Yanked - has more energy, conveys conflict and tension VS Drawn - is more evocative, thoughtful and lyrical VS Lured - which has a sinister undertone. 

I have a love-hate relationship with twitter because it’s hard to condense my thoughts in 140 characters; on the other hand, it forces me to distill my thoughts into 140 characters. It’s similar to elevator pitches, if I think about it.

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Love this art work. Love strong female warrior characters.

By Rui Li

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Critiques

Some people hate them. Some people love them. I appreciate them when they’re constructive.

A few weeks ago, I participated in a contest. I wasn’t interested in the prize in as much as I was interested in the promised feedback from the judges. I haven’t found my critique group so this sounded like a great way to get feedback. 

My $25 entry fee was worth it. Today, I received an email from the contest organizer with the judges’ scores and detailed feedback. Overall, my premise was interesting and all the judges noted that they would have loved to read my complete novel. Unfortunately, my manuscript was riddled with typographical errors, grammatical errors, and POV shifts.

Whhhaaaaat????!!!

But I ran Microsoft spell check and used Grammarly.

Shows how much they work, eh?

I won’t lie. I had to take a deep breath before I opened the score sheets and read through the manuscript comments. Ohmygosh, there they were, highlighted in yellow or blue, errors and clunky words. 

My heart didn’t drop nor did I get depressed as I thought I would be. Instead, I felt energized. The comments were comprehensive and very helpful. These are the things I needed to improve my craft.

I’m going to take another stab at the manuscript and will look for a proper editor this time. 

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Now, this post gives great examples of writing diverse culture.

Female Vietnamese-Chinese-Australian

My dad is Vietnamese, but his parents come from China. My mum is from China, but she moved with her family to Hong Kong from an early age. They speak Cantonese (or as you otherwise might know it, traditional Chinese) as a main language, although they can speak (simplified) Chinese too. I was born and raised in Australia so I identify as Australian as well as Chinese and Vietnamese.

My area has some Asians, but you can get other PoC showing up too and as a writer, I like to embrace that (that’s why this profile exists). However, most people here are non-PoC, Australia being a former British colony and whatnot.

Clothing

Hand me downs. When your dad has 10 sibings and 2 of them are about an hour’s drive from your house, you can’t deny that’ll happen. However, I do get new clothes every now and again.

Food

My family does have a habit of eating rice and/or different Chinese styles of noodles a lot for dinner, but we eat pasta and other cultural foods every now and then. A typical lunch is normally a sandwich or fast food, while breakfast can be anything from dim sims to toast to apple pie (I think the apple pie is just a scrounge-for-money excuse on my mum’s part though).

We do eat Vietnamese food for dinner (a cold vermicelli dish with mint/lettuce, fish sauce and soft shell crab/spring rolls/cha lua/surimi scallops - or a combo of those - known verbally as something along the lines of “moong” to me, although I don’t know its proper name or spelling) or lunch (banh mi or pho), although the likelihood of having Vietnamese food for any given meal is significantly rarer than Western-style food/rice and normally it’s my dad who’ll eat pho.

We used to go out for yum cha for lunch (despite it being breakfast in most cases in Hong Kong) every now and again. When we’re in Hong Kong though, my maternal grandma makes us go to yum cha for breakfast and then to the same restaurant for dinner. There’s one dish I love from yum cha specifically (prawns in cheong fun with soya sauce) which is often on the menu and why I don’t mind yum cha in most cases.

My mum loves Japanese food, but my dad doesn’t like most raw things (I had a childhood friend whose mother used to work at a sushi shop, so we got lots of discounted food - it didn’t help my dad one bit) so me and my sisters have grown up eating sushi/okonomiyaki/sashimi and we’ll eat this stuff on birthdays or special occasions. That’s how we get into anime and learning Japanese at school. 

Holidays

My family is atheist, with a mild exception on my smallest sister’s part (she believed in the optional religious education classes a little too much, and so is a bit more insistent on Christianity). We normally go out to Chinese New Year celebrations in our vicinity (we normally buy the spiral potatoes on skewers and/or batter-coated octopus tentacles and eat them if not collecting freebies). We’ll eat mooncake, tang yuan or the like as a celebratory food around the relevant holidays, although we do sometimes eat them out of season if the food is around and cheap. We don’t take days off around Chinese New Year like Chinese are supposed to, but we do take breaks around Easter, Christmas etc. because schools, supermarkets etc. close on those days.

Red pockets (actually red envelopes, they have money in them) are a custom for birthdays, Christmas, New Year, weddings and Chinese New Year. If your birthday is close to one of the other listed holidays, you get one instead of two (see this profile for explanation). There is no set amount for the others, but normally for a 20-something-year old the cap is about AU $50 (we send the equivalent in American money to American relatives, but that’s less often than the ones we see in person and remember the birthdays for), and for weddings you should give more than that. 

We take basically any excuse to get together with extended family and Asian family parties are never dull. The adults, especially, gossip long into the night and if they bust out the alcohol, they go home at midnight or 2 am because…obvious reasons.

Identity issues

I thought, when I was younger, my surname was Chinese, but it turned out to be Vietnamese put through American pronunciation. I told my friends…and they didn’t give any reaction. Either they took it in their stride or just continued to think I was Chinese/Chinese-Australian like them.

I’ve been to Vietnam and Hong Kong on family trips before and for some reason, even though Australia is “home” to me, when all the people look closer to what you do and experience life similar to what you do, you feel like you’re “at home” in a weird sense. Can’t speak a speck of Vietnamese and my Cantonese and Chinese have fallen out of good use though, so I’m just berated by older relatives (in Cantonese and most times to my parents’ faces) when I visit them and speak in English.

I’m a bit more tan than my sisters due to neglecting sunscreen on sunny days, but my dad used to joke to me and my sisters that I was Filipino/Indian and looking back on it, that was pretty toxic. (It was also kinda hypocritical because he’s tanner than me, but he never pointed that out.) Some other people may get offended at being called “banana” or “ABC” (Australian-born Chinese), but me and my sisters can take it as a joke.

Talking about the Vietnam War is kinda awkward for me, as my dad escaped from it in his youth. I learnt about the war while doing an international studies course and being to Vietnam - there was this aura of coldness around it all the while and I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of it.

Language

I was taught Cantonese from birth, but Australia being as it is means English is my default. I had to learn Chinese and Japanese from language schools and school courses.

Hong Kong was British up until 1997, so there’s lots of English (the language, the people aren’t that common there) around and it’s easier to get by there (for me) than Vietnam. Vietnam was French in the 1800s so my dad knows limited French, but I’ve never learnt French. 

Study

I used to try and keep up with my parents’ standards of “play piano!”, “get good grades!” etc. etc. but as time wore on, I found I didn’t want to. In the end, I found they’re not too worried, so long as I do well in what I want to do and pass in what I need to do. 

…I’m also a proud procrastinator, as bad as that is.

Micro-aggressions

Notice how I’ve used “Cantonese” as a term for traditional Chinese, and “Chinese” for simplified? Cantonese and Chinese are completely different beasts. (I can get kinda picky about it, even though “Canton” is a somewhat whitewashed term and doesn’t refer to Hong Kong per se…I use the terms because I have no better way of distinguishing between the two.)

Tropes I’m tired of seeing

Kung fu Asians. Not all Asians are willing to whip your butt into shape with martial arts - most Asians wouldn’t know martial arts. For that matter, tai chi/taekwondo/karate/gong fu do not equal each other (yeah, Karate Kid with Jaden Smith is a misnomer).

Things I’d like to see more of

There’s one show I thought was fairly accurate in depicting a life like mine, and that’s The Family Law. Showing more family dynamics like that would be great.

I’d also like to see close siblings, regardless of genre, gender or race. (Not twins or OreImo, either - that’s a little too close.) I’m very close to my older sister, to the point where if we weren’t blood related, we’d be best friends.

It’s a weird demand, but regardless of where your story’s set or who it’s aimed at, I get kinda disappointed when people have an eating scene and they could check up some weird and wonderful food for it - for a workplace or school scene, a sandwich can make sense and it’s fine, but for one example, in fantasy feasts people eat “boar meat” and sometimes I wish they’d eat char siu instead of being so generic. Just do your research properly, spell the words properly and it’ll fit right in if it’s appropriate and/or relevant.

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Trident Media Group Wants You

All writers looking for an agent. Trident Media Group, the literary agency of Deepak Chopra, Jude Deveraux, and others, are have issued a challenge at The Prose. 

Details of the challenge are below.  I’ve also added the link.

https://theprose.com/challenge/5613

Entries

In order for the challenge to resolve and any prizes to be distributed, this challenge must have at least 1 entries. If the challenge does not meet the minimum entry requirement, entry fees will be refunded.

Winner Selection

The winner will be chosen by the challenge creator. For challenges with non-zero prizes, Prose will confirm the authenticity of the winner's submission to safeguard against plagiarism and other forms of foul-play.

Description

Please include the following information at the end of your post: title, genre, age range, word count, author name, why your project is a good fit, the hook, synopsis, target audience, your bio, platform, education, experience, personality / writing style, likes/hobbies, hometown, age (optional)

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#Pitmad

In anticipation of the upcoming #pitmad this Thursday, I’m re-reading the contest rules by Brenda Drake. Good luck to all! 

Refining, editing, and writing new pitches. Never thought they’d be this hard. 

Here’s the link

http://www.brenda-drake.com/pitmad/

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#monday musings #travelfun #amwriting

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Lessons Learned

The Muse and the Marketplace was such an eye-opener for me, in so many ways. I had an inkling there were many writers out there but seeing the grand ballroom of Boston Park Plaza filled with numerous people of varying age, gender, and ethnicity slammed it home. I met a few lovely people, one flew in from Atlanta to attend the conference, another was from Maine but originally from California. Most were novelists, a few were essayists, screenwriters or poets. Aside from the people, the "classes" were very informative. Participants were given lanyards with barcodes which had to be scanned before the participants take their seats. Somebody told me last year was a bit of a mess as some people attended the classes they weren't registered for, causing those who were registered to lose physical spots as the rooms were relatively small. I signed up for 4 classes, slightly bummed that the classes I originally wanted were full along with the meet-the-agent session. Conference Lessons First lesson learned, register early. Writing conventions are very popular. Scholarships are also provided by Grubstreet so it's wise to look them up. Second lesson learned, search for the bathroom before the sessions start. There's only a 15-minute break from one session to the other and lines are not uncommon. Third lesson, participate. Some speakers encourage audience participation and doing so makes the session more interesting. Writing Lessons Diversity is not just describing characters with stereotypical adjectives. Physical characteristics can go beyond almond eyes or food-descriptive words (i.e. mocha sk8n, chocolate brown skin). Dialogues can reveal a character's personality. A good way of showing, instead of telling. Less can be more. Readers often prefer to make their own deductions from the clues sprinkled all over the book. Settings must move the story along. Waxing poetic about your world for several paragraphs can slow your story's pacing. Personify your inanimate objects. Don't be afraid to use human characteristics to describe the sun, hills, and animals.

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The Muse and the Marketplace 2017

Forecast said it’ll be a rainy day today. While I’m normally averse to rain, I won’t mind it today since I’ll be spending the entire day at the Boston Park Plaza where the Muse and the Marketplace is going to be held.

I heard about this event when I attended one of Grubstreet classes. Grubstreet prides itself as a “literary arts center.” They provide writing and writing-related classes throughout the year. I’ve only attended two and have immensely enjoyed one of them. The other, not so much, because my expectations were different from the objectives of the class. Regardless, it’s a great place to learn and, I believe, they also provide scholarships in certain cases. With regards to Muse and the Marketplace, it’s a flagship event of Grubstreet where writers learn about the craft and even get to meet agents and editors. I won’t be one of them as I registered late and the session filled out quickly. http://museandthemarketplace.com/about-grubstreet/ This is the first day and the only day I’ll be attending since I couldn’t afford the 3 days, both in time and money. Will blog more at the end of the day.

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Home

Whew! Traveling is fun. The anticipation of going somewhere, new or familiar, gives me a thrill. I can't wait to experience new things, food, sensation, sights and sounds. My phone and my camera are crammed with photos and videos. Some of them would be deleted or just stored in the cloud, never to be seen again. This trip, I struggled a bit with the time difference and wi-fi connectivity. I know. First world problems. Still, they were legitimate concerns since I signed up for a writing workshop and the video calls were scheduled at 1.00 AM in my timezone. That seriously messed up my already jet-lagged body. Now, I'm back home. Though I enjoyed my trip, nothing beats coming home.

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Positive Thoughts Help Shape Reality

I've never read "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne but I do agree with the principle that a person attracts the energy that he / she releases into the universe. When I started writing, I've always said that experience is the best way to learn something. I read books to get inspiration but I prefer to experience things. Traveling afforded me those experiences. I'm a mid-level traveler. I don't normally go for 5 star hotels. I don't book first class seats. I can (now) comfortably stay at Airbnb. I can eat at little hole in the wall restaurants. I would be lying, though, if I say that I don't dream of traveling in Business Class or First Class or to stay at a 4 or 5 star hotel. Aside from the selfish reason of wanting to try it, I also know that I won't be able to write about the high life in my romance novels. Then it happened. I got upgraded without having to ask. First, it was from Premium Economy to Business Class on Cathay Pacific in my Hong Kong to Boston leg. That was 15 hours of relative comfort in the air. Flight crew who address you by your last name and the bliss of a flat bed. I tooks tons of photos since I thought it would never happen again but I kept hoping. Then it did! This time Boston to Hong Kong. Not only that, I also got upgraded from the lowest price one-bedroom to the most expensive 3-bedroom suite. Did I take videos? Hell, yeah. Thanks universe!

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Having Fun in Harlem Heights

Sometimes not doing your routine results in unexpectedly delightful results. I decided to go to New York this week because the plane tickets and hotels in Austin were too expensive. I wanted to attend the 2017 SXSW Conference and Festival to check out all the hype. Alas! My budget said no. To console myself, I decided to go to the exciting, bustling and ever-charming Big Apple. I always stayed in hotels whenever I visited but this time, I wanted to try Airbnb. No, I'm not being sponsored. I compared hotel prices, read reviews and said, "Heck! Why not try Airbnb? It couldn't be that bad." I've already tried renting out apartments in Europe and Asia. It usually takes me awhile to make a decision because I check out the locations, I read the reviews, and I exchange emails with the owners. In this instance, however, I only exchanged one email with the host, didn't check out the location and just skimmed the reviews. I booked the place because it was cheap and it was close to The Cloisters. A day before my departure, I double-checked the listing location. My heart stuttered when I saw Harlem Heights. Oh, crap! I googled Harlem Heights safety, crime statistics in Harlem Heights and variations of the same. Trulia.com didn't allay my fears when it pinpointed exact street corners and the number of crimes committed in each of those streets. Then my host sent me a text with the address. It was a different address from what was in the confirmation email. By then, my anxiety level peaked. What had I gotten myself into? The host texted back explaining the listing address was incorrect but the apartment was still in the same block. After some back and forth, I decided to brave it out. And here I am, blogging underneath the warm quilt, listening to the occassional stomping feet of a resident going up the stairs, cars driving past outside the window, and voices filtering up from the street below. The apartment is wonderful in its shabby chic condition. All amenities are provided, including normal-sized toiletries (the host was so much more generous than hotels), six fluffy towels, mix of pots and pans and cutleries, fresh 1 litre bottles of water and orange juice and 8 tiny tubes of yogurt. Oh! And there's even a yoga mat. I feel very comfortable. I get the sense that this is how some New Yorkers live. The surrounding areas aren't bad either. The place is vibrant especially around Amsterdam and Broadway. Not a bad result. This experience will be showing up in one of my future stories. Have you ever done something outside of your routine with unexpected results?

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Learning from the Masters

Read as much from those that you admire and learn from them.

This is a paraphrase I read somewhere. The article talked about how some famous writers in the 20th century had similar descriptions of their female protagonists. It wasn’t zeitgeist but a deliberate action by the fan-authors as tribute to the more famous author. Similar to celebrity fans. I don’t remember the authors mentioned but that got me thinking. Copying, someone said, is the best form of flattery. Many would disagree.

I grew up reading romance books among others. My first book was a Mills and Boon paperback lent to me by my Aunt who got annoyed when I kept bugging her to give me something to read. From Mills and Boon, I moved on to Harlequin before venturing to Sweet Valley High teen romance. Yeah, my romance reading books went backwards. I interspersed that with Stephen King, Robert Ludlum and John Grisham. 

Since I was a voracious reader of romance books, I noticed similar themes among the books. Mills and Boon seemed to prefer openly hostile first meetings between the protagonists before they fall in live or the heroine gets pregnant and hides it from the hero or the heroine was the secretary/assistant/is of a lower station in society and the guy is this domineering boss/lord of the manor/millionaire (before billionaires became popular). The plots were so predictable, I needed to read Vale of the Vole by Piers Anthony and stumbled across the Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander to give my reading a bit of spice.

Years later, I realized these similarities were called tropes or hooks and writers use them because readers expect them. The most common tropes according to Tahra Seplowin (@calixofcoffe) in her article http://www.soyouthinkyoucanwrite.com/2015/06/plot-102-romance-tropes-fab-or-drab/  were: girl next door, virgin heroine, marriage of convenience, alpha male.

There were romance writers who were able to write original and compelling stories using those hooks. And there were those who simply wrote without originality. Rumors and accusation of plagiarism emerged, the one I was most surprised to find was the accusation that Janet Dailey plagiarized Nora Roberts . I was surprised because Janet Dailey was - is - popular in her own rights; however, this is an illustration that even great writers suffer from lack of inspiration. 

With the rise of self-publishing and the ease with which readers and writers can download e-books, it has become relatively easy to just copy off from others. I don’t mean “be inspired by”, rather literal copying of someone’s work. Read about the Becky McGraw vs Laura Harner case.

In my case, I am inspired by the works of Kresley Cole, Larissa Ione, AW Exley, Ilona Andrews, Nalini Singh, specifically the romance fantasy series. As a first time novelist, I am dissecting their works and trying to figure out what makes their books engaging, exciting, and enjoyable. One commonality among these authors is their ability to make their characters relatable and memorable. Their protagonists and their supporting characters are not one-dimensional. They have their own voices and their own personalities. That’s what I’m trying to incorporate in my novel.

If only other writers would take the time to study the techniques of the Masters instead of just copying and passing off other writer’s work as theirs, there wouldn’t be plagiarism cases. 

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Stories from Daily Travels

An old man bends over, picking up the change and bills passengers dropped in his guitar case. Salt and pepper hair peaks out from his black beanie. He stands for awhile. His eyes squints as he picks up coin after coin from his palm. He drags one leg over until he gets to his usual spot on the bench. His gnarled hands picks up the battered guitar. A sad haunting melody fills the air just as the train roars to a stop

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Falling snow

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After the Snow Storm

When the media announced the snow storm, I was giddy with excitement. While others hunkered down, I watched avidly for the snow storm to hit. At the height of the storm, I went up to the roof to stomp through the snow and took a video of the grey sky. It was fantastic!

Today, I got dressed, pulled on my snow boots and went off to see what the snow wrought. I wondered what story I can come up with. Whoah! Piles of snow were dumped on the sidewalk, some as high as a meter. While I found them charming, it created the problem of crossing the street and even waiting for the bus. I gave a virtual thanks to those who braved the day before I did because they created these little paths for me to walk on. I didn’t mind sinking into the snow; I quite enjoyed it. 

What I did notice was that the drivers seemed to have become selectively blind. They saw the bus stop but they kept on driving as if the pile of white snow blinded them to the people waiting. I had to tell the driver he missed a large group of kids but he just kept on driving. Fortunately, there were 2 buses that arrived immediately thereafter, but I’m not sure if they missed the kids again.

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Surreal

Mark Twain said, “Truth is Stranger than Fiction.”

Right now as I watch and read the news, it strikes me that what is happening in the US isn’t strange, it’s surreal. Protests are not uncommon but the atmosphere is heavy, laden with uncertainty. 

I had brunch with a friend a week ago and something she said struck a chord in me. To paraphrase, she said that since life as she knew it had been fairly trouble free if she would be fortunate to never experience World War III. Our generation didn’t experience the devastation of war. We’ve seen the civil wars in the Middle East but we never had a first hand experience of what it truly meant to be in fear of our lives.

As a writer, I observe. It is in my observation where I craft an alternative world. Sometimes, the worlds are filled with happy ever afters. Sometimes, I channel Stephen King and make them horrific. Sometimes, I do a mix of both. I do this, knowing that the characters and the worlds will remain a fantasy. I am not naive to think that horrible things don’t happen, that there are human monsters out there, but I believed that good would always triumph.

Now, I look around me and wonder whether good will prevail in the end. Would it be my idea of good or other people’s idea of good?