WotC Open Call for Novel Proposals

[takyris]

Had a good critique session last night. It gave me some solid pointers on the novel (two scenes in particular that everyone hated), and people really seemed to enjoy it, which is, y'know, always nice. Am now feeling more confident of having this guy out the door quickly, so that I can get to the next novel. With luck, I'll have this guy out the door by the end of the year. (The crits from just about everyone basically boiled down to "Cut this scene, fix THAT scene, add a map, and shorten it (which I'd already planned to do).)

Having the good critique reminded me of, well, good critiques. A bad crit group can hurt your confidence or try to get you to write the novel that they would want, rather than the one you want to write. But a good crit group can help you write your best possible novel. If the Forward Motion website has a crit group in it, that's one option, but you might consider others as well.

Anyway, luck to all! Can't wait to hear how it goes!

 

[mythusmage]

Important Stuff! (Listen up you primitive screwheads)

RESEARCH!​

I don't care if it's just a ghost story or some crap like that there, get it right! Tolkein spent decades doing research for Lord of the Rings. Folks like Stirling, Turtledove, and Flint do research for their alternate history stories.

And take notes. Notes on what happens and on what your characters do. It'll help you keep things consistent.

 

[two]

I promised not to write!!!

I know I know, I promised not to write any more messages here...nor read here...I was very good for a week or so...

Just a short note, supporting takyris' conclusions: from a very informal survey of other writers I know, and from various forums I make a habit of occasionally frequenting, I've been told of over twenty "polished, completely" finished novels that are being submitted to this competition, which is getting to be very well-known indeed. One guy actually has 4 novels that he is sick of peddling to publishers, and is going to submit all of them (so he claims). Yeah, I'm more than a little suspicious about the 4 novels guy too (they could all be uniformly bad, thus that's why they are unpublished) but more novels means more chances, I guess.

I don't know a lot of other writers, I am not big in the "writer's group" thing, etc. but even so, people are pulling stuff out of their dusty files and plishing it up -- my gut tells me WOTC is going to be buried. I can't say for certain how many submissions they will get... I really have no idea. 5 thousand? 1 thousand? 500? No clue. I do know that a reasonable percentage of them will be in a high state of polish -- this was something I had stated before, suspecting it would be the case, and lo and behold it seems to be true. Now polish does not equal "good", granted. You can polish a turd all day and you won't ever end up with more than a brown streak. But, well, whatever. Just more info. Do with it what you will.

See also takyris' posts above for more good info.

OK now really: bye!

PS: Romance novels can be as short as 45K words (Harlequin), "literary novels" can be even shorter (30K) if they are "arty", but a typical novel now runs 75K to 85K words. Novel size is shrinking; most agents currently ignore novels over 100K unless submitted by a published author with a good track record (or if it's in a genre where huge is normal, which are niche genres to be sure). Fantasy novels can go 70K - 100K or longer. I would definately not go longer than 100K unless you are on one heck of a roll. If you get to 80K or 85K and you are at the end of your story, don't feel the need to pad. If you get to 50K and are done -- well, then pad/expand/etc.

Ok now really really really: bye

 

[takyris]

One possible note in defense of the four-novels guy: I've got two novels out there right now, and another one that'll be out by the end of the year (likely to WotC). Here's how the submission process has gone:

Book One (Victorian Fantasy Novel with Mystery Plot):

12/2001 -- Out to Tor
10/2002 -- Queried Tor
04/2003 -- Queried Tor again
08/2003 -- Queried Tor again
10/2003 -- Sent a "Please respond to my query, or I'm withdrawing" letter.
10/2003 -- Withdrew and sent to Daw

It has been at Daw for more than a year now. It's still there, because they politely answered my query and said, "Sorry, it's taking a long time." Tor, however, never responded to any of my queries, which I sent by letter and by e-mail.

Book Two (Modern Tongue-in-Cheek Epic Fantasy) has been at Tor since 11/2003. I'm not even bothering to query on that one until a year has gone by. And even then, I dunno. I might withdraw after a year and a half. I might let it sit awhile longer.

Book Three (Swashbuckling Fantasy Romantic Comedy) will go out by the end of this year. It'll either go to Baen (the only other major publisher I know of that's taking unsolicited and unageted submissions right now, and which has a turnaround time of about two years, reliably) or to WotC. Haven't decided which, to be honest.

Book Four (rough description: If "Ocean's Eleven" were a fantasy novel) gets started as soon as possible, and likely goes out near the end of next year, after the rough draft, set-aside period, crits, and rewrites.

So I'd easily buy four novels being out there, even if it's a good author. I'm not saying I'm writing bestsellers, but my geek-buddies read a lot of stuff, and they say it's better than a lot of stuff they've paid money for. Breaking into the novel market sans agent isn't necessarily difficult, but it's nigh-impossible to do quickly. There are about four pro-level markets out there that take unagented submissions (Tor, Daw, Baen, and one I'm forgetting, not counting WotC), and they all have slush-turnaround times of a year or two. If you get a response earlier than that, chances are that it's a form rejection letter.

(Of course, four unpublished novels doesn't mean that you're automatically a good author -- it just doesn't automatically mean you're a bad one.)

As far as other general writing advice goes, I figure that at this point, anyone writing specifically for this open call should just do the best they can. Any advice that anyone gives here at this point can be misread, argued with, or reductio'd ad absurdem, and the number of people who are going to make meaningful improvement because somebody here said, "Research", "Outline your plot", or "Don't have your heroine meet Legolas, Neo, and Commander Data and have all three of them fall in love with her and fight over her until she cries and runs away in order to stop them from killing each other, only to perish at the hands of bad guys, so that Legolas and Neo can then cry over her and Data can say something about feeling an odd sense of loss, which might be considered grief," is pretty tiny.

Write the kind of story you'd want to read. Anything else is either going to go over your head or result in you getting defensive and pointing out examples of famous people who did what someone just said not to do and got published anyway.

 

[kaiscomet]

I just wanted to make a few quick observations.

One, if someone already has a polished novel that they have been shopping around, it may be pretty good (after all, it's tough to break in sometimes), but chances are it has some problems. And remember, a polished story that stinks still stinks.

Two, there are bound to be many proposals, and I personally believe that most of them are going to come from people who have already completed their story, or who have a good chunk of it already done. If you are committed, there is no reason why you could not complete what WOTC wants you to do in the alloted time. I personally believe that they are asking for a shorter turn around time to weed out the pretenders. Robert Heinlein felt that if 100 people said they would write a book, only six would actually submit the story. I'm sure that the increased requirements that WOTC is asking for with the shorter turn around time reflect this.

Last, remember the odds. For Maiden of Pain, 3 out of 500 were selected to write a book for WOTC. I've heard that there were less than 400 entries for Eberron, and there is only one guaranteed slot. With the amount of work that is required for this open call, I would expect that there will be fewer than 250 people that complete all that is required from scratch, if that. There are a lot of people out there with completed novels that they will submit, but even if they received 2000 proposals (I personally don't think they will receive 1000, but that's just me,) they will still select ten for consideration. Unless of course, they choose eleven like they did with the setting open call. With those odds, you still have better odds of getting selected to show your stuff for this open call than you did for either Maiden of Pain or Eberron.

But you don't win the race watching the other runners. Just write. If it's a good story that they like, you'll win. If not, you'll still have a novel to shop around. All things considered, you'll win either way.

kai

 

[Fast Learner]

Don't have your heroine meet Legolas, Neo, and Commander Data and have all three of them fall in love with her and fight over her until she cries and runs away in order to stop them from killing each other, only to perish at the hands of bad guys, so that Legolas and Neo can then cry over her and Data can say something about feeling an odd sense of loss, which might be considered grief

Crap. She's such a good character, too! Back to the drawing board.

(It had to be said.)

 

[Scribe Ineti]

Hey takyris, have you considered seeking out a literary agent? If you have four novels done and shopping around, you'd probably be attractive to an agent. That might help shorten the lag time between sending a novel out and waiting to get news from the publisher...

 

[Insight]

Hey takyris, have you considered seeking out a literary agent? If you have four novels done and shopping around, you'd probably be attractive to an agent. That might help shorten the lag time between sending a novel out and waiting to get news from the publisher...

I agree about getting a lit agent. Be careful, however. There are a TON of very unscrupulous agents out there. DO NOT sign up with one that requires an up-front fee. An associate of mine made that mistake and big surprise - he never heard anything back from the guy!

A real lit agent will charge you a percentage of your take on a project. They will require you to go thru a few hoops to get on with them. Having four works completed should get you in the door, but agents will only take on clients they expect to make them money. Your agent is not your friend, and they are not in business to help you per se, only inasmuch as it benefits the agent.

This is not to say that agents are heartless bastards, but they are often sole proprietorships who are highly dependent on their commission to make ends meet.

 

[takyris]

Fast Learner: Heh.

Scribe Ineti: Both of the novels currently sitting with publishers are also sitting with agents. I've gotten generally nice comments from agents, who usually respond faster than publishers, but no hits yet. One agent said that he didn't do mysteries (and the Victorian Fantasy Mystery fits as well in the mystery section as it does in the fantasy section), and another agent said that he just plain wasn't taking any fantasy until the market stabilized.

And yes, I'm checking references. I've had two bad experiences (neither of which resulted in me losing money) with agents who were fronting for rewrite services (ie, "Your manuscript was rejected because it was too rough and unpolished. Would you like to try this rewriting service?", which might have gulled me, had the three agents before that person specifically said, "This reads smoothly and quickly, like a professionally authored manuscript," even as they rejected me.). At this point, I'm making use of my SFWA membership (which has some neat directories for members) and only actually trying agents who represent authors I like.

So yeah, I'd love an agent -- but with most publishers restricting submissions to agented material, the agents have effectively become first readers for the publishers. Their response times have lengthened, and they're much more selective -- or at least, the ones who are worth having are much more selective.

Not an insurmountable problem -- the more novels I get out there, the greater the chance that one of them will hit. Eventually, if I keep writing, it'll happen. An agent would speed things up -- they get responses more quickly, and they're allowed to submit to more than one market at a time -- but it's also much easier to get an agent after selling the first novel...

 

[kaiscomet]

Takyris,
I was curious if you subscribe to Writer's Digest. This past year (I believe it was March or April) they had an issue that listed 25 agents that all have good credentials and are actively looking for writers. There were over five that mentioned specifically that they were accepting proposals from the fantasy & sci-fi genres. You might have better luck with one of these.