One piece of advice I often find myself giving is that before you query or share your work with agents, you should make sure you have read it like a reader. It’s easy to get caught up in what it is you want to express or in finding the perfect image, while losing sight of how the work is reading experientially for the person on the other side. Keep hold of what experience you are trying to deliver for a reader. That’s not to say one should write cynically towards the market, not at all. But in a way, with a novel you are giving the reader a gift, something of value that will stay with them—an idea, a voice, a feeling, a story, or, ideally, all of the above!
And I do mean “value” literally: I often talk to my clients about the “twenty-seven dollar test” (adjust for inflation as needed). A book is an idea, but it’s also an object on a shelf in a store. You need to give people a reason for your book to be the one they spend their money on. An amazing voice or singular style can be just as “valuable” as the perfect hook but it’s worth trying to imagine encountering your work in the wild. Does it earn a claim on your time and attention? Has it enlarged your world in some essential way?
So, before you send out your novel: Print it, curl up with it on the couch as you drink a cup of coffee, and see how it feels to read when it’s more than just a Word document on your computer.
—Amelia Atlas, literary agent, Creative Artists Agency
Photo credit: Liz Farrell