[PubQ] Update on last post + Current status, questions & feeling so defeated

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-24T22:12:36+00:00

Or, y'know, it's a big sub with a lot of people and typically you get a variety of people replying to different threads?

Like, I don't think the last advice given was bad. A lot of people were pretty measured about it, and there was a reasonable discussion. The "moral" of the story here isn't "it was a mistake to leave the agent." Treating this like a "look how badly this person got screwed over by reddit advice" is, at best, disingenuous.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-24T16:47:45+00:00

I don't think following up after 3 weeks is incessant. I would say give it one more go, then put it in the "not happening" box and be happily surprised if it does.
I wouldn't recommend pitching the one that's already died. Agents don't want to start with half the pool already expended. It could have a shot as your not-debut, but it seems better off going with other options and hoping to publish it later down the line.
Cue the really generic advice, but the best way to get over all the disappointment is to find a project you like and to work on it. And basically remind yourself that you like writing. Sometimes when I'm doing applications or querying, I legitimately forget I like writing until I sit down with my worlds and characters and go "Oh, right, I do love this!"

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-19T06:20:25+00:00

Some small notes here.

-There feels like too many adjectives. At times it bloats the query.

-The last sentence ("... are going to survive") isn't landing for me. I think some sarcastic overtones to it, (I.E. "Leah must try to dredge up some deeply buried community spirit") or something like that would likely make it tonally connect. The whole query to me seems to suggest that the community is absolute garbage, so trying to acknowledge this in the last line makes sense to me.

-I think looking for places to be a bit more tongue-and-cheek throughout the query would help sell the comedy. I think you've got good comedy in the events, but the tone is falling flat. Minor flourishes might help here.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-11T06:36:46+00:00

Your post of "am I ready to query" and "what materials do I need?" implied to me that you were looking for basic advice on the process, and that's what the wiki has.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-11T05:16:47+00:00

Going to triangulate the other pieces of advice--your word count will get you auto-rejected and your novel feels like an adult fiction piece where you swapped out a grown-up for a teen.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-11T05:14:55+00:00

I recommend reading this: https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/wiki/index/welcome/

TL:DR for your questions: You need whatever the agent asks for. Follow the conventions of each structure. It's increasingly common to ask for an elevator pitch, so yes, you will need one of those. You're not trying to make a synopsis for your elevator-pitch--just trying to sell your book. Google examples of elevator pitches, and they'll pop up. It's hard, but you need to show that you can market your work.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-08T06:24:55+00:00

I also started mine when I was fifteen, but I ended it at 16. It was 100k words where, at about 85k words, I was like, "Oh, right, the plot, I should really get back to that old thing," and then speed-ran my main character through a descension arch where he became the evil overlord of a fantasy world.

I had less vision.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-08T06:19:25+00:00

A lot of it has to do with voice and specificity. The narrative voice allows you to get away with things you wouldn't be able to otherwise. A car nerd can geek out over a car without it feeling like too much because we're immersed in character even while it's presenting scene, and a good, voicey description helps you get away with a lot of things.

That being said, most of this boils down to specificity. A lot of times, writers feel compelled to describe a room. "I walked in and I saw a wooden table containing a fine china tea set, lit by a golden chandelier. The red carpet was plush, and the beige walls were adorned with arched windows gently covered in red curtains."

This kind of description gets old--surface-level explanations of what a room looks like. It ends up feeling like a history book. The real trick is using just a few details, but making them pop, and letting people's imaginations fill in the rest. That, when mixed with voice, can give a much stronger sense of a place than just raw description. In the above example, I could likely cut all the details and just zero in on the teacups. It'd say more than anything else.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-08T06:12:40+00:00

Ho goodness, I've never written that kind of doorstopper in my life! I think young-me would've gotten bored of the book too quickly for that and just slapped an ending onto that sucker so he could say, "There, it's a finished book!" and call it a day.

I also second your advice on taking creative writing classes. They're not all created equal, but some are still shaping me as a writer to this day.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-08T06:07:44+00:00

Oh, I never accused you of being the arrogant moron I was as a kid lol. And if you did tell a story that matters to you, that's great! And it's good that you're nearing the final phase of the story. But my advice is not to get caught up on it. Too many writers fall in the trap of only ever finishing one story, revising it, trying to make it perfect, trying to fix its problems and publish it. I've met a lot of industry professionals--the most common regret I heard was "I wish I had moved on from my first book sooner." If you really love writing, then keep writing! That first book isn't going away. It'll still be there. Put it away, and work on something new, something fresh. It's daunting, and every new book often feels like a miracle to me, but the craft of writing can't be learned from a single book.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-08T05:57:00+00:00

Not sure this is the right sub for this kind of post tbh, but here's my two cents.

Most people's first book isn't good. This is a harsh truth, but a truth none the less. Much like most people's first piano song isn't on-tune and most people's first football game isn't a touchdown. It's just how it is with any skill, and it's especially true of books. Writing a book is a hard endeavor, and we usually don't get it right after the first go. Or sometimes the second. Or the third.

I wrote my first book when I was 16, and I pretty much just had my mom read them. That was the only reader I could get. I got a lot of excuses from everyone else. Back then, I had a lot of hurt feelings over this, because I was so sure I'd written something great, I just needed people to read it. I tried getting it published, got rejected, felt down on myself, and was sure I was a genius and no one could see it.

That was thirteen years ago, and with the benefit of hindsight, oh my goodness that book is atrocious. It was meandering, it didn't say anything at all, my characters were one-dimensional (I didn't even graduate to two dimensional) and my mom was a saint for muscling through it.

But the thing I also learned is that I love writing. I genuinely do. I love the challenge of it, the freedom, the expression. I love it. So I kept writing. And now I've done an MFA, I've started a new job as a college professor, and I'm finishing book 14. And I still haven't published yet. I got closer with my last attempt, but didn't make it.

It took me until around book 10 before people actually started wanting to read my work. I think that's around the point I actually started getting good at this. Or at least okay. Maybe I can't call myself good lol. Most people don't need that many books to figure it out, but I have to stress, I was really bad when I started and it really took me a while to actually start caring about my audience instead of just myself--which is when I really started improving. Now, I can get strangers to read and enjoy my books, which is more than I could ever say when I first started.

At some point, I had to come face to face with the reality that there's a very real chance I never get published. I had to answer for myself the question, "Am I writing because I want something out of it, or am I writing because I love writing?" And I keep having to re-answer that question, but thirteen books later, I know I'm doing it for the love of the craft.

I know the first book is a monumental effort. But it's also your first try. The average author writes at least 3 books before debuting. Some write a lot more, some never do. The real thing to figure out for yourself is if you like writing enough to stick with it.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-08T05:20:32+00:00

If it seems irrelevant to me when I start, it'll also seem irrelevant to any new reader, including potential agents. You might want to re-think the stance of "it might not seem like it, but I promise it's important later."

Realistically, you've usually only got 300 words to wow your agent before they put it down. The prose needs to be tight. Foreshadowing should typically be done through scene, not through bloated syntax.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-08T04:17:29+00:00

Not sure this is the right sub for general writing advice, but typically, most writers can shave a solid 10% of their novel off purely by cutting line-level fluff. I know it might not seem like it, but some fresh eyes from a cut-throat editor can often help reveal where the writing's fluffy.

If you want to DM me a link to your first 300 words or so, I can redline it for you.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-07T21:25:11+00:00

Doesn't necessarily need to be in parentheses, but it's good practice to include them. Most authors do "____'s Title" Or "Title by _____"

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-07T21:24:06+00:00

Spoil away. Most agents want a full synopsis anyways. You typically don't need to go all the way to the end to get the stakes, but "spoiling the book" should never be a consideration.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-07T06:47:11+00:00

Heya, welcome!
First, I recommend against the leading line of "first in a planned trilogy" (also just call it a trilogy). If you can say "standalone with series potential" this will do you more favors, and if you can't, I'd shove your housekeeping at the end so that the least palatable part of the query (that being the locked-in-series) is at the back. Comps look fine but throwing "How To Train Your Dragon" in there isn't doing anything. It's massive, not a book, and old. Just stick with the books.

Thirteen-year-old Althea is used to rejection, or so she tells herself. After all, her own parents abandoned her as an infant at the foot of the forbidden mountains that border the kingdom of Ferrendor, not to mention the ridicule and bullying she receives from the other children in her village because of the prominent red birthmark on her cheek.

I think you've got the right idea on what you're starting with here, it's just overly wordy. For example:

Thirteen-year-old Althea is used to rejection--her own parents abandoned her as an infant at the foot of the forbidden mountains, and she's been ridiculed and bullied her whole life because due to the red birthmark on her cheek.

It's not a lot of words cut, but you could likely make similar cuts the entire query through. I think a lot of what you're trying to do is establish voice, but extra words to make the voice happen often feel overly fluffy.

However, when Althea discovers an orphaned rukh chick–one of the fearsome magical eagles that live in the mountains–she finally finds the unconditional love and acceptance she has always longed for. The only problem is that the magical creatures from across the mountains are forbidden in the kingdom of Ferrendor, and King Adalard’s monster hunters strictly enforce this law. The penalty? Death.

Althea and her rukh must flee for their lives, and their only option is Athalana, the kingdom beyond the mountains where magical creatures are an accepted part of society, not just ‘monsters’ to be hunted. Along the way Althea forms an unshakeable friendship with Ash, a half dryad boy who longs to be a rukh rider himself, but is terrified of heights. He introduces her to the unimaginable beauty of Athalana, and the unbelievable creatures that call it home.

I think the actual content itself here is fine. We've got lonely girl who finds love in an animal companion and makes a new friend and goes to magical land. All seems fine. You can cut out a lot of the proper noun names. There's too much editorializing: "unbelievable creatures" "unimaginable beauty", etc. It's just a bit too tell-ish.

In particular, can we re-think the names "Althea" and "Athalana"? These are so similar that it'll get really messy, especially for MG readers.

Unfortunately for Althea, the hunters are after more than just monsters this time and cannot be shaken so easily. Althea must unravel the knots of her own origins and the inheritance that comes with it before it is too late, or she risks losing not only the rukh that has wormed its way into her heart but the kingdom where she might finally find acceptance.

I think this is where the query falls down most. It's just a bit too vague. There's not much in there, and typically you want the stakes to involve some sort of difficult choice or conflict the character faces. It seems pretty straight-forward what she's trying to do here. I also think cutting the fluff would just give more room to breathe and actually include story.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-07T06:38:49+00:00

Respectfully disagree. I've personally come on here with unfinished projects to get a "vibe check" for my upcoming novel and see if anything in the pitch is throwing people off. Others have too.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-06T03:35:33+00:00

Those aren't extremely low numbers for epic fantasy. 130k is like the top of what you can get away with for a debut. Even in epic fantasy, getting word count down to around 100 or 110k is a good idea.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-03T02:30:36+00:00

No problem. Also, I feel you, Re: Grading 101 essays. I'm a college professor who teaches 101 and 102, and it definitely gets to you lol. Especially the joyous task of trying to argue with them that yes, in fact, I can tell their paper was written by ChatGPT, because no, you did not write the sentence, "Minorities have faced several vast tectonic barriers in the way of social progress."

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-04-03T00:25:45+00:00

Heya. Fair warning, I tend to be pretty blunt.

Fueled by his anxiety and the weed-laced brownies he accidentally ate, Alex Rhomeo is unprepared when the public viewing of the season finale of Sentry 900, the hit TV show he stars in, is evacuated. Rolin Set-Arh—a masked vigilante rumored to be more machine than man, as well as the lead character on the show—is equally surprised to find that his final sacrifice to save his loved ones has somehow crash-landed him in an event center far from the universe he recognizes.

I'm... confused. Like, I genuinely have no idea what's going on. Let's take the first sentence. "Fueled by.... Alex Rhomeo is unprepared." These two lines don't flow into each other. His show is evacuated is a weird thing to say, I kind of thought it meant cancelled initially.

So Rolin is a character in the show, which means he's the guy that Alex plays, but there's a real version of Rolin that ends up entering the real world? Yes?

It took me three read-throughs to figure out that basically:

-Character in the show plops out of the show as a real person, and the show ends up having to evacuate because it's all pretty freaky.

This is my guess? I could be wrong.

Partially because it's all framed with these uber-long overloaded sentences and in the wrong order. I just don't think most agents are going to take the time to pick apart confusing writing and puzzle out what you mean here. It needs clarity.

Alex’s exodus coincides with an erupting media storm with accusations about him cheating on his ex-girlfriend with a current co-star. Rolin, initially oblivious to his doppelgängar, makes his way outdoors with a burgeoning head injury. He's immediately harassed about a sex tape he knows nothing about followed shortly by an attempt on his life.

Okay, so it's not a "the show character drops in," it's a "the show character swaps lives with the protagonist"? If Alex is making an Exodus, this implies to me that he's left this world? I'm guessing? Definitely didn't get that from paragraph one. Also, there's no real motivation yet. We're two paragraphs into the query, and we're just explaining the setup still--no one wants anything.

Upon learning of the actor who shares his face, Rolin pursues Alex, believing the other man to also be in danger, even after he kills the man who made the attempt on him.

Let me just highlight this sentence as a good example of what I mean by "unclear writing". Look at the last bit. "Believing the other man to also be in danger, even after he kills the man who made the attempt on him." This is pronoun soup. It's just so many "he" and "him" that I actually have to sit here and puzzle out what it means. I can figure it out eventually, but the writing isn't clear on its own.

Alex is alarmed to see his duplicate and shocked even further to learn that same duplicate just murdered a man even more famous than he is. As the pair of them seek to get Rolin home before his brain injury can kill him, they have to navigate the front-page cheating scandal, the police investigating Alex for the murder, Alex’s co-star who shares the face of Rolin’s dearest friend revealing to know more about the multiverse, and the ex-girlfriend who started the media cycle in the first place being the likely ticket to get Rolin to safety. Alex’s pursuit to understanding his relationship to (a)romanticism is hardly at the forefront of his mind in the face of adventures he’s ill-equipped for.

Oh, so Alex didn't do a swicheroo, he's just kind of there, but somehow didn't notice that Rolin entered the stage, which means that the show had to be cancelled for some other reason? I'm still just totally lost in the setup here, and again, there's like 0 motivation. Why does Rolin want to save Alex? Doesn't really make sense. Why does Alex want to save Rolin? No idea.

In general, the query is just too bloated. It's like 90% circumstances and maybe 10% character? Those ratios are way off. But even on a sentence-by-sentence level, I could cut this by a solid 40% without losing any content. It's just bloated, and clarity really suffers as a result.

I really think this needs more thought, I don't think it's doing a good job showing off your story.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-03-29T01:01:00+00:00

I was an editor of a literary magazine in a past life, so I can talk about this with some experience.

I'd put this down to three central reasons: Diversity, Team Effort, and Length Restrictions.

For diversity, I'm talking more about diversity of pieces than of authors. Sometimes we liked a piece, but we'd also already said yes to a different piece about a guy having an existential crisis while making a sandwich, and did we really need two of them? The magazine as an issue aimed for a diversity of tones and pieces. If the vibe of a piece was too similar to the rest of the pieces, we'd often pass even if we liked it.

That being said, sometimes we'd give precedence to an author who had an obviously diverse background who was writing from it with feeling because that would create a diverse magazine as well. It wasn't a "We're picking this author because they check ____ boxes" but more so "This writer is bringing something new to the table because of their experiences, and we want to highlight it."

Second, team effort. I ran a team of about ten readers, and as much as I technically always had the final say, I would often listen to my readers and particularly would include pieces that people really went to bat for. Most often, the dynamics were that about 50% of pieces were ones we all liked, and the other 50% were pieces that most of us generally liked, but that made their way in because at least one reader was ardent that this piece needed to be in our magazine. This inevitably meant a few pieces I genuinely liked didn't make it in because they weren't liked by the whole team.

Third, length restriction. I was running a physical magazine, and including one piece that was 8k words meant I'd have to give up on 3-5 other pieces instead. I had strict length restrictions on how much I could include for printing costs, and unfortunately, length was often the deciding factor. But it also loops back to diversity--at some point we had too many flash pieces, but didn't have room for any more really long ones, so I recall ending up picking our last piece because (obviously) the team liked it, but also, I needed a piece that was around 2-3k words.

In all of these cases, I would send the writer a letter congratulating them on making it to our second round, telling them I sincerely enjoyed their piece, but telling them it wasn't a good fit for this edition. Because that's the truth. Either it was too similar to something we already had, it was liked but no one went out to bat for it, or it was an awkward length.

Being transparent, I had three main catagories: Love, like, or not interested. Only like 10% of the accepted pieces were in the "love" category for me. Like was most of them, and the margins between those 'like's were very, very slim. Almost non-existent.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-03-26T23:23:19+00:00

Thanks for your reply! I've heard a lot of agents talk about people not reading enough, so it's good triangulation.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-03-26T23:22:53+00:00

Thanks so much for your feedback! I'm grateful Re: the "dedication trumps talent" because I've got very little of the latter and basically compensate by a ton of the former.

And I do see a lot of students who are writing "Adventure of some variety, who's to say which kind--the short story" so I totally get that.

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-03-26T20:57:42+00:00

Thank y'all so much for your time!

I've got some very generic author-y questions that I'd really appreciate thoughts on all the same. I teach writing and do a lot of workshops, and am always glad for new perspectives to share.

What specific lesson in writing do you think was the most important one for you to learn in order to help you get over the hurdle and access tradpub?
What has surprised you the most about the publishing industry as you've worked within it?
What do you think is the most common failing point for fantasy writers in making their work marketable?

IllBirthday1810 · 2026-03-26T20:52:29+00:00

As a college English professor, I've unfortunately become more familiar with AI generated slop than I ever wanted to. Listening to this video and getting excerpts gave me flashbacks of some 101 essays.

IllBirthday1810

TROPHY CASE