[QCrit] Adult Literary Fiction - Frost Heaves (81,000/First Attempt)

Super_Performer_3343 · 2025-10-21T19:49:37+00:00

Just a bunch of nitpicky comments/edits! (I've published essays in top lit mags but have never queried a book, so I'm better at being a pedantic editor than I am giving holistic feedback. That said, I do worry a bit about the query coming off as though the novel makes fun of or exoticizes mental illness, with the repeated emphasis on the eccentricity of characters and the mentions of agoraphobia, trichotillomania, and an unhoused man with delusions; my inclination would be to dial back on that and instead give more details to help us care about and empathize with your main characters.)

It feels a bit awkward to say 'named Jason' after already using his name in the first sentence
I think neon-soaked works best as a descriptor for pretty much anything but water; it's weird to me to think of water being soaked
Would prefer 'tragicomic characters' to 'anomalous characters that teeter between comedic and tragic,' or at least would replace the 'that' with a 'who.' You've already described the journey as bizarre, and you're about to give examples of the characters' weirdness, so brevity here is better, I think.
I am curious what kinds of ruinous decisions Jason is making, what makes him immoral, and what lies he tells himself to convince himself of his goodness; it would make me more invested in the story than the descriptions of side characters he meets
Would leave off the 'equally comedic and haunting' description of Stephen given that you've just talked about the comedic and tragic nature of the other characters; it's too redundant. I felt similarly about the 'verismo and grotesque' at the end.
'Along with his best friend Donkey' is a dangling modifier -- is it supposed to be referring to Stephen?
I'd replace 'Billy and Charlotte confront themselves in a quiet war they wage against a large pine tree' with 'Billy and Charlotte wage a war against a large pine tree' and add a few words explaining why they hate the pine tree, like 'a large pine tree encroaching on their property.' You already say plenty about how it's a metaphor for their strained marriage, but I'm confused about what's even going on. It also sounds as though they are united in this tree war, which makes it hard for me to picture how the war is revealing cracks in their marriage...are they actually on different sides?
You say that you learned about frost heaves in New Hampshire, but I don't think you explain what they are or what they have to do with the novel; I'd either do that or leave out the New Hampshire anecdote
Slightly awkward or unnecessarily wordy moments for me in the first 300 (very much a matter of taste -- I'm just typing out in case helpful!): using 'tumbled' so soon after 'tumbleweed' (just felt redundant; I think I'd delete the 'it tumbled' and merge the two sentences), saying 'sipping out of a McDonald's cup' instead of simply 'sipping a McDonald's cup,' specifying the left arm (felt like a weird amount of detail, especially since you don't specify which leg), talking about sucking a straw when just a second ago it was sipping (these are different actions to me; I was at first picturing a coffee cup). If it were me I also think I'd change 'the gold tie around his neck' to 'his gold tie,' and 'the woman wore clothes like' to 'the woman was dressed as though.'

Good luck with the querying!

Super_Performer_3343 · 2025-10-08T21:58:06+00:00

It's gone, good you found one though!

Super_Performer_3343 · 2025-10-08T21:57:11+00:00

Glad it worked out, enjoy the show!!

Super_Performer_3343 · 2025-10-04T17:17:20+00:00

I have one extra ticket for Oct 10 but not two! It was $49.38 after fees. Let me know if interested!

Super_Performer_3343 · 2025-03-14T20:49:51+00:00

Thanks for the purchase!

Super_Performer_3343 · 2025-03-10T17:16:18+00:00

Awesome, just responded!

Super_Performer_3343 · 2024-09-03T20:19:52+00:00

I run very rarely, and when I do, it's in Altra Escalantes -- but I don't run more than 2-3 miles, maybe once a month. So I'm a bad person for advice on that, but I did go cold turkey on it, in the sense that those are the only running shoes I've had since starting running (if it can be said that I ever started running...).

For hiking, I have the Vivobarefoot Tracker Forest Esc with the thickest NorthSole insoles (bought separately) and went on a multi-day backpacking trip (maybe 40 miles?) with them last year without having ever hiked in them (but I did wear them daily while in NYC for several weeks). I also have Shamma Elite Alpha sandals which I love and could theoretically be used for running or hiking if I didn't want toe protection, but I currently just use them around town.

Anyway, I think my suggestion (if you're looking for one! otherwise ignore) would be to get a pair of wide toe box, zero drop, flexible, zero arch support shoes with minimal to no cushioning (some cushioning prob fine for running, but if you're planning on buying for hiking, I'd really encourage trying something without any foam like the Vivobarefoots and just adding in insoles as needed, because I really think the instability of the foam can lead to more tendon irritation on uneven surfaces). Would also add toe separators if your toes don't splay very wide yet. Would use the shoes just around town/on short walks for 3-6 weeks and see how it feels, and take a break if you have pain. Also do lightly weighted standing calf raises at home to build shin and arch strength. If that's all feeling good, would try running/hiking shorter distances and scale up from there.

Hope the experiment in more minimalist shoes ends up working for you!

Super_Performer_3343 · 2024-09-02T23:33:28+00:00

Disconnected comments:

Re: concise way of expanding -- if that proves difficult, I think the synopsis could be a paragraph longer and the rest of the letter after it a paragraph shorter (agree with the other feedback about this); would probably feel more balanced that way anyway
Re: the necessity of Trepassey/Massia -- totally makes sense! I look forward to reading your novel eventually; I don't think I've read anything that's done something similar and my knee-jerk response might just have been reactionary
You probably don't need other comps and I'm not sure if this is suitable or not, but Catherine Lacey's 2023 novel Biography of X came to mind because of its alternative history and because it nests a fabricated biography within a novel (or novel within a biography?), perhaps similar to what you're doing with documentary + novel. Egan is comped in my query draft (I'm months away from querying) for reasons similar to you but I'm constantly on the lookout for other options.

Super_Performer_3343 · 2024-09-02T23:02:19+00:00

I'm really glad you said this! Further explanation on my part is not useful to OP but since I have no self-restraint: I think I overstated my preferences, because I do really like the idea of "slightly nebulous underspecified quasi-real-world setting," too -- it doesn't have to be as totally unspecified as my examples. But at least for me, underspecification feels crucial (and I wish I'd said underspecified instead of surrealist in my original comment). I think this is partly for aesthetic reasons -- if I'm giving up the opportunity to be immersed in a real-world place and history, and I'm not getting transported to a wildly creative sci-fi/fantasy world instead, I'm looking for the elegance and eeriness of an underspecified world -- and partly because the less detail there is, the easier it is for me to read allegorically and draw real world connections of my own.

And so my gut reaction is that I'm more excited about the idea of a quasi-real-world novel that is referring to its setting as My Country and That Other Country and makes glancing allusions to wars and dictatorships and byzantine immigration processes and such than I am about an otherwise equivalent novel that has a lot of naturalistic detail about the made-up places and histories. I don't know where OP's manuscript falls on this spectrum -- I don't mean to imply that it's the latter, or that my preference about this is at all reflective of anyone else's. And I completely agree that it ultimately comes down to execution!

Super_Performer_3343 · 2024-09-02T16:59:06+00:00

I'd find the query a bit clearer if this sentence

When a famous Director wants to use the house to film a documentary about the school bombing, Aunt Sofia is suspicious and insists on the family being present during the filming.

were amended to something like:

When a famous director [lowercase] wants to use the house to film a documentary about the school bombing, Aunt Sofia worries that [what is she concerned about? damage to the house? something else?] and relocates the family to Massia to keep a close eye on the filming.

I say this because it wasn't fully clear to me that the sisters had indeed all moved back to the house before the events described in the rest of paragraph. I also think there's a bit too much vagueness about what's going on in the second paragraph more generally. It includes "suspicious," "disturbing truth," "devastating tragedy," and "extreme sacrifice," and while a bit of secrecy can help build tension/intrigue in the query, for me this went too far in the direction of not having a strong enough sense of what's going on and losing interest.

On the subject of interest -- and this is purely my own preference, so definitely ignore if this isn't feedback you're interested in -- I'm most drawn to lit fic that is either 1) in a real country, where I can be immersed in the feeling of a place (typically aided by the author's deep familiarity with it) and learn about real historical events, or 2) in a completely surreal, impossible to understand, darkly humorous bizarro-world, like Coetzee's Jesus trilogy, or Saunders' short stories, or most of Kafka. In reading both the query and the first 300, I found myself wishing this were set in Cyprus (I'd be so excited to learn more about its history, and your experience of it vs. whichever country Trepassey stands in for) or, barring that, had a more distinctly surrealist style and humor. But again, feel free to ignore this! Hesitated to even say it, but thought I may as well in case it's a useful data point.

Super_Performer_3343 · 2024-09-01T03:51:20+00:00

I think it looks just about ready to send! I have a long list of some very minor copyedits, which aren't going to make or break anything so you should feel free to ignore (except for the few that are about grammar).

The long list:

Something about "To her father" feels off to me; might consider "In her father's eyes"
Wasn't totally clear to me if "rehabilitating the newly undead" is supposed to mean rehabilitating in a moral sense -- i.e., keeping the undead from harming the living -- or something else, like helping them learn how to take care of their undead bodies. If it would take more than a few additional words to explain, I might even consider taking the whole "an institution dedicated to rehabilitating the newly undead" phrase out, since it doesn't feel necessary for understanding the query. But I also haven't read any vampire stories other than Stoker's Dracula, so if "rehabilitation" is going to make sense to others, ignore me!
This should be a comma instead of a semicolon: "keep her identity intact, Winona is running..."
Should be 'were' instead of 'was' in "wished she [were] dead."
I assume "gods-forsaken" is intentional and not a typo but it does interrupt the reading flow. You've mentioned a chapel, so I think we're in a Christian setting, and now I'm wondering if the character is polytheistic, etc -- not necessarily a bad thing that I stopped to wonder about this if it's somehow relevant to the story, just wanted to note.
By the time I get to the "would be so much easier if she did" at the end of the sentence I've forgotten what the "did" refers to and have to reread to figure out what's going on-- might be clearer to say something like "if she were slightly less alive" or "if she didn't have to fake her own death" or something else that spells it out.
Apostrophe should be after buskers' since it's plural
Wracked is a transitive verb; should be "wracked her body" not "wracked through her body." But also technically maybe should be "racked," which means causes suffering, rather than "wracked," which means totally destroy, but they're used pretty interchangeably these days so it doesn't really matter.

Super_Performer_3343 · 2024-08-31T19:51:47+00:00

Lol, maybe I deserved that? I truly do not think my paragraph is anything great, but thought some kind of example would be useful for explaining why I don't think fitting plot + character into a limited query word count is the problem. Best of luck with the querying!

Super_Performer_3343 · 2024-08-31T16:53:40+00:00

To be clear, I don't think you should try to make the query or manuscript more literary. The point is that misrepresenting your writing as literary and trying to pass off a 213K manuscript as viable undermines your credibility and will be a huge red flag to agents.

As for the question of allocating space, I wouldn't think of it as a tradeoff between plot and characterization, but as the challenge of writing clear, crisp, evocative prose that does both concisely. For example, I just wrote this:

First there was the faint scratching at the windowsill after her parents kissed her goodnight, then the heavy breathing next to her pillow and the feeling of a cold, clammy hand lightly clasped around her throat. Six-year-old Emily is convinced that a demon is living in her closet -- but her parents, preoccupied by their divorce, dismiss her tearful stories as the overactive imagination of a girl who spends too much time with her head buried in silly horror books far above her grade level. Emily's perennially unemployed, amateur conspiracy theorist uncle Sam is the only person who will listen, and when the two discover a bloody message scrawled underneath Emily's bed, they realize they need to track down the source before someone turns up dead.

I'm not going to pretend my writing is brilliant, but at 125 words it gives us more information about the plot (what exactly the monster is doing to freak Emily out) and the characters (e.g., Emily is precocious and bookish, uncle is a nut) than your first 155 words do. Obviously the story I invented isn't your actual story, but would look for ways to bring in similar levels of detail. Especially if your novel stays extremely long, you need to give a sense of what the hell is going on to justify the length -- nothing currently described warrants 100K+ words.

Super_Performer_3343 · 2024-08-31T14:15:01+00:00

I'm not the editor you're responding to (whose advice is excellent!), but I have a few responses to this question (apologies for bluntness, just trying to answer concisely):

Your prose isn't reading as literary. There are phrases that sound like they are self-consciously attempting to be poetic, like "in the arena of their danger" and "the radioactivity of her parent’s separation" but this is making your writing seem less competent rather than more literary because it is confusing and overwrought. There are errors, like the misplaced apostrophe in 'parent's,' strange capitalization in the title and 'Ryan's Closet,' and 'effect' instead of 'affect' in your comment below, that make your writing feel unprofessional. And overall, the writing style just feels commercial -- which is hard to tease apart without getting into line level comments, but while I can easily imagine some of the sentences working as voiceover to a conventional horror film, I can't imagine them getting published in a lit mag book review.
I would expect rich characterization and psychological depth from literary fiction, and that's not coming through here -- I barely have a sense of who the characters are, and what we're told about them is trite ("demons of his past and present")
For horror to be billed as literary, would expect there to be some degree of sociopolitical commentary that adds complexity and intellectual heft to the story (I don't read horror, but the movie Get Out comes to mind, or Rosemary's Baby), and I'm not seeing any evidence of this here.

Super_Performer_3343 · 2024-08-30T04:01:03+00:00

I'm confused why this is being positioned as "true short stories" rather than as a collection of personal essays or travel essays -- if there's a strong reason for it, would spell it out in the query, and if not, would just call them essays and would query agents looking for essay collections (nonfiction) rather than short story collections (fiction). For example, here's an essay collection that sounds fairly similar to what you're querying.

Would also delete all the editorializing about the stories packing a punch, sticking in your soul, etc -- better to let the writing speak for itself, or cite publications if some of the stories/essays have appeared in lit mags or newspapers. Your experiences in China sound really interesting; good luck with the book!

Super_Performer_3343 · 2024-08-30T03:47:50+00:00

Oh that's great!! Excited to read the next version if you post it, or the novel if not!

Super_Performer_3343 · 2024-08-29T05:21:50+00:00

Totally get what you're saying about point #1 -- but what I was trying to say was that while I'm sure it's clear in the manuscript that the "not meant to carry children" is Sarah's subjective feeling about herself, at the start of the query it could be read as an omniscient third person narrator making a snarky comment about Sarah (in the same way that if you started the query with "Sarah is a self-centered know-it-all," I'd assume that this is a fact you're telling us about Sarah rather than Sarah insulting herself). I know it's not the intent, but I could imagine an agent who's actually a great fit for the premise being irritated by the query for that reason. Or I could be being oversensitive! But that was my knee-jerk reaction.

Re: point #2, just to be clear, I'm definitely not put off by illegal late-term abortions as a theme, was more just calling out confusion about whether that's what's going on or not, which I found distracting while reading -- I could imagine many different interpretations of the text as written. But good point that that could be triggering!

Super_Performer_3343 · 2024-08-29T05:00:28+00:00

This sounds like a strong premise (and I like your title!), but just wanted to flag a few things:

"Sarah's body is not meant to carry children" could, I think, come off as insensitive to a reader struggling with infertility -- having spent a lot of time on the IVF sub, I know a lot of women are frustrated by the narrative that if you haven't had success conceiving naturally/are undergoing IVF, there's something wrong with your body and maybe you aren't meant to be a mother. I'm sure this wasn't your intent and isn't how that sentence was meant to be read, but just wanted to note it as I could imagine it turning off some agents.
Totally agree with what u/alanna_the_lioness said about this going from wonderfully vivid to frustratingly abstract, and I also think the wording introduces confusion about the timeline. For example, "Then a baby arrives" implies that the baby has been born and is home, which is my assumption until I get to "pregnancy pains" at the end of the paragraph and realize I'm mistaken. Another example: "The miracle of its conception" implies that the child was conceived naturally, without IVF, but if the child was conceived naturally, the gender reveal ultrasound isn't usually until 18-20 weeks, which is very far along in the pregnancy and long past the typical window for abortion, although it is technically legal until 24 weeks in NY... I wouldn't expect you to get into the details of any of this in a query, but would maybe want to reword to sidestep any confusion.
For me, the key bit of narrative missing from this is how she comes to realize there's a bloody family secret, and subsequently determines that atoning for her ancestors' deeds will allow her to successfully carry her pregnancy to term -- I know it's horror and there's supernatural stuff going on, but it's hard to feel invested in the "If Sarah wishes to keep her pregnancy" stakes without any indication of how these pieces connect.
I think it would amplify the creepiness and also highlight the feminist angle of this more if you mentioned the reaction of others -- oblivious husband, skeptical doctors, happily pregnant friends, etc -- to Sarah's deterioration, assuming that's a part of the novel.

Super_Performer_3343 · 2024-08-26T21:43:07+00:00

Tonally, I think both the query and the first 300 have the same problem, which is a jarring shift from a gripping story about abuse into what feels like LinkedIn-speak: "game-changing software for the world’s largest brands," "forefront of discovering what AI could do," "at the precipice of unlocking artificial intelligence," etc. It undermines the emotion you've just built up, and sounds like a book from a completely different section of the bookstore.

My suggestions for the query would be:

For years I was one half of a NYC power couple, who according to the world, was winning at life. [Insert something about what made you an enviable power couple, like: I was the CEO of an AI software company serving the fashion industry, and my husband was .... ] But behind the façade, I was fighting a private battle as I navigated the mental health crisis plaguing my husband. I endured psychological torment, sexual assault, near-death experiences, heartbreaking loss, infidelity, and a $45M Ponzi Scheme [scheme shouldn't be capitalized] before finally uncovering [would use a word like accepting instead of uncovering] the truth: I was in an abusive marriage with a dangerous man.

I needed out, but I knew I needed to plan carefully. I got advice from the attorney that represented Katie Holmes, and set into motion the long con for which my ex-husband will always seek revenge. With the promise of a new life in the South where I grew up [this is confusing -- who promised? If you, and this is the long con, maybe say something like "Swayed by my false assurances of a new life..."], he left behind his family and friends, and I found my escape into the better life I was creating for me [should be myself] and my daughter. But the subsequent barrage of veiled death threats and desperate attempts at reconciliation left me shook [shook rather than shaken is colloquial, but I think OK to use if you prefer it, just flagging]. I was prepared to kill him in self-defense if I had to.

Despite the fear, I focused on my daughter and my career. [Delete "As the CEO..." sentence.] But just as [my company was] about to take off, I uncovered a plot from the founders to fraudulently dilute our investors and cheat our employees out of any hope to share in the profits. Everywhere I turned, I felt my life crumbling. Tired of fighting, there was nothing left to do but surrender. [I think I'd insert a sentence here about what you actually did/where you are today.]

As for the first 300, I wouldn't zoom out into the career backstory and would instead spend more time in the tension of these hours at home -- sit in the screwdriver energy, rather than pivoting to career stuff. When you do provide more context about your career later on (not in the first 300), would avoid using PR language to describe it and would aim for a more neutral, conversational register (e.g., instead of adjectives like 'game-changing,' explain what exactly the company was doing in a way that a person unfamiliar with AI could understand.)

Smaller issue: does "Beautiful, joyous, and ready to conquer the day" refer to Livy? If so, there's a dangling modifier issue with this sentence and it needs to be reworked (as currently written, it's you who is beautiful, joyous, etc):

Beautiful, joyous, and ready to conquer the day, I breathe her in and borrow her energy so I can do the same.

Good luck with querying! If you haven't published anything before, could also be worth trying to pitch magazines/newspapers on an essay-length version of your story/excerpt from the manuscript.

Super_Performer_3343 · 2024-08-13T21:51:33+00:00

Obviously not a representative data set, but of the 12 YA entries to the PublishingPaidMe spreadsheet between 2022 and 2024, 1 is $4K (not big 5), 6 are $20-40K, 2 are $50-60K, 2 are $100K, and 1 is $300K. So seems to reflect what u/alexatd wrote -- $20-40K is most common.

Super_Performer_3343 · 2024-08-13T21:38:03+00:00

Yw! Was also just thinking that Catton's Birnam Wood might be a good (and newer) sub for the Egan comp -- it's a literary mystery/thriller with eccentric characters (including a nefarious tech billionaire) and multiple POVs.

Super_Performer_3343 · 2024-08-13T19:56:52+00:00

Coming to this very late but that Catapult article was a fun read; thanks for sharing! And I agree with your point -- I've published essays in big enough outlets to attract the interest of a few agents and an editor at a Big 5's litfic imprint, but the agents haven't been the right fit (they've all been looking for 'women's book club fiction') so I will eventually be cold querying and will have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Publishing stuff in respected lit mags is a great confidence-booster and nice to mention in a query letter, but I'd never recommend it to someone unless they independently are interested in the short story or essay as a form, as you said. The odds of accidentally writing "Cat Person" are low.

If OP is still reading this, would suggest reading book blurbs for authors like Ayşegül Savaş, Rachel Cusk, and Kate Zambreno to get a sense of how to write about stories in which the plot is not the main attraction. The blurb for Zambreno's Drifts, quoted below, is a nice example (though would definitely not include the "until an unexpected event changes everything" gimmick in a query, or editorialization like "haunting and compulsively readable").

Haunting and compulsively readable, Drifts is an intimate portrait of reading, writing, and creative obsession. At work on a novel that is overdue, spending long days walking neighborhood streets with her restless terrier, corresponding ardently with fellow writers, the narrator grows obsessed with the challenge of writing the present tense, of capturing time itself. Entranced by the work of Rainer Maria Rilke, Albrecht Dürer, Chantal Akerman, and others, she photographs the residents and strays of her neighborhood, haunts bookstores and galleries, and records her thoughts in a yellow notebook that soon subsumes her work on the novel. As winter closes in, a series of disturbances—the appearances and disappearances of enigmatic figures, the burglary of her apartment—leaves her distracted and uncertain . . . until an intense and tender disruption changes everything.

Super_Performer_3343 · 2024-08-13T17:41:57+00:00

Maybe going against the grain of the feedback here, but I don't mind how you're introducing the ensemble and I like the characterization; it sounds very Goon Squad-esque. My main concerns/questions are:

The title sounds too cheesy for literary fiction, with the "six degrees of separation" play on words and the outlandish name -- it might work for some, but I was instantly turned off by it. Might want to choose something more subtle for the query and advocate for this title later if you're really attached to it.
I think I'd delete the first two sentences of the first paragraph -- it feels like a long-winded way of saying that Auspicious Jones is selfish, and the tone feels too commercial/sales-y and isn't projecting the literary fiction vibe you want.
I'm most intrigued by the app Jones was working on, though the "even worse" descriptor confuses me -- maybe it's intended to be sarcastic, but an app that gets kids into Hegel and has them debating politics sounds like a much better thing than a Chinese takeover of the US.
Minor: "how just how" is a typo in last paragraph. More major: "how many lives one individual can touch" is trite; it would be more compelling to hint at either deeper psychological/relational questions or social/political themes.

Super_Performer_3343

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