Do I really need that prologue?

Writer's Digest posts a Literary Agents blog with good advice. Today I got an e-mail that expanded the "pet peeves" of five agents.

"Most agents hate prologues. Just make the first chapter relevant and well written."
- Andrea Brown, Andrea Brown Literary Agency

"Slow writing with a lot of description puts me off very quickly. I like a first chapter that moves quickly and draws me in so I'm immediately hooked."
- Andrea Hurst, Andrea Hurst Literary Management

"Avoid any description of the weather."
- Denise Marcil, Denise Marcil Literary Agency

"I don't like it when the main character dies at the end of Chapter 1. Why did I just spend all this time with this character? I feel cheated."
- Cricket Freeman, The August Agency

"A cheesy hook drives me nuts. They say 'Open with a hook!' to grab the reader. That's true, but there's a fine line between an intriguing hook and one that's just silly. An example of a silly hook would be opening with a line of overtly sexual dialogue. Or opening with a hook that's just too convoluted to be truly interesting."
- Daniel Lazar, Writers House

" 'The Weather' is always a problem - the author feels he has to set up the scene and tell us who the characters are, etc. I like starting a story in media res."
- Elizabeth Pomada, Larsen-Pomada Literary Agents

Viral Times has a prologue of 900 words. Does my novel need it? I believe it, which represents another tip of publishing and writing: Follow your voice, especially if you have tried alternatives. For my book, there's too much sweep of character and time and place to get a sense of what's at stake, and the state of the world 20 years from now.

But you can choose for yourself. Making choices is the artist's work, after all. And your joy, if you can embrace the choosing.

Submissions, Part 2

Some literary publications never make it to paper. The Web world hosts untold numbers of what are sometimes called "zines." It may not be any easier getting your writing published in an online lit mag. But there are more of them out there than the printed versions — and getting a look at the finished editions happens much faster. The lag between reading time and publication is shorter when there's no printer or distribution in the process.

One of the pieces of paper from my 2006 AWP tour:








Just a simple business card, instead of a postcard printed in four colors.

Carve is named after the short story titan Raymond Carver. You can read their magazine online at carvezine.com. They have a yearly contest, judged by a PEN Award winner, with a top prize of $1,000. Unlike paper lit mags that are run by college students, Carve and these online pubs don't have a formal reading period.

The odd part of the story: Carve Magazine doesn't accept online submissions yet. Yup, postage and paper to get you in the door. For now, as most of the lit mags say.

Submissions, Part 1

I'm doing some reorganizing of my office studio this month — so I'm chucking out a lot of paper in the process. A lot of what's going made its way into the office after the 2006 AWP conference, held in Austin. Much of the departing paper was printed to inspire submissions of more paper.

Imagine a space the size of two football fields, side by side, lined with 10-foot-long tables, each representing a small press or smaller lit journal. Each has a stack of books or issues to sell. Sycamore Review was one of those. I scraped up the details on the twice-a-year fiction and poetry journal that prints just 1,000 copies for each issue. It's pretty typical of the lit mag submission dance.

Sycamore has an eye toward what it calls "stories that have a ring of truth, the impact of felt emotion." Its entry in the 2008 Novel and Short Story Writer's Market uses the word "emotion" several times. You can offer up your writing to the publication only by printing paper and mailing it, but at least the Sycamore staff has let go of the No Simultaneous Submissions commandment.

They have an annual contest, the Wabash Prize, which accepts fiction entries until March, and Poetry entries in the fall. Don't forget to send along your $10 reading fee. (By the way, some lit mags don't charge a submission fee, like Farfelu here in Austin.)

They also want "fiction that breaks new ground." On the pub's Web page, the sample story Exposure begins thusly:

Wednesdays and Saturdays are my days off at the pharmacy, but Saturdays my wife is off too, so I do my flashing on Wednesday afternoons.

Edgy, as they like to say in Hollywood (a place where not much writing is going on for TV, since the writer's strike remains unsettled. But I digress). Exposure was also this year's Wabash winner. The Sycamore editors read until March 31, and they just put an issue to press this month, so they're reading for their first 2008 issue. You can submit to

Sycamore Review
Purdue University
Department of English
500 Oval Drive
West Lafayette, IN 47907

And if you wonder why Sycamore Review, like most literary magazines, demands the paper on ink plus stamp and envelope ritual, the answer is: they're a little magazine, with old computers, and they read paper. Oh, and taking the trouble to submit through the mails, um, that's part of the weeding-out process. It eliminates the riff-raff, according to the world as one editor described it during 2006.

There’s something about having to actually print out submissions, write a cover letter, get stamps, and go to mailboxes that weeds out the dilettantes. With emailed submissions, every high school student whose creative writing teacher praises him would be sending submissions. (I’ve seen this happen, the hordes of emails not hardly worth reading…But I’m not knocking high school students, creative writing teachers, or you in any way.) You can’t just walk onto American Idol—they have a screening process. Similarly, you can’t just write your way into Sycamore Review—there’s a built-in screening process called “submitting” that allowing emailed submissions takes away.

Computer budgets and tiny staff aside, the handsome postcard at the top of this entry is part of the Sycamore Review budget, one of several hundred printed for the AWP show. Paper for the journal issues is even more dear, apparently: there's only enough pages for five stories and eight poems in the most current issue. The good news? There are thousands more publications out there to send your paper to, including a $10 check. A couple of football fields full of them.

But a lit mag with two issues per year, payment of two copies to successful contributors, and a yearly contest with a $1,000 first prize? That's about what you can expect. Do the math. $200 a year will get your five of your stories considered by four journals. Or you could spend the money on a good editing job for a novel. That kind of work sells here in Austin for about $800 for a novel.

But that's another kind of submission, one that puts you on your way to being in print.