Writing a Premise Statement for Your Book: Inner and Outer Story Synopsis and Why It Helps Get You Published

Imagine receiving 300-400 manuscript queries--each week!  Flooding your inbox.  Some weeks, even more.   

Welcome to the life of agents.  And their hired assistants who sort through queries to find the lucky few that stand out.  Maybe you'd like it to be yours?  What would you have to do, to make that a possibility?

Writers working on their first book may not even know what a query is.  It's a short, one-page letter (via email, often) that presents your book in the most engaging way.  It goes like this:  one paragraph about your book, one about your credentials for writing it, one about why you chose to solicit this particular agent.  It's brief, it's punchy, it's eye-catching. 

At least, that's the plan.

How do you start writing a good query? 

With a premise statement, also called a tag line or pitch or elevator speech.  A quick synopsis of your book's inner and outer story.

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Carrie and Alton Barron on "The Creativity Cure"--An Interview with Two Clinicians about Their New Book

Carrie and Alton Barron are two physicians, well known in their respective fields of psychiatry and orthopedic medicine.  Carrie is on the faculty of Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and Aldon is recent past president of the New York Society for Surgery of the Hand and a long-time orthopedic surgeon for the NY Philharmonic Orchestra.  I had the pleasure of meeting Carrie when she began attending writing classes with me at the Hudson Valley Writers' Center in New York's Westchester County--and Alton some months later.  Passionate about creativity and its power for healing, their new book, The Creativity Cure (Scribners, 2012), is garnering rave reviews. 

This week, they share some of the process of writing a nonfiction book, staying passionate about their subject during the long journey, and what happens when it gets published.

When did you begin writing this book?  What were the stumbling points and the Ah-ha! moments that you remember?

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Check Out The Write Life's List of 100 Best Websites for Writers--We're Included!

This is one of the best collections of writing websites I've seen.  Spend some time enjoying it.  (We're thrilled to be included.  Some heavy hitters in this line up and lots of excellent and inspiring stuff.) 

Click here to visit.

How Writers Reveal a Character through "Container"--The Environment of a Story

A memoirist was trying to write about the sadness she felt at her father’s death.  Her writer’s group gave her unexpected feedback:  while it was clear she was very sad, when they heard her speak of his death, her feelings on the page were abstract, hard to really grasp. 

“They don’t feel any of the sadness I feel,” she told me.  She cried when she wrote, so this confused her.  

When I read the chapter in our next online class together, I too noticed how distant the writing felt.  My take-away was an almost-intellectual sorrow, a wistfulness, rather than any strong emotion.

A very intelligent woman, this writer worked as a psychologist.  She knew people, she understood how they ticked.  But she hid her “character,” herself, behind her thoughtful prose, rather than revealing it. 

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Patterns of Change--How Do You Create Strong Conflict in Your Fiction or Memoir?

Most stories foster change.  Either change in the situation, in the character or narrator, or in the reader and their understanding of a topic.

Most writers know that change in story comes from conflict.  Conflict is a dilemma presented to a person and it forces action.  It makes a person realize a truth, right a wrong, change behavior or thoughts, move to a new city or job or relationship, do something different. 

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Making Your Own Book Trailer--Guest Blog by Authors Juliann Rich and Aren Sabers

You've seen them:  short, sassy movies, using imagery, themes or even text from a soon-to-be-published book.  A moving visual image to entice you--the reader--to purchase that book.  

Book trailers have come out in the last decade.  From novelty item to common device used by publishers and authors to pique interest, generate web presence and platform.  Even used in school classrooms by teachers to entice reluctant readers or prompt discussion, designed by students as part of arts-and-communications curricula.

Are you excited about making a book trailer?  Authors Juliann Rich and Aren Sabers, creators of their own successful book trailers, share their best tips in this guest blog.  Their websites and trailers are listed at the end of their post--be sure to check them out.  Fun, entertaining, and moving--and hopefully offering excellent reasons to read their new books!

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How'd You Do? Reviewing Your Year's Writing Goals--A Sure Way to Encourage Your Creative Spirit

Each month, I set goals with a writing partner who lives in another state; we used to be in the same writing group until I moved, and I value her feedback so we set up a monthly exchange by email or phone.  We look at what we've accomplished or learned in the previous month and think about what's next.

We also like to do this each December or January, reviewing our goals for the past year and thinking about how it went.  And what we want to bring into manifestation next.

Accountability is hard to come by.  It's easy to let writing slide to a back burner, rather than generating creative heat in your life.  These regular check-ins help me stay accountable. 

But they also show me--much to my own surprise--how much I actually grow as a writer!

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Your Writing Voice: How to Develop It, Recognize It, Not Copy Someone Else's

One of my long-time students asked a great question this week:  how does a writer develop voice?  Voice is the elusive uniqueness that comes out in writing over time, the signature of the individual wordsmith.  We would never mistake a passage by Flannery O'Connor with one by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. 

What makes them different, distinctive? Each delightful in its own way?  That's voice.

The elusive hunt for voice is much discussed in writing books, classes, MFA programs.  One of

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Strange Alchemy: How Place, People, and Conflict Intertwine in Fiction and Memoir

Boston's legendary Cecelia chorus performs only a few times a year.  Their concerts are well worth the time.  Recently I heard them in an old church in Brookline, Mass. 

At this performance, a soloist with a particularly liquid voice sang a few pieces, then disappeared into the rows of the alto section.  I strained to hear her voice rise above the other altos--but it was impossible to distinguish.  She blended so well, the group became one voice.   Then she

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From School Principal to Thriller Writer--The Grassroots Journey of Andy Rose

In 1967, Andy Rose started working as a fifth-grade teacher in the impoverished Lower East Side of Manhattan. The children in his classes were predominantly illiterate and presented many learning issues.  Andy immersed them in daily readings of literature, used humor and passion to motivate them.  He found them wonderful to work with--their spirit was indomitable--and thirteen years later, he became principal of the Norwood Public School in Bergen County, New Jersey.  He served as its chief school administrator until 2009.

During the last decade of Andy's career, he read the works of Nelson DeMille, Dan Brown, and John Grisham. Their thrilling novels provided welcome escape from his 24/7 responsibilities as leader of a public school district. When he retired, images and stories about teachers and school children filled his mind. Characters and an inner city school setting began to emerge. It felt natural to write about schools and to portray teachers, instead of James Bond, as heroes.

But a major obstacle:  Writing fiction was very different from writing reports for a Board of Education, press releases, and analytical articles for local newspapers.  

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