Agent Advice

I work at a publishing agency in Manhattan. I read your query letters and your manuscripts. Sometimes I need to vent. Sometimes terrifyingly arbitrary details make the difference between an outright rejection and a manuscript request. Please do not do these things with your writing.

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Please for the love of all that is holy: no more generic, vaguely-described pretty white people. They are impossible to visualize. It's easier to get invested in a character quickly when they are vividly described, and the most memorable descriptions are always the unusual ones. 

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If you wrote an intergalactic romance between a centaur and a postman, don't submit it to an agency that specializes in educational textbooks. If you wrote an in-depth guide to international relations, don't submit it to an agency that represents romance novels. Send your manuscript to agencies that are aligned with your manuscript's needs! 

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Can you name a chapter "The White Middle-Class Nuclear Family Has a Busy Breakfast" if that's literally what you name it and you use it as a hyperbolic way of mocking the cliched breakfast scene?

Absolutely. Demonstrating an awareness of cliche is a great way to get the attention of the person reading your manuscript! As long as you don't go totally overboard with it - telling a good story should always take priority over being snarky.

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Many teen novels that use a family breakfast scene for exposition. A breakfast scene isn't damning in itself, but it can be a tip-off to the person reading your manuscript that you are a formula follower. Try to think of other ways to introduce your character and their family, because if I read another chapter called "The White Middle-Class Nuclear Family Has a Busy Breakfast" I will stab myself with a grapefruit spoon, so help me.

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When writing a cover letter, please for the love of god don't compare yourself to J.D. Salinger. Or Fitzgerald, or Faulkner, or Proust, or Shakespeare or anyone considered "classic".  If you really are the next great American novelist, the work will speak for itself. If the agent your querying thinks that you're too big for your britches, they might be biased against your work.