How not to get rejected
And what to ask yourself instead
Hi, I’m Kate. Ask an Author is a free newsletter providing advice and assistance for authors at all stages of writing, publishing, and hand-wringing. Have a question? Fill out this form and I’ll answer it in a future response!
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Hello all!
Welcome new subscribers! There are a host of new people here - I’m so glad to have you, and thanks for signing up! Be sure to explore the archive and let me know your burning questions about writing, craft, querying, and all the ins and outs of publishing.
I suspect many of you found your way here through Kate McKean’s excellent Substack Agents and Books (which I highly recommend) and her informative open Q&A chat she hosted.
I don’t have a new question to answer this week (!!), so I thought I’d do something a little different and share some thoughts I’ve been having ever since I read with interest the questions in Kate’s Q&A thread, a lot of which dovetailed with questions I get here and with some things that had been on my mind but that I hadn’t quite been able to articulate until that thread.
(This also means that if you do have a question, now’s a great time to use the form and ask!)
One of the things that came up a lot in Kate’s Q&A were questions that went something like this:
“If I do ______, is that an automatic rejection?”
“If I don’t do ______, is that an automatic rejection?”
“I’ve heard agents don’t like ______. If I’m too close to ______, is that an automatic rejection?”
In these cases, the fill-in-the-blank could be something like: start with a prologue, start with a line of dialogue, start with a character waking up in the morning, have a comp that’s a mega-seller, have a comp that didn’t sell enough, have a comp that’s more than 3 years old, have a comp that’s a movie or TV show, use an alternating point of view, use a single point of view, be under the standard expected wordcount for the genre, be over the standard expected wordcount for the genre… I could go on, but you get the idea.
Reading through these questions, the answer was always, inevitably: It depends.
My interest here isn’t in repeating “It depends” (even though yes, it really does depend!).
Instead, I want to take a step back and look at why it depends, and what I think these questions are really getting at, and how those of use who are writing, submitting, querying, and doing our overall best to make our work do everything we want it to on the page (and then ideally be read and enjoyed by others, too!) can (maybe!) shift some of our thinking to (even more importantly!) better understand this nebulous, mysterious, frustrating question of what agents (and editors, and readers) are looking for — and (re)consider how to approach our own work as we try to make it successful (in whatever highly individual and personal way success means to each of us).
I don’t mean to speak for anyone, but I think a lot of us (me) are used to being good at things and feeling in control, and publishing is a time when a lot of us (me) suddenly feel out of our depth, subject to a great deal of criticism (or radio silence, which can feel even worse) and this is very shitty and very unfair and very hard to deal with.
Even if you aren’t coming from a background where, hello, I did my homework and was “rewarded” with A’s and thought that was supposed to mean something (?!?????), it can still feel like, okay, I did what I’m supposed to do (write a book) and followed the instructions I was given (query letter, synopsis, comps, metadata, personalized and targeted agents list, check check check), and in most other aspects of our lives that leads to, you know, RESULTS, and in querying that often leads to… form letters in our inbox, if we’re luck enough to hear anything at all.
It can feel like WHAT am I doing WRONG here. Or rather, I’m doing everything right, just as I’m supposed to, so why aren’t I seeing results? It must be because I did XYZ thing wrong (the “automatic rejection” language), and so if I make sure not to do XYZ and follow ABC instead, I’ll get the yes I’m looking for.
I certainly understand the desire, whether conscious or not, to find out the rules and nail the specific, concrete, actionable things one has to do to “make it” in this field. I know I’ve felt that way - and often still do. But this assumes a clear connection between input and output, cause and effect, if-I-do-this-right-I-will-get-my-reward, akin to if I get an A at “writing a novel” or “querying agents,” everything will fall into place. And publishing, not to mention writing in general, don’t really operate this way.
There are some universal truths to take to heart: the more you write, the better your writing will get. The more you read, the better your writing will get. There are definitely guidelines that can better set you up for success, and things like adhering to expected word counts and following standard query formats fall into that category. But the thing to remember is that these are guidelines, not rules. They’re in place to better help you succeed, not to dictate what you have to do to make your book work. That also means that doing them, or not doing, isn’t THE thing that will make or break your chances.
I’m going to use the example of a prologue. Many agents and editors will say they don’t like them and would prefer writers jump in and get to the story right way. But if you’re reading this and your manuscript starts with a prologue, don’t panic or think you have to delete it or that there’s no way your book will sell! There’s no rule saying Prologues Not Allowed. I’m sure you’ve read plenty of books with fantastic prologues that do important and effective work in the novel — I know I have.1
In many instances, the problem comes when writers overly rely on a prologue to provide an easy shortcut to establishing action and interest in the beginning of a novel, when the beginning of the novel should itself be able to provide the drama and characterization and world-building and suck-you-in feeling all on its own. The prologue can serve as a Band-Aid hiding the fact that your beginning isn’t (yet) effective. When agents say not to have a prologue, they aren’t saying Prologues Are Bad.2 It’s that they’ve read a lot of prologues that aren’t strictly necessary to the book and that aren’t doing the kind of work that every part of your manuscript needs to be doing from page 1 all the way through. “Will my book be automatically rejected because it has a prologue?” No. But it could be rejected because the prologue isn’t working. These are two different issues, and it’s important to recognize the distinction! “Do I need to make sure my prologue is absolutely necessary to my book, that I cannot tell my story any other way, and I can confirm this through beta readers who aren’t my friends and family and through my own clear-eyed and attentive editing of my own work over successive revisions on which I’ve spent significant time?” Yes yes yes yes yes.
When I see questions like “If my novel cold-opens with a line of dialogue, will it be automatically rejected?” it makes me think of how much we’re looking for rules and prescriptions, as though that will show us the way to a publishable novel. But the real answer is: you can open your novel with dialogue if it works well. You can do absolutely anything in your novel. Really! As long as you pull it off. An opening line of dialogue might be a great way to draw us into the moment. Or it might feel confusing for the reader to have no idea who’s speaking or what’s going on. It all depends on how you do it. You, the writer, are the one who has to make that call.
That is both wonderful and incredibly difficult - because it means there are rules but also not-rules. There are rules and you should follow them but also you can break them if you break them in a way that works, and no one can tell you what works means because it all comes down to your work and your taste and your reader and your reader’s taste and the indefinable space in which those multiple lines may or may not intersect. You need to believe in your work and your choices. You need to know why you’re doing what you’re doing on the page. You need to be open to criticism and feedback and to making significant changes. You also need to know when you stand behind your manuscript and other people can think what they think but their opinions aren’t going to make it any better, which is to say any more of a fully realized version of itself, and you can smile and say thank you and move on.
The question to ask isn’t: Will doing this thing mean I’m automatically rejected? The question is: Does this serve my story? Is it effective? Am I doing it intentionally, thoughtfully, and well? Publishers want books, especially debuts, not to be too long because paper is expensive. But they also want books not to be too long because many books don’t need to be as long as they are. It’s easy to be excessively wordy without needing all those words, and a tighter book is often, frankly, a better one. Just as a novel does need to be a certain word count to not be a novella — because if an agent sees a novel with an especially short word count, they’re more likely to think it might not be developed enough. It might not be fully realized yet. But a shorter word count might be the exact right number of words to tell your story, and padding it to reach some “acceptable” level isn’t the answer, either.
As you encounter “rules” about writing, it’s useful to file them away in your memory bank. But it’s also important to think about the reasoning behind the rules. Why a word count range? Why skepticism around prologues? Why does it matter where your opening begins? Why am I doing this is a question that can help you get an agent, get published, get whatever you’re hoping for - because it can make you a more intentional writer, more aware of what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. This is a different line of inquiry than guess what the agent is thinking or anticipate what the reader wants. And it’s different, in a subtle but important way, from if I do this, will I be automatically rejected?
I can definitely answer questions about norms and expectations and “Is my book too long?” and “I heard agents don’t like X and is that true?” I also hope that by reading this, you’ll also feel empowered to (re)consider your manuscript not (only) in terms of “What do agents want?” but “How am I telling my story, and how can I continue to improve it?”
Keep going!
Kate
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle! The Girls! The Tiger’s Wife! The Book Thief! I’m just scanning my bookshelves - I’m sure you can think of plenty more.
Maybe some of them are. There’s always somebody out there over-claiming something. But are those the agents you want to work with? Probably not.
Brilliant advice, thank you. I think it's so easy to look for reasons for a rejection, when sometimes the fact is it's just not a good fit (at least this is what I, a querying author, tell myself, lol).
I watched an Instagram live with Holly Root of Root Literary a few years back and she said that querying is like dating. Just because someone rejects you doesn't mean your QL or manuscript is bad. It could just be not for them.
I like your reframing of the question: is this serving my story? I'll definitely keep that in mind!