{"id":14743,"date":"2013-10-31T12:33:28","date_gmt":"2013-10-31T16:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=14743"},"modified":"2013-10-31T12:33:28","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T16:33:28","slug":"skimming-tangentially-against-the-agented-universe-and-the-scriptwriting-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/skimming-tangentially-against-the-agented-universe-and-the-scriptwriting-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Skimming Tangentially Against the Agented Universe, and the Scriptwriting One"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Nelson<\/a><\/p>\n

[Don’t read too much into this RAMH post’s title.]<\/em><\/p>\n

L<\/span>ast night, I and 40+ others participated in an interesting webinar called\u00a0Agent Reads the Slush Pile<\/a><\/em>. It lasted from 8pm Eastern time until close to 10:30. Each of about forty authors submitted the first two pages of a manuscript, including as “identifying” information only the title and genre — i.e.<\/em>, no names. Each of these mini-manuscripts was assigned a random number, which determined the order in which they’d be read. And then the agent… well, the agent\u00a0read<\/em> them. Commenting as she went. The idea was to reproduce, aloud, what it was like for an agent to just dive into a batch of unsolicited manuscripts. (And to answer the unspoken question: no, she hadn’t seen any of the submissions in advance.)<\/p>\n

How it worked, more precisely: an agent at the agency read the mini-MSS aloud, one at a time, while the lead agent moderated her progress through the reading with little instructions like, “Okay, stop right there for a second…” and “Okay, pick up at the next paragraph.” At each point of interruption or discontinuity she’d point out something like a pattern of word choices or details which were helping (or, more often, hurting) the story at this point. (Considering that it’s the first two pages of a novel, one definitely wants\u00a0not<\/em> to include anything like impediments.)<\/p>\n

We also had plenty of opportunities to ask questions, which didn’t need to be restricted to the reading\/critiques.<\/p>\n

I won’t get into details of the critiques. But I will say that it all drove home to me the importance of three precepts, as if you don’t already know these things:<\/p>\n