Writer's Notebook: Writer Idol at the Boston Book Festival

In my last post, I talked about my fun experiences attending the Boston Book Festival.  The event brimmed over with sessions that were helpful for writers who are on the path to publication.  

The first of these sessions was called the "Guided Open Mic," with our expert guide being author and investigative TV journalist Hank Phillipi Ryan.  Here's a picture of the Arbor Room of the Boston Public Library, where that session was held. 

I got a chance to do a reading at that session and had hoped to get my work read at a second session.  This one was across the street at the Old South Church about an hour later. 

Imagine this scene.  The room is packed with about 250 people.  Up on the stage, a panel of four publishing industry veterans is assembled, with representation from the literary agent, editing and publishing communities.  The session was named Writer Idol. 

Now that you've had a chance to visualize the scene, here's a photo of the session as it was about to begin (it's fuzzy, but you'll get the sense of it). 

The ground rules for Writer Idol were:

1. Participants were asked to bring in a 250 word beginning to a novel or piece of non-fiction and state the genre.
2. The entries were put in a box and a woman actor pulled them out and read from them.
3. There were four judges: a couple of agents and two other people from publishers.
4. The entries were read until two of the judges raised their hands to stop.

Depending upon your perspective, this might seem like either a writer's dream or, more ominously, their nightmare. 

 

I would estimate that about 40 entries were read over a one hour period.   My entry didn't get read, but the process was fascinating, a kind of live slush pile. The judges had different perspectives, so sometimes one hand would be raised but the reading would continue. Only a few pieces were read through to the end.

 

The process was anonymous; nobody knew who the writers were. However, there were some passages where the audience totally broke down with laughter, which no doubt was tough for the writers of those pieces.

For example, it turns out the judges REALLY did not like references to certain bodily functions that get activated when a character gets squeamish. TMI, I guess. There were three entries or so that went there; they all got shot down immediately.

Other no-no's included overuse of flowery adjectives, misuse of large words, and overuse of cliches. I'd imagine most writers that participated in a writing group wouldn't be surprised by these things, but seeing the panelists stop the reading because of these gotchas offered powerful reinforcement on these do's and don'ts.

 

My conclusion: Great session.  It's one thing to hear about what agents and editors want to see -- or not see -- but it's quite another to see it all play out in real time.  If you submit your work to an agent, they'll read what you submit and analyze it line by line just as they did here.  So, yes, you want to make your work compelling AND avoid miscues that will take the reader out of the scene and cause them to move on to the next item in the slush pile. 

 

That's it for this post, but I'd like to mention that I'll be having a guest blogger join me later this week on November 19.   Pat Bertram, author of Daughter Am I and two other novels published by Second Wind Publishing is on a whirlwind blog tour this month.  She and I have a lot of fun chatting together online and we've collaborated on an interview where we both talk about our writing and muse about topics such as writing outside of typical genres.  Please join us.