Tuesday, November 24, 2009

How to Make Them Stop Reading

The ever-informative Guide to Literary Agents Blog had a great post recently from guest blogger Livia Blackburne called "7 Reasons Agents Stop Reading Your First Chapter."

All novelists should take a look-see, because we all fall prey to cliches, boring conventions, and lazy writing at times. I expected to find the "don't start with weather" dictum, since that's a common theme when you talk to agents and editors. But I was more surprised to see that some writers give readers Too Much Information (TMI), as in detailed descriptions of bodily functions or even surgery. Ew. My sympathies, agents!

2 comments:

Livia Blackburne said...

Thank you for featuring my post! (Google alerts is how I found you ) There really were quite a few TMI's at the event :-)

Nina Berry said...

Love those Google alerts! Keep up the posting, Livia. Good info for sure!