Full Requests

Thank you for this post, Mary. I’m going to remember to keep things in perspective when an agent (or editor) has a full. I wish I would have done that a few years ago when an editor requested a full on a chapter book of mine. I thought it meant BIG THINGS WERE TO COME. Although I got a nice personal rejection with some great tips for improvement, I was heartbroken.

P.S. You always write posts that writers really care about! (me, anyway.)

A lot of writers on Absolute Write wonder how an agent can ask for a full and reject it the next day. You just answered why.

Most readers abandon books that don’t hold true to the original promise (especially if it’s a library book), so why should agents be any different?

Thanks for letting us peek into your cerebral cortex, Mary!

I try to see the silver lining in a full rejection. If that rejection comes with even a scrap of personal feedback, I’m still happy. That feedback could help my future submissions. Learn and move forward, I say.

That’s too bad that people can’t take (or at least absorb) the heat (personally, i think it’d do us a whole world of good to know just how early you stopped reading — no pain, no gain, right?). Sounds like you need a bouncer

This is exactly why I love the internet/blogs/twitter so much. It really does help to hear agents’ and editors’ processes and to know that they don’t cackle evilly as they hit the reject button.

You seem like a really nice person, and I really appreciate what you do here.

Thanks.

Hello Mary,
Thanks so much for the advice. I’ve found these agent blogs to be a well of such wonderful information, suggestions and such but it can be confusing sometimes, too. I went through a submission period for my first manuscript, had a few partial requests and then rejections, stopped for a while, re-wrote, and am now ready to get back in it. All the while I’ve read the agents’ blogs and some say, “Follow the submission guidelines!!” and I see yours says to send in a sample regardless, which I much prefer to do, but I’m curious that if they say, “Follow the submission guidelines!!” and you send in a sample where one was not asked, the agent won’t stamp a big FAIL on the sample before even reading the first line?

Again, thanks so much for help!!

I suspect that with e-mail becoming a preferred method of communicating in the business world, more submissions will be sent electronically instead of in hard copy. This being the case, I would guess it would be just as easy for agents/publishers to ask for fulls - but perhaps that’s just wishful thinking on my part.

Thanks for the insight!

Yes, speaking as a writer, a full request is a Big Deal. And, despite the let-down with a rejection, I’d rather risk it and send the full for the reason you listed. If an agent likes what they’ve read, they’ll keep reading while it’s fresh. As a reader, I want to be able to inhale the entire book in one sitting–I can’t do that with a partial.

I will then, Mary, definitely. Go bold or go home, right? I have another, non-request related question for you. With writer websites, what are your thoughts on posting sample chapters for non-published or non-represented writers? Would it be like giving away the milk without getting the cow sold or do you think it’s a good way to generate attention?

Thanks so much for you reply. You’re awesome!

Coming out of lurk to say thanks for the great post, Mary. It helps put the querying process into perspective. I think we, as writers, need to adjust our expectations on the fulls. A full request is still great, no matter how little the agent has reviewed, because it means that your concept and/or initial writing is interesting enough. But it’s not instant ticket to fame and fortune! lol If you’re rejected after a full request, you know that you need to reevaluate the writing- it’s not the concept, but something’s breaking down at some point. The far worse thing is no one wanting to request anything past the query!

Thank you for taking the time to give us such great information- it’s much appreciated.

Sometimes the reason(s) that a book doesn’t click with me as a reader are very subtle. I don’t just mean “the evil man is named the same as my beloved little boy” or “I hate Vegas and gambling, and it’s set in Vegas with a lot of gamblers.” (Although that is sometimes a factor!) And I don’t even mean grammar and spelling issues–although those are a deal-breaker for sure.

If the scenes seem to be those stock scenes that are in every movie shown on “Lifetime for Women” (my elderly mother lives with us, and that’s what she turns the TV to every chance she gets–yikes), then I’ll grow weary more quickly than if scenes are set in places I’ve always found interesting. For example, if a book has a really promising first few pages (it usually means they’ve had it polished up by sending it off to various contests and workshops and critique partners) but then degenerates into phone calls between women bemoaning the men in their lives and sitting around drinking, I’ll yawn. There are other ways to get the setup done or to advance the story, surely.

The book has to fulfill the promise it made to the reader–sometimes an implicit promise, but other times explicit, such as “I intend to find the person who poured ink on this watercolor!”–or the reader will call shenanigans. Many books have one of those Really Exciting Openings with shootings and bleeding and screaming, but the book doesn’t continue to escalate the tension, mostly because you CAN’T escalate. You have to dial back, pull the lens back to see a wider field, and explain. Then you’ll lose the readers who are in it for the chase scenes. And if you don’t make readers care about the character or identify with her/him in some way pretty soon, then they won’t care if he gets into a battle or falls off a cliff. I judge a goodly number of contests for RWA and MWA conferences, and these are things that make me mark down entries. Does that make sense? I’ll bet agents notice these same issues.

But agents can’t be expected to TELL you this. It takes me up to an hour, more likely twenty minutes, to write the comments on ONE entry in these contests. Typically, an entry is three chapters, around 25 pages, and it takes me a while to read that entry. Then I do some thinking, fill out the “rate 1 to 5″ sheet, and consider the comments. If it is an electronic entry, I use MS-Word’s “comments” feature to comment inside the entry. Man, that takes a while! I spend probably an hour to an hour and a half “doing” one entry. If a contest has seven entries in the category I am judging, that is a big commitment. I do it to “pay it forward” and to try to bribe God to give me a break in publishing. Agents have no such need to bribe God, so they can’t spend that kind of time. Besides, it could have been a visceral response to the work that decided them.

It’s very tough to figure out why I like _Catcher In the Rye_ and others hate it with the flames of a thousand suns. You have to chalk it up to “life” and go on as best you can.

My QUESTION (and I did have one), however, is: do you hate “thank-you notes” in e-mail from authors you’ve rejected but have said something nice about in the rejection? How about if I have another book, and I turn around and query you on that one right away? Is that a hopeless venture? (Some say not to query an agent right away on another book. Writer’s Digest used to tell us to do that through the 1970s and 1980s, but the rules have probably changed. *grin*)

That makes complete sense to me. I think it makes more sense to do this than to request more and more pages at different times. This is a very interesting topic, thanks for posting on it!

Now with email, it’s just as easy, no easier to attach the full as a partial, so it makes sense to me. I don’t think a request for a full after a query read is more exciting than a partial request anymore because of this. Both are equally exciting.

Thanks. Good info to have. It will help me keep a request for a full in proper perspective.

I’m still waiting for that wonderful day when I receive a letter requesting a full.
This mama will be doing her famous Woo-Woo-Woo dance.
I’ll probably do the dance and then receive the rejection-hahaha.

Mary,
Thanks for the encouragement to send 10 pages regardless of an agency’s submission guidelines. I now feel I have professional permission to do what I’ve wanted to anyway! I wrestled with conficting adivce to ‘obey’ submission guidelines when they ask for only one page. (You don’t want to tick that agent off) And I know you guys are good at what you do, but one page? Yikes! That’s a lot of pressure on us wannabes.

I was just wondering if, since you request a full every time, do you ever flip to the end first just to see if things end up somewhere other than “And that’s when she realized, it was all a dream.”