Understanding Editors & Agents, a P&W Interview Series
I have been following the series of interviews held by Poets & Writers Magazine on the secrets of the publishing world, and I have found them useful. To get a taste of the thinking that guides editors and agents in their busy work, read this interview:
Question: Every reader understands the feeling of falling in love with a book. You guys do that for a living. I'm curious if you've given any thought to the specific things that can trigger that experience.
GARGAGLIANO: I don't know if there's a specific thing, but you know it immediately. The minute I start it I know that it's the book I want to fall in love with. And that's the one I keep reading. I will read a hundred pages of something else, but I won't fall in love with it. You have this immediate sense of texture and place, and you're just inside it from the first sentence. I think the thing that everybody says about first sentences is true. Everyone should try to get that first sentence perfect. I make my authors do that all the time.
NASH: But if you make them do it, they didn't quite do it the first time, did they?
GARGAGLIANO: Well, it might be that you've had them totally rewrite the opening.
CHINSKI: Do you feel like it's different for fiction and nonfiction?
GARGAGLIANO: I do. I always hate that with nonfiction, when you read a proposal, you don't get the writing first. You get the pitch first. I always look to the writing.
CHINSKI: For me, with fiction, there's that funny moment when you feel like you actually want to meet the author. You want to know who the man or woman who's writing it is because there's a real sensibility in the writing. It's not just that the writing is good—there's a kind of intensity of imagination to it. You wonder, "Who is this person who's able to telescope all of these ideas into something that feels accessible?" I think that's one similarity between nonfiction and fiction, even though obviously they're different in many ways: It takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary. You sort of recognize something but it allows you access to it in a totally different way. But I can't tell you how many times, thirty pages into a novel, I actually want to write the agent and say, "Who is this person?" You just wonder, "Who's coming up with this?" Read more here...
Question: Every reader understands the feeling of falling in love with a book. You guys do that for a living. I'm curious if you've given any thought to the specific things that can trigger that experience.
GARGAGLIANO: I don't know if there's a specific thing, but you know it immediately. The minute I start it I know that it's the book I want to fall in love with. And that's the one I keep reading. I will read a hundred pages of something else, but I won't fall in love with it. You have this immediate sense of texture and place, and you're just inside it from the first sentence. I think the thing that everybody says about first sentences is true. Everyone should try to get that first sentence perfect. I make my authors do that all the time.
NASH: But if you make them do it, they didn't quite do it the first time, did they?
GARGAGLIANO: Well, it might be that you've had them totally rewrite the opening.
CHINSKI: Do you feel like it's different for fiction and nonfiction?
GARGAGLIANO: I do. I always hate that with nonfiction, when you read a proposal, you don't get the writing first. You get the pitch first. I always look to the writing.
CHINSKI: For me, with fiction, there's that funny moment when you feel like you actually want to meet the author. You want to know who the man or woman who's writing it is because there's a real sensibility in the writing. It's not just that the writing is good—there's a kind of intensity of imagination to it. You wonder, "Who is this person who's able to telescope all of these ideas into something that feels accessible?" I think that's one similarity between nonfiction and fiction, even though obviously they're different in many ways: It takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary. You sort of recognize something but it allows you access to it in a totally different way. But I can't tell you how many times, thirty pages into a novel, I actually want to write the agent and say, "Who is this person?" You just wonder, "Who's coming up with this?" Read more here...
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