Had this come in through my slushpile, I'd have 1) read the whole thing 2) shown it to my interns and others in the office, who probably wouldn't like it--for the reasons Anon mentioned, and 3) sent a long email detailing edits I would request. Then I'd see how she'd react.
See, this is a sneaky agent trick. If we're on the fence--not just on the fence, but loving some things and hating others--we'll sometimes send edits and see how the author responds.
It's a risk: we know there may be other agents hovering nearby, and sometimes authors will simply go with the agent who first says, "Hi! It's perfect! I'm going to make you the next bestselling author! You'll have a gold-plated private jet, an international tour (starting in Paris), and a big enough advance to buy a castle! How does that sound?"
Okay, I'm exaggerating. (It'd be a mansion, not a castle.) But really. Some authors will go with whatever agent suggests the least amount of work. Their books may be marvelous rough diamonds, but do I really want a writer who doesn't want to work? Over the long term, it's likely to cause problems. I can't say to an editor--assuming the as-is version sells--"That's right, you bought it as-is, and no, you *can't* change that comma on page 203. Nope. Nope. Sorry. Uh-uh. It's incorrect? Splice giving you a headache? Walk it off."
See, there's a little thing in publishing contracts called Acceptance. You don't just get paid when you deliver a manuscript (as per your payout), you get paid when the manuscript is delivered and accepted (approved of) by the house.
So an author who simply refuses to edit, or who doesn't take direction well, may find his/her work suddenly not accepted. Realistically, this usually means that there's an unfortunate back-and-forth between the editor, the agent, and the author, and eventually something's turned in that's accepted. Not always, though. In the worst case, it's possible to get a great big "NEVER MIND" from the publisher. That's never happened to me, thankfreakinggoodness.
Anyway, I digress. Had this been in my slush, I would have sent a long email detailing the following, which I see as problems with the work:
- First and foremost, this work doesn't follow the traditional dramatic structure (intro, development, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution) in the way that I'd hoped. I felt, instead, like there were several rising actions, climaxes, and falling actions--technically, I suppose, we could consider the injection to be the climax, but by that point, I was already adrenaline-fatigued by the earlier "Oh goodness! Look out! Oh my goodness is that...? IS THAT? Oh NO! Oh wait--oh, okay, it's fine again" moments.
- Though it's mostly likely unintentional, probably subconscious, the protagonist suffers from a major case of [word that needs to be invented that means "throwing aside everything of importance and/or stability and/or self-interest/self-preservation in order to pursue a young man who is a remarkably bad bet psychologically/emotionally"] -itis. Dude. Seriously. She's going to suddenly not care about school (she'd been doing quite well), her friends (isn't that a major sign of being in an unhealthy relationship?), her previous dreams, and her life (she wants, at one point, to be a wolf too) to go after someone who's only available a half a year, who's made her no promises, who does little other than look cute and get her into bad situations? REALLY? I know, you're going to say it's just fiction. No. There's no "just." Books you read at that age help form your image of the way the world works. It's a hefty authorial responsibility.
yea her parents were absentee parents, but these days, what parents are 100%? everything else in her life was fine. she had no excuse to be a jerk.
I think her parents were worse than normal parents--they barely noticed her and were out until 3 a.m. regularly. I'd say many parents at least manage to be 80 percent--hers were more like 50 or 60. And not everything was fine. She had friends, yes, but she felt alone and as if she wasn't connecting with them.
it seemed to me that the author was trying to make her female protagonist "strong" by making her rude and cold and sterile, devoid of emotion or interest in creative thought.
Given the somewhat un-PC and antifeminist sentiment mentioned earlier, I doubt it. I think it's just that's how she came through to the author. I agree she could be more multifaceted.
SERIOUSLY?? WHAT KIND OF HIGH SCHOOL KID STAYS HOME AND MAKES QUICHE? FOR FUN?
Um, I did. Cooking's cool, yo. Besides, they needed an at-home activity to keep them busy so they could ask Isabela what they needed to and keep her busy at the same time.
Pardon my inability to jump from 'hello, how are you' to 'would you like to sleep in my bed and fall in love with me for no reason except that we have an Unexplainable Attraction To One Another, even though we have Nothing In Common'
True dat. I love their romantic schedule: nothing, nothing, nothing (for good reason; he's a wolf); he saves her life; he becomes human and that same day sleeps in her bed--and does so regularly for months yet they never do more than kiss--and then, BAM! They "make love." Once. In the whole book. What? At the risk of making rude inferences about the author's love life...
and not mind at ALL that he used to check her out butt-nekkid as a wolf
Yeah, that's creepy. I *really* hope this doesn't mean that young women reading this will think--as the protagonist seemed to--that it's cute if men stalk you. Seriously, it was mentioned three times like, "Aww, yes, wasn't that romantic that you were looking through my bedroom window while in the body of a deadly creature?" And where were her curtains?? Geez.
oh, but they eventually fixed his (already inherently stupid and weakly supported) problem :SPOILER ALERT: with meningitis? REALLY? Really Maggie Stiefvater???
I know. I'm not a fan, either. There are so many things wrong with this. First, curing a supernatural condition with a human disease? Great, let's inject some vamps with AIDS/another blood-transmitted disease and see how that goes. Grrrr. So many bad lessons for the kiddies reading. Also, while I believe that Isabela's mother could do some charity work at the clinic, I have a very hard time believing Isabela could manage to 1) dress up as a nurse 2) sneak in unnoticed by her mother or others 3) draw blood from patients without them realizing she's not a nurse 4) store it in the fridge without anyone noticing 5) sneak everyone back into the clinic (um, don't they have security?) and 6) convince everyone to go along with it. Geeez. No no no.
and then just when you think things Might Actually Go Somewhere -- BAM. The book ends. Time for another FOUR sequels, perhaps????
Well, so far, just one. I just checked Publishers Marketplace, and it was sold as two-book, "significant" deal, at auction. Audio rights have sold for Shiver and a second (called Linger), and movie rights have sold for Shiver.
Sam was a total and complete WUSS. He likes to cry and read Rilke in GERMAN.
I didn't think he was necessarily a wuss, and I liked his reading habits. Unfortunately, emo (but still insensitive) seems to be the new YA male standard.
[He] comes up with the CHEESIEST song lyrics every time Grace does, well, nothing memorable, but somehow seems ravishing to him and his non-beastly/self-contained/sexually-repressed/i-don't-want-to-be-a-monster (Sound familiar, anyone?)/i'm-so-EMO ways
I was okay with the song lyrics. They're delightfully bad--amusing, like finding poems you wrote in high school. But they weren't *all* bad. I think this aspect was actually done quite well--injecting just a bit of teen angst and showing how deeply they feel for each other.
*
So, yes. I do think it's worth reading--but probably not worth buying in hardcover. For me, it was "read it in three days but only on the subway" good.
And yes, the cover is ridiculously pretty.
5 comments:
I have never offered potential authors mansions or castles, just booze and girls... I agree with the Gatekeeper's reaction to this kind of story: suggest edits and see what the author says and how s/he reacts (which can be equally important in the agent/author relationship as the project).
I [don't] hate to say this, but why is the current trend in YA involve abusive relationships, disguised as supernatural forces of fate/cosmos/nature pushing two bland nitwits together? And as the Gatekeeper pointed out, why are the dopey girls always human? Maybe they wouldn't be so vulnerable and wussy if they stayed home and baked more often.
And I love the idea of telling an editor to "walk off" their editorial comments, or take an Advil for a splice-headache...
I absolutely love this post! Somehow it really helps me to see your comments about a preexisting work.
When I read Shiver, I was so taken in by the raw emotion shown that I kind of let the 'bad' stuff slide (all of which you mentioned).
I really love seeing your 'agent take' on this piece! I really hope you do more of these 'critiques' from an agent's perspective on already published works. As a writer this is actually really really helpful to me! (Could I say 'really' anymore? Geesh.)
This isn't a comment on "Shiver," which I haven't read yet, but on something you mentioned in your post about how you might "test" a prospective client with comments and see how they react. You concluded that if the writer didn't make the changes you wanted and/or went with an agent that didn't want changes that means the writer is lazy and/or difficult. I'm sorry, you seem like a lovely person and I enjoy reading your blog but I have to call you on that one. If there's one thing I think everyone in this business can agree on is that it's SUBJECTIVE. As a published and agented author I've been in the situation where an agent has made suggestions and those suggestions made the book worse, not better (and they admitted that after the fact and asked me to change it back). I've also been in a situation where I was told by an agent that the book would likely not sell as written and that the book would be much better if I changed it as they suggested. I ended up signing with another agent (who did not want changes) and the book did sell. I've also been in a situation where I reached an impasse with a (now former) agent and I agreed to hire a freelance editor that the agent recommended. The editor liked the manuscript much more than my agent had and the suggestions she did make were for the most part different than those my agent had made. These two publishing professionals with many years of experience read the same manuscript and came to two very different conclusions about what was working, what needed to be fixed, and how to fix it.
Obviously you want to represent books that you love, and you should. But to assume that a writer is lazy and/or difficult just because they don't agree with your suggested changes really is quite a leap and an opinion I hope you'll reconsider.
Writers should only take the comments to heart that enhance their vision of their work.
Now, if a writer says to GK, "I'm going with Snarky because he says it doesn't need any changes and he offered me alcohol whereas you think it needs a complete rewrite and all you sent me is some regifted querylicious tea" then that strikes me as a laziness issue, too. (Besides, who doesn't like tea?)
If a writer were to say, "I'm going with Snarky because his vision of the book meshes better with mine" then GK probably wouldn't have brought the laziness up in the first place.
But it astounds me to see what some writers do in actuality write to agents (that flies in the faces of Common Sense and Better Judgment both at the same time). So I'm taking GK's word for it.
Because if you find THE agent for you, you can talk to them as human beings are known to do (not always via twitter, either) and discuss things and if the agent *gets* the work, then most of the comments will be valid, though they might not all need to be implemented. But even those that aren't might spark changes elsewhere in the book.
And those changes will make it a better book in the author's eyes, which is what matters most.
If an agent ever says, "Personally, I don't like your book, but here's how we can sell a million copies of this sucker. . ."
RUN!
:)
I'm not sure if you ever go back to earlier posts and take a look at comments, but I just finished Shiver and noticed this when I did "Books I'm reading" label search.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
I just kept thinking that the book needed some serious editor run-through--even before I got to the typo that made me spit take. It should be rifling--not riffling.
I did think the book had some really good things going for it, but it fell sooooo short. It had so much unrealized potential that I just wish someone had critiqued the heck out of it before it jumped to being published.
I've been noticing something recently in books and maybe it's just now that I've seen how the process works... but anyway.... I can see how an agent could be sold on this book by the first fifty pages. I was sold. I liked the temperatures with the chapter headings. I liked where it was going. Then, it fell flat, finished weak, and I found myself wondering why it was published as it was. It's all about the beginning, isn't it? You can tell that books sell for the first fifty pages.
Anyway, you nailed all of the problems I had with the book, and I was relieved to see an agent say they would have requested rewrites on it. There should have been rewrites on it. Grace's friends were so two dimensional that I had a hard time remembering who was who.
BTW, I saw the "cure" going somewhere so different. I really thought it was going to be about her being left in the car in the heat for so long somehow--was that a weird red herring or what? (Like she'd had the heat baked into her and that's why she never turned.) The meningitis twist was unrealistic and full of lameness. By that time, though, I was yawning and wishing I'd gotten the book from the library instead of buying it. Still, if I'd written it.... it would have been the hot car thing.
The cover was what sold me.
Sigh. Must not judge book by cover--repeat one thousand times, Wendy.
Oh! Look at Hush Hush. The cover is pretty. Where is my credit card?
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