Your Opening Pages MUST do this

0:00Welcome to the Story Nerd Podcast. Hook your reader episode. This is where we give authors our professional advice about their query letters and their first 10 pages samples. I'm Kathleen Fox and I'm a literary agent at the Rights Factory Toronto and an Editor at Fox Editorial. And I'm Valerie Francis. I'm an author and a story editor and I teach women who are writing in all genres. I would have to book so good that it hooks a reader on page one and it never lets them go. On today's episode we're reviewing Book Club Fiction with a Time Travel Element from Catherine Caldwell. Before we get started we would love it if you could help other writers find our show by leaving a rating and review. For our Apple Podcast listeners you can do it right from your phone. Simply go to the show's landing page and scroll to bottom. It is that simple. And if you're watching us on YouTube please hit like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Alright, I'll get started by reading the query letter but a reminder that if you want to

1:04read the query letters in first 10 pages writing samples that we review here on the show all you have to do is sign up to my mailing list. You can do that by going to Valerie Francis.ca slash checklist and download the first 10 pages checklist. Alright, here's the letter from Catherine. If you could return to your past knowing what you do now, would you change anything or would you change everything? A dinner party conversation inspired me to write yesterday again an 80,000-word book work of Book Club Fiction with a Time Travel Element. This story comparable to once and again by Rebecca Serel and this time tomorrow by Emma Straub will appeal to a man of a certain age who wonder whether they'd be happier now if they'd made different choices in their youth. Forty year old Suzanne's choices led her to a career as an award-winning TV journalist and a life in New York City with her husband Darryl. But when her sister and brother-in-law died in a plane crash, orphaning their children,

2:06Suzanne and Darryl returned home to Atlanta to raise them. A year later Suzanne still struggles as a stay-at-home mother to twin toddlers and a preschooler. She misses her job, her life, and most of all her sister Jennifer. So when a novelty time machine actually transports Suzanne to 1988 back in her big-haired, shoulder-patted body, she warns Jennifer about the fatal crash. She'll save her sister and get her own life back. Instead, Suzanne returns to a life where she abandoned her career dreams to marry her college sweetheart, a life weighed down by infertility and regret. Jennifer is still dead and now someone else is raising the children Suzanne loves as her own. Desperate to undo this, Suzanne rebords the time machine, but at malfunctions creating different versions of her own life based on choices she could have made. Choices that she didn't make because she sat back and let things happen or trusted others to decide for her.

3:08Suzanne must start choosing for the life she wants and hopefully that life will include her sister. I left my Emmy award-winning television career when my husband and I adopted our first child. Now a freelance writer and editor, I'm a member of Women's Fiction Writers Association and was a finalist for the WFWA Rising Star Award for Unpublished Authors. Thank you for your consideration. Catherine called well. Okay, Kathleen, what are your thoughts on Catherine's query letter? Yeah, quick disclaimer. My thoughts and views here are my own and not necessarily reflective of other agents or the rights factory. So on first glance, this seems like a good length for a query letter. That's usually the first thing that I notice is how long it is on the page. So it looks like it's a good length and it is coming in just under 350 words, which is fantastic. The metadata paragraph has some great comps, but I would recommend showing which elements you're pulling from these novels. It just makes it a more specific vision in my head.

4:13Once I read the plot paragraphs, I actually wondered if you might consider using the Midnight Library by Matt Hague. It's got a theme of exploring the lives that you could have lived if you made different decisions, right? Different choices. And then maybe one of the two other comps that you feel is strongest. And just to touch on that for a second, that would mean instead of adding a third one, you would choose your top two. Number two is thine. If there is a very, very strong third option that shows something else that the other two don't show, or if you want to include a movie or TV series or something like that, then that would be a good idea for a third comp if you want to use one. I also, I laughed a little bit when you said this is for women of a certain age who wonder whether they'd be happier if they had made other choices. And I think that pretty much covers almost all middle-aged women.

5:14There's probably not a lot of us who haven't thought about that. And I also like the title. It's intriguing. I did think that the log line could be tightened up a little bit though so that it's stronger and more impactful. It has that, like, what would you do aspect? And that immediately puts people into whatever situation it is and evokes the tension in the reader. I'm just going to scroll back up here because a couple of other things that came to mind as you were reading this Valerie. It says that Suzanne returns to a life where she abandoned her career dreams to marry her college sweetheart. So I don't know if it means like she uses this time machine to go back and then lives that life as that. Do life has happened or does she get back in the time machine and come back to the point in time that she left originally? So I'm not sure what that means. So I would encourage you to be a little bit more clarifying on that.

6:20And then the other thing that it says is Jennifer is still dead and now someone else is raising the children Suzanne loves as her own. So I wasn't sure if she is referring to like that someone else is referring to her college sweetheart instead of the husband that she knew and loved before or if it's someone totally different like she doesn't even have them at that point. So I would clarify that as well. So the first plot, sorry, the first plot paragraph sets us up with Suzanne's norm. We get to see what her life was like and then the tragedy that struck and how that impacted her seemingly perfect life. And then in the next paragraph, a time machine suddenly appears and I have questions. There's no explanation for how it got there or how she found it. It almost seems coincidental or convenient. And those are two words that we don't want to have these things in our novels because

7:21there needs to be a story specific story forward reason for everything that happens. So that just makes me wonder about coincidences. That can lead to a plausibility problem and that can cause you to potentially lose your reader. So you want to make sure that everything is clear and put together in the query letter in a way that doesn't come across as a coincidence or a convenience. So she makes this decision to go back in time to prevent or try and prevent her sister's death. And the result of that would be that Suzanne gets her happy for perfect life back. But it doesn't go as planned. Somehow the result is it's even worse. So this kind of so the first time that I read this, this is this coming question is what I had. And then when you read it, Valerie, I was thinking about it a little bit more. So this goes back to the ability for her to time travel. So she can get into a machine and travel whenever she wants.

8:22Why would she wait until she's back to the same point in her life when the story began and then try to fix things over again, right? So I think there definitely needs to be some clarity around the usage of this time machine. Why it's there? How she can use it? What the rules are. It sounds like she's now lived a life of unhappiness and regret even though she chose to marry her high school sweetheart instead. So does she get stuck in another loop until the time as she shows up again or it does it always pop up at the same time in her life and then she gets the chance to go back and change things again. So definitely make that part a little bit clearer. At the end, it seems like there are many different lives she could choose from, but it's not clear what exactly she has to do and what risk she's taking. So she has all these opportunities and one fails. She just go back and try it again until she's found one that she's happy with.

9:22There must be some kind of risk involved or else there are no stakes. No stakes means no tension and no tension means no reader. So I think the ending needs to be infused with specificity. What her ultimate goal is, what she must do to get it, what is standing in her way and what happens if she fails. And so, yeah, just again with the clarity and, you know, like, is there some kind of a ticking time bomb, right? Like, is there, we're all getting older, right? Time goes by. I don't know if her life rewinds or like does she stay the same age? Like, is there some kind of of time limit that she has? Maybe that would affect her stakes, right? So yeah, those are my main notes for this query. Time travel is really tricky. Yes. It like, I love the way it was handled in the time travelers wife. But I often shy away from stories that have time travel in them because I'm so nervous about it.

10:29You know, because so often it. Logic problems will creep in and I'm not saying this is true of Catherine's manuscript at all because I haven't read it. None of these things that I'm about to say could be a problem in her manuscript. In any way, I'm just speaking generally of time travel stories. You have logic issues or it's so easy for plot holes to creep up. So you've got to come up with really strict rules about what can and cannot happen with time travel, how it does and does not work. And it cannot be an option for going back in the past and fixing the mistake or having a do over that makes the present day work again. Now I say that. Are there successful books where that happens? Yep. Look at Harry Potter. Hermione's time travel time turner drives me nuts. Now nobody else seems to have a problem with it.

11:31JK Rowling has gotten away with it and she. She. Has had you know we should all be as lucky to have her career. Frankly, so can it be done? Sure. Absolutely it can. I would argue though that maybe JK Rowling is the outlier, the exception rather than the rule. Okay, but but that said when time travel has done well, oh, it's so satisfying. So satisfying. And in fact, I have a list of time travel books on my TBR that I want to read because I'm very curious. Kathleen, is this a is it that I am just now noticing it because I've decided I have been avoiding time travel books and maybe I should start looking for a few to read that I'm now noticing how many there are or is this a trend at the moment, you know? Hmm, tricky to say if it's a trend. I mean, there are a lot out there. I will say that as an editor, I get a lot of requests for time travel stories.

12:32And I specifically know in my manuscript wish list as an agent and and also as an editor, like I love time travel stories. But I will say that I'm kind of, you know, I'm on board with that thought that it has to be done well. Like it has to be there can be no holes in the logic. And most of the time travel manuscripts that I receive have some kind of a logic problem. And I think many of my editorial clients, they're like, oh my God, I didn't even realize that. How did you pick up on that? And it's just the way that my brain works. I see things and I'm like, hey, wait a second. How does that work? And I will point them out. And it is very common for me to see those issues in manuscripts. But yeah, also a very, very popular element included manuscripts. You have fresh eyes on the manuscript. Yes. Never damn play the importance of fresh eyes. And there's only two ways to get it as far as I know.

13:33Either put your manuscript in the drawer for three months and come back to it yourself or have someone else read it. So if you're in a writers group and you're writing a time travel story, see if you can get one or two of the people in your group to volunteer to actually read your whole manuscript. But with a focus on, have you created any plot holes because of the time travel? So yeah, when it's done well, it's, ah, chef's kiss. So I don't want to discourage anyone from writing them. I just want to point out that they're the harder than they sound. I haven't attempted one because they scare me. Okay. They scare me creatively. All right. I have a follow up question to something that you said. I'm just looking down at my notes here while you're reading. You suggested the midnight library as a comp. Is that too big a title though? Because I know we don't want to, we don't want to name like the big heavy hitters.

14:33Yeah. Yeah. And I see what you mean. I, I usually give the advice, something to the effect of you want to use titles that have sold well and that are popular and well known, but not so big that it's just like everybody wants to be, you know, a mad hag or a Stephen King or, you know, one of the big, big, big names that everybody talks about. And so the reason that we say that is because agents will get all kinds of queries that have those comps. And once we read the plot paragraphs and maybe some of the opening pages were like, I don't really think that fits. Maybe that was just to get my attention. Excuse me. And you, you don't want that. You want to make sure that your comps fit and that they are logical and, and they have something to do, something big to do with, with your novel. Sometimes though, sometimes you do get one and it absolutely fits.

15:34And there have been times where I have sent a submission out and I have said, hey, you know, what do you think about this title? It's a big title, but I absolutely think that it's a good match. Sometimes it's just a good match. Sometimes it's just undeniable and you just, if you're going to go that way, be really sure and don't just use it to get attention. So would the author then say it, it specifically say what it is about the big title that is like their own book, like, you know, could have the same crisis, the same stakes maybe as their own story or the same general plot or maybe the same type of protagonist or a similar theme. What do you think of that? Yeah. So that's always what I recommend is pick a specific element or a theme that runs through that is similar to yours. And that's why I talk about when I talk about comps, I'm talking about showing intersection

16:35of specific themes or elements, right? One comp shows this particular thing and the other comp shows something completely different and yours kind of meets in the middle. Yeah, that's exactly it. Not so much plot though. You don't want to compare your plot to somebody else's plot because if there's already a book out there with the same plot, then why are they going to want yours, right? So it's fine, it's not just saying that you can't have a plot that's similar to someone else's, but if you're focusing on comps, I would not compare to somebody else's plot. You want to show specific themes or elements. Okay. All right. Catherine, first of all, I just have to say you have a 40-year-old protagonist and yay for that. In my not-so-humble opinion, we need more stories featuring women in midlife. So I am rooting for you. I hope you get your book published and I hope it finds a huge audience because I believe that there is a huge audience out there of women in midlife who are looking for protagonists

17:39that are their own age dealing with the same types of things that women in midlife are dealing with. We are as a woman in midlife. We actually have time to read again and we have the money to buy the books. So I think women in midlife are a huge audience that are not being tapped into nearly well enough. So you got my vote, Catherine. I am cheering for you. I am rooting you on. Okay. I'm rooting for you. Kathleen, question for you again. Catherine has said that this is book club fiction. So my question is, one, what is book club fiction and two, do all agents have the same idea of what book club fiction is? This is kind of a tricky question because no, I don't think every agent has the same definition.

18:41Some people call it book club fiction. Some people call it upmarket fiction. Some people call it women's fiction and these, there might be a difference between those categories but they all kind of have very similar qualities to them. So book club fiction, I mean to me, that could almost be any story because if the story is really good, don't you want to talk about it? So yeah, book club fiction, I think your main audience is going to be women because it's the majority of the readers out there are women of fiction. It's going to have that sort of upmarket quality to it. So it's not going to be a super fast commercial thriller or something. It's going to have certain qualities like that the quality of writing is going to be different. It's going to be something that has themes in it that really make you think and that resonate

19:41with you and perfect example. You were just saying about having a 40-year-old protagonist, that's excellent. So many of us are going through issues that we're going to see in the protagonist in book club fiction and that's really what it comes down to. But yeah, it's kind of, I struggle with that title because it's like all stories should be talked about, right? They're all worthy of book clubs. Yeah. Book club fiction and upmarket fiction are to me. Well, okay, I'm just going to say this and you can tell me if I'm full of BS or not. So if I were, wouldn't be the first time, Gatley. Won't be the last. So I'm just imagining if I was a literary agent and I had on my manuscript wishlets that I wanted book club fiction and upmarket fiction. Well, they're kind of opinion genres, right?

20:46They're marketing genres and I'm going to talk more about genre in a minute. So if a writer sending in their submission to me, they want to call a book club fiction, well, I can't really argue with that. I mean, you'd be a fool almost not to say that your book is book club fiction. It also kind of be a fool not to say that your book is upmarket because upmarket is like the, in my opinion, the perfect union of commercial and literary, right? It's got, it's got great line writing, but also a great plot. It's, it's just this beautiful sweet spot in the middle. Well, everyone thinks that their book is well written and has a great plot. Otherwise, they wouldn't be querying it. So they're kind of, I was going to say throw away genres that's not fair. But I don't know how it would help me as an agent at all because I don't know.

21:47What, do you understand what I'm saying? I don't know. Like, I do get queries for book club fiction and one of my clients, for example, writes book club fiction and it is sought after by editors and you see it in their wish list and things like that. Therefore, you will see it in agents wish list as well. I think though, I think there still has to be something else attached to it that specifies exactly where this book is going to sit, right? Because book club fiction can range in so many different things, right? There's a lot of variables. So I think it needs to be book club fiction, but specify genre, for example. You're right. Book club fiction isn't a genre. It's a category, like literary or commercial of market, that kind of thing. So yeah, as with everything, specificity is key.

22:51Yeah, absolutely. We could have, we could talk for an hour just on this. So I'll just keep moving because we're already, we're having to start with this. I'm not going to have to take the time to do that. Okay, but lots of great information here, I think. Okay, Catherine, I have a comment more than anything else and I get this is about genre. So in a nutshell, what I read in the query letter set me up for one kind of story. Like I had one set of expectations having read your query letter. But when I read your opening pages, it feels like a different story. So I'll talk about the 10 pages in a minute, but let me just focus on the query letter first. All right. So the middle of the query letter is typically when the author reveals the plot of the story, right? And we've talked about the plot paragraph. So it's called also the hook paragraphs. You can think of it as a back cover blur, although it's a bit more to it than a back cover blur.

23:51And you want to talk about your, the plot of your story in a way that does not give away the ending. So basically you're going to start with the inciting incident and you're going to end with the crisis. Now for anyone who doesn't know what I mean by this or if you need or you want help writing your plot paragraphs, I do have a whole training on it and it's called the hook formula. If you're curious, go to learn.storiner.ca and you'll get all the information there. The link should also show up in the podcast player in the description below the play button and in YouTube, it's in the description. Okay, so from the query letter, when I read that first, it seems to me like the inciting incident is when Suzanne's sister dies, but it turns out that's all backstory. So the whole first paragraph is backstory. So then I thought maybe finding the novelty time machine is the inciting incident. In which case, I'm curious to know how far into the manuscript it comes. So if this actually is the inciting incident, Catherine, it should come in the first three

24:56chapters. Now, we have talked in the past about the inciting incident coming in the first five chapters and Kathleen and I have both said that we think even though that's, if you talk about the craft and sort of the writing guidelines and stuff like that, you'll hear first five chapters in a lot of different places. Absolutely. But Kathleen and I have both said, and we both came to this conclusion separately. And I won't speak for Melanie, but I will speak for Melanie because she has said this as well. So I know she is also on side with me and Kathleen. We think the first three chapters is a lot wiser for someone who has not published and who does not yet have a big audience. And there's a lot of different reasons for this. The one that we have sort of talked about most often is that the reader wants the story to get moving. It's just it. You become very impatient if the story hasn't kicked in yet.

25:57And you don't want to give your reader any excuse to put the book down. But let me drill down into that a little bit further. Keep in mind that when you're querying an agent, 10,000 words is pretty common. Some people ask for five pages. The first three chapters or the first 10,000 words is also a pretty common request for the writing sample. So obviously that's more than 10 pages. Now those agents are allowing for a slightly slower start to a novel I suspect. But there's still only allowing three chapters or a maximum of 10,000 words for the story to kick in and the story to get moving. Now again, I have not read Catherine's manuscript. So she might have nailed this absolutely. I'm just raising it right now because it's something that all of us really need to keep in mind and it bears repeating. It is so important. I just cannot overstate it. And listen, you don't have to agree with it artistically.

26:58You will find plenty of novels where the story doesn't kick in until well past the 10,000 word mark. Absolutely. I'm not going to say those books don't exist because they do. However, if you're goal is to get an agent and you're not someone who already has a huge following, which would guarantee sales of 100,000 copies right out of the gate, then in my opinion, you kind of got to be willing to play the game a bit because you're asking not only an agent to invest their time and expertise in your book and in you and in your career, but you're asking a publisher to invest their expertise, but also their money honey. And you want everyone in the chain of publication to feel really confident that readers are going to get the joke of your book. Right? They're going to buy into your book and really love it.

28:01So the sooner it kicks off the better. You're just doing yourself a huge favor. Now I want to be really clear that I'm not telling anybody to dumb their story down or to write to a template. Nothing could be further from the truth here. It requires a whole lot more creativity and more innovation to kick your story off sooner rather than later. So in my opinion, having the inciting incident somewhere in the first 10,000 words, I mean that's not going to diminish your artistry in any way, in any way, shape or form. It really isn't like that's a promise, but in my opinion, it's going to give your book a much greater chance of being appealing to an agent and being appealing to a publishing house. Like one thing, artistry and having your inciting incident in the first 10,000 words, one doesn't preclude the other like they have nothing to do with one another. So we can absolutely retain your artistry and kick the story off soon.

29:06Okay, so that's my little rant there back to Catherine's query letter. From the plot paragraphs, I'm expecting a story where time travel is the main plot device. Kind of like I mentioned the time traveler's wife, which I think is amazing. And big, I kept thinking about big and maybe because it's a novelty time machine and that immediately makes me think of the one from big. So I wonder then why time travel is listed as an element of the story. It seems to be more than an element. Like it seems to be like the main hook. From the query letter, the plot is about a woman moving backward and forward through time. And every time she leaps her present day reality has shifted. So the question then becomes, and this is the central dramatic question, okay, which is the main question hanging over your whole story. I haven't studied this in the craft episodes here on the show. Maybe I should. Maybe that's a good topic for me to study because it's so important.

30:10This question has to be so compelling that your reader is going to read 350 pages and devote a couple of months of her life to finding out the answer to. It's a big deal. So the question then, the central dramatic question for your book, given what just from what I have read in the query letter is this, will Suzanne ever find her own timeline again? So Catherine, you finished the plot paragraphs with the sentence. Suzanne must start choosing for the life she wants and hopefully that life will include her sister. I don't know what that means. Does that mean she abandons hope of returning to her own timeline? Maybe. Does it mean that she has to choose whether to keep returning to the novelty time machine and keep leaping, like a quantum leap thing, great TV show?

31:12By the way, one of my all time faves. Or does Suzanne accept one of the timelines that she lands in? So I would make this last line, since it's the last line of your plot paragraphs, I would make it super clear, like really highlight the crisis question facing the protagonist and indicate the consequences of the options before her, right? Like this is going to highlight the stakes and Kathleen, I think you also mentioned stakes. I really wanted to know what the stakes were for Suzanne. Don't make the agent have to figure it out. Like as remember, even the most compassionate agent who wants you to shine and who really wants to find a diamond in the rough that he or she can work with, they have thousands of query letters to read and they are human. And if they have to work really hard to understand your story from the query letter, Kathleen, correct me if I'm wrong.

32:14If I was the agent, my spidey senses would be tingling. Does this mean I have to work that hard to try and understand the story? Because they just don't have the time. It's not that they don't want you to succeed. They want to get through their query letters so they can go back to their kids. Right? Or go out for a date night with their spouse or go for a run or go for a spa or whatever they do to get back to their life, basically. So my question is, if Suzanne doesn't start choosing for the life she wants, what happens? Okay. Great conversation we were running super long. So I'm going to shut up now and Kathleen, turn it back to you so you can talk about the opening pages. Lots of great stuff, though. I love the conversation that comes out of doing these. These are fantastic. And I think it gives a lot of elements for people to think about, even not just the

33:18person that's sending it in, but everybody else who's listening to. Okay. So opening pages, I like how they are showing us Suzanne's norm. It's exhausting. It is so different from the life she lived before, but now she's settled into it. It's like she's accepted it. She didn't choose this, but she seems to be making it work and keeping calm about it. Much more than Darryl, her husband seems to be, right? We see him here and there in the pages and I really like him too much. And yeah, he just doesn't seem like a super supportive husband and father. He's like a little bit erratic. There is empathy there because, of course, he didn't choose this either, but he just strikes unearth with me. And maybe that's just based on my own previous experiences. But that's something important to touch on too, is that you write your book. As soon as it's out in the world, it's not your book anymore.

34:20It is the reader's book. And every reader is bringing into that story their own experiences, their own emotionality, their own everything, memories. So it's all going to play a part in how they read this book. Anyway, so yes, we see Susanne on her new norm. We're seeing what kind of a person she is. She's calm, cool, collected. She is what she needs to be for the kids first and foremost. And then we end the chapter on a surprise. Something unexpected, unexpected for the reader. And I loved that. And we've just come to know about our protagonist is now in jeopardy, right? What is she lying about? Why? Where is she really going? Is she having an affair? So now I want answers. So guess what? I'm turning the page to the next chapter. Before we do that, though, I just want to go back and mention something about a curiosity seed. On the first and second pages, we know that Susanne is getting dressed up to go somewhere,

35:22right? But this is something that is no longer the norm for her because of the circumstances that she now finds herself in, being a parent to these children. So near the bottom of the second page, she narrates that it's time to go. So I'm wondering, oh, where is she going? It's not at that point anything super plot specific. It's just a question. But it gets me wondering where is she going? It's so important that she's leaving her exasperated husband behind with the kids and not taking the kids when Grace wants to go, et cetera. So it's just something that I'm curious about. And then halfway down the following page, we get the answer. She's going to a funeral. So that in itself is probably not what readers expected at all. So my point here is that a small curiosity seed is planted and it makes us wonder something. And then we get the answer to that. Meaning you don't make the reader take forever to find out, right? That's the trick with these points of curiosity. They're designed to make the reader curious, to make them theorize so that they want

36:23to read more to find out the answer. But if you don't give them those little puzzle pieces at just the right time, they get tired and frustrated. And the thing about curiosity as well, like you want to plant these little seeds and give them little pieces to the puzzle. If you're planting a seed and then planting another seed and then planting another seed and not giving any answers whatsoever, that's very frustrating. So that's just a note for anyone else who is wondering how to implement those curiosity seeds. Timing is everything and you did that very well. I also like that you didn't over explain her sister's death. It's clear enough without going into details or saying the words, which means it does not come across as explanatory and you're trusting your reader to pick it up. That's very important. When we get to the second chapter, you're letting us know and a good amount of time that her lie wasn't anything drastic. It's just that she needed to escape the madness inside their home and get a little bit of piece of quiet. I know all about that.

37:24I have five kids. So it's absolutely understandable. So yeah, no, she's not a bad person. She's a good wife and mother who just needs a little break. I totally get that. But also, there's now a tiny, niggling realization and just the back of my mind as I'm reading. On the surface, I don't disagree with this little lie she told. It's not hurting anybody. It's not doing anyone any harm. And it will help her, which means in effect, it'll help everybody else. But it's clearly the only way she's going to get this break because Darryl doesn't seem very supportive or understanding about that kind of thing. But this also lets me know that she is capable of telling a small seemingly insin-significant lie. And maybe that is setting her up for something later on. Who knows? But it's sitting there in the back of my mind as a possibility. And what does that mean? It means I'm theorizing, which is exactly what you want your reader to be doing.

38:27So when she bumps into her old flame, she's flustered. It's clear by her actions and thoughts that she never really got over him, even though she tells herself that she has, which is also sort of, it points to that capability of lying, right? Not just others, but herself. And then by the time we get to the end of the 10th page, we're wondering what this meeting might lead to. Usually, no good could come from meeting up with an old flame that you obviously still have feelings for, usually. So now my curiosity is peaked there. What happened all those years ago that caused them to break up? Are there still real feelings there? What is she going to do with them? Does he feel the same? How is this going to complicate her life? Is that is what we need to see? We need to see whatever point is happening on the page. How is it going to complicate things for the protagonist? But I also thought there's a good balance of dialogue and narration here. I'm not 100% sold on a feeling natural from Darryl. Like, there's...

39:28I would like to see him speaking naturally to Suzanne, which might help me get a better sense of who he is as a regular guy, not just a flustered father figure, who hasn't figured it all out yet. And part of that unnaturalness is there's some usage of all caps and exclamation points. And I always recommend to reduce or, if possible, eliminate them all together and use strong pros to show us the emotions, the tone, the volume, the urgency. Otherwise, it just feels like he's yelling all the time. And I'm not sure, maybe that's your intention, but that's how I'm picking it up on the page. And the last thing I'll mention is that I am curious about the intention behind setting this story in 2008. So if it's not set in contemporary times, and I have talked about this before, there must be a story for a reason for it. So why not take it... Sorry, why not have it take place now? Is it because there's something that happened in 2008 that is integral to the plot?

40:30So for example, the mid-90s, it's a perfect nostalgic time for the majority of your target audience, right? I would just make sure that there's a story specific reason, have it take place in the mid-90s, if that's where you're going. I do, if it's being used as a tool to captivate your audience, because you know most of them are going to think back to the 90s and they're going to get all nostalgic. And that's always interesting and intriguing. But yeah, I do wonder if there's something that affects the plot that is... It has to take place in 2008. Those are my notes. Okay, I'm going to pick up on a couple of points you just said, because we talked about one of the pitfalls or one of the common traps of a time travel story, being plot holes. So picking up on what you just said about why does this have to take place in 2008? It's a time travel story.

41:32So why can't the current day, right, the day of this opening scene, why couldn't that be today if Suzanne can bounce around in time anyway? So if there is something integral to the plot that makes 2008 really significant, could she time travel back to it? Or not. And I don't know the answer to that. I'm just thinking out loud here, because this is what happens when you get into time travel all of a sudden, oh, you really got to have a watertight plot. And all of these little things, especially around time and when things happen, not just whether it was before present day or in the future of present day. But what year they happened in, what month they happened in, where your character travels back to, and does she ever travel ahead of present day?

42:32I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. If not, then you've got to have some, you got to let the reader know that there's some reason why future time travel is not a part of your fictional world. Oh, we could talk about time travel stories forever. Okay. Another thing that you mentioned, Kathleen, that I want to pick up on is we know Suzanne has the ability to tell a little white lie. And totally the white lie she tells in the chapter one, I get it. I have two children. They're grown and gone now. But there were days when I just needed five minutes out of the house to breathe deeply and collect my thoughts so that I was a better mom when I went back in the house. So I think your reader will absolutely empathize with that and nobody will judge her negatively for that little white lie. However, just as Kathleen said, it lets us know what kind of person she is, that she's

43:36totally capable of lying and not having any problem with it and evaluating which would be an okay lie to tell. I think it's a really interesting character trait to lead with because that's the first thing you let us know about her that she can lie and she can do it right to Darryl's space and not have any problem with it. So it's Kathleen calls it a curiosity seed. It's a setup. We are expecting that to pay off somewhere down the line. If it doesn't pay off somewhere down the line, if you don't know what I mean by setups and payoffs and why they're so important, read, wired for story by Lisa Cron. Set ups and payoffs are a huge deal in terms of how our brain processes a story. We're reading this. You have chosen to tell us as the first thing about Suzanne that she can tell lies.

44:41She doesn't have any moral problem with telling a white lie to preserve her sanity. But because you highlighted that, we're expecting it to pop up again at some very key plot point. If it doesn't, then either you have to make it later in the book or you've got to lead with a different character trait because the one you come out of the gate with is really important. Not only right now is you're querying someone, but for the reader who reads the whole book. The other thing that you have let us know that Suzanne Wants is escape because that's what she is doing. It is the first action you are giving us. She is escaping. That is also a setup. It's going to inform future decisions. And again, if that is exactly what you're doing, then go star for you.

45:44Absolutely. But if it's not setting up anything that comes in the future, you need to look at that. Because I have expectations now. If I was the agent and I requested the full manuscript, I would be expecting to see those things. Okay. Catherine, even your line writing is excellent. That is no surprise given your background. Now, you said you worked on an Emmy award-winning show. I'm assuming as a writer and that you have an Emmy as a writer. If that's not true, I would clarify that in your query letter. If it is true, I would absolutely highlight it more, specifically say, by the way, dear agent, I'm querying, I'm an Emmy award-winning writer. Because that is seriously impressive. And that is really going to make you jump out from the query pile. Because I bet you're not too many Emmy award-winning writers querying agents.

46:48That would be my guess. Okay. So, Catherine, the images that you're giving us here in these opening pages are so clear and so vivid. I want to applaud you for that because not everybody can do it. I can hear the confusion in the house. This is Anne's just trying to get ready to go out the door. Been there. Done that. Well, I got the t-shirt. I can see the mess that Grace is making with the makeup. Yeah. We're all going to have empathy. Now, it is very typical. So there's nothing that is out of the ordinary. So you don't want to go on too long with it because it is all kind of stuff we've seen before in our own lives and in stories, whether it's written form or television or film, whatever. So in terms of your description and your ability to bring a fictional world to life, I think you can really do it well. I'm not going to say anything more about that because you know what you're doing and

47:48I don't want to say anything that would throw you off your game or make you start questioning yourself about your ability to do that because as an editor, my prime director is Do Know Harm. So I'm going to just praise you for it and walk away from it. Just keep doing what you're doing on that score. In fact, you might want to lean into it a bit because like I said, not everybody can do it so well. All right. So, a couple of areas to work on. As we have said before, you don't want to have any blank space in your submission pages. But now in fairness to Catherine, she would have sent in these pages before any of the episodes where we talked about not having blank pages aired. So you know, that's fair. I'm just saying it again because it's important and in case somebody missed a previous episode where we talked about that. If you've got 10 pages, use all 10 pages. You know, it's a small administrative thing, but it's hugely important.

48:52It's an easy fix. Now, the bigger topic I wanted to spend time on is genre. I mentioned this when I talked about the query letter. I'm expecting a time travel story, but the genre in terms of plot is not clear because time travel stories run the gamut of plot types. Right? That means it could be anything. Suzanne has said it's book club fiction. Kathleen called that a category. I refer to it as a marketing genre, not a story genre. So, Kathleen and I both make a distinction, but we use different terms to identify that distinction. For Kathleen, it's a genre and a category. For me, it's a story genre, which means like the plot genre and the marketing genre. Now, genre is one of those topics, like point of view, that a lot of writers don't give much thought to because it seems really obvious. Right? Like, I know what I mean when I'm talking about a time travel story or when I'm talking about

49:55a book club fiction or women's fiction. I know exactly what I mean, but it's not necessarily Catherine's understanding or Kathleen's understanding. And it's tricky because as writers, we have to have a really broad understanding of genre. Okay? That's why in the story Trinity course that we offer, like, there's a whole module about genre. It's that important. It is one of the fundamental skills that every writer needs to have. Absolutely. Someone has their own take on it. Nobody's right. Nobody's wrong. There's different ways of understanding the same thing and to make it even more complicated, it is constantly shifting. So what we mean by book club fiction today might not be what we mean by it tomorrow. Thriller is a great example. Thriller is really nebulous. It has, it's just nothing but shade's gray with a thriller. And it's constantly shifting.

50:56Even horror is really shifting right now. There's all kinds of horror. A lot of people think of it as just sort of slasher films. And it is. That is one type of horror. But it goes all the way through Gothic and what I call horror light. Right? Which is just something that goes bump in the night. There's just shadowy things and it can really feel like a thriller. Anyway. So our job as writers is to really understand genre from everybody's perspective. Not only does it shift from writer to agent, but it shifts from agent to agent and from writer to writer and from agent to publishing house and from publishing house to reader. It just shifts all around. Which is why when we are querying agents, we've got to do so much research. Not just on genre, but on the agent that we're querying because we need to see from their perspective, what are they considering book club fiction?

51:57Because it might not look anything like the book that we've written. So if we pitch it as book club, they're going to interpret that as this person doesn't know what they're talking about about by book club. They don't understand what book club is in what book club fiction is onto the next query. Or at least that's a risk of what could happen. Also need to understand that book club fiction is a marketing genre. It doesn't have anything to do with the plot. Which is why the plot paragraphs in the query are so essential. Okay. If you take nothing else away from what I'm going to say, from what I say today, please take this away. The opening pages of your story must clearly telegraph the genre that you are writing in. Now how do you telegraph it? Well, it's with the story events and with the writing style or the tone or the voice piece, as some people call it.

52:58It's with the presentation of the main character. It's through the way you're establishing the fictional world. Every single word in your opening page or opening pages must clearly support the story genre that you specified in your query letter. So from the query letter, I don't have a clear enough sense of what the plot is actually about. Because like I said, a time travel story could really be anything. Could be an action story. It could be a performance story. It could be a love story. It could be like a global internal genre story or character driven story. Like a time travel story can go in a whole bunch of different ways. And in these opening pages, there's really no hint of time travel. Yes, Suzanne says it's time to go. But that doesn't telegraph a time travel story. It just means she's got to get out the door. If I didn't have the query letter, honestly, I would think that this book contains a marriage

54:01love story. If I consider the opening page as an isolation, I'm expecting a story about a woman who is so invisible to her own family and maybe she has become invisible to herself as well. But she has an affair with her ex-boyfriend because you have set her up as a woman who has no problem lying and is seeking an escape. That's the story I'm expecting. I don't have any sense of time travel. I think she's actually going to have an affair with him like in present day. So Suzanne bumping into trick and deciding to have lunch with him feels like the story is inciting incident, which is not what I got from the query letter. Right? Like first I thought it was when the sister had her accident, Jennifer had her accident. Then I thought it was when the novelty time machine showed up. From these opening pages, bumping into trick feels very much like an inciting incident.

55:01So Catherine, I'm wondering if you understand genre well enough and you might totally understand it, which means that it's not articulated well enough in the query letter. Let me just look at my notes here. The other thing I'm wondering is the book starting in the right place. And I can't answer it without reading your whole manuscript. But if the story that followed, like if I was an agent and asked for the manuscript, if the story that follows is not about a woman who has an affair with her ex boyfriend in present day, I will be confused because that's now the story I want to read about. Right? That's the story I'm interested in now because it's set up beautifully. The whole escape thing and every mother understands that, right?

56:01There's a joke, you know, how high are you on the priority list in your family? Well, when your kids are real little, you probably aren't even on the priority list at all. For yourself or your spouse, right? That's that is motherhood, man, especially when the children are little. So, and the thing is, I don't judge Suzanne for that at all. What is so compelling about the setup is that it will allow your reader to live vicariously through Suzanne, right? From a safe distance. When you get to relive, you know, the what if we had, we bumped into our ex and he still looked really good and wasn't, you know, bald and fat, what if he's looked really good at 50 or 45? And you don't actually want to have an affair. You don't actually want to cheat on your spouse, but this allows you to escape and just

57:02have a little vacation, a little mental vacation for a few minutes before you have to jump back into reality. That's so compelling. Okay. The final thing I'm going to say is this, and yes, I'm saying it for Catherine, but it applies to all of us, really spend a lot of time making sure you know how to write a scene that works. So the second chapter, which starts on page six, contains a much stronger scene than the one in chapter one. And I say this because in chapter two, Suzanne is faced with a choice. She has a dilemma and that is, will she have lunch with trick or not? And it's a good one because this is a fork in the road and we all know it, including Suzanne. This is a big story moment, rekindling that relationship is a big deal. And it's wonderful. You can just trick herself into believing that it's just coffee because we all know it's

58:06not just coffee. So in the moment, she can justify it. Oh, it's just coffee. We're just going to have a sandwich. I don't have a lot of time anyway because I really am going to a funeral because it's just starting to unfold this really delicious story. Now in chapter one, you've done a wonderful job of creating an atmosphere, but it doesn't contain a working scene. Since you worked for TV, I'll explain it this way. It feels like an establishing shot, right, which is exactly what you're doing film in TV. So there very often we'll see characters and it could be under the opening score. It's under the opening credits where we don't actually hear anyone speaking. We don't hear the noise of the day necessarily, but we can visually see the chaos of what's happening.

59:09It's like, I don't know if this is officially B-roll footage, but that's kind of what that's the only language I have right now to use for it, but opening credit footage. Like if you took all the dialogue out of the opening pages, the reader wouldn't lose anything. We would still have a total understanding what's happening there. So while that works really well in film and television, it's not how a novel starts. So start your story as close to the global inciting incident as you possibly can and then fill your book with working scenes. But you might not get 100% of working scenes. I mean, even silence of the of the lambs whose success nobody can argue with, even that doesn't have 100% working scenes, but that should nonetheless be our goal as many as humanly possible. If there's an expository scene here or there, like this one is, that's fine.

1:00:10It's not a great place to start a story. But they sometimes can creep up really short ones in a story and no one even notices. But the goal is to go for 100%. And a working scene is filled with tension and stakes. It's a bigger topic, this whole idea about writing scenes that work and it's already come up a few times here. It is, I mean, we're already running super long, holy smokes. I'm just looking at the clock. This is a long episode. My apologies, everybody. It is a topic all unto itself. And I have thought about doing a course, but it would be a bigger course, which means it would have a bit of a higher price tag. And I don't know if there's a demand for that. So if that is something that people are interested in, just reach out and let me know. Because if there's a demand, I'm happy to do it. I've also done one-on-one six-week scene writing boot camps with clients.

1:01:12Maybe I'll open that up again. I don't know. So yeah, if anyone is interested in knowing how to write better scenes, yeah, just let me know. And I'll see what I can do to help you. All right, I'm a better stock there. You know, final advice. The opening pages of your book have to clearly telegraph the genre that you are writing in. In other words, like what kind of story is going to follow? What if you took the spinal scenes out of your story and listed them out? What story is that telling? That's what you put in your query letter. Okay, Kathleen. Yeah, I just want to touch on one thing that you mentioned that the inciting incident should come in the first five chapters, but really probably the first three. Something that we really have to remember is that nowadays people's attention spans are much shorter than they used to be, right?

1:02:14There's a lot more that's competing against books for time. So the quicker you get to the meeting potatoes of the story, the better your chances of hooking your reader and that absolutely includes agents, right? So yeah, my main advice about the query letter, making sure that there's enough clarity and specificity to entice the agents to get to the pages. Remember to make sure, like, tell us what the ultimate goal is, what exactly she needs to do to get it and what's standing in her way. And is there an end to this? Is there a limit? Does she only have so many tries before she doesn't get any more chances? And then also to really examine the how and the why the time travel machine is possible in this story and the rules that are surrounding that. Yeah, I agree with with everything Valerie said as well. So that wraps it up for this week. If you want us to review your query letter in your first 10 pages writing sample, go to

1:03:17storeing our .ca for all the details about how to submit. To support the show, please leave us a rating and a review. Tell your friend, tell your writer friends about us and if you're watching on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. If you need help writing the plot paragraphs for your query letter, check out the hook formula at learn.storeingyour.ca. And to find out more about my agent wish list or what I offer as an editor, visit Kathleen Fox agent.com and Fox editorial.com. And that's Fox with two X's and be sure to sign up for my sub stack newsletter, literary cats, keen notes. And remember story theory does not have to be difficult. It is a tool to help you write more, not less. So take it one step at a time and have fun.