Creating Excerpts

popmuze · May 13, 2007

It has been suggested by my agent that I try to find some excerpts from my novel to send to literary magazines.

I guess the idea is, if I can get any of them to publish an excerpt, my book will gain a higher profile, thus a better chance of getting published.

So let's say I find three or four sections suitable for excerpting. Should I send them each to different magazines, or would that be considered a simultaneous submission?

James D. Macdonald · May 13, 2007

Different excerpts to different magazines should be okay. The same excerpt to different magazines would be simultaneous submission.

Why not ask your agent for guidance on this?

blacbird · May 13, 2007

This is an interesting question, one which I've been pondering for some time, and has a lot of side avenues. First, a fair number of mags say they accept novel excerpts if they "stand alone" as stories. Which has always struck me as meaning they will work only if your novel is purely episodic. Problem is, in my work, things are intertwined throughout. It's difficult to pluck out a portion, even if it has a central unity, which also doesn't depend to some extent on what's gone before, or what is to come after. Further, the novels I consider most admirable all tend to work in that way. Comments?

caw

southernwriter · May 14, 2007

blacbird said:
This is an interesting question, one which I've been pondering for some time, and has a lot of side avenues. First, a fair number of mags say they accept novel excerpts if they "stand alone" as stories. Which has always struck me as meaning they will work only if your novel is purely episodic. Problem is, in my work, things are intertwined throughout. It's difficult to pluck out a portion, even if it has a central unity, which also doesn't depend to some extent on what's gone before, or what is to come after. Further, the novels I consider most admirable all tend to work in that way. Comments?

caw

Ditto. I read the original question and wondered WTF? I haven't read a magazine yet that published only an excerpt. I take it back. I think Cosmo ran Judith Krantz' Scruples back in the '70's. I wonder whatever became of Krantz?

blacbird · May 14, 2007

John Irving, in The World According to Garp, has a chapter (might be more than one chapter, I can't recall exactly) titled "The Pension Grillparzer", which is little more than a short story told by one of the characters, or something like that (again, it's been a while since I read it). It does stand alone as a story, but has a resonance within the novel as well. Nice work if you can get it, I guess. I know all this because I was a (bad) student of Irving's back in the 1970s at Iowa, and he read aloud an early draft of "Grillparzer" in class one day. It was truly intimidating; no way in the 13.7 Billion years of the universe could I ever write anything that good, and it was his "early draft".

Dam.

caw

popmuze · May 14, 2007

I don't want to mislead anybody here. I too am unsure whether anything I could dredge out of this novel would stand alone as a short story. The only thing is, sometimes I read short stories and have the same feeling, that they don't stand alone as short stories either.

My novel is fairly episodic. But when I went through it the other day I felt that almost every chapter would work as a stand alone set piece. Which can't be right.

In submitting something, would I have to say it's from a novel? Wouldn't that be a red flag? I think if I go this route, I'd have to make some changes here and there in each piece to provide necessary information that might not included.

Of course, I'm hoping my novel stands a chance even if no one picks up any excerpts.

Julie Worth · May 14, 2007

I've submitted chapters before, but I've always rewritten them to make them stand alone. In one case, I plucked scenes out of four chapters, then condensed it down.

Why say where it came from? If it works as a short story, what does it matter? But if it's been published before, you better tell them.

Gillhoughly · May 14, 2007

It might raise the profile as your agent says, but won't result in an automatic sale of the whole book. At most, a sale to a magazine (Unless it's to The New Yorker or Playboy) only adds to your resume, which is a good thing. Just make sure the magazines pay in real money, not copies. Print pubs only. E-mags don't count.

If the excerpt is a short story, then send it as a short story to an appropriate magazine. Back in the pulp days writers like Chandler would sell a short story like "Killer in the Rain" then rework it into a novel like "The Big Sleep." I've done that myself.

If the novel sells, then it's your agent's job to place excerpts in an appropriate magazine to boost its profile.

popmuze · May 14, 2007

Gillhoughly said:
If the novel sells, then it's your agent's job to place excerpts in an appropriate magazine to boost its profile.

I'm wondering if this sequence of events hasn't been turned on its head
nowadays. Looks like agents and editors want some of it to have appeared "in different form" elsewhere before the book will be even considered. This is especially true in non-fiction. Now maybe it's even infiltrated the thinking of fiction editors.

Please tell me this isn't true.

Julie Worth · May 14, 2007

popmuze said:
I'm wondering if this sequence of events hasn't been turned on its head
nowadays. Looks like agents and editors want some of it to have appeared "in different form" elsewhere before the book will be even considered. This is especially true in non-fiction. Now maybe it's even infiltrated the thinking of fiction editors.

Please tell me this isn't true.

Jamie Ford (a member here) was a finalist in Glimmer Train's short story contest with his story I Am Chinese, and used that to great advantage in marketing his book to agents. (In this case, the short story grew into the novel.)

popmuze · May 14, 2007

I guess that's the object here, except since the novel is already done, the growth process can be pretty fast.

Creating Excerpts

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