Agents don't seem to like the opening; beta readers did. To revise or not to revise?

I would not revise to counter one rejection.

Now, beta readers can be wrong, especially if they aren't well-versed in what commercial agents may want. Two is not a very large sample size, but it's twice the number of agents who have responded.

Hi laserkey.

I wonder if you might find this thread helpful?

Two rejections isn't really much in the scheme. Many very good books get far more than that. How readers engage with a book is subjective.

With feedback, speaking for myself, I'd wait until I heard the same feedback multiple times before I made any major changes.

Still, you know your own work best. If you can see ways to tighten it and you can see the backstory, then maybe the agent has a point. How long would it take to fix? How long do you want to put the process on hold? The answers to those questions will be different for everyone.

You also know your beta readers best. Do you trust them? Are they friends or outsiders who don't mind hurting your feelings?

When you've got 50 posts here you can post in Share Your Work (password: vista). The critters there specialize in openings. You'll get a range of opinion, usually. What works for one might not work for another. It'll always come back to what you want to do and how you want to tell the story.

Does the agent's critique resonate with you?

OTOH, two rejections are far from enough to have significance. On the other hand, personalized rejections are rare, and backstory in the first 10 pages CAN be a problem. This depends to some extent on your genre and category. I'm pretty sure the YA ms. with which I got an agent and a sale had backstory in the first 10 pages, but the first scene happened in the now. And in the editing process, all that backstory got moved waaaay later. It really depends on the ms. If it feels to you like this agent "gets" your book, I might heed the advice. If not, I might hold it in reserve and see how others feel.

Either way, I'd consider posting in Share Your Work once you have 50 posts. Openings are tough, and it's very useful to hear a wide range of strangers' reactions to them.

As others have said, two rejections is not enough to discern a pattern. I'd even say the fact that one of the rejections was personalized is very encouraging. It's really rare to get personalized or specific feedback on initial queries. In fact, form rejections are pretty common even with requested material.

As for whether or not backstory works at the beginning of a novel, this is pretty subjective. I know current wisdom says to avoid it at all costs and to jump straight into a scene with a crisis or conflict of some kind, but not everyone likes this approach either. It varies with genre, but also with taste. I've read plenty of trade-published novels, including ones written within the past decade or so, that start out slowly with rumination, backstory, world building, or the narrator simply telling the reader something (not showing it). Some are even debuts that were presumably shopped with agents and/or publishers and found takers. I can't tell why "breaking the rules" worked for these authors, but some of the books are popular, so the agents and editors who picked them up obviously saw something promising.

Sharing your opening once you get to fifty posts is a great way to get feedback, but be warned: you may well see a diversity of opinions.

laserkey said:

Thanks. I have also read that modern readers tend to go for fast-paced scenes and conflict, and that backstories are primarily a thing from old literature. I guess part of me is torn between rewriting for the sake of appealing to the masses, vs. keeping my original draft because it appeals to me.

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I cannot recommend highly enough that you take advantage of Share Your Work once you've got the post count. Your opening may indeed be wonderful, but IME we often fall in love with our own words more than we ought to. Opening with backstory doesn't have to do with fashion as much as it does engaging the reader. Yours may be incredibly engaging, but people carp on it because unengaging backstory is a common rookie mistake.

laserkey said:

This might be a silly mindset and runs counter to the world of publishing, but does writing to appeal the masses make you a sell-out?

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Define "sell-out." The better you sell, the more likely it will be that someone will pay you to write again. And it's far more difficult to appeal to the masses than people seem to think.

laserkey said:

Thanks. I have also read that modern readers tend to go for fast-paced scenes and conflict, and that backstories are primarily a thing from old literature. I guess part of me is torn between rewriting for the sake of appealing to the masses, vs. keeping my original draft because it appeals to me. This might be a silly mindset and runs counter to the world of publishing, but does writing to appeal the masses make you a sell-out?

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I've actually been asked a few times to ADD backstory, so I don't think there's a movement against backstory per se, even in YA. It can give readers important insight into the characters. It's just that you're expected to alternate it with present action that's moving at a good pace — which can be very tricky! Breaking up the backstory into small chunks, instead of having one big info-dump, is something I often see in successful books.

Backstory is always tricky. We don't want to write exposition simply to write exposition; it should, at least in my opinion, feel natural and organic and important to the story that's unfolding in some way.

YA does tend to open with high stakes and in the middle of action, discovery, or conflict. This instantly hooks the reader and leaves room for some intriguing "I think I know what's going on but I totally don't so I need to keep reading."

I'm also just going to echo what everyone else said: 1. It's subjective and two rejections is not a pattern to go on, and 2. Does the agent's commentary resonate with you? It sounds like you've thought about this before the agent even pointed it out, which might mean you can consider how you might tighten it up, what details are not absolutely necessary to the beginning, and which details you want to save for later on as a kind of reveal. Narrative tension is good. However, what's most important is that YOU feel fully or mostly confident in your work.

I just want to chime in here. I'm not a fan of too much backstory upfront, and yet I recently read VE Schwab's "A Darker Shade of Magic" - and there was tons of backstory up front, to the point of me getting frustrated: why couldn't she weave it into the story? But, that was not the book that landed her her agent...! So she could get away with it. The point is, more established writers get away with a lot more than querying writers do. It's sad, but true. Querying writers are held to higher standards. You can play and mess with the system when you're successful. Until then... if you want to snag an agent and don't have contacts in the literary world... you'll have to tow the line. Play by their rules. I queried my first page (which I loved) for ages and ages... when I changed it up a bit and made it more "hooky" and less "philosophical" I got more requests. Even from the agents who seemed to want the more philosophical work!

Moral of the story: agents have only so much on their plates. They have a short amount of time to spend on queries which are mostly time-eaters and not money-makers. They need to be hooked, and fast. If you can hook them early on, you might get a shot at the partial... where more of the backstory can be woven in, to draw them in further.

laserkey said:

This might be a silly mindset and runs counter to the world of publishing, but does writing to appeal the masses make you a sell-out?

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It IS a silly mindset, and one that all sorts of creative types get hung up on, like there's something inherently wrong with creating something that people like.

Do what you want to do. If all you want is to put a book on your shelf and say, "I wrote that." then there's no need to bother with any of this. Just pay a vanity publisher to pretty it up and do a print run of 1.

You need to develop thick skin for rejections. I've had some say too much backstory, and then I had an agent reject with the comment that she didn't know enough about the characters to care about them. I actually ended up submitting to a contest. The judges gave detailed feedback, and they were agents! So I revised, entered another contest and took third place and earned a partial request. That partial turned into a full and then a contract! So, what I'm saying, even after a bunch of rejections, don't give up. If you can find a contest where you'll get feedback, take advantage of it. If there is any element of romance in it, I'd suggest the RWA YA contests. Good luck! <3

My rejections don't give very specific feedback, so that's something. The only feed back I got was the font was too small, which is a function of pasting Scrivener into Yahoo mail and I can fix that. The best I get is "I can't get 100% behind this, so I am saying 'no.'" Remember, many now famous authors received upwards of 200 rejections before being accepted. So when I get to 100 rejections, I will start to rethink this project, perhaps.

Peace, Joe Tex

Wow that's good that you at least got some personalized feedback through one of your rejections.

But I agree with others. Two rejections doesn't seem like a rehaul yet. Who knows, you might get a bite soon with the right agent

Cheers and best of luck querying others!

I still recommend the contests that will give you feedback. Usually agents are the judges of the contests, and the feedback helped me get an acquiring editor and publisher. Before all of that though, my beta readers were awesome. I found them on nanowrimo.

2/6 rejections? It's like a one-night stand even if it's 6/6, good but still can get much better than this (like 30/30).

Revising? You can always do that, hold your horses.

I have never been published as I have gotten over 40 rejections from my first. But I would definitely not change it based one 2 rejections and 1 specifically saying you need to change it. I'd keep trying to get it published as it is