Have you revised your m/s after agent rejection on fulls?

TrixieLox said:

My YA m/s has had a good response from initial query 2-3 weeks ago with 3 requests for fulls, but 2 agents have rejected the full, one with very interesting notes about how it would work better if more paranormal romance / less sci-fi.

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The bolded part keeps throwing me, because I'm trying to figure out how you can turn a SF story into a paranormal romance without a complete rewrite. SF is often heavily dependent upon and defined by the science in the story, while paranormal is defined by its elements of the fantastic. Unless this agent is confusing her terms.

Now, anyone else had this? What happens if 1 or more of those 5 agents request a full? Do I send them the new one with an explanation? And once you finished your revisions and were happy with them, did you re-query agents who had your intitial (agents have asked to see my future work but no mention of seeing this one if revised).

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I have revised based on notes given in agent rejections, yes. But only after I thought hard and agreed that those changes were in the best interest of the story. I wouldn't do massive rewrites based on one agent's opinion, unless it struck a "wow, duh!" chord in me and I knew it would make the book fantastically better.

If one of the agents you've queried requests the book, there's no need to tell them you've revised it. They've not seen the original, so they won't have any idea it's changed, and telling them you've revised since querying makes it look like you've started querying too soon (which I suppose you have, but there's no need to tell them , right?).

And don't re-query an agent on a revised project unless they invited you to submit revisions. A no is a no, and there are many more agents to choose from.

I don't have any experiences for you as I haven't finished mine yet. However, I did want to congratulate you on getting this far and on the feedback you are getting from the agents. So many people get rejected on their queries you should be very pleased to be asked for your full manuscript and getting such good responses. I personally would wait to revise your m/s until you hear back from the agent who has the full. If this agent accepts it as is then you have put extra work into revising it that did not need to be done. I would start on a new piece.

Good luck. I hope this agent accepts it.

It sounds like you need a new query, not a new novel. The agents asked for a full expecting a romance and got something else. If you're happy with the novel as is, it might make more sense to change the query for round two (if the current agents reject it).