Querying an unfinished MS

Yes, people do this a lot, and it pisses the agents off massively. Any agent who wants to see pages and finds the MS is unfinished will be extremely unimpressed.

There's an element of unfairness to it but it is what it is. An unfinished MS won't get you anywhere. Not finding agents tends to be why many people go the self pub route. So they don't feel their work is wasted etc.

Seems like an open invitation for unnecessary stress and tension. Don't do it.

Nonicks said:

If I get a request, well, too bad.
Please try to understand the auther as well. People only agree with the agents - they don't want to waste their time on unfinished MSs - but what about the authors?

Click to expand...

As an author, I don't understand this. Do you really mean to query something that if you get a request you'll tell the agent "Haha. It's not finished yet. Too bad."? Because that's not the attitude one needs when looking for a business relationship.

The problem with querying something unfinished is - what if it's boring/bad/poorly written only because you haven't spent the time on it? Sounds like a recipe for self-defeat.

Novels are hard because they are long. The structure is more challenging in some ways than short stories and even if you see what needs to be fixed there are just so many more words to plow through. But why the hell would you want to approach an agent with something that you know is not the best representation of what you can do? That's like showing up for a job interview in a bathrobe with a bottle of Jack in one hand and a beer in the other.

If *you* don't have confidence in a MS then work on something else. But testing the waters with the equivalent of word vomit is not going to get you anywhere. (Either you'll confirm that it's just vomit or the agent will be excited about it, only to discover you've wasted their time and yours by querying something that still needs - at a minimum - six months of work before they can assess the whole. That's a bad move, no matter how frustrated you are at subbing polished work and not finding interest.) [And, no matter how polished, a first chapter is not worth much. Opening chapters, first and second act plots are easy compared to finishing a project. Third acts are hard and that's why we take the time to polish shit after we get the first draft on the page.]

This is also one of the few things that will get you on a "do not read" list for an agent. So, no. Don't do that, no matter how frustrated you may feel.

Nonicks said:

I figured I'd query the first chapter and if I get rejections, I'd move on to my next project (instead of spending another year polishing the boring one). If I get a request, well, too bad.
Please try to understand the auther as well. People only agree with the agents - they don't want to waste their time on unfinished MSs - but what about the authors?

Click to expand...

I don't understand the logic in your first sentence. Saying "too bad" is shooting yourself in the foot in a massive way. You say you want to be published, so why would you risk screwing that up by querying something you've barely started? If you actually want to be published, you have to put in the effort to keep chugging along and polish your work to the best it can be. There aren't any shortcuts. You're going to get a black mark next to your name and then you really won't ever be published, but there aren't any positives to querying the way you propose.

(Side note: Why do you call a past manuscript "the boring one"?)

Look, we do understand the author's perspective. We do agree with authors. All of us here are authors in some shape or form, published or unpublished. But we also know the reality of the industry, the rules and regulations. If people could be successful querying half-written projects, don't you think we would have done it already? It doesn't work. It's not how things go.

Even after you sign with an agent, there's no guarantee that the book you sign will actually be your first book that sells. Marie Lu is an NYT bestselling young adult author with a very prominent agent, and the book that originally led her agent to offer representation was not the first book she published. So if you don't want to polish and write new manuscripts constantly -- well, that's how it goes, even after you get an agent.

Write all of it. Then rewrite, edit, polish. It's the only way. Trust us.

I hear this is something people do, but I had always imagined those people were impatient or unrealistic about deadlines (as in "I'll surely finish it and edit it before someone requests!)

In your thought process, how is this going to help you? Your goal is to get an agent and get published. If you query before you're done and get interest, you suggest the answer is "too bad." So, what does this accomplish? What are you hoping to get out of querying an unfinished MS that you didn't get out of the querying you've done with finished and polished ones?

Nonicks said:

Hi everybody,

I know the answer is "no! Don't do it!" And I know I should finish the MS, revise it, and only then query it. It seems like if I finish the MS and polish it, I'll surly get an agent. But I have several polished MS that were rejected and I spent several good years polishing them. If I were immortal, I'd definitly be spending years polishing my work. But I'm not. And I want to get published while I'm still alive. So my question is: has anyone queried an unfinished MS? I figured I'd query the first chapter and if I get rejections, I'd move on to my next project (instead of spending another year polishing the boring one). If I get a request, well, too bad.

Click to expand...

Yes, people query unfinished works all the time. And yes, it is incredibly irksome (speaking as an editor) to find that the book you're interested in doesn't actually exist yet.

Please try to understand the auther as well. People only agree with the agents - they don't want to waste their time on unfinished MSs - but what about the authors?

Click to expand...

We do understand the issues writers face (and note: if your work is as error-filled as your post is here, it will put agents and editors off taking things further with you). But we need to have finished works.

Nonicks said:

Oh I actually hope that several agents ask for a full or a parcial. That would be a sign for me that what I'm writing has potentional, and I'll continue writing and editing it. But if, as usual, I get nothing but rejections, I'll stop writing and move on to my next project.
And "too bad" is not something I'm ever going to say to an agent, of course, "too bad" is for myself. That I had a chance and I blew it.
Just thought about it while querying my previous manuscript. I could've written the first chapter - no one got to reading the second one.

Click to expand...

If you are getting nothing but rejections, don't just move on to your next project. Take the time to work out why no agents have asked for fulls from you. Because if you just keep writing more of the same stuff that's getting turned down, with no insight into why it's being rejected all the time, you're never going to improve.

The fault might lie in your book; but it could also be that your query letters aren't doing their job; or that you need to revise your work more thoroughly; or that you're submitting it to the wrong places. Until you have some idea why agents are saying no to you, you aren't going to know what to do to get any requests.

Nonicks said:

I figured I'd query the first chapter and if I get rejections, I'd move on to my next project (instead of spending another year polishing the boring one). If I get a request, well, too bad.

Click to expand...

Yeah, it would be too bad, both for you and the agent. So what's the point? How is this going to help you?

It does occasionally happen that an agent will take on a writer with an unfinished manuscript. But it's pretty darn rare and usually comes about only under unique circumstances.

Nonicks said:

Just thought about it while querying my previous manuscript. I could've written the first chapter - no one got to reading the second one.

Click to expand...

But would the first chapter have been the same if you'd stopped there?

Nonicks said:

Hi everybody,

I know the answer is "no! Don't do it!"

Click to expand...

Which is how the business is run. You don't stick around a restaurant that shows a picture of a steak on the menu then says, "It's still inside the cow at the stockyard." You get annoyed and go somewhere else to eat.

And I want to get published while I'm still alive.

Click to expand...

Then market those as indie works and press on with the next commercial-worthy project. Only after you have a track record of pro sales can you get away with a proposal and sample chapters. By then you will have acquired skill at your craft and they can trust you to deliver.

Those rejected books are not a waste of time, they are practice. All writers have trunk novels and reams of unsold stories in their files. It's the practice they put in to get to Carnegie Hall.

So my question is: has anyone queried an unfinished MS?

Click to expand...

One of my now pro writer friends did this. She got a reply from the agent requesting the rest and was over the moon for about ten seconds because she did not have the rest written and needed months more to finish the book. The agent was not amused but said to query again when the book was done.

But the book was never finished. Real life intruded and my friend got sidelined by serious s**t and could not work on it. By the time she did, the momentum for the story was long gone and so was the agent.

It's a Time Thing. An agent might like that proposal on THAT day, at THAT time, and have no interest in it a week later. Agents have to fall in love with a book to want to sell it, and that won't happen when the writer doesn't deliver the whole thing.

I figured I'd query the first chapter and if I get rejections, I'd move on to my next project (instead of spending another year polishing the boring one).

Click to expand...

This is a telling phrase and I hope you don't mean it. I took it to say that YOU are finding your own work boring. That could explain all those rejections. A writer ALSO has to be in love with their work. It has to be something you're excited about and can't keep away from, that you think about all day and tinker with all night.

Maybe the boredom is from the rejections or expectation of rejection. We grok that. Rejections are a total bore, but if you're excited by your work that will come through in the writing, and you keep subbing a finished work. I collected 25 rejections on my first novel. The 26th submission worked out, mostly because I did 25 rewrites and honed my craft to make it commercially publishable.

If I get a request, well, too bad.

Click to expand...

For YOU, for your career. If you're lucky, the agent who sent the request will forget your name. If not, she might have a Post-It note up to remind her that you can't deliver.

I would also suggest, if you are able, to permanently turn on the spellcheck feature. It can save you some embarrassment with typos, etc.

Gillhoughly said:

I collected 25 rejections on my first novel. The 26th submission worked out, mostly because I did 25 rewrites and honed my craft to make it commercially publishable.

Click to expand...

I'll just add that I did not do 25 revisions on my first novel. I did get 179 rejections though. And then query number 180 was a winner. Success is not always instantly likeable.

The more you polish, the better you will get at doing it quickly and effectively. Writing is a skill that takes practice. So is revising.

Referring to your MSs as boring, and the spelling errors through your posts, suggest that you're not spending time doing polish work, or you're not doing so very effectively. If you're still at the point where you find that process boring, you still have a long way to go. Publishing is work. It can be fun work, it can sometimes be boring work, and like any work it takes experience to get it right first time, but you have to put in the work or else you won't meet your goals.

There are no shortcuts.

There are hundreds of queries landing in an agent's inbox whose authors have done the work of polishing, learning, getting better, polishing again. There is luck and subjectivity in this business, but if you don't put in the effort there is little luck involved at all: your chances are nil.

Nonicks said:

Oh I actually hope that several agents ask for a full or a parcial. That would be a sign for me that what I'm writing has potentional, and I'll continue writing and editing it. But if, as usual, I get nothing but rejections, I'll stop writing and move on to my next project.
And "too bad" is not something I'm ever going to say to an agent, of course, "too bad" is for myself. That I had a chance and I blew it.
Just thought about it while querying my previous manuscript. I could've written the first chapter - no one got to reading the second one.

Click to expand...

I understand the appeal of, "I'll go ahead and query this, and while the agent is reading the partial, I'll keep working on the book. Then, when they ask for the full, it'll be ready to send."

That way, friend, lay madness, because you're not factoring time into it. What if you send the partial, fully expecting to have six months or more to finish the work, and then three weeks later you get an enthusiastic email that says, in effect, "I loved this. Please send the full MS." ? Two emotions are going to hit you, probably both at the same time: "Hot dog, they loved it!" and "Oh crap, NOW what do I do?"

At that point you can either come clean, and tell them it isn't finished (bad move), or hide out and work like a squirrel on speed to try to finish it (worse move, because the product will be sub-par).

It's your book, Nonicks; you don't want to throttle it in its crib.

I'll also add that my 180th query got a full request inside of four minutes. (Several of my earlier queries got full requests within a couple of days.) That's a tad unusual, but not completely unheard of. If I had been querying an incomplete MS there would have been no room to work on finishing up the draft.

And, what no one has mentioned yet, as far as I can see, is that agents talk to each other. If you were to get requests and have to tell them the thing isn't done yet, they will likely tell their friends about it. You run the risk of not only never getting a second chance with those agents but with a broader pool of agents as well. Because this would be considered highly unprofessional behavior.

Aggy B. said:

I'll also add that my 180th query got a full request inside of four minutes. (Several of my earlier queries got full requests within a couple of days.)

Click to expand...

Yeah, my future agent's response was 2 days. Nowhere near your 4 minutes, but still not enough time to finish the WIP.

To the OP, Old Hack mentioned working on why your other novels didn't get bites. Really, you need to treat this like debugging a program or investigating an engineering failure. You have several possible failure points: query text, story plotlines, writing style, clichés that are insta-fail. You have several avenues that you can use to evaluate each of these possibilities: feedback from agents, feedback from alpha/beta readers, crits on this or other forums, QLH for the query, etc.

If you don't do this, you risk just making the same mistake(s) again. Maybe your query texts really, really suck. This isn't unusual--writing queries is much harder than writing stories. Maybe your opening chapters contain some of the clichés that will make an agent roll their eyes--things like waking from a dream, or working in a description of the protag by having them look in a mirror. Maybe you info-dump too much for the genre you're writing. Maybe you tell too much. Maybe you use more adverbs per square foot than (insert metaphor here).

The point is that something is stopping agents from picking you up. Find out what.

Why do you characterize your current unpublished novels as boring? Did they excite you at one point? I am puzzled by this. I wonder if this aspect of your post puzzles you too? It seems like it's worth a little thought ... Not necessarily here, but on your own maybe? What is boring about them? Can you correct it? How would you avoid it in the future?

Nonicks said:

So my question is: has anyone queried an unfinished MS? I figured I'd query the first chapter and if I get rejections, I'd move on to my next project (instead of spending another year polishing the boring one). If I get a request, well, too bad.

Click to expand...

Hmm, I'm not seeing the "win" here, for you or for the agent. If you get rejected, you move on to the next MS, but if you get a request...what are you doing to do? It seems like a lose-lose situation for you.

Let's say you get a request. Your choices would be:

1. Rush to finish the rest of the MS and give the agent an unpolished product. You'd likely get rejected.
2. Tell the agent, "Thank you for the request! However, the MS is still unfinished. Would it be possible to send it to you in three months' time?" Again, you'd probably get rejected.
3. ??

The point of coming up with a strategy is to better your chances of success. I don't see how this particular strategy would do that...

There is just no point.
Even if they did bite, you have nothing more to give them. They won't wait around until it's finished and polished so it's just a massive waste of time for all involved.

I can only add that agents are not a critique service. If you aren't sure about a work in progress, spend some time exchanging critiques with a beta reader.

Nooope!

If you want professional feedback (in addition to beta (or alpha?) reader thoughts) as you go, check out your local writers' centre and see if they offer mentoring or manuscript assessment services. They'll cost money, but you'll get what you need and won't piss off any agents in the process.

Nonicks said:

... if I get rejections, I'd move on to my next project (instead of spending another year polishing the boring one)...

Click to expand...

(my bolding)

Putputt said:

Let's say you get a request. Your choices would be:

1. Rush to finish the rest of the MS and give the agent an unpolished product. You'd likely get rejected.
2. Tell the agent, "Thank you for the request! However, the MS is still unfinished. Would it be possible to send it to you in three months' a year's time?" Again, you'd probably get rejected told to sod off for being a time-waster.

Click to expand...

Fixed that for you, Put

Nonicks, have you considered that finishing a novel can be pleasurable in itself? If you don't actually enjoy the process of creating, a career in a creative industry may not be for you.

Another one on the "don't do it" pile.

But from a writer's perspective, how do you know your book will be the best it can be before it's finished? I always feel like I'm writing GENIUS when I'm in the middle of it, then I finish it, and once the excitement cools down, realize that the real work on the book has only just started.

Anyway, forget the agent part. Finish the book and work on it over again for your own sake.

I also have made my husband promise that if I get hit by a bus before I finish this revision, he'll finish the book and see if it can get published. Pretty awful author self-centered-ness isn't it? "Take care of my dog, please finish my book, don't be too sad. love you~"