Submission Critique story
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Ben was having some problems with submitting his crime novel to agents. He kept sending it out again and again, but somehow no-one seemed interested. Was it his novel itself which was the problem, or was it something to do with how his submission package presented his work? Should he send more chapters? How long should the synopsis be? Was his letter compelling enough? These were all worrying conundrums as he tried to work out what to do next.
Ever since Ben had been a kid growing up on his parents’ winery in Australia's Hunter Valley, he’d been scribbling away. He went off to university in Melbourne, came back to work on the local newspaper and then was lucky enough to get a job on the Sydney Morning Herald. Although he was a big sports fan – crazy about cricket in fact – he ended up covering the crime beat and became fascinated by the human side of the stories he was reporting on. A few years later his occasional attempts at writing fiction turned into something more ambitious and he started writing a crime novel.
When it was finished, Ben showed it to his friends, who said it was great. He had plenty of confidence and was pretty sure that his novel was good. Even though authors always think that about their own work, he really knew the setting and his story had an interesting twist. But how could he make the breakthrough and find an agent? He’d worked his way through most of the Australian agents, gathering rejections, and now needed to get his submission package ready to send off to UK and American agents.
What Ben would get from a WritersServices Submission Critique is a detailed report on the material in his submission package. His letter would be critiqued, his synopsis commented on and he would have a view on his chapters and how they presented his novel.
Ben decided to go ahead and was delighted to get back a Submission critique which showed exactly what he was doing wrong. He persevered with looking for an agent, sending out his reworked submission package, until eventually he struck lucky with a new agent in London. Now all his agent had to do was fix up a publishing deal!