Stephanie Winkelhake

I love taking portraits, and my favorite photographs are ones that give us a glimpse of the subject. I’ll often focus on a single feature of a subject–their feet, their hands, their eyes. Combining these different shots into a collage tells a story. To me, it’s more interesting than showing all the details of the subject in one single snapshot.

When you think about it, we write our characters in the same way. It wouldn’t be interesting to expose every single thing about them at once. As a reader, I’d be bored if everything about a character was in focus at the beginning of the story. Sometimes we need to blur parts of our characters and their backgrounds. Sometimes sprinkling in clues about characters propels the story forward and leaves readers wanting to know more.

When I started querying agents, I learned the hard way that pasting parts of my manuscript directly from a Word document into an email message wasn’t the way to go. Many agents ask for a few sample pages, and the first queries I sent out had jumbled and weirdly formatted text. Not the best first impression, huh?

Eventually, I came up with a method that seemed to work. I’m not saying this is the best or only correct way to do things, but it worked for me.

1. I switched my email format to plain text. Yes, this will get rid of your ability to show italics or underlined text. But it’s also a format most widely read by email programs.

2. I created a text file (.txt) for my query. (For Mac, I used TextEdit to do this.) I originally wrote it in Word, so I pasted the text from there into my text application. I kept the text single-spaced, and then I added a double space between paragraphs. I didn’t indent new paragraphs.

3. I copied the first 50 pages of my manuscript. (You will most likely be asked to paste 5-10 pages into the body of the email, but yes, some agents do ask for as many as 50 pages.) I pasted these pages into a new text file. Just like the query, I kept the text formatted as single-spaced, and I added a double space between paragraphs. And again, no indentations.

4. I did the same thing for my synopsis.

5. For every query, I opened these text files and pasted in the query followed by whatever the agent requested for their query submissions (synopsis, sample pages, etc.).

By using these text files, you’ll only have to format the text once instead of doing it every time. Keeping in mind you’ll have to update these text files if you make changes to your manuscript. Also, make sure you send a test email to yourself before you query, just to double check the format.

Hope this helps!

You guys, I can finally share the news.

I am now represented by Marie Lamba of The Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency!

*squee*

On Jan 2nd, I checked my phone and Marie had left a message. She said she really enjoyed my manuscript and would love to talk to me about it. My first reaction was something like omgomgomgomg. I replayed the message a few times to make sure I wasn’t imagining things.

A few hours later, Marie called again…and offered representation! We talked for a while, and Marie was happy to answer my questions (though I’m not sure how coherent I was at this point). My manuscript was out with several other agents, so I notified these agents of the offer and asked them to get back to me within a week.

On Jan 5th, I called Marie with more questions. In our first phone conversation, Marie had given me specific examples of revision suggestions. By the end of the second call, I was confident that Marie and I shared the same vision for my manuscript. Without a doubt, I knew she was the right agent for me.

So this past Monday, I called her and accepted the offer.

It’s still sinking in, and I couldn’t be happier!

My short story, DO NOT MACHINE WASH, made it to the final selection round of Chicken Soup for the Soul: I Can’t Believe My Dog Did That! They’ll notify me a month before publication with the final word on whether or not the story will appear in the book. The book will be released on September 18, 2012.

THE MATTER OF SOULS not only came in first place for the YA category of the Indiana Golden Opportunity Contest, but it was also chosen as the Best of the Best winner!

This year has been one HUGE turning point for me.

For those of you who don’t know, I finished my first YA story the summer of 2007. It’s buried in a cabinet now, but every once in a while I dust it off and read a passage or two. Why? Because it reminds me how far I’ve come. I knew nothing about plot development, POV, or anything else. Thankfully, only close family members ever read that one. And they’ve been warned to never talk about it. (Not really, but seriously, don’t mention it. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.)

My next YA story, while leagues better, still wasn’t great. Infodump and horrible character development? Check and check. Definitely not ready for publication. Again, family members read it, but that was it. Did I enlist the help of beta readers or a critique partner? Heck, no. What if they didn’t like it? What if my writing was horrible? I managed to get a few requests from agents, but not surprisingly, this story didn’t get very far.

Fast forward to this year. I finished THE MATTER OF SOULS. I was determined not to make the same mistakes I made in my previous novels. And this time, I did something different. I asked people to beta read. I signed up for every contest I could find. I joined YALITCHAT and put my work out there for others to read and critique.

Was it scary? A world of YES.

But you know what? It was a necessary step. I’m thankful to finally have more confidence as a writer. A few years ago, I would have never entered contests or shared my work with others.

Maybe one day I’ll take the next step.

Until then, I’m thankful to be where I am now.