Edgy, experimental, and other meaningless words

Over the last few years I've become an expert on agents' submission requirements - or at least, I thought I had.

I have no difficulty providing the first three chapters, and I'm happy that my synopsis gives an accurate summary of the backbone of my story. I've even wrestled with one sentence summaries, and have some that don't entirely mislead the reader.

But all that is background to the main problem when submitting to an agent.  The main problem is trying to reach inside one individual human being's mind and figure out what they like.

It's often easier to tackle this by cutting out the agents who I know wouldn't like my work.  I describe myself as a simple storyteller, and I like to tell my stories in a traditional order.  Beginning, followed by middle, followed by end, works best for me.  The good old-fashioned three act structure.

So when I see the words 'edgy' and 'experimental' in an agent's likes I start to get edgy too.  I know  that person is not for me.  I'm in service to telling a damn good story, not advocating the case of weird literature.

Another easy way to weed out incompatible agents is by rejecting the ones who love the books I hate.  The ones with the tired tropes of women characters who are either prostitues or assassins.  Am I heartily sick of books which restrict their female characters to one of those two roles.  I can just imagine what one of my vocal main characters would have to say about such women.  It wouldn't be flattering, and it wouldn't be pretty.

So I haven't really mastered the trick of figuring out what an agent really wants.  It's one of the darkest arts I've ever encountered.  Sometimes I think I'll need one of Harry Potter's spells to solve it.  If I could just cast a mind-reading spell and find out what the agent really wanted life would be a whole lot easier.

So it's time to return to the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook, to work through the next batch of entries. It's time to send my manuscript out on its latest round of leaps into the dark.