My First Writers Workshop – Part 2 – Agents
This is the second in my series of blog posts about The 2025 Colorado Writers Workshop hosted by Writing Day Workshops. In this post, I would like to focus on Agents. I attended two different sessions with Agents, the first was Writers Got Talent, in which attendees were encouraged to submit the first page of their manuscript for evaluation. I will talk about that process shortly. The second session was an open Q&A session to ask the agents any questions you have about querying an Agent, pitching, and what agents are looking for in a writer.
The Writers Got Talent session was a powerful learning experience for me. In this session, there was a panel of six agents and a reader, who would read out loud the first page of a randomly selected manuscript. The agents were asked to raise their hands when they would stop reading. The goal was to get to the end of the first page. Once three agents raised their hands, the agents would then give feedback on why they stopped. Boy, was this eye-opening!
Of the thirty or so pages read out loud, only five made it through to the end. The feedback was fascinating and constructive. I didn’t submit my work, but I will next time, to gain more insights on how I can improve my work. Here are some of the key takeaways I got from the session.
Writers Got Talent
- Move from summary to specifics quickly within your first and second paragraphs
- Get into the point of the story quickly – Get into the action – This couldn’t be stressed enough – If you’re three paragraphs in and still talking about the landscapes, you’re dead in the water
- Be Careful of long run-on sentences to start your book and overly flowery language
- Too much flowery imagery can be too much; you need to get into the story and not from a telescope-looking lens.
- While world-building is important, but it’s more important to learn about your characters and get into the plot of the story quickly.
- In the first couple of sentences, you need
- Action, Dialog, Tension in the first couple of paragraphs
- A good cadence to have is: Dialog – Action – Description
- The first sentence and a couple of paragraphs make it or break it – remember these agents get hundreds of queries a day, then move very fast
- Be careful how much you tell, but you want to get into the emotions of the character
- Show us who your character is, show what they are about, what they worry about
- Giving details without context doesn’t work
- Be specific in your word choices
- Don’t EVER start with someone waking up
One of the big takeaways I got from this session was just how subjective it is. For example, during one of the readouts, one agent repeated a line and said, When I heard that line, it made me stop wanting to read. The agent next to her said that was the line that made her want to keep reading.
The next session was the Agent Q&A, which was another session with about six agents, and the audience was free to ask questions and thoughts on querying agents, and ask about what an agent does. Here are some of the highlights from that session.
Agents
- The biggest mistake new authors make is not researching enough about their audience
- Make sure you query someone in your genre
- Better to have no agent than an agent that is a bad fit
- What is the agent’s role in the editing process
- The role is to advise authors on what to hold firm on and what to change
- The editor is only trying to get your book read by publishers
- Don’t send anything to an agent unless it’s finished
- An editor is looking at your book and trying to figure out how much work they need to do on the book.
- The more work you do that an editor doesn’t have to do, gives it a better chance of moving forward.
- Synopsis
- Write the back cover 400 to 500 words
- Create a short synopsis for each chapter
- Query letters
- Include your synopsis
- Included your sample pages in your letters
- Include no more than 3 comp titles
- Pitch
- Have a short and long version of your synopsis
- One sentence pitch and a 400 words version and one that is just a few sentences
- Where might we find your books next to
- Do not say your book is unique
- Don’t use language that might make people roll their eyes
- Focus on your current book more than the next one
- Include something current in your category during your pitch and query letters
- Self-Publish vs Traditional
- Most agents don’t want someone who already self-publishes, especially if they have poor sales
- If you have a business and self-publish, this can be overlooked
- Other things, if someone has self-published, they can use a pen name for their traditional publishing or vice versa
- Questions Agents like to ask
- What weird aspects do you nerd out on in your book
- Why are you the best author to write this book
- Have you thought about any parts of your manuscript that you can take out
- What agents are looking for in Authors
- Someone who is teachable
- Someone who has talent
- Looking for someone who wants to write multiple books
- There are 3 people who make decision about publishing your book –
- They are the Sales Manager, Marketing Manager, and Publisher
- Thoughts on AI
- Use it for research
- Good for iterating and sparking ideas
- AI tends to average out your writing and not make it stand out
I can’t emphasize enough how crucial it is to find the right agent for your genre, this was the biggest takeaway from the agent panel. Do your research: look into the books they’ve represented, understand their preferences, and seek out someone who feels like the right fit, both professionally and personally.