No.
UPDATE 5/29/19: Still no.
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AmandaKMorgan says
I actually know someone who queried with her novel unfinished, got an agent…and then sold it to S&S.
Although that's the exception rather than the rule.
Lea Schizas - Author/Editor says
Actually, you could but after that query you respond with a, “To save you postage, I’m sending you my rejection right now.”
Scott says
Okay, them how about $10 and the idea’s yours? ;^)
Honestly, I’ve been tempted to test a few ideas against agents, but realized it was kinda wrong.
Funny stuff.
Marti says
Not even if I enclose a SASE in my e-query?
*grin*
Thanks for the laugh, Nathan!
John says
Hi Nathan,
Why is it that this applies just to novels and not to short stories or non-fiction? Is it simply that it’s harder to judge a novelist by a sample than it is to judge the others? The rule has always been clear, the reason less so.
hannah says
I love that two people have already mentioned me š
Yep, I queried on a novel 3/4 of the way done, unpublished, for no good reason other than I didn't feel like waiting any longer. Got a bunch of partial requests, sent out the finished first 50-100 pages as requested. Got a full request. Finished the book that night. Sent it out the next morning. 4 offers of representation, coming out with S&S this summer.
I'm a terrible, terrible example.
(And no, the agents had no idea! I'm crazy, not stupid)
A Paperback Writer says
56 comments on a one-word blogpost?
Wow.
Cam says
The only way to top the effectiveness of this post would be to phrase it in a rhetorical question. I’d do it, but I’m too busy editing my novel to think in rhetorical questions now.
AM Riley says
I don’t understand. By ‘no’ do you mean ‘no’ as in ‘no’? Please clarify. Does this mean you do not want to read the partial I’ve attached just in case?
Nathan Bransford says
hannah-
Ha! I guess I’ll make an exception: you can query, but if an agent wants to see the manuscript you have to finish it that night.
There.
hannah says
Deal!
Sarah Jensen says
I almost spit on my screen when I saw this on my blog and wondered if there was much to be said. Glad there’s not.
Thanks for the chuckle!
Liz says
This is what caused me to have heart palpitations a few weeks ago. After a wave of rejections, I grimly reassessed my MS and read and researched and re-read and had come to some tough realizations about changes that needed to be made. The changes were necessary and not insignificant. Then just as I was getting ready to dive into the text again, out of the blue came a request for a full – a response from a really fabulous agent that just happened to arrive a month after the wave of rejections. What to do? Sending her the manuscript in its then-current state was not an option. I might as well have written her reply rejection for her and saved her the time. So I *very gingerly* replied with a hearty thanks for her interest and casually requested a few days. Fortunately she was buried already in mss and encouraged me, with lots of caps, to take ALL THE TIME I needed. God bless her. I stayed in communication and took 2.5 weeks. It was a very fine line to walk without coming across as a completely unprofessional goof. I opted not to bother her with the gory explanation – just politely asked for a little time. It was a very uncomfortable position to be in, but in retrospect I don’t think it could have been helped. I *thought* the ms was done (and yes, I’d already gone through significant rewrites and revisions and polishing) when I sent out the original queries.
Jess says
Okay I asked this question in comments a while back because I’ve read a lot of first-author stories where they did it and it worked, and I was wondering what made them special and under what circumstances, IF ANY, it was okay to do so. Not that I think you should or would, but out of curiosity. So thank you, Nathan, for answering.
The condescending comments are another matter.
Robert says
But my idea is a total Barney Stinson!
Suzan says
I don’t get it.
Furious D says
Ah, but that’s the beauty of my project. This novel never really ends. So far I’ve written 343,099 pages and it can be released in 1000 page “volumes” one at a time.
And by the way, it’s all told from the point of view of a character who is blind, deaf, and has no sense of touch, smell, or taste, and communicates with no one.
I don’t have a title about it yet, but everyone I mention it to, calls it “Senseless.”
Dara says
LOL. The questions people ask are funny.
That’s like one of one of the golden rules of submitting a novel–make sure the thing is finished!
Of course, there are those off the wall exceptions (like Hannah). Even if I finished the rest of my book in one night, it definitely would not be ready to submit. That takes talent. š
hannah says
Dara–I wrote the first bit of the book in six days. While I was in school full time (I was a junior in high school at the time) and in two plays. I’m *insane.* I definitely don’t recommend being like me.
Chumplet - Sandra Cormier says
I guess you were busy today, huh?
Sam Hranac says
I’m confused by the vagueness of your post, Nathan. Please try to be more direct.
Melissa says
Tune in next week for another edition of simple answers to simple questions.
Bee says
Uber-terse blog post/answer. I mean: Duh! as was so succinctly put by Madison.
emeraldcite says
Even if my idea is so good that I promise that we’ll make tons of money together and that James Patterson will be so jealous that he’ll wish that he had someone else write it for him first so that he stick his name on it in a real large font and sell tons of copies for himself, but in reality, it’s all for us?
Even if I add an evil laugh at the end?
Bwhahahaha.
Now can I submit?
**word verification word of the day: rehabin. Sounds like the next hit single from Amy Winehouse.
Not that bright, frankly says
Er… What if you sent in a query kind of on a lark in the middle of the night because of sleep deprivation induced hysteria and a huge national agent liked it, so you quickly wrote a partial and the agent liked it VERY MUCH and now she wants to see a full and you haven’t TECHNICALLY finished the full. (Because you haven’t started it. Technically.) Do you thin that would lead to a No?
And, er, what if there was, say, a month long lapse between the time the agent sent the email requesting the full and the time you actually sent back the full. Would that irritate the agent? Enough that if they ended up loving the full they’d still be too irritated to take it on?
Not that I’m in that situation. Or anything. Not that I just got said request for a full tonight.
Um.
Not that bright, frankly says
Also, what if, just THEORETICALLY, this agent said she had a month long lag time for reading fulls anyway. Would a one month lag on my end really be that noticeable?
Just theoretically of course.
And I meant think not thin.
Kristin Laughtin says
I choked on my lemonade. Awesome.
Ann Victor says
I don’t know which made me laugh more: the post or the comments! Good one!
Ali Katz says
Well, that says it all.
Thamuhacha says
Just because I *have* to ask …
The dynamic young novelist who starts a publishing war complete with six figure advances for their debut masterpiece … that they haven’t finished … how did they get into that position? Is Daddy a publisher?
It’s a sort of serious question. Take a reasonably famous example: Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth”. How do you get in that position at age 21 with only half a book? Don’t tell me that the 3 chapters made it to the top of 5 slush piles simultaneously.
Newbee says
But… what if your third cousin’s uncles, nefew wrote it? Surely that would be a exception? (LOL)
I might not know much… but, at least I know the answer to this question.
Anonymous says
Hannah….
You wouldn’t by chance be related to the person who reached a word count of one million only halfway through NaNoWriMo…..would you???
O.O
lol!
Charlotte says
Right, back to work then.
David Quigg says
Funny post that makes a clear point. But I need to dissent. At least a little.
To do it, I’m going to concoct a writer who I don’t resemble in any way. So what I’m about to write may be foolish, but it won’t be self-serving.
It’s a big world. So let’s say that somewhere in this big world there’s an old woman we’ve never heard of. She’s raising her grandchildren alone and working two jobs to keep everybody fed. For the last 15 years, she’s also been using every spare bit of energy and time to craft what is shaping up to be a behemoth of a literary masterpiece. She can’t afford a computer. So she writes at the public library.
At her current pace — with her current impediments of time, equipment, and exhaustion — she might finish the book in five years. Or maybe she’ll die first.
I hope that Nathan’s succinct “No” leaves some room for the reality that literature would be best served by an agent who considers this hypothetical writer’s unusual circumstances, reads her existing 629 manuscript pages, recognizes their extraordinary merit, and makes a deal with a publisher that yields enough cash for the writer to quit her jobs, hire a babysitter, buy a computer, and craft the balance of the novel at ten times the pace she was writing before.
Can you tell I’m not the biggest fan of rigid, absolute rules?
Diana says
Nathan, you've done Strunk & White proud.
Concision!
December/Stacia says
Why not? If you are unpublished what does that have to do with a query? It’s not like the agent wants to read the entire manuscript right then and there.
My agent enthusiastically requested the full three hours after I queried him. He offered representation two days later.
I shudder to think what his response might have been had I said the book wasn’t done.
Anonymous says
Against this advice (and general opinion in the comments) I did this with my third novel – and succeeded.
Novel no.2 got a string of rejections, but it paved the way to getting to know an agent. Though she had rejected novel no.2, she said she would be interested in future writing.
It had taken her six months to reply.
So I asked myself this – am I going to finish novel no. 3 and then wait six months for an answer, or am I going to send off the first 80 pages and get the rest finished in time for her answer?
After three weeks she replied. She loved it and wanted to see the rest.
It was a bit embarrassing telling her I hadn’t actually finished, but she understood my point – after all, I had expected to wait six months.
One year later we have undergone lengthy revisions and we are at the final polishing stage.
hannah says
12.25 Anon–no, but I did finish NaNo on day 12…
Samantha Tonge says
This has been my main mistake – i’ve always finished before subbing, as in the first draft, but haven’t taken enough time to hone and polish.
It is hard though! I think patience is a writer’s greatest asset.:)
Anonymous says
Gotta admit I know better but had a novel all but finished except for the last chapter and I just sat on it. So I figured I needed a nudge and queried just a few agents to see what sort of response I might get. Figured at worst they would ask for a partial. Immediately had three requests for the full. So there was my incentive to finish it off. Which I did that weekend. Kids don’t try this at home.
Dara says
Hannah, that’s amazing. Seriously. There aren’t many people out there like that š
I’m not talented enough to write a whole novel in that amount of time. Unless I locked myself away in my study for the entire week. Even then, I don’t think my attention span can go more than 3 hours at a time writing my novel.
I told my husband I need to lock myself away in my study this weekend to finish my book. That’s the only way it’ll get done any time soon. š
hannah says
Haha, thanks, Dara. I definitely write in bursts–if I don’t finish a first draft in a few weeks at most, I get bored and give up.
Scott says
What I meant to say was:
But it’s guaranteed to be a best seller. It’s about this vampire wizard who falls in love with a werewolf while searching for the secrets of the knights templar in the ruins of a lost pueblo in Arizona where this old guy used to live (only it’s not da Vinci, it’s Michaelangelo, who turns out to have been an actual person and not just a turtle–who knew?) with little people who look like hobbits but are actually called Rockids on account of they live in the rocks and when there’s danger around they glow red so everybody’s always looking for the rockids red glare (it’s really quite patritotic.
clindsay says
Really, you should write more of these one-word answer questions. It does tend to drive the point home in a great way. =)
Toni Kenyon says
Are you on deadline, Nathan?
Anonymous says
Nathan, I can’t decide whether your rejection is *form* or *personal*. Maybe you can add a smiley to it?
(hee, guess what I’m about to do ;))
Anonymous says
I personally know someone who’s done it and gotten an agent and Zadie Smith did it, Bock of Beautiful Children did it, Danielwski did it…I doubt that the majority of people would get away with it but it happens. Ah well.
Haste yee back ;-) says
YES you CAN QUERY if you’re unpublished and your novel isn’t finished… IF YOU’RE A CELEBRITY!
Haste yee back š
Anonymous says
tl;dr
Sheryl says
I know that this is the standard wisdom… but there is at least one YA author I know of who started her book during nanowimo (or whatever that acronym is supposed to be)… submitted the partial to a ‘top tier’ agent the following Jan ’07 and he took the partial out and sold it (2-book deal) to Delacorte. It will be released March 10th. It’s called The Forest of Hands and Teeth, author Carrie Ryan. I figure this is one helluva manuscript. I can’t wait to read it. Just sayin’…