NB: I’m not sure if my sympathies are with J.R.R. Tolkien or with the (fictional) agent. Herbert makes some good points!!
By: Peter Cooper
Dear Mr. Tolkien,
Thank you for submitting a query for your children’s novel, “The Hobbit”. I regret to inform you that while the proposal shows merit, this agency may not be the best fit for your work.
If I might venture some feedback, your query letter needs to be improved if future submissions are to be met with success. Although well written, with some of the strongest grammar this agency has ever seen, your outline of the dilemma facing the main protagonist failed to engage me on an emotional level. You also spent far too much time talking about your professorship and expertise in Norse mythology and foreign languages. What has that got to do with anything? Tell me about your book!
On to the sample pages you supplied. From what I can see, most of your first chapter is taken up with back-story concerning “hobbits” and their unusual living arrangements. Indeed – by the end of this first chapter, the story still hasn’t started. Might I suggest commencing at a different point in the narrative? Your best bet would be to open with Bilbo in the grip of the Trolls, and gradually, as the tale progresses, present the back-story of how he came to be there. This will grab your young reader’s attention from the start, enticing them to read further while moving the story along at a much quicker pace.
As for the main protagonist – is it likely that children will relate to a fifty-something man with hairy feet who lives in a pit? Might I suggest making Bilbo younger and perhaps a tad less hairy? How about having him as a young tear-away living in his parent’s attic, perhaps escaping one night by tying his bed-sheets together, that sort of thing. This demonstration of a rebellious attitude and a desire for personal empowerment will far better capture the imagination of a young reader than a middle-aged man running off without a pocket-handkerchief. Trust me.
This might be a good place to mention the apparent gender imbalance in the work. There would appear to be just a slight deficiency of female characters in the story. To put this another way, there are none – zilch – zero. There are men with hairy feet, men with long beards, men with pipes, men who can see in the dark – there are even men who can turn into bears. There are men of every size, shape and smoking habit imaginable, but the closest you come to a female character is the inclusion of several slightly effeminate elves. This just won’t cut it in today’s publishing world. If you want to attract a female audience, you must include strong female role-models. My suggestion would be to make the wizard a woman. Gandalina has a nice ring to it. But lose the beard.
A final comment – the conclusion of your story is far from satisfactory. Having brought Bilbo across miles of uncharted wilderness and ever-present danger, someone else kills the dragon! I can already hear the wails of your young readers, devastated at such a radical deviation from accepted norms of children’s literature. I for one will not subject them to such a trial.
I wish you all the very best for your future submissions. Remember, publication is a highly subjective business, and one person’s trash may indeed be another person’s gold.
Yours Sincerely,
Herbert T. Agent
Jenn says
Very entertaining. This is why we query, query, query!
Love it. Along the lines I was thinking with my guest blog (funny, ironic, but sadly realistic).
Thanks for sharing!
PurpleClover says
What she said! hehe.
CKHB says
God, I loved reading The Hobbit in third grade… back, fiendish editors! BACK!
Rick Daley says
I bow down to your wit. This was priceless! I would add in a bunch of Tolkien references, but I used mine up yesterday.
Dara says
LOL!
I'm thinking many of our literary classics would get the same in today's market. What would've worked 50 years ago wouldn't work now. It's interesting to see how our literary tastes have evolved.
RW says
Hilarious and a good reminder that most of the rules of good writing that got thrown in our faces don't stand up to a few minutes thinking.
T. Anne says
LOL! The sad truth is, he just might have received such a rejection in today's market and you know what? That makes me feel just a little bit better 😉
Well done.
Irishspartan1775 says
I thought this was very entertaining. On the other hand, it may point to something wrong with the publishing industry.
Agents are wonderful, and without them most of the books I have read in the last 6 months may not have been published (all of them were written by new/slightly unknown authors), but are there some agents who would reject a query/partial if it were written as well as some of the classics?
Perhaps the rise of e-publishing will add a new dimension to the publishing industry that might allow more opportunity for slower burning classics to emerge.
frohock says
Like I said the first time I saw this post, Peter: nicely done! 😉
Teresa
bethanyintexas says
This was hysterical. I laughed. Very witty. Good job!
Thermocline says
I played Bifur the dwarf in the stage version of The Hobbit back in sixth grade. The girls in the show had to wear the same itchy fake beard as the rest of us. None of them appreciated that fact.
Mira says
Very clever post. I especially liked the last line about trash to gold. Funny!
Kudos to Nathan, too, for picking an entry that in a sly, witty way points to some interesting issues in the industry.
Laura Martone says
I have such mixed feelings about this post. On the one hand, Peter, you had me laughing hysterically – your wit is indeed apparent, and I very much enjoyed the irony of such a modern agent response to a book that I still consider a classic. But, on the other hand, it made me just a wee bit sad… this is exactly what's wrong with publishing today. While I still love The Hobbit (it's one of my all-time favorite books, and one of the reasons that I was inspired to pursue a writing career) and reread it often, I am well aware that it violates the laundry list of narrative "rules" that many contemporary agents and editors put forth on their blogs and elsewhere.
Unfortunately, I write like the writers of old… and I'm finding it difficult to get with the times.
Regardless, this is a classic post – thanks, Peter, for submitting it to Nathan… and thanks, Nathan, for selecting it. I find it hilarious that it came on the heels of all those LOTR references yesterday.
–Laura
Regina Milton says
Very witty. Thank you indeed. This had me laughing…and thinking. The industry can be just a bit unpredictable. Fortitude my friends, fortitude.
Bill Barnett says
Very funny! Really makes you think.
Renee Sweet says
Hilarious – well done!
Reminds me of a post at Miss Snark where she basically said to never, never, NEVER do things x, y, and z…unless you do them like that.
All this advice floating around on the internet is good, valuable, and should be heeded–but as a guide. If you can absolutely rock something by breaking the rules then break them.
AM says
Peter,
I really, really, really needed that!
Hilarious and so true.
Well done!
Novice Writer Anonymous says
That was good.
Made me think of what Orson Scott Card said in the book he penned on characters and viewpoint about how Rings and Hobbit were milieu works, more focused on the setting than the characters. I really do wonder if Tolkien would have the success at publishing today that he had when he published.
Livia says
Brilliant, hilarious, and thought provoking. Thank you 🙂
Elaine 'still writing' Smith says
Herbert have you considered setting up a Blog and offering other such pieces of insightful advice? I believe there is a market for it.
****** superlatives here – I laughed out loud. Thanks Peter.
knight_tour says
Ouch. This one really hit home for me. I find that my tastes don't fall in line with the rules of today's industry. All of my favorite books break the basic rules that populate all of the agent and editor blogs. I wrote my book the way I like it, yet because it follows the old styles, I don't even bother to try to find an agent for it. I already know what they will say. At least my kids love it though.
Christine says
I have to agree with Dara, having spent the last several weeks trying to read JANE EYRE–another "children's book," mind you–and finding it a very hard row to hoe.
But I also agree with Laura Martone, when she says she has mixed feelings about the post. There is a lot of fiction out there that is very good. There is a lot of advice out there about making your work saleable, and it breaks every rule in classical literature. This may or may not be a bad thing.
But I can also say I've read a lot of good recent stuff that has broken every agent's rule, and still gets sold, to rave reviews. I guess my real question is, how do these gems slip through the slush pile?
Anna says
Great post! Gives me hope… :)))
Bane of Anubis says
Like those papery Guiness folks say: Brilliant! Now, if only I could get that much feedback on my queries 😉
Matilda McCloud says
LOVE IT!!! very funny…
But in defense of agents, sometimes I go back and reread classics I read as a kid (Black Beauty etc) and wonder why I loved them so much. I find them virtually unreadable now.
Tara says
LOL! I may have to frame this and put it on my wall! Thanks for sharing.
Melanie Avila says
This is teh awesome. Thanks for the laugh. 🙂
Rebecca says
This is a wonderfully entertaining post.
Wit and humor int eh highest order.
Anonymous says
Ha! Thank you. I know this is a bit tongue in cheek, but I think you hit on all the reasons I couldn't stand "The Hobbit" as a 13 year old girl.
Deniz Bevan says
Ha! As if! I'm a female; I read The Hobbit when I was 10, and have reread it every year since then. Just because I was young and a girl, did that mean all I wanted to read about were young girls? Heck no! I wanted to go on adventures – as long as I could empathise with the protagonist, what did it matter whether he was 50 or 15? And I love all the languages!
Great agent letter, however 🙂 I'm sure in today's world (can anyone say we've actually progressed?) this is exactly what would have happened!
Anonymous says
Oh, how I wish the publisher's would read this post.
Anonymous says
Ugh, publishers I meant. Stupid typos or rather stupid typist.
Tricia J. O'Brien says
Hilarious post! Times change and we do change our tastes, but the one thing that will probably always find an audience is a writer who can deliver the magic of story. That's what each of us can concentrate on–our voice, our particular magic–and hope we do it well enough to captivate an agent, an editor and many readers.
Keren David says
Umm…absolutely hated The Hobbit as a child, for many of the reasons stated by the astute agent! And don't get me started on Lord of the Rings…
Jade says
Fantastic, funny post. This has really made me see The Hobbit in a different light… and all those years I thought it was so good!
Marla Warren says
Wonderful! I have to send the link for this post to number of people.
And the timing is great because the Peter Jackson film adaptation is currently in production.
Meg Spencer says
Hm. Interesting how many of the comments assume that The Hobbit would only have a hard time finding publication in these modern times. A quick internet search says that the Hobbit was finished in 1932 and wasn't published until 1937, when the son of a publisher got a hold of it and liked it. After the Hobbit, publishers turned down the Silmarillion because it didn't have hobbits in it.
As for the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien had a number of publishing disputes over it. It's fairly common knowledge that he didn't want it released in three parts, and that he hated the title of the third book.
So while this is a funny post, the conclusion that it shows how modern publishers are daft and writers should stick to their guns and forget all those silly rules strikes me as fairly misguided. One, this letter could EASILY have been written 100 years ago. And two, breaking the rules might have worked for Tolkien, but how many of us are Tolkien? I don't think that Nathan has ever insisted that rules should never be broken, but that they are rules for a reason, and it's very important to be absolutely sure you can pull off breaking the rules before you do it. The Hobbit could easily have failed in the hands of a lesser writer.
CindyLou Foster says
Very humorous, but unrealistic. Tolkein would be getting the chirping cricket treatment or if he did get a response it would have read like this…
Dear Mr. Tolkien,
Thank you for your query. Unfortunately it is not right for our agency. Best of luck.
Dear Mr. Smith,
Thank you for your query…
Pamala Knight says
So hilarious!! What an awesome post. Thank you Nathan for choosing it.
Laurel says
This is the funniest thing I have read in aeons. I find myself re-reading classics or even twenty to thirty year old bestsellers and wondering if they would get published now. I certainly hope so…
The thing about The Hobbit is that if it had never been published there is a huge genre in lit that might not exist. (Although CS Lewis wrote in a similar niche but completely different style.) So maybe even today it would make it through based on the fact that it was completely different from everything else. It's weird to think of what might have been with no Tolkein. Would we have had Peter S. Beagle or Charles DeLint or David Eddings? And if so, what would they have written? Hmmmmm.
Anonymous says
I think the onslaught of comments speaks for itself. The audience wants funny. This post…was funny.
Nikki Hootman says
I missed out on the Hobbit as a kid, and my husband pressed me to read it a couple of years ago. Actually, I felt basically the way this agent does. 😉
Christina G. says
lol. I totally gave up reading The Hobbit when they were only sitting down to tea on page 30.
Kiersten says
Tee. Hee.
That's all : ) Well done.
Kristan says
LOL! No wonder I haven't bothered to read The Hobbit yet…
jjdebenedictis says
To be fair to the fictional agent, the lack of active female characters in Tolkien's work really did annoy me, when I read them.
Girls want butt-kicking role models too!
jonathandanz says
Great stuff! It would seem that there is a classic case of story trumping all else. Conventions are nice guidelines (open with action, weave in back story, sparing use of adverbs), but be leery of adhering to them at the cost of good storytelling. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to wipe the tears from my eyes.
Ash D. says
Ha! Funny stuff!
(I LOVE The Hobbit, LOTR, The Silmarillion, and basically everything else ever created by Tolkien, by the way…)
Marilyn Peake says
Ouch. That rejection letter made me cringe. I read THE HOBBIT in high school and absolutely loved it, just the way it was. I’m so very thankful that the classics are now classics and, hopefully, will remain unedited forever. When I saw all three movies of THE LORD OF THE RINGS, I thought how awesome a story. The main women characters were among the strongest and bravest of the characters, and I thought about them as well as the men for months afterward. In a time when women didn’t go to war, Eowyn dressed up like a man, went into battle and killed the Witch-king of Angmar, Lord of the Nazgul. She was no shrinking violet, that’s for sure. If I may use the words of Gandalf, and apply them to classics that make you think as you read:
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither
Deep roots are not reached by frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken:
The crownless again shall be king.
Anonymous says
Today I coincidentally set aside a couple of hours to catch up on last year´s First Paragraph Contest, which I hadn´t had time for before. Note to self: be sure to include long paragraph on pipe smoking in prologue. Not.
Sigh.
Those were the days.
And yes, it IS important to reference LOTR not only in every blog post, but also in your term paper, job application, email signature, income tax form…