One somewhat common refrain among queriers is, “This has never been done before!” or a related espousing of the belief that their novel is completely unlike anything that has ever been written.
This is almost never true. And what unfortunately ends up happening is that whenever someone says, “This has never been done before!” I immediately take it as a challenge and start thinking of the times it has been done before.
The queries below are made up, but they’re close to the mark. Here’s how these claims tend to go and what I start thinking:
Query: “There’s never been a bestselling novel written in the second person!!”
Me: Thinking…. thinking… THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST!!
Query: “No one has ever explained the history of philosophy in novel form.”
Me: SOPHIE’S WORLD!
Query: “No one has ever written a novel in Twitter form!”
Me: Just sold!
According to Google Books there have been 168,178,719 books published in the English language. In words (even more impressive) that’s one hundred sixty eight million one hundred seventy eight thousand seven hundred nineteen books published.
In the immortal words of Roger Sterling after Guy Mackendrick’s foot was run over by a riding lawnmower in the office of Sterling Cooper on Sunday’s episode of Mad Men: “Believe me, somewhere in this business, this has happened before.”
Now, I definitely understand that each book is unique: every single one of those 168 million books was different in its own way. Even the plagiarized ones!
And we agents do stress, with good reason, that it’s important to know how your novel will stand out among the books that are already out there. That might mean a fresh take, a unique setting, an interesting character, an original style. There is absolutely a premium on originality, and every once in a generation a new genre is created almost completely from scratch.
But it’s important to recognize the extent to which every novel draws upon traditions that have come before and to be well read enough to know where your novel stands among the popular ones in your genre. Even very unique novels draw upon a rich literary tradition and have their influences and predecessors. When an author immodestly declares “This has never been done before!” it makes it seem as if the author is unaware of the books that have come before that are similar to theirs, and makes the agent wonder why the author doesn’t seem to know about them.
It isn’t important that you write a novel that has never even remotely been done before. What’s important is that you write it well.
If a riding lawnmower appears in act one, someone's foot has to be mutilated by act three.
They say "this has never been done before", but they forgot to add the phrase, "by me" 🙂
Hmmm. Well. Maybe this is a form of heresy, but I sort of don't get why an author needs to be well-read.
In fact, personally, I'd rather not read anything similar to what I'm about to write. I deliberately stay away from humor books, for example. I don't want them to influence my style and result in unconscious plagerism.
As for orginiality, I am not going to create a new genre. But I do have some ideas that are pretty darn original. They are. Of course, not being extremely well-read, I could be wrong, and they are a dime a dozen, but being me, I'm going to assume I'm right, and they are pretty fresh ideas.
But I would not put that in a query letter. Well, not for fiction. For non-fiction, I think they want you to talk about how your proposal is different than what's on the market. But that's different than starting a new genre, or having a very new take on things.
For fiction, I would let the idea speak for itself.
When you say 'somewhat common,' could you provide a rough statistic?
Overall (and conversely), just sorta curious about the percentage of queries you receive that seem like they come from people who understand the game.
Mira-
I think you just inspired a future You Tell Me: can you be a good writer without being well-read?
I'm not so sure.
I’ve heard such comments as well, which usually lead me to believe that the person either doesn’t read much or missed a similar book. "There is nothing new under the sun" applies to both human actions and literature. 🙂
Great advice, something my mentor has been drilling at me for quite some time. At first, I was discouraged because I wanted to be completely original but the originality is in the telling.
BofA-
Lately I'd say less than 25% of the queries I receive are from people who understand the game.
Since you brought it up…I laughed an unseemly amount about the riding lawnmower tragedy…"no golf!"
Nathan – I'm honored to have inspired you, even in a somewhat negative sense, and I'm stunned at how quickly you read. I barely refreshed the page! 🙂
Maybe it depends upon what you write. I'd be interested in people's thoughts too.
Wow – sorry to hear that (I was expecting much, much higher, particularly given all the available resources).
Has a Facebook novel been done before this collaborative chick lit novel on Slate?
https://www.facebook.com/SavingFace
I know collaborative novels of one sort or another have been done, and chick lit has certainly been done, but I guess I'm just jealous I'm not finding thousands of people to help me write my novel! 😉
Guy can't be an executive if he can't play golf. Poor Guy. He was such a winning, yes man.
Can I get me one of those Dr. Pepper machines?
Also, I am fully embracing my unoriginality thank you very much.
Wishy, my wife told me about this the other day — what a great idea (one I'd definitely never come up with) if you're willing to compromise your story and 'vision' (whatever that may be) — you already have a built in readership who feels like they've got a lot invested.
I would bet that most of the 25% have visited this site. Thanks for the effort, Nathan.
Word Verification: SCRATIC – the unfortunate condition one experiences when quickly removing undergarments from the dryer, and then sitting in traffic for an hour.
Cary
http://www.insidethehedges.com
Totally love the Mad Men. Completely in love.
…but, can't decide if the whole window washing/blood, sponge, squeegee episode was brilliant, or disgusting.
The part of me that thinks it was pretty gross is trying not to think about it too much.
I'd love to see a you tell me about whether or not writers need to be well read.
Eric: Chekhov's Lawnmower? I like it!
I've got something that's never been done before: a 210K memoir about an elephant's time in the circus, told entirely in the past-passive second person by a one-eyed monkey with melanoma and an unfortunate banana aversion.
Unfortunately nobody's who's tried to read it manages to stay awake though the first six pages of the dedication.
Some things have never been done, and some things just shouldn't be done.
Ok so this one has never been done before, it the memoir of Hitler's Hamster who feels torn between his owner's actions and the need to eat. What is a hamster to do? This book examines good, evil and the metaphoric and literal hamster wheel we're all on.
Thanks for the great advice Nathan.
This makes me laugh because I'm so the other way. I don't think of myself as all that creative, so I figure, if I could think of it, it must have already been done at least a thousand times. I'm shocked out of my socks when someone (agent, author) tells me that my work is unique or original. (Which has happened a lot in the last two weeks.) I'm running out of socks.
BoA – Do you follow Janet Reid's query shark blog? The queries she dissects come from people who found her through that blog. You would expect that before they submitted their query to her (and subjected themselves to public humiliation) they would have read the rules of a good query, and would have read through her examples (there's over 100). But somehow the queries are still crazy and terrible. People are using her blog to send queries for novels that are 250,000 words. It's astonishing how people can have information in front of them and not utilize.
That said, I also think that queries are tricky and require some practice to get them right. Like writing, the best thing is read other people's queries and see what works and what doesn't. What leaves you confused. And what leaves you begging for more.
Just remember–even Shakespeare wasn't original half the time. He "rebooted" a ton of older stories.
Just because it's been done before, doesn't mean you can't do it in a fresh way :).
Ulysses, Lol.
Nathan, I realized I sort of missed your point. When you said that there are no original ideas, I immediately felt reversed challenged. Like, oh yeah. Let me tell you about THIS one. 🙂
But your point – that originality is not the crucial element either in the quality or the marketability of book is a good one. I like that you're writing about this, because it lets people off the hook. We don't have to be ground-breaking, just well-written, with a fresh take.
Being well-read is not about knowing if you ideas are fresh. It's about absorbing how the English language works, having a conversation with writers who have come before you, and being challenged by new ideas.
Want to be a good writer? Write, read, read, write, read, read, read. Repeat.
Mira and Nathan,
Really interesting discussion! Nathan, I hope you do run a You Tell Me: can you be a good writer without being well-read?
Personally, I think writers need to be well-read, although I’m sure there are a few geniuses who aren’t well-read and nevertheless write a literary masterpiece because they possess some very powerful storytelling gene or something. It’s probably also possible to have a natural talent for language and such a unique idea that it doesn’t matter whether or not the author’s well-read. For most writers, however, I think the art of storytelling soaks into their neural pathways through the reading of many books.
On the other hand, until recently, I wouldn’t read novels while I was actually in the process of writing a novel because I didn’t want to be influenced by a different style. Now that I know what my own style is, I read even when I’m in the process of writing my own novel. I remember seeing Norman Mailer interviewed years ago, saying that he never read other books while he was writing his own, but caught up on his reading after he completed the book he was writing.
Elizabeth Kostova includes an incredible amount of background information about vampires, Bram Stoker’s DRACULA, the Ottoman Empire, Europe, and so on in her vampire novel, THE HISTORIAN. Stephenie Meyer has said that she refused to read anything at all about vampires before writing the TWILIGHT series, so that she wouldn’t be influenced by other vampire stories. Personally, I think THE HISTORIAN is a much richer book, full of symbolism, history and legend.
Authors do need to be well read. Every professional stands on the shoulders of his predecessors whether he knows or acknowledges it.
That said, I also refrain from reading too much while actively writing because I know I need to work through my own story problems.
Of course everything's been done before, didn't the Beatles say so?
There is nothing new under the sun. Even in neuroscience, which is supposed to be the new scientific frontier of 21st century (or something), it's remarkable how often we think of a cool idea, and then some older researcher goes "Oh yeah, someone did all these experiments in the 80's." The only thing that saves us is the fact that we have new pretty brain scanning machines.
I really like what you say today, Nathan
Being well read. in my opinion, opens our minds to so many lives we do not have time to explore in our own alloted span. It instills the feeling and rhythm of good writing, opens new vistas, expands vocabulary. One can always learn from others instead of starting from the beginning and making mistakes previously worked through;discover what works and what does not.
Why stumble about in the dark? See with the light of others, then go out and shine your own.
I think the last comment really hammers it home-
"It isn't important that you write a novel that has never even remotely been done before. What's important is that you write it well."
I'm plastering that on Post Its all over my desk. Really.
BTW, for what it's worth (insert snickering here), I'll add that I do think one should be well-read in order to write effectively. When I get jammed up with my writing, I scoop up something unread from the immense pile next to my desk. Hearing the different voices that come from other writers, seeing the characters from someone else's head and feeling the textures that go with their conflicts almost always helps me along. And not in a way that I'd lift, consciously or otherwise. It just helps me find a groove.
Just my 2/c. Reading well is a bit different than reading often. What's the definition of "well-read"?
Nathan!! I'm glad you posted your examples because this has confused me. Is TRF really second person? I know he says you because he is talking to the guy, but he is still telling his story, like "I did this, I studied here, I got this job." Jhumpa Lahiri does a similar thing in her last story in Unaccostomed Earth–where it starts with "You…" but it is like she is telling it to her lover. I thought second person was "You go into the room, it's dark, you turn on a light…"
Now I'm confused!! Please help. 🙂
P.S. Thanks for keeping the anon funtion so I don't have to telegraph my stupidity.
Quote from Hemingway, somewhat relevant to the discussion: "If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water."
confused-
Yeah, I think it's second person. It's a restrained second person and he's easy on the "you"s, but he's telling the story to someone.
I like knowing that books fit into an existing fabric of literature. I think if you are too far out in one direction, you might be excellent, but have trouble getting published. (I can think of a few authors like L'Engle that might have been ahead of their time.) It's good to know where you fit, as a writer.
I'm with Marilyn.
Nathan, I'm looking forward to that edition of You tell me.
Megan, RE: JR's queryshark — she also posts the worst or best(IHO) queries she receives without giving statistical numbers to how many she receives in total, so it's hard to know the statistical breakdown…
Going sideways, what defines well-read?
I would think it would be difficult to write well without being well-read. More importantly, if you didn't love books then I'm not sure why you'd be drawn to writing them in the first place. That being said, I don't read the same genre while I'm writing an ms – so as to avoid undue influence.
I would also like to take a second and congratulate regular commenter Rick Daley on getting an agent – yeah!!!
Rick Daley got an agent? I hadn't heard. Way to go, Rick!! Congratulations!!
Yes, I've been waiting for Rick to post so I can say: yippee!
He was so smart in how he got his MG agent, too. But that's his story.
Well, hopefully he's reading, and so I can add congratulations!!
But I thought that second person wasn't telling it to someone but where you actually are the main character.
Like this: "As you walk up the hill, you realize that the atmosphere's just too quiet. There's no sound from the cardinal you know is almost always singing from the top of the maple tree. You think you see a shadow move high up on the slope, but when you look again it's gone. You shudder as you feel a silent threat pass over you. You feel cold, like a cloud just passed over the sun."
(https://home.mchsi.com/~webclass/POV%20samples.htm)
Now you've got me thinking…
I could be wrong, but my understanding is that second person is just a mode of speech whether you're talking to someone directly or using it to create a "you" as protagonist.
This has never been done before is a classic oversell. Its cousins are:
The next bestseller
and
Like Twilight/DaVinci/Harry Potter
wvs: wometer-the measure of how much a query claim makes the agent say, "Whoa. Pass on this one."
I always thought of 2nd person like anon does — e.g., The Choose Your Own Adventure stories.
But were it a story written mainly addressing the reader, I could see that being 2nd person, too… I'm a bit confuddled, too, anon.
I'm sure as between the two of us you would be right–that's why I asked! I think maybe my understanding of second person was too limited.
I just googled it and the author calls it a monologue:
"For me, writing a novel is like solving a puzzle. I try many different things and see what works. So my first draft was an utterly spare, utterly minimalist third person. A later draft was straight-up first person, but with an oral cadence and an American accent. I found the voice I was looking for, and the frame of the dramatic monologue, very close to the end of the writing process. As I was writing that version, I could feel that the puzzle had been solved and that this would be the final draft."
(https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000068281)
Thanks for indulging me!
Well, they didn't include the Reluctant Fundementalist, but Wikipedia has a whole list of novels and other works written from 2nd person narrative:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-person_narrative
It's so easy to get wrapped up in trying to force originality (what type of spaceship/super power/dwarf beard/fleck of eye color) and lose sight of the core of the story has to be interesting. Originality in trappings doesn't make up for a lack of substance. Pretty decorations won't cover hollowness.
Okay, wait a minute here… Why would you need to state the obvious if it's really "never been done before"? I'd think the work would speak for it's self. Maybe I'm wrong on this one. I don't know? But, the fact someone would make a comment like this, leads me to believe the author is delusional.
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I read a completely different genre from what I write in typically because my "voice" gets garbled when I get too far into the story I'm reading. I've actually been really getting into non-fiction and philosophy books lately. (Ie. "Einstein's Space and Van Gogh's Sky" is what is next up.) Maybe I lack discipline, but my characters aren't as distinct when I'm reading other books. I keep intending to read in-between completing projects, but with rewriting and more writing… in-between isn't happening.
I don't mind when books are similar to other books… it's much easier to recommend a book that way.
Seriously, I love your advice. You're so generous to offer it all the time.
I think all anyone really wants to publish or read is a really well-written book.
Thanks again!
Even "money for old tropes" has been done to death.