DENTON WRITERS LEAGUE

JULY TOPIC: NEW SLATE OF OFFICERS.

The 2001-2002 officer team is stepping down.

The membership must come forth with a new officer-team.

Nominations will be held in the July meeting.  Come prepared to volunteer for office to keep this valuable organization running.

Jim Cline, CTO and Vice-President and Carol Woods, Senior Editor of Timberwolf Press were the speakers at June's meeting. They spoke on the workings of Timberwolf Press and how to grab a publisher attention.

Before you submit to a publisher, check the writer's market or their website for their submission guidelines. Submission packages vary, but they all contain a query letter and one, two or all of the following: outline, synopsis, selected chapters of the manuscript or the whole manuscript. The query letter is the first and sometimes the only thing that a publisher will read of your submission packet. Not only does it have grab their attention and make them want to dig further into your submission packet, but the outline, synopsis, and manuscript need to keep their attention. The query letter is composed of three sections: 1) What the manuscript is about? 2) What are your credentials (why are you the only one who could write this book)? 3) Why this manuscript will sell? The outline or synopsis should introduce the characters and hit only the key action points. Whereas the synopsis usually written in full grammatically correct sentence, an outline does not need to be in full sentences. Bullet points hitting the highlights of the action and introduction of the characters will suffice. If they do make it to your chapter or whole manuscript part of the submission, the first sentence of your manuscript should grab the reader's attention and leave them wanting to read more. Two things that you should never do is act arrogant or submit a packet with typos or misspelled/misused words.

In answering questions from the members, some suggestion for helping you write a better book were offered. Number one was critique groups followed by writer's groups, conferences, credit or non-credit classes, and trusted advisors. Critique groups offer good feedback and can find gaps and holes in your story that you cannot see because you are too familiar with the story. When you leave a critique group, you must still be excited about your story. If you aren't, then the group is not right for you. If you find yourself at an impasse, sit down and write your synopsis as if the is finished. It will help you work through the place in the story that has you stumped.

Other writer's groups:
Greater Dallas Writer's Association-http://gdwa.org/
Lesser Dallas Writer's Association-contact Carol Woods carol@timberwolfpress.com for more information.

Timberwolf Press submission guidelines are as follows:

Send the following to: submissions@timberwolfpress.com.

An email query letter. Query letters should be brief and to the point. If you cannot summarize your work in one page, you need to spend more time refining your query letter.

A synopsis. The synopsis should describe the book at a "strategic" level. It should provide an overview of the story-line, along with a sense of who your characters are and their motivations.

An outline. This is a "Joe-Friday" outline. Just the facts. No prose allowed. If it takes the author more than an hour to write the outline, then something is wrong. The outline will help Timberwolf evaluate the pacing of the story, since we will write a script based on it for the Audio Theatre adaption.

The first three and last chapters (if completed) of the manuscript.

Optional: Character sketches. A character sketch is generally a one page description of each of your *major* characters that should read like a dossier.

All submission should be in standard manuscript format in MS WORD. If you are not sure what standard format is, please use the Template.doc file as a guide.

Note: Timberwolf Press will not consider any work for which any of the publishing rights have been assigned to another publisher. Simply put, all Audio, Video, Movie, Game, Print, etc. rights must be available.