New England SCBWI – Stephen Fraser

I’m back from the New England SCBWI Conference, and I have so much to share. I’m going to take it slow, though, so check back often this week and next to hear about the people I met, the things I learned and, of course, the books I bought.

The conference opened on Friday afternoon with a keynote address by Stephen Fraser, an agent at The Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency. His overall message was comforting: a good manuscript will find a home. So just relax, make the manuscript sing, and Believe. Overly simple? Maybe. But it is an approach that appeals to me, and it is ever so much easier than sending your manuscript out with a box of caterpillar-shaped cookies.

Mr. Fraser also suggested writers perfect an “elevator pitch” for every manuscript. Suppose you were to find yourself alone with your dream editor in an elevator of your favorite publishing house. You have two minutes—the time it will take to travel from her fourteenth floor office to the lobby—to get her interested in your work. What would you say? You are going for short, succinct and utterly compelling, a single sentence that will entice your dream editor to acquire your manuscript on the spot … or at least ask to see it exclusively.

I think this is good advice, and I gave it a whirl.

(I tried to hide my “giving it a whirl” bit behind a handy LJ cut, but couldn’t make it work. If you care to read a sample elevator pitch read on. If you don’t skip to the next few paragraphs!

THE MAD MARCH is a picture book biography that introduces readers to the French entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre through the lens of some of the most vivid and accessible experiments ever conducted on insects. Readers of any age or science background will marvel at the mad march of the Fabre’s pine processionary caterpillars.

Okay, that’s two sentences, and it reads a little stiff. But in the elevator I could loosen the language a bit, flail my hands, use pens to demonstrate the amazing caterpillar experiments. The point is that this exercise forced me to focus my thoughts on the book. What is it really about? Why is it going to be important to readers? Why should an editor care about it?

Go on, try it. Write your elevator pitches. It’ll be good for you.)

Finally, Fraser recommended two books to the writers and illustrators in attendance:

THE SOUND ON THE PAGE, by Ben Yagoda

and

READING LIKE A WRITER, by Francine Prose

I’ve read the Prose book and agree it is worthy. Has anyone out there read the Yagoda title? Do you recommend it?