Getting Attention

Getting Attention

A few days ago, someone came to visit whom my dog adores. While my roommate was talking with this person, I was napping in my room. I ignored Lucy’s pleasepleaseplease let me out to see them. When I finally got up, she looked at me and then began shredding a piece of paper on the floor.

Now, it is difficult to say that she was trying to get my attention, but it sure doggone felt like it.

She got attention, just not the open-the-door kind of attention she wanted, but more of the what-are-you-doing kind of attention.

As writers, we very much want the attention of an agent. There are plenty of ways to get their attention, but sometimes, it isn’t the attention you want.

The bad ways:

•         Gimmicks. This includes, but isn’t limited to: asking a rhetorical question in the query letter, sending a letter with 26 point neon orange font, or starting your query letter with dialog.
•          Breaking the rules. Example: Purposely misspelling the word green or writing an entire query letter as one giant run-on sentence.
•          Not Following Guidelines. If they say no attachments, you attach something. If they say they don’t represent young adult novels, you send them your query for a YA novel.

These ways will most certainly get you noticed, but not in a good way.

So what are the steps to get noticed in a good way?

The good ways:

•        Write something awesome.

That’s it. Plain and simple. If you want their attention, do that. It won’t work with every agent, everywhere, but guarantee, if you write something awesome, it will get noticed.

Happy Writing.