Tag: Please Don’t

Tips from the Slush Pile: Do not compare skin color to food. It’s not appropriate and some find it rather offensive. There are plenty of other colors in the world without using food and those options could also prove useful for conveying tone and character. A pretty, red-haired woman might have hair the color of […]

Tips From The Slush Pile: Just…why?? So I’m reading the newly submitted queries and pages, tracking some of the things I’ve mentioned in the past, living my best life, really. Then I get to a query where the author doesn’t talk much about their book (sadly, fairly typical), but does quote Mark Zuck’s 2017 mission […]

Shadow Mountain’s slush pile is open! And you know what that means… Tips from the Slush Pile! Please don’t have your character break the 4th wall to introduce themselves. It’s happening so often, it’s becoming cliche. I’m not even halfway through the slush and already the tally for this sort of opening is the highest […]

Tips from the Slush Pile: Do not have your character describe themselves while looking in a mirror. Just…don’t. I’ve lost count of the manuscripts I’ve read where this happens, usually in the first 10 pages. And if it’s not a mirror, it’s reflective surface of some sort. There are better ways, people. Your character could […]

Tips from the Slush Pile: Make sure you are submitting a clean document, with no comments or edits left visible. I’ve mentioned this before. I’m telling you again. Why? Because the Slush Pile is open this week. There are currently 200 manuscripts in there, waiting to be evaluated. You want to put your best foot […]

In honor of the slush pile opening this week, I’m giving you a Tip from Slush Pile: Please, please, please, for the love of all things chocolate-covered, double-check your query salutation line. If you personalized your query with a real person’s name, great! Just make sure you are using the *correct* name for this particular […]

Tips from the Slush Pile: Know the expected word count range for your genre. Middle Grade varies around 30k-50k. Romance sits pretty at around 75k. Epic Fantasy gets hefty with 90k fairly typical, frequently tipping into 100k. However, 630,000 words is not a book. It is an entire series. (Ironically, it was pitched as the […]

Tips from the Slush Pile: Don’t start with “It was a dark and stormy night…” Just…don’t. Because stories that do this inevitably go on to say well, no it wasn’t that stormy and it was actually the middle of the afternoon and quite sunny. It’s not funny and most importantly, it’s not original. I see […]