Killer Lines: 5 Things Not To Write in Your Submission Materials

We all remember the good lines. No, not good. The really killer ones. The ones you don’t ever forget, because they’ve done for your soul what delicious food does for your belly. Best of times and worst of times, one ring to rule them all, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo kind of lines.

Then there are the killer lines that I’m talking about. The comments or turns-of-phrase or sentences that are hackneyed clichés or pointless ramblings, useless facts or simply don’t make any sense. Whether in your query letter, marketing materials, biography or synopsis, these five killer lines will mutilate your chances of being published. Or being taken seriously:

ONE: Creating a Genre That Does Not Exist.
You’re a writer. You think about things in new and different ways. We appreciate that. But don’t try to create your own genre. That’s not how the game works. New genres may come about, but usually as a result of reviewers and critics calling them a new genre.

Visit your local bookstore and check out how the aisles are labeled, or look inside book’s flap and see what is listed. Literary fiction. Memoir/biography. Science. Romance. Health & Beauty. New Age. Generally two, maybe three words to describe it. Notice that you do not see any of the following (unless the bookstore owner has a sense of humor):

• A string of descriptive genres shoved together. “Dystopian sci-fi romantic comedy horror”? It may have elements of all these genres, but you need to choose the dominant genre and stick to it.
• Fictional memoir. If it’s a memoir, it’s not fiction (as James Frey has taught us).
• Non-fiction memoir. Refer to the above.
• Fiction novel. A novel is, by its definition, fiction. This is a redundancy. Don’t use it.

TWO: Unrelated Ramblings About You, You, You.
Situation A. You’re a health specialist with a focus on women’s health and you’ve written a book on menopause. Great. Let us know about it. You have a platform for your book and your background will strengthen the book’s chances from a marketing and publicity point of view. It’s valid to create an author’s biography that connects you to your writing.

Situation B. You’re a health specialist with a focus on women’s health and you’ve written a fast-paced WWII thriller about a fighter pilot who ends up in the Bermuda triangle. Unless he crash-lands in the Bermuda triangle’s only hospital and has to save a woman from the brink of death due to female ailments—and this is the major element of the novel—it’s not relevant to write several paragraphs about your experiences as a health specialist, or to give us your résumé. That doesn’t make you qualified to write a WWII thriller about a fighter pilot, nor will it help in your book’s campaign.

Include information that is brief, precise, and relevant to connect you and your book.

THREE: Referring To Yourself as a Bestselling Author… When You Aren’t.
You see it all the time. Books by bestselling authors gracing the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc. Stephen King is a bestselling author. Stephanie Meyers is a bestselling author. Eckhart Tolle is a bestselling author (thank you, Oprah). Mr. Such-and-Such with his terribly-designed website proclaiming him to be a bestselling author and his book to be a bestseller? Probably not. If you didn’t already know it, we will check your background, and your book’s numbers. Technology (such as BookScan) is amazing like that. So if you claimed to have sold 100K, and yet your book hasn’t sold one copy on Amazon.com, we’re likely to be a little suspicious.

FOUR: A Title That Would Make Any Reader Cringe.
This probably speaks for itself. With the except of the truly witty and unique who create exceptional titles with strange and/or long names that work, most titles that are irrelevant to the book’s subject, or that explain the book’s subject for seven lines, aren’t going to cut it. Have fun, but be practical: what intrigues a reader and what makes them shake their head in confusion? This is not to say that agents and publishers will not work with you to make a title more effective. But try to make it easier on them.

FIVE: Wait, What?
Misspellings. Strange grammar. Using one word when you meant to use another. Or just plain illegibility. All of these are terrible ideas and indicators to the agent or publisher that you’ve probably put as little care into your manuscript as you have into your supplementary materials. Take the effort to make everything you send clean, professional, and not full of careless errors.

These guidelines are not by any means complete, but please consider them as you are polishing up your final materials to send out to agents and publishers. It will save us all a lot of time and trouble. And as always, best of luck!