Writing Excuses Transcripts

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/18-02-an-interview-with-dongwon-song/ 

 

Key points: Publishing is about providing context for the story. Positioning. The story about the story. As a published author, you have your writing job, the craft, and you have your professional author job, hitting deadlines, negotiating, networking, marketing yourself. Why did you write this book? Why is this important to you? Why is this your story to tell?

 

[Season 18, Episode 2]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] An Interview with DongWon Song.

[Erin] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

 

[Mary Robinette] One of the things that we wanted to do is take a little bit of time and help you all get to know us. We have been doing this for a long time at this point. While you got the quick introduction to us in that first episode of the year, we wanted to take some time and do a little bit of a deeper dive into the backgrounds of each of us so that you understand kind of what we bring to the table, but, more specifically, how our lens can help you. So, DongWon, you and I have known each other for a very long time.

[DongWon] Indeed.

[Mary Robinette] So I want to start with the version of you that I met first, which was the editor version. Because you've gone through several reinventions. So, what do you think, like, when you think about yourself as an editor and approaching writing? Like, what are the lenses that being an editor in specific do you think allows you to look at the work?

[DongWon] Yeah. I mean, I think being an editor was a real education. By that, I mean working inside a big five publisher as an editor. For me, that was a real education and how to think about putting books into the world. Right? So, for me, publishing as an industry, as an activity, as a goal is so much about providing context for the story. Providing context for the thing that you, the audience, are about to read. I remember when I interviewed for the editorial job at Orbit, I was interviewing with the publisher there, Tim Holman. It was one of the most stressful 45 minutes of my entire life. He asked me a series of questions that I not only didn't know how to answer, I didn't understand the questions he was asking me. Because the first thing he said was, "What's a book that you think has been published well recently?" I talked about like, "Oh, I liked this book." Or "I liked that cover." Or "I liked that marketing." He's like, "Nonononono. None of that is what I'm asking. What's been published well?" What I realized eventually, after years of working for him, what he meant by that. It was just the holistic synthesis of the whole thing. What's the positioning? What's the story that we're telling about this story? So, I think the thing that I bring to the table from my editorial experience is not just the mechanics of like how to structure things, how to fix a sentence, how to do this, that, and the other. It's how do we frame this whole thing? How do we think about the book as it is in a way that we can package it, we can communicate it, and we can pitch it for a broader audience?

 

[Mary Robinette] I love that. I love that holistic approach idea. Which is actually a nice segue to the next piece that I wanted you to talk about a little bit, because there's your professional identity, but then there's also you as a person. After I got to know you as an editor, I got to know you as a friend. You've also gone through some reinvention as a friend, as well. So I was wondering if you could tell people a little bit about the aspects of yourself that are perhaps not obvious with just voice?

[DongWon] Yeah. I think one thing that I have found over the course of my career is starting to understand the ways in which my own context influences the kind of stories that I'm interested in, the way I think about publishing, the way I think about story. Just for clarity, so everybody's on the same page, I'm transgender. I'm trans fem non-binary, I use they/them pronouns. I'm also Korean American. So I'm bringing those perspectives as a marginalized person in a predominantly white, predominantly sexed industry. There's some friction around that. Right? It gives me a certain perspective. It gives me a certain interest in the kinds of fiction I work with and the kinds of perspectives that I enjoy seeing on the page, I enjoy working with, and that I want to see more of in the industry. So that is a thing that informs not just what I'm excited about, but also how I think about story. Right? Coming from a background where I'm interested in different narrative traditions, where I kind of grew up with a different cultural context, I think that gives me a sense of other modes of storytelling, other modes of engaging with the world. I can sort of come at certain types of stories with a little bit more of a critical perspective. When I say critical, I don't mean that in a negative way, but in a way that I… With that parallax of my perspective, I can see difference and I can see different aspects of the story then I think a more homogenous industry could. For me, I think that's a real asset to finding fiction that really stands out, that really has that perspective that is very novel and exciting and engaging.

 

[Erin] That actually makes me think of a question, which is you've talked a little bit about how your identity changes the way that you negotiate story or that you think of story. What about the industry itself? Like, how do you think your own identity and your journey has… Gives you a different perspective, if it does, on the actual publishing industry?

[DongWon] Yeah. I'm a literary agent for a lot of reasons. I enjoy the life, I enjoy the work, I love advocating for writers. But one of those reasons is I get to be pretty independent. I work with an agency. It's a pretty small group. But my structure with them is… I'm 1099 with them, I'm not employed by them in a direct way. I don't work for a big multinational corporation which is what you're doing if you're working for a traditional publisher. That means that I get to work on the books that I want to work on. I get to advocate for the writers I want to advocate with. I don't need approval from anybody to take something on that I think is worthwhile. There's a lot of risks to that, right? I often find myself ice skating uphill sometimes trying to get a certain project over the finish line. But for me, that's really exciting and really engaging. So I think my role in the industry has been shaped a little bit by the friction of being a person of color, being queer, in this industry. I have found a way to carve out a space for myself. But that really feels like a thing that I had to do, I had to chip that out. I had to carve that out. I had to push back and kind of fight for my little corner here. I love it. I loved doing it. I love the space that I am in. But it took work to build that and make room for myself, so that I can now make room for other people.

 

[Dan] Now I've got a question for you. The… We've had you as an instructor on the Writing Excuses retreat several times. So I worry that some of our listeners are hearing you talk about how to package a book, how to present a book to booksellers, and things like that, and are worried that it is so long… That for an aspiring writer, that you… That that's a concern so far down the road as to be immaterial right now. But you've proven over and over again on the retreat that you have a lot to say to the brand-new, little baby aspiring author as well. Can you talk about how you can adapt what you learned publishing wise to the very early career author?

[DongWon] Yeah. It's a little bit of a trick, because one thing that I like to talk about a lot is that I think as a professional author, as a published author, you kind of have two different roles, right? You have your writing job, and you have your professional author job. The writing is really focused on the craft. It's sitting down, putting words on the page, getting the story out. Telling the story that's important to you, that is the book of your heart. But then, the professional author side is hitting deadlines, it's learning how to negotiate, is learning how to network, it's learning how to market yourself. All of those things. So, for me, the reason I'm excited to be participating in the podcast in this way is getting to communicate some of the professional skills at an earlier stage. Right? That doesn't necessarily mean that you need to adjust your writing process to think about like, "Oh, who's going to be the audience? Who's going to be the bookseller?" I kind of want you to put that aside, but I do want you to start thinking about developing professional skills early in your career, and developing an awareness of the industry. What's being published? Who's publishing it? Where are books sold? How are they sold? Right? The more you're aware of those things, the more when you do get to that stage, you're going to be ready to hit the ground running. Right? When I work with a client, the thing that I'm most excited about is a sense of professionalism in understanding the industry. I'm not expecting them to know everything. But being engaged with it, I think, gives you a set of skills coming into the industry that means you're going to find the right agent, you're going to be able to frame how you're talking about your book in a way that makes sure that when it goes to an editor, when it goes to the audience, it's the book that you're proud of and the book that's important to you. The more you can advocate for yourself in this process, I think the more you're going to get the career that you want and get the story that is important to you out into the world.

 

[Mary Robinette] That sounds wonderful. Let's pause for a quick break, and then when we come back, let's dive a little bit more into what that's like, what pitching a project is like.

[DongWon] Our book of the week is a debut novel that is out this month. It is titled The Daughters of Izdihar by Hadeer Elsbai. Hadeer is an Egyptian American writer. The story is a secondary world fantasy, but it's very loosely based on contemporary or 20th-century Egyptian history in terms of the suffrage movement that took place there, I believe in the 1950s. Hadeer has taken those elements and filtered that through this fantasy lens to really examine what it is to exist in that society, what it means to resist, how do you build a resistance, how do you build a movement, and the cost that takes on the people who are present in that and who were those advocates. What it meant to stand up for yourself and fight against an oppressive regime. It really is the story of two women who are friends and caught up in this moment, coming at it from different perspectives. One from sort of a more working class and one from a more wealthy perspective, and how they come together to build solidarity and build a true movement. It's a really thrilling book. It's beautifully written. There's a wonderful queer romance in it. Truly, truly a book that I've been so delighted to work with, and feels really special to me. Hadeer is a client of mine. That, again is The Daughters of Izdihar. By the time you're hearing this, it'll just hit the shelves. So go and check it out.

 

[Mary Robinette] Now we're going to dive into what it's like to pitch things. Howard, you had a question for DongWon on this?

[Howard] Yeah. I'm going to lead by saying that I've had a couple of sales jobs in my life, and I hated both of them. I had extensive experience. They lasted for like two, three days each. When you are working as an agent, in my imagination, your job is to sell one thing to one person by convincing them that they can sell it to a million people.

[DongWon] Uh-huh.

[Howard] Did I get that right? Is that kind of how it goes?

[DongWon] Close.

[Howard] So tell me how that works. Because that seems zany.

[DongWon] Yeah. It is zany. It's a very unique job, and kind of a weird job, and one that I deeply, deeply love. But what's funny is my first job in publishing was at a literary agency. I'd just gotten to the point where I was taking on clients, starting to pitch projects, and I was like, "I hate this." I kind of had the same reaction you did, Howard, in terms of like sales jobs are so hard, I don't like doing it, I don't like cold calling, I was bad at networking at that point, so I was like, "Oh, I think it would be easier to buy things and sell it, so I'm going to go and be an editor." The joke was on me, because mostly what editors do is pitch stuff to the other people in the company. Instead of trying to get an editor to buy it, now you're like convincing your boss, you're convincing art, you're convincing the sales force, all of these things. So, ironically, becoming an editor was the thing that forced me to get good at pitching and really learn to love that process. But, I think we're coming back to the agenting side now having those skills, but where it really diverged from my initial idea of what the business was and from those sales jobs you were talking about is I'm not pitching to the public world. I'm not pitching to a thousand people. You're right, that I'm trying to get one person to buy it. But when I send a project out, I'm sending it to eight people, 10 people, maybe 20 if it's really… Depending on the category. But I'm sending it to people I know. People I have relationships with. Right? I love to work with people I have built a friendship with, a professional trust with over many years. So I can go to those people and I have a little bit of a shorthand and say, "Here's what this thing is. It's like this other thing." Or "You know me. You know what I like. I know what you like. I think you're a great fit for this because I've seen you do X, Y, and Z, and your great at X, Y, and Z, and that's what this author needs." Right? So we can have this like deeper conversation about what the fit is, like why this is the book for them. So the sales pitch becomes as much like giving them the tools to turn around and go pitch it to everybody else, to pitch it to that broader audience. But it's also me convincing them and giving them the tools to go do all that convincing for other people. So it's a little bit of like a second-order thing. Not to horn in on your territory, Mary Robinette, but it's a little bit like puppeteering. You know what I mean?

[Mary Robinette] Ahuh.

[DongWon] Like, I'm pulling strings on a second order. I need to pull this strings so that that person can go do those eight other things I need them to do. Right?

[Howard] Thank you for strings, because the other kind of puppet would have your hand in a bad place.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] I thought… I was actually [garbled] theater, but then we get into a whole different deep dive.

[DongWon] I know there's technicalities on this thing here.

 

[Howard] I have a follow-up question.

[DongWon] Please.

[Howard] How does that pitch reflect back to… I mean, the knowledge that you need to develop that pitch, how does that reflect back to your client, the author?

[DongWon] Absolutely. So this goes back to the first thing I was talking about which we call positioning in the business. Positioning, the way I talk about it, is the story about the story. Right? So much of publishing is what story can we tell about the story that you have written. Right? So this reflects back on the author because I think the more the author understands what the story that they can tell about their own story is, the more that does a lot of free work for me and for the editor and for the sales force. Right? We're obviously going to have input on it that's going to evolve over the conversation as we all bring our different perspectives to the table. But I love it when a writer shows up in my inbox or comes to me, and as we're talking with this is why I wrote this book, this is where I think it fits, this is the kind of thing that I'm trying to do. Then that gives me all of these tools to build around. Right? If I know why it's important to you, the writer, and if I know how you see this in the world. Like what movies it's like, what other books is it like. Who do you think your readership is? Then that gives me a ton of tools to build a pitch around that I can then take to the people I have relationships with and convince them to take that and run with it. Right? So, ideally, in the best cases, I think a book shows up on my desk with a pitch in place, and that's the same pitch I go to the publishers with. That's the same pitch they go to their sales force with. That's the same pitch that goes to the reviewers, and then to the readers. Right? If there is that connection, if there's that like real through line, that to me says we're getting it right, we're nailing it. We're doing the thing that fits your vision for the book.

[Dan] So, how often, when you say a book shows up on your desk with that kind of pitch, how often is that pitch overt on behalf of the author? Or more likely, I assume, that pitch is buried somewhere in the query letter and you are able to draw it out based on your experience.

[DongWon] Yeah. Most of the time, it's a little buried. Most of the time, it's me reading between things are having a conversation with the author. I'm very direct. I'll just straight up be like, "Hey. Why'd you write this book? Why is this important to you? Why is this your story to tell?" Then, out of that conversation, I can start putting together, and start seeing why this is important and how to do it. Right? Not everyone works this way. One thing I really want to get across, you're going to hear a lot from me about how I see the business and what my perspective is. That's me. I'm one agent. You put five agents in a room and asked them a question, you will get 7 to 8 different answers. Right? Like, we all have different ways of doing this that are very different. Publishing is a big business with a lot of different perspectives. There's room for those perspectives. I come at it from this way, this is a little bit part of like why I like to talk about my own marginalizations and my own cultural perspective. Because there's a seriousness to vision that's important to me. Right? Because that's how I engage with the world. That's how I've learned that I have to engage with the world. So I look for that in fiction, too. There are other ways to do this, but for me, understanding why this book is important to you, why you're the only person who could write this story, that's really top of mind for me anytime I'm considering taking a project on.

 

[Mary Robinette] One of the things that I love about you is that you do bring your perspective to it. You also always want to lift up other creative people. Which is why you started this newsletter. So I want you to briefly tell folks about the newsletter, because I encourage our listeners to start subscribing and following you along. Then, if you can tell us that the homework is that you have for us, after you talk about the newsletter, that would be amazing.

[DongWon] Absolutely. So, a few years back, I started a newsletter, in part because I love talking about the business, I love talking about the industry, and I love doing the educational component. From teaching at Writing Excuses, from doing other workshops, I found like I really loved doing that. I was also teaching at Portland State at the time, I've taught at NYU. Sort of teaching people who want to be in the business how to work in publishing. It is a tough business. It is a very difficult business to work in. The money can be very tight, the amount of work you're doing is overwhelming, there's a lot of people fighting to improve labor conditions in the industry right now. Hopefully this is resolved by the time this comes out, but the HarperCollins union is currently on strike. There's a lot happening to try and push the business forward. So, to me, one thing that was important to me was to communicate what the subjective experience of being in publishing was like. So I started this newsletter that, inevitably, there's some advice for writers in there, but really what it's about is providing a perspective on the business for you to understand this is what the life of being an agent is like, these are the things I think about, these are the things I struggle with. There are ways that I try to communicate that and frame that so it's useful for writers to then approach the industry or think about the business. But it's a thing that I write for myself it's almost personal essay as much as it is educational in terms of this is what it's like to sit in my seat on my side of the table. It's a really tough job. It has a lot of really hard days. So, thinking about how to talk about that, I ended up just putting it up front. I've named the newsletter Publishing Is Hard. You can go to publishingishard.com, sign up for it there. All the content is free. There is a paid tier if you feel like contributing. So I'm doing that. I'm also starting to do monthly Twitch streams that are Q&A sessions. That is what those subscriptions in part are for is my ability to do those and bring on a writer and make sure they are compensated for their time, too. So, I'm going to be doing those going forward. Sign up for the newsletter. It's very irregular, don't expect everything every week. But I try to make sure there is one or two things a month that I… That really sort of talk about one of my experiences and what my perspective on the business is.

 

[Mary Robinette] Fantastic. Our homework assignment for our lovely listeners?

[DongWon] Your homework assignment. I'm a literary agent. I want you to start thinking about who the right agent for you is. It's a good thing to think about early in your career. That list will evolve and change over time. People come in and out of the business. But starting to pay attention to who's out there, who's doing what, what's exciting to you, what are you looking for in an agent. I think it's a good thing to do early on. Right? Because you're looking for a business partner that you're going to grow with. So my advice to you is to go make a list of five agents that you're interested in working with. Again, this doesn't have to be ultimately who you end up submitting to, but go… Do a little bit of research, Google around, do some searching. Some resources are to go to your bookstore, look at the acknowledgment sections of books. Most writers will think their agent in there. You can look online. Twitter's a great place, a lot of us hang out there. Although we are in an interesting era of Twitter, so people are leaving that to some extent. So you might have to hunt around a little bit more where people are landing. But there's lots of resources out there for writers trying to find an agent. So I would encourage you to do some research. Put together a list of five names. Then just keep an eye on those people, see what books they do and see what's exciting to you about how they work.

[Mary Robinette] Wonderful. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2021/06/20/16-25-breaking-into-game-writing/

 

Key points: You'll probably start at the bottom. Work-for-hire means follow the marching orders, and someone else owns what you make. Put yourself out there. Cold calls, a portfolio, networking. Game jams! Snowball your career, start small and roll up into bigger gigs. Give the boss what they want. Be careful of trying to impress and ending up setting expectations that aren't sustainable. Competent, on time, and pleasant to work with is enough. To break in, you need to be obstinent, and keep throwing yourself at the door. 

 

[Season 16, Episode 25]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[James] Breaking into Game Writing.

[Dan] 15 minutes long.

[Cassandra] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[James] I'm James.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Cassandra] I'm Cassandra.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Dan] We are finally arriving at the topic that I bet a lot of our listeners have been waiting for. For seven weeks…

[Chuckles]

[Dan] We've been talking about how to write for games. But today, we're going to talk about how to break into it as an industry. How to try to get paid for it. So, Cass, if someone wants to become a game writer, what do we do? Where do we start?

[Cassandra] I think setting expectations, unfortunately, is definitely where you want to start. It is a highly competitive business, regardless of the field you're talking about, whether it's tabletop role-playing games or video games or anything in between. So, like any other job, unless you benefit from nepotism, but that is a topic for something else, you start at the bottom. No one is going to hire you to run a new game right off the bat. Nobody wants to publish your homebrew setting. Not because they don't necessarily believe in your abilities, but because they have an entire stable of people who have already proved themselves and have contacts to reach out to. Most of your work is, unless you end up opening your own studio, going to be work for hire. Meaning somebody else owns your creation. As such, you have to be prepared to follow those marching orders, within reason. You're a mercenary. [Garbled plot games?] Prior to the show, we were discussing artists versus artisans. I'm curious about the analogy you're using there.

[James] Yeah. So, this is one I often use, along with mercenary, like you said. Where I think an artist is all about sort of expressing yourself and creating the thing that is you, embodied on the page. An artisan I think of as somebody who does a job for somebody else. So when I say… I always say for game writing or any sort of tie-in work for hire, you're building a house with words for somebody else. They tell you what they want. You build it. Then they control what happens to it afterwards. So if you build a beautiful word house and then they decide to paint it with purple polkadots and you hate that, sorry. Like, that's not your house. Like, your fundamentally building something for someone else. I think that's really important for people to know going in. Because it can be easy to get your heart broken if you go in thinking you own something when you really don't. But, so, getting in again is the important part for this show. So, how do you get in, Cass?

[Cassandra] You have to put yourself out there. I know it is possibly a difficult thing to do if you're an introvert, which I think a lot of writers are, but this is definitely one of those things that is just necessary. You have to cold call companies you love, maybe noting a few specific things that you enjoyed about their games. You have to present a portfolio. You have to have a portfolio. You should network, at least as much as you can within the boundaries of what you feel comfortable with. Cons, social media, talking to people at social media, internships, meeting devs… Dan, you have any other thoughts on this?

 

[Dan] Yeah. But before we leave this concept of the portfolio, how does someone build a portfolio before they get hired?

[James] I'm glad that you asked, Dan. We were definitely going to hit that.

[Giggles]

[James] So, making your own portfolios, you kind of have to start a lot of the time by making your own stuff. So that can be writing a little one page role-playing game, it could be writing interactive fiction like a choose-your-own adventure, writing fan material for an existing game, new adventures, new rules, etc. Modding a videogame. Even just writing a short story. Anything you've done that's somewhere related to the job you're trying to do can be experience. Then you take that to companies, usually smaller companies while you're first starting, and say, "Hey, I've done some stuff that's related to this. Here's what I can do. Do you need my skills?"

[Mary Robinette] One of the things also to keep in mind when you're building a portfolio, regardless of the medium in which you are building it, is that portfolios are judged by the weakest piece in it. Because your best peace might be a fluke as far as they're concerned. So whatever your weakest piece is, if you're like, "Well, I'm including this. It's not really good but there's this one piece about it," take that piece out. Take that piece out. A portfolio is only as good as your weakest piece.

[Cassandra] It all ties into something I also wanted to say. Joining game jams, at least for video games, is a really good way of building your portfolio. It gives you an understanding of working within time constraints, working within the constraints set by somebody else, and also, you'll have people judging and commenting on your work. So if you don't necessarily find yourself a good judge of your own abilities, game jams are a good way of outsourcing it, right? Very slightly?

[Dan] I'm not sure that I'm familiar with game jams. Can you…

[Mary Robinette] Yeah, I don't know either.

[Dan] Talk to us about that?

[Cassandra] I keep forgetting everybody hasn't been in the games industry… Video games industry for far too long at this point. I need a new job.

[Laughter]

[Cassandra] So, game jams are things organized by the videogame community. I think nowadays by some of the people out of the RPG community. It's basically people will say, "Okay, over the course of this particular weekend, we need you to make the thing that uses these two ideas." Very often these ideas are voted upon by a community. So it could be stuff like make this a romance game. But it must in some way involve sentient cacti. Then everyone just goes to town creating them. Depending on the game jams, there are pre-events, where you can partner up with artists and programmers, other writers, and kind of fuse together into this temporary team to pull things off. It's definitely very stressful, I will not lie. It's something people need to watch out for, because I've seen folks burn out on it. But it's very much an interesting way of approaching stuff like this.

[James] So I wanted to throw out a couple more examples of, Cass had talked about, various ways you can network and get your portfolio in front of people. We mentioned cons and social media and internships. But there are some others. There are… You can meet with the devs, by, say, interviewing them as a fan or for podcast, fan sites, the press, whatever. That can be a good way to make contacts in the industry and just get some face time and learn about how things work. I love press because you get to ask people how they do their job and learn from them and get paid for it. You can also take non-writing jobs at game companies just to be sort of around it and learn by osmosis. You need to be careful with that, because if I hire an accountant at my game company, I want an accountant, not a game designer. So you need to make sure that first and foremost, you do the job you were hired for. If you do it well, then the people in the quote unquote creative departments are going to be a lot more likely to give you a shot when they're looking for freelancers. There's also mentorships. Cass, you had talked about one called the Pixels?

[Cassandra] Yes. It is just, I think, a yearly thing where a number of people offer to be mentors. They organize classes and workshops. They have little talks that are hosted across the year. You can apply with the knowledge that there is a group of people embedded in the video games industry who are invested in getting you to the next stage. This is a little bit of a sidebar, but one thing I definitely want to note. If you're breaking into game writing and you're from a marginalized community, it is incredibly easy to see a list of requirements in a job opening and go, "No, this is not for me." Especially in the video games industry, you will see people going, "Okay. You must have shipped at least one AAA game." Something that is very difficult, because positions in narrative are very limited. What I've learned from recruiters and managers over the years is people don't actually care about that. There are very many, many recruiters who will hire people with a good portfolio, who do not meet those credentials. As you're breaking into it, like, keep that in mind. Like, do not be dissuaded.

[Howard] One of the things that I found in the few occasions when I've done work for hire for game companies for other folks is that the skill set that I built writing Schlock Mercenary and writing other things had some holes in it. I had to learn new things. I had to learn them pretty quickly. Fortunately, I'd learned that I can learn things very quickly and I know how to build a craftsmanship skill for myself. But it's a challenge. It's a… The learning curve is steep. While I know we already have homework for this episode, one of the things that I think will build confidence for you and going out there… Putting your name out there, somebody says, "Well, can you write multi-branched dialogue?" Well, the question… The answer you always want to be able to say, "Yes, I can." Because I know I can learn how to do it. But you don't say that part out loud. Over the last several months, we've given lots of different kinds of homework assignments in Writing Excuses. I've looked at a lot of them and I've said, "Oh, that looks tedious. I don't want to do that." Okay? If you want to break into writing for hire in any business, I challenge you, take the homework assignments that look tedious and you don't want to do them, and do them anyway. So that when somebody says, "Can you do this?" Not only can you say, "Yes," because I know I can learn how to, you might even be able to say, "Yes. That was a homework assignment on Writing Excuses and I did it three days ago."

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Yes, but you don't actually need to say that part out loud.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Please don't.

 

[Dan] Let's take a minute for our game of the week, which is coming from James.

[James] Yeah. So this week I wanted to talk about a tabletop game called Dread. The reason I wanted to bring this up for this class is because it's fairly simple. It's something that you could make without the big team. The basic mechanic of Dread is that you use a Jenga tower. Every time you have to try and do something, the GM says, "Okay. Pull one piece." Or pull two pieces. Or pull three. Depending on how hard you're trying. If the Jenga tower falls, your character dies. It's a horror game. That little mechanic is so good at creating tension, because as the game goes on, everyone's just naturally getting more and more scared of that thing falling. So, like, that's a very simple mechanic, that, like, is an idea that you could come up with and put… You could build a game of an idea that simple and put it online and really impress people. Similarly, the character creation system is the best I've seen in that it's just a series of leading questions. So the GM will give you a bunch of questions. They'll be things like, "Why didn't you talk to your father before he died? What's hidden in your sock drawer? When was the last time you cried?" So as you answer these things for your character, it's impossible to not create a back story. So, that's Dread. It's a supercool indy RPG. I encourage people to check it out.

 

[James] So, as we're coming out of that, talking about Indy RPG and talking about credits, while absolutely you should be applying at the big companies, it's also really important to be looking at the smaller companies and seeing what companies are doing good work, because you're going to have a lot easier time getting in there. Then, I always think of like Katamari Damacy or the sort of what I call the snowball theory of career, which is you get credits whatever you can, and then you roll them up into larger and larger gigs. So maybe you start putting out a little thing on your own, and then you use that to get in with a small RPG company, and then use that to get into the next larger one and so forth.

[Cassandra] But I think, universally speaking, impressing bosses, the process is pretty much exactly the same. You should give whoever hires you, whether they're from a small company or a large one, precisely what they want. You want to hit your word count, not more, not less. You absolutely want to hit your deadlines. If you can't, you should always be transparent about your inability and give people enough time to create a buffer in case something comes up.

[Mary Robinette] But, speaking of buffers, this is a piece of general life advice to people. One of the things that people will do when they want to impress bosses is that you will do 110% that first couple of months. The problem is that they assume that that is your normal.

[Hehheh]

[Mary Robinette] And you will then have to do that level of work all the time. If you… If they add more to it and you succeed at that, that is what they think is your normal. So you actually want to build a buffer in for yourself. A piece of advice that I heard very recently was to come in and plan on giving 80%. So that the times when you actually have to do extra, that reserve tank is there and that you can bring that. But the other is not sustainable. I've spent my entire life building it to create crises because I work best in a crisis. But that also means that I have big burnout periods.

[Dan] Yeah. I saw somebody on Twitter the other day… Maybe this was something you had linked to, Mary Robinette, but they said their therapist had told them that if you always do your best, it's not your best anymore, it's your average.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] That can be such an easy trap to fall into. Especially for an employee or a freelancer.

[James] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So, when you… I'm not saying, like, to deliberately slack off. But think about how you work best, and do that. But don't… Remember that whatever expectations you set at the beginning are the expectations that you have to live up to for the rest of your time there.

[James] Yeah. I would say, as somebody who has spent a decade… Oh, to say, as somebody who's spent a decade hiring authors, one of the easiest things you can do to really stand out is just match their existing material. Do that thing we were talking about before, where, identifying their formatting, the language they use, the way the game is written. If you can copy those specific style elements for the game when you're writing for it… If what you can give them looks as close as possible to what an in-house generated document looks like, you're going to make it easier for them. You're also going to make it seem like you are already on the team. It makes it a lot easier to hire somebody if you can tell that they're going to be able to jump right in with very little on boarding.

[Mary Robinette] Cass, what were you going to say?

[Cassandra] I was going to say capitalism has definitely created a very toxic work environment in general across all the industries. What you mentioned earlier about not giving your 100%, but instead something that is comfortable with a buffer to grow into if you need to crunch. Like, that is really good advice, and that is advice that I think a lot of companies are trying to push under the carpet. Because they want to pressure everyone to go as hard as possible, churn them out and get the next new hire who is willing to work for a lot less then you might have once you've realized your importance and role in that company. Which I think is an oddly depressing point to bring up in an episode about breaking into the game industry and writing industry.

[Mary Robinette] Actually, but I will say… Yeah. I will say something from having hired people, from talking to my husband who works in winemaking, to talking to a contractor, to talking to editors. If you are competent and show up on time and are pleasant to work with, you are… That's basically all people want.

[Chuckles]

[Dan] Yeah. It's like what James just said about making things easy on the hiring person, making things easy on the manager. It's not that you have to give 110%, you just have to hit your word count, hit your deadline, make their job easy, and then they're going to hire you for the next project.

[James] Yeah. That was… my very first editor, when I started out in journalism, told me, "Oh, James, you're one of my favorite writers." I went, "Oh, thank you. Like, what is it about it that speaks to you?" He goes, "You're always on time and you're always on word count." I said, "Oh. What about the writing itself?" He went, "Oh, it's fine."

[Laughter]

[James] But he kept hiring me.

[Dan] Yup.

 

[Howard] I… When I was drawing the Munchkin Starfinder stuff, there was a big piece I was doing and I had given one of the very small characters a very large wrench for comedy value. There was this approval process. It kept coming back. The guy at Paizo, I don't know his name…

[James] Probably best not to say.

[Laughter]

[Howard] You know what, it's fine. It might've been a Mike, it might have been a Matt. It began with an M, I think.

[James] It was probably Mark Moreland. Sorry, Mark.

[Howard] It had two M's in it. That's fine. But what came back was "make the wrench smaller." Okay. So I did a quick erase, redraw, made the wrench smaller. Came back again. "Make the wrench smaller," again. At which point I stopped and I talked to the art director and I said, "I could be wrong, but I think what Mark means is I hate the whole idea of the small character with the large prop, and I don't want it in the piece. So what I'm going to do for this next fix is I'm going to give the character a flamethrower instead so that it fills the visual space. Let me know if Mark's okay with that?" Now I'm saying it's Mark, because it must've been. What came back around was, "Oh, that's perfect, he loves it." I share that with you because giving the bosses what they want depends entirely on a suite of communications skills that involves you knowing what the boss wants even when sometimes the boss doesn't. That's hard to navigate.

[Mary Robinette] Well… Also, it involves asking questions.

[Yes]

[Mary Robinette] Like, never be afraid to ask a question when you don't understand the parameters.

 

[James] I want to just… To end on an inspiring note, because it can be so intimidating to think, "Oh, well, these people got in. They've always been in the game industry." I would just love to know, like, Cass, how did you break in?

[Cassandra] Oh. To the game industry, specifically, in terms of development? My first big role was because I would not shut up. I was working PR at a convention, and I met someone who worked at Excel. I ran up to him, like, "Oh, my God. Did you work on the original [garbled planet escape car?]?" He was like, "Yeah." I was like, "I want to work in your company." He was like, "I'm just a writer. What do you want me to do?" I'm like, "I don't know. Here is my portfolio. If there's ever an opening that you think is appropriate, please let me know." We kept that up for about four years before I got hired. It was just constantly me just jumping up and going, "Hi! Please?" So, blind obstinence. That's how I got in.

[James] I think…

[Chuckles]

[James] I think that's really important for people to hear, because, like, that is the message. It is just throwing yourself at it. I got in the same way. Where I wanted to work on Amazing Stories magazine, which was run by the same people who did Dungeons & Dragons. They were hiring for an editor-in-chief. So I emailed the CEO of the company and said, "I am totally unqualified for that job, but I have this portfolio of journalism. Is there anything at your company that I might be useful for?" She brought me in and started me out working on their website, finding JPEG's for a nickel a JPEG, which was very far from being a magazine editor, but it got me in the door. So don't be afraid to just throw yourself at the door.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I got in because I… A friend of mine had been asked to write loading screens. He does not write short, at all. It's not Brandon, it's someone else.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But he knew that I wrote short and that I wrote fast and introduced me to them. So I wrote these loading screens. I could get the word count that they needed and I would turn it in on time and I had no problems with multiple iterations. Then they hired me again to do something else, because I had turned things in on time. That's basically… I came in from the side, but it was because I had honed a set of skills in a different area, and then turned up on time and hit word count.

[James] Yeah. Perfect.

[Howard] Dan, you want to go next?

[Dan] Yeah. I'm actually relatively new in the games industry. I have written a bunch of tie in fiction in the past. But about two years ago, I started getting approached by game companies. That's just because I started producing two different web series. We do Typecast, which is the Twitch show that Howard and I and a bunch of other authors do where we play games online and I'm the game master. Then, I also do a weekly YouTube series of role-playing game reviews. So it is… I was not actually, at the time, seeking out employment writing games. But raised enough eyebrows… Or got onto enough people's radar because of all the web stuff I was doing related to gaming that I was contacted by people at cons and stuff. So that's where it came from me. But that's after 12 years of writing books. So…

[Howard] So, about 12 years ago, I've been making Schlock Mercenary for eight years. I was at a convention in the green room with Tracy Hickman who was pitching this idea for this book he wanted to write called Extreme Dungeon Mastery. He couldn't find a publisher for it. I told him, "Well, here's a Schlock Mercenary book. We self publish these. You should totally self publish things." What he heard, apparently, was, "I would like to publish your book, and can I draw the pictures for it?"

[Chuckles]

[Howard] He came back to me and said basically that, and said, "Oh, and can we have it by GenCon?" I did the math and realized… Sandra and I both… We had this discussion. "Tracy, you're asking us to turn around a 160 page role-playing supplement in 12 weeks." He said, "Yeah, can you do it?" I'm like, "I really don't think we can do it, that's too fast. So, no." Then he came back to us three weeks later and said, "But I really want to do it. Can you do it?" I said, "Well, now it's nine weeks. So obviously, the answer is yes."

[Laughter]

[James] That's the story of the game industry.

[Howard] I broke in by doing something way too fast. Sandra was brilliant in assembling all of this. She contacted our friend, Stacy Whitman, to help with the copyediting. We ended up putting a team together to publish a Tracy Hickman book at GenCon. Then I ended up at GenCon, and coming back to what Cassandra has said, at that point I was now networking with games people instead of with comics people, and other opportunities began presenting themselves.

[Dan] Howard, is Extreme Dungeon Mastery still available?

[Howard] I think we might be out of print of the hardbacks. I need to talk to Sandra. I'll post something in the liner notes about whether or not it's still a thing.

[Dan] Okay. Cool. Mary Robinette, what were you going to say?

[Mary Robinette] I was going to say, by interesting coincidence, next week we will be talking about teams. I think that we should probably wrap this episode up and go to homework, so that we can talk about teams next week.

[James] Yeah.

[Dan] Agreed.

 

[Cassandra] Your homework this week is to brainstorm something short you can make to showcase your skills. It could even be the homework from a previous lesson. Then make that thing and post it online for free.

[Dan] All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You are out of excuses. Now go write.

 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2020/08/02/15-31-the-agent-in-the-room/

Key Points: How do you become an agent? Lots of different answers. Often, start as an intern or apprentice, and work your way up. It takes time to build an income stream. Start out by networking. You can be both an author and an agent. How does an agent and an author work together, especially between "send me more" and signing with an agent? Read the manuscript. Get a feeling for the person. It's a long-term relationship. When do you talk about "the sticky stuff"? When we start talking about working together, we need to talk about communications style, morals, ethics, financial issues. Agents are business partners, not used car salesmen. Remember that when an agent offers to represent you, it is now your decision, you are hiring that agent.  
 

[Mary Robinette] Season 15, Episode 31.

[Dan] This is Writing Excuses, The Agent in the Room.

[Dongwon] 15 minutes long.

[Piper] Because you're in a hurry.

[Howard] And we're not that smart.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Dongwon] I'm Dongwon.

[Piper] I'm Piper.

[Howard] And I'm not the agent in the room.

[Chuckles]

[Dongwon] No, that's me.

[Howard] Yes, it is.

 

[Dan] Yeah. We have an agent in the room, and before we allow him to leave, we're going to make him answer a bunch of questions. First one…

[Howard] Which you asked, fear listener.

[Dan] Yes. We have… This question showed up quite a bit when we did our little survey of listeners. We tend to think that most of you listen because you want to be writers. But there's apparently more than a couple that listen because they potentially want to work in other aspects of the industry, as editors or agents or whatever. So, first question for Dongwon, if somebody wants to be an agent, how do they go about that?

[Dongwon] Terrible mistake.

[Laughter]

[Dongwon] It's funny…

[Dan] See, you say that, but you were something else and then decided to become an agent instead, so…

[Dongwon] Well, actually, I was an agent first. So my first job in publishing was at an agency. Then I decided I didn't like selling books, I wanted to buy them instead. So I became an editor. Then e-books were a thing. So I started working at an e-book startup, before I came back to being an agent, I wanted to work with writers more closely. It's a nonlinear kind of circuitous story. Part of the challenge in answering this question is if you ask five agents how they became an agent, they all usually have a very different answer. If there is a track, it's basically that you get an internship at an agency, and then get hired as an assistant, either at that agency or another agency, and then, over time, grow until the point at which you can start taking on your own clients. Where this gets very tricky in the part that people don't talk about a lot is that each agency has a very different structure of how agents get paid. Right? So there's a thing that's called a draw, so sometimes, the agency will give you a certain amount of money, and then you earn that back out of the commissions that you're earning for the agency. How much of a percentage is counted towards that depends on your deal with each agency. So that can be anywhere from like 25% on the very, very low end to 60 to 70% on the high end. So, figuring all these kinds of elements out is really important, and the biggest challenge to being an agent in the early years is that it takes a while for that income stream to build up. Because you're not earning a salary, often, right out of the gate, and then it's hard to get those first few deals going while you're looking for clients. Then, once you do sell your first books and… $100,000 sounds like a really great deal. It is a really great deal, but your commission of that… So whatever percentage you get to keep out of that 50% that goes to the agency, that's parceled out, usually over two, three, even five years. So it takes time for that income stream to build up. Usually, about year five or six is when you're starting to get something that looks like a more livable wage. So, getting into being an agent is a very difficult process in a lot of ways. I think it sounds very attractive and easy from the outside. But the financial side of it actually can be quite tricky. One of the things that we need to look at as an industry is making that a little bit easier for people to get into the business, because, I think, we're keeping a lot of interesting voices out of the industry and out of being agents representing writers from a wider range of backgrounds. Because the type of person who comes in tends to be relatively limited.

 

[Dan] So, if somebody wants to do this, what angle of approach do they come in? Are there people they have to talk to, is it all about networking? What do those first steps look like?

[Dongwon] I think networking is the most important one, right? So, unfortunately, almost all of these jobs are in New York. They're starting to spread out a little bit more, especially on the agency side. But what you want to do is go to events where you can meet agents, meet editors, meet writers even who can help you be introduced to some of the decision-makers who might be hiring. That's how you hear about new jobs, that's how you hear about opportunities. So networking really is number one for what you need here. There are a couple paid programs, like, the Columbia program and NYU, that are sort of paths into publishing. Those can be ways to meet people. They can be quite expensive. I'm not sure that they're always effective or necessary. But those can help if you're willing to go that path.

[Piper] I think one of the things I want to jump on and say is that you don't have to choose to be an agent or a writer. I know several of the agents that I've run into overtime are both authors and agents. In fact, I've had several editors asked me if I ever wanted to become an agent. So I happened to ask this exact question to my agent, Courtney Miller-Callihan of how does one normally become an agent. She basically said exactly what you said. Generally speaking, there's an apprenticeship or an internship depending on the agency. Agencies are structured in a different way. I think the only thing that differs, and I'd be really interested in getting your opinion on that, is that she actually did spend some time in publishing first, in fact, in the contracts department, prior to starting to pursue an agent career. I personally have benefited from that because she's excellent with my contracts. But what do you think about people who potentially are getting experience with the publishing houses first, or other experiences?

[Dongwon] For me, having a wide range of experiences in the industry has been really, really helpful, right? Understanding what things look like from the editor's side, how the internal conversations at publishers work. All agents understand that to some extent, because you deal with it a lot, but having been in the room is a very different vibe from somebody explaining it to you, right? So I think having a wide range of experience can help a lot. But the thing about agents, especially, is we all have different strengths and weaknesses, which are more varied than you see in most industries, I think. How agent A versus agent B does their job can be really night and day. What skill sets they bring to the table is really defined by their background and their experience. So coming from a contracts background, your agent probably has a slightly different perspective on how some of those arguments happen in-house, whereas to me, I'm good with contracts, I know what I'm doing there, but I don't always understand when a contracts person comes back to me and says, "We can't do X or Y," like, why they're coming to that decision. It's a little bit of a black box to me sometimes. I would love it if I knew more about that process. That said, we all have different areas that we come from and different expertises, and part of the process is really figuring out what you need from an agent and how they can best support you in your career and picking someone who has that skill set, that is congruent with yours.

 

[Dan] Cool. I want to pause here for the book of the week. Which, this week, is one of mine. My book, Extreme Makeover, which I chose specifically because it was one that my agent had a ton of input into. More so than any of my other books. The initial manuscript for this was well over 200,000 words. Then she helped me trim it down to 180, and then, of course, the final version after it got edited was like 120.

[Howard] Is 200 the one that I read? Before it had been agented?

[Dan] No. You read the 180.

[Howard] Okay.

[Dan] So, the agent had helped clean it up and helped really guide…

[Howard] So what I read had been cleaned up?

[Dan] Yes! Yes, it had.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] [garbled] old friend. What I read had been cleaned up. No, I liked it. I really liked that book, and I was reading the version that is longer and unnecessarily so.

[Dan] Yeah.

[Howard] The one that you, fair listener, can read…

[Dan] The final version… The initial version, the first draft, was a big, giant mess. I have always used my agent primarily for business stuff, and this was the first time that I went to her and said, "Hey, this is a mess." She's like, "Yeah." "Help me clean it up." With… Working with her, we wrangled that into a very good story that was kind of un-publishably long. So we got that down to 180. Then turned it in, and Whitney Ross at Tor Books trimmed it down again. But that agent relationship is really valuable, and people get different things out of agents. I typically don't use them for editorial, but in this case I did. So, that's my book, Extreme Makeover. You should go listen to it. Or buy it. Because it's awesome.

 

[Dan] But that leads us into the second half of our podcast, which is, how does an agent and an author, how do they work together? I want to guide this talk a little more specifically. What is the process… At what point… We talk a lot about submitting to an agent, and the agent saying, "Okay, this looks good. Please send me more of it." From that point on, until the point where you actually sign with an agent, what does that period of time look like?

[Dongwon] In my case, unfortunately, it often looks like a very long delay while I'm finding the time to…

[Chuckles]

[Dongwon] Read the book that I'm excited to read. But I think a lot of things go into that. The first is reading that manuscript and saying how you feel about it. Then, sort of looking into the person a little bit. I'll often Google them, take a look at their social media profile, and… There, I'm not looking for do you have a big following. I'm just trying to get a sense of who this person is. Right? A thing I talk about a lot is that I like to work… I work with people, I don't work with projects, right? I sign a client, not a book. So what I'm looking for is are we going to get along well as people and as business partners. Are you someone that I feel like I can communicate with? Are we going to be having fun together? Honestly. Like, you want that relationship to be one that has a certain energy to it, and a certain excitement to it. Especially at the beginning, when you're just figuring all that stuff out. So a lot of times, I'm looking into who that person is. Do I feel like they have a lot to bring to the table in addition to just the words? Right? Are they ambitious, do they have career plans, do they give off an air of competence and confidence in the world?

[Piper] I can say Courtney Miller-Callihan, who is my agent, was also aware of me on social media prior to our connecting. In fact, I had tweeted… Retweeted a blog post about… Just addressing when authors want agents versus not, and had lightly given my opinion that I personally would be looking for an agent when I had a manuscript to do so. She tweeted back at me and said, "Hey, drop me an email when you're ready to talk about that." Of course, the assumption was I would know her email. Which, she was correct, I did.

[Chuckles]

[Piper] So I sent her an email. Before I had… I tried to stay really, really obvious. I did not have a manuscript ready yet. But she got on the phone with me anyway. She had a conversation with me anyway. She was already familiar with my work. Because of that, and our conversation… She knew that there were a couple of other agents who were interested in working with me, but they were waiting for me to have a manuscript to send. She kind of maybe took advantage of that situation a little bit. No, I'm kidding. But she did offer me representation without a manuscript. She kind of placed a bet on a dark course.

[Dongwon] I've kind of done that a lot, actually.

[Howard] She was… You say she was familiar with your work.

[Piper] Yes. She was familiar with my work.

[Howard] That's… That's not… That's not the unknown quantity that you make it sound like.

[Piper] True.

[Howard] If an agent knows that you have written things, Indy or with another agent or whatever, they have a really strong sampling of what they can get from you when your next manuscript arrives.

[Piper] True. She was familiar with my voice that way. I will say that one of the things that she does look for in all of her clients is a sort of quirky sort of voice. So it's not nailed down by genre per se so much as she's looking for certain quirks that match her taste and her personality. She says that a lot of times, when it comes to selling books, she knows which editors have similar taste to hers, and so they are things that are marketable. Eminently so. But also quirky. They hit a… They strike a chord that unique and individual while still being [garbled]

[Dongwon] The thing is, I'm looking for that thing, that spark of energy and uniqueness and point of view. So I often will take a bet on someone who hasn't written a novel yet. I'm happy for that to be a very long-term bet, right? Five, seven years before that is going to be a book that we have out in the world. But I know, from talking to this person and seeing this person and seeing either short stories they've written or awards they've won or even podcasts they've done that they're going to do something interesting. I'm going to help them get there. If I get in early, then I can really help shape those early steps and hopefully get to where they want to go in a more exciting way than if I hadn't been involved.

 

[Dan] Cool. So, this leads into the next question, and I love the way one of our listeners phrased this. At what point in this relationship do you talk about the quote sticky stuff. This is all a lot of business, this is a lot of projects, but at what point do you start talking about personal beliefs, morals, politics, religion, the things that make that author who they are and how that will be reflected in their career? At what point do you bring that up in an agent relationship?

[Dongwon] So, whenever I'm looking at signing somebody and bringing them on board, I make sure that we have a phone conversation. There's… At a minimum, you want to have at least one conversation. There are times when I have three to four to five to… Sometimes months long that we're talking. Or even years in a couple cases. When you have that in person conversation, when I call to start talking about it, like, are we going to work together, that's the point at which you want to start asking those questions, right? What I love more than anything to see is when a writer challenges me in those conversations, and really asks me the difficult questions about communication style, about morals and ethics, about financial issues. What happens if this thing goes bad, what happens if that thing goes bad? What happens if some random event or you get in trouble on Twitter or what are your views on this? How do you feel about these things? Those are interesting conversations to have, and they're really important conversations to have. Because, ideally, an agent is a business partner you're going to have for decades. Right? So, why wouldn't you want to know more about those scenarios, before you get into it?

[Dan] Yeah. That's something that… At one point, I was at a con talking about agents and how to find agents, and somebody in the audience kind of pulled out the Freakonomics anecdote about the real estate agent, right? Like, it's in their financial interest to give you the best deal early because then they get their money quick and they're not in it for the long haul. He's like, "Aren't agents the same?" No. Not in the least tiny bit. I can think of very few people, including the Writing Excuses team, that are as closely partnered and invested in my career as my agent. We work together very closely, and it's a very long-term thing.

[Howard] Yeah. The difference there is that the agent… I mean, if Dongwon were to begin representing me… I don't have a manuscript for him, I wish I did. This conversation would be much more entertaining…

[Laughter]

[Howard] Dongwon and I would be having conversations about where he's planning on shopping it, what maybe I need to do to refine it, what plans do I have after this manuscript, because if/when it sells, that is going to open some new doors, it's going to close every door that it didn't sell to for sequels, potentially. That conversation is all about repeat business. Okay. I say repeat business. It's not repeat business when I have partnered with someone. It is a partnership. Your real estate agent is not a business partner. Your real estate agent is a used-car salesman with something that doesn't have wheels.

[Dongwon] Yeah. I mean, we are real estate agents if your real estate agent was also helping you renovate your house. Was also helping you design what your lawn is. Was also considering like how do we rebuild the neighborhood around you to be more suitable for your… Like, what would you do…

[Howard] And you're going to be buying a new house every 18 months.

[Dongwon] Exactly. Exactly. So, that conversation is really, really important. Finding those elements in that conversation that can really make you stand out, and, for me, as an agent, help me stand out as well. I had a case this last summer, where I was talking to a potential client. She was in the very enviable position of having 16 agents offering representation all at once.

[Piper] Yay!

[Dongwon] She wrote in a category that I had never represented. So it was a really interesting set of conversations that we had about why me. Why should I be in this race at all, much less the person who ended up winning it? All that came down to the conversations that we had. Right? All that came down to my strategic vision, my vision for the book, and what was coming down the road for her in five years and 10 years. We just really hit it off and had a really wonderful conversation about all the potential things that we could be doing. It's an opportunity for me, as much as it is an opportunity for the writer. The thing to remember, if there's one thing you take away from this particular podcast, is to remember that as soon as an agent offers representation, the power dynamic completely inverts. The power is now in your hands. It's now your decision. Right? Up until then, you're trying to get an agent's attention, but always remember, it's your work, it's your career, and you are effectively hiring an agent. I work for my writers, not the other way around. They pay me, quite literally, for what I do. So when you're having that conversation, think about that. It's like that old saying about when you go in for a job interview, you're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you. That's true in that case, too. So think of the hard questions. Think of the things you really want to know about how this partnership is going to work over the long term.

 

[Dan] Yeah. In fact, that's something we want you to start thinking about right now, even if you're not at the point where you need an agent. So that your homework today, and Dongwon is going to tell you about that.

[Dongwon] Yeah. So, what I would like you to do is start making that list of questions, right? Start making a list of the strategic questions you want answers to, the moral and ethical things, the communication style elements. Make a list of 5 to 10 questions. What's important to you? What are the things that matter in your career? What are you afraid of in terms of your relation with your agent? Don't be afraid of asking difficult questions. Because if you ask a potential agent a hard question or an uncomfortable question and they react badly, then what happens when that situation actually arises? How can you trust them to have your back in that moment? So, feel free to go hard and go big.

[Dan] Awesome. Great advice, and we hope that you've learned some good stuff about how to work with agents and potentially how to be one. So, you are now out of excuses, now go write.