: Re: Can you pitch an outline? Here's my question: can you pitch an outline of a novel to an agent? I.e. you have two to three chapters complete to a high standard and at full outline of the

@Mendez196

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As Mark says, not without a track record of one bestseller after another. But if you got that, you should be pretty rich, so why bother? Rowling and Stephen King probably don't worry about stuff like that, they'd rather NOT be on deadline, just in case a film deal comes along or they get a different idea. They'll just finish the book at their leisure and their same agent will get them a good deal and handle the details.

There is also the market, it just doesn't work like that for authors that haven't sold millions of copies. On fiction, agents only represent finished works, publishers only consider finished works, because they don't trust us -- And they shouldn't!

Just because you wrote three good chapters and an outline doesn't mean you can finish a novel that people will love. Middles are notoriously difficult, they drag, get boring, etc. Finding twists is difficult, Endings are difficult, tying up all the loose ends and making the reader feel like it all ended well. The first three chapters are all in the first Act and that is relatively easy, you are just introducing problems and complications. I find it to be the easiest part of any story, describing the normal world and then disrupting it.

Perseverance is a big issue in writing fiction. There are thousands of unfinished novels out there, in fanfic and real attempts. Aspirant authors begin a story, but get overwhelmed by story problems, character issues, plot issues, or just their own life and how much effort a novel is, and quit. Writing can get difficult, it can mean scrapping a month of work or starting over because the whole story hangs on the conundrum they gleefully detailed in Chapter 3, and in Chapter 12 they realize they don't know how to solve it. So they get discouraged, they can't scrap 10 of their 12 chapters, don't know what the story can be about anymore and put it aside to "think about it." They don't persevere.

The only thing that proves you can finish a whole novel is a whole novel finished.

Agents and publishers are not looking to support and nurture a diamond in the rough, they are there to acquire a finished work of art, one they can read cover to cover before they invest a dime so they know it should sell, and then buy it from you and sell the crap out of it.

In the market for fiction, agents and publishers are not interested at all in "This might be great someday," they both want to say "This IS great and I know how to sell it."

Agents charge you nothing to decide whether they want to represent you, they work on commission only (warning: many scammers try to charge you, never pay for it). Because anybody can submit to them, they have to reject more than 95% of what gets submitted. Some say 98%. They have no reason to take on an unfinished novel when they are rejecting 19 out of 20, or even 49 out of 50, completed novels. Even then, the agent is familiar with what individual publishers want to see, so the agent only brings each publisher the kinds of books they want more of. If publishers have their own readers taking over-the-transom books, they have to filter out 99% of books. Many publishers (and movie studios) work only with agents: Rather than pay employees to read and reject, they rely on agents to bring them only material they'd plausibly want. They "outsource" the reading but pay nothing for it (indirectly they may pay more because the agent negotiates a good deal for author, but up front they get the filtering for free and eliminate the hassle of dealing with amateurs).

An Agent is already taking a gamble, her speculation begins with the quality of your one-page query letter; if you get through that, she'll read your first 5 or 10 pages, if you get through that cut (1 in 20 or 1 in 50), she may want to read your synopsis, and after that your manuscript, and decide if it is market ready. She does all this for free, and you provide all the material for free. The way this business works, the only place for your unfinished work is wherever you do your writing.

In non-fiction they will believe you can finish a book, because you have the credentials and standing to produce the non-fiction book, AND those do not require as much imagination, twists, descriptive prose or emotional engagement, as fiction does. The chances of screwing up non-fiction are massively reduced by that.

In contrast, fiction doesn't take any credentials, and there are no classes or degrees that will give them confidence you can finish a great story other than doing it. A novel (or movie) really is art, a work devised to evoke an emotional reaction. It isn't writing chapters of a textbook.

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