Overview

Matt has been a professional writer for over 40 years. One of the hardest aspects of writing is the beginning - both the beginning of the book but also starting a book.

His Book

https://www.amazon.com/Emirs-Falcon-Matt-Hughes-ebook/dp/B0BC4MPGD6?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1668717297&sr=8-1&linkCode=li2&tag=discoveredwordsmiths-20&linkId=41bf8e6aabddb0e0a1defec9fe4e8eeb&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_il

YouTube

Transcript

Let's move on and talk some author stuff. And we have a really good topic today. A lot of authors want to talk about finishing your book and that we're going to talk about beginnings.

Before we do that, though, you have been writing for a long time, so what are some things and, and even your fiction, you've been writing for quite a while. What are some things that you've learned through that time that you're doing different with your writing than you used to?

Matt: I was always pretty good right from the beginning.

I, I sold my first short story that I ever wrote in 1982. And I've sold virtually everything I've written since. I had a knack for it. That's, and it certainly didn't hurt that I spent decades writing speeches that is writing for the voice and bringing across charact. To audiences who sit there saying, why am I listening to this guy?

It's cause I can make you listen. But I know some things, and I think I knew them pretty early on. One thing, as I said before it's always about conflict ERs have to contend against each other and their circumstances. One thing that I find most obvious when I give advice or teach or do critiquing or editing for people who are trying to learn how to do this business is that you have to do a really good opening.

And recently I looked at a few pages of someone I know. Who asked me to have a look at what he was doing. And it started with a guy getting up in the morning and going in the kitchen and having coffee and talking to his mother. And then his friend showed up and they talked a little and absolutely nothing happened.

They all got along very well with each other and it was here's the thing. The real problem, and it's got nothing really to do with literary considerations. It has to do with how the market works, the industry agents and editors are the gatekeepers now. Used to be, you could write a thing and send it in to a publisher and there would be somebody there who would read it or read some of it and decide whether or not it was worth looking at.

They were called slush readers, and Slush was the stuff that came in, as they would say over the transom. All of that ended decades ago. The corporations took over the independent publishers and turned them into profit centers. And one of the things that makes profit is to cut costs. So they got rid of all those slush readers, assistant editors, and they pushed the job of winnowing, triaging.

They pushed that down onto the agents. The agents responded. They said, We're no longer gonna take 10%, we'll take 15%. Cuz now we have to do all this extra stuff. And that happened. So there's a story that a famous, very powerful New York agent tells at writers conferences. He says that they they get 800 queries a month.

Seven to hundred to 810% of which they send a note saying, send us the synopsis and the first chapter. And then once a month, usually on a Friday afternoon, they gather only agents gather around a big table in the conference room and they have this stack of 70 or 81st chapters and they start to pass them around.

And what they're doing is deciding. Am I gonna read this on my own time on the weekend? Cuz nobody ever has time to read. They're always so busy marketing, reviewing contracts, looking at manuscripts for people. They already represent the idea of reading something new and seeing maybe we'll represent this person that's done on their own time largely.

So say there's six agents sitting around a table and down comes the first chapter and a guy looks...