Pacing and Suspense

I was just reading an article on The Hunger Games in Entertainment Weekly -- this is my official source for all things pop culture, and by the way, Stephen King writes a column for it, so nanner-nanner-poo-poo. The overall topic was related to the movie adaptation. Lionsgate has the film rights and the scriptwriting process is well on its way. Nicole Sperling made this striking observation.

The books (which hide a compelling antiwar message behind the veneer of a tween thriller) are exceptionally well written and expertly paced, with near-constant suspense.

In particular, two phrases jumped off the page at me: "expertly paced" and "near constant suspense". I would certainly agree that in the first book, especially once they're in the arena, the suspense is nearly non-stop. The tension in the second book starts immediately because of President Snow, and then jumps through the roof when they're called back for the Quarter Quell. And if you haven't read Mockingjay, well, it's pretty much a non-stop ride on a runaway train. Nobody I know was able to put any of these books down without some form of dire threat.

So how do you manage expert pacing while keeping the reader in a near-constant state of suspense? This is tricky business because if your reader's heart is constantly pumping you run the risk of wearing them out. Here are some ideas, the basis of which require that your characters have excellent voice and are just plain interesting. You won't have much suspense if nobody cares about the people in the book.

Open with tension and suspense. Do you want to grab your readers' interest right away? The best writing lesson I ever had told me to begin the story when things change. What better way to change things for your characters than by sticking them in a stressful situation? Leave open questions, but not eight million of them.

Keep it moving. This should be pretty obvious. If scenes don't advance the plot, cut them. Whether it's commercial or literary, please don't spend a chapter in which nothing happens except the examination of a character outside the context of advancing the story. This is crucial to excellent pacing.



Every chapter needs a little tension. That's right. Every single chapter you write should have a little edge to it, except perhaps the epilogue. I'm going to mention this again later, but tension levels should read like a healthy EKG. Great big pulsating scenes followed my moments of quiet. There's nothing wrong with quiet moments, but they can never flat-line, or your patient's dead. All can seem well, but it's always good to have an undercurrent of some emotion, such as fear or hatred. Let it simmer and occasionally boil over a bit.

Cliffhangers. Often, you think of a cliffhanger in terms of the "To Be Continued" byline at the end of a book, movie or television show. Here's the challenge. Think smaller. Conclude your chapters with a cliffhanger. Clearly, you can't end every chapter that way, nor do I think you ought to. Sometimes, it's nice to end a chapter on a positive note, giving the reader some amount of closure on one particular issue. However, cliffhangers are critically important to adding suspense, especially early on when you are still trying to bait your readers (yes, they are fish, and you are trying to land them). These suckers are so important to getting your readers to turn the page rather than setting the book back down and either going to bed, or coming home from the book store or library empty-handed.

Tension in bunches. They say life's challenges occur in multiples. Stress can happen to your characters three chapters in a row. Three stressful situations can happen to your characters in one chapter. Or, if you want to go for the trifecta, beat your characters about the head by having three stressful situations occur per chapter, three chapters in a row.

Give 'em a  break. Everyone needs to take a breath. Your characters. Your readers. After a solid week of battling evil creatures with mixed results, everyone's sitting around the campfire with their age appropriate beverage of choice. Take advantage of that time. Spill a little back-story. Add some emotion. But make it interesting. Let it serve a purpose. But don't forget a teaspoon of tension. Let it be ever present. I'm also a big fan of ending one of those scenes with a major disruption. It's a great way to let the reader know that they've had a moment to catch their breath, but they better saddle up once more.

Take everything away from your protagonist(s). This works if your main character is a protagonist that appeals to your readers. Take away what they love. Leave them with nothing. Make their lives as wretched as possible. Why? Suspense. Huh? If your protagonist resonates with your readers, they're going to want to see what happens. Will Katniss overcome and survive the Hunger Games? Against all odds, will she save Peeta too?

Mix up your sentence lengths. This is such a nit, but it makes a difference to how your story reads. If every sentence is about seventeen words, joined together with a conjunction, then your reader will start to nod off. If every sentence is about six words, your reader will become irritable. Mix it up. Break up your longer sentences with the occasional short one to make a point. The short ones have a greater impact that way.

Place foot on neck, don't remove. a.k.a. Climax. This is the EKG where the patient is undergoing a stress test. They're jogging on a tread mill, working like hell to keep up. I like big, multi facted, multi-chapter climaxes. The tension should be high. The resolution shouldn't be easy. You need more than one mountain to climb. Once your characters reach the zenith of one mountain, they should discover that there's another bigger one, this time with irritated and generally peckish cannibals waiting halfway up. Even better, they should discover that one among them is a spy for the evil king of the irritated and generally peckish cannibals, and has been leading them to their slaughter since day one. Finally, once they get past those guys, it might be a good time for an asteroid to burst through the atmosphere and set fire to everything. By the way, this is a great time to think in terms of plot twists or the big reveal. Hence, the spy.

Satisfying Resolution. Don't cheat your readers. How you resolve everything--if you resolve everything--needs to make sense in the context of your book. If the reader says, "Sorry, I'm just not buying that." You've missed something. You don't want them feeling like Clark Griswold arriving at Wally World to find it's closed. Do you want to be taken on a roller coaster at gunpoint?

And there you have it: my recipe for pacing and suspense. I could have sworn there were like eighteen more concepts I wanted to raise, but they were probably boring and didn't advance my point.

Mythos is now Urban Mythos

The first bit of interesting news for those that follow me is that I've retitled Mythos as Urban Mythos. It's a kind of catchy play on words. The key revisions will be completed today (a neat trick, considering my daughter and six other eleven-year-old girls will be occupying my house during Rachel's birthday sleepover). I'll definitely post an update on this, but suffice to say, rounds one through three of my revision process are complete.

At this point, I'm convinced  the book is in the kind of shape where I can now divide my time up between writing and refining the core of a query and a synopsis, while spending some time on revision round four. There is nothing quite like having your book read to you, even if by a deranged robot living within your computer. If only Jim Dale would donate his time.... *sighs* With experience comes a keener eye (and ear) for some of the less obvious issues such as repetition, cliche, pacing, etc. In years past, I relied on tools like AutoCrit.com to help me there, but right now, I'm feeling less obliged because of how pleased I am right with the book in its current state.

The book is still up for my critique partners at the YA forum to continue providing me the most excellent feedback a writer could ever receive, and so I will continue to tweak here and there, until such time as I must stop.

So, wish me luck with the tween girl set giggling, singing Karaoke, and generally being eleven year old girls as my son and I try to avoid being covered in nail polish. Of course, I did pop Sweet Caroline on their Karaoke DVD. I may need to join in.

The Revision Process

Elana Johnson had not just one great post but a second great post on Getting to 100%. Her first blog entry was thoroughly rah-rah, sis-boom-bah about getting your novel and your query to 100% before even thinking about shipping them out. Her second post elaborated on the original premise by stating that getting to 100% was more about an emotional state -- are you confident enough to send your babies out into the publishing world?

This is a fascinating premise, because we writers are not always the most confident bunch. Cold rejection for our query and manuscript waits behind every rock in the big, scary world, ready to spring forth and say, "Boo." Actually, it's more likely to be a jack-in-the-box with copy paper stapled to its head, the word, "Boo" printed in Times New Roman. Naturally, we will try to interpret the meaning of "Boo" and make ourselves neurotic.

Since I'm in the first round of revisions of Mythos, I began to wonder at what point I might be confident enough to say that this urban fantasy of mine is 100%. So, let's see. What are my revision plans?

Revision Round #1 - Decrap-ification (in progress)

1. Kill some recycled trees and print the first draft.
2. Read it and take copious notes all over the page. Can't put the check here yet. I'm halfway done.
3. Make all the changes from step #2.

Revision Round #2 - Incorporating feedback

1. Gather all the critiques from the critique group (in this case, my YA writing pals on writing.com).
2. For any editing/grammar nits, revise appropriately.
3. For the "big issues", like characterization, plot, setting, voice, etc., decide if I agree with these points. 

• If I agree, revise appropriately. 
• If I don't agree, but several others do, consider that I may be wrong and revise appropriately. 
• If I don't agree, but only one or two others do, the author wins. (Stephen King rule)

Revision Round #3 - Grammar and Dialog

1. Judicious use of MS Word spell and grammar check. Correct as needed.
2. Read the book out loud, or use tools like ReadPlease to read the book to me.
3. Immediately fix the obvious grammatical issues.
4. Immediately fix the horrendous dialog that the ear makes far more obvious than the eyeball.

Revision Round #4 - The automaton editor - bring on the pain

1. This is where I take the book chapter by chapter through manuscript editing software. I've used AutoCrit and been quite happy with the results.
2. This isn't so much about grammar or spelling, but more about finding repetition, clichés, poor sentence pacing, readability, etc.
3. This is tedious and painful. The Terminator is not kind.
4. Revise appropriately.

 Revision Round #5 - One last look - one rule - no MAJOR changes allowed

1. Gather any additional feedback and revise as needed (see round #2)
2. One more MS Word spelling & grammar check.
3. Final read through and tweaks.

I have that rule in round #5 to ensure I actually finish. I've heard of artists who keep going back to the same painting, and never finish. There's always something to fix, to touch up, or to re-do. Life just isn't long enough, and I have too many other ideas for me to allow that to happen. If I were to reach round #5, and the book still had major structural problems not fixed in an earlier round, shame on me, and I'd have to change my plans.

However, it's at the end of round #5 that I expect to cross that emotional hurdle, where I can say, "Yeah, this is good." I won't go back and read the manuscript again, except to help building the synopsis and query. *shudders* Okay, let me just get through the revisions before worrying about the query and synopsis.

A Diatribe on Dialog Tags

Some time ago, I posted an Analysis of Adverbs. While writing that entry, the notion of adverbial dialog tags kept coming up and reminded me of some of the more, um, flamboyant dialog tags I've seen employed. And this is funny to me, because I've received critiques from other writers who complain that I use he said/she said too much, and that I should mix it up with shrieked, argued, intoned, begged, demanded, pleaded, and I can't even tell you how many more.

Let's start with the two most fundamental points as regards dialog tags because if you buy them, everything else flows naturally.

1) Dialog tags should do nothing more than advise the reader who is speaking, in case it's not obvious.

When you watch a conversation between three people, you know who is speaking by sight, sound (tone and a spatial sense of where the voice is coming from)  When you eavesdrop (don't lie now, you know you do), you rely on sound. When you read, you rely completely on context. I'll come back to this.

2) Dialog tags distract the reader from the story.

There. I've said it. Plain and simple. Stories are about your characters and what happens to and because of them. Your characters do stuff, see stuff, feel stuff. They don't do, see, or feel dialog tags. Authors do. If you want your readers caring about your characters, keep the focus on the stuff your characters do, see and feel. If you want your readers caring about the author, write an autobiography.

Right, then. Context. Readers need to know who just said those precious pearls of dialog on the page. Dialog tags work, but, IMHO, the best way to convey such a context is to have the character do something prior to speaking. Action beats. You can't always do it, and sometimes it's just silly if you do it for the sake of doing it, but when you can, you should. Check out this tedious bit of dialog.

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"Lovely day, isn't it?" asked Sally.

"Oh," replied Alfred. "Smashing. Truly."

"I wonder if we'll ever see the rains again," said John.

"I highly doubt it," replied Alfred. 

"Oh, stop whining already," said Sally.

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Well, there's no doubt you know who is speaking. But this exchange suffers from a case of talking-head-itis. Nobody is doing anything. As far as you know, there's just some dismembered heads on a table babbling. How do I make it better?

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Sally leveled the pistol at Alfred's chin. "Lovely day, isn't it?"

Alfred swallowed hard, casting a sideways glance at the barrel of the gun, while trying to keep the car  from barreling off the road. "Oh, smashing. Truly."

In the back seat, John made a few more feeble attempts to free his wrists from the fishing line binding them together. He blew a mop of sweaty hair from his eyes and peered out the window. "I wonder if we'll ever see the rains again."

"I highly doubt it," replied Alfred. 

Sally shook her head and smirked. "Oh, stop whining already."

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It's no longer a bunch of talking heads, is it? And I didn't put an action beat or full-on action around every bit of dialog. Tags are okay. One more note about context, before moving on. When there are only two characters having a conversation, context often becomes more obvious. If the conversation were strictly between Alfred and Sally, and you were relying on dialog tags for some of the exchange, you wouldn't need to repeat those tags because it would be obvious who is speaking as long as you observe the basic rules - new paragraph per speaker and such. For example:

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied.

Technically, could be rewritten as:

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said.

"Are you sure?" 

"Yes."

Now, onto my favorite part. Dialog tags as distraction. Remember, these things are supposed to be utensils, not the condiments, much less the food. Once you get going with that knife and fork in your hands, you don't much notice them anymore. Pursuant to that thought, when you use dialog tags, if you stick primarily to the garden variety - said, replied, asked - like the knife and fork, very shortly the reader doesn't even notice them there. They somehow ... work. The diner remembers the meal. The reader remembers the story.

Rather than listing the eight million ways to say said, I will point you to Aaron Lazar's excellent post from last year. Here's a great line from his post, and I whole-heartedly agree.

Never use anything but “said,” “asked,” or an occasional “whisper” or “mumble.” Once in a great while, if you feel you really need it, slip in a “spat” or “croaked.”


I'm personally okay with a "replied". And if you want to throw in the occasional flowery dialog tag, that's fine, but keep it rare. The thing is that when you do this:

1. "I don't wanna," he whined.
2. "You bastard!" she shrieked loudly.
3. "Don't do that," he lectured.

It does several things. First, the reader stops and reads the dialog tag. It's a distraction. Second, we are telling the reader how to interpret dialog whose intent is self evident. Readers like to use their imagination at times. Third, it appears that the writer is a novice, which doesn't help get you published if that's what you care about.

Now let me dissect what bothers me specifically about each of the above and make a suggestion.

"I don't wanna," he whined.
The dialog sounds like whining. I don't need the tag to tell me.
Better - He hung his head and kicked a pebble across the sidewalk. "I don't wanna."


"You bastard!" she shrieked loudly.
This is, O M G, this is too much. And I've seen this exact line somewhere. First, there's an exclamation point. Definitely tread lightly there, but given that it is there, it implies the speaker is shouting. So, shrieked is unnecessary. On top of that it's an adverbial dialog tag that happens to be redundant. I'm not aware of anyone who can shriek quietly. There's not much wiggle room there. So, we have an implied shout via an exclamation point, a beauty of a dialog tag, and an adverb.
Better - Her face was red and her hands balled into fists. "You bastard!"


"Don't do that," he lectured.
First. like #1, it sounds like the speaker is lecturing. But second, and more importantly to me, if you are going to use a dialog tag, make sure it is a form of speaking. Whispering, muttering, mumbling - those are forms of speaking that imply the tone - quiet and/or unintelligible. Lecturing is something a person does, not how a person speaks.
Better - He waggled his finger in front of my face. "Don't do that."


So endeth the diatribe.

Word Count Wanderings

Word count sucks. There, I've said it. Word count is a necessary evil. Word count makes the world go around. A couple weeks ago, I posted an entry on Frankie's blog about how word count matters. I've done research on and off over the last year or so on word count, and have come to this conclusion.

There is no one answer. I will use middle grade and young adult for my examples.

Chuck Sambuchino, editor for Writer's Digest Books wrote the definitive post on word count for novels and children's books.
MG - 20k - 45k
YA - 55k - 70k (add 5k for fantasy/sci-fi)

Colleen Lindsay from Fineprint Literary Agency, posted this entry on word counts and novel length.
MG - 25k - 40k

YA - 50k - 80k (longer for paranormal or fantasy)

Nathan Bransford from Curtis Brown, Ltd, posted this entry on novel word count. He's not a stickler for word count. In his words, "If it works, it works." His larger point was that agents will reject you outright if your word count is outrageously high.

Kristin Nelson of Nelson Literary Agency posted this entry on the word count question. She points out that it's the completely wrong question to ask. The right question is to ask how important pacing is in your novel.  Length won't matter if the pacing of the novel makes it such that the reader doesn't care. Case in point: Harry Potter & Twilight. (among many others I can think of). She would know. She sold Helen Stringer’s Spellbinder, which my daughter, wife and I recently enjoyed.

On the flip side, Michael Bourret of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management posted this query critique on a relatively short middle grade novel. (28k words). He wasn't worried about the word count, thinking that they could expand the book in the editorial process if need be.

To complicate matters, in my research I found an agent or two that categorized some well known middle grade novels as young adult. These are definitely MG books - they're shelved with MG, the characters are middle schoolers, and the themes are very much MG. Yet, those novels had 80k word count. If you were to query such an agent with a middle grade novel of 40k words, would they think twice when reading the query letter?

In the end, I think you tell the story that's in your head. Then revise the heck out of the thing - lop off what doesn't move the plot along. Ensure the pacing is appropriate for your target audience. Get people to read it and make sure it's just right. When you're done and you think it's right, if it falls well outside the typical range for your genre and target audience, you have a decision to make. You can query anyway, but keep in mind that you're lowering your chances overall. As you can see above, some folks are less concerned than others. Remember that publishing is a business. And if the story is just right, decisions made based on word count are often driven by the business side of things, especially for debut authors.

An Analysis of Adverbs

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.
-- Stephen King

What is it with adverbs anyway? Why all the fuss? Adverbs are a sign of weak writing, they say. And believe me, "they" say a lot of things on the topic of writing.

Adverbs modify a verb, adjective or other adverb. So the lesson goes, if you need to further describe a verb, adjective or - *gasps* - another adverb, then you're not using a good enough verb or adjective in the first place. They are writers' ketchup, the all purpose means of masking a substandard meal. Good steak doesn't need ketchup, and even a phenomenal burger tastes great even without the red stuff.

The notion that adverbs show a lack of effort is fully ingrained in my head now, whether I agree with it or not. For many of us, trying to avoid adverbs while writing a first draft is a challenge, and often brings out our Evil Inner Editor. Sometimes an adverb is the first thing that pops into your head, and if you're still in your first draft (and you do revise), what's wrong with decorating a verb so you can get on to the next sentence? You can fix it up later, right?

Consider a certain SM Blooding, a.k.a. my buddy Frankie. She is one my favorite writer friends, and is an incredibly prolific writer. We critique each other's work, although she does way more for me than me for her. One of the first occasions a critiqued one of her chapters, I didn't really know her that well. And I pointed out all the adverbs, because that's one of the many things we do. Her response took me aback. In her opinion, adverbs were part of the English language and were therefore at her disposal. This was such a rock star reaction, and perfect for her. I should add that Frankie's books are not exactly rife with adverbs.

Speaking of "rife with adverbs"... Harry Potter - all seven books - seriously rife. Stephen King reviewed a couple of the Harry Potter books, at least one of which appeared in the New York Times. He adores the Harry Potter books, but he has complained about the adverb count. I've noticed more English writers using adverbs liberally, and had one such writer tell me that English writers as a whole use adverbs like condiments.

While the anti-adverb movement was trying to brainwash me, I had begun reading Philip Pullman, specifically His Darker Materials. The adverbs jumped off the page at me, slapping themselves in the chest and shouting, "Look at me, I say!" It was so distracting. I eventually started over, this time trying with all my might to ignore the devilish "-ly" words.

When I write, I'm cognizant of the adverbs I put in. In first draft, only the ones I cannot immediately think of an alternative for, or I am unable to drop outright, make it onto the page. On the whole, I don't think there's anything wrong with the occasional adverb. Anything in moderation, right? I have one exception, though.

"I hate you!" she shouted angrily.

Adverbs decorating dialog tags. The example above is so obvious in its badness that I won't even comment. I avoid these suckers like a blast-ended skrewt fed on a diet of chili.I think the rewrite below is an example of avoiding the accursed adverb-decorating-dialog-tag, but also illustrates "showing" something without using an adverb to do so.

She glared at him, her fists balled at her side. "I hate you!"

I allow myself one exception to the adverb/dialog tag thing. We're told to avoid fluffy dialog tags. Stick with said, replied, and asked. Otherwise, you run the risk of making the reader blink. Worse, you might use a tag that's not an actual act of speaking, which is what dialog is all about. I'll sometimes employ an adverb for a subtle description of the speaker's tone of voice.

"I hate him," she said softly.

She's not whispering. Oh, there's still ways to accomplish the above even without the adverb, but you get my drift?

So, what are your adverb rules? Where do you think it's okay/not okay to use them?

ABNA and the back-story tweak

Late last week I decided to enter the Amazon Breakout Novel Contest. This year, they added a separate Young Adult category for submission, which is a pretty cool deal for us YA writers because our books were compared against adult fiction in the past. They really are different categories in my view. The style of YA is often quite distinct and needed its own special place.

Seeing as how Mythos wasn't ready, I decided to enter The Children of Midian. However, I realized some things needed changing: the opening and the pitch. As far as the opening goes, I eliminated chapter one and the first half of chapter two. The book now begins with fourteen-year-old Elliot in the woods at dusk, moments before curiosity brings him into the shack from which he's carried off to Midian.

When I originally wrote Midian, I didn't subscribe to the notion that your book should begin when everything changes for your protagonist. I wrote the story where it began. In fact, I once had a way cool prologue, but I put the thing in the guillotine. In theory, everything that occurs before the "big change" is nothing but back-story. That includes prologues. Once this finally sunk into this slack brain of mine, it became quite simple.

What are you supposed to do with back-story? You weave it in throughout your book. In the case of Midian, I've long feared starting where things changed for Elliot because some crucial character information resided in those opening chapters. When it "clicked" this weekend, I was able to weave those critical bits of back-story into the opening scene. And wouldn't you know it? The book opens at a brisker pace, with a bonus of 4000 fewer words!

As far as pitch goes, well, I had one already. But it seemed to me I could do worse than to come up with something entirely different - a whole from scratch kind of thing. So, I spent Sunday before and after the Jets game (sniff) working that puppy until the light bulb stayed on.

New opening? Check.
New pitch? Check.

Last year I stayed up until midnight Sunday into Monday to submit. This year, I got up at the butt-crack of dawn Monday and submitted. Heck, I had to get up and go to work anyway, didn't I? So now I wait. Actually, I'm going to completely tune it out and resume working on Mythos. Spealing of Mythos, I owe you all a new Birth of a Novel entry.

A submission and the ten year old editor

I've done it. I've submitted The Children of Midian directly to a new small press publisher. Risky, I suppose, but I'm willing to give it a shot. Let's see what happens. I've done a bunch of research on Absolute Write, which is key to a lot of my decision making. They are not on P&E yet, so let's see how the ride goes. I'll let you all know as soon as I know anything.

I've spent nearly the last 24 hours researching small houses. It seems like many of the newer and successful smaller houses got picked up by or merged with others. Front Street Press joined Boyds Mills Press about five years ago after a very successful ten year run.

My about-to-be ten-year-old daughter has been reading Midian, and she's proved to be a terrific editor. I renamed one of my characters a while back, and in one of the later chapters, she spotted the old name listed once or twice. A little background makes this an interesting lesson to learn.

The leader of the children in Midian goes by the name of Mara. There's also another primary character whose name was Sarah. There are a few scenes in which these two have a lot of screen time with Elliot, and I found that the rhyming was a bit off-putting. So, I changed Sarah's name to Rebecca, wanting to keep it biblical.

I relied on the ol' global search/replace of MS Word. It worked great! Except in the two instances where I had spelled Sarah's name as "Sara". She was Rebecca everywhere except in this one section of the book where she was Sara twice.

Thus commences a "nearing bedtime" scene the other night between daddy and daughter.

"Daddy?" asked my girl. "Who is Sara?"

"Sara?" I said. "There's no ... oh, crap."

Lesson? Don't rely on global/search and replace AND when searching for names, look for ALL spelling variations.

Know your genre

I received a form letter email rejection today from an Jessica Regel. Mind you, I thought this had the potential to be a reach. She is cool with fantasy if it's YA/Middle Grade, however, she seems to prefer Contemporary Fantasy versus other forms of the genre. She likes her stories rooted in our world. While I like to think of The Children of Midian as contemporary fantasy, our world plays a role only initially until Elliot stumbles through a portal into the parallel world Midian. So, technically it's High Fantasy.

The classification of stories into genres is a topic, which I imagine both frustrates and challenges writers to pigeonhole their stories. I once had a short story rejected by a magazine because it was too sci-fi for them. This was in my very early and naive days of writing and trying to get published. I had honestly never thought of my short-story-on-the-verge-of-novella in terms genre. It took place here on earth with regular people, only the planet turned out to be a computer simulation that needed rebooting periodically. In retrospect, I suppose it was sci-fi.

I've gone to three writing conferences over the last three years and I've learned two often contradictory lessons.

1. If you want to get published you might want to know in which hole to stuff your pigeon of a story.
   
2. The story and good writing is what's important. So, just send it.

The problem with #1 is that, like most things in this world, not everything is black and white. It is often difficult to typecast a novel into one tidy little spot, plus that tiger actually grows new spots over time, and his old ones have to shift around to make room. Make sure you get it right and make sure what you query with matches what you say it is. Don't bother sending a query about your urban fantasy to an agent who is looking for that genre, and then include a synopsis in which a farm boy rides a dragon as it does battle with a Krakken in the North Sea. She might notice.

As for #2, well, not everyone agrees with it. Secondly, someone has to actually read a few of your chapters to get a feel for the quality of the story and the writing. In many cases, you need to get past the query and onto a partial for this rule to apply. If you make an unbelievable pitch in your query, you've at least piqued their interest, and it's also a good sign of your writing skills, or at least your sales skills. :-)

This of course goes beyond genre or literary category. If you write books for kids - well you've got numerous categories there - Middle Grade, Young Adult, chapter books, transition books, and so on. There is even rumor of a new category that is somewhere between Middle Grade and Young Adult. You see? A new spot on the tiger forcing the other spots to get out of the way!