What Do Literary Agents Really Want?

My dog agility students know the answer to this one!

When I take on a new dog-handler team to teach them the sport of dog agility, I start by describing some different scenarios and posing the question: Which of the following dogs do you think is most ready to compete?

(1) A dog who moves at a medium pace through the course, mostly doing the obstacles in their correct order, but who keeps putting its nose to the ground to sniff things and trots right past some obstacles.

(2) A dog who’s super eager to work with its handler, though so quick to make decisions about where to go that it occasionally knocks a bar or has a wrong course (i.e., an obstacle inserted incorrectly into the sequence)

(3) A dog who’s even quicker than #2, but so fast that it flies off the teeter without waiting until the teeter touches the ground (thus breaking a safety rule), after which it zooms around the perimeter of the ring without taking the rest of the obstacles.

(4) A dog who takes all the obstacles in their correct order at a slow trot and wins the blue ribbon for having a clean run.

If you answered #4, you’re not alone. Most of my students give this answer, too. But in my view, you’re wrong. The correct answer is #2—the eager dog who makes mistakes. Here’s why: that dog exhibits a motivation to do what its person wants that none of the others has. It might make some mistakes, but it possesses a spark of life that not even the slow, accurate winner of the class displayed. It has drive.

It's my firm belief that the agility teams who end up being happiest doing this sport—whether or not they ever compete—are the ones who’ve been trained in what’s called the DASH principle (from Susan Garrett, agility trainer extraordinaire). This is a simple acronym in which D = Drive, A = Accuracy, S = Speed, and H = Habitat, and it embodies the essence of dog agility. Drive gives you a motivated, happy dog. Accuracy gives you a dog who can do all the obstacles in correct order without knocking bars, jumping off teeters, refusing obstacles, taking incorrect obstacles, or accruing any of the many other possible faults. Speed gives you a dog who zips through the course well below the time limit. And habitat means you have a dog who can generalize and perform obstacles in different locations with all sorts of distractions around the ring (other dogs barking, children running, food everywhere, you name it). Learn the components in the proper order, and you’ll have a fun canine partner who loves bounding through a ringful of obstacles as much as you do (note: you don’t actually get to do the obstacles).

But this bears repeating: you must learn DASH in order. Train your dog to do simple tricks with drive before you do anything else. Soon you’ll be able to raise the difficulty level of the “tricks,” and voila, you have a dog who can accurately perform the weave poles, or the teeter, or any of the other obstacles. As your dog gains confidence, so will its speed. And finally, you’re ready to take your dog on the road and test its skills in new habitats.

Now, back to the question that has plagued writers through the ages (or at least as long as agents have been a necessary part of the traditional publishing process): what do those agents want, anyway?

After attending more query, pitch, and submission workshops than I can count, and after celebrating friends and colleagues who have managed to land an agent, I think the answer lies within the principles of good dog agility training. Agents are looking for drive. They’re looking for a premise that is so motivating to them personally that it stirs their soul. Sure they appreciate a writer with excellent (i.e., accurate) technique who has clearly spent years studying the craft and has polished their submission materials to a brilliant sheen. Sure, they respect a writer who’s got the speed of mind to have other projects in the works. And of course they like a writer who has the potential to show their book to as wide an audience as possible (i.e., many habitats).

But an agent needs that drive above all else. Without the spark of a premise that interests them, they’ll never read past the query letter to the first page. And with it, they’re willing to overlook a lot of mistakes. They know they’ll enjoy the story so much that they won’t mind working with the author as long as it takes to make it as good as it can be. Their goal? A book that wins the blue ribbon not for plodding correctly through all the steps of Writing 101, but for its heart, its intrigue, its fascinating portrayal of life in all its messiness.

If we compare the agility dogs that have the D in DASH to the books that are lucky enough to obtain an agent, they have one thing in common. They’re fun! Not in a comedy sense (unless the book is a comedy, of course), but in the sense of having heart and soul. They’re fun to watch run at an agility competition, or fun to settle down with on the couch and read. They’re not always error-free, but they’re as enthralling as a musician who sings or plays their heart out, not caring about the occasional wrong note. To me, they’re like the opera tenor Placido Domingo, who sings with a fervor and intensity that stirs my heart even more than the pure and perfect tones of Luciano Pavarotti.

Photo credit: Gwen King

If I raised a few brows by daring to elevate any singer above the great Pavarotti, I meant to. That’s because the appreciation of drive in someone else’s work is subjective. Very subjective, especially when it comes to the creative arts (books, music, etc). One agent might be completely unmoved by your work, while another is almost instantly ready to fly with it to the moon and back. But your chances of finding any agent are going to increase enormously if you revisit your premise, your query, and your characters and look for heart, passion, and purpose every step of the way. Something that elicits those feelings is gonna be far more stirring and memorable than a perfect performance.

And I’m fairly certain a lot of those agents might just happen to agree with me.

Happy Tales!