EmmaD
1997 Posts
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Finish it first, for lots of reasons.
The main reason is that if you're to get anywhere, the chapters
need to be as brilliant as it's humanly possible for you to make
them. And you can't know that they are the best they can be, until
you've finished the first draft, revised it totally, then edited it
within an inch of its life, done any more revisions that the
editing has revealed, knitted it all back up together, and polished
the result. You can't do any of those later processes properly
until you've got the whole novel written, and know what you're
trying to do with it, what kind of beast it is, whether it's come
in at the right sort of length etc. etc.
The subsidiary reasons include:
- if an agent loves the first three chapters she'll ask to see the
rest. If you haven't written it then she's extremely unlikely to
offer to represent you, because she's got no guarantee that the
rest is as good as the beginning. At best, she'll tell you to get
back to her when you've finished the whole thing, and maybe even
give you a few tips for what they think may help. That's
encouraging, but can also put huge pressure on you to finish it to
her liking (which will be hard if you're just going on a few
general comments), and quickly (even though in fact book-trade time
is glacier time, and she won't turn a hair if it's a year or more
before you send in the finished thing) . That isn't always good for
your writing. All agents have stories of having seen terrific first
chapters, only to find that when the balance comes in it tails off
sadly, because the first three chapters were brilliantly polished,
and the rest written in a horrible scramble. And there's nothing
more heartbreaking than to have written - or re-written - a novel
to suit something an agent's said they think you should do, only to
have them rejected anyway, because actually it doesn't really
work.
- if they reject the first three chapters, which is most likely
because mostly they DO reject things, then if you want to send in
the full MS in due course, even though you wouldn't say that they
rejected it before, it's perfectly possible that they'll remember
it. It'll then be starting off on the back foot as something
they've already decided isn't good enough and saleable enough to
take on - which is not a good start to their reading.
You could get hold of Harry Bingham's book the WAAYB Guide to
Getting Published, which has lots of advice about approaching
agents. (Full disclosure: Harry owns the Cloud and Writers'
Workshop, and I'm occasionally employed by them)
Best of luck with it!
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