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Literary Agent Sam Farkas on Retellings, Idea Generation, and What Makes a Story Layered
by Writing Workshops Staff
2 hours ago
The first sentence of A Harvest of Hearts, the cozy fantasy debut by Andrea Eames, runs like this: "They said that magic, real magic, not the shite that the hedge-witches peddled with all their little bags of powders and herbs, could only be performed in exchange for a human heart."
It is the line literary agent Sam Farkas calls haunting, the one she returns to as a small master class in tone. Notice what it does. It places us inside a familiar fairytale ecosystem, complete with witches, magic, and payment in flesh, and then cracks the spell with a single profane word. That collision of the timeless and the irreverent is, in a way, the entire promise of a great retelling.
It is also why Sam is the right person to teach Retellings: Fairytales & Myths in Fiction at WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature.
As global rights director and literary agent at Jill Grinberg Literary Management, Sam helps books find homes around the world, which means she has a finely tuned ear for what feels fresh on the page and what reads as derivative.
Her workshop offers writers something most retelling classes do not: the agent's eye. Students will leave with concrete tools for generating and pressure-testing ideas, a working method for finding the layered "deeper about" of any story they choose to reimagine, and a clearer sense of what makes a retelling marketable to editors and readers alike.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Sam:
Writing Workshops: Hi, Sam. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Sam Farkas: Hi! I'm Sam, a literary agent and global rights director (which means I help books find homes around the world). I live in New York City with my husband and two cats, Bask and Paprika.
Writing Workshops: What's the thing you wish someone had taught you earlier in your writing life, and how does this class address that?
Sam Farkas: I wish someone had taught me idea generation. There's this myth with any kind of art that inspiration just strikes, an idea more or less fully formed, but that hasn't been my experience. Sometimes you have to actively work toward coming up with good ideas (which also means learning to recognize bad ones. It's okay, we all have bad ideas!). My goal with this class is to give writers tools for honing their ideas and discovering new ones.
Writing Workshops: If a student walks away from this class with one skill or shift in their writing they didn't have before, what is it?
Sam Farkas: They will know how to workshop and refine their idea into one that feels fresh and, importantly, marketable.
"Good stories are layered. They are about something, but they are also about something else (often multiple things!)."
Writing Workshops: What's the last sentence you read that made you stop and reread it? Type it out for us.
Sam Farkas: I'm continuously haunted by the first sentence of my client Andrea Eames's novel A Harvest of Hearts: "They said that magic, real magic, not the shite that the hedge-witches peddled with all their little bags of powders and herbs, could only be performed in exchange for a human heart." I love how it immediately establishes the tone of the book, and how it blends a classic fairytale feeling with "shite."
Writing Workshops: Describe a moment in a workshop, one you were teaching or one you took as a student, where something clicked for someone. What happened?
Sam Farkas: I had a writing teacher in college who used to ask in regards to our writing, "What's the About? And more importantly, what's the Deeper About?" For some reason, talking about theme that way caused a lightbulb moment for all of us in that class: good stories are layered. They are about something, but they are also about something else (often multiple things!)
Writing Workshops: What's a craft move you're slightly obsessed with right now? Not a big concept, a small, specific technique.
Sam Farkas: Enter late, exit early. It's basic advice, not at all groundbreaking, but I find myself talking about this a lot when it comes to scene structure and pacing. We don't want to take too long to get to the meat of a scene, and we don't want it to overstay its welcome.
Sharpen your scene craft and idea-generation muscles with a literary agent who has placed novels in markets around the world.
Enroll in Retellings: Fairytales & Myths →Writing Workshops: What's a book you press into people's hands that has nothing to do with writing craft?
Sam Farkas: My current obsession is Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl. It's funny, smart, well-written, with amazing character development and worldbuilding, and there's a good reason it's speaking to all types of readers.
Writing Workshops: What's the worst writing advice that sounds smart?
Sam Farkas: "Start in the middle of the action." Gosh, I hate this advice. It leads to a lot of very confusing, rushed openings, when really we need an on-ramp. Action doesn't matter if we don't understand the purpose behind it, and if we aren't yet emotionally invested in the characters.
Writing Workshops: Finish this sentence: "Most writing classes won't tell you this, but..."
Sam Farkas: One of the best things you can do for your writing is to read widely, i.e. outside your genre. A lot of classes have a narrow focus, but there's so much to be gained from reading books you wouldn't normally pick up.
Romance offers a masterclass in creating tension even though the reader knows how the book will end; fantasy teaches worldbuilding; horror, atmosphere; literary fiction, voice and stylistic prose; thrillers, pacing. It's great to do a deep dive into a genre, of course, but there's also a true benefit to reading and studying books outside of it.
"Romance offers a masterclass in creating tension even though the reader knows how the book will end; fantasy teaches worldbuilding; horror, atmosphere; literary fiction, voice and stylistic prose; thrillers, pacing."
Writing Workshops: Who was your first literary crush?
Sam Farkas: Not sure if you mean "book boyfriend-style crush" or "crush on a writer's skill/style."
The former, Rhys from Gail Carson Levine's The Two Princesses of Bamarre. I was probably twelve years old and I wanted to marry this sorcerer.
If we're talking authors and their body of work, probably Ernest Hemingway. In high school, I was truly obsessed. I love how he can say so much with such spare prose.
Writing Workshops: What's your teaching vibe, in one sentence, not a paragraph?
Sam Farkas: I am going to ask so many questions — I want my students to not only think deeply about what they're writing, but why they are writing it.
Writing Workshops: What would your students be surprised to learn about you?
Sam Farkas: I really love video games (although perhaps less surprising now since I'm shouting about my love for Dungeon Crawler Carl). I could talk for hours about Fire Emblem.
Find the Deeper About of Your Retelling
From dungeon crawls to fairytales, Sam moves through stories the way her clients' best characters do: with curiosity, craft, and an instinct for what is marketable. She brings that same energy to the workshop. Whether you are nursing a half-formed idea or wrestling with a draft that has not yet earned its retelling, Sam will help you find the deeper about, sharpen your prose, and shape something an agent (or a roomful of readers) would want to follow into the woods. Bring an idea, or come to find one. You will leave with a story that has its own pulse.
Spend a summer with a literary agent who knows what makes a fairytale or myth retelling sing on the page (and sell on submission).
Save Your Seat in Retellings: Fairytales & Myths →WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
