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QUERY LETTER help please? (PLEASE IGNORE new thread to be made)
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Jeannine wrote: "Dear AllI am presently querying agents and I edited my letter about a hundred times. Please may you assist? ANY suggestions are most welcome! Many thanks!!
Query Letter:
[TITLE] is a young adul..."
your query letter is well-organized.
unfortunately, i've only submitted short stories to ezines and the submittal form is quite a bit more streamlined. so, i don't have much else to add specifically.
however, i just did a quick search ("query letter") of Joanna Penn's website and it has an article (written back in 2012) about query letters:
http://www.thecreativepenn.com/?s=que...
in it, she references this book as the best:
How to Write a Great Query Letter: Insider Tips & Techniques for Success
!! -- actually, the author offers it for free from his website: http://www.lukeman.com/greatquery/dow... --!!
(Joanna Penn is a "New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author." she's also an indie author. i read 2 of her marketing books and they're excellent.)
anecdotally, i've heard that publishing companies and agents also want to see a marketing plan and a social media presence.
Alex G wrote: "Jeannine wrote: "Dear AllI am presently querying agents and I edited my letter about a hundred times. Please may you assist? ANY suggestions are most welcome! Many thanks!!
Query Letter:
[TITLE..."
Thanks so much Alex G!! I'm downloading it right now! My shabbiest feature is social media.
Hi Jeannine,Query letters are the worst, aren't they?!
I'm not an expert on queries, but I'd say right now yours has too much in it. You want to briefly hook agents, show what your character wants, what is in the way, and what the stakes are.
It also has some too formal/a bit awkward phrasing in it (ex. '...rigorous endeavors of proving her innocence is triggered...').
Here is link to a blog that I found helpful for crafting queries: http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2006/...
And here are some suggestions for tightening up the query:
Way over six feet under (great line!), sixteen-year-old Amber Harrow finds herself paying a hefty price in Lower-Sheol, land of the reapers, for (go ahead and tell us the specific crime).
If she can find (or solve, whatever works best in context) the drop of death, (tell us what this is), she will prove her innocence and ensure her father's peaceful passing. But dead bodies infected with (whatever they're infected with) are (tell us what they're actually doing to get in the way; what specific action?). Mustering all her human resources and medical knowledge as well as help from Jude Blackford, a newly ordained god, Amber sets out to (something really catchy).
Tiffany!! You are a gem! Love your suggestions! Thank you for illuminating where an agent might want more juice.
You're welcome. Glad it was helpful!If you ever need editing or critiquing in the future, please check out my website www.owlediting.com. I'm better at working on manuscripts than queries :)
Jeannine wrote: "Tiffany!! You are a gem! Love your suggestions! Thank you for illuminating where an agent might want more juice."
Tiffany wrote: "You're welcome. Glad it was helpful!If you ever need editing or critiquing in the future, please check out my website www.owlediting.com. I'm better at working on manuscripts than queries :)
Jea..."
Hi,
I have revised my query letter along with your help and a few others. I have trimmed it and tried to make it as simple as possible. Please may you give it another read? Your input is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Lower-Sheol is an underground network of reapers who collect souls, ensuring the dying return to dust. Sixteen-year-old, Amber Harrow, is a nursing student, who receives a vision from the reapers showing that her father exists as a black solid form, wedged between the stages of death. The reason: Amber’s unconventional medicinal pursuits of trying to cure her father have backfired and instead, she has opened a gateway for him, to a fate worse than death.
The herbal muthi Amber smuggled from a witch doctor, and administered to her father has caused his spirit to fuse with his body. In so doing, she has inhibited the reapers from properly harvesting him.
Now, Amber is up for execution, and will have to prove her innocence and buy her time if she ever hopes to eradicate the mysterious plague that is threatening Lower-Sheol's delicate balance between the living and the dead, and ensure her father’s peaceful passing.
Having queried 67 times without success, I'm probably not the best source, but I'll chime in here anyway. I think the first letter was truly more engaging, although, too long. However, the second is starting to read a little like a grocery list and I feel it is not engaging enough...doesn't "pop" enough to stand out.Exercise: read something-anything all day until your eyes are just shy of falling from your head; until you have to put this down for a break. Then, go back to your query and read it while trying to take your heart out of it.
After reading these, I could immediately tell it was written by a woman and even make assumptions about your personality, without looking whom wrote it. So there is little doubt about how much of yourself you've put into this thus far. But you may need to loosen your grip a little and think objectively. Remember, you are trying to sell this. WWAUCSD (what would a used car salesman do?) Ha-ha-! Yes, I did. ...Sorry.
But your revision felt to me like if someone being handed a steak dinner said, "oh, no thank you. I couldn't possibly. I've just eaten." Then the server took the steak from the plate and slapped it back into the counter and said, "fine, then, here." ...Wait. What?
Without loosing the spark that makes you first query rather edgy, you may consider combining phrases into "power" words, moving the "spice" to the front of the sentences, followed by the synopses bits that hold things together and, as always, focus more on the struggles and conflict of the character, rather than the overview.
Hope that helps! I really am liking the premise though. I feel your artistic ideas are original enough to set your work apart from the rest, yet commercial enough to make you some bookoo money.
Dear L.B Conahan,You are so funny!!! I Didn't think about it in such an animated way but you definitely have put it in perspective.
It does sound like a grocery list! Aaaargh! This query business is damn hard!
Thanks for the power words tip.
I'm going to have to practice detaching myself.
Thanks for your input!
Jeannine wrote: "Dear L.B Conahan,You are so funny!!! I Didn't think about it in such an animated way but you definitely have put it in perspective.
It does sound like a grocery list! Aaaargh! This query busine..."
You are not alone. Queries and synopsis are an author's worst nightmare. How can one possibly put the blood, sweat and tears of months, or even sometimes years of work into the standard 250 limit? 'Aaaargh!' indeed.
The bottom line, that I often must force myself to remember, even after 10+ years of writing, is you don't really have to. You simply need to "sell" your art to somebody (in my experience, often with a terrible, entitled type of attitude, but whatever) and just give the gist of what it's about.
I know that's easier said than done. I suggest you focus solely on intent with an agent and try to block everything else out, especially emotions and attachments. You might even try to write several different queries and pick to one your support group finds the most catchy. But wait until you have to have interactions with a publisher's editor...best of luck!
L.B. wrote: "Jeannine wrote: "Dear L.B Conahan,You are so funny!!! I Didn't think about it in such an animated way but you definitely have put it in perspective.
It does sound like a grocery list! Aaaargh! ..."
I think you are right. I'm beginning to understand that less is more in a query letter. Simple and catchy. NO EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENTS.
Thank you. That's why groups like these are invaluable. To get others' opinions is very helpful.
And hey, don't give up on yours! They say you shouldn't even think of giving up before you've sent out 100 queries.
Best wishes.
Okay...here goes another try....Sixteen-year-old, Amber Harrow, leads a double life: one as a dedicated nursing student who saves lives and another as a killer who takes lives.
One wrong move changes Amber’s label from life saver, to murderer in an instant when she takes the life from the very person she tries to save – her father. Unconventional healing traditions are forbidden, but after a luring meeting in secret, a bottle exchanging hands, and precise instructions from a witch doctor, Amber is blinded by false hope and commits a crime against her nursing pledge: murder by medication error. The heathen serum was meant to heal her father. Instead it has fused his spirit with his bones and he exists as a semi-conscious form underground in Lower-Sheol, land of the dead.
With life and death uniting six feet under, ravenous soul collectors are hot on Amber’s tail for justice and so are the authorities; they need to solve a murder case. Now, to prove her innocence and to end her father’s suffering permanently by restoring the reapers’ realms below, Amber has to do the unthinkable. She must find a way to enter into Lower-Sheol and give her father a second death.
Bio and thank you.
Here we go. I thought the original was very passive and this is more active and certainly shorter – a good thing. I wouldn't start with her age, not grabby enough, but if you do, take out the comments in the first clause.
Maybe Killer/Murderer Amber Harrow has another life: a sixteen-year-old nursing student dedicated to saving lives.
Next par, I'd delete 'in an instant', it's padding. Also consider a colon after 'from life saver:'
But there are a few lives and saves in that sentence. I'd reword. Next sentence is too long. What's a 'luring meeting'? Is that relevant. Too much detail. We're going over old ground because we already know she's killed her dad, by error.
I think there's too much telling of the story. The query letter needs to have hooks, what makes this different, where is the suspense, why would an agent want to read this — that sort of thing.
Have you written down what you think the key points of the story are? What makes it interesting and unique? Don't forget a query letter is not a synopsis.
From reading this, I'd assume the nurse has made a mistake and basically killed one person by error. That doesn't make her a murderer or someone who kills lots of people. So to me it doesn't hang together. Unless she does kill lots of people?
Roughseasinthemed wrote: "Here we go. I thought the original was very passive and this is more active and certainly shorter – a good thing. I wouldn't start with her age, not grabby enough, but if you do, take out the com..."
You are a superstar! Thanks so much for the helpful advice!! I am going to work on tightening and hooking a little more...aaaarh....sigh
;-)
Take some time out from it. There's no rush.
Jeannine wrote: "Okay...here goes another try....Sixteen-year-old, Amber Harrow, leads a double life: one as a dedicated nursing student who saves lives and another as a killer who takes lives.
One wrong move c..."
Jeannine, isn't 'killer who takes lives.' redundant? How about just 'killer.'
Yes Martin that sounds good thank you:-)
But if you are trying to keep the phrases involving lives, for emphasis, then maybe "...saves lives, and another, where she takes lives." Or "takes them."
Pat wrote: "But if you are trying to keep the phrases involving lives, for emphasis, then maybe "...saves lives, and another, where she takes lives." Or "takes them.""Thank you Pat, that is phrased better. But I'm going to have to rework the whole thing so that I don't set up false expectations (even though in the end she does take over 16 lives of those who are suffering)...Eeek! I know it sounds grim but the reasons and the backgrounds are all fuel for the ending.
JeannineSuggest a new thread for your reworked letter?
Yes! Good idea...as soon as it's ready ;-)
I am presently querying agents and I edited my letter about a hundred times. Please may you assist? ANY suggestions are most welcome! Many thanks!!
Query Letter:
[TITLE] is a young adult horror/fantasy novel complete at 75 000 words.
There are no dead ends in Lower-Sheol, land of the reapers, for sixteen-year-old Amber Harrow. The road ahead is a long one as she finds herself lying in the pit of an underground tower, paying a hefty price for her unintentional deeds.
The days of being the envy of her peers and being seen as an impeccable, gifted nursing student are over for Amber. In her town on the Island of Ficus, a small appendage of the modernizing colossal Cranium City, she is judged harshly for her unconventional medicinal methods of trying to cure her ill father. Consequently, Ficus court finds her guilty of consorting with witch doctors and murdering her father. In the meantime, way over six feet under, infected dead bodies are disabling the reapers of completing their duties. Now, instead of Amber’s father resting in peace, he exists as a shadowy form in Lower-Sheol.
Amber’s rigorous endeavors of proving her innocence is triggered when she discovers fragments of evidence verifying that the crime she has been charged with is not entirely of her own doing. With a small chance of pardoning, there is one piece of evidence remaining that may be able to rectify her situation: the drop of death. Solving the mystery of the drop of death will not only ease Amber’s sentence, but will ensure her father’s peaceful passing. Mustering all her human resources, medical knowledge as well as the help from Jude Blackford, a seventeen-year-old, newly ordained Air-gravi god, Amber sets out to retrieve the drop.
Short bio.
Brief thank you.
So what do you think?