#292

Question: I have revised my query until my fingers bled. And yet nothing. So I am wondering if I'm doing something in my query to put agents off without realising it.


Dear QueryShark:

Loren Blake is taking down the patriarchy one revenge plot at a time.

Well I'm all for that, but this doesn't give us any sense of of what's at stake.


As long as she can get away with it.

And this doesn't help. It's too abstract.


When she starts dating school goth Alexa their relationship is like pouring gasoline on the fire and she finds out just how far she is willing to go for the people she loves and what she's willing to sacrifice to protect them.


Too abstract. 
Gasoline on a fire is a cliche. 

She discovers that a boy in her school has raped her closest friend and knows that the only way to stop him is to kill him. Loren doesn’t believe in second chances.

Aha, finally!
Here's where the story starts. 
Why does she think the only way to stop him is to kill him?

And you can bet that by now, she knows how to get away with it.

The Gospel According to Loren Blake is my first novel, it is YA contemporary complete at 84,000 words. It has an lgbt protagonist and is #ownvoices. I am a thirty year old private tutor with purple hair that made me a poor fit for my previous career in teaching.


Your main character's name is an oddity. Laurell K. Hamilton wrote the Anita Blake vampire series. That info was just a squiggle in my brain as I read this, but my first thought was you were paying homage to those books, or that author. (The Goth reference above probably got me thinking like that.)
If you ARE, fine. If you're NOT, you might consider a name change.

I have included the first ten pages and a synopsis below. I hope you enjoy it and I look forward to hearing from you.

Of course you hope I enjoy it. That's like saying you hope I'll keep breathing while I read it. I'm picky about this stuff because I like to see a query that doesn't state the obvious. If you do that here, you'll do it in the novel.  Yes, persnickty and nitpicky. But there's a reason for that.

The only way to close a query is Thank you for your time and consideration.

The answer to your question is yes, this query doesn't do the job. 
You've got the goods, this is an interesting plot, and you've got voice (I know that from your description of yourself) but this query doesn't show that well enough.


Revise, resend.

#291

Questions:
Will beginning each part of my book with a stanza be a total turn-off for agents? Not including it in a response to a request for pages would be dishonest; but I realize the only other creatures in the sea who share my love of poetry might be cryptozoological.

Is including supplementary/reference material at the end of a manuscript frowned upon? (Not as extreme as Operation Red Jericho)

Dearest Carcharodon Inquiro,
Filo is a glitch in a centuries-old U.N. plan. The Academy was designed to admit one child from each family. There shouldn’t have been any siblings. Filo and his brother must decide which of them is to attend and which must stay behind. When another child fails to show on Collection day, Filo secretly takes Silas’ place. He thinks he is merely an imposter protecting his frightened friend. He is trying to fit into a hole he was not designed for.


This is a hot mess of backstory and explanation. SIMPLIFY! I should be able to read this paragraph straight through without pausing to think "huh??" and at the end know what problem the main character faces. Yes, it's really hard to get it right.  It helps to prune out everything that doesn't matter, AND go in chronological order.

Filo is a glitch in a centuries-old U.N. plan.
The Academy was designed to admit one child from each family.
The Academy admits one child from each family.
There shouldn’t have been any siblings.
Filo and his brother must decide which of them is to attend and which must stay behind.
When another child fails to show on Collection day, Filo secretly takes Silas’ place.
(I'm assuming that Filo's brother is NOT Silas' but that is not clear here at all.)

He thinks he is merely an imposter protecting his frightened friend.
He is trying to fit into a hole he was not designed for.
But: he's not. And this is where the query goes flat. If he's not just an imposter, what is he?

At the Advancement Academy, 21 students are instructed in the ways of an ideal Humanity. A perfected gene-pool, crafted ethics, and dogged morals. Their charter from the United Nations is to restore mankind to a better state.

Eleven years later, all Filo wants is to complete his training unnoticed. To maintain calm and order. A resurgence of suppressed memories and the appearance of Silas dissolve this balance and bring Filo under the microscope. He can either escape the compound with Silas or stay and let the Academy run its course. Escape would jeopardize not only the success of his fellows, but the entire species. If he stays, he might be collateral damage.


And here's where I've stopped reading. That entire first paragraph is now backstory. It's clear the main part of the plot takes place here, eleven years later. And what you've written is too abstract to be interesting. I'm confused about who Silas is, I have no idea what happened to his brother, and I thought "The Academy" was an institution not something like a disease.

Then there’s the matter of being an asexual male charged with repopulating the planet.

Huh? Where the everloving holy moly did that come from?


INITUS is 47,000 words of young adult fiction and deals with the paradoxes of ethics and diversity from the revolving viewpoints of Filo, his brother, their co-conspiring classmates, and Silas. INITUS is GENESIS with a human instigator -- a real-life macrocosmic ‘Take Two’.

I don't understand any of that. 

And there's no way you can write any kind of complex world-building-required fantasy in 47,000 words. You'll need twice that.

Thank you for your time and consideration!

As to your questions:


(1) Will beginning each part of my book with a stanza be a total turn-off for agents? Not including it in a response to a request for pages would be dishonest; but I realize the only other creatures in the sea who share my love of poetry might be cryptozoological.

 It wouldn't be dishonest at all. I'm not sure why you think it would be. Lots of things get added to a book betwixt submission to an agent and publication. Glossaries, indexes, timelines, maps, and epigraphs (which is what you're talking about.)

You can include them if you want of course. I personally find them distracting and useless but I just skip over them. I don't stop reading if you include them.



(2) Is including supplementary/reference material at the end of a manuscript frowned upon? (Not as extreme as Operation Red Jericho)

This is added later if the editor thinks it's beneficial.  For example, there are extensive author notes in Gary Corby's historical novels about the real life events and timeline for the world he's created. All of that is added after the book has been edited.


Those things aren't even close to your problem here though.

Your problem is two fold: a hot mess of confusion in the query, and word count in the book.

First things first: figure out what you left out of the book if you think it's finished at 47K. Then rework the query to show us:

Who is the main character?
What does he want?
What is keeping him from getting what he wants?
What must she sacrifice to get what he wants?

#290-Revised once

Revision

Dear Queryshark,

Aisha Batu is not a typical housemaid. She is educated, she wears expensive clothes, and her employers Henry and Teju Cole have become her informal, foster parents. But her old this tranquil life suddenly changes when she is raped. By Henry.

It's not an old life that's disrupted, it's the way she's living now, in the present day, as the story unfolds.

Physically broken and emotionally shattered, Aisha stumbles through her days with only one thing on her mind: getting back to her home village, Gaa Sabi. Gaa Sabi means her dysfunctional opportunistic family, her betrothed - Attahiru, and more importantly, it means keeping the terrible betrayal to herself.

Show us how she feels by what she does. Stumbles is a good word to convey that she's not doing well. Why does she have to keep the terrible betrayal to herself? That's the part of the story that creates tension. If this is discovered, what bad thing will happen?


 But nothing in Aisha's life is that simple anymore... Not only is her return to Gaa Sabi complicated by a positive pregnancy test  – but Teju has just been diagnosed with terminal leukemia and with less than three months left to live, specifically requests for Aisha as her end-of-days caregiver. Torn between grief and loyalty, she puts aside her intense fear for the man who has assaulted her and chooses to stay.


 Why the everloving hell would she do that?

 You have two very separate things in one sentence: "Not only is her return to Gaa Sabi complicated by a positive pregnancy test  – but Teju has just been diagnosed with terminal leukemia"

Since Teju is NOT in Gaa Sabi, it doesn't make sense to have it follow the "not only is her return to Gaa Sabbi" clause.

 Consider this:
Torn between grief and loyalty, she puts aside her intense fear for the man who has assaulted her and chooses to stay can she put aside her intense fear to help a woman she loves like a mother during her final days? And then of course, there's the pregnancy.





Amidst caring for Teju, avoiding Henry without raising suspicion and discouraging a hell-bent suitor, Aisha manages to keep her pregnancy to herself and negotiate her life as normally as she could
manage. Until yet another potential tumult is thrown at her, revealing what she's fought so hard to hide, and threatening to take away all she has; her unborn child, Teju, and even her chance at love. Aisha must decide what is most important to her, face her fears and fight her battles, and learn how to hope again in the face of devastating heartbreak.

So you've set this up nicely and now you throw in all this other stuff, and it's so abstract as to be meaningless. 


WHEN I WAKE, is a women's fiction complete at 95,000 words. I have included the first chapter as required and would be happy to send the completed manuscript on request. Thank you for your time and consideration.

You don't need to say the first chapter is requested. Most agents are pretty familiar with their own submission guidelines.

You're getting closer.
Revise, resend.

---------------------------------------------------

Question, I'm an African, and this novel is African-themed, do I need to query agents who strictly represents African writers or do I generally query agents who represents books in my genre?

Dear QueryShark,
When Aisha, a young Fulani maid, chooses to stay with her dying foster mother, she has no idea she'd be investing her heart for an emotional whirlwind. 

This isn't a log line (which I think you intended it to be.) You don't need a log line in a query, and if you did, a good log line is less about description (a young Fulani maid) and more about action.

Aisha Batu is not a typical housemaid. She is educated, she wears expensive clothes, and her employers Henry and Teju Cole has have become her informal, foster parents. But her old tranquil life suddenly changes when she is raped. By Henry.

This paragraph is a much more dynamic set up than what you had for a log line. It's specific. It gives us a sense of the characters, and we have an emotional response to what happens. In other words: start with this.

Reeling emotionally from the storm caused by her foster father's betrayal, she Aisha resolves to return to her home village to heal. However, Teju - her foster mum - gets devastating news; she has leukemia and has less than three months left to live. Torn between grief and her sense of duty, Aisha is forced chooses to put her intense fear and hatred for Henry at bay and stay with her dying foster mom.

Aisha isn't forced, she chooses. That's the actual strength of the story.  You don't need to tell us Teju is Aisha's foster mom again since you introduced her in the preceding paragraph.

Reeling emotionally from the storm is just overwrought writing and really out of place here. Don't be afraid to be plain. Aisha was raped by a man she trusted. We don't need to be told she's reeling; WE are reeling with her.

 With the clock ticking out the seconds of Teju's life, and the struggling through hospital visits, endless tests and fainting spells, the extraordinary bond between both women deepens. As Aisha works on piecing her life together, she watches Teju's own fade away. Determined to make Teju's final days as joyful and painless as possible, she keeps Henry's brutal attack to herself. 

 The charade is kept up until she When Aisha discovers she is pregnant, and soon her secret is out. Her reticent friendship with Teju is disrupted, and she faces the risk of losing everything she has ever cared for. She must decide the depth of her loyalty, how far she could go for love, and, in the face of devastating heartbreak, learn how to hope again.

 Reticent is the wrong word here. It's a word that describes a person not a friendship. You might have meant nascent. But, nascent would imply she's just now becoming friends with Teju, and that doesn't feel right. Aishu is choosing to stay with her; surely that means they were friends of long standing.

I also don't understand what any of "risk of losing everything" etc means. She is going to lose Teju. I hope she's kicking Henry to the curb in terms of any kind of filial devotion. What else does she have to lose? Be specific here. Specificity will engage your readers; generalities will not.

WHEN I WAKE, a one sided narrative adult fiction is complete at 95,000 words. I have attached included the first chapter as required and would be happy to send the completed manuscript on request.

I'm not sure what one sided means here.  
Unless instructed otherwise, you'll include the pages in the email NOT attach them as a document of any sort.

Thank you for your time and consideration.


You should query every agent who represents commercial fiction, literary fiction or women's fiction. Do not limit yourself to agents who've expressed interest in African stories. As far as I can see here, there is nothing uniquely African in this story. It's much more of a universal story. That it is set in Africa (I assume) is a bonus.

 I'm not sure if English is your first or second language. If it's your second, get a native speaker to review this with you to pick out problems like "reticent." If it's your first language, get a good copy editor to help you find problems like "reticent."

Revise with an eye to being very specific about what's at stake for Aisha.

#289

Question: So in my end paragraph as you'll see that I included comments about the representation that's in my story. And yes, I'm trying to think of a less generic title. But anyways, do you think it's alright to put that there? We need representation in books and I know that many agents and readers are looking for that, so I thought it might be a good idea.

Dear Hungry Query Shark,

All that beautiful and intelligent Tinkerbell wants is to survive, though granted she does it differently than other UnSeelie Fae. Neverland is a fun-filled wonderland, and Tinkerbell has happily spent her centuries luring children there with the help of her brainwashed, broken, and beloved Peter Pan. There children are safe from that nasty outside world full of horrific pain, and can be carefree and always happy. Until the day prior to their thirteenth birthday.

That sound you hear is me screeching with frustration at "beautiful and intelligent." Wait, I hear you saying, what?? How can that be bad??

It's not so much bad as boring.  Compare it to "brainwashed, broken and beloved" or even better "useless, nasty, scum filled" both of which are MUCH more interesting. And I have a real thing about female characters being described by how they look first, rather than what they do. You've escaped the full cauldron of rage with "intelligent" but you're still in the soup cause intelligent really doesn't have much zip.

If Tinkerbell is your main character, you want some zip in her description. You do NOT want boring.

You could actually chop that entire first sentence and be better off.


But now some useless, nasty, scum-filled imaginary friend by the name of Wendy has come along. She thinks Tinkerbell’s Neverland is barbaric, that Peter Pan needs to be saved, that Neverland needs to come crashing down and Tinkerbell must die. So naturally, Tinkerbell wants her gone. But paradise has gotten boring, so she decides upon a game rather than just sending the snivelling little thing to whatever afterlife imaginary friends have.

This is vivid writing. I love it. I'm not sure I completely understand why Wendy hates Neverland, but I don't really care. Right now I'm enticed. That's all you need.

Thus it’s a chess game to keep control over Peter Pan; whoever captures the king’s his mind wins the chess game. If Tinkerbell wins she’ll make sure a fate worse than evisceration awaits her opponent. But if Wendy wins, one way or another Neverland will fall.

It took me a second to realize that Peter Pan and "the king" are the same guy.  You can avoid that by using him, rather than calling Peter Pan by a new designation in the same sentence.

In short form writing like query letters, one trick for clarity is not calling the characters more than one thing.

NEVERLAND is a 61,000 word YA psychological thriller retelling of Peter Pan, and is told from the point of views of both Tinkerbell and Wendy. There are examples of racial diversity as well as LGBTA+ diversity in my manuscript, as I believe diversity in literature is essential. Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,


As to your question: I think this is a nice concise way to alert agents and editors that your book is inclusive. And yes, editors are telling us they're looking for inclusive books, so it's a good idea to have it there.

I don't hate the title. 

This needs some polishing up, but after that I think it's ready to go out.

#288-FTW

QUESTIONS:
1) Initially I had more words dedicated to each section, but worried it’d be nothing but loglines and you’d eat me alive. Is focusing extensively on the first two parts the right way to go, or do I need to diminish them to slightly flesh out the other parts?
2) The "alliances form" paragraph describes events in the last ~10% of the novel. Since each part has its own arc and stakes, is it cheating to use the end of the book like this?

Dear QueryShark,

Abbi Abrams loves hunting demons. She also sucks at it. She's fired for letting a couchtar escape (a couch-human centaur, by the way). In drunken woe, Abbi quite literally falls into a clutch of demon eggs (apocalyptically bad, by the way). Abbi fears she's a mediocre screwup, but she's also the only one who can stop a demonic conspiracy from obliterating her town.

We cross the universe.

Oasa scours the cosmos, finding the last piece of her mother's crown in the claws of an old friend. He asks a favor: transport the son of the alien zealot who butchered Oasa's mother. Oasa reluctantly agrees, but so-called allies betray them. She flees, desperately seeking the human homeworld of legend. Instead, Oasa unearths the horrifying origin of her royal lineage.

We travel onward.

A self-loathing scientist chases a serial killer across time.
A lovelorn angel escorts a woman through demon country.
A British mother discovers the sorcerer shopkeeper in her neighborhood.
A C.I.A. agent hunts her terrorist ex-boyfriend.
A friendless tween survives an island of monsters.
A vengeful synthetic liberates his people.

Alliances form. Enemies are made. A bloody battle ensues. And when the negotiations begin, these eight must figure out how to save the world from each other, and how to make the world a place worth saving.

LEGENDS is my first novel, a genre-blending episodic adventure. At 176,000 words, LEGENDS is The Avengers without superheroes, Bone Clocks with more punching.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,


The hell with the critique, send the manuscript toot sweet. (ok, I know it's tout suite) This query breaks almost every rule in the book. It also works. Why? Well for starters, the voice. It's vibrant. It's fun. It's enticing.

And there's a couchtar. How would I NOT read a book with a couchtar?
And yes, I know the author made that up, but still, it's hilarious.

And then there's the phrase "mediocre screwup" which made me laugh out loud.

At this point, I'm unplugging my laptop and carrying it out of my office and getting second reads on the query from my colleagues here.

And yes, they all thought it was funny and charming.

And of course, too long by a wide margin, but that STILL didn't stop us from wanting to read it.
It did make us demand a synopsis with the manuscript, but the key information here is WE WANTED TO READ A 176K novel!

Never let anyone tell you that 176K is a deal breaker. It may be to some (lesser) agents, but here at The Reef we sneer at such things. I'd rather pare something down than not have enough story.

This query works.

Now to answer your questions, cause even though I've already demanded you send me the full, you will KEEP QUERYING.

(1) Focusing on two is fine. I'm assuming these two are the characters who first appear in the book. It will help if they appear in the order they do in the query too. That means Abbi first, Oasa second.  If I start reading pages and neither Abbi nor Oasa appear fairly quickly, I'll probably start skimming to find them.

(2) It's fine to use it. And it would wreck the rhythm here if you didn't. Write what works, even if "the rules" say otherwise.

Did  I mention send this ASAP enough?

#287-Revised 1x

Dear Query Shark:

Realtor Reed Winford suspects something is wrong with the historic house he has agreed to sell for an old client but he thinks at worst it is bad plumbing or a leaky roof. The last thing he expects is the ghost of a young jazz-age woman who lived in the home in the 1920s and who was murdered a hundred years ago.



And here's where I stopped reading this revision.
This paragraph is an exact replica of the first revision; the one I wrote four paragraphs of notes on last time.

Failing to revise is fine. You don't have to follow my advice at all.

What you can't do is not follow my advice and then ask for more. That seems a poor use of time for both of us.

I see this less in queries, and more in novels. When I give notes to prospective clients, there's always the chance they think I'm delusional, off my rocker, have no taste, or a myriad of other reasons they think the advice is flawed.  Such is the way of subjective evaluations of any art form.

But then sending the novel back for further consideration, that's where I lose my cool. If you think I'm wrong, why the hell would you want me to represent your work.




Winford knows he must find a way to remove the haunting in order to sell the house. His business is selling homes and he has a job to do. He uses clues from old records, maps and antiques found at the home to track the woman’s prior locations when she was alive. As he’s drawn deeper into this woman’s tragic life, he begins to have real feelings for her. Now he wants justice for her death. He talks to the police, title researchers and the ghost herself, trying to find out who killed her and why.

When someone tries to murder Winford, he discovers that she may not be the only ghost, and that the evil which killed this wonderful woman is still in the city and must be confronted and destroyed.

Winford tracks down the source of corruption using smuggler’s maps and old photographs dug up from a grave. His skills pay off when he is able to discover the crime family’s headquarters as well as their secret to remaining in power even after death.

Writing books like this is the best way I've found to combine my two biggest hobbies: writing and real estate. I’ve been published in Chicken Soup for the Soul, Boy’s Life and Capper’s Weekly. I’ve won the Crowder College Golden Quill Award.

Thank you for your time and consideration.
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------

First revision
Realtor Reed Winford suspects something is wrong with the historic house he has agreed to sell for an old client but he thinks at worst it is bad plumbing or a leaky roof. The last thing he expects is the ghost of a young jazz-age flapper who lived in the home in the 1920s and who was murdered a hundred years ago.

These sentences convey information but not vitality. Remember the purpose of a query is to entice your reader (ie me) to want to read more, not just tell me about the book you've written. A query is more like a sales pitch than an informational interview.

One of the fastest and easiest way to punch up the vitality of a query is to ditch those long ass sentences. Short, sweet, hubba hubba.

For example: Realtor Reed Winford suspects something is wrong with the historic house he has agreed to sell for an old client. At worst it is bad plumbing or a leaky roof. The last thing he expects is the ghost of a young jazz-age flapper who lived in the home in the 1920s and who was murdered a hundred years ago.

You don't always need complete sentence: At worst, bad plumbing or a leaky roof.
You don't need to repeat yourself: jazz-age flapper, 1920's


Winford knows he must find a way to remove the haunting in order to sell the house. His business is selling homes and he can’t let a ghost ruin a deal. He uses his real estate skills and clues from old records, maps and antiques found at the home to track the woman’s prior locations when she was alive. As he’s drawn deeper into this woman’s tragic life, he begins to have real feelings for her. Now he wants justice for her death. He talks to the police, title researchers and the ghost herself, trying to find out who killed her and why.

You don't remove the haunting, you remove the ghost.
You don't need every single piece of information that you've got here. This is not a checklist for a home inspection!


When Then someone tries to murder Winford with an old car and an ancient safe, he discovers that she may not be the only ghost. The evil which killed this wonderful woman is still in the city and must be confronted and destroyed.


Winford tracks down the source of corruption using smuggler’s maps and old photographs dug up from a grave. His real estate dective skills pay off when he is able to discover the crime family’s headquarters as well as their secret to remaining in power even after death.

Don't reveal the entire plot in the query. At MOST you want the first act.

I’ve been published in (this), (that)  and (them). I’ve won the (That) Award. I live in the Seattle area and the locations in the book are real.

The fact you live in Seattle and locations are real isn't a selling point. It's a novel; you can make it all up if you want. That the locations are ACCURATE is my big sticking point. I can't stand when writers get the geography of a real place wrong. 

Thank you for your time and consideration.


Thank you for changing the name of the main character. That helps a lot.

Now, it's time to spruce up the writing here. A query needs to be vivid. It's not just a conveyance.

And if your query reflects the writing in your novel, you'll need to take a look at that too. Remember a query is intended to entice me to read the novel. If the novel isn't spruced up that's not the fault of your query!

Reflect, revise, resend.

----------------------



Original query

The centennial of the Roaring Twenties is coming, and there will be a resurgence of interest in that era. This novel combines the mystery, romance, fantasy and history of that time. Realtor to the Dead, a paranormal mystery of 118,000 words, describes how a modern day real estate agent handles a house haunted by a crime from that era. 

Your query doesn't need a prologue. Start with the story.
And it's almost always a terrible idea to project where readers interest will be going. Given the popularity of Downton Abbey right now, a "resurgence" in interest in the 20's may very well have come and gone.


(MC NAME) is an agent who enjoys his career but always seems to get stuck with the difficult house listings. He thinks his luck is about to change when he gets to list an early 1900's beach-front house in the suburbs of Seattle. GERTRUDE SEDGWICK is a 99-year old woman who is selling the home, which has been in her family for many years, although she suspects something is wrong with the house she's trying to sell. And she’s right.

Start with something interesting. That MC enjoys his career is nice, but it's not very interesting.


(MC) finds a ghost in the home during an open house. He discovers she is a young jazz-age flapper girl who used to live in the home in the 1920’s, and who was murdered nearly a hundred years ago. (MC) uses his real estate skills (and a dug-up bootlegger relic from the Antiques Roadshow) to track down the woman’s prior locations, using historical property documents and maps. He finds an underground speakeasy in Seattle’s historic district. This leads to talks with police, title researchers and the ghost herself. Who killed this woman and why? What connection does it have to one of the city's richest immigrant families? Who is trying to kill (MC) through antique automobiles and an ancient safe? It gets worse when they try to destroy the house (MC) is trying to sell, by attacking it during the filming of a reality TV show.

You're getting lost in events here. What's at stake for our MC? Why does he want to solve her murder?


(MC)is also drawn deeper into feelings for the dead woman. This sends him on a quest to get closer to her by using antique telephones, eyeglasses and phonograph records. He takes it a step further in an intimate scene involving an antique magic trick!

This is so abstract I don't know what you mean. For starters you HAVE feelings, you don't get drawn deeper into them. I've jumped up and down about plain writing here more times than I can count but it bears repeating. Plain and simple is almost always the best way forward.


(MC) tracks down the criminal source using smuggler’s maps and old photographs dug up from a graveyard. His real estate detective skills pay off when he’s able to discover the crime family’s headquarters, as well as their secret to eternal life.

oh. Eternal life huh.
Well, that moves it right off the crime shelf and into something else.

I have published short works in Chicken Soup for the Soul, THIS and THAT. I have won THOSE College's SPLENDID Award. It was more fun and personal to name the agent/detective after myself. I live in the Seattle area, and the book’s locations are real.

Naming the protagonist after yourself is textbook confusion for an agent reading this. I thought it was memoir when I read it first. If I'd gotten this in the slush I would have rejected it instantly cause it looked like you were talking about yourself in the the third person.  

I STRONGLY urge you to revisit this choice. It doesn't add value, and it makes your query ripe for misunderstanding. That is not what you want.

Please be an agent to this agent!

I'm also at work on another novel.

(MC name)


It's pretty clear you haven't read all or even enough of the Query Shark archives yet. There's a template for getting plot on the page, and a template for a closing line. You've missed both of those. You don't have to follow all the rules, but if you break them it should be for a reason, not cause you don't know them.

Read the archives.
Revise.
Resend.

#286-revised 1x

Revision #1

Lesa has always looked like her father. But after her mother left, Lesa began to take on her father’s worse traits: his overwhelming loneliness, his violent anger, his desire to be loved even if he had to force it. Lesa would give anything not to become like him.

One of the first things I notice here, and would if I were reading this in my incoming queries is that "overwhelming loneliness" is not a trait. It's a state of being, or a condition. While it may be picky, it's exactly the kind of thing I look for in a query because it's not a deft use of words.

However, at seventeen, Lesa becomes something else: an “outcast,” one of many people to spontaneously acquire a superpower. Lesa renames herself Chaos, hoping to distance herself from her father. But Chaos’s outcast ability—hearing thoughts—only makes her lonelier. Then, Chaos’s power becomes more frightening. She dreams other people’s dreams. She accidentally kills a man by tearing at his mind. Chaos fears she’s the monster everyone believes outcasts to be.

You can solve the problem of the entire first paragraph simply by inserting "who is prone to anger and trying to force love" after "father" in the second line:

 Lesa renames herself Chaos, hoping to distance herself from her father, who is prone to anger and tries to force love.

You can see from this awkward sentence that "trying to force love" doesn't really make sense here and that means you need to use different words to convey what you mean.

If you're going to use "outcast" as a proper noun, it will help to cap it in every use: Chaos fears she’s the monster everyone believes Outcasts to be.

And I have no idea what "tearing at his mind" means.  I think I know what you meant, but it's not what you said.  That's a problem in a query. If I don't understand something, I'm not going to assume it's my problem. I'm going to conclude that the writing isn't clear. That's exactly what you do not want to convey.

If you've been working on your novel and your query for a long time, you might be blind to some of these things. Always ALWAYS have someone not familiar with your book read over your query. Ask them to mark what they don't understand. Or what's not clear. Or where they were confused.



Chaos decides that her only chance is to find her mother. If she can convince her mother to love her, without any of her father’s tactics, then she’ll no longer be like him. But traveling is dangerous. Outcasts are hated by the public, hunted down by researchers, and easy to identify on sight. To go means risking capture and experimentation. Not to go means having no way to prove that she isn’t a monster.

And again, the word choice here of "tactics" befuddles me. Tactics aren't loneliness or anger. Tactics are actions. So far your reader has not seen any tactics.

And this is actually where you should end the query. You've got the set up, you've got what's at stake. You've got the choice Chaos has to make.


The dangers are more than Chaos could ever prepare for. Outcasts are being tossed dead onto the streets. Her mother is involved in their capture. Chaos is soon forced to make a choice: to become a monster and save herself or give up the only thing she’s ever wanted. Love.

This is just repeating what you said in the preceding paragraph. Other than the fact that Mum is involved in capturing Outcasts, which you could work in to the paragraph.

CHAOS is a YA speculative fiction novel with 75,000 words. It will appeal to readers of Marie Lu’s The Young Elites and fans of X-Men.

I hold a BA in writing and have short fiction published in Literary Orphans and Strangelet journal. Thank you for your time and consideration.


You've got the structure of the query down pretty well, but this would not survive my incoming query sorting (yes/pass) because the writing isn't clear and focused, and we have no sense of Chaos as a character.

 ----------------
Initial query
Question:

My character changes her name from Lesa to Chaos in the first chapter, and this fact is significant for clarity. Have I dealt with this information in a way that isn't confusing? I have other worries, but if I list them all, I'll start spiraling into self doubt. :) Thank you for your time and critique!

Dear Query Shark,

When Lesa becomes an “outcast”, she gains the ability to hear thoughts. But the thoughts make her scream, tear at her hair, and worst of all, they deepen her loneliness. Eevery time she hears people think of their families, she misses her mother. In seven years, Lesa has only seen her mother on television.

If you leave out the screaming and hair tearing, you get your reader to focus on what's important: Lesa misses her mom. It's really important to be as focused as possible in a query.

Like many outcasts, Lesa is captured. She Lesa renames herself Chaos and escapes with four other outcasts, making her first friends. But Chaos can’t ignore the fact that her power is becoming more frightening. She’s dreaming other people’s dreams, and She accidentally kills a man by tearing at his mind. She fears she’s the monster everyone believes outcasts to be. And who would stay friends with someone like that?

 The first sentence about being captured doesn't connect to anything else in the paragraph. By whom? What for? And the paragraph appears to be about Chaos learning what this new ability is going to do to her. Focus!

Worse yet, Outcasts are turning up black-eyed on the streets of the capital, stripped of their powers, and Foxwell, head of research, is seeking out more. The other outcasts want to go to the capital to fight, but Chaos isn’t sure. If she goes, she must leave friends, risk her life, and face her own monstrousness.


And here's where you go splat. You've introduced a character with no context (Foxwell) which is confusing. You've got some sort of fighting, also with no context. You've equated leaving friends, risking her life, and facing her own monstrousness as equal problems. My guess is they aren't.


But she could also, maybe, find her mother.

Unless she's a duckling in a picture book, finding her mom must have some additional value other than just reuniting with her. Some context here will help. 

CHAOS is a YA speculative fiction novel with 80,000 words. It will appeal to readers of Marie Lu (The Young Elites) as well as to fans of super-humans with flawed powers such as X-Men’s Rogue.

I hold a BA in writing and have short fiction published by in THIS and THAT.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Right now this is too general to be enticing. You've got to give us a compelling reason to care about what happens to Lesa/Chaos and HOW you talk about her is the way to do that.  Make us feel what she feels, what she's afraid of, what she hopes for, what she's willing to risk and why.

Answer to your question: I think the name change is handled very well. I wasn't confused at all.

Answer to your other worries: Stop. Focus on fixing your query. You can't control a lot of this stuff, but you are in absolute control of what you write. 

Revise. Resend.