#331

I have so many questions, but I’ll whittle them down to two. First, do you think I’m correct in describing this as literary fiction? Second, some agents I’m interested in querying require bios... but would admitting that I’m in high school lead them to dismiss my query or my writing? If so, could I just conveniently leave that bit out?

Thank you!

Dear QueryShark,

First of all, this query is 498 words, so it's double the target word count. The first thing we need to do here is start trimming.

Anamaria huddles in her family’s barracks with her best friend Julio. Together, they listen to the sick pattern of gunshots and radicals’ bodies falling into the dust. The detainment center guards— the executioners— scare everyone, but she knows she’ll be safe if she does everything just right.

Then her childhood ends.

When you need to cut, look for set up and backstory.That's often the info you can leave out without any loss of clarity.

Anamaria is sent to Moonhaven Academy, where her name and identity are stripped away and replaced. There, she must bleach her skin and hide her accent until she can pass as the perfect white woman. And Anamaria, now Anna Clara, knows she is lucky. Had the Academy not accepted her, she would have become one of the women in red who supposedly cook and clean for white men.

But everyone knows what they really do, behind closed doors.

Or, rather, what’s done to them.

She could still become one of them if she fails.

At this point, I'm salivating.
I am thinking of editors, I'm plotting submission strategies.

Anna escapes as her dream-self, Indigo, into a fantasy world where the rainforest teems with dragons. Not too long ago, her dream-planet was colonized by the humans who made Earth uninhabitable. They genetically warped the planet’s indigenous life into creatures designed to serve. Now, one revolution later, Indigo and her only friend Oak are stuck on opposite sides of an imminent war between two of the human-created tribes.

What?
What just happened here?
We were all set for The Handmaid's Tale Redux and along come...dragons??
I've stopped salivating cause what you had was strong commercial fiction, and now I'm looking at fantasy.

Indigo must choose whether to betray Oak and live in safety with the tribe that took her in, or to leave the tribe and risk her life, alone, in the rainforest.

Yea, but it's all a dream, right?

Meanwhile, Anna is forced to either abandon her heritage for the illusion of whiteness, or let herself be given away to any man with a few dollars to spare. Her heart aches against both.

I'm pretty sure she's got a stronger reaction than heart ache here.

Three years later, Anna finds out she has been married to Julio, now Julian Taylor. He has changed beyond recognition.

Ok, and?

Ten years later, Anna must make her first autonomous choice.

are we done with the dragons?

Anna’s former classmate, tiny genius Amalia, is the leader of an underground organization intended to smuggle women to safety until the law no longer threatens them. Now Amalia has only days to find her successor before she is executed for crimes including treason, blackmail, and loving another woman. She begs Anna to take on her duties when she’s gone. After all, her wife can’t stand the thought of replacing her, and Anna is the last person the police would ever suspect. She’s pale, unassuming, well-mannered (at least in public): the perfect facade.

What does Amalia do that  makes her a genius?
Why is "tiny" something we need to know about her.

And honestly, I'm so confused here the only reason I'm still reading is that you had a GREAT opening, and I can see possibility.

If Anna accepts, she will surely die.

If she refuses, she will be a traitor to every woman on Earth.

What you're missing here is why she doesn't want to be a traitor to every woman on earth. You're assuming she doesn't. Watching a person struggle with choices, especially ones you might think are no-brainers creates tension, and tension boosts interest.

JADE AND INDIGO is just over 90,000 words of literary fiction, narrated primarily from the perspectives of Anna and Indigo. I am a high school student with a deep love for surrealist art, the poems of Sappho, and musicals. I scavenge for time to write when I’m not juggling AP classes and horse shows— no flaming swords yet, but maybe someday. JADE AND INDIGO is my first novel.

Well, if this is literary fiction, how are we going to explain the dragons?

Thank you for your time and consideration!

Sincerely,

I'm not sure how large a part the dragon thing plays in the book, but you're better leaving it OUT of the query. It's utterly confusing.

You can have it in the book (without seeing the book I'm going to assume your reader will understand what's going on) and NOT have it in the query.

Or you can allude to it in the query with Anna escapes into a fantasy world (without going into specifics.)

You've got the start of something I'd read but I'm not sure I've ever seen this big a splat in such a short period of time.

Fortunately, it's all fixable.

I suggest you leave out your age. It's nobody's business how old you aren't.

#330

Question: I do not have much as far as credentials are concerned other than personal experience driving my story but I do have a large and strong social media presence. How should I go about this? Have I represented that aspect well?

Dear QueryShark,

The universe was music before it was anything tangible.

I love this idea. Whether anyone else will is subjective, but I like it a lot. It's fresh and new (to me at least.) It's not a killer first line, but it does the job: it engages my interest.

Time was measured without signature, and worlds formed from the power of boundless melody, creation in song. Within this crucible of worlds lies Tellure Grand, a land wide, young, and full with possibility. Here, power is being found in the notes of destruction.

oh splat.  That first sentence was easy to read and easy to understand.
Now we get time was measured without signature: well, my guess is you mean this:

but unless you have some education in music (versus just listening and enjoying) you may not get the reference.

And I don't know what a boundless melody is. Is it like an Unchained Melody?

The last thing you want is the agent trying to parse out what you mean, and get diverted to YouTube and dive down the Dirty Dancing rabbit hole.

Warsingers.

The world folds where Warsingers make music. Each striking sword and flying arrow is accompanied by the strum of a harp or the lilting of an aria. Minds mold, politics change, and ideologies bend in the wake of such music. Life tuning to the history they create.The land shaping by those who wield the ebb and flow of these powerful sonatas.

this is so abstract I have NO idea what you're talking about.
That means I've started to lose interest.

Now the era turns anew for Tellure Grand and her fledgling civilizations. Strains of glory hum against the strings, where baritones of tribulations rise. A young lordling, a foreign man, a blind girl, and a wild huntress find themselves caught in the orchestrations of a world steered toward discord. For in the distance a bell tolls, a powerful noise that resonates with annihilation, striking with insidious fury. And the gods?

And now I'm skimming.

Gods do not sing; they are the song.

THE WARSINGER OPUS:(Series) A BREAKING OF BELLS is an adult High Fantasy manuscript complete at 325,000 words. It is an epic for those that love The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson, The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss, and The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan.

You don't need me to tell you that 325,000 words is a total deal breaker.

I grew up telling stories, comfortable with the attention of a room.

This is not the selling point you think it is.

That joy only grew as my love for Dungeons & Dragons burgeoned, kindling a deeper appreciation for worldbuilding and immersion. I market myself well and have a loyal following of 152,000 followers on the social media platform Tik Tok where the videos I have made about my book and worldbuilding have garnered hundreds of thousands of views, tens of thousands of likes, and thousands of positive comments. A consistent flow of those followers are transferring to my twitter as well, with 1,250 following on that platform to date. I also boast 950 active Discord participants that enjoy in public readings of chapters bi-weekly.

Well, that's a platform indeed.
And you put the info on how to find you at the end, which is just where it should be.
Because this query is an utter mess (right now) if I'd gotten to this part, I'd go check it out because clearly you're doing something right.

BUT note that I lost interest, and was skimming after the second paragraph.
Don't risk losing an agent's eyeballs.
Get the story on the page.

Thanks you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.

E-Mail: (just put your email address. We know gmail means email)

Phone: (and we know what that pattern of numbers means)

Tik Tok: (what you had) here is where you DO need the identifier because this isn't as well known to your audience yet.

Twitter: we know what @ means.


This query doesn't work because I don't know what the book is about.  

Here's the PW review of one of your comps, the first Brandon Sanderson book:

This massive tome is the first of a 10-part epic fantasy series from relative newcomer Sanderson (Mistborn), best known for his efforts to complete the late Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. 

In a storm-swept world where history has dwindled into myth, self-serving aristocrats squabble over mystical weapons that render their bearers immune to mundane attacks. 

The ambitious scholar Shallan learns unexpected truths about the present, the virtuous aristocrat Dalinar reclaims the lost past, and the bitter and broken slave Kaladin gains unwanted power. 

Race-related plot themes may raise some eyebrows, and there's no hope for anything resembling a conclusion in this introductory volume, but Sanderson's fondness for misleading the reader and his talent for feeding out revelations and action scenes at just the right pace will keep epic fantasy fans intrigued and hoping for redemptive future installments. 

There's not much sense of the plot here, but at least we have an idea of what's going on.


Here's the PW review of The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (2007)

The originality of Rothfuss's outstanding debut fantasy, the first of a trilogy, lies less in its unnamed imaginary world than in its precise execution.

Kvothe ("pronounced nearly the same as 'Quothe' "), the hero and villain of a thousand tales who's presumed dead, lives as the simple proprietor of the Waystone Inn under an assumed name.

Prompted by a biographer called Chronicler who realizes his true identity, Kvothe starts to tell his life story. From his upbringing as an actor in his family's traveling troupe of magicians, jugglers and jesters, the Edema Ruh, to feral child on the streets of the vast port city of Tarbean, then his education at "the University," Kvothe is driven by twin imperatives—his desire to learn the higher magic of naming and his need to discover as much as possible about the Chandrian, the demons of legend who murdered his family.

As absorbing on a second reading as it is on the first, this is the type of assured, rich first novel most writers can only dream of producing. The fantasy world has a new star.

 And again, not much plot but a sense of what the story is.

Both of these books are too old and too successful to be good comps NOW.  Generally you need comps that are new (within the last three years) and from authors who haven't sold a gazillion copies.  That's a tough challenge, I know, and it drives me crazy too.

Bottom line: even in epic fantasy you have to tell me  the story.

Saving grace: That kind of platform can rescue a query that's an utter mess, but it's a risk  you don't need to take. A query that tells me the  story combined with this platform would be very very strong.

Take another crack at this and tell me the story.