#319-Revised once

Dear Query Shark,

When an asteroid hits Earth, Lauren Sand considers herself lucky to stumble upon a Cold War bomb shelter down a mine shaft—until she shuts the door. Time-locked for two years underground, Lauren has no connection to the outside world. Nothing but the final radio broadcast of conspiracy theorist Mick Parks, who claims a nuclear error caused the catastrophe. When the door opens, Lauren emerges into a drastically changed world. The sea has a new shore, breaking six-thousand-feet high into the Rocky Mountains. With everything she has ever known covered by salt water, Lauren sets out to find other survivors.

This is a promising opening.

I can see a couple places where the writing could use some polish but when I read a query, a good compelling concept trumps all.

Struggling to survive, Lauren is grateful to befriend members of a commune called Camp Genesis. But after weeks of camaraderie, she discovers it’s a cult. The women there are the charismatic leader’s chattel, destined to repopulate the Earth with his offspring. When he stakes his claim on Lauren, she flees.

Oh blarg.

Honestly, I'm so so so over this plot device. Women as chattel, women as victims. One of the GREAT things about a post apocalyptic novel is your chance to discard old tropes and invent some new ones.

I'll keep reading but my enthusiasm has dwindled.

With the cult leader on her trail, Lauren treks across the desolate remains of Northwest Wyoming where algae devour the landscape and holiday resorts have become fiefdoms that kill trespassers on sight. Death and destruction greet her at every turn until she meets homesteader Jay in the lawless last city of New Casper. Jay offers Lauren sanctuary, and the future she always dreamed of. But Lauren sees the future of humanity at stake and believes the truth about the asteroid will help give closure and peace to the dying city. Driven by her hunch, Lauren and Jay embark up the frozen summit of Gannet Peak to last known location of Mick Parks. If her intuition is right, his story may help restore their broken world and allow Lauren to stay with Jay forever— if the cult leader doesn’t silence her first.

And now, I'm utterly and completely confused. Fiefdoms kill trespassers? I'm guessing you mean the people who live in the fiefdoms. How do you have a homesteader in a town? And why is Lauren worried about the future of humanity when she's got more immediate concerns?

Closure and peace to a dying city? What does that even mean?

CAPTURE THE TIDE is a 65,000-word, post-apocalyptic YA novel.

Your first query worked just fine.
Why are you "fixing"this?
It's the PAGES that aren't working.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

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

ORIGINAL QUERY
Question:

After a handful of rejections, I decided to commit myself to the Query Shark archives and I'm so glad I did. I killed my darlings, waited, then killed some more. But, the question is still the same. Is it my letter or my pages that get me rejected? I need the Query Shark.

Dear Query Shark,

When the earth starts collapsing around her, Lauren Sand considers herself lucky to stumble through the steel hatch she finds in a mine shaft—until she reads the notice on the bomb shelter door telling her it won’t open for two years, when the radioactivity outside has safely decayed. But, thanks to the final radio broadcast of a conspiracy theorist named Mick Parks, the young woman knows it was an errant asteroid that shook the world, not nuclear war. What she has two years to wonder about is why no one knew the end was coming.

Now, standing on the new shore of the sea, breaking six-thousand-feet high into the Rocky Mountains, Lauren understands she will never see her Shoshone grandmother Jean and sister Ava again. They, and her hometown of Shadow Grass, Wyoming are covered by salt water. She has survived the end of the world, but to what end? As she begins her treacherous search for other survivors, Lauren is driven by the need to know how there was no warning that the end was near, except for the disregarded claims of a radio talk show host.

Hostile vagrants with saccharine promises haunt the desolate landscape and threaten her resolve. But when she meets Jay, nothing seems impossible. Lauren will learn that one person willing to ask why, and not flinch at the truth, can begin to reconstruct the broken world. Along the way, she will shed the doubts and guilt of adolescence and accept the most unexpected gift of all at the end of the world—love.

CAPTURE THE TIDE is a 66,000-word post-apocalyptic survival epic and love story. It is my debut novel.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

It's your pages.
This isn't the most compelling query I've ever seen but I like the concept a lot. I'd read pages if  I repped YA. (You know this is YA, right?)

I'm not sure finding out why the world ended is a strong enough plot; the world after all did end. No amount of knowing why is going to change that.

"Hostile vagrants" is the wrong phrase here. I'm not sure you can be a vagrant in a post apocalyptic world since it means "without visible means of support" and no one has a job in this new world, or money, most likely.

You might mean vagabond, as in traveller. 

You're also missing the obvious: why are they hostile? If I was traipsing around at the end of the world, I'd probably be glad to find someone else.

All that said, I'd read pages.

So, what's wrong with your pages?  My guess (and I haven't seen them of course) is you start at the wrong place.  Start with the door opening, not the door closing.  And you might think about the plot too.

#318

Questions:
The first person viewpoint character of my novel is blind but the story is not about her blindness. It’s just something she happens to be. I know it’s a selling point, but it’s not a plot point.

Originally, I had it as a logline (A blind girl and her best friend…) Now, I’m having trouble fitting it back in earlier in the query. Is it too far down?

At the end I talk mention the blurb (author) promised-- is that worth including? It’s not a lie, but I’m worried it’s not relevant or I’m jumping the gun.

-----

Dear Query Shark,

When something from  space (missing word) and lands in the parking lot outside the pizza shop, Meg knows she’s in trouble.


You're missing a verb here. As I read your query that kind of typo stands out like a pink flamingo on Astroturf.  It leads me to form some opinions about your work and they're not good.

 I cannot over stress the ironclad necessity of making sure these kind of glitches get revised out. We ALL leave out verbs, make typos, have too many thats, and discover errant the thes in our writing. The trick is to REVISE those errors out.

Other than that, this is pretty funny.

But when a boy who smells like spearmint invites her to see his band and her boy-crazy, best friend, June, overhears? Meg knows she’s screwed.

And this is splat. The second paragraph should build on the first. You have an alien space craft (or something!) landing in the parking lot. Your BFF hearing a boy invite you to a concert is pretty anti climatic.

The solution? Leave it out. Move directly to the next paragraph.

There’s rumblings in town that something like this (the object from space, not the boy) without the second paragraph you don't need the parenthetical has happened before. Also, their new friend, Sev, a zoologist from the team sent to investigate, seems to know much more than he’s letting on.

Together, the three of them must unravel the mystery behind the object that fell—and they’re not the only ones searching.

Why do they have to unravel the mystery? What's at stake if they don't? Unicorns will go extinct?

And, it all has to happen before Meg’s “date” (June’s words) at Battle of the Bands this weekend.

Why? What's so important about this concert?

 THE DODO AND THE SPACESHIP OUTSIDE is a lighthearted YA, slice-of-life novel interrupted by the arrival of a sci-fi adventure in the parking lot outside.

One of the things agents say at writers conferences panels about queries goes like this: "I was reading this terrific manuscript, pretty sure it was a rom-com, then all of a sudden, aliens arrive in Chapter 14. That's why I ask writers to submit a synopsis."

And here you are with aliens interrupting a rom com, but you've kindly put it in chapter one.

You're trying to be witty here. Oh hell you ARE witty. But the purpose of a query isn't to show your wit, it's to entice me to read your novel. You're undercutting that here by using the word "interrupted." 


It’s all experienced though the ears, hands, and nose of Meg, who is blind.

It is completed at 60,000 words. Comparables are “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” meets “Steelheart.”

I’m currently a creative copywriter at (Big Ass and Famous), a large advertising agency. This novel was workshopped over a semester under (Good writer) and he has promised a blurb once it’s published. As an LGBTQ+ minority, I’m also passionate about including those narratives in my work.

Thank you for your time and consideration,


Your questions:
The first person viewpoint character of my novel is blind but the story is not about her blindness. It’s just something she happens to be. I know it’s a selling point, but it’s not a plot point.

Originally, I had it as a logline (A blind girl and her best friend…) Now, I’m having trouble fitting it back in earlier in the query. Is it too far down?

No. You handle it very deftly. Since the book is NOT about her blindness, you don't lead with that.

At the end I talk mention the blurb Brandon Sanderson promised-- is that worth including? It’s not a lie, but I’m worried it’s not relevant or I’m jumping the gun.

It's worth a mention because he's OFFERED the blurb. Where you'd run into trouble is if he'd already blurbed it. You can't ask an author twice and often books are revised and reshaped in the acquisition and editorial process such that the book read before sending out to agents is much different than the book now on its way to bookstores.  There's a longer blog post about that here.


There's essentially no plot on the page here, and even in a rom-com, you must have a plot, or what's at stake for the characters.  You've got the wit; now we need some substance.

Queries can have frothy whipped cream but it's got to be on top of the hot chocolate, not in place of it.

Revise, resend.

#317-rev 1x

First revision

Dear QueryShark:

Things 16-year-old Joshua Taylor didn’t see coming:
A mom who doesn’t know him.
A clone in the kitchen that looks exactly like him.
A dead father who’s very much alive.

I like this because it's instantly interesting: I'm eager to find out the WHY of all these things.

He’s knocked unconscious by bullies and wakes up in a world where supernatural creatures live among humans, technology has advanced by a couple decades, and even his family is different. Could it be a time paradox, parallel universe, or maybe like The Matrix or Total Recall?


But now I'm confused. Did this happen before or after the events of Paragraph One?
Simply adding "when" will help:
When Josh is knocked ... he wakes up in a world.

This gives your reader context and avoids confusion.


Then an angel, named Zed, claims tells Josh he is a champion with the power to manipulate matter and energy. And he thinks that’s ridiculous — until he sends kids flying with a wave of his hand and strikes a tree with lightning. An ancient prophecy declares he’s destined to liberate a powerful sword and he frees it. But it’s engraved with a warning: “In the wrong hands this is a weapon of mass destruction. Protect it at all costs.”


If you use tells instead of claims, it keeps the focus on what Josh is doing: learning about this new world he's in. Each word counts. Revising is often a matter of changing one word at a time.

And you've left out the consequences of his uncontrolled superpowers. He sends kids flying...where?Into a brick wall? Off a building? Into the girls bathroom?

And simplify as much as possible. You don't need all the information in a query. Just enough to get us where we're going.  It's the difference between a bridge and stepping stones. You only need stepping stones in a query.

Consider:  An ancient prophecy declares he’s destined to liberates a powerful sword t. But it’s engraved with a warning: “In the wrong hands this is a weapon of mass destruction. Protect it at all costs.”

Just paring down to what he does really helps here.

Now Zed’s forces are fighting over Josh, trying to recruit him, and pushing him into dangerous situations to test his powers. And they want the weapon and threaten to kill anyone who gets in the way. Josh must learn to use his superpowers quickly, because if he fails, everyone and everything he loves could be lost.

I don't understand what or who Zed's forces are. And fighting over Josh? Among themselves? Can they make him do things against his will? If he has control, why is he doing what they tell him?


But what if he succeeds? Stakes are about what cost Josh must pay to win. He learns to use his superpowers quickly and what will he have to give up or lose?


OTHERWORLDLY is a 93,000-word YA fantasy adventure. It’s the Hero’s Journey with a twist — boy wakes up and the world has changed but he doesn’t know why or how and has to figure it out along the way. Prior to this first novel, I worked as a PR fixer — like Olivia Pope minus the blackmail, torture and murder — and I have a bachelor’s in journalism/communications. Thank you for your time and consideration.


I know it will surprise you to learn that we'll recognize a Hero's Journey novel when we see one. In other words, you don't have to point out the obvious even to dunderheads agents.  (Some of us even wrote a senior thesis on why Rambo is the new Beowulf.)

Question: I’m struggling with current comps. Cassandra Clare’s books have diverse creatures but not the alternate reality aspect. And my book’s tone/style is somewhat similar to Percy Jackson. Because I couldn’t find a current comp, I came up with Dark Matter (the novel) meets Lady Midnight with a dash of Percy Jackson, because it ties in the elements, but I know the Shark hates these. Am I making this more difficult than necessary? Do comps need all prominent elements together in one book?

Essentially comps are for people (and I mean agents and editors so perhaps I should have said scallywags) to assess who the audience is for your book. People who liked Harry Potter will like this book because it's adventures in an alternate world with magic kind of thing.

Every element of the comp book doesn't need to match. Tone and style are more helpful than anything.  I love to read Jack Reacher. Therefore, comps are books set contemporary times, with heroic main characters doing good cause it's the Way He Is, solving problems for people.  He's not trying to overthrow the government and he's not fighting some abstract madman trying to take over the world.  For that you need James Bond. 

I don't think you need comps for this book cause I think it's pretty clear what it is, but some agents and editors insist.

Comp for style and tone first.


I'm not sure if you realize that what distinguishes this book, or any book, is not that it is a hero's journey with a twist because all books are that when you get down to basics.

What will make this book stand out is the elements you bring to it that are fresh and new.
Pulling a sword from a stone with a warning is neither of those.

Trying to master superpowers isn't either.

What makes your story different?

So far, I haven't seen that.

And in a crowded field like YA fantasy adventure it is essential that you have something fresh and new.

The one thing that keeps me reading, even if the plot is something I've seen before, is zesty and vibrant language. Tell the old story with verve, and you'll hold our attention.

-->
 -----------------------------------

 Initial query
Dear Query Shark:

Question: My plan was to give potential agents the ability to read up to 1/3 of the book instantly. Eight years ago, you said not to include active links, but it’s very common now. Is this acceptable? Active is much easier because email software will turn parts of a URL into what looks like active links, but they don’t work, which could be confusing. This is what a non-active link could look like:

To read up to 88 pages of the book on Zoho TeamDrive, go to tdrive.li/JmuUf_JanetReid (add https:// at beginning and paste into browser) and enter the password (redacted)

Is this a good idea or a bad one? I’ve made this a real link/password for the Shark in case she wants to see how it works.

Thank you for making query writing educational and entertaining. You can chomp my arm off now (left please since I write with my right).

You're solving a problem that doesn't exist.

If I want to read your manuscript all I have to do is hit Reply to your email, and ask you to come to my house and read it. And about 50% of all y'all would be there within an hour.

Alternatively, I can just email you to send the manuscript as a word doc. In other words, the system works fine, don't screw around with it unless asked to do so.

The only reason I can think of that made you want to do this is being afraid you'll miss the email requesting the full. Unless you are headed for a long prison term, on a voyage to Mars, or stalking the wild asparagus in Borneo, you'll be available enough to send something.  I don't need the manuscript the instant I read your query. I generally read queries in batches, and requested fulls when I've set aside a block of time.

So, there's no real reason you need this PLUS it's a TERRIBLE idea and you should never do it because it marks you as a crackpot who thinks "follow the damn directions" doesn't apply to you. I'm sure that's not the real you, so don't do stuff that makes people think so.

Also, I like to have the manuscript here on my hard drive so I can adjust the font, clear out all the crazy margins you set, insert double spacing, AND be able to send it back to you with some notes marked in track changes. In other words, what I ask for is what I want, and what I want is not arbitrary or whimsical.


Dear Mr./Ms. Agent Name:

Things 15-year-old Josh Taylor didn’t see coming:

A mom who doesn’t know him.
A clone in the kitchen that looks exactly like him.
A dead father who’s very much alive.

It’s like he wandered into the Twilight Zone . . . or a seriously messed up after-school special. He’s knocked unconscious and wakes up in a world where supernatural creatures live among humans, technology has advanced by a couple decades, and even his family is different.

This is actually pretty good, and enticing.

An angel, named Zed, claims he’s a champion with the power to manipulate matter and energy. And he thinks that’s ridiculous — until he sends kids flying with a wave of his hand and strikes a tree with lightning. An ancient prophecy declares he’s destined to liberate a powerful sword, and he easily frees it. But it’s engraved with a freaky warning: “In the wrong hands this is a weapon of mass destruction. Protect it at all costs.”


Now he’s got a list of things he never thought he’d do:

Make it rain in the school gym.
Heal his friend’s cat-dog hybrid.
Steal a priceless artifact from a museum.
Battle a 5322-year-old changeling at the zoo.

And those were the easy parts. Something invisible is stalking Josh. Angels fight over him, try to recruit him, and force him into dangerous situations to test his powers. Even his home isn’t safe — with a spiteful AI in charge. And vampires and aliens want to steal the weapon, and they threaten to kill him and his family and friends to get it. Josh must learn to use his superpowers quickly, because if he fails, everyone and everything he loves could be lost.

TITLE — a 93,000-word YA alternate-universe adventure — is my first novel. Thank you for your time and consideration.


Angels, vampires and aliens. And Artificial Intelligence. You've got a LOT of weird here. Often the best plots are pretty simple. You don't need fusion cooking for a tasty treat (Brussels sprouts, raisins, walnuts with ice cream!); you need really simple but delicious ingredients. Corn on the cob. Butter. A napkin.

Over stuffing the plot is something I see in writers early in their career. It takes confidence to pare down, and confidence takes a while to build.

It's not your lunatic page link that will earn you a pass here; it's the overly elaborate plot.

Revise. Resend. And ditch the link idea forever.

#316-Revised once

Dear QueryShark:

Rosie didn’t mean to summon a muse, but now Muses Incorporated’s best and brightest is at her service. Every time Rosie runs into Theo, her new neighbor, inspiration follows in his wake. Words that have been dead and gone for years flow free and easy. Things are looking up. 

I'm confused here. If inspiration follows in his wake, who's being inspired? Rosie? Theo? People standing around chatting at the neighborhood t-rex roast?

Words that have been dead and gone flow free and easy? Dead words are flowing? That sounds like a horror novel to me.

Don't try to be clever. Just tell me what Rosie wants and why she can't have it. My guess is that Rosie wants to be a writer and she's having a hard time wrangling words. 

Until she and Theo stumble through a portal and end up trapped in the world where Rosie’s stories live.

They stumble through a portal? Generally when I'm slinking about with my Muse  here in NYC I avoid the manhole covers portals.   

Stumbling through a portal is one of those devices you use cause you haven't figured out how to get them to a different world in a more interesting way.  Quick fixes like this are ok if they aren't major plot points, but honestly, this is the big one, and it's a cliché.

Okay. She can handle this. 

Theo says the only way home is to write them to the other side, but that’s kind of hard to pull off when there’s nothing but sand and sun where characters and plot should be. 

You know characters and plot are made up things, right? Cause at this point you've taken this whole "my book is a living thing" metaphor right up to the edge of aw c'mon.

As if that wasn’t enough, Theo’s power-hungry, manipulative boss is doing everything she can to keep Theo from signing his last contract and becoming a free human again. Calliope’s determined to keep them trapped until Theo gives up his hope at freedom and promises to stay by her side forever. And if that means killing Rosie, then so be it.

Theo sounds like the guy with the problem, not Rosie.

Maybe she can’t handle this after all. 

ROSIE AND THEO is contemporary fantasy, and is 75,000 words.

75K feels a bit light for a fantasy. There's all that world building you need, plus of course a plot.

This is my debut novel. When I’m not writing, I’m raising five kids to be pretty cool humans, along with my pretty cool, human husband. Sometimes, I’ll go on long and very excited rants about Jewish pirates. It’s a thing.

This is still the best part of the query, and it gives me hope.

 

Thank you for your time and consideration.

The really bad news is that books about writers and writing are generally best left to non-fiction. Only writers find the travails of writers to be interesting. It's a little too inside baseball.

I see these kinds of books from writers often enough that I know it's a response to being frustrated about your own writing career.  Unfortunately that's not enough to drive a novel.

If you can turn this on its ear, make the writer the villain (gasp!) and the Muse the protagonist; the writer botching things left and right; the Muse having to solve things for the writer, this is going to be a whole lot more interesting.

If you don't want to make that kind of major change, you still need to be much more specific about Rosie's problem: what she wants and why she can't have it.

 

 --------------

Original query

Question Re: contact info. Should a tumblr be included? I have over 2k followers, but it's mostly fandom content. And what about fanfiction? I've been writing for 17 years and I have stories that have close to 50k hits online, and several hundred likes and comments. But I also know that a lot of people see fanfiction as taboo. Should I reference it, or am I better off not mentioning it at all?

One last question - when submission guidelines ask for pages, should they always be double spaced, even if the submission guidelines don't say either way?


Dear Query Shark,

Rosie’s pretty sure it would take magic to help her publish a novel at this point. Her best friend, Adelaide, always said she had it in her. But to be honest, Rosie hasn’t written a word since Addy died two years ago. Right now, she has less chance of publishing a book than she has of landing a decent date on Tinder. And that’s saying something.

Novels about writers are really tricky. Only writers care about whether someone publishes a novel. And writers aren't your audience here: readers are.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a doctor once at a writing conference. I asked what the stakes were in his novel. He said in a horrified voice "he will lose his hospital privileges!" The writer/doctor was shocked to his shoes when I said no one would care about that.

My point here is the book needs to be about more then whether Rosie gets published.

Theo has worked as a muse at Muses Inc. for two hundred years. Now, at last, his contract is almost up. He just needs to sign one more writer and he can get back to his life, to his own writing, to his freedom. But his boss, Calliope, doesn’t share his enthusiasm, and seems determined to make him stay, whatever the cost.

 This is actually a much more interesting start to the query. But what is Calliope's problem here? She doesn't like writers all of a sudden? Last I looked, she's the muse of Poets et al.

When Rosie inadvertently summons Theo, the two of them end up thrown into The Sandbox, a world where Rosie’s writing comes to life. The only way back home is to follow the story through to the end. Cue hybrid monsters, fire mages, fairy queens and one seriously manipulative Greek goddess.

So, what's the plot here? Rosie wants to get published. Got that. Theo wants out of Muses Inc. Got that. Who's running the Sandbox (ie the antagonist)? And by Greek goddess do you mean Calliope, cause she's a muse, not a goddess.


Rosie’s pretty sure it’ll all make a good book if she and Theo can just survive it.
ROSIE AND THEO is 74,000 words. It is a contemporary fantasy novel about reclaiming agency, overcoming fear, and becoming the protagonist of your own narrative.

Well, ok, but I don't get how this is any of that. What fears does Rosie overcome? Reclaiming agency? I'm pretty sure you don't mean literary agency, cause that would be weird. Become the protagonist of your own narrative sounds like a self-help book, not a novel.

This is my debut novel. When I’m not writing, I’m raising five kids to be pretty cool humans, along with my pretty cool, human husband. Sometimes, I’ll go on long and very excited rants about Jewish pirates. It’s a thing.

This is the best part of the query. It's funny. It makes sense. And it makes me want to know more about you.And where's the book about Jewish pirates? Oy matey!

Thank you for your time and consideration.

You don't have any plot on the page here, and I'm not seeing what you tell me the book is about. Start over.

As for your questions:
Question Re: contact info. Should a tumblr be included? I have over 2k followers, but it's mostly fandom content. And what about fanfiction? I've been writing for 17 years and I have stories that have close to 50k hits online, and several hundred likes and comments. But I also know that a lot of people see fanfiction as taboo. Should I reference it, or am I better off not mentioning it at all?

Include your Tumblr account if you want an agent to look at it. Any social media platform is ok, particularly if it shows you've got an engaged audience.  Readers are readers and I'm always glad to hear that a debut novelist already has some. 

Fanfiction is taboo? I guess we should all forget that complete flop of a novel Fifty Shades of Grey?
I can't sell fanfiction using a world someone else created but I can certainly let READERS of that fiction know you have another book being published. There's a very clear distinction here. Let me know if you need elaboration.

One last question - when submission guidelines ask for pages, should they always be double spaced, even if the submission guidelines don't say either way?

Not in an electronic query. Pages are single spaced BUT you allow white space by inserting a line every 3-5 lines so you're not sending a Big Block O'Text.

#315-revised 2x

Questions:

* one of the people commenting on my pitch on your site mentioned that he thought it was speculative fiction. I’m not sure if a couple of ghosts qualify a novel as speculative fiction. Could it be Magic Realism?

I can never remember the distinctions on these, so I'm always looking it up. Here are some places to start. And category can be more fluid than genre for sure.

Magical realism: https://bookriot.com/2018/02/08/what-is-magical-realism/

Is speculative fiction also magical realism? https://liminalpages.com/exploring-speculative-fiction-sub-genres-magical-realism/

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Revision #2


Dear Query Shark,

In 1977, seventeen-year-old psychic Alice discovers a young man in antique clothes — and he’s been murdered.

She asks Rona the housekeeper if she knows if there had ever been anyone murdered on the old Georgian estate? Rona reacts annoyed, and when Alice tells her about a ghostly swan with human eyes that tried to warn her about the forest, she becomes agitated and changes the subject.

“reacts annoyed” is incorrect usage. You mention in an earlier query that English is your second language. I think you’ll need a native English speaker for a the final once-over on this. A native speaker would catch this (I hope!)

I’m also confused by this entire paragraph. What ghostly swan? What warning?

Alice finds a dead guy in antique clothes. The first thing she does is ask the housekeeper if knows of any dead people? I’d think she’d check his pockets for ID. Or call the police. Or someone who could help her.

Is Rona the only other person on the estate? If so, and that’s why Alice inquires about this of her (Rona), then you don’t need to tell us much more than she (Rona) becomes agitated and changes the subject.
Determined to find answers, Alice searches her room and discovers a secret compartment containing old letters dated 1803. The letters, written by the eighteen-year-old Melissa, intrigue Alice and slowly a tragic life lived 174 years before starts to unfold.


So, you’ve got a dead body and your first course of action is to search your own room?

That doesn’t make sense to me.

You’d be better off to place less emphasis on the discovery of the dead body, and instead starting with the search: 

After Alice finds a murdered young man in antique clothes in the garden, something no one on the estate seems to want to talk about, she decides to search for clues about his identity.

The cache of letters from 1803 that she finds in a secret compartment in her own room seem to hold the answer.

Then Alice meets and falls in love with Rona’s nephew Connor and she experiences true happiness for the first time, but when she finds her dog poisoned in the forest, she begins to wonder if meeting Connor wasn’t orchestrated by Rona to stop her investigating the historical murder.

So that’ a long ass sentence of 48 words.

Anytime you have something this long, revise into shorter, blunter sentences.

You’re also awash in what happens rather than giving us the plot. (Lack of plot is a consistent problem in ALL these iterations of your query)

Consider this revision: Alice’s investigation slows down when she meets and falls in love with Rona’s nephew Connor.

There’s no connection here between the dog being poisoned and Connor. Why would Alice suspect him? And if she thought Connor killed her dog, why hasn’t she kicked him to the curb?

In trying to lay Melissa’s brother’s ghost to rest, Alice must face a devastating truth about the swan — with Connor’s eyes.

Again, what swan?

I grew up in Ireland and have always loved the stories told me by my teachers at the various convent schools I went to. THE GHOST SWAN is set in Ireland, and inspired by Irish legends and history. The novel is told in a dual time narrative and complete at 96,000 words, targeting a YA Crossover readership.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

There’s nothing at stake here for Alice. Facing a devastating truth is NOT stakes. What’s at stake is what Alice is going to lose, have to give up, etc. What choices she has to make.

Stakes are why we care about what happens. Without them, the book is just a series of events, and that’s not what you want.

There are templates on this blog for how to get plot on the page. Use them as the starting point.

Since it's  not in the query, first make sure it IS in the book.

Yes, it is entirely possible to write a book without a plot.

I’ve read some. Great writing, great voice, but no plot. Those break my heart.

Make sure you’ve got a plot in the book THEN revise the query to reflect that.

 --------------------------------
Revision #1

Question:

I’ve put in two comparable titles, Atonement which inspired me to want to write a heart-wrenching love story and I wanted the mystery of The Miniaturist, but how do you compare yourself to such great writers?

Dear Query Shark,

It’s 1977, Leda recently moved with her father to a mysterious Georgian estate in rural Ireland.

This isn't a compelling first sentence.  If you show us why the Georgian estate is mysterious, or why Leda and Dad are moving there, you'll have a better chance of engaging your reader. But really the best way to start is with what Leda wants, and what's getting in her way.

In the throbbing heart of the forest not far from the house, where shadows duck away from sunbeams like wild cats, she stumbles on the murder of a young man dressed in strange old-fashioned clothes. She realizes she must have witnessed something from the past.

Forests don't have throbbing hearts of any kind, and this kind of metaphor makes me roll my eyes. That shadows duck away from sunbeams is telling me something I already know, and not in a way that makes me see shadows or sunbeams in a new light. If you start with "In a forest not far from the house Leda finds a young man dressed in antique clothes. And he's dead" you've got my interest.

In other words, don't try to be fancy. Not here, not in the novel. Too much fancy is like an overdecorated cake. Save the marzipan filigree for the top of the cake, not covering the entire thing.

Terrified and lonely, she finds old letters hidden in her bedroom written by a teenage girl dated 1803. The letters strangely comfort her, and visions of past events start to trickle into her daily life.

This is too abstract to be compelling. We have no idea why she's terrified, why she's lonely, why she's finding letters hidden in her bedroom.

And if she's having visions, what is she seeing? Is that what's scaring her? If so, you have this in the wrong order: visions, then tell us she's scared.

But the big problem here is we still haven't gotten to the plot.  I really need to know what the problem is, and what's at stake for Leda.

Then, she meets the first kind person in the village, slaughterhouse worker Connor, and it doesn’t take long for her to fall in love with him. As she uncovers the secrets of the letters, she discovers that the murders that started 174 years ago have never really stopped and Connor may be hiding the darkest secret of all — she might lose more than just her heart.

Still no plot. What does Leda want? What's keeping her from getting it.

Written for a readership that also enjoyed Atonement and The Miniaturist, The Ghost Swan is a general fiction novel of 96,000 words, set in 1977 and 1803, and told from two perspectives, the young, murdered man in 1803 and Leda.

There isn't really a "general fiction" category when you're talking about your novel. You'll see that in libraries maybe, but here in a query you can just say fiction (but NEVER EVER "fiction novel")

Atonement isn't a book you'll want to use a comp. First, it's now too old to be useful (it was pubbed in 2003). But, more important, Atonement sold very very well. You'd think that would be a plus as a comp, but it's not. More than anyone, agents know what a crapshoot it is to get a novel to sell hundreds of thousands of copies. (Hell, tens of thousands of copies is hard enough.) And of course, it was nominated for the Booker Prize.

Comparing your book to an outlier like this is akin to saying "The woman who won Miss America played the trombone for her talent. I play the trombone, so I could be the next Miss America." And no matter how well you play the trombone, that is not something people will take seriously. Even if you are young and lovely.

You can use Atonement if want to compare tone or style, but even that isn't a great idea.

The Miniaturist is a better choice, since it was pubbed in 2015, but it also has more than a thousand reviews on Amazon, thus might be a big reach.

Comps are very difficult to get right.  You're safer to say "the tone of my book is reminiscent of X or Y" or "the two time lines of my novel are similar to Z and A."

Readers who liked B and C should have B and C no more than two years old, and not runaway best sellers. 

Thank you for your time and consideration.


The answer to your question, how do you compare yourself to such great writers, is "you don't."

While I would LOVE it if your book moved me like Atonement, it's better for me to discover that it does, rather than be disappointed if it doesn't.

I remember when I read the very first draft of Lee Goodman's INDEFENSIBLE. I put my monocle down at about page 30, took a breath, and thought "holy moly, this guy writes like Scott Turow."  Lee hadn't mentioned Scott Turow, or even Presumed Innocent  in his query at all. He let me figure it out on my own. And because I saw it on my own, I was sure I was right. (I am right!)

You've still got the same problems you did in the first version: no plot.
This leads me to think that the problem might not be the query, it's the novel itself.

Make sure you have a plot in your novel. Yes, it is entirely possible to write a novel without a plot.
It's not a character flaw, or a sign that you're a bad writer, or you should throw up your hands in despair and become a taxi dancer at a waterfront dive bar.  It means you should figure out a plot and get it in the book.


 -------------------------------------
Original query

Questions:

1. I was raised in Ireland but born in the Netherlands; technically English is my second language, should I mention this in the query or would I be better off keeping my background a secret?

2. I’ve lost count as to how many agents I’ve queried; my novel was requested twice. I’ve had it assessed by official assessment agencies twice as well, both were very positive but had different views to what I should adjust. Could it than be the query that is posing the problem?

3. Is this query too short?

4. Should I mention the courses I did?


Dear Query Shark,

Florian relives one day over and over again, 11th February 1803, the last day of his life.
Leda discovers 174 years later who murdered him.


Your sentence structure is robbing that second line of any zing.
Consider: 174 years later, Leda discovers who murdered him.
See the difference?

But the problem of course is that reliving one day over and over again has been done so often that it's not only NOT fresh and new, it's tired and cranky.

This opening does not catch my interest. That's not fatal in a query, but it's not good either.

Although Florian and Leda live in their own time, each simultaneously embarks on a quest for truth, not knowing what the other discovers will affect them both in ways they never dreamed.

I don't understand what that means. Specifics really help in a query. And as far as I can tell there's no plot and nothing at stake. I really need to know about those in the query.

The Ghost Swan is a literary novel of 96,000 words set in Ireland in 1977 and 1803, and told from two perspectives.

And here's what's really amiss about this query. You're calling it a literary novel, but this query is the antithesis of literary. There are no lyrical turns of phrase, no deftly wrought metaphors, no words tangoing the reader across the dance floor of the novel, beguiling them to read on.

In other words: your query shows me what kind of writing to expect in the novel, and after reading this I do not expect literary fiction.


Plain is good. Plain is very good. But plain as in the beauty of an Amish quilt or the negative space of a spider web on a dewy morning.


I am an artist, and divide my time between writing and painting large watercolors. I’ve completed the writing a Novel, course at (School) in London, and (named) course in Scotland, and the (another name) Short Story Course. I published a short memoir in (another) Magazine in Dublin, and also made the artwork for the cover of (another) Literary Magazine, which was published last January.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

To answer your questions:
1. I was raised in Ireland but born in the Netherlands; technically English is my second language, should I mention this in the query or would I be better off keeping my background a secret?

There's a difference between keeping it a secret and not announcing it in a query. If you were raised in Ireland my guess is your English is pretty darn good. I didn't see anything in the query that made me wonder if it was your second language.

2. I’ve lost count as to how many agents I’ve queried; my novel was requested twice. I’ve had it assessed by official assessment agencies twice as well, both were very positive but had different views to what I should adjust. Could it than be the query that is posing the problem?

This query doesn't work at all. It starts with something that doesn't sound engaging, and there's no hint of plot, or what's at stake for either main character.

3. Is this query too short?
It doesn't have any mention of plot or stakes, so yes. That said, don't just add that. Think about how to entice your reader.

4. Should I mention the courses I did?
 No. The only thing that matters is the book.

Start over. Get some plot on the page here in the query.
SHOW me that you're writing literary fiction. 
If you're not, it's ok, but call it something else (like commercial fiction.)

#314

Question/s
I've queried fifty-six agents. Five requested my full manuscript. They all passed. I now have these questions: Regarding my MC's name, I know your mind turns to CODE NAME VERITY. This isn't what I want. But, I want to use the name and there's an etymological reason. Is this foolish? Should I mention that the novel is told in two points of view? Would it be relevant to mention my writer's group in my bio? And should I include my published novel even though it didn't achieve robust sales?

Dear Query Shark,

Sixteen-year-old Verity Callahan has the ability to know the true answer to every question she's asked. When she was fourteen, she learned minutes before it happened that her father would die in a car crash — and yet, she failed to save him.

She's tried to bury her ability, but now it's manifesting in new ways. She's burdened with more information than ever before. What's worse, she's compelled to blurt it all out. She never asked for this. She wants to be normal.

Her younger brother Lucas Callahan is an empath whose power is growing. He will manipulate anyone's emotions to get what he wants: access to the best Ivy League institutions and a life of power and prestige. And once he understands what Verity can do, he imagines all they could do together.

But Verity has found happiness with her new boyfriend, Will McConnall. Lucas wants Verity and her abilities under his control. Realizing he'll never get that with Will in her life, Lucas devises a drastic plan to eliminate him.

By answering one fateful question after another, Verity learns of Lucas's scheme. She must hone the very abilities she detests to thwart Lucas's plot, or lose Will forever and become Lucas's puppet.

TRUTH BE TOLD, a young adult contemporary fantasy novel, is 101,000 words.

My first novel, (title), was published by (press name) in 2009. I wrote the novel while earning a master's degree in creative writing at (named) College. I completed the Creative Writing Summer Programme at the University of (other name).

Thank you for your time and consideration.


Regarding your questions:

I've queried fifty-six agents. Five requested my full manuscript. They all passed. I now have these questions: Regarding my MC's name, I know your mind turns to CODE NAME VERITY. This isn't what I want. But, I want to use the name and there's an etymological reason. Is this foolish?

No. Verity is a fine, old-fashioned name.

Should I mention that the novel is told in two points of view?

It doesn't matter.


Would it be relevant to mention my writer's group in my bio?

No. Your writers group is absolutely irrelevant.
And should I include my published novel even though it didn't achieve robust sales?
Yes


And here's the answer to the question you didn't ask: what's wrong with my query.

Nothing. You're getting requests. The agents are passing after they've read the ms. That means you have a problem in the manuscript, not the query.

There are a couple of ways to work on that. All of them are going to require some financial investment. You can engage an outside editor to look at your novel and identify areas that need to be revised. You can enroll in a class about novel writing. Grub Street in Boston offers these. You can bid on (and win!) an auction item wherein an agent offers a manuscript critique.


When you're considering who to work with look for actual, and recent experience in trade publishing on the acquisitions side of things.  You need help from people actually in the publishing trenches, because what agents want is a book they can sell.
Your query has done her job. Time for the manuscript to step up.

#313-revised 1x

Revision #1

This really is a book without a main character. You said that can't be done, so I guess that means I did the impossible. I do not know how to say that politely. I literally counted words and mapped out the appearance of each of the eight points of view so that none of them had significantly more length or prominence than the others. I had placed a subtitle on the work because the title, by itself sounded like a science fiction novel. But it can be removed. When I wrote "sans editing" I was thinking of a professional editor (I am done with the work) and did not realize how it would be taken by a literary agent.

Because of the unique construction of the book I have decided to try and focus on the plot, which is the main character. I also kept paragraphs shorter and tried to tone down the academic weasel words which is a hold over from my career as an associate professor.

Dear Query Shark:

I am seeking representation for a completed crime novel titled Master of all the Stars.

This novel is unusual because it ignores the standard format for a crime novel. There is no all-knowing but tragically flawed detective solving impossible crimes. Nor is there not a world-beating villain out to conquer the universe. There isn’t even a main character in the standard sense. The plot, itself is the main character. The plot is driven forward by eight, diverse, carefully balanced, rotating points-of-view that are presented in discrete sections within each chapter. It is the cumulative effect of each point-of-view not an individual character that drives the plot and entertains the reader.


In and of itself, this is not a deal breaker. I'm always looking for things that are new and different. Even though this isn't the standard opening to a query, I'd keep reading.
The main plot is very simple. It is the struggle to control the 200 million Swiss franc fortune, worldwide real estate holdings, and money laundering operation of the Church of True Astrology after the death of its founder.

And here is where you shoot yourself in the foot. No matter what, you have to make your book sound enticing. This paragraph makes it sound boring.

Consider this change up: After the death of the founder of the Church of True Astrology there is a struggle to control the real estate, the money, and most critical the money laundering operation.

This main plot is divided into two primary subplots.

The first subplot involves a group of criminals who outwit the police, cooperate with, bribe, double cross, and murder each other as they attempt to gain control of the Church which they have been clandestinely using as a money laundering vehicle.

I'm hard pressed to think how you could make a band of ruffians bent on murder, revenge, extortion and general skullduggery of the greenback kind sound more bland.

The second subplot revolves around the actual believers in True Astrology attempting to locate a set of lost prophecies that will confirm the church's theology and rescue it from the first group.
 
Now you're doubling down with  a coven of astrologer prophecy hunters, armed no doubt with crystal balls, tarot cards, and bullwhips pursuing the crooks around the world, and they too sound like a major yawn

Beyond the two main subplots, each of the characters who contribute one of the eight points-of-view is developed, and each has their own subplot arch. Some of these are sympathetic, others are genuinely evil.

I'm all for genuine evil, but again, this isn't specific enough to be interesting.

A great deal of world-building and went into this book. An entire religion had to be created including scriptures, theology, and history. It required custom-designed star charts, astrological tables, and communal prayers. The book is also set in three locations, Hong Kong, Zurich, and Guam which must be described to readers.

I honestly have a hard time comparing this work to other crime novels, and I have literally read dozens of them. There may be other works that have used this approach, but I have not seen them. It is clearly a crime novel but told in an unconventional way, using a seldom seen format. What I do know is the combination of multiple, rapidly changing points-of-view, richly built world and exotic locations (all are places I have lived) combine to create a unique, sophisticated, gripping, plot-driven novel.

And here is where I say no thanks if I'm reading this query.

You've read dozens of crime novels?
Honestly, that's fewer than you should be reading every year if you plan to be part of this category.
You should have read HUNDREDS of crime novels, starting with the classics.

And given what you're writing, you shouldn't limit yourself to crime. You should be reading James Clavell, Aurthur Hailey, James Michener. They wrote great epic novels with vast lists of characters.

But more than that, you don't need any of this in a query.

You need to entice me to read the pages you've included.

That's all.

And I would have, if you'd made it sound interesting.

You can break every rule of querying IF you do it with style and flair, on purpose, and you entice me to read pages.

Instead, you made your work sound bland.


I have included the sample pages your agency ask for.
Thank you for your time

Revise. Give your characters some panache on the page.
Give your plot some zest.

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

Initial query

Greetings (Agent’s name)

When someone uses Greetings as the salutation, it always reminds me of the now cliche "Greetings, earthlings. Take me to your leader." Or worse, a letter from my draft board letting me know Uncle Sam has need of my services.

 I'm not sure why you don't want to use Dear; it's standard business form. Hello works too.

This sounds nit-picky. It IS nitpicky, but you want to set the right tone at the start; Greetings doesn't do that.


Title: Subtitle is a mystery/thriller novel that appears to correspond to the types of manuscript you prefer to represent.

No. Never ever put this in a query. Either tell me what SPECIFIC book your book is like, or leave it out. This is so general as to be meaningless.

Also, novels generally don't have subtitles.

And you don't need novel to modify mystery/thriller. Those are, by default, novels.

Again, I can hear you saying "don't be so damn nit picky" but if you've got excess words here, you're going to have them in your novel. Your query tells me what kind of writer you are, in addition to telling me what your book is about.

This is the kind of writing that leads to "french fried potatoes" instead of just french fries, or better yet, fries; and, "she looked down at her toes". Generally one is not looking UP at one's toes. If you are, then you'd include it. If you're just toe-gazing, you don't need down. Your reader will fill in the expected words.



The main plot of the book revolves around the struggle by several groups and individuals for control of the theology and especially the vast fortune of an astrology cult which has become a money laundering vehicle for powerful criminal cartels and organized crime.


Again,  is so general it's meaningless. Start with something interesting. Like what happens to one of the main characters that is important.


As in works by Russian authors such as Tolstoy this book has an ensemble protagonist. Which is to say there is no single main character. Instead, the plot is moved forward by several individuals or groups who, in some cases are not even aware of each other. The most important members of the ensemble are Izaak Houser a professional conman and the cult’s Head Astrologer. Sophia Chin-Robinson, an alcoholic housewife and cult member who lives on Guam. Xi, Shinwai a 93-year-old Hong Kong real estate tycoon who is also the cult’s wealthiest convert. Zack Xi, Shinwai’s sociopathic illegitimate son who is the CEO of one of his father’s subsidiaries which is used in the money laundering operation. Jacque Eider, the ethically challenged managing director of Zurich International Banc-Corp. Wilson Chau, a venal and corrupt law enforcement officer in Hong Kong. Gerald Morris a bitter, amoral, ex-mob lawyer. Thomas Saint-John, the leader of an Interpol team based in Geneva who is investigating money laundering and William Ngan an ICAC officer (The Hong Kong equivalent of the FBI) who is investigating what appears to be an unrelated crime. I believe this makes for a convoluted but ultimately engrossing storyline.



Never ever describe your novel as convoluted. It means difficult to follow. This is not what you want me thinking NOW. Complex, layered, multi-faceted, sure. Convoluted ...no.

There are 198 words in that paragraph and it doesn't tell me anything about the story.

You've got textbook character soup.

Here are the characters you mention by name:

(1) Izaak Houser a professional conman and the cult’s Head Astrologer

(2) Sophia Chin-Robinson, an alcoholic housewife and cult member who lives on Guam.

(3) Xi, Shinwai a 93-year-old Hong Kong real estate tycoon who is also the cult’s wealthiest convert

(4)Zack Xi, Shinwai’s sociopathic illegitimate son who is the CEO of one of his father’s subsidiaries which is used in the money laundering operation

(5) Jacque Eider, the ethically challenged managing director of Zurich International Banc-Corp

(6) Wilson Chau, a venal and corrupt law enforcement officer in Hong Kong.

(7) Thomas Saint-John, the leader of an Interpol team based in Geneva who is investigating money laundering

(8)William Ngan an ICAC officer (The Hong Kong equivalent of the FBI) who is investigating what appears to be an unrelated crime


Eight people.And not a one of them sounds interesting because you haven't given us a reason to care about any of them. We care about people when we see what choices they face.


I'd stop reading here if this was an incoming query.

I can get past all the format screwups and weird salutations, but at this point, you haven't done the one thing your query MUST DO: entice me to read more.

The manuscript is completed sans some editing. It is actually a prequel to another work which is also completed in what I plan as a series.

If I hadn't stopped reading when served character soup in the preceding paragraph, I'd stop here. Never query a novel that isn't ready to go on the day you send your query. Some of us surprise y'all by asking for things within minutes of receiving the query.

And just so you know, that last 10% of the editing? It takes forever if you do it right.


I hope that the work reminds my readers of books by authors such as Nury Vittachi because I am dealing not just with the crimes but with the subtle ways that people from different cultures and generations misunderstand each other. I also hope that readers of an author like Kurt Vonnegut would appreciate this book because it portrays imperfect people thrown into an absurd world and coping with the sometimes random consequence of both good and bad life choices. Lastly, I believe that readers who enjoy works by authors like Dan Brown would possibly enjoy my novel as it deals with alternative religious ideas particularly what most astrologers would consider a heterodox system.


Kurt Vonnegut and Dan Brown both huh?
Kurt Vonnegut writes literary work, Dan Brown doesn't even come close. When you select books to compare yours too, you need to be aware of style and tone, not just subject matter. 

I like the first sentence of this paragraph a lot. I think really terrific novels come from cultural and generational misunderstanding. Done well, this kind of novel can pack a very subtle but very powerful wallop.

The problem here is that you're telling me, not showing me. And you're telling me too much. I have no idea of the story here.  Even Tolstoy's ensemble casts novels had something that unified them.

War and Peace has 580 characters (no, I didn't count, I looked it up on Wikipedia) but it can be described without identifying more than a few:

The story moves from family life to the headquarters of Napoleon, from the court of Alexander I of Russia to the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino. Tolstoy's original idea for the novel was to investigate the causes of the Decembrist revolt, to which it refers only in the last chapters, from which can be deduced that Andrei Bolkonsky's son will become one of the Decembrists. The novel explores Tolstoy's theory of history, and in particular the insignificance of individuals such as Napoleon and Alexander.

I underlined insignificance here because if this arrived in a query, that would be the word that would catch my attention. Normally we think of Napolean and the Czars as significant. Here's a book that challenges that. I'm in!  (and that's exactly what you want a query to do)

This is an unusual mystery of just over 80,000 words. It is set primarily in the cities of Hong Kong and Zurich as well as on the island of Guam.

Well, I don't see anything unusual here about the story at all because there is no story.


Thank you for your time. I truly appreciate your diligence in reading this query and reviewing the sample chapters that I have submitted.

I know you're trying to be polite here but it comes off as smarmy. You don't have to thank the meter reader for looking at the gas meter. Reading and evaluating queries is my job.

You can reach me via my author email:

Leave this out. If you're querying by email, I have your email address already. If you want to include it, put it under your name


I look forward to your response.
You probably don't, but you're trying to be polite.

End a query with Thank you for your time and consideration. That's all you need.



What you've failed to do here is figure out how to query for an ensemble cast. The answer is not to list the characters and hope for the best.

There are some terrific ensemble cast books.

What you do is talk about what UNIFIES the characters. What do they have in common? Are they working at, coming to or leaving an AIRPORT (by Arthur Hailey). Are they living in the SOUTH PACIFIC (James Michener). Are they living/working/living/dying in Charm City (The Wire created by David Simon and Robert Colesberry.




There's simply no way all eight people can be the main character. They can be important to the plot, sure, but which character starts the plot moving forward? In Noble House by James Clavell it's not the prologue, it's the arrival of the Americans.

In Shogun, it's not the shipwreck, it's the decision to save the English sailor.

At some point in your novel, hopefully at the start, something changes. That's where your plot is.



Start over. Tell me about a story I'll want to read.