+ the query that led me to my agent
Today, I’m bringing you a pastiche of wisdom-learned-the-hard-way, resources-I-wish-I-knew-about-earlier, and the query that got the attention of a Big5 editor and that landed me with my agent (I swear, someday I’ll write a HIGMA post about that wild tale).
#1 Pitch Your Friends First. Y’all, my initial query was a sour turd. It sucked. This was my first tour through the query trenches, and I’m in that 1% of writers who rather write a thousand synopses than a single query letter. In response to the rejections I received, I ended up rewriting my query so many times that I now have 47 versions of it saved on my computer. What finally forced me stop writing mini-synopses and start hooking the reader was pulling out an old-fashioned pen and paper and handwriting a letter to one of my best friends, who is a librarian. My goal was simple: write a pitch that would get her (specifically) to read it. Somehow doing this made query-writing click. You can read about it here: Breaking Query Letter Paralysis.
#2 Get Critiqued Before Diving In. It’s extremely unlikely nowadays that an agent will give you feedback as to why they issued you the red frowny face of doom on QueryTracker; meaning: you need to seek this out yourself before diving in. Round up as many eyeballs as you can to scrutinize your letter, synopsis, and first three chapters before sending off that first query. In my own case, I had my entire friend group, an agent (whom I paid $29), and a handful of mutual on X (including two published authors) eviscerate my query letter.
The primary benefits of this are obvious: constructive criticism will enable you to polish your query so that it reaches its maximum potential. However, you should consider the subtle secondary benefits: you’ll feel more confident when rejections roll in, because it will be far more likely that you were rejected for fit rather than a lack of quality in your submission package. This alone can bolster your resilience and keep you in the query game longer. (For more info on the benefits of having your work critiqued and how to discern good from bad feedback, check out How to Love Critiques.)
#3 Practice Condensing Your Pitch to 1,000 Characters (Not Words). The pitch that got a Big5 editor to pluck my novel out of the unagented slush pile and seek to acquire it was significantly different from the one I had been using to query. Why’d I change it, you ask? In this case, the submission form capped the pitch’s character count (not word count) to a hard 1,000 (including spaces!), which forced me to have to rewrite and condense my query letter to fit that small allotment. However, doing so unearthed a vastly stronger pitch than I had been using, and that pitch is now part of my agent’s submission letter. Your final query may end up longer, but doing this exercise will force you to narrow in on novel’s quintessential hook.
#4 Work Smarter, Not Harder to Find Your Comps. If your approach to finding comps for your novel includes staring up at the ceiling, scrunching your face, and straining to recall the last five books you read, I can tell you now there are far easier ways that don’t include inducing an 7am migraine. Mercifully, editor and author Allison Alexander has created two fabulous comp-finder databases: one for science fiction and one for fantasy. Other resources include Goodread lists, award lists, Amazon bestseller lists, and sites dedicated to your genre, such as Worlds Without End for SFFH writers. Want to know the most underrated resource that’s both free and amazing? Check your local (or even a metropolitian) library’s online catalogue to see if they are utilizing EBSCO NoveList, which lets you find books related to your searches with a single click.
#5 Don’t Condense, Build Out Your Synopsis. Attempting to condense a 100,000-word story into a 1,000 words can daunt even the seasoned writer. Everything feels important and necessary for an agent to understand your story in its entirety. This is why I argue for approaching synopsis writing from the reverse mindset: what are the bare bones of your story (in other words, the major plot beats, whether you’re using Save the Cat, the Hero’s Journey, a simple Beginning, Middle, and End, or whatever). Write those down first without regard as to whether the whole story makes sense or not. After you’ve written a line or two for each big plot point, read through and see what doesn’t make sense and fill in those missing details. Repeat until your synopsis is fleshed out enough for someone to understand the flow of the story (and certainly have someone unfamiliar with your book read through it, too!). For a more in-depth guide, try out my Synopsis Worksheet.
Now for the 1,000-character-count pitch for ALL IS WELL:
As a disillusioned apprentice, Vune longs for the day her colony abandons its dangerous terraforming project and relocates to a distant but bountiful valley, where everyone can live off of the land. The problem is, dangerous toxins lurk within its soil — at least, that’s what an embittered shock-jock would have the colony believe.
To avoid becoming an expendable grunt, Vune must leverage her wit, voice, and flair for political maneuvering to uproot her small colony and unwrangle it from the fearmonger’s vice-grip. However, her father — a savvy Councilmember — refuses to release the one piece of evidence that will make her goal possible, forcing her to decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice to reach paradise.
ALL IS WELL (109,000) is a dystopian YA/NA science-fiction novel that would appeal to readers who enjoy the character arcs and moral complexities found in SOME DESPERATE GLORY (Emily Tesh) and THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES (Suzanne Collins).
If you have any of your own nuggets of wisdom that you’ve gleaned while querying, share them below in the comments!