Today I’m in the humble chair.
I sat down the other night to write my query letter and ended up with a handful of sad fragments. (In a world where…. hides a terrible secret! Now their only chance of survival…. Before darkness falls!) OY. It’s like I got hit with the Epic Cliche truck.
If I were good at pitching or selling, I’d work in sales or advertising. I’m not. I just want my work to speak for itself. But if a one page query is the only sample of my writing that an agent initially sees, it had better sing. It had better showcase my chops and my plot. But how do I reduce a 115,000 word manuscript with three alternating POV characters into one concise paragraph, without boiling it down into something ridiculously generic? I thought I knew. But seeing as my letter currently reads like something you’d hear movie-trailer-voice-over-guy say, it turns out I don’t know nuthin’ about nuthin’. I am getting positively silly with angst over here.
So I’m going to stop with the moaning and the rending of shirts and the gnashing of teeth and bone up on my reading. Thank goodness for the internet.
I’ve already read Miss Snark’s back catalog once, but it’s obviously time for a refresher. I’m also going to dig through Query Shark, agent Janet Reid’s query critique blog, and (W)ords and (W)ardances, where author Jodi Meadows often tackles the business of query writing through her Query Project. Her most recent post links to an article she wrote, Writing A Query Letter for WriteOnCon that is so clear and simple I’m thinking about printing it out and taping it to my forehead.
Osmosis, people. Osmosis. It’s like The Secret, only more directer.
On a less ridiculous note, if any of our Dear Readers have any advice on query writing to share, I’d be grateful to hear it.
Yes! I’m not the only one out here with men in white coats circling my house! All I can say is find the liquor and hide the guns! I’ve got three generations in two time periods, reincarnation overtones, forbidden love, illegitimate pregnancy, world war, inherited talent, and frustrated ambition. And that’s before I even sit down to try to write the damned thing!
Thank God I went bald years ago. At least I can’t blame that on the query snarks, who’ve had me spinning around like a dog after his tail for years now!
*laughing maniacally before being injected with something that makes me go quiet again, for a while…*
I’m laughing over here, but it’s the laugh of understanding. Believe me, Nathan, it’s no accident that Jack Torrance was a writer.
*pumps fist in nuthouse solidarity*
PS your story sounds pretty awesome, so I hope you figure out how to squeeze all that goodness into one little paragraph.
Amy …. I really like “Author! Author!” Anne Mini’s blog. I credit my pitch success to her. She is the step-daughter of Philip K. Dick and her blog is great. She is also an awesome person. Best–Kim
Hey Kim, thanks for the tip! I will most definitely check it out.
I’m in the same boat! My delightfully simple query has been gutted out (by me) and I’m making my life more difficult! Will check out the links for a refresher course. Thanks!
Hi Julie, I hope you find some inspiration in them thar links. It seems like the trick with query writing is to be simple, yet specific. I just haven’t figured out how to do that yet. Good luck to you!
I don’t believe in query letters. Getting an agent to notice you is just like going on a blind date that your someone who is only an associate, but considers herself a friend, sets up for you. All you have to do is not talk about yourself, pretend to be interested in what they want to talk about and the rest is luck. Most of them have a pretty good idea what they want and you just have to be lucky enough to be the right writer at the right time.