Tools for Selling Your Novel: The Query Letter

Query letters are like the Gorgon of the writing world. Unpublished and experienced authors alike get all wobbly at the knees when they hear the words "query letter".

I understand the stress. The query is the thing that will (hopefully) entice an agent to look at your pages. The query is the bait around the sharp hook of your manuscript; that tasty morsel that makes the agent (or editor) say "I want more." It seems like an impossible task to write a one page anything that will accomplish that. Especially when you start thinking about all the other query letters the agent sees every day. Yours has to stand out, not just among a few letters but a few dozen or hundred!

First, take a deep breath. Writing a query letter is not an easy thing, but it's not as hard as most of us have been led to believe.

Second, one of the best ways to get an idea of how to put a query together is to look at some existing ones. Query Shark is a great place to see various queries - some that work and many that don't - dissected by a Real Life Agent in order to illustrate What Works and What Doesn't. If you want to take the time to join the Absolute Write Water Cooler they have a forum called "Query Letter Hell" that is for the revision and refinement of queries. (There are also a couple of threads about How to Write a Query Letter and Successful Query Letters, if you're still in the research phase of your query mission.)

I have a caveat here: I have not found the advice given on my early query attempts though QLH to be especially useful. But many people have found the feedback and insight there to be invaluable. So, it obviously works for some, but don't be distressed if it doesn't seem to be working for you.

I DID find it useful to look through the successful queries to see what sorts of things they said, how they structured their letters. (And really the answer there is: all sorts of things and many different ways.)

I also found it very useful to start with a logline and then expand that to produce the bulk of my query.

Here was my three sentence logline: Magic-handler Keira Fennel's search for her father intersects with shape-shifter Lowen McCrae's hunt for a murderer in the alleys of 1888 London. When they uncover a plot to construct a mechanical heart from stolen flesh, Keira's skill with gears and magic makes her the target of the otherworldly villain. She's forced to participate in the experiment or lose both Lowen and her father.

(And let me just stop to say that I've a short version of the query letter that uses just these three sentences + the genre/length of the book and my personal info/credits. Although there are agents who apparently dislike loglines, this shorter letter has produced the same percentage of initially positive results as the longer letter.) 

I expanded it to this: Nineteen-year-old magic-handler KEIRA FENNEL is painfully aware she has outgrown the magic school at Ballaghaddereen Abbey, but her father – absent in every way but his continued fear for her safety – is not ready to let her loose in Fey-shy Britain. When Keira learns Da is lost and injured, she seizes the opportunity to prove she no longer needs to be protected.

Her quest to find and rescue her father intersects with shape-shifter LOWEN MCCRAE's hunt for a serial murderer stalking the alleys of 1888 London. At first they are allies out of necessity, but a friendship soon forms and Lowen's search for the man who murdered his ex-wife becomes a mission to protect Keira. The bond is deepened when Keira reveals her Immortal second-nature in order to save Lowen and he accepts her strangeness without judgment.

As they uncover a conspiracy to construct a mechanical heart, the parts distilled from stolen flesh, Keira's skill with gears and magic makes her the target of the otherworldly MONSIEUR DEVEREAUX and his cohorts. Keira must choose between cooperating with Devereaux or losing both Lowen and her father. 

Of course, the big question is always "But did it work?". I've had a 1 in 10 request rate off my queries. Which is at the low end of the spectrum but perfectly acceptable. (I know, I'd be giddy if I'd gotten a higher request rate on this, but I've had some really wonderful people ask to look at this so I'm satisfied.)

The longer version is great for querying folks who want only a query to start off with. If they ask for a synopsis as part of the query package, I've been using the short query letter. Because I'm a writer who likes to be succinct whenever possible. 

But whether I'm using the long version or the short version, both letters have the following: a summary of the book (with the intent of showing the uniquenesses of the plot), the basic info on the book (genre, word count, with series potential, complete), a paragraph about my writing credits, and a brief paragraph stating that I am querying multiple agents, I look forward to hearing back, and whether or not I've included sample pages, etc.

Why am I telling you all this in detail? 

Because writing a query letter is not easy, but it's not rocket science. In fact, that longer query letter was written in one thirty minute stint last fall. (After I'd spent a month working on the logline, of course.) It has remained virtually unchanged since then. 

So stop stressing. 

Write a logline (or nine) and find the heart of your story. 

Then write a query expanding the logline. 

Finally, go forth and query. 

Your agent is waiting.

 

#PitMad - September 12, 2013

So. The Twitter party for PitchMadness (#PitMad) is coming on September 12th. Which is two days away! If you haven't considered participating, there's still plenty of time to get a pitch or two ready and jump into the fray.

There are a few things to remember if you want to participate.

1. You must be pitching a COMPLETED and POLISHED manuscript. Not that any of us will be able to tell, but if you get requests and send in something rough and awkward or have to say "Just wait another month and I'll be through with the rough draft/revisions/etc" you're only making yourself look like an amateur.

2. Pitches must be 140 characters or less and need to contain the hashtag #PitMad. It's even better if you can fit a genre/category hashtag in there (#YA #SpecFic #UF #whatever) as it saves the agents/editors time when they're browsing the feed. (Some pitches will obviously be Adult or Young Adult, but some are more ambiguous. If you don't want agents frustrated trying to guess whether your fairytale retelling is meant for adults or kids, use a category hashtag.)

3. It never hurts to have multiple pitches ready to go. This gives you more chances to pitch (Twitter will not allow you to tweet the exact same thing more than once so be prepared to move hashtags and small words around) and gives agents different looks at your work. A good approach is to have a pitch that covers the general plot, and then one or two that bring up the secondary plot or focus more tightly on one of the characters.

4. Do your best to write a pitch that reflects your book accurately. I once got a request from an agent who then rejected the expanded query because she didn't like steampunk. Which is fair enough and I should have been more specific in my pitching to make that clear.

5. During #PitMad try and show some restraint. It's easy to keep tweeting every couple of minutes but that only clogs the feed and, well, makes you look a little desperate. My approach is to try and tweet every half hour or so. (I'm pitching two different projects so I can put up a different pitch every quarter hour to 30 minutes depending on whether there are agents actively looking.)

6. Have fun. Pitching can be stressful, there's no better way to start second-guessing yourself than to see other pitches and try and compare them to yours. But the best thing you can do is be prepared and have fun. (Those other authors are probably looking at your pitches with envy too. That's insecurity for you.)

Bakers Dozen Agent Auction 2013

Just a little heads up about the upcoming Bakers Dozen Agent Auction.


The pertinent details are here: Bakers Dozen @ Miss Snark's First Victim


I entered last year and, although I wasn't selected as a finalist, it was a great motivation to get The Steampunk Novel query-ready. (In fact, I started sending out queries the same week as the auction.)


There is a $10 fee required for entry but it's well worth the money for the opportunity being offered. AND there are log-line prep sessions in the months leading up to the auction. AND it's loads of fun.


So mark your calenders.


October 29 and 31: Submissions for the Adult Fiction Category (everything except Erotica and Erotic Romance)


November 5 and 7: Submissions for Young Adult and Middle Grade (all genres)


THE AUCTION DATE: December 3

Tools for Selling Your Novel: The Three Sentence Logline (Or the Short Pitch)

The beauty of the three sentence logline is its structure: one sentence each for the beginning, middle and end of your novel. I can whittle almost any plot down to a single sentence, but selling a project is not always just about how few words you can use to sum up the plot.

Here's the strongest one sentence logline for The Steampunk Novel: A young magic-handler desperate to find her Da confronts conspiracy, murder and forbidden magic under the streets of 1888 London.
 
It's good. It covers the plot. It identifies the protagonist, her goal and the obstacles she faces. All in all, it does exactly what it's supposed to do. But, when I entered The Bakers Dozen Agent Auction in November I felt like I needed something that touched on the specifics of the story.

This is what I came up with: Magic-handler Keira Fennel's search for her father intersects with shape-shifter Lowen McCrae's hunt for a murderer in the alleys of 1888 London. When they uncover a plot to construct a mechanical heart from stolen flesh, Keira's skill with gears and magic makes her the target of the otherworldly villain. She's forced to participate in the experiment or lose both Lowen and her father.

This version is also good. It covers the plot. It identifies the protagonist, her goals and the obstacles she faces. It also provides details that highlight the uniqeness of the story and the final conflict.

Is it better than the shorter version? No. Probably not. But it is capable of serving a different function. Because of the added length it is not just a logline, it's also a very short synopsis and there are times when that property will be more important than the brevity of the shorter version.

Just like a synopsis (which should have 1-2 page and 4-10 page versions) there's no harm in having loglines of different lengths one very short one to sell the heart of your story and one slightly longer one that covers the plot arc from beginning to end. If anything, identifying the guts of each act of the novel is helpful in writing both the query letter and the normal length synopsis.

So. What are the three acts of your novel? When you distill them into a single sentence each, what does it look like?

Tools for Selling Your Novel: The One Sentence Logline/Super-short Pitch

Loglines are sometimes frowned upon when mentioned in connection with Novels. When I tried to get feedback on a logline a few months ago I was told "They aren't useful because you can't use them in a query so we tend to be apathetic toward them."

Ah. Yes. Well, there's more to selling a novel than writing a query letter.  

The One Sentence Logline is basically a pitching tool. It's the thing you rely on when someone says "Oh, you're writing a book? What's it about?" It doesn't matter if that someone is your great-aunt Matilda or an agent you bumped into at a writing conference. The last thing you want to be doing is groping around for an explanation of what your book is about. (And we've all been there, right? "Well, see. There's this girl. And she's magic and live in Ireland. Only it's not called Ireland, it's called Eire because the British never succeeded in invading in the 1600s. And she's lonely and then she finds out that her dad is in trouble and she wants to help him...." And then it gets really messy.) 

Also, if you're a writer who has been on Twitter with any frequency over the past year you've probably run across a Twitter Pitching contest or two. (This goes ten-fold for YA writers who frequent agent blogs.) 

The Twitter Pitch is even worse than the One Sentence Pitch because whatever sentence you come up with has to fit in about 132 characters. I know. MADNESS! But useful madness. 

Here are a couple I used during #pitmad a few months ago. 

A young magic-handler desperate to find her Da confronts conspiracy, murder and forbidden magic under the streets of 1888 London. 

With a brutal serial killer loose in London and a werewolf as her ally, Keira Fennel will save her Da or die trying. 

Keira Fennel didn't plan to run away or put her trust in a stranger, but Da's in danger and death nor magic will keep her from him. 

I had a few others, but they were multi-sentence pitches so I'll save them for the post on Three Sentence Loglines. 

"Well, that's cute," you say. "But I don't intend to enter any pitch contests and I certainly don't have the money to go to a writing conference and hobnob with agents. What good will this do me?"

If there's one vital ingredient to selling something it's KNOWING YOUR PRODUCT. It's no different when we're talking about a novel. And distilling the 400+ pages of your book into one concise sentence, one through line that will tell anyone the heart of your story, is immensely useful. Especially if you use it as a building block for other tools to pitch and sell your novel. (More on this later.) 

Holly Lisle even recommends finding the logline as part of of the editing process. Before you even cut the first word, find the logline. It's the heart of your project. The statement you can hold each chapter up to and say "How does this fit with the theme/heart of my book?"

"Okay," you say. "I might be able to use that. But how do I write a logline?"

With great difficulty. Hah. There's no perfect way to tell you how to find that single sentence summary of your story, but here is a great template (courtesy of Authoress courtesy of Holly Bodger).

"When [MAIN CHARACTER] [INCITING INCIDENT], he [CONFLICT]. And if he doesn't [GOAL] he will [CONSEQUENCES]."

Notice that she suggests two sentences there. But for this structure, one will usually work as well. Write a logline for your book based on that structure, then start playing with it.
Try and make it as effective as possible in the fewest number of words.
Try putting the goal and consequences first.
Use active words. (Verbs are your friend.)
Assign an adjective to your MC (plucky or reluctant or young or... you get the point).
SAVE EVERY VERSION. (I have a journal I use for brainstorming these. It goes through many pages just to get one usable logline.) 
Consider how to pitch the story as a romance. A thriller. An action-adventure.

If you stick with it, something will click. (It might take a few tries, it might take dozens.) Stick with it.
This will be one of the most important tools you can use to sell your novel.