Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Return of Query Madness

So, when Lacey, Darcy and I posted our queries a couple of weeks ago, we promised to humiliate...um, help anyone who sent us a query letter. Our first vict...volunteer is Beverley, whom we've known since we all participated in Avon's FanLit contest last year.

Here's how the process went, in Beverley's words:

If anyone ever tells you that writing queries is fun you can be sure of one of three things:

1. They're lying.
2. They've never written a query.
3. They're lying.

Okay, I'm only kidding because I'm sure that for some (I don't know who these crazy people are), it can be very fun. But if the rest of you are like me (a first-timer who didn't know whatthe hell I was doing and didn't really even know what to put in a query), it's a special purgatory. I slaved for an entire week on this ONE PAGE LETTER and did so many revisions I stopped counting. Thank God for the people (and they were many including, of course, Lacey and Jacqueline) who didn't want to see me completely humiliated should I have sent the original out to any of the publishing houses.

And thank goodness I learned something about GMC before starting my 2nd draft!

Just as a reminder, this works like it did before: the original query letter is posted here, while Lacey's comments on it are on her blog. Click here to bring up Lacey's post in a new window so you can read them side-by-side.

In An Honorable Rogue, a sexy Victorian 100,000 word novel, 1 Millicent "Missy" Armstrong2 has known since the age of thirteen who she would marry and when.3 Five years later, the when has arrived, and the who—sinfully handsome, Lord James Rutherford—is one of her brother's closest friends4 and an unapologetic rogue.5 But getting one of London's most eligible bachelors to the altar proves more difficult than she imagines and Missy finds that the road to love is one fraught with the unexpected.6

Once compromising Missy Armstrong would have been one of the worst things that could happen to the heir to the Windmere earldom,7 James Rutherford. The fact that it isn't7 only intimates the incredible predicament he finds himself in when Lady Victoria Spencer claims that he is the father of her unborn child. Not only does James have no memory of the night in question,8 he has no desire to wed. But before a full blown scandal can erupt, the truth behind Victoria's false claim is discovered, freeing James to do the honorable thing.9 What he doesn't expect is the response he receives.10

With rumors of an affair between James and Victoria still swirling thick in society's air,11 Missy is heartbroken and insulted when in a reluctant proposal of marriage from the man she loves,12 James makes it clear that she is not to expect fidelity. Unwilling to share him with other woman, Missy declines. It is only with her refusal that James realizes the love he has long taken for granted. So the tables turn and James, long pursued, becomes the pursuer in a game where the only winner can be love.13

Every writer begins as a reader and I am a testament to that fact having been an avid reader of historical fiction for twenty-five years.14 I am a member of RWA and I belong to the GRW chapter.15 I am currently at work on my second novel.16

Thank you for your time and consideration.17

And now we have the new, improved, and much trimmed version below. The new version of the letter is posted on Lacey's blog with comments courtesy of Darcy below.

  1. A hook!
  2. He sounds like a very bad boy.
  3. Good, conflict.
  4. This restates what I already learned in the first paragraph, but I’ll keep reading.
  5. She’s going to court him? Unusual.
  6. Decisions, decisions. More conflict.
  7. More conflict. Hmmm, can these two get together?
  8. Tough for a rake to do, I wonder how he manages?
  9. He IS a very bad boy!
  10. Lots of potential for conflict and a sustainable plot here.
  11. Great, she’s serious about this.
  12. Hard at work on the next one – and it involves characters from this one. Series can be good for business.
  13. I already know it’s complete from the first paragraph, but it’s nice to know she’s ready to send it at a moment’s notice.
  14. Nice closing.

So, there you have it: a much improved, much hookier query letter that spends more time on the romance than the plot!

We have a couple more query letters in the pipeline that we'll be posting soon. In addition to my blog and Lacey's, however, we'll be adding cross-posts to Erica Ridley's blog. Erica's a member of our little critique circle and rocks at writing hooks. I am not exaggerating here: Erica managed to hook the redoubtable and notoriously unhookable Miss Snark in her last Crap-O-Meter and also liked Erica's first three pages. Ignore Erica's advice on queries at your peril, I say!

So, keep your eyes peeled. More fun is headed your way. (This is fun, isn't it?)

8 comments:

Ann Aguirre said...

Hm, I wouldn't call queries fun but they're necessary. :D

I've often wondered what responses I'd get if I queried like so:

Dear Agent / Editor:

I wrote a smoking hot book and I'm attaching sample chapters. If you want more, ask.

Have a nice day.

Jackie Barbosa said...

Well, Hilary Sares would like it! She likes query letter short, apparently. She said at National last year her favorite was one that said:

Dear Ms. Sares,

HERE!

Jackie Barbosa said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ann Aguirre said...

One truth I can pass on about query letters: brief is better.

I said as much on my blog, but let me elaborate here. The number one mistake authors make is trying to sum up the WHOLE story in the query letter. It gets long, overly detailed and makes the agent / editor think the author doesn't know how to self-edit. The (sometimes erroneous) conclusion then becomes that if the query letter is that unwieldy, the novel must be one bloated mess, so they just reject and move on.

What needs to go into that first paragraph is word count, hook, and genre, and that's all, really. They'll find out whether your writing is right for them by reading it. Get them reading your pages and if they're good enough, you're set.

Beverley Kendall said...

Oh wow. Could have just written HERE and I would have been finished. Lord that would have been a whole lot easier. :)

lacey kaye said...

Ann(ie), I believe we do agree with you. Completely. Sometimes that advice sounds a bit unbelieveable...I'm absolutely in favor of shorter is sweeter!

Jody W. and Meankitty said...

Whan Ann(ie) said. Mine are 3 paragraphs -- one with the hook and stats and hopefully the reason why I'm sending it to that particular person, one with the brief story summary that reads like back cover copy, and one with the me. The last paragraph is by far the shortest :).

Not that my queries have been across the board successful, but I always figure, the shorter the better.

Gee, someone is screaming because I've been typing this for FIVE WHOLE MINUTES! Gotta go.

Evangeline Holland said...

I have such a hard time with queries because when I plot, it's usually a word association type-thing(as in, I just type in whatever comes to my mind that I think should happen in the story, and Voila--I begin writing.) Plus, writing a query letter for a romance novel can ge SO hokey even if I study the back copies of other romances.