Query help: When early details disappear
I read more than 300 queries last year. Most of them started with a key detail that never reappeared, conceptually or specifically, like this:
“As a career fisherman, John [rest of query is about unrelated things].”
This is bad for a few reasons. They include:
- When you tell someone something early, you’re telling them it matters. By then not including it in subsequent information, you establish that you’re either unreliable, forgetful, lazy or otherwise bad. None of those qualities is one you should be touting in a query (or otherwise).
- You have 250 words to sell an agent or other publishing professional on your book. Wasting an early one on an unrepeated element focuses that reader on something that isn’t repeated. One-off details that aren’t repeated thematically or essential to the plot are generally a bad idea, but having one so closely associated with your character is much worse than dropping something random in your middle paragraph.
- If you have written a fisherman whose fishing informs none of the plot, that’s boring and unrealistic. If you have written a fisherman whose fishing you can’t figure out how to incorporate into the query, that’s a craft problem you need to fix (perhaps with help). Neither situation puts you in a great position to expect agents to want to read more because if you drop one plot ball, how many others do you drop? When I work with clients, one thing we focus on is maintaining narrative threads from character paragraph to stakes sentence.
In most stories, John’s fishing is central to the plot, but the writer doesn’t know how to show that or doesn’t realize they haven’t done so. The writer doesn’t know how to show, or doesn’t realize they haven’t shown, that John loves the solace and the individualism and the chance of finding something amazing. In most cases, this is because the writer is trying to chop 30,000 words of a first act into 250 words of query.
Fixing this query problem is easy enough: Find a few decisions or other plot points that are informed by aspects of John’s fishing. The stakes sentence needs to hang off part of it as well. And again, it could be John’s love of the water, his hatred of offices, whatever. As long as it’s thematically/conceptually consistent, you’re fine.
One good example of a query that uses an aspect of a character thematically or conceptually consistently is Serena Kaylor’s query for Wherefore Art Thou Beatrice Quinn? (now Long Story Short after it was bought about a year ago; preorder it here). I used Serena’s query in the paid query workshop I ran this month because it’s excellent. And one of the reasons it’s excellent is that it shows Beatrice’s social awkwardness/ignorance, then builds with that as a major plot/narrative thread rather than saying she’s awkward and then having her proceed through life ho-humming at things awkward teens might struggle with.
We start with Serena showing Beatrice’s lack of social awareness:
“Sixteen-year-old Beatrice Quinn doesn’t text or tweet and thinks the Kardashians are the nice, elderly couple that live up the street. She is awkward, easily confused by social cues, and has always preferred the company of books to people.”
And that’s the plot: Beatrice has to show she can function with humans:
“She has six weeks at the Connecticut Shakespearean Summer Academy to show her parents she can pull off the role of “normal” teenager and won’t spend the rest of her life hiding in a library.”
And that’s the continuation of the plot, and the stakes: Beatrice tries humans, then discovers she might … like them? But the route isn’t easy, which reflects reality for those of us who are awkward:
“she begins to realize that relationships might be trickier than calculus. As the summer draws to an end, and with Oxford on the a, this girl genius stumbles through illicit parties, double dog dares, and more than your fair share of Shakespeare. Before the final curtain falls, she begins to wonder if Oxford alone will still be enough.”
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Even if the book weren’t significantly about social cues, we’d still want one narrative thread to focus on them because the query starts with Beatrice’s lack of social interactions. Early query details matter. And if you’re going to start with something, it should be thematically important.
Good luck <3