Query Trenches Part II: Resources

by Katy White

In my last post, I talked about the importance of querying in traditional publishing. Today, I want to share a few additional resources that I used during my time in the query trenches. If you're looking to make your work really shine, check these out.

First Five Pages Workshop - From their site: "Our monthly First Five Pages Workshops begin the first Saturday of every month. We accept the first five middle grade or young adult manuscripts received by email starting at noon. (The moderators) work alongside a guest mentor to tell you what we see in those first five pages with respect to your voice, plot, characters, setting, pacing and writing in general. Depending on the mentor's schedule, they may comment only on your initial entry, on the initial entry and one revision, or on all subsequent revisions. You'll also get feedback and comments from your peers, and have the opportunity to post two revisions, so you'll end up the strongest possible start."  

I entered this workshop for another manuscript, and it later ended up winning a contest based on my first page! Although I eventually decided to shelve that novel, the advice and insight I got from this experience was crucial in making my next novel stand out, from the first five through to the last five. If nothing else, look at the archives, comments, and the growth of those entries over the weeks. It's really eye-opening!

Pitch Contests - Once you have a tight query, killer opening pages, and a generally clean, strong manuscript, consider online pitch contests like Pitch Madness, #PitMad, Pitch Slam, and #PitchMas, among others. In these contests, you usually have 140 characters (Twitter) or 35 words (if it's through a blog/website) to condense your MS, then typically your include your first 250 words. You need to make your pitch and opening enticing, interesting, and utterly unputdownable. If you make it past the judges, agents and even publishing houses make requests to see anything from a query to your full MS! Even if you don't make it, though, seeing the entries that make it helps you understand how to polish yours. For a more beginning-to-end pitch contest, be sure to check out Pitch Wars, where a mentor will read your entire MS and give you advice to make it as pretty as can be for agents.

The Writer's Voice - This contest is a "multi-blog, multi-agent contest hosted by some writers who are really well known in the writing community for all the help they provide aspiring authors. The hosts serve as coaches, critiques, and mentors during the course of the contest. They select multiple projects for their teams based on entrants' queries and first pages and help make each entry as strong as it can be for the agent round.

These are only a few of the fabulous helps you can find from the writing community. If you know of more, please include those in the comments below!

Query Trenches, Or, So You've Written a Novel. Now What?

by Katy White

For those of us who want to publish novels, a time will come, if it hasn't already, when we finish the herculean task of writing a book. In many ways, it feels like the hard part should be over at this point.

We all know it's not.

By now, we've discussed things like edits, critique partners, more edits, beta readers, more edits, lather, rinse, repeat. Once we have our manuscript super clean and polished and pretty, the hard part should be over then, right?

Sigh.

Welcome to the Query Trenches.

Querying is a lot like dating. There's a reason why Bridget Jones called her married friends "smug marrieds." Because (assuming you have a good marriage, which I hope is the case for every married person!) not having to date is infinitely more enjoyable than dating. Similarly, not having to query anymore (whether because you've landed an agent or an interested publishing house or because you have decided to self-publish) is just so, so much better than querying. Yet, it's a necessary step for most writers' journeys.  

So what is a query? Although every agent/agency will have personal preferences about query format, you can think about a query as the back-of-a-book blurb. You want to condense your novel into around 250 words and make it sound absolutely fabulous. Introduce the main two or three characters, show the reader what those characters want, set the stakes, and end it. You need to give enough detail to make sense and arouse interest, but not so much that you give away the ending or important twists. Nathan Bransford gives this explanation:

A query letter is part business letter, part creative writing exercise, part introduction, part death defying leap through a flaming hoop. (Don't worry, you won't catch fire and die during the query process though it may feel precisely like that at times). In essence: it is a letter describing your project. 

The first thing to know about writing query letters is that there are as many opinions out on the Internet about query letters as there are, well, opinions on the Internet. You will find lots of dos and don'ts and peeves and strategies and formulas.... The important thing to remember is that you will need to choose the ideas that work best for you.

As the immortal Douglas Adams said, don't panic! Write the best letter you can, be yourself, don't overthink it too much, don't sweat it if you realize the second after you sent it that you made a typo or accidentally called me Vicky. If an agent is going to get mad or reject you over something trivial like that they're probably not the type of person you'd want to work with anyway.

Fantastic advice from someone who reads queries for a living. And writes queries for a living.

Here are some excellent resources to help you better understand queries and to see some examples of successful queries:

Query Letter Mad Lib - essentially a plug-and-play query generator, from none other than Nathan Bransford. An excellent place to start you on your query journey.

Query Shark - In my opinion, this is hands down the best place to get a feel for what not to do, as well as an understanding of what an agent honestly thinks about the queries that she sees. The infamous Janet Reid keeps it real, yo.

23 Literary Agent Query Letters That Worked

Anatomy of a Query Letter 


Also, here are some resources to help you find reputable agents (you should NEVER pay to have an agent agree to work with you!): AgentQuery, Preditors & Editors, Writer's Digest New Agent Alert (it's always helpful to find people who are actively building their client list), and Literary Rambles (the blog host interviews reputable agents who rep from picture books to young adult and includes what the agent is looking for and how to format your query for that agent. INCREDIBLE site!).

QueryTracker is a great resource to help you organize your agent search and keep track of your submissions and responses.

And lastly, if you haven't already, consider joining and participating in a writer's organization (e.g., I'm a member of SCBWI and ANWA), as that will help agents know that you're serious about your craft.

Please sound off in the comments below with your query questions, advice, and any additional querying resources you may have. And stay tuned in two weeks for Query Trenches Part II, where I'll share additional resources beyond the query itself!

Dilemma and Discussion Question

by Katy White

I'm in the querying process, and I recently had an agent request a full manuscript of my YA contemporary romance.  Only a week later, I had an R&R (revise and resubmit) request from her.  She told me she loved the book, loved the idea, and thought it would be an easy sell to editors, with just one caveat:  either age it up or age it down.  Make it more mature or more juvenile.

Go raunchy or go middle grade.

I'm embarrassed to admit how much this bothered me.  It wasn't just that I was offended by how young adult literature has become progressively more age-inappropriate.  It was that I instantly thought of a dozen ways to "age it up."  To make it more mature.  Raunchier.  

The thought didn't last for more than a split second.  But in that split second, I could feel the pull of "doing whatever it takes" to get published.  I could feel how easy it would be to make the changes that I'm sure would have thrilled the agent.  I could feel myself losing my grasp on why I love young adult fiction and why I want to write YA and only YA.   And I didn't like it.

Fortunately, two split seconds later, I shook it off.  I reminded myself of the reason I write YA (irrespective of the fact that I'm not a huge middle grade fan).  I write YA because I love it and think it demands more authenticity than you find in other age groups.  More importantly, I write it because I have nieces and young women in my ward who love reading and who are finding less and less new releases that support their standards.  My concern isn't even cuss words or mature themes, because I feel those have a place in literature and an author can tell a valuable, important story by using such things responsibly.  My concern is that more and more books are making standards seem embarrassing and making values look like bigotry.  

I can't stand for that.

I don't know how long it will take me to get published (if ever).  But I know I won't stop trying.  I know I can't sell out.

So...here's my "discussion question" for all of you: where would you/do you draw the line when it comes to making your book a better sell?  When is it appropriate to make something more mature, and how would you do that, if you felt like it was important?

Staying Positive While Treading the Waters of Rejection

By Lacey Gunter

I am currently in the process of querying. As many of you know, this can feel like an act of self initiated torture. Given the odds of success, this description may not be too off base. Unless you are that one in a million, one must be prepared to face rejection and likely a lot of it.

I am not sure who originally coined the phrase (or equation, rather) "Happiness equals reality minus expectations," but applied to this situation, the only sure way to be happy seems to be to expect rejection. On the surface this sounds very pessimistic and counter productive to success. So are we then forced to choose between optimism and happiness?

I would say NO. So then, how do we stay positive while treading the waters of rejection? There are many techniques that can help us do this. Here are a few that I have been using. (Please forgive me if I sound like I am in statistics instructor mode. I am immersed in it a good portion of my time, so it can be difficult to step back out.)

1.Bring the odds to your favor: Rare events, by definition, occur very rarely. So if you only observe a single outcome, you are very unlikely to witness a rare event. But rare is not the same as impossible. Observe many, many, many outcomes and you are much more likely to observe a rare event.  So in writers speak, one can maintain optimism about eventual success, while still recognizing that this particular submission will most likely end in a rejection. Write frequently and submit often and eventually the odds of success are going to be in your favor.  

2. Keep moving forward: When you first try to tread water you feel like you are barely hanging on
and you don't know how to swim. But the more you practice it the stronger you become. Eventually you are strong enough and skilled enough to just swim. Writing and writing well is a skill. Like all skills, the more you practice the better you get. Especially if you take the time and effort to learn from your rejections. If you tread the waters of rejection long enough, you will eventually be strong and skilled enough to swim away down the lane toward success.

3. Be grateful:  As painful as rejection is, I have found more peace and closure when I take the time to tell agents thank you for reviewing and considering my manuscript. They may never take the time to open up my thank you email, but that doesn't really matter. I have already experienced the positive mental and physical health benefits of gratitude and I am emotionally prepared to try again.

These are a few techniques I use to stay positive. I'm sure you have a few we could all benefit from hearing about. Stay positive and just keep treading.

#QueryDay

Carlie Webber's 60 Queries and What We Learn From Them

During Write On Con, agent Carlie Webber wrote a "60 Queries in 60 Minutes" post to give us all a little peek into her slushpile. It's a wonderful opportunity to see why queries get rejected, and it was an extremely informative post.

I'll let you go peruse the list, if you'd like, but I've crunched some numbers here that might brighten your day (or make you cry... but let's pretend it's the first thing, yes?)

First of all, I need to point out that she actually shared sixty-two queries with us. Her numbering got fumbled in the middle and we got bonus insight. SCORE. Of those sixty-two queries, only nine made it to the Sample Pages round.

Nine.

That's around 14% of her slushpile made it to sample pages. That's not the people who get upgraded to a partial or full or even get an offer of representation. That's who made it past her inbox. Okay. So let's think on that and be intimidated for a moment...

Now on to the better news. Of those fifty-three who got form rejections right off the bat, eight were rejected for not following the most basic rules. They didn't submit a query letter because they "didn't feel like writing one," or they queried an entire series at once, stuff like that. That means about 13% of her inbox that day was people flat-out not following the rules of querying.

Another twenty-three (37%!) didn't do their research. And remember, this is just a query, not the actual novel. So we aren't talking about actual research, we're talking about easy research. Stuff like word counts (YA fantasy at 212K?!?), what publishers are looking for, what agents are looking for, or even how to write a query. Learn how to write a query letter. It's important. As important as writing your novel.

Don't let yourself be the person who writes a killer novel but then gets rejected because you didn't realize you shouldn't have rhetorical questions in your query letter. 

Lastly, and most heartbreakingly of all, are those who were rejected though there was nothing overtly "wrong" with their query. Twenty-two queries, or 36%, were sent form rejections for being "not compelling enough" or having "not enough spark." Lack of connection, lack of focus, lack of an obvious plot in the query. All these things were things that the author just probably has no idea they are doing wrong. On the upside, almost half of these were things that Carlie said would more than likely appeal to other agents and editors and she felt bad about rejecting them.

So here's what we learn from all this:

- You can make your chances better by following the rules. Yes. You. You must follow the rules. All of them.

- No seriously. Follow the rules. A full HALF of queries were rejected for not following the rules.

- Make your characters compelling. And your story. And your setting. And when you're done with that, make sure those compelling characters and storylines and settings shine through in your query.

- Sometimes, there's nothing wrong with you or your work. It just isn't a good fit. Keep working. You'll get there.

And that's what I learned from Carlie Webber's "602 Queries in 60 Minutes." What do you think? What did you take away from this post?