It’s the first week of April, and the Magic & Mayhem Writers have all decided to talk about the query letters that landed us an agent. I’ve always loved querying, and I’ll admit it, I’m kind of sad that I haven’t had to send out a letter pitching my book in well over a year. It’s not that I enjoyed all the rejection and the waiting, but I loved checking my email for responses. And checking it again two minutes later. And again after another two minutes. And… Well, I’m sure most of you here know what I mean.  

How I Query 

For every project I’ve completed, I sent out around fifty query letters. I would have queried more, but I targeted agents who represented fantasy, romance, science fiction, and young adult because I wanted someone who would be interested in everything I planned to write. With each project, I started querying the same way: by sending out letters to ten agents, some who were on the top of my Dream list, some who were in the middle, and some who were on the bottom.*

Whenever I received a request or a rejection, I sent out another query, keeping the number at ten outstanding queries. And, yep, you read that correctly. I sent out more even if I had a request. Requests are awesome, but most partials and fulls end up being rejected eventually, so even though I think my books are perfect at the time of querying, I go in with the assumption that I’ll be rejected. Sounds kind of pessimistic, but honestly, when looking at the odds, it’s pretty realistic.

The Query that Led to Three Offers of Rep

I think I’m fairly decent at writing queries. I’ve liked the final versions of the three I’ve written, but something was different about the one that landed me an agent: it was the easiest one to write. Maybe it was because I finally learned how to write a query or maybe it was because my book had a strong hook, but my pitch for The Shadow Reader (formerly titled FISSURED) felt perfect whereas my previous two only felt pretty good.

Anyway, here’s what I ended up sending to my agent.

Dear Ms. Stampfel-Volpe:

Some humans can see the fae. McKenzie Lewis can track them.

Ever since the fae discovered her talent ten years ago, McKenzie has fought to balance her normal life with her life as the Court’s best shadow-reader. She has things almost under control until she’s abducted from her college campus by Aren, a charismatic and dangerously attractive fae who’s set on overthrowing the king.

Aren’s determined to have McKenzie’s help. She’s determined to stay loyal to the Court. After all, this is the man responsible for damaging the fae’s magic and causing a bloody civil war. Or so she’s been told.

Aren’s methods of coercion – and his tantalizing smiles – rattle McKenzie’s faith. Instead of hurting or threatening her, he teaches her his language and claims the Court has told her lies. Now, McKenzie must decide if she can trust the fae she’s falling for or if his seduction is part of a strategy to lure her to his side of the war.

I noticed your guest post on Market My Words last summer and read there and elsewhere that you are looking for urban fantasy with strong female leads. I thought you might enjoy FISSURED, my urban fantasy which is complete at 105,000 words. I’m a member of RWA as well as several on-line and in-person critique groups. Currently, I’m living in London and working on my next novel.

Sincerely,

Sandy Williams 

My Top Three Tips for Writing Queries

Keep them short: Definitely keep them less than a page. Sure, some writers get away with longer queries, but that’s not the norm, and if you can get your hands on the October 2010 issue of Writer’s Digest, the above query is included with comments from my agent. One of the things Joanna liked about my letter was that it was concise – I pitched the entire story in exactly 162 words. Mine is probably on the shorter end of things but, hey, if you can sum your book up in 300 words or less, do it.

Leave things out: One of the hardest decisions I made when summing up my story was to leave out one of the most important characters in the book: Kyol, the fae McKenzie has been in love with for a decade. I honestly don’t think the book would have sold without him, but I didn’t mention him because he would have bogged down my query and, most likely, confused the reader. But the point of a query letter isn’t to tell everything that happens in your novel. The point is to get an agent interested enough to read those first pages, and I felt that my query did that even without Kyol.

Show the conflict: Of course your query needs to have your story’s conflict, but the part of the letter above that stands out to me is this: “Aren’s determined to have McKenzie’s help. She’s determined to stay loyal to the Court.” It shows the book’s two main characters going after their own, conflicting goals. I think my previous two queries lacked this. It wasn’t that there weren’t conflicts in the books, but I didn’t spell it out as succinctly as I did with this one.

I hope these tips are helpful. I’m definitely not an expert on queries, but I find them fun and challenging. If you’d like me to take a look at one of your queries, leave a comment saying so on this post between now and next Monday. I’ll randomly choose one winner for every ten comments received. I won’t rewrite your query for you, but I’ll let you know my impressions. It’ll be similar to Jodi Meadows’s Query Project, which you should definitely check out because Jodi is uber-wise and awesome.

Hope everyone has a great week!