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I came over from Cym Lowell's Book Review Party Wednesdays (BRPW).

I take it that this is an urban fantasy? Cool!

"Character immersion" is totally believable method to me. It is logical. And I think would make a very believable character(s) which readers can connect with. Not that I know anything about writing :)

Cherry
www.cherrymischievous.com

Thank you, Gaby, for all of your support--for me and all the writers and their books you feature. You rock! And BTW, if book clubs are reading How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly, we can have a virtual meeting via Skype. Again, many thanks and happy reading! Connie, www.conniemayfowler.com

Novellas are tough to sell. You'll do better if you up the word count to at least 60k.

I liked the voice, though.

Maybe it would look better with a colon instead of a comma

The Milky Way: China Poison

When the dialogue popped up, I got confused for a moment and thought I was reading a New Beginning.

I agree with Matthew. I was confused when I started reading this because I thought it was the begining of a book, and I was wondering what the heck was going on. Just work on making it shorter and less descriptive like EE said, and I think you'll have a much better query letter.

I've heard it's considered tacky to quote your novel in the query letter. I'd leave the final determination for that to EE, but as a query letter, this doesn't work. Rather than the dialogue, maybe focus in on telling us the big picture of this story. Use some hooks that make us want to know the details rather than just provide them in such volume.

It might help for you to read through a number of the completed/refined queries on this site to get a better example of the format used. Hope that helps.

You've been around here a while; you know traditional query format. I think that'll work a lot better for you, as will checking and rechecking the punctuation.

This is a really good voice and bodes well for the novel. EE's got a good idea about the flash fiction, too--what you have here wouldn't do too badly.

I'm not so hot on the title, but titles are likely enough to change before publishing.

Are you trying to get permanently kicked out of China, or have you already been?

Good voice, wrong place to display it. Here's to hoping the next draft works!

Drop the dialogue in the query. Also shorten this baby up. This is more like reading a synopsis. It's a good premise, however, and I do like the cynical voice. Beef up the wordcount, I'd rather see a novel. Query-wise: pare and tighten and come back.

I've just started reading BROTHERS By Yu Hua and I sense the same sort of language differences with this query. There's a delightful story in this "query" and I put that in quotes because this isn't a query.

It's a story about love and whistleblowers. Start someplace like this:

After the death her of her young son, Gillian takes a job in China to bury her grief and quite by accident discovers a man, she thinks is a fool, but who loves her passionately. Unfortunately, his company also sells poisoned milk to the masses. When Gillian exposes the truth, it is up to her new lover to get her out of China alive.

That's not entirely correct but it's exciting and too short. Expand it in your own words. Don't get carried away with the details of the story. I like your style as in your face and startling as it is.

How many different ways can I say thanks? Evil - as always, great guidance and help. Awesome continuations. Comment people: thank you for your input. I have been haunting EE's site for a while now, I didn't know it was bad form to include dialogue. Thanks for telling me. I have read the archives. Slow learner? I'll take another run at it. I seemed to give you guys a case of dry mouth. I am encouraged - no one said my query turned synopsis made them barf. You guys are important to me. Bibi

Ah, Bibi. I was wondering when you would show yourself.

I heard a story about baby milk causing infant death in China. Is your novel based on this? I would link the story but I have to run out at the moment.

Matthew, yes the fiction is based on the poisoning of kids and adults from milk powder made in the PRC cut with melamine. The milk powder was used in baby formula, cookies, candy, instant powdered milk (sent to war torn and countries in catastrophic situations), chocolate milk, anything that has milk products in it. Melamine fixes the nitrogen level in the milk which at that time was the protein indicator. Higher the nitrogen level, higher the protein. By adding water to the melamine contaminated milk more volume was achieved and sold. At monstrous profits. Formaldehyde (sp?) was likely used to mix the melamine with initially to assist solubility. The first execution one of the major players happened about a month or two ago. I was poisoned by drinking one tiny box a day with coffee. Red welts, itchy, burning, Dr. said I was allergic to something. Milk I guessed later My room mate was poisoned more severely than I was. She had open sores that could only be closed by laser treatment. She drank less milk than I did. Terrible, hundreds of thousands of kids have kidney damage and no one knows how many in the world have been affected. The milk powder was bought by many food producers on at least three continents to be used in thousands of products that are shipped worldwide. Grim story. That is what I wove my story around. Bibi

Bibi, I'm sorry to hear what happened to you and your roommate, I'm glad you guys are okay.

Be sure to post your revision in the comments. We'll be happy to help you out.

Hey, we got off very lightly. There is no safe level of mel. with infants. Small body masses make the effects so devastating. That is what drives my m.c. nuts. This was deliberate. Greed drives the plot. The love of money - that's the root. Greed is acting on that evil. Very interesting how it all unfolded. I left the PRC Aug. 7th, the day before the youth of all nations gathered. I felt relief. B.

Your passion came through in the writing. Keep that passion in the revised query. This is a plot (as Law and Order says,) ripped from the headlines.

I sure hope I don't meet any bees in heaven.

EE, are you training to be an ophthalmologist? What's with the eye-chart shrinking font sizes?

I wholeheartedly agree with all of EE's comments. That said, I also really like this query. I'd definitely pick up a book like this in the bookstore.

The voice is very YA-friendly. What if you called the book literary YA? And I've seen several agents mention they're looking for a "high-concept" YA suspense/mystery at the higher commercial end.

I haven't read "The Disreputbable History of Frankie Landau-Banks" yet but this query reminded me of the premise a little bit. That book is YA and was a National Book Award nominee...possibly your novel could go along similar lines.

The query doesn't sound like literary fiction. It's good, but I was startled by "literary novel" because I'd been reading about a YA suspense story.

EE's improvement does tone down the voice a little, but I agree it has to be done. Another publishing world blogger (not that I am unfaithful to Evil. I'm loyal, not dead. I'm allowed to look. ;-) ) says query letters should reflect the tone of the novel but need not mimic the voice. ( I paraphrase.)

Looks like a good story.

-pulp

I really like the voice and the story. Agree that the query should be in third person.

For what it's worth, I don't care for the name Kharon, but I assume this is not so subtle symbolism? If so, that would seem a lot more YA-ish than lit fiction-y.

By an odd coincidence, I was just reading through queryshark last week and Janet Reid posted a similar query written in character, with a RAVE review. I quote from her:

I don't even care that it's written in the voice of the protagonist, something that is mostly viewed as a gimmick.

I don't care there's nothing else here, no pub creds, no bio, no nothing. I will read this with alacrity because it has the one essential thing: voice.



http://queryshark.blogspot.com/2008/12/86.html

So, for every rule there's an exception if it's done well enough. You will take heat and there'll be a lot of people who will reject out of hand because it's not the correct format, but who knows? It might be worth the risk.

But I do agree with what everyone else has said about this being "literary" versus YA. Also, I've heard on other blogs that some agents don't appreciate the "soon" tag (they feel the author is trying to rush them) and that the "blank meets blank" pitch has fallen out of favor in a formal query letter.

This sounds like YA not literary. If you are insistant that it's literary, I'd leave your opinion out of it and let the agent decide for him or herself.

This sounds like it could be a decent read, but the letter doesn't sell me on the story completely. I think that the letter has a little too much set up with the two paragraphs about going to boarding school. If you start with the crux of the matter--a girl is kidnapped and your pov character's lame prank is rumored to be the cause--it might have a bit more punch.

And I'd totally read GTP 3, except it was already done in Shrek 3, lol.

I really appreciate all this good feedback. Thank you!

I have been struggling with the YA thing. The book includes drug use, strong language, death, and a student-teacher affair. For those reasons, I thought a YA agent might reject it.

I am intrigued by AC's comment on 'high-concept' YA, or any other specifier that would work for categorization.

And yeah, EE - I think you are right that maybe the title has got to change. I was surprised how many people caught the reference right away.

Thanks again! Looking forward to reading the comments as they come in.

-Author

I love the voice and I'm intrigued by the story but I think that third person would work better in the query.

Really do love that voice. The only bit I didn't get was "butt-munch", which sounded rather rude for a YA book. It's probably because I'm British.

Great voice in this. If you want an opinion on your first page, EA (http://editorialanonymous.blogspot.com/ then click on the Anonymati crest) is running a first pages workshop.

Author,

As long as the student-teacher affair isn't explicit, I think you can still market this as YA. There are always going to be agents who only want the happy-go-lucky YA stuff, but there seem to be quite a lot of YA novels being published that are darker and more honest.

My only problem with the query was that, to me, it read like an adult who was trying to sound like a teenager. Granted, I am (technically) an adult, but in my experience kids can spot an impostor a mile away.

Mixing phrases like "wet, cold, and with a freshly snipped umbilical cord" with "suck," "crap," and "butt-munch" made me feel like the narrator was fluctuating between different ages (or different levels of maturity). Personally, (currently and when I was a teen) I'd have preferred the mature 14 year old to the typical one, but that may just be me.

As for the premise, it sounds really interesting.

The query reads very, very YA. Fun and lighthearted, with a touch of dark suspense. If the novel is as dark as you suggest, author, that needs to come out in the query.

Also, I don't see what's literary about it. It seems like a fairly straightforward suspense plot. Maybe I just don't get literary (that's true).

And how is this like the two novels you are comparing it to? I don't see it at all. If I were you, I'd drop the comparison entirely (I'd recommend that even if your novel is like those books - comparing to bestsellers rarely goes over well).

All of that said, I really like the story as presented in the query. It sounds fun and interesting.

And for fairyhedgehog: "butt-munch" is a fairly low-offense, somewhat-low-brow insult in America. Beavis and Butthead used it a lot, so did I when I was in second grade. If kids actually say it today (which I don't know if they do), it should fit in YA just fine.

Ditto the comments about changing the query to third person, and ditto loving the voice. I would totally read this; I love suspense stories like this anyway and this just sounds fun and awesome. As it stands if I were an agent I would probably still request from this, but I'm not an agent and so don't see all the queries they do. So why take chances, when it's such a small change, right?

I'd also take out the roommate quote, though. Maybe something like "So when her butt-munch roommate leaves herself open to the Best Prank Ever, MC doesn't hesitate. Trouble is, the girl disappears..." etc etc.

As far as some things being too dark for YA...no, not really. It depends on how it's handled, as others have pointed out. You can get just about anything in there if you do it right. Carrie Ryan's THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH has, if I'm not mistaken, incest and cannibalism, and it's YA (and apparently fantastic too; I can't wait to get a copy myself.)

Good luck! :-)

Thanks, Adam, for the translation service!

Anytime, fairyhedgehog. I'm here for all your English-to-English translation needs :-)

I would also recommend changing the title to something that refers to the pov character. Meant to say that yesterday. Partly it's because Kharon is close to Charon and the Greek pantheon doesn't appear to have anything to do with the book.

Nothing wrong with literary/high concept YA either. Maybe still don't label the book literary but target your queries for those agents looking for that sort of YA novel.

And if you think that your topics aren't YA, try reading Such A Pretty Girl (about child molestation) or a number of other books out there. Great book, definitely YA, but not an easy topic.

It all depends on you and how you deal with the subjects, I'd say.

YA is a very broad field these days. And sex, murder, violence, rape, drugs, etc. are all included. So are more toned down stories.

The protaganist in a Middle Grade novel tends to be about 13 or 14. Whether or not an older teen would be willing to read about a 14 yr old might be an issue. In general, kids like to read up - the protagonist being a few years older than the reader.

There are a lot of articles on the web these days that go into the difference between YA and MG. One of the recent ones can be found here.

The protaganist in a Middle Grade novel tends to be about 13 or 14.

The article you provided a link to claims the protagonist tends to be 8 to 12.

Buffy Squirrel - Thank you for the link. That looks like a good resource. I was daunted out of submitting by the 70+ pages in queue, but I look forward to learning from other people's pages.

I was also looking at the 'high-concept' sub-genre that was suggested by AC. The term did not mean what I thought it meant, unless I read inaccurately: Being able to sum the plot up in a sentence or two.

Any other suggestions for key words to specify a darker or more mature YA?

I am glad to hear it looks like a better fit to YA and the content does not necessarily make it a bad match. Thank you for all the input.

-Author

Any other suggestions for key words to specify a darker or more mature YA?

The problem, I think, is that the query voice doesn't reflect that darker tone. You can certainly lead off with the breezy voice, but then take out some of your qualifiers like "probably" and "pretty sure" and kick it into darker gear by the 4th paragraph. Putting it into 3rd person will give you a better opportunity to add that darker, more mature layer.

You don't need keywords when the writing itself demonstrates the tone of the book.

And EE, I would so read Moby Dick if it came with that hook! But then, I suppose I'd be disappointed because the book would turn out to be all literary and Ahab wouldn't really talk like that. But I guess that's why query voice and tone should match story voice and tone. You are such a genius...

Damn. Looks like my long comment disappeared into the ether.

Short form:

Harry Potter series: HP is age 11-17
Keladry of Mindelan series: Kel is age 10-15
Charlotte's Web: she's 8, whatever her name is.

I don't know many MG books where the protag is younger than 10.

Best advice I got - read what's out there to see what's really going on in your genre of interest.

Many people gain satisfaction from watching the privileged endure hardship....

Yep. Write about that!

(btw, we enjoy watching them endure hardship, but we don't like hearing them whine about it. So make them mute :).)

As written this sounds like lifetime movie and those things give me hives. But they're also popular so that approach might work. But as it stands there's little about the actual story and what is there is rather repetitive or should be omitted as irrelevant (see EE's comments.)

Why not start with the point of the book--finding forgiveness for her son's killer and finding peace thereby. Then tell us something about the protagonist's growth process in the book.

I'd recommend you don't mention she's priviledged (a turn off) or the things you think about the book. Sell the story via telling us about it in a gripping manner.

I'd love to see the revised version of this.

Know thy genre. I'm in the target demographic you identified but would never buy this. I imagine your plot would appeal to church ladies, but middle-aged femaleness doesn't have any particular connection to being eager to read about forgiving murders. It might be better to describe your project as Christian lit, and sub to agents who are specifically looking for this kind of spiritually oriented story.

While some people may choose books on the basis of theme, I think many of us read for plot first. As EE says, let your query tell the story. Your theme will emerge. Otherwise it seems like you're lecturing by telling us what we'll get out of the book. If nothing else, you're committing the error of telling, not showing.

A woman struggling to come to grips with the murder of her son doesn't strike me as "a quick and easy read."

Try writing this in terms of the action.

Katherine Wainwright's life came crashing down the day her son was murdered. She [broke all her china, holed up in her room, moved to Tibet]. Then she received a letter from her son's killer, begging for forgiveness. Never.

But life has other plans for her. When her son's real father unexpectedly surfaces, she has to face the fact that perhaps she needs to be forgiven, too.

All the Way to Amen is women's fiction, complete at 65,000 words.





Not what she learns or discovers or decides. What happens. I made up the plot I used, obviously, but I hope you have similar events to include in the query instead.

EE is right on all counts.

I get awfully tired of people talking about forgiveness without bothering to deal with REPENTANCE. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, the two are part of one process--atonement--just as a lock and a key form one mechanism; each doesn't have much use without the other.

I think the book would benefit if it included the murderer--perhaps as another PoV character? Does he repent? If so, why? How does it change him? If not, why does Katherine forgive him?

I would love to read #6. *sigh* This is the problem with these Face-Lifts; I keep getting captivated by stories that don't exist!

Actually, 150's version really made the story interesting. I might even consider that story, and I flat do not read Christian lit. Ever.

150's version is excellent. I would be interested in reading that book.

I agree with what others have said. The emphasis on theme in this query turned me off.

I'm another in your target demographic--I'm 35, with two children--and sorry, but I'd rather read just about anything else as long as it doesn't deal with the grisly murder of children.

That sounds depressing and grim to me, not quick and easy. No matter if the mother in question eventually forgives the killer (which I don't want to read either.)

I agree this has or seems to have a strongly Christian theme, and you should think about pitching it as such.

Sorry, it's just not for me.

Forgiveness is for your own sake, not for that of the person you forgive. It can and does exist without repentance.

On rereading this, I am reminded of Lovely Bones, which was written from the perspective of the murdered girl. The theme is letting go, forgiveness, and healing, and the book's theme is something you sort of think, "Oh, that's what it was about!" after you are done. Because it's the story that makes the book so haunting and wonderful.

You wouldn't talk about Lovely Bones based on theme, because it would sound an awful lot like the original query letter.

We know the theme -- what's the story?

I think December/Stacia and I are on the same page with this one. I can't imagine anything less fun than reading about the grisly death of someone's child.

I wouldn't touch it unless it promised a big emotional payoff that would possibly show me how to be a better person. Or, it caught my curiosity by leaving out an important piece of the puzzle.

Right now the query would make me run screaming from the room. I do think you've got a good story here, but the query isn't telling us what the good part is.

BuffySquirrel said: Forgiveness is for your own sake, not for that of the person you forgive. It can and does exist without repentance.

Someone who encountered Josef Mengele when he was living more or less openly in Uruguay once asked him if he had any regrets about what he had done. He replied that he did: he regretted that they had failed to exterminate all the Jews in Europe.

I don't think forgiveness makes sense in the context of someone who is proud of the evil he's done. It would be like saying to Oprah, one the most prominent espousers of the PoV you expressed, "I forgive you for being black." She'd be offended, deeply, (and no wonder!) and you wouldn't feel better.

I agree that one has to get past tragedy and victimization, but I don't think forgiving the unrepentant is the right way to go about it. Remember, the process is called atonement: the sinner and the sinned-against become "at one" again. There's a lovely example in the first chapter of The Wind in the Willows, where the headstrong Mole, certain that he can row the boat as well as the Water Rat, seizes the oars and overturns it. Here's the repentance and atonement:

When all was ready for a start once more, the Mole, limp and dejected, took his seat in the stern of the boat; and as they set off, he said in a low voice, broken with emotion, `Ratty, my generous friend! I am very sorry indeed for my foolish and ungrateful conduct. My heart quite fails me when I think how I might have lost that beautiful luncheon-basket. Indeed, I have been a complete ass, and I know it. Will you overlook it this once and forgive me, and let things go on as before?'

`That's all right, bless you!' responded the Rat cheerily. `What's a little wet to a Water Rat? I'm more in the water than out of it most days. Don't you think any more about it; and, look here! I really think you had better come and stop with me for a little time. It's very plain and rough, you know--not like Toad's house at all--but you haven't seen that yet; still, I can make you comfortable. And I'll teach you to row, and to swim, and you'll soon be as handy on the water as any of us.'

The Mole was so touched by his kind manner of speaking that he could find no voice to answer him; and he had to brush away a tear or two with the back of his paw. But the Rat kindly looked in another direction, and presently the Mole's spirits revived again, and he was even able to give some straight back-talk to a couple of moorhens who were sniggering to each other about his bedraggled appearance.

When they got home, the Rat made a bright fire in the parlour, and planted the Mole in an arm-chair in front of it, having fetched down a dressing-gown and slippers for him, and told him river stories till supper-time.

Can you imagine that sort of reconciliation with an unrepentant offender?

You really should read The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal et al. I think you'd find it of great interest.

Wow. Thank you EE and everyone who commented. I'm embarrassed to say I had trouble finding my query and the responses to it. Everyone has offered valid points/suggestions that I will consider on the rewrite. Just FYI, for those who are turned off by the grisly murder of a child, I don't go into detail too much there--it's something I need to further Katherine's growth. Thanks, especially, to 150 and Talpianna. I will look for the book you've recommended.

Non-survival of life's sufferings is pretty much a given, whatever mystical crap you believe in.

Back a few decades ago when I was in college, one of the Fraternity houses (Beta Sig I think) built a slingshot out of steel and surgical rubber. It was a perfectly crafted slingshot to borrow the query's words.

One day, I'm sitting eating lunch in the student union courtyard and oranges come smashing to the ground. A grand spray of pulp, juice, seeds and sticky liquids. It seems that "perfect slingshot" could launch an orange over the four lane street, over the parking lot and into the courtyard. That's easily 150 feet and 20 feet over the lighting stanchions.

Now that's a slingshot. And the adventure lasted all of about 15 minutes because they launched and orange right through a city schoolbus, right through the windows and (ooops here) broke a windshield on a car in the parking lot. The trajectory was too low and the speed too high for the car, but not for the delighted school kids. They thought it fun. BUT the guys involved, wrote a check that day.

Now before you all hang your heads and tsk, tsk, the affair... we need a moral.
A) never do this. It's wrong!
B) this has more story to it than the query.

Sorry author, but you do need more story. You have 4 paragraphs and 3 hooks:
1) Sonny whittling the slingshot
2) Star-Crossed lovers
3) Beach Boulevard in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
(The last one of those being attractive because it is not LA or NYC or Boston or San Francisco. It's middle America, and that makes for an audience.)

What happens to Sonny and Rudy Lacroix in Mississippi.

Buffy, you crack me up.

Author, EE pretty much covered it. Put specifics in your query. You could very well have a great novel here, but there's no way to tell from the query. Also, don't call it a "literary fiction novel" because all novels are fiction.

Does Sonny Lacroix follow in that great tradition of lil' rapscallions with sling shots dragging down the back pocket of their short pants? I'm thinking Dennis the Menace and Bart Simpson. Or perhaps he's a more mischevious version of Roy Hobbs (and "Wondersling").

It seems you're holding back on telling us what Sonny did with that slingshot to set in motion a chain of events that covers 30 years. Give us something to sink our teeth into. Was he taking potshots at squirrels, only later to repent and become a founding member of PETA? Was his careless slingshottery the match that set to light a race riot in a tense Southern town? I understand the desire to hold the story back a bit, but give us enough of a taste. As is, we've just got a kid whittling. Queries are tough; EE's advice is helpful.

A slingshot whittled from pine will break pretty gosh darn fast. Trouble is, one of the three "legs" will always have cross-grain. Cross-grain on pine is really weak.

dave. We used to light M-80's and launch them with a catapult that had flyover power...

It was fun to hear of cops being called on a whole other block from ours...

I loved the first line of your query. I would cut the word little and start at Nine-year-old.

The second paragraph sounds like it came from a different story, and we need to know that something happens in this book even if it is literary in nature.

You really pulled me in with the picture you drew at the beginning and just as quickly lost me after that. Remember to show not tell and don't show with a sledgehammer.(i.e. - Little)

Goodluck with your novel. I'm sure there's much more story here. We just aren't seeing yet.

BTW - I too like the first paragraph. It sets up a really attractive story.

Scott: I never had fireworks. But Paulo Pugliasi only had three fingers on his left hand and half an ear. He served as the "bad" example.

Okay. Author here. Let's try again. Round two:


Little nine years old Sonny Lacroix carved his sling shot from a single piece of pine wood. It was a beautiful work of art for a nine year old boy. He worked for days to carve its Y shape, and then spent another few days sanding its rough edges to perfection. It felt so good in his hand; so smooth. No one could imagine that such an innocent child’s toy as this could set up a sequence of events which would culminate with the death of his infant sister.

As their father’s abuse of Sonny escalates, Rudy's big brother’s rage mounts. Rudy takes refuge in the music of Betty Lee Meacham.

Anna, Betty Lee’s mother, has big plans for her daughter and will allow nothing to interfere. She pushes Betty Lee early to excel in piano, singing and acting. The girl is never allowed a life, a love or a dream of her own. After secretly intercepting all her love letters from her beau on the Pacific Front, Anna sends the girl away to school in California. She soon uproots the entire family for a move to California.

Harboring a secret love for her throughout his life, Rudy is crushed when Betty Lee suddenly disappears.

One blustery Saturday morning a few years later Betty Lee goes to Mother’s closet for a sweater. She pulls out an old trunk only to discover it is filled with old mail. All the letters she had sent and everything mailed to her from her beau during World War II. She is emotionally devastated and becomes motivated to repudiate everything her mother stands for including her music and eventually her faith.

After a successful stint as a stunt man in a movie filmed nearby, Sonny leaves home for California with big dreams and the name of a young lady whom his mother had befriended years earlier.

Inevitably the two meet and fall in love thousands of miles from their small town. Rudy is conflicted and sees the impending train wreck of the two vulnerable people he loves most.

Years later, in the aftermath of a disastrous marriage, it is Rudy who helps Betty Lee piece her life back together and re-discover her faith.

Beach Boulevard is not just the story of star-crossed loves; at a deeper level it asks the fundamental questions of faith: Can each of us survive life’s inevitable suffering, without faith? If you have real faith, must it be tested?

Beach Boulevard as told to us by Rudy Lacroix begins in the early forties on Beach Boulevard in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Finally, matters resolve with a surprise ending back where we started: On Beach Boulevard.

Coming in at 85,000 words, Beach Boulevard is a Literary Fiction novel which will allow you to answer those questions for yourself. My name is XXXX XXXXXXX and I wrote Beach Boulevard for the mature audience.

I'd like to know more about this novel - I agree with others who've said there's more here.

Hope you don't feel bad with the potshots at your query- better to feel the pain here and get it over with, here at Amelioration Central (heavily disguised).

That said, EE was on a good roll with this:
Finally, matters resolve [What matters resolve? There've been no matters.] with a surprise ending back where we started: On Beach Boulevard. [The surprise is that something finally happens.]

Hi Author. There's certainly more in your revision, but now we need more focus. First off, it's too much. Secondly, it needs a more coherent POV. Sounds like Rudy is arguably the protagonist. As such, I'd try doing the whole query about Rudy. You can still start with the slingshot, but 1) give it to us in 2 sentences tops and 2) give it to us from Rudy's POV, i.e., Rudy's brother livingly crafted a slingshot..... Finally, there's still too much mystery. A sentence about what actually happens to their poor sister with the slingshot is going to be much more powerful than an unnamed sequence of events.

I wrote Beach Boulevard for the mature audience.

Man, did you come to the wrong place!

I quite liked the detail of the slingshot and hoped it would lead somewhere — but it didn't.

Might be worth keeping something of this in the suggested rewrite, but the rest has to go. It's too vague.

Ow, cognitive dissonance--Sonny is little and a big brother? Ow.

Author here-
You're a rough crowd, but I like it! Good stuff. Keep it coming.

Not to be nit picky on the revised query, but who thinks of a sling shot as "such an innocent child's toy"?????? Send one in to school with your kid and see how innocent people think it is. I can, in fact, imagine that something bad would happen with a sling shot. Maybe not a death, but something bad. Eye taken out. Tooth chipped. Rock to the head. The possibilities are endless...

Well I think we all made a mistake falling in love with the slingshot.

This is a little like "La Forza Del Destino" in that destiny wins and the happy ending loses. And the story is so complicated that it defies description. It's depressing. La Forza mostly denies description because it is contrived and tortured but it has beautiful music (so we love it).

The accidental death of their sister drives the brothers Sonny and Rudy apart. Sonny into guilt and Rudy to Betty, his neighbor. Fate intervenes in the form of Rudy going to WW2 and Betty's mother, who separates the pair and pushes Betty into the musical career she never had. Eventually, Betty learns the truth and in fleeing her mother, meets Sonny. They marry and spend a decade unloved and miserable. When they divorce, Rudy steps back into Betty's life and they live happily ever after.

Nah, that doesn't work.

Now that I get through that rather plebeian description of your plot. It sounds a bit like "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg"... I wouldn't describe that story from the POV of the rich man, or the mother. It's told from the mechanic's POV. think about that.

Rudy meets Betty and falls in love but War and Mother split the two apart. Years later, after a failed marriage to Rudy's estranged brother, Betty and Rudy reunite to live happily ever after.

Like I said at the top, perhaps the slingshot is a bad place to start. Perhaps Sonny is the wrong person to drive the plot. Paca had that idea. Others seem to be struggling with this point too. The love story of Rudy and Betty is the overall arc, the death of the sister thanks to the slingshot is not the arc, it is only the initiating event for the tragic events to come. It's like the witches in Macbeth. Or like the vision of Manderly in Rebecca. The sister's death is not the story but the wonderful color of the story.

Dave, et al-
Okay. It is not made clear in the query, but the character Betty Lee IS NOT in love with Rudy; never was. Hence star-crossed. I can see I have work to do. Revision to follow.

I believe the revised query is too long. I only want to know four things:
1) who the main character is
2) what he wants/sets out to do
3) what opposes him or complicates things
4) how it's all resolved.

The rest is detail I don't need to know in a query.

Also, I really don't need this:

"Beach Boulevard is not just the story of star-crossed loves; at a deeper level it asks the fundamental questions of faith: Can each of us survive life’s inevitable suffering, without faith? If you have real faith, must it be tested?"

It tells me nothing about the story, only what the author thinks the story does and how the audience is supposed to react. Authors who make these claims are usually wrong.

Hook me with the story and I'll read it before coming to my own conclusions about what it does.

Author here, again.
Okay-one more time:
Rudy’s older brother, nine years old Sonny Lacroix carved his sling shot from a single piece of pine wood. It was a beautiful work of art for a nine year old boy. He worked for days to carve its Y shape, and then spent another few days sanding its rough edges to perfection. It felt so good in his hand; so smooth. It is coveted by the all the neighborhood boys. Soon Sonny becomes engaged in a wager: his slingshot for Possum’s magnifying glass. A fierce game of marbles ensues. Sonny wins the magnifying glass and soon starts an accidental fire which claims the life of his infant sister.

Over the next few years, as their father’s abuse of Sonny escalates, Rudy’s big brother’s rage mounts. Rudy takes refuge in the music of Betty Lee Meacham.

Anna, Betty Lee’s mother, has big plans for her daughter and will allow nothing to interfere. She pushes Betty Lee early to excel in piano, singing and acting. The girl is never allowed a life, a love or a dream of her own. After secretly intercepting her love letters from her beau, Dickey Gertz, on the Pacific Front, Anna sends the girl away to school in California. She soon uproots the entire family for a move to California.

Harboring a secret love for her, Rudy is crushed when Betty Lee suddenly disappears.

Blustery Santa Ana winds chill North Hollywood one clear Saturday morning a few years later. Betty Lee goes to Mother’s closet for a sweater. She pulls out the old trunk only to discover it is filled with old mail. All the letters she had sent and everything mailed to her from her beau during World War II. She is emotionally devastated and becomes motivated to repudiate everything her mother stands for including her music and eventually her faith.

After a successful stint as a stunt man in a movie filmed nearby, Sonny break the bond, and leaves home for California with big dreams and the name of a young lady whom his mother had befriended years earlier.

Inevitably the two meet and fall in love thousands of miles from their small town. Rudy is conflicted and sees the impending train wreck of the two vulnerable people he loves most.

Years later, in the aftermath of a disastrous marriage, it is Rudy who helps Betty Lee piece her life back together and re-discover her faith, the piano and maybe love… but with who?

Beach Boulevard is not just the story of star-crossed loves; at a deeper level it asks the fundamental questions of faith: Can each of us survive life’s inevitable suffering, without faith? If you have real faith, must it be tested?

Beach Boulevard as told to us by Rudy Lacroix begins in the early forties on Beach Boulevard in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Finally, matters resolve at the present time with a surprise ending back where we started: On Beach Boulevard.

Coming in at 85,000 words, Beach Boulevard is a Literary Fiction novel which will allow you to answer those questions for yourself. My name is XXXX XXXXXXX and I wrote Beach Boulevard for the mature audience.

the character Betty Lee IS NOT in love with Rudy; never was. Hence star-crossed.

Then you'll want to describe it as "unrequited", not "star-crossed."

Listen to what Paca said. Write the query from Rudy's POV. Use the buildup of the slingshot in the book, not the query.

Try, try again!

So the slingshot had nothing to do with the story. It was the magnifying glass. I take back my statement that we are willing to listen to one sentence about how the toy sets the story in motion. We don't need the slingshot, the magnifying glass, or even the sister. One brother goes to war. The other goes to California and gets involved with his brother's crush. And then...? Surely something happens between them before matters resolve in present time, when these characters are all 75 or 80 years old.

What's the surprise ending?

OK. More information than we need. This is getting longer not shorter. You don't need to say nine years old twice in a row. And you don't need a complete paragraph on the catalyst for the beginning of the story. It seems you're in love with the slingshot, and it is a good description, but it's not working for you in the query.

I also suggest you carefully read through the comments here. You still have things in your query that have been called out as needing to be changed. You might want to take a little time and work on this before throwing up a rewrite.

Yes, I was thinking you're way too in love with the slingshot as well. The sentences describing it are fine but not necessary; you've only got 250 words or so, so we don't need the lyricism.

So what you have here is a story about a childhood tragedy, and how the consequences of that tragedy affect the characters throughout their lives? Is that correct? I keep getting lost in the laundry lists of characters and places.

When a simple childhood toy destroys a family, the residents of Beach Boulevard must find some way to move on. For some it's alcohol; for other hasty marriages and secrets. But for Rudy the memories are inescapable. His story weaves through the others, a desperate search for absolution (insert one or two details about something that happens to Rudy here.)

Ulysses has given you the correct query formula. There's a little play for litfic, but not much.

White flag of surrender here. Okay, okay, I'll take this thing back to the drawing board. That's if I can walk. I'm feeling rather injured now. I don't think I'll fling myself from the nearest skyscraper just yet, but boy a giant chocolate malt sure sounds good. Woe.

1. I agree with Sarah. Take your time rewriting. Read your query to yourself, out loud, and think through the comments made.

2. Anon 10:00 am. A long time ago, slingshots were common toys, depending upon where you grew up.
Not everything in the world is seen only through the focus of the present and the temper of these times.

Author,

I just saw your comment - please don't be discouraged- better to hear it here than somewhere else.
Truly.

I had a slingshot once, from a forked branch, which for strength is the ideal. My brother whittled all the nice smooth surface away, leaving it weirdly textured. I've never found out what he was thinking.
I dunno, in my childhood slingshots were more innocent than bb guns, but not by much. You could still put someone's eye out or kill a small animal.
The slingshot will be wonderful in your first sample pages. Save it for that, and pull it from the query, I'd say.

I don't think the issue was "commonality" of the sling shot but foreseeability of harm resulting from one. The author called it "innocent." Which implies harmless. But as it turns out, the surprise was not that a sling shot could hurt someone, but that *trading* a sling shot could.

The allusion to surprise, therefore, became more logical when we learned about the trade. And more interesting. My point was that the author seemed to set up the shock of learning that a sling shot could hurt someone as part of the hook. I wasn't shocked. Nothing to do with how common a toy was/is. Everything to do with logic/consistency.

Author, you deserve a chocolate malt for putting yourself out there.
In my experience, different agents/editors ask for different kinds of queries -- I have about 15 versions of mine on file. Some want just two sentences about your plot -- some want three paragraphs, others specifically ask for a "detailed synopsis." Drives me crazy. But it is always a good exercise to take your synopsis and cut it down to the two-paragraph version, then the two-sentences version. Might help you focus. One thing I'll say is try not to get too attached to any one sentence so that you're writing the query around it. (Like the slingshot thing) Just try to get at the heart of the story. Good luck.

In MURDER MUST ADVERTISE by Dorothy L. Sayers, a slingshot is the weapon used in the first murder.

Author, take two chocolate malts and call us in the morning...

Standing on Beach Boulevard Rudy Lacroix’s older brother, Sonny clutches the prize magnifying glass won in a fierce game of marbles. The glass feels so solid; has good heft. The next day Sonny accidentally starts a fire with the magnifying glass that claims the life of their baby sister. For this family, it was a fire that would burn for a lifetime.

Over the next few years, as their father’s abuse of Sonny escalates, Rudy’s big brother’s rage mounts. Rudy escapes through the music of Betty Lee Meacham. Unbeknownst to all, Rudy has fallen in love.

Anna Meacham, Betty Lee’s mother and piano instructo r, has big plans for her daughter. At nine-years of age Betty Lee had become a piano prodigy. Now she’s 16, and Mother believes they are poised to take the music world by storm. Nothing would interfere with the “work.” The girl is never allowed a life or a dream of her own. WWII intervened on Mother’s behalf and swept Betty Lee’s beau, Dickey Gertz off to the Pacific Front. After secretly intercepting love letters to, and from Dickey Gertz, Anna sends the girl away to school in California. She soon uproots the entire family for a move to California. Rudy is crushed when his secret love suddenly disappears.

Several years later, Betty Lee goes to Mother’s closet for a sweater. She discovers an old trunk filled with letters she sent and everything mailed to her from Dickey Gertz during World War II. How could God allow this? She wondered. The music died. Betty Lee ceased playing the20piano that moment. She is going to fly as far away from Mother as she can.

After a successful stint as a stunt man in a movie filmed nearby, Sonny breaks the bonds, of home. He’s destined for California with big dreams and the name of a young lady whom his mother had befriended years earlier. The two meet and fall in love. Sonny finds everything he’s dreamt and more.

Understanding the underlying flaws for both these individuals, Rudy is conflicted and sees the impending train wreck of the two vulnerable people he loves most.

Years later, in the aftermath of a disastrous marriage, it is Rudy who helps Betty Lee piece her life back together, re-discover her music, her faith and maybe even love… but with whom?

Beach Boulevard is not just the story of star-crossed loves; at a deeper level it asks the fundamental questions of faith: Can each of us survive life’s inevitable suffering, without faith? If you have real faith, must it be tested?

Standing on Beach Boulevard, Rudy looks out over the Gulf of Mexico. He has finally sorted it all out. Reconciled all the pieces and found peace. He wonders if hurricane Katrina, due later that night, will be as bad as they say.

Coming in at 85,000 words, Beach Boulevard is a Literary Fiction novel which will allow you to answer those questions for yourself. My name is XXXX XXXXXXX and I wrote Beach Boulevard for the mature audience.

Author, I hope you've had a few choccy malteds and given yourself time to recover from the ice cream milkshake.

My hatred of writing queries burns with the heat of a white hot sun, so I understand how painful this process is. But I think you might need to clear the decks and start anew.

Take a look at the other queries here and over at places like Nathan Bransford's blog or the Query Shark. Read lots of them, and you'll get a sense of the length, the pacing, the basics. They're formulaic (as Ulysses points out).

Your query is much too long.

Your query doesn't have a main character.

Your query lacks a simply defined conflict.

Is it Sonny Lacroix trying to find redemption? Is it Betty Lee's struggle to break free of her mother's controlling nature? Is it Rudy's attempt to find love?

You've introduced too many plot lines that, while they make a book full and rich and interesting, clutter your query and make it difficult for an agent to determine what the story is about.

Your query points out its themes. Most agent and editor sites I've read warn against this. It's telling, not showing, and suggests your book may do the same.

Less is more. That is part of why writing queries is so difficult.

Read lots of queries, walk away from it, then try again.

Sorry to be blunt, but better to get feedback here than to wind up in an agent's circular file without knowing why.

Can you boil it down to 4 sentences? That might help you simplify what you're trying to get on paper.

Here's a tighter version, FWIW.

Standing on Beach Boulevard, Sonny Lacroix clutches the prize magnifying glass won in a fierce game of marbles. The next day, he accidentally starts a fire that claims the life of their baby sister. That fire would burn for a lifetime.

Rudy, Sonny’s younger brother, escapes their father’s escalating abuse of Sonny through the music of piano prodigy Betty Lee Meacham. She has no life or dream of her own as nothing is ever allowed to interfere with the “work.” After secretly intercepting love letters to, and from Dickey Gertz, Betty Lee’s mother uproots the entire family for a move to California. Rudy is crushed when his secret love disappears.

Betty Lee eventually discovers the letters her mother intercepted. She ceases playing the piano that moment. After a successful stint as a stunt man in a movie filmed nearby, Sonny’s destined for California with big dreams and the name of a young lady whom his mother had befriended years earlier. The two meet and fall in love.

Understanding the underlying flaws for both these individuals, Rudy is conflicted and sees the impending train wreck of the two vulnerable people he loves most. Years later, in the aftermath of a disastrous marriage, it is Rudy who helps Betty Lee piece her life back together, re-discover her music, her faith and maybe even love… but with whom?

Beach Boulevard is not just the story of star-crossed loves; at a deeper level it asks the fundamental questions of faith: Can each of us survive life’s inevitable suffering, without faith? If you have real faith, must it be tested?

Star crossed doesn't mean what you think it means, author. Star crossed lovers are trying to get together but circumstances prevent it. What we have here is unrequited love by Rudy for Betty.

I also loved teh slingshot detail, but the query really needs to lose that element. While I frequently say there's too much detail and no emotional hook/motiviation in a query, yours is the opposite: Too many emotional hooks, but nothing really ties into the story. What is the main plot and what elements and emotions support that?

Doesn't sound like my cup of tea at all, but the letter still isn't doing the novel justice. Keep at it!

Several years later, Betty Lee goes to Mother’s closet for a sweater. She discovers an old trunk filled with letters she sent and everything mailed to her from Dickey Gertz during World War II. How could God allow this? She wondered. The music died. Betty Lee ceased playing the20piano that moment. She is going to fly as far away from Mother as she can.



There are several tense problems in this paragraph, and one grammatical error ("How could God allow this? She wondered" should be "How could God allow this? she wondered" or "How could God allow this, she wondered" or "She wondered how God could allow this" or, to solve the tense problem, "She wonders how God could allow this".) It's not important, though, because none of this belongs in your query. It's better suited to a synopsis but doesn't belong there either, really; in a synopsis you would mention finding the letters and being devastated and refusing to play piano anymore.

Benwah is right. Read the other queries posted here. Try reading Query Shark. Read Bransford's blog. A year or so ago on the Fangs Fur & Fey community at livejournal we posted our queries, the ones that attracted our agents or publishers. Go to FFF & click the "queries" tag. Go to Miss Snark's blog and read the Snarkives for 12/10/06 onward; it's when she did her query hook Crapometer.

A query is not a synopsis. As I said above, you have about 250 words. Let the writing in the ms speak for itself; a query's job is simply to introduce the work, hook the agent's interest, to tell the agent what the book is about, and that is all.

Your story seems to be about the implications of a tragedy on a small community. Is that correct? If it is, that's what your query needs to say.

I know it seems really difficult, but you can do it. You've written an entire novel; you can figure out how to boil the major story of it down to a few lines.

Good luck!

Uh...since all the characters are female, could the author go out on a limb and say EACH finds HER own way...? Just a thought...

Most of the literary fiction tropes seem to be accounted for. I would probably ditch the list of quirly menfolk that Jewell gets involved with -- looks trite when listed like that. I would also riff on EE's point and say that the title "Semiprecious", together with all the women's names, seems a little too self-concious and makes me feel under-estimated as a reader of lit-fic.

*muses on the old days when word count was a reflection of how much space the story took up and everyone had their favourite formula for finding it, before all these whippersnippers turned up with their fancy word processors and inability to round off*

No comment on the query. It's so not something I would read that I started to skim it.

584 pages??? Zounds.

Some inconsistencies in the query might not be a problem in the novel itself. But at first glance, they raise questions about the novel's inner cohesion. Drifting across central Wisconsin isn't compatible with the daughters living most of their lives in the same city, and the daughters being exhilarated at their mother's peripatetic lifestyle seems incompatible with their stated characteristics of anger, rigidity, retreat to fantasy, cold aloofness and painful secrets... not to mention all that is known about basic childhood needs for stability.

Rather than cutting the novel short at Mom's death, why not start it there, and only flash back to her freewheeling lifestyle and multiple men where a particular experience impacted one or more of the daughters particularly hard?

Is the city's adjustment to Hmong influx a meaningful parallel to the girls' adjustments, or mainly the background against which their adjustments to adulthood develop?

Also, I don't get a sense where these girls, or this story, are really going. In the query, at least, can you focus us on one or two characters and give us a sense of their ultimate end point (the living charcters that is)?

Yes, I think the book itself sounds interesting and there's some good writing in the query, but it's too long. The story seems to be how Jewell McQuinn drags her daughters through the twists and turns of her hard-living, unconventional life, but when she's murdered the girls have to find a way to build their own lives rather than simply orbiting around their mother. Do they try to solve the murder? Is the book about them learning to forgive him? Is it about them learning to forgive their mother? That sort of thing.

The query reads well and makes me interested in the story, but it is also confusing. The first (huge) section is about Jewel and her life and choices. But then you spend another (huge) paragraph discussing the four daughters and tell me the story is about them, not Jewel. The final (huge) paragraph tells me that the story isn't about the travelling because it takes place in one city.

This letter basically shows three focuses for you book: Jewel, the daughters, and the city. If it's really about the girls, you need to omit the other two paragraphs and blend the details regarding Jewel and the setting into the description of the girls' story.

If the novel is about the daughters, Jewell's life is backstory, and I don't think you need much more than:

Freewheeling Jewell McQuinn is a frizzy-haired blonde who changes jobs and men as often as she buys a new pack of cigarettes.

- and this bit can be worked into a paragraph about *their* story rather than leading the query.

Having worked extensively on a novel about a large family, I wholeheartedly agree with EE about focusing on one character - though I think you could get away with two. The other two/three still have plot arcs, of course.

The problem I have with this query is that I don't know what happens in this book. The actual plot seems to be:

When Jewell is suddenly, violently removed from their lives one winter night in 1996, the sisters must draw on each other's strengths as they each awkwardly stumble into adulthood.

[You don't need 'suddenly' - 'violently' implies it, unless her violent death is due to being slow-roasted on a spit, in which case I definitely want to know that.]

('Stumbling into adulthood' begs the question - how old are they when Jewell dies? Even if Jewell gets knocked up as quickly as possible, we're still talking a couple of years between eldest and youngest. Are they all teenagers?)

I'd love to see a revision that explores the story, and that might also allow you to build in some of the 'each girl survives thusly' information *by showing them in action* rather than just giving a static description.

Did I not leave a comment here earlier? I thought I did.

I wrote a huge long comment but then EE boofed up his e-mail *wails, gnashes teeth*. Here's the digest version.

From what I see, here's what the story is about:

When Jewell is suddenly, violently removed from their lives one winter night in 1996, the sisters must draw on each other's strengths as they each awkwardly stumble into adulthood.

Jewell's freewheeling blond chain-smoking man-loving ways are backstory. THIS is what the query needs to discuss.

A few thoughts:

- 'suddenly, violently' is redundant; violently implies suddenly (unless Jewell is slow-roasted to death in which case I definitely want to know that).

- how old are these girls? If they're stumbling into adulthood then I'm thinking they're spread throughout the teens.

- having just worked extensively on a project which deals with a large family, I strongly suggest focusing on one of the girls - two at most. The others will of course have plot arcs, but four protagonists will clutter things up a lot. And don't feel that the other two or three have to get equal time in the query letter; they don't.

- if you can SHOW us in the query how the protagonist[s] respond to their mother's death, that will work much better than the list of static descriptions you currently have.

Hope this helps. I suspect the story is there, but just not showing in the query.

I can't thank you all enough for the suggestions and critique. I knew this first draft of my letter wasn't hitting the mark, but I wasn't sure why not.

Now I know: I need to focus on plot instead of cramming in so much ineffective stuff about characters and setting. I'll do so in my revision.

Thanks again for the feedback!

Post the revision when you get it written. And don't forget that the character stuff isn't all bad. The main point is clarity and getting people to want to read pages.

thanks, moonie! i'm surprised. i'd expect it to be a higher number, to be considered a success. i wonder what the number is for commercial fiction?

i also read somewhere about a expectation sheet the editor fills out before making an offer. do houses actually have "formulas"? and i wonder if it works?!

I'm amazed. I thought the numbers would be much higher, even for literary.

Terrific answer, thank you!

I personally have idea, but I was wondering if you could maybe talk about other genres / reading levels? Like YA, MG, etc?

Steph

Nobody's gettin' rich on literary, apparently. In fact, they're only gettin' about one month's rent.

For what it's worth, I read a similar number somewhere else (prolly because I read too many editor/agent blogs and don't do enough at my day job).

I thought it would be higher too, but if you think of the tens of thousands of books your literary masterpiece has to contend with, it doesn't seem all that high.

I'm surprised too. I would have expected higher numbers.

JohnO--this number isn't based on any data at all, only on my experience. Literally, I made up a number based on what people I know have been happy with. That's why I find it VERY interesting that someone else agrees. If you ever find the other source, please come back and let me know!

Steph--I really know almost nothing about children's/middle grade/YA. It's unfortunate. But I do have the feeling that that's a wild territory and almost none of my advice applies!! I bet Editorial Anonymous would have an interesting take. I'll drop her a note.

Cindy--houses do have formulas. What we offer on a book is almost always based on what we anticipate the book will sell (unfortunately often for us in a best case scenario), so you can just about figure out what your publisher thinks/hopes YOU'RE going to sell! Basically, work out using your contractual royalty percentage how many copies you would have to sell in the first year to equal your advance.

Interesting

Thanks for the interesting info! I, too, would love to know if you have any ideas on other areas - romance, fantasy, mystery, etc. But also I'd love your opinion on this: if I could sell my first book to a house that gave a $2000 advance or one that gave a $7000 advance, and sold X number of books, is it better to be with the smaller house with the smaller advance and earn out, or with the bigger house and hope they're not disappointed with the numbers, hope I earn out? Or is there more to it than whether you earn out? Asking as a former accountant-turned-writer. :) Thanks for any thoughts you have!

as an aside on sales, are offers going to start drying up even more than they already have? especially on literary fiction? are the great majority of the books out on submission pretty fried at this point? thanks in advance and for all the great columns!

pacatrue, how high is your rent? Am I calculating incorrectly that 7000 hardcovers * $25/book * 10-15% commission = between $17,500 and $26250 in royalties. Not exactly living the high life, but probably 6 months pay for most middle-class American jobs. Then again, I'm from the midwest, so what do I know of rent and housing prices...

Hmmm. Thanks Moonie.
I have a feeling the # is similar for YA/MG.

WOW, these numbers are alot smaller than I thought. But I have heard before that your advance pretty much is based on what is expected for your first year's sales.

Thanks again Moonrat.

moonie, thank you for the "formula". it is sad that i don't have the head to figure it out? haha! i'm going to have anxiety math dreams again...

ah, ignorance is bliss. i'll worry when the book actually comes out. eeee!!

Thanks so much, Moonie.

One of these days I might, might encounter a publishing-related statistic to which I can't apply the adjective "sobering."

Wow those numbers are a lot lower than I expected. But then again, I don't know anything about literary novels. Thanks for the perspective, moonrat!

Moonrat, I'm one of your (several, btw!) Australian devotees and also an editor. What surprises me is that these figures are pretty much the same here, where we have a population of about 20 million. I guess the costs of printing, distribution, etc aren't affected much by the size of the market, so the number of sales needed to cover basic costs will be roughly the same... but in a much smaller market, reaching those sales figures is (presumably?) tougher.

All of which is not very relevant to most of your readers! But for those of us Down Here, it's useful to be reminded of this. We really shouldn't be too hard on a literary author whose first novel sells, say 2000 copies -- but unfortunately we usually are.

JES: ...yeah. me too.

Anon: VERY interesting! I also have UK experience and know that there's are... about the same. I'd say if a literary novel sold 7,000 copies in the UK it would be quite a coup, but you're right that the numbers aren't proportional. Thanks for the input!

Moonie,

And then there's the "how do you define literary" debate...for another day, eh?!?!

Anyhoo, in your opinion, what is considered "good sales" for commercial?

anon 4:34: sorry, I didn't mean to skip your question. I do think that the age of huge advances that don't earn out is over. Some of that still happens, but less and less these days, since book prices don't rise at the inflation rate (they rise considerably more slowly) so publishers are working on slimmer and slimmer margins each year.

That said, I don't think this is a bad thing--instead, we should be investing in literature that backlists, that lasts... A number of novels that earn some royalties over the years can actually turn out to be a chunk of change, if you're a talented author with a devoted following that keeps coming back for more. If I wrote books, that would be my goal--to be a good enough writer to sell over time.

BTW, thanks for always giving US your best!!!! You are sooo appreciated, just so you know.

I was surprised to. Thanks for sharing and your honesty!

Very surprising. Also the downunder comment. My novel may never be so widely read as my blog blatherings, sniff sniff.

Kristi - keep in mind that royalties are usually based on what price the book was sold to the store at, not the retail price that the consumer pays.

Moonie, thanks for the reply on advances. Good information. I was also going in the direction of the credit crisis and how it might already be affecting yours or others' ability to make offers, especially on literary fiction. Thanks!

Hi, Moonrat. Happy to chip in.
Speaking as someone in children's publishing, I don't agree with that 7,000.
Acceptable sales vary greatly from book to book, but here's the answer from my desk: good sales for the first year is most of the first print run.
Did you publisher print 7,000 copies? And you sold 7,000 copies?
Great.
Did your publisher print 50,000 copies? And you sold 7,000 copies?
Shit.

--EA

Anon 4:34: That's a pretty many-textured question, and I'm sure I can wax on and on and on.

To start with, publishing companies need to keep putting out titles, since that's our income. In terms of what we will be choosing to publish, WE won't choose to stop publishing literary fiction--from our end, we almost always lose money on literary fiction regardless of how many copies sell (with overhead, salaries, freelance costs, cover design, etc etc worked it, we often publish even the books that earn out at a 3-digit profit). We make our livings off of nonfiction books (most places, at least; some imprints do specialize in commercial fiction and make a lot of money there), and people always need nonfiction books, because people always need information. Also, most people who work in publishing houses struggle with underpaid jobs because they have always dreamed of being able to work on literary fiction, and a lot of higher-ups don't abandon that romance even when they're choosing to make sacrifices in order to keep those titles on their lists. So from the publishers' standpoint--no, we're not going to stop publishing literary fiction. At least, not right now.

However, there is the future. The pressure there is coming from the national accounts, which are increasingly putting pressure on publishing companies to place paperbacks instead of hardcovers. This is because paperbacks move faster in bookstores and make the vendors more money. However, publishers have a problem here. We need to sell literally 4-5 times as many paperbacks of a book to make the amount of money we would have off of a hardcover, and while MORE books sell in paperback, in the case of MOST books the discrepancy isn't that great. That means that if national accounts are denying us hardcover placement, there ARE going to be books we're not going to be able to afford to publish.

That hasn't quite happened yet, but the squeeze gets harder and harder every season.

But seriously, publishers don't want to cut out literary fiction. I speak on behalf of... I'd guess... 8 out of 10 of us.

haha. thanks, EA. some very valid points.

Thanks for taking the time to respond! I feel better :)

Ed Ass=best blog ever (or tied with Snark)

Re: EA's comment (printed 50,000, sold 7,000 -- shit!) : isn't this called sell-through and isn't this another good way for us to look at whether or not expectations were met? But I think -- Moonrat, correct me here -- that few publishers expect full sell-through. Isn't 50% or 70% or something more the norm?

Thanks for doing the math, Kristi! Yeah, if your math holds up, that would be 17-26 months of rent. Much better.

For the newbies: sell-in refers to the books we get stores to put on shelves.
sell-through refers to the books consumers buy from stores, and that never come back to publishers as returns.

50% sell-through is not so good. 70% I could live with.

I think my comment didn't make it yesterday--basically wanted to say thanks so much for posting this!

Kristi and wheelmaker, there's far more than just the price to be taken into consideration here. You make it sound like it's easy money -- I can assure you it's not.

First of all, there's typically a tiered structure of royalties; depending on the genre and the deal you made (which can depend heavily on your agent), a first novel may only start at 8-10% for hardcovers, and not go up for 10K copies. Being generous, let's say it's 10% for the first 5K, then 12% for the next 15K. The cover is $25, which gets discounted roughly 25% on average, so the selling price averages $18.75. That means the author's income comes to $13,875 (but only eventually, as you'll see later in this post).

But, wait, there's 15% to the agent ($2,081) -- who deducts that before cutting you a check -- and roughly 7.5% ($1,040) going to self-employment taxes that you wouldn't have to pay if you were getting a W-2 instead of a 1099 (the other 7.5% is the equivalent of Social Security taxes from a "normal" job). And then there's federal and state taxes as well; being generous, we'll say 20% combined ($2,775). The author's income just shrunk to a shade under $8000. (There are ways to mitigate that so you retain more, but this isn't the time for that explanation.)

Not so bad, you say? Sure, except that you got an advance against royalties when you sold the book, remember? $4000 is pretty standard in SFF for a first novel these days, and the publisher probably split that up into 3 payments: signing, delivery&acceptance, publication -- which meant spreading that payment over 12-18 months at around $1300+ a pop.

But you're still getting that $4000 now, right? Nope. The publisher has what's called a "reserve against returns," -- an insurance device that publishers use to make sure they don't pay out more than they should before the book's lifecycle is complete -- and most, if not all of that $4000 is tied up in the reserve until the book drops below about 100 sales per quarter. Oh, yeah, and they only report (and cut your agent a check) twice a year.

Eventually, that other $4000 net (from the $10,000 gross before the 47.5% to agent and taxes) makes its way to you, but not for a couple more years. You may be able to pay 8-12 months rent (depending on where you live) with your $8000 net, but your total timeframe was closer to 36 months -- I don't think your landlord or mortgage company would carry you for the other 24-28 months!

For a more detailed explanation of the financial life of a writer, see http://danhoyt.livejournal.com/2006/07/22/

One minor clarification about the math in the second-to-last paragraph: that amount should have been 42.5% (sorry!), and it's paid on the entire $13,875 gross, not just the roughly $10,000 ($13,875 - $4,000 advance) I mentioned.

On further reflection, if I'm not going to include the other 7.5% SS taxes that the W-2'ers pay (which would bring the net down to less than 7%), I probably shouldn't include fed and state taxes either, so I'll give you back 20% ($2,775), so you now make almost $11,000 "net" (before the same taxes you would have paid on W-2 income) for those 36 months. That should get you to 11-16 months rent/mortgage -- which is still not nearly enough to keep you from getting evicted/foreclosed on.

thank you for writing this, hermana. You know this is a subject that frustrates me, and we won't even TOUCH on the issue of "why the hell has genre become a bad word?"

I really want to know what happens - and that means, what happens after they set the fire, have guilt, paint paints with screamy burny people, etc. You have 107,000 words and I don't see how the part up to the fire is going to take even half of that - so what's in the rest? Do they know these four people they killed? Do they stalk their friends and relations? Does Peyton think the paintings are talking to (or screaming at) him?

WRT 'strangely innocent painting prodigy' - as long as she isn't a complete ditz like Phoebe in Friends, I'm happy.

Also, just a thought - be really careful about that 'dirt poor in the backwater' background. It's way too easy to turn into a cliche; I remember Tom Wolfe getting some criticism for cluelessness.

Anyway, nitpicks aside, I like it.

I laughed out loud at EE's comment regarding Peyton's name--it *does* sound prep school!!
I liked this one though. Good luck with it.

...is a fast-paced literary novel.

I think you're leaving that to the query reader to accept on faith, because just before that paragraph, you say, "over the next two decades, Peyton finds himself haunted less by the people he and Isabelle accidentally killed, and more by Isabelle...who floats in and out of his life, unable to let him or her despair go." That sounds like a substantial part of the story, and not fast-paced.

I wanted something more in the close of the query not to push it aside. If they die old and miserable in their sleep, then maybe you've said enough, but if not, give a little more.

Whoa. Huge flag on the play. You cannot name a football player Peyton. Particularly in Boston. The Rindge & Latin kids would break his knees on general principle.

It sounds like Peyton's move to Boston and the early relationship with Isabell is all Act I stuff, culminating with the fire.

An interesting start, but then what? I fail to see how 20 yrs of smothered guilt is fast-paced.

Also, that last paragraph has FIVE commas and one period. Break it up or simplify it.

Otherwise I agree with EE and everyone else, it's well-written but I'd like less backstory and more...front story?

Agreed that it needs more of what happens in the "twenty years," but I liked the backstory that set up *why* it was so important to him to not give up his chance at success.

This sounds terrific to me. I would read this book.

Er... 10700 words?
Isn't that a little long for a "fast paced literary" work?

It's about right for an epic fantasy, but unless you've neglected to mention Peyton's elfin family, I don't think that's where you're going...

I'm a little bothered by the statement in the query that Peyton isn't as haunted by the dead people as he is by Isabelle—or even that the guilt of killing four people recedes over time. Coupled with his wrangling and fighting and ambitions to 'make it' at all costs, this makes him out to be a bit of a psychopath. It's hard to be sympathetic.

As far is the query is concerned, I think you could shrink the first two paragraphs into one. Your real story is what happens after the fire, and that's the part I think you should focus on. Doesn't Peyton learn anything from this? It doesn't sound, as the query is presented here, that he does. More like he's just plagued by vague feelings of guilt. Nothing a few beers wouldn't cure. Is there any redemption for Peyton? If there is, let's hear it.

I thought from reading agent and editor blogs that 100,000 words was about the right length for a novel. You don't get into epic territory until you have to split the novel into a trilogy. ; )

I like the sailing ones...

Much has already been said of fast-paced/literary/107,000/two decades. I only add 'ditto' on that. And to the mega-dose of back story, which reads more like notes on character motivation than a story in itself. The rags-to-fire portion could be a YA novel in itself, but it would have to stop at graduation.

What exactly is the story here? Leaving home in a wagon and fighting your way to a football scholarship? Being haunted as an adult by a death-dealing act-of-stupidity done in your teens? Why should I care about this man's attempts to avoid consequences?

This story might intrigue me as an adult novel if it opened with the highly successful, wealthy, famous ex-football Bostonian paying cash for a painting of people screaming as they burn, with bonus points for smuggling it home in plain brown paper to stash it in a hidden room with a hundred other paintings of people screaming as they burn.

Under those circumstances, I'd immediately start to wonder whether he was an in-bred Brahmin with a fire fetish or a shrewd art collector setting up the eventual murder of a painter with a fire fetish, so as to enhance the value of his art collection. And, if the writing was good, I'd keep reading to find out.

As this query reads, I reiterate: why would I care?

The GTPs were terrific.

EE's comments are, of course, spot on. Everyone else hit on the "fast paced" aspect--I get the premise and believe it could make a really good story, but saying it's fast paced does not make it fast paced. There's not a lot of sense of the action in here.

Or did you mean it's a book you can read at a fast pace because you only used one-syllable words? Or you wrote it at a fast pace? Or perhaps because it can be thrown with great speed?

In any case, the query (to my amateur eye) seems good enough to warrant a request of pages by an agent who likes this sort of thing.

First, thanks very much for the post and comments! This is helpful. And, I am busted: at some point, Isabelle does paint burning buildings. :)

If anybody is willing to slog through more information, I’d like to say more about the structure of the book here and see if anyone has additional thoughts in light of this—particularly about the role of the West Virginia section in the query.

In the prologue (Boston, 1984) the fire occurs (the summer after they graduated from high school.) Part 1 (of 4) is Peyton growing up in West Virginia (1966-1980.) Part 2 is high school, and Part 3 and 4 are the 21 years following the fire.

Though the fire is the turning point for Peyton's life, his life before is very important to the book. He’s a wild, ambitious spirit, and that’s partly who he is innately, and it’s partly because he grows up on the mountainside without a father or any siblings. And with a young mother who tells him again and again that he is the one who is going to get them out of poverty.

When he arrives in Boston at 14, he’s fearless - and though some people are turned off by this, he is popular because of it. He sees the insecurities and machinations of society as frivolous, and he thinks and acts like he has nothing to lose, as well as working all the time to get ahead. He only realizes when it is too late that he does have something to lose—his future, and Isabelle. The accidental (but negligent) fire forces him to make a choice: his future or Isabelle, worldly success or an honest life. He chooses the former—because his mother expects him to save them from poverty, because he’s been surrounded by wealth for four years and his desire to make something of himself is strong, because he’s still a boy and perhaps, when pushed to the wall, he's too cowardly to do what’s right.

There’s a fatalistic undertone to the rest of the book—once he makes this choice, he can’t really find his way back.

Isabelle disappears after she agrees to remain silent about the fire, as she said she would, and she doesn’t come back to Peyton for ten years. Peyton tries to find her during the ten years, but can't, and when she does come back, he wants to be with her with his whole heart—in the ten years since the fire, he’s worked himself into a great financial position, but he hasn’t loved another woman. But he doesn’t want to be with Isabelle enough to undo what he did—to let himself see and recognize how wrong what he did was, to ask Isabelle for forgiveness, to talk with her honestly about what happened. He's had thoughts of guilt, but he's largely distanced himself from the fire because he felt like that was what he needed to do in order to move on. To some degree, he's funneled his guilt over the fire into his guilt over making Isabelle remain silent, which he does think about. When they are together again, he sees she needs him to "come clean," and yet afraid of what will happen if he does -- the whole life he's built might be shattered -- he can’t, and after two years of them living together, she leaves again, without a word of explanation.

Her leaving sends Peyton down a reckless path where he works all the time, and spirals more and more out of control - drinking, yelling, sleeping around, etc. After years of this, he is dried out, exhausted, and he starts over, and constructs a more reasonable, structured life. He ends up content, married to another woman with whom he has a son, but he occasionally sees his life as heartbreakingly mundane, tragically inferior to what he could have had.

Isabelle, who is an artist and is also a free spirited loner—she is driven by beauty and a kindness and generousity of spirit that arises from having something you love so purely, rather than being driven by what other people think of her, or any material motivations—is very much tied up with the man he could have been. Because she is not spurred on by a fear of poverty and has never faced the prospect of poverty, she is more honest and innocent than Peyton, and ultimately she cannot get over what they did. When she leaves the second time, he knows he is losing both her and his ability to live his life in a free spirited, genuine way. He can’t do that by himself - he is wrapped up in the life he has created - and he doesn’t believe he will meet anyone else like Isabelle, and even if he did, he doesn't believe anyone else could redeem him because she is the only one who knows and might understand the whole truth.

I realize my descriptions here are insufficient—free spirited, wild, strangely innocent, pure, etc.—but it is very hard for me to come up with better words to describe it. The book is about, among other things, the conflicting desire to escape society to something more freeing and true, and the desire to belong; also, it is about the fear and hardness that poverty (and the lack of a father) can create in someone, and the cost that can extract, as well as how bad luck can so thoroughly change the course of a life. It is not a happy book, but it also may be less depressing than I am making it sound.

In the end, Peyton accepts the choice he made and comes to terms with the life he has. He takes responsibility for what he chose, even though he sees it was the wrong choice. There is a more final resolution with Isabelle, but I feel like saying what happens there in a query would make reading the book less enjoyable. But nobody ever confesses to starting the fire, and after Isabelle leaves the second time, Peyton never speaks with her again.

I'm not sure if this clarified any or changed any advice for the query, but any thoughts welcome.

Really bad title. It would really have to be good for an agent to want to read something called that.

Yeah, you lost my attention halfway through that long long long long ol' soap opera. Just cover the most passionate, dangerous, beautiful, life-changing episodes and skip the rest.

Jeb, you have just cited the plot of Elizabeth Lowell's DIE IN PLAIN SIGHT.

LOL 'Fredian slip' Ah, my morning laugh. Thanks, EE.

Names aside, here's what I got from this. And it might be wrong - it's what stayed in my mind after reading it through once.

There's some fighting. Stupid girl (SG) gets everyone arrested. Fighters get SG and a couple others out of jail, but not SG's family. SG doesn't stick around to get mom and pop out of jail, but she worries about how mom and pop are faring with the torture and all.

SG and friends make perilous journey to 'safety' then turn around and make same perilous journey back so they can help overthrow the bad government.

Oh and there's some romance(s) thrown in the mix.

I'm actually not sure if mom and pop are still in jail. I'm just not clear that they got out at this point.

What I'm missing here is your voice. And this is something I struggle with in writing queries - getting the voice of the book into a few paragraphs.

I'm also getting the impression that your heroine is an idiot. She's fighting the bad government and she slips and lets them know who she is. Then she agrees to go on this perilous journey away from the city only to turn back and do it again in reverse? What about her is good and smart? That might be a good thing to put here instead of how it's all her fault that her friends and family are in jeopardy.

You write Fredia, but I think Frieda, the Peanuts character with naturally curly hair.

Who on Earth knew that she was named Frieda? You really need to get out more. I kept thinking of the movie about the Mexican painter, but of course that's Frida, not Frieda or even Fredia.

Author, besides the plot holes EE asks about, you've got the same problem in this that Dave F pointed out in one of my recent attempts: You tell a lot of "this happens, then that happens, then they have issues, then they're in danger, then this other thing happens."

You need to divorce yourself of the notion that the entire plot has to be explained in the query. We don't need the detail about shutting down the city, smuggling food, or running ragged, do we? We really need to know that Alaina screwed up and she and all her friends are about to be executed; then they're rescued. But her family's captured. And they run away. And deal with stuff.

So wait, she just leaves her family as captives and runs away? They're sure to be executed, aren't they? She's OK with that?

Alaina deals with her family’s arrest and the aftermath of her prison experience, which was more brutal than either of her friends’. Terrence struggles with his feelings for Alaina and her tendency to push him away. Cathy tries to figure out whether, in light of her beliefs, her minimal participation in the resistance was justified.

To be honest, to me this sounds awfully boring. It sounds like they've all ended up at a remote location, and they're wandering around avoiding each other, steeped in angst. Don't get me wrong; if you've got a literary masterpiece here, it could be really interesting. But... the query makes it sound boring. They seem to all be in a "poor me" situation, and rather than the MCs initiating the action, they wait until they are called back.

Throw the word "eventually" into the final paragraph, and it makes me wonder how long the wandering-around-steeped-in-angst part of the book lasts.

Can't judge the work itself, of course, without reading it, but the query makes it sound like your characters are too passive and moody for revolutionaries.

Yeah, the names threw me. Because of the names I thought when you said "Alaina’s cell blows up one of the capital city’s major bridges" you meant her cell phone. But then I realized you meant her cell, as in sleeper cell. But then I got to the end, and now I'm not really sure.

I think you need more specifics. Calling her prison experience "more brutal" isn't doing anything for me. Also, "in light of her beliefs." Don't know what her beliefs are, or even what's the problem with Fredians except they're oppressive. Which is pretty common with governments. And since the Fredians have already been ruling Sancia for three years, maybe you could call them rebels or freedom fighters. To me resistance implies the Fredians are still in the process of taking over.

It seems like the main plot points of your book are her capture, which you should probably start your query with, her journey to Lacawhatever, which you need to explain more why they are going there and what is accomplished there, then the journey back to overthrow the evil regime.
I want to say to leave out the angst each character faces on the journey since I hate it in queries when someone just tells; 'so and so is feeling this and must deal with her blah' just makes it boring. Stick to the plot points and action is what I say.

Why not set your story in one of the scores of countries that have struggled for national sovereignty in the past 100 years? I believe readers would become more involved and have greater empathy for the characters even if the readers had only fragmentary knowledge of the issues driving the fight for independence. Think of how much more impactful a story would be if it were set in Tibet today. Or Kosovo a few years ago, or occupied France in WWII.

I don't really get what Cathy and Terrence are doing over in this dangerous third-world country. They both sound too naive and clueless to know or care about anything going on there.

Is Alaina a native of the occupied country? It's hard to tell with that name, but she must be because her family is kidnapped by the oppressive government.

I'd try to make it clear who these main characters are (and not just names) and why they are there in the first place. And I'd leave out the romance, it just confuses things.

I picture Terrence as a prematurely balding twenty-something with a Blackberry so he can check the basketball scores. I just can't see him being tortured in a third world dungeon. "What's wrong sir? And what are you going to do with that sharp thingamabobber?"

It sounds like a potential episode of the Brady Bunch where the family goes to an occupied nation to participate in the resistance. Probably a two-part episode, like when they went to the Grand Canyon.

I'll bet the book isn't like that but the query letter is. Do your plot justice, author!

"It's like reading a book about a high school girl named Madison and her BFF is named M'lota Larg and her guidance counselor is D'Ghor of the house of Kanjis."

I think I just found a setting for my next story.

This screams Fantasy so loudly that I suspect it's going to be a hard sell as litfic. Especially given it has a strong plotline rather than exploring the characters' inner space. (don't jump on me, litficcers! I tried to be nice!)

I think for litfic it needs to be set in a real place, whether historical or contemporary, not a series of places that sound like they're straight out of a Fantasy novel. Mind you, my preferred advice would be just to make it a Fantasy novel. They sell better anyway.

I guarantee you'd get the agent's attention if it turned out that Ronnie Hartson was a zombie.

I was bothered by how many names end in "ia". Fredia, Sancia, etc. It's a nitpick, but it really stood out for me.

I don't think Alaina is necessarily that stupid for getting caught; remember the guy about to get on the train in The Great Escape? His passport was perfect, his German was perfect, but when the guard said in English, "Good luck," (or is it "You speak very good German"?) he automatically replied "Thank you." So I can see how someone might slip.

But I agree this isn't an effective query, and that it makes what is probably an interesting book sound dull.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of names that end in -ia either, ah, Stacia. Generally I don't like names that are hard to pronounce, either, 'cause they get in the way of reading the story. Yeah, I'm lazy.

The query doesn't mention genre (or wordcount), so I'm wondering where Lit Fic came from. Did you just cut that out of the query for the blog, EE? I'm going to guess at wordcount being something north of 100K if fantasy; if Lit Fic, still something north of 100K, but no dialogue.

I guess there's no reason why a literary genre piece can't be set in a fantasy world (Murakami's novels have fantastic elements), but the query, at best, suggests an unenticing fantasy adventure, which I'm sure does not do you justice.

If it wouldn't hurt the plot I'd make Terrence a wolfman as well.

This is fantasy, but it needs to be made a bit more explicit up from. I also agree with what everyone else's said about writing in the voice of your main character(s). Perhaps the first two lines could be:

1. Fredian rule was supposed to be good for Sancia, bring it... (insert maybe a description of your world's culture - are we dealing with a cobblestone streets and kings or some cold war Eastern European surrogate).

2. Alaina's not buying it because...(personal reasons for being in the resistance)

Something like that would be a standard open.

This reminds me of a Q&A I saw here a few months ago where the author wanted to know why an agent had told her that her book lacked tension (I think it was a she). She said her characters experienced a number of obstacles through the story. I forget EE's exact answer, but he suggested that the characters be given the absolute minimum of time to complete their mission, or they would never make it home. Then, he suggested that the author give them even LESS time than the minimum. That way every obstacle they encountered increased the tension. This also was a good way to provide an overall arc to the story.

This is a long way of saying the query is missing the arc. We need to feel the tension of the story in the query. The story itself seems to have all the ingredients for a good thrill ride.

I agree with the others: this is all over the imaginary map--too many characters, too many journeys, too much going on. Focus in on one thing. Perhaps start in the middle of the mission to blow up the bridge, then gradually widen the scope so we meet other characters and get the issues. But focus on one character. A wonderful example of an interesting opening is the fragment AFTER TEN YEARS by C.S. Lewis: a bunch of soldiers waiting for action, griping about their uncomfortable situation; gradually you realize that they are the Greek soldiers inside the Trojan Horse. Try to do something like that.

And I do want to make an issue of the names. When Tolkien was asked about the "meaning" of LORD OF THE RINGS, he said it was "an exercise in the linguistic aesthetic." And he got it right, though there's a lot more to it, of course. I am driven mad (MAD, I tell you! MAD! MAD! MAD!) by stories which are inconsistent in naming characters, because it means the authors haven't consistently thought out their secondary creation. There are sites like Behind the Name that can help you keep all your names in the same linguistic hat.

I also like the suggestion of setting the story in some real occupied country like occupied France. Or you could take a leaf out of Philip K. Dick's THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE and set it in a future occupied U.S.A.

The author is welcome to tell us the genre, and I'll be glad to change it. I saw nothing of a fantastical nature, and I haven't seen any more than the rest of you.

I think it's the names of the places and people that make me think of a made-up world, that makes me think fantasy world. I'm guess it's my bad assumption.

I think that the names lend themselves to fantasy.

I didn't read any "Lord of the Rings" type fantasy here. This is more of a dystopian society than a fantasy.

I don't like the odd names because it makes reading hard. Remember, high school kids and freshmen college kids HATE Anthony Burgess' novel "A Clockwork Orange" because of the language barrier.

Noto add - the names don't add up (esp. C.D.) and it lacks the tension it ought to have.

There's lots of romping across (imaginary) country but the real crux has to be the Gredeinian/Donaldson/Harlin* head-on confrontation of fears and issues, about which you say very little.



* There - they're either a trio of authors of an obscure anatomy textbook or a firm of lawyers specialising in not getting hired. Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, however...

Well, fair enough, EE, but it still reads to me like a Fantasy-type plotline in a pseudo-historical setting.

I'm with prem here. The two things I felt were most sorely missing were 1) what's so bad about the oppressive regime? What are they doing that we should sympathize with a resistance that bombs things? and b) how does this affect Alaina personally? What is her driving force? Without that, the plot looks like a series of events. If the events can be closely tied to the main character's deepest dreams/wishes/fears/identity, then we've got a reason to care.

I found the 'ia' names annoying due to their similarity, and ditto what everybody else said. If this is a literary novel, perhaps sell that aspect of it instead of give the impression that it's really an epic fantasy with realistic elements? Seriously, this sounds like a tired old fantasy the way you present it in this letter. sounds like it could be a good read, the presentation is the problem here.

This reminds me of a Q&A I saw here a few months ago where the author wanted to know why an agent had told her that her book lacked tension (I think it was a she). She said her characters experienced a number of obstacles through the story. I forget EE's exact answer, but he suggested that the characters be given the absolute minimum of time to complete their mission, or they would never make it home. Then, he suggested that the author give them even LESS time than the minimum. That way every obstacle they encountered increased the tension.

That was me! That was me!!!!
YAY! What a great segue to me. I have lots to talk about, and to think I wasn't even going to read the comments for this one. But first let me say what a great memory you have. That was more than a few months ago.
Okay, back to me. Where do I even begin?
We're dog sitting a golden retriever and just let me say how smart she is. AND....her name ends in "ia." Can she be in this book too?
We'll probably have tortellini for dinner with some tomatoes on the side.

:-)

I'm no expert on what constitutes a fantasy, but until the author chimes in I don't see how this war story constitutes one. If the story were set in Czechoslovakia, Romania and Russia, or in Bosnia, Serbia, and Albania, and the author decided to change the setting to fictional places, does it immediately become a fantasy?

Is every mystery, romance and children's book set in a fictional place a fantasy? Is Our Town a fantasy because there's no Grover's Corners? Are the Sherlock Holmes stories fantasies because 221-B Baker Street doesn't exist?

I have come to expect something magical or supernatural in a book labeled fantasy. Is this wrong, experts?

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I've been thinking about changing the names for a while, just haven't gotten around to it.
And nope, it's not fantasy.

The big three -- Osama bin Laden, Sukarno and Cathy Donaldson.

EE, I'd love an answer to that question (uh, that would be the "what is fantasy?" question). I am currently working on something set in a fictional place, with a fictional history and culture, but there is no magic or bending the laws of physics. I've been calling it fantasy for lack of a better label. So, minions, what DO I call it?

something set in a fictional place, with a fictional history and culture, but there is no magic or bending the laws of physics.

I am no expert, but simply having a fictional setting would not stick it in the Fantasy section.

Star Wars, as my son likes to point out, does not take place in the future. Therefore, there's something else (space ships) that makes it sci fi. By this I mean (in a roundabout way) that simply being in the future is not enough to make something sci fi.

There are lots of literary genres from which to choose. Fantasy seems to have mythical creatures, knights, magic. If yours does not have any of that, then perhaps you've got a thriller, or a mystery, or a romance, or a comedy.

EE spelled it out pretty well, I thought. This query is for a war story. Most likely literary fiction due to all the angst and people being executed. My WIP is a YA adventure, and I'd never call it a fantasy just because the location is fictional. There's no answering your question, mb, without knowing what your story is. For it's the story and the fundamental elements of the story (of which setting is only one) that define it.

If your fictional setting is on Earth, in the past, you could call it a historical novel. (I assume if you were writing a historical romance, you'd be familiar with that term). Contemporary fiction is a good catch-all if it's not literary fiction. I don't think it's required that your setting exist in fiction. Have you considered adding a wizard and continuing to call it fantasy?

Yeah, yeah, pjd, but I didn't just fall off the cabbage truck yesterday. Have you had a look at a lot of the stuff on the shelves that IS being labelled fantasy? No magic, no knights or dragons. "Imaginative fiction?" Sounds like a tautology to me. I find the whole business of genre labelling annoying to begin with, but it's a necessary evil for the query. I'm just asking, is there a term for action/adventure/political intrigue set in a world that resembles, but is not, our own?

What do you mean "resembles"? Is your book set on Earth in a place you made up? Or is it a parallel universe or our world as it might have been if...

In other words, science fiction or alternate history.

Would your novel work if you changed the names of the places to places we're familiar with?

Um, sort of, no, no, and no.

Never mind -- clearly this is just as confusing as I thought it was!

I don't think Fantasy requires magic or the supernatural, but what do I know? If I wrote a quest story on a fictional planet that had different rules from ours--rules that allowed actions that would be magical or supernatural on OUR world--that would be Fantasy. And after all, long pointless journeys are the very stuff of Fantasy ^_^.

And Star Wars isn't sci fi (sic); it's Fantasy. Or, at best, Science Fantasy. "The Force" isn't science. And don't get me started on the light sabres.

Then again, I can't help feeling that a historical novel requires a historical setting. Nothing about the 'ias reminds me of any particular historical setting, but then again the plot doesn't feel contemporary. Historical feel without being real history spells Fantasy to me--maybe I've just read too much (bad) 'medieval' Fantasy. Although I don't read Fantasy that much.

Also, lit-fic is mainly in the writing, and this query didn't strike me as demonstrating writing at that level.

The author has declared it isn't fantasy. (11:09)

We await clarification of what it is and whether these nations are on Earth.

Do Sancia, Fredia and Laucasia really sound more fantastical than Serbia, Bosnia and Romania?

Yes, but not as fantastical as Timbuktu, which I refused to believe for years was even a place.

Hmm. Good questions, EE.

Is every mystery, romance and children's book set in a fictional place a fantasy?

No. Though, until recently, fantasy was pretty much always set in places that never really existed.

I have come to expect something magical or supernatural in a book labeled fantasy.

Very often there is something magical (like a sword) in a fantasy or magic is used or something supernatural happens. Or there is no magic, but the story uses creatures that never existed.

I think fantasy is not that the people or setting aren't real but that something in the story never could be real.

While fantasy is a much larger genre than medieval settings with knights and wizards and unicorns, I wouldn't classify this story as fantasy. To me, in order for the story to be fantasy, it has to include an element the author makes acceptable that would simply be impossible or otherwise defy logic.

I don't see anything like that described here.

I think this sounds more like a thriller.

Glad to bring you in as a segue, christineeldin. That Q&A stuck with me because EE simplified such a significant problem in my own stories. Saved me I don't know how many hours.

How did that story turn out, anyway, if you don't mind my asking?

This book may not have fantastical elements, but I strongly question whether any reader of thrillers, litfic, or military novels would be willing to read a story set in a made-up place unless the imaginary countries involved have strong, obvious parallels to actual existing political entities, which would then make it a satire. Can anyone think of a nonfantasy book set in an imaginary country that isn't meant as an analogy to some existing country or government?

Is every mystery, romance and children's book set in a fictional place a fantasy?

Well, technically, I guess it's someone's fantasy. Heh heh.

the point to be made has nothing to do with the classification of any novel as fantasy or historical or alternative history or mystery or action/adventure or literary or political thriller or whatever...

The query isn't clear about the tone and style of the story and therefore, the reader is confused about the type of book the query represents. The novel is what it is... It's finished and down on paper. It's te query that has representational problems.

What we seem to have here is the dystopian version of Ruritanian romance. "Dystopian fiction" is a known genre, usually considered a subset of science fiction. While some books, like 1984 and Brave New World, are set in the future, others are set in a nameless present (cf. some of Ursula K. Le Guin's works).

That's all I can say about the subject, as I don't care for dystopian fiction; but Wikipedia has more:

http://tinyurl.com/yrsm5c

Can anyone think of a nonfantasy book set in an imaginary country that isn't meant as an analogy to some existing country or government?

Possibly Lost Horizon, set in Shangri-La. Most authors settle for fictional cities, rather than countries:

Amity Island: Jaws

Ilium, NY, several Vonnegut novels

Lake Wobegon--Keillor

Brewer, PA, John Updike's Rabbit books

Belvedere, OH, Silence of the Lambs

Santa Teresa, CA, Kinsey Millhone's home in the Sue Grafton alphabet mysteries

If it's true people won't read a thriller set in a fictional country, but don't mind one set in a fictional city or on a fictional island, I'm not sure why. Maybe they're pretty sure there's no Fredia, but not so sure there's no Belvedere.

They do know there's a planet Tycho though.

I'd say that a fictional city is very different from a fictional country. Belvedere still has to operate by Ohio state law; they speak American English and share local and national history. The country of Belvedere could be anything. I guess I'm wondering why you'd bother to invent world politics from whole cloth without also inventing fantasy elements to make it worth it. Or why you'd read a thriller, litfic or military novel in a world with a whole new set of rules when there are plenty such novels set in the real world, with familiar (and exciting!) rules.

I don't think you need to invent world politics and new rules to set a story in a fictional country, if your story has nothing to do with world politics. Maybe you're a former CIA agent who's written a romance novel and you don't want to give the impression it's based on something that actually happened to you. Maybe something that happens in your book would cause the Ayatollah to issue a fatwa against you if it were set in a real Arab country, so you make one up. Maybe you want your murder mystery to take place on an undiscovered Pacific atoll. I don't think the island in Robinson Crusoe was named, but I also don't think it was real.

Robinson Crusoe's Island.



(Although I suspect this is one of many real, genuine, Defoe's Robin Crusoe islands.)

But if you make up an Arab country and call it Zyxistan or whatever, it's an obvious stand-in for something familiar: a satire. An ex-CIA operative wouldn't write a book on the fictional continent of NeoGondwanaland where Gilder is occupying Floren, she'd just find a way to justify the Swiss going crazy and taking over Europe. Again, can you think of a non-fantasy novel where an imaginary country invaded another imaginary one? I can't. I'm counting alternate history and sci-fi as fantasy here, btw.

What makes fantasy fantasy? A very good quesiton and one I should have an answer to since I've been reading mostly fantasy for over 30 years now.

Fantasy does cover quite a lot of ground. There are the King Arthur-style ones with legendary swords and such. There are the ones set on other planets. Alternate universe books used to be fantasy, but I think they broke off into their own genre or maybe that's just the alternate history ones.

Generally, there should be a fantastical element that is central to the story or that the story cannot work without. Just like there should be some 'can't do without it' science element in science fiction.

Personally, I read a lot of military space opera these days. Another fantasy spin-off. Military space oprea is like taking Horatio Hornblower or Richard Bolitho and sticking them on spaceships. The main difference between the wet navy and the space navy is location and gadgetry.

So if this story doesn't have the fantasy element - which it doesn't look like it does - then it must be military fiction of some sort. Perhaps military land opera?

this has gotten ridiculous

The wet Navy?

I bet there are plenty of Hornblowers out there for whom this would constitute the perfect fantasy.

Here's a list of fictional countries in literature, movies, TV, etc.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_countries

I haven't read enough of them to declare that an invasion took place, but there's no evidence an invason took place in this book. All we know is that three years ago Fredia started ruling. Possibly through threat of force; the USSR didn't invade every eastern bloc country.

I guess any further specifics about the book in question are going to remain closely guarded secrets about which we can only speculate; I suggest, therefore, that the book is clearly, ah, speculative fiction.

I thought Robinson Crusoe's island was Tristan da Cunha (hope I spelt that correctly!).

The island in the novel is probably largely fabricated, but it's based on a real place, as Alexander Selkirk really did live for many years on a desert island, after being marooned (not shipwrecked).

Robinson Crusoe was based on the real-life experiences of Alexander Selkirk, who was stranded on an island now known as Robinson Crusoe Island:

http://tinyurl.com/2wwqbo

Here's a summary of what Northrop Frye has to say about romance, which in his usage is pretty much synonymous with fantasy, in Anatomy of Criticism:

The critic Northrop Frye in Anatomy of Criticism (1957) used romance in two separate meanings.

In one, he separated some essentials of romance from the Medieval historical vehicles, to distinguish Romance as a mode that may be detected as a theme or atmosphere in other fictions, one that falls between the mode of "myth" and that of "high mimetic". Expanding Aristotle's Poetics, Frye classified fictions by the power of the hero's actions, which may be greater than ours, or less, or roughly of the same degree. Thus if the hero is superior in kind to men, the action is a myth. If the hero is superior in degree to others and to his environment, the mode is that of Romance, where the actions are marvellous, but the hero is human.

The hero of romance moves in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended: prodigies of courage and endurance, unnatural to us, are natural to him, and enchanted weapons, talking animals, terrifying ogres and witches, and talismans of miraculous power violate no rule of probability... Romance divides into two main forms: a secular form dealing with chivalry and knight-errantry, and a religious form devoted to legends of saints. Both lean heavily on miraculous violations of natural law for their interest as stories" (Frye pp 33-34).

If, on the other hand, the hero is superior to other men but not to his environment, the tale falls into the mode of high mimetic.[4]

He also divided fictions into the fields of comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony. In this division, the essential component of romance is adventure, and the central theme is the hero's rescue of a princess from a dragon.[5]

That's a pretty extensive list of fake countries. But they forgot Waponi Woo.

Freedonia goes to war.
Hail Freedonia! Freedonia All Hail!

When I read "cell blows up" I first thought you meant a prison cell, as in Alaina already being in prison and somehow smuggling a bomb in.

I've got several problems with this query:

(1) As others have pointed out, it has far too much of a "this happens, that happens, then this other thing happens" feel to it. When you write a query, don't write it like it is a one-page synopsis. Find the core issue of your tale and build the rest of the query around that, leaving off the ending.

(2) The names don't seem to fit with the world or with each other. I'm not sure whether you need new names, or whether a query fix will clear up this problem. However, as long as this problem exists, an agent is likely to have serious doubts about your world-building skills, just from reading the query.

(3) Your main characters are essentially terrorists (resistance fighters, terrorists, pretty much the same thing). In order to "sell" your idea to an agent, you want to have main characters who can be easily identified with. But readers will be very reluctant to identify with terrorists unless the Fredian government can be shown to be very, very evil. In your query, there isn't a strong contrast between the actions of the Sancians and the actions of the Fredians. Try to find a better way of portraying that contrast.

(4) You've included a couple of plot twists in your query that sound stupid, as others have also pointed out (such as fleeing quite some distance only to turn around and come back). I'm not saying these plot twists are stupid - I've read great books where a one-page plot summary would contain much stupider-sounding things. Your task is to either describe these plot twists in such a way that they fit smoothly and naturally with what else is said in your query, or find a way to omit them. Otherwise, they make it sound like your book is stupid, no matter how great it is.

Another comment -

I know I've read non-fantasy non-scifi involving a fictional country. One small fictional country tucked away in Eastern Europe, Central Asia or South America is usually easy for readers to accept. Readers also routinely accept fictional cities and towns.

However, having multiple fictional countries does seem to present a problem if your book isn't fantasy or scifi.

Well Jamie, I hate to say this, but in a historical context, the winners become patriots and the losers become terrorists.

They both tend to use the same tactics. It's just that one gets to actually write the story while the other (what shall I say) decomposes quietly.

Dave, I don't for a minute believe that you hate to say it. It is the truth, after all.

Dave: Except for the fact that the losing sides have all the great songs--"Aura Lee," "Skye Boat Song," "Shule Aroon," and the like.

EE pretty much said it all. There's not enough here to go on to offer suggestions on improving the query.

If I read the denial part right, which I'm not at all sure I do, then no one is in denial but rather they are denying. Seems like it's more a cover-up than denial. Denial implies that someone can't believe something and therefore just lives like it's not true. E.g., Maureen's mom pretends Adam is off on an extended golf outing rather than buried in the rose garden--not just to convince the cops but because she simply can't function in reality.

Cover-up is implied by the word sinister. For example, Maureen's mom found out that Adam was cheating on her and that Maureen isn't really her baby (we can deduce Maureen's mom is blond in this example). That would explain the lack of vibrancy and the subsequent banishment of Maureen off to school. In this case, Maureen's mom and the gardener would both be denying that they conspired to kill Adam and turn him into rose fertilizer.

OK, enough. I don't know what's happening in this book, and I can't tell whether to latch onto the sinister denial, the restless souls, or the once-vibrant mother. Maybe EE's got it right.

There's not many words in this query, so you have room to grow and explain more about what goes on in your book.

With rearranging, assuming, and tightening, I've got it around 110 words.

Maureen is a privileged child from birth who enjoys reading and quiet time with her father, Adam. When Adam dies shortly before her sixth birthday, her life changes. Her once-vibrant mother banishes her to a far-off school, where Maureen spends the majority of her childhood. Returning home ten years later, Maureen discovers new off-limit topics – like her beloved father.

Resisting this betrayal of her father’s memory, Maureen uncovers a sinister pattern to the denial of Adam’s existence. More about the denial of the living. Yadda yadda yadda.

Maureen Pope is a 64,000 word literary fiction piece. I understand that you are particularly interested in literary fiction. Thank you for considering my submission.

I agree I'd like to know a little more, but I think your novel sounds like something I would read.

And I do think it's quite difficult to write a query for literary fiction, where much of the action/change is internal.

I wish you the best of luck with your work.

Hi evil editor.
Could you visit my website and give me an honest opinion about my work (especially my unfinished piece entitled "a boring job"). It would be very kind of you, and i'll find out if i just need to stick with my day job. Think about it, you might be saving a fellow human being from a life of eternal poverty. Thanks. Nezha

Author: I'm not as good as EE at reading between the thoughts, so this query only left me very confused, I'm afraid.

First, Maureen is five when she's shipped off and a teenager when she returns. She's a teenager. Of course her whole world is changed. What insight is the query reader supposed to understand from that?

Seems strange to yank a kid out of high school when she's been gone 10 years -- is there an inciting incident to bring her home? Seems that might be important to help the query get to the internal conflict.

Maureen starts out pretty young, so that it takes awhile for her to discover that her mom's been denying her existence is understandable, although some inkling should have gone through her mind after, say, around year 8 or so at the boarding school. To suddenly realize mom's been ignoring you for 10 years doesn't make her sound as bright at 15 as she was at 5. I'm assuming that's what "denial of the living" means. If it isn't, then I'm clueless what that means in the query.

As Robin notes, literary usually equals lots of internal conflict. Showing a little of that in the query might be helpful. Is she the same quiet, observant girl at 15 as she was at 5? Or is she coming home an angry, pregnant teen? Does she quietly stumble across evidence of all the denial, or has she turned into a nosy little sleuth determined to dig up the truth? Why does she care after all these years?

Nezha: I don't think EE would have posted your comment if he were going to respond privately to your request. Follow the guidelines here as you would when querying or submitting work to any agent or editor if you'd like feedback. One of the "rules of the blog" is that you have to be willing to subject your work to all.

Yay! New blood...