For every good query letter I read, there are five not-so-good ones. No matter how many times we editors—and agents—go over it, a lot of writers don’t seem to listen or care about what we want to see and what we don’t want to see. I’m really good at listing things, so I’m sure you can figure out what’s coming. =)
1. We are not the administrators of a dating site. You’re not going to find the love of your life by submitting a profile to us. We are not interested in how tall you are, how much you weight, what color your hair or eyes are, or how old you are. Nor do we care if you like long walks on the beaches and long soul-searching conversations. We don’t care if you’re divorced or how long you’ve been married or how many kids you have. What we do care about? Your story.
2. At this point in time, your initial query letter, we don’t care why you write. We only care about if you can write a good story. If a nasty divorce caused to to write the story, of if another life-changing event caused you to write, we don’t want to hear that. At this point, we don’t have a relationship with you. I’m not saying that we won’t care about that, but that wouldn’t come until we have an author-editor relationship with you. You wouldn’t lay every little thing out on the table during a first date, would you? The same theory applies here.
3. If you have a relationship already with the editor you are working with, you still need to write a query letter for your submission. If you had to do a huge report at work and present it in front of the Board of Trustees for your company, would you simply throw the report on the table in front of them and say “Here it is”? No, you would explain it and try and make yourself look as good as possible. When you don’t take the time with us, we feel like you don’t care as much as you should. There are certain times when you have such a good relationship with your editor, and you’ve been talking about a manuscript, you may not need a query letter. That is rare, though. If you have to even stop and wonder if you have that relationship with your editor, then you need to write a query letter and send it with your manuscript.
These are just a few of the things that are standing out in my mind right now. If I searched my brain even more, I would have about ten times this to share with you, but that wouldn’t be a blog post, that would be a novel. Not really what we’re going for here. =)
What are your thoughts on query letters?
I fear and loathe the composition of query letters. Not because of any inherent difficulty in the query letter itself, but because of the enormous pressure I feel when writing it — it feels like you’re working in a field of land mines, where a single mis-step could doom your poor defenseless novel to the scrap heap of literary history.
Take that sentence above. It’s one thing to mix metaphors, but it’s another to mangle them with a chainsaw and then stick them in an industrial blender. If this were a query letter I’d tear out another clump of hair and take a long swig from a bottle of a suspicious beverage and then spend a good half hour swearing and gnashing my teeth. Note to self: No more query letters are to be written at the office. People are starting to talk.
I’ve spent weeks on one-page query letters.
But in retrospect, it was time well spent, because a good query letter will get you a reading. It won’t sell a book, and it won’t correct any flaws in your masterpiece, but it lets the editor know that you’re serious and that you know the drill.
Not bad, from a page or so of type.
I find little more agonizing than trying to write a query letter. Why? Because all my training and education in writing becomes meaningless when writing a query letter. Training in writing prose does not prepare you for writing a marketing pitch. By its nature, marketing requires you not to see the story, which is naturally the writer’s focus, but instead to focus on who would read your story and why and how to make the story attractive to them. As a writer I like to delude myself that everyone would want to read my stories, and writing the query letter in an attempt to convince even one person to read it forces me to acknowledge my self deceit.
The only thing worse than writing a query letter is writing a [insert shudder] synopsis.
The query letter is tough because of all you hear agents and editors say what they do want and what they don’t want. “Address it to me, not the agency! It shows you know me.” “Don’t address it to me, you don’t know me and you sound stalkerish!” The conflicting messages on who wants what and how they want it can be very confusing even for a veteran writer.
But I’d still rather write a query letter than a synopsis. shudder Take 68k, condense it into three pages, and make it sound good. Almost better than the book. Make sure your writing voice gets through!
headdesk