Current Query Critique

As promised here is the critique of my current query by the amazing Rachele Alpine of Freckle Head

Don't forget that her thoughts are in blue and mine are in red:

Dear Agent,

Fifteen year old Lee Ruccio is a reluctant (I love the idea of a “reluctant” juvenile delinquent…seems like an oxymoron! Just that term alone made me want to read further) juvenile delinquent who arrives at reform school fearing the worst but soon discovers esoteric mysticism and arcane magic (I got a little lost here. I didn’t know what you met by your description here, and I wonder if agents would get confused. Some may know all of these terms, but you want to keep in mind those who may not) hidden beneath the hard-knock surface.

You have a good hook, but after you have your hook, you usually want to introduce your book. You should do this in the first paragraph so the agent knows exactly what kind of book they are dealing with. I would list your genre and word count in the first paragraph so the agent doesn’t scan through to see if it’s even something they represent.

Rachele makes an interesting point here. Nearly all the advice I read (Query Shark, Nathan Bransford, etc) advises to put the housekeeping data at the end (title, word-count, genre) but I think she has a cool idea. I think it was Roland who made another good point in the comments on Tuesday. Why not put this info in the subject line? I think I will ask Nathan Bransford in his forums, see what he thinks. That being said, Rachele is giving some good advice here. It doesn't make sense for an agent to read all the way through your query only to get to the end to realize they don't rep your genre.

Also I'm really glad people like the reluctant juvenile delinquent phrase. I came up with it very spur of the moment but it really does fit this character.

After the death of his (I would use Lee’s name here instead of “him” so the reader is reminded of who it is…especially if you add something about your genre after the hook) mother, in which his father was incarcerated for her murder, Lee's (here you can switch to “his”) aunt and uncle ship him off to Rocky Mountain Academy, a reform school in the bitter wilderness of northern Idaho.

Both good suggestions. Lee is certainly the most important character so having the reader lose sight of his identity would be very bad.

Instead of explaining that the death was a murder, you could reword it to say something like, “After the murder of Lee’s mother, in which his father was incarcerated…” This gets rid of the repetition.

That does sound better. I'm actually considering leaving the murder part of the plot out in the re-write, it wasn't really that important except as a device to remove the father from the picture. There are other ways. We'll see how it ends up working out.

At this strange and wonderful school he learns Aikido, Kenjutsu, East Asian Calligraphy and Meditation; eventually developing the ability to manipulate Ch'i energy and defend himself from his Katana wielding classmates with his Bo staff.

Try combining this with the paragraph above; I don’t think you need to separate the two. I wonder if you want to say why they teach him these things. It seems a bit off to me that he would be at a reform school for being a delinquent and they teach the students how to use weapons. Answering the “why” would explain this.

She right about that. There is sort of a leap of logic regarding how the school works and why students end up there. It's sort of a secret even in the novel so I'm not sure how to fix it in the query but I do need to make sure the reader (see: agent) doesn't read my query and think: hmm, that doesn't make any sense.

As he learns more and more about the secrets of life as a warrior monk the industrialized world outside of the sheltered campus continues to fall apart. Elemental Creatures of fire and stone have been attacking mines, oil refineries and other industrial locations for years but as Lee arrives at school the attacks begin to increase dramatically. He and his fellow students are eventually asked to investigate the source of the creatures and their skills come into play critically as they fend for their lives.

I want to know why he was sent to this school. What did he do to get brought to a reform school? This paragraph makes me wonder if he was even at a reform school if he’s suddenly fighting these creatures. This is also the first time the reader gets a sense that this is a world that has creatures in it. You mention magic at the start, but I didn’t really see it as a different type of world until you got to this paragraph. You may want to mention that sooner (and by introducing you genre in the first paragraph, instead of below, you would let the reader know that it’s a paranormal fantasy world).

This part is difficult for me. I have talked more about the trouble that he's gotten into to cause him to get sent away in other queries but that kind of backstory has always ended up droning on for too long and being clunky. I need to find a balance.

WARRIOR-MONKS is a young adult paranormal fantasy with elements of romance and a bit of jaded humor (I've left out the Word Count because I'm in revision, the current MS is still WAY too long). I'm told it sounds like a cross between Harry Potter and Naruto, and though that wasn't necessarily my intent I have to admit it does fit.

I would delete the Harry Potter/Naruto comparison. Let it stand on it’s own. The way you have it worded makes it sound like you discovered a lot of similarities, which makes the book not sound unique (and from the rest of your query it does sound very unique!).

Also, personally I would only mention that it’s a paranormal young adult novel. Fantasy sounds repetitive (isn’t that paranormal) and if you don’t mention the romance or humor in the query summary, don’t mention it in the description.

Great point about the comparison. Comparing anything to Harry Potter sounds kind of pretentious anyway.

As far as the paranormal fantasy I'm not sure. I don't consider them quite the same thing. Paranormal is always fantasy (unless you believe things like telepathy or telekinesis really exist) but fantasy is not necessarily paranormal. That being said she's right that it sound clumsy when describing the novel as both. YA paranormal works better I think because even though there are some creatures that essentially make it fantasy there are no elves, dwarves, knights or princesses so if I was to drop one of the terms it would probably be fantasy.

This is my first novel.

You don’t need to say this. I wouldn’t mention it. I feel like the only time you would mention what number novel it is when you’ve published before.

Makes sense.

I would be happy to submit sample pages of WARRIOR-MONKS upon your request.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Matthew Rush

So there you go. I want to thank Rachele for her advice; she makes some excellent points and really focused in on what could and should be improved with this query.

Thanks Rachele!

So what do you guys think? Do you agree with Rachele's points? Do you have anything to add?