Helene Dunbar's Current Query Critiqued

Helene and her query are back again today. I'm sure everybody is used to this by now, but just in case we get some new readers, here's how it works: Helene's query will be in regular, black text, my thoughts, feedback, and stupid jokes will be in red text. Then I would love it if you readers could offer some of your own thoughts in the comments, feeling free to disagree with me, because we all know how subjective all this is.

So let's get to work.

Dear [AGENT]:

Before I get started I just want to point out that this premise sounds incredibly compelling to me. I think if Helene submitted using this existing query, she would probably have some success. We can polish the query, but it's already pretty good, and the strength of the idea behind this story already comes through.

Now let's nit-pick it as much as we can, only because there is always room for improvement.

They say your life can change in a heartbeat, but sixteen-year-old Cal Ryan knows it takes longer than .857 of a second for a car to spin towards yours and kill one of your best friends. He knows that it takes longer than that for your damaged heart to be replaced with someone else’s. And he knows that overcoming his guilt could take a lifetime.

Okay. So this opening hook breaks the rules a little bit, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm not sure the "they say" is the best way to grab an agent's (assistant's) attention. It's not a rhetorical question, which is good, but you don't want to place questions in your readers head that they may not have an answer to. Here the question would be "who says?"

Now I want to talk about exactly what we're trying to get across here. Where does .857 seconds come from? Is that the length of an average heartbeat? It sounds like it might be, and I like the whole comparison of time, and how the measurement of a heartbeat ties into Cal getting a heart transplant, but I want to look at the execution.

First of all it's written wrong here. Think about how you would say this out loud. "... longer than point eight five seven of a second ..." That doesn't make sense. Neither would "...eight hundred and fifty seven thousandths of a second..." Actually, that would make some sense, but I think what you mean here is .857 seconds. The seconds need to be plural because although technically this is less than one second, mathematically we're actually talking about a plural idea.

My second problem is that it all feels kind of passive. I mean yeah, Cal knows all these things, so it is him actively acting on the subject in these sentences, but it still comes across with less punch than it could, I think. What if you said something like: "It doesn't take much longer than a single heartbeat for the blur of a car to spin into sixteen-year-old Cal Ryan's Jeep, killing his best friend, and changing his life in just over .857 seconds. It takes far longer than that for the surgeons to transplant his injured heart, and he dreads that overcoming his guilt could take a lifetime.

I don't know. That's not great either, but I think you get my drift. The last thing about the opening is that I would love to get a better sense of who Cal was before the accident. Was he the caring nerd? The apathetic musician? Something else?

Cal thinks he does a lot of thinking and knowing, is he wrong? he’s lost everything: his friend, Lizzie; a promising future as a baseball player; and any chance he had with Ally Martin, the girl he’s had a crush on for two years. But when he learns that his donated heart was Lizzie’s and starts hearing her voice, sharing her dreams, and feeling her desire for their mutual friend Spencer, Cal fears he’s losing the only thing he has left – his mind. I would avoid em-dashes in queries, because they never end up formatted properly. And two dashes in a row looks like shit. You could probably just use a colon here.

This is it right here. This is actually very good querying. You've got a great set-up for conflict, an excellent sense of what the character is going to be going through, and a pretty good hint at what kind of choices he's going to have to make, all in a few nice, succinct sentences.

As Cal is forced to examine the things he’s always taken for granted, he discovers that friendship can overcome many obstacles and that, sometimes, what you were looking for was inside you all along.

This is a tiny bit vague, but I think it works. This last line is especially great, with the implied double meaning. Love it.

GHOST LIGHT is a complete young adult novel at 64,000 words.

You don't need to say complete. Unless you're pitching a non-fiction project, your novel better be complete, even though it really isn't, until the editor says it is.

A member of SCBWI, I am a marketing manager/editor for a nonprofit organization, as well as a freelance music journalist for Irish Music Magazine (Dublin, Ireland). I have extensive non-fiction writing credits which include the 2006 biographies for “Celtic Women” (EMI/Manhattan) and articles in multiple encyclopedia series for Thompson Gale Research (Cengage Learning) including “Exploring Law & Society” and “Great American Court Cases”.

This is great. I can't see anything to change in these credits.

Thank you, in advance, for your time and consideration.

So basically I really like this query. The middle is especially good. It's short, sweet (not really), and to the point. I think if you re-work the beginning, give us a better sense of what kind of person Cal is, and make the hook and the accident more active, more powerful, you'll be well on your way to The Garden of Good Queries.

Sincerely,

Helene Dunbar

What do you all think? Am I crazy? Can anyone suggest a better rewrite of Helene's opening paragraph (it wouldn't be hard to top mine)?