Elaine Vickers' Current Query Critiqued

Welcome back for hump day. This is going to be a tough one, so let's just crack right on. My feedback will be in red.

The query:

Dear AGENT,

Eleven-year-old Isaac Sanchez has never belonged anywhere or mattered to anyone. But he’s only a little bitter—like dark chocolate, not like Brussels sprouts. THIS is how you open a query. Not only does it tell us loads about our character (and why we should care about his story), but it does so in very few words, and is full of voice. As most of you know, I do suggest avoiding em-dashes in queries, because of what email clients can do to the formatting, but this hook is so good I don't think it matters. Mostly he’s just lonely and lost. When the mom who abandoned him as a baby comes back and begs for another chance, Isaac struggles to adapt to a whole new life with a whole new family. The rest of this opening is good, I mean the content is certainly full of stakes and conflict, but I feel like it's missing the execution of the previous two sentences. Surely Isaac's mother isn't begging him? Does he not have some new guardians of some kind? It may not be that important to the plot, but it gave me pause, and left me wondering exactly what the conflict is here, and who all is involved.

Then Isaac receives an old copy of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica and discovers that he has more in common with the greatest scientist in history than just first names: a father who died before he was born (check), a mother who left him with his grandparents and started another family (check), and a crummy history of being the smallest, most picked-on kid in the neighborhood (check and check). I don't know if you can follow up an opening hook any better than this. It's fun, it's full of voice and cheek, and it introduces so much important info you can basically ignore my note above about Isaac's guardians. All of the things that made him feel insignificant now convince Isaac that he is destined to become super rich, rock-star famous, and one of the greatest geniuses of all time. Why? I like the concept, but why does he come to that conclusion? If it's because he seems himself as being like Newton, I think you can say that. If it's something else, well ...

Isaac decides to follow in Newton’s footsteps. He gets pet mice, wears red every day, shuns his new family, tries to spook the neighbors by flying glowing kites after dark, and uses Newton's favorite fruit (apples, of course) for a projectile experiment that goes horribly wrong. He even solves the secret code his dad wrote in the margins of Principia. But his most surprising discovery of all is that he may be able to forgive his mom and care about his sisters, and they might care about him too. When Isaac's experiments cause a life-threatening accident, he must decide whether his "destiny" is worth the price. Does he really want to turn out like Newton anyway? This is still very good, but this ending is the weakest part of your query. It's not bad at all, but it lacks the strength of your first two paragraphs. There are several ways you could do this differently, and I'm not sure which is best. For one thing, I would suggest not ending with a question. For another, I would suggest you could be more specific about what his experiment is, and how exactly it threatens someone's life. If this is the absolute climax of your novel, that doesn't belong in a query, but if it isn't, you don't want to be vague at all.

DISCOVERING ISAAC (42,000 words) I'm not sure how I feel about this word count in parentheses bit. It's not a huge deal, but you could easily word it to remove them. is a contemporary middle grade novel this should all be capitalized, and technically, it's not a novel until it's published. Call it a manuscript in your query, or just leave the word novel out. that contains sneaky bits of physics, history, and biology. I heart this part so hard. I am querying you with this project because [agent personalization here].

My previous publications include a story in the children’s magazine The Friend published works should be italicized (February 2011) and a collaboration with [author's name and bestselling novel title] (The Moms’ Club Diaries, Spring Creek Book Company, 2008 again, italicize) as well as several scientific papers in some of the nation’s top chemistry journals. (These are every bit as riveting as you’d imagine.) I love this too, but the period should go outside the parenthesis, and the parenthetical aside should not be separated from the sentence it modifies. I currently teach chemistry at Southern Utah University and am a member of SCBWI.

Thank you for your time and your consideration.

Sincerely,

Elaine Vickers

Well. This query is about as close to perfect as you can get. I don't know who told you you needed help with this, but they were trippin (just kidding, CPs).

Your opening two paragraphs - I'm not sure I would change a thing. I know I complained about the final sentence of your opening hook during the post, but you explain it so well in the next paragraph, I think it works. Maybe just the final line of your second paragraph. See if you can re-word it for just a bit more clarity.

Your final summary paragraph is also still really good. The problems in it wouldn't have stood out at all if the rest of your query wasn't so amazing. The only problem I have is the vagueness of your final summary of the conflict. Isaac experiments with something, we don't know what it is (unless it's the same experiment as the apples, which isn't clear), but we have a vague sense that it somehow threatens someone's life. Clarify. Also, instead of closing with a question, word it like this: "Isaac must decide whether he really wants to follow in his hero's footsteps, or if the lives of the people he's come to care about are more important." Or something like that. The problem with that choice is that it seems like an easy one. We need to know why giving up on his hero is so tough (we can infer from his backstory that it's important enough to him, but is it worth risking lives?).

That's it.

Man. This is the hardest one I've done in a while. It's so much easier when they need more work. What do you guys think? Is there still room for a little improvement?