Covering Critique Methods at Project Mayhem

I'm over at Project Mayhem, posting about full manuscript critiques this morning.

Tanya Miranda's Current Query Critiqued

Today we have Tanya's query again, this time with my feedback, in blue.

The letter:

Eighteen-year-old Jasmyn McKeery is next in line to inherit Grandma Agatha's magic. Tradition dictates her magic is passed on to the next female kin, but Agatha feels Jasmyn's jealousy and bitterness towards her eight-year-old sister Katarina may be a problem. She struggles with a decision that will affect both their lives and possibly worsen their relationship. Neither Katarina nor Jasmyn knows of their grandmother's gift or of the inheritance. Agatha takes her secret to her grave.

Okay, this ... started out pretty well. I mean that first sentence ain't half bad, but then ... it gets pretty confusing, pretty fast. 

This query is missing any housekeeping, so I don't really know if this is intended as a YA novel, and regardless of whether it is or not, what genre it fits in. Furthermore, with the opening line the way it is, it seems Jasmyn would be our protagonist, but then the rest of the paragraph tumbles into this odd space where it seems like it's Agatha's story, not Jasmyn's.

Their grandmother's death reopens old wounds and the rift between Jasmyn and Katarina grows. Through fits of sadness and resentment, spells are accidentally recited and rituals are unintentionally performed. With the powers unbeknownst to them, the sisters release an indestructible nemesis from a supernatural prison and now the world is in danger.

And then Agatha dies? That's not necessarily a problem, in the sense of story structure and building conflict, but the way this query is built that makes most of the first paragraph essentially pointless. It's not so much that the details you share in that paragraph aren't worthwhile, it's just that the way they're worded, they sound like parts of Agatha's story, not Jasmyn and Katarina's.

Assuming you can reword that paragraph so that whose story it is becomes clear, the details of this second paragraph need to be worked on too. The conflict is good and clear, but how the sisters go about combating it is vague and needs to be clarified with specificity. What or who is this nemesis? How did they release it? Exactly what kind of supernatural prison was it in, and can they send it back?

I understand you don't want to give everything away in a query, but outside of perhaps the ending, there's not much point in holding back important details from an agent you're hoping will represent you as an author.

Agatha's secret is soon revealed How? and Katarina is thought By who? to have been the chosen one. Feeling betrayed by her grandmother and ousted by the rest of her family, Jasmyn flees her home and leaves the world-saving efforts to Katarina and her magic.

This is kind of a nice twist, but it also actually confuses things even more. What we thought at first was Agatha's story, and then Jasmyn's, now becomes Katarina's? Who is eight years old? Is this a MG novel?

But Agatha At this point, considering she's dead, I would suggest you stop referring to her by her name. choice isn't exactly what everyone believes. Huh? How exactly is her choice revealed? Did she leave a will? Or is it just that whoever has the magic is the chosen one? Somehow, both Katarina and Jasmyn have inherited some of her magic, Ah, okay. and now they need to work together to capture the evil they've unleashed. It's difficult to tell what is the main conflict in the plot of this story. Is it the sibling rivalry, or the indestructible nemesis? If it's the nemesis, that needs to be given much more weight in the query. Can the two sister mend their broken relationship in time to defeat these monsters of darkness, or will their sibling rivalry be the death of them? And if it's both (which it now seems to be), that's fine, but don't let the nemesis take such a back seat in the query. Describing him/it/her or whatever specifically, and possibly even naming it, would make it much harder to forget about when you're covering all the sibling rivalry bits.

Okay, so in summary, this query needs some work. But not all is lost. You've clearly got the fundamentals of a good story here, and if you can just tease them out a bit better, and be more specific about the minutiae, you'd be on your way to a great query.

It's also highly unclear whether this is mainly Jasmyn's story, or whether perhaps it's Katarina's (or both), and you definitely need to clarify that, because it would make a hug difference in whether we're considering a YA novel, or a MG one.

That's it!

What do you all think? Anything I missed?

Tanya Miranda's Current Query

Today we have Tanya's query for THE BOX OF SOULS. Be sure to drop by her blog, and give it a follow.

Now, the letter:

Eighteen-year-old Jasmyn McKeery is next in line to inherit Grandma Agatha's magic. Tradition dictates her magic is passed on to the next female kin, but Agatha feels Jasmyn's jealousy and bitterness towards her eight-year-old sister Katarina may be a problem. She struggles with a decision that will affect both their lives and possibly worsen their relationship. Neither Katarina nor Jasmyn knows of their grandmother's gift or of the inheritance. Agatha takes her secret to her grave.

Their grandmother's death reopens old wounds and the rift between Jasmyn and Katarina grows. Through fits of sadness and resentment, spells are accidentally recited and rituals are unintentionally performed. With the powers unbeknownst to them, the sisters release an indestructible nemesis from a supernatural prison and now the world is in danger.

Agatha's secret is soon revealed and Katarina is thought to have been the chosen one. Feeling betrayed by her grandmother and ousted by the rest of her family, Jasmyn flees her home and leaves the world-saving efforts to Katarina and her magic.

But Agatha choice isn't exactly what everyone believes. Somehow, both Katarina and Jasmyn have inherited some of her magic, and now they need to work together to capture the evil they've unleashed. Can the two sister mend their broken relationship in time to defeat these monsters of darkness, or will their sibling rivalry be the death of them?

That's it!

Please thank Tanya for having the courage to share this, in the comments, and like me, save your feedback for tomorrow!

Marlene Moss' Current Query Critiqued

Okay. This god-forsaken penny-ante soul-sucking day job is trying to swallow my morning like an Arrakian Shai-Hulud.

Ahem. Sorry.

Let's get to work. Here is Marlene's query again, this time with my feedback, in blue.

The query:

Dear Ms. Agent,

This is good. I mean, I know, pretty obvious, right? But I do think it's professional, especially in a cold query, to address an agent as Mister or Miz. Even if you've met them at a conference or something, this is a professional letter. Once you've communicated a few times, if they sign their replies with their first name, it's probably okay to start calling them that.

Eleven-year-old Mike loves all things science and science fiction and is determined to become an astronaut—assuming he can escape fifth grade with all the body parts required by NASA.

This is pretty great. CHARACTER. Voice. Humor. 

If I must nitpick? That's what we're here for, right? I would say we could always use even more characterization for Mike. I mean, he's the most important element of the query. We do know he's a science geek, (and an SF geek at that), and we can love that and sympathize with him right away, but even one more word or phrase about his personality would help even more. Is he shy? Precocious? A lover of all things geek, but maybe not the greatest student in the world?

Other than that, I would recommend not using em-dashes in query letter. I love em-dashes myself, since what they do to the rhythm and cadence of a sentence is unparalleled in the universe of punctuation, and they just look so bold and brash and daring on the page, but in query letters? Where the formatting per email client is a bit of a crap shoot? They can get garbled pretty quickly. If you must use them, I would recommend replacing them with the double-hyphen/dash, like this--see?

While hiding from the school bully, he meets an alien who tells him Earth will be surrounded by an anti-flight field unless humans are defined by which planets they can safely visit. This sounds really cool, except for one thing. Defined? What does that mean? I think you can word this better so it's clearer. You mean something like they'll be prohibited from visiting certain planets or something, right? On top of saving space flight, Mike figures he’ll gain scientific experience as he records the effects of candies from an intergalactic test dispenser. I love this, because it's so Middle Grade, but the effects candies have on what? But the sprinkles on the sundae? Great line! Temporary bully-stomping, superhero side-effects. Is that the effects the candies have? Because that is awesome.

This is pretty good. The exact nature of the conflict is maybe a little fuzzy, but you've got so much style, I'm thinking a lot of agents would want pages anyway. 

If you do want to get nitpicked, you could definitely try rewording to make the CONFLICT clearer. I mean Mike is the only one who knows about the alien, right? So what exactly does he have to do? See the president? Work with NASA? Fix it himself? Lots of excellent possibilities here, ripe for conflict, but try to be as specific as possible.

Mike’s ordered not to tell anyone, but how could he hide something as cool as first alien contact from his best friend? Good thing he spilled the Jellybeans because he needs his friends to save him from a fish transformation—complete with gills, webbed fingers, and flipper feet.

Again, this is great details, and a lot of fun and pitch-perfect MG voice, but it's still a little muddy as to specifics, and how the plot moves forward.

It’s all flying and invisibility games until fake federal agents invade town. Whoa. Fake eh? Cool twist. Forget bullies, Mike must save himself and his friends from alien Interstellar Enforcers determined to leave them in permanent stasis at the bottom of a mine so they can’t tell the world aliens exist.

Not bad, but one way to make a good query great is to end on an excellent sadistic choice. It's a little less necessary in MG, because a lot of times you wouldn't picture a kid that young ditching his friends to save himself (or whatever), but maybe Mike has to choose between going to the authorities and fixing things himself.

MIGHTY MIKE AND THE INTERGALACTIC CANDY DISPENSER is an MG sci-fi/adventure Science-Fiction Adventure complete at 49,000 words. You could really just say 50,000. It should appeal to those who enjoy the quirky characters in Nathan Bransford’s Jacob Wonderbar Jacob Wonderbar series or the problem solving skills of Marcia Wells’s Eddie Red Eddie Red.

Working titles go in ALL CAPS in queries. Published works go in italics.

I live in Colorado and train endurance horses while trying not to use my physics degree to calculate trajectories of unplanned dismounts.

This is a good example of how to bio when you have no real publishing credits. Just share something a little personal that has tons of flavor, voice, and personality!

Okay, so to summarize. I really think this query is already in great shape, Marlene. You've got so much voice and such a clear sense of the tastes of Middle Grade readers, I think you'd do pretty well with agents if you sent this out as is.

That said, it does lack a little structure and specificity. Try to really focus on CHARACTER, CONFLICT, and CHOICE, and if you can narrow things down so that you really strike those key elements as high points, the wonderful voice and personality that already shine through would glow the brighter.

I think the biggest thing you're lacking here is a clear sense of exactly how the conflict plays out. We know what it is (save space flight for Earth from the Aliens trying to restrict it) but it's really a bit unclear how Mike could possibly go about that, other than hiding from Aliens masquerading as Feds in a cave.

I hope that all makes sense.

That's it!

What do you all think? Anything I missed? Anything you disagree with? Please share your feedback in the comments, and have a great weekend!

Marlene Moss' Current Query

Today we have Marlene's (who you can find at her blog or on Twitter) query for MIGHTY MIKE AND THE INTERGALACTIC CANDY DISPENSER, which sounds like loads of fun to me, so let's just get right to it, shall we?

The query:

Dear Ms. Agent,

Eleven-year-old Mike loves all things science and science fiction and is determined to become an astronaut—assuming he can escape fifth grade with all the body parts required by NASA.

While hiding from the school bully, he meets an alien who tells him Earth will be surrounded by an anti-flight field unless humans are defined by which planets they can safely visit. On top of saving space flight, Mike figures he’ll gain scientific experience as he records the effects of candies from an intergalactic test dispenser. But the sprinkles on the sundae? Temporary bully-stomping, superhero side-effects.

Mike’s ordered not to tell anyone, but how could he hide something as cool as first alien contact from his best friend? Good thing he spilled the Jellybeans because he needs his friends to save him from a fish transformation—complete with gills, webbed fingers, and flipper feet.

It’s all flying and invisibility games until fake federal agents invade town. Forget bullies, Mike must save himself and his friends from alien Interstellar Enforcers determined to leave them in permanent stasis at the bottom of a mine so they can’t tell the world aliens exist.

MIGHTY MIKE AND THE INTERGALACTIC CANDY DISPENSER is an MG sci-fi/adventure complete at 49,000 words. It should appeal to those who enjoy the quirky characters in Nathan Bransford’s Jacob Wonderbar series or the problem solving skills of Marcia Wells’s Eddie Red.

I live in Colorado and train endurance horses while trying not to use my physics degree to calculate trajectories of unplanned dismounts.

That's it!

Please save your feedback for tomorrow, and thank Marlene for having the courage to share this with us.

Augustine Chan's Current Revised Query Critiqued

Two weeks in a row, we've got Augstine! This can be interesting, because it's always fun to see how a query letter evolves, and what gets cut and what gets added. Augustine is obviously a talented writer, but queries are damn hard, so let's see if we can help him out. As usual, my feedback will be in blue.

The query:

Dear [ ],

[PERSONALIZATION HERE: I am querying you because you are the author of one of my favorite books. (xx)]

Personalization can be so tricky. What I do (not that my habits should be considered rules or anything) is include personal personalization up front. So if I know the agent from a conference, or if one of their clients is a close friend of mine, or if I really loved an ARC I just read of one of their author's books, I will include that up here. 

However, when it comes to more professional personalization, like say, "I believe my manuscript compares favorably to these particular titles from your list," I will usually include that kind of detail in the housekeeping paragraph at the bottom. As always, there aren't necessarily hard and fast rules for such things.

Now, to this new version of this query, what I notice at first glance is that it is long, and filled with large blocks of text. I pasted this query into MS Word, and it is 519 words long, without personalization. That's too much. The general guideline is 250 words for the "meat" of the query, the part that describes the story, and then maybe another hundred for personalization and housekeeping. At first glance this query needs to be heavily trimmed.

I am seeking representation for THINK OF THE CHILDREN, an adult coming-of-age debut that’s complete at 97,000 words and None of this is necessary. Words are at a premium, so don't include ones you don't need. "I am seeking representation," is completely redundant. That's why you're sending a query. There is no other reason to send a query, so don't point out the obvious. The title, word count, coming of age and all that can go elsewhere. One option is the subject line of your email. Another is the housekeeping paragraph at the end. Either way, don't delay getting to what matters: STORY. which is told over the span of a single, pivotal day. This is an important detail, but don't put it here. Start with your next line, the one that introduces CHARACTER. Daniel Hoover, a twelve-year old latch-key kid who lives in a rural Midwestern town, has a special bond with his single mother, but she holds down three part-time jobs and so he never sees her. In her absence, he looks after his mentally-challenged younger brother, he keeps the household running, and he balances his mother’s checkbook. In spite of this, he has never been in trouble at school and manages to become a division-level wrestling champion with an unblemished academic record.

Okay, there's a lot to unpack here, but this opening is still not cutting it for me.

First of all, you're missing the most important part of any story, let along query. STORY always begins with CHARACTER. You introduce Daniel to us, sure, and we get a decent glimpse of his life and his situation, and it's one we can sympathize with, but all that information is external to Daniel. In order to truly care for him, we need to have an idea of his heart and his mind. What kind of person is Daniel before his story starts? He's a young boy, and from that we can certainly infer certain things, but give us more. What kind of things would Daniel love to do if he was not so busy running his household? Is he a mischievous boy? Fastidious? Obsessive? Curious? People, and therefore CHARACTERS, are unique and singular things. No two have ever been exactly alike. Let us into Daniel's heart, so we can feel a bit of his soul lifting off the page, and then once we care about him, we can start to be introduced to his story, and the conflict that follows.

That is the main problem with your opening. It lacks the sense of CHARACTER that the best queries always include. But there are other problems. There is also some contradictory language. His mother is never home, but Daniel has a special bond with her. That's not impossible, but it's certainly improbable, and you don't want improbability making a query look a little off. Furthermore, Daniel handles his brother, the house, and the checkbook, and yet he is apparently a perfect student, with no behavioral problems, who excels at sports. Again, this is not impossible, and this is more a story level problem than a query level one, but that's a scenario that sounds pretty hard to believe, so it makes a reader wonder if the story itself feels as far fetched as it seems in the query.

Which is why Daniel has everything going for him. Again, this is a complete contradiction to what you've just told us. Except that he trips over words when he talks, rendering him awkward during conversations despite his large vocabulary. Yet his academic record is unblemished. And except for no parental supervision, which he craves. Awkward phrasing. Look beyond it. Very awkward phrasing. Look beyond what? You've also jumped into second person here. His life will change completely if he wins a sports an athletic scholarship to the elite Fieldstone Place Academy. Then he’ll be able to rise above his family’s staggering poverty and make something of himself. Today, a recruiter plans to visit to watch him during practice and to informally interviewing him after. Don't use this wishy-washy kind of future tense language. If this story all happens in one day, just tell us what happens. But the school bully, Sammy, makes good on his threat that he’ll ruin the interview, resulting in Daniel and Sammy fighting during practice and Daniel striking Sammy so badly by accident that Sammy has to go to the hospital. You don't really need the bully's name, and you definitely don't need to repeat it four times in one sentence. That's just clunky as hell.

Let's see if we can distill this. All this stuff about the contradictions of Daniel's life is unneeded. Cut it. Here are the key points of the conflict:

• Daniel has a hard life trapped in severe poverty (among other things--and this is all introduced in the opening paragraph, don't repeat or contradict any of it)
• He sees a way out by way of a scholarship
• A recruiter visits who will decide his fate by viewing him in a wrestling match
• His chances are ruined by a bully who somehow goads him into breaking the rules of the match

That's really it. That's all you need to convey here. What Daniel does to redeem himself and so on comes after, but in the previous paragraph, those bullet points are all we need to know. Cut everything else.

All of a sudden, Daniel’s fists become a way to express himself. He uses them to destroy school property. He uses them to take his aggression out on his brother. His brother goes to the same school? And when Daniel sees him in the hall he hits him? And he uses them to punch a glass door so hard that it renders his entire wrestling career over. This is vague. Just tell us that he punches a glass door that shatters and cuts his hand. By the end of the day, Daniel is kicked off the team, expelled from school and frightened of the person whom he has now become.

With the deepest sorrow, Daniel knows he has lost everything that he has fought so hard to attain. He knows he has lost everything for which he holds dear. When the pain over such losses is so acute that you have to say that, but you don’t, holding out instead for a future altogether different from the one you now know. Something maybe resembling the past, his past, the memory before this day, and how it burned bright and green and was full of boundless hope.

Huh? You lost me here. There's some nice imagery and so on, but two of these sentences are fragments, and none of this is needed. As a matter of fact, you can honestly cut all of these last two paragraphs. When re-writing this query, focus on introducing the CHARACTER of Daniel, then hit the bullet points listed above, and leave us with a sadistic choice Daniel must make: lose his scholarship and save his brother, or give up his brother and somehow save his chances to go to a better school (or whatever the actual scenario is on the book).

THINK OF THE CHILDREN is a critical dissection of a child’s indomitable spirit and fire against all odds and No. Don't do this. First of all, don't tell an agent what your story is, show them, and let them decide for themselves. Second, I sure hope this is not a critical dissection of anything, but preferably a damn good story. a tale about how school bullying can irrevocably alter one’s entire being. The book captures, without flinching, those moments in the day of a life forever altered by the actions we do and do not take; and the story of a person turned away from his natural path, turned to a new way of being. It will appeal to fans of Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life and, more recently, Jean Kwok’s Girl in Translation because those books are also about children who grow up in hardship, who seek a better life, and who ultimately achieve that goal through hard work and hard-won triumph. When it comes to these comparisons, see if you can come up with some thematic similarities, rather than ones that are just factual.

Okay, in summary: Man, queries are hard! You've got an excellent grasp of language, and there are some lovely lines in here, but queries are not about poetic prose. Focus on CHARACTER, CONFLICT, and CHOICE, and if you can nail those three simple things, an agent will probably move on to your pages, which is the place for more poetic prose.

Instill your opening hook with more character, trim your second paragraph so that it hits the bullet points, and after that you won't need any of the rest.

That's it!

Sometimes queries are so hard it makes you tired just thinking about them. But that's why we have to work together, to help each other out, and see if we can hammer them into something resembling quality.

What do you all think? Please share your feedback in the comments.

Augustine Chan's Current Query Revised

You'll remember Augustine's query, and my critique of it, from last week. Here we have his revision.

The query:

Dear [ ],

[PERSONALIZATION HERE: I am querying you because you are the author of one of my favorite books. (xx)]

I am seeking representation for THINK OF THE CHILDREN, an adult coming-of-age debut that’s complete at 97,000 words and which is told over the span of a single, pivotal day. Daniel Hoover, a twelve-year old latch-key kid who lives in a rural Midwestern town, has a special bond with his single mother, but she holds down three part-time jobs and he never sees her. In her absence, he looks after his mentally-challenged younger, he keeps the household running, and he balances his mother’s checkbook. In spite of this, he has never been in trouble at school and manages to become a division-level wrestling champion with an unblemished academic record.

Which is why Daniel has everything going for him. Except that he trips over words when he talks, rendering him awkward during conversations despite his large vocabulary. And except for no parental supervision, which he craves. Look beyond it. His life will change completely if he wins a sports scholarship to the elite Fieldstone Place Academy. Then he’ll be able to rise above his family’s staggering poverty and make something of himself. Today, a recruiter plans to visit to watch him during practice and to informally interviewing him after. But the school bully, Sammy, makes good on his threat that he’ll ruin the interview, resulting in Daniel and Sammy fighting during practice and Daniel striking Sammy so badly by accident that Sammy has to go to the hospital.

All of a sudden, Daniel’s fists become a way to express himself. He uses them to destroy school property. He uses them to take his aggression out on his brother. And he uses them to punch a glass door so hard that it renders his entire wrestling career over. By the end of the day, Daniel is kicked off the team, expelled from school and frightened of the person whom he has now become.

With the deepest sorrow, Daniel knows he has lost everything that he has fought so hard to attain. He knows he has lost everything for which he holds dear. When the pain over such losses is so acute that you have to say that, but you don’t, holding out instead for a future altogether different from the one you now know. Something maybe resembling the past, his past, the memory before this day, and how it burned bright and green and was full of boundless hope.

THINK OF THE CHILDREN is a critical dissection of a child’s indomitable spirit and fire against all odds and a tale about how school bullying can irrevocably alter one’s entire being. The book captures, without flinching, those moments in the day of a life forever altered by the actions we do and do not take; and the story of a person turned away from his natural path, turned to a new way of being. It will appeal to fans of Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life and, more recently, Jean Kwok’s Girl in Translation because those books are also about children who grow up in hardship, who seek a better life, and who ultimately achieve that goal through hard work and hard-won triumph.

That's it!

Please save your feedback for tomorrow, when I will share mine as well.