Okay, guys. This is very exciting for me, because it takes us back to one of the coolest things I used to do on this blog. Sharing examples of successful query letters. I finally get to add another one to that list.
And this one is going to be very cool, because it comes from my good friend Adam Heine, who not only wrote an awesome book, but just recently landed his agent. So, if you've never read one of these before, it can get a little confusing. I like to do tag-team analysis, so here is how it works: Adam's query will be in plain text. Adam's analysis of why he thinks his letter might have worked, will be in blue. My random interjections, stupid jokes, and occasional tidbits of sage wisdom, will be in scabby-red (note that my blog design template turns hyperlinks into a more blood-red).
Okay, here goes...
Honestly, I don't actually KNOW why my query worked, but I guess it did (11 to 17% request rate, depending on how you count). I'll try to say why I did what I did. We'll see if that helps.
It does.
For Hagai's 17th birthday, he receives a stone from his mother that shows visions of the future. The thing is, Hagai thought his mother was killed ten years ago.
The Hook. It's hard to get everything critical in just a sentence or two. I think the trick is knowing what's NOT critical. Here, I wanted his age, the inciting event (the stone) and why it was inciting (the sender, his mother, is supposed to be dead). I'd cut "that shows visions of the future" too, except then he just gets a stone, which is somewhat less exciting.
I get the feeling Adam's just being humble here, which I completely respect, but I'll go a little deeper. The key, IMHO, to what he's done here, is how he conveys so much information in so few words. One way he achieves this is by combining Hagai's age with his birthday, which is masterful, if you ask me. Another is that he deftly weaves backstory into the same two sentences as his hook and inciting incident (which may or may not be the same thing, depending on your story and your query). The final thing, and this is not always that easy, depending on your character, is Hagai's name. Knowing Adam, and knowing his love for all things Asian (much like my own) I get a hint for the kind of world he's built, just from his MCs name. It's subtle, but it's there. This can be very important in some genres, like fantasy, or completely unnecessary, like in contemporary romance (assumption).
The bravest thing Hagai's ever done is put peppers in his stew (People seem to like this line. I guess this is what they call "voice." Fortunately for me, it's the same voice I use in the novel, so I didn't have to cut it.), It is voice, but it also characterizes our MC a bit, so again, Adam's killing two birds with one stone. but when the stone shows his mother alive and in danger, he sets out to find her (increased stakes and what Hagai does about it). Initial conflict. Air pirates are hunting the stone too, and it's not long before a young pirate named Sam nicks it. Hagai tracks Sam down and demands the stone back--politely, of course, because Sam's got a knife.
Here's where things got tricky. The book actually has two POVs: Hagai and Sam, but every attempt I made at writing a query that mentioned this, or that restarted the story from Sam's POV, didn't work. The best I could come up with was to make Sam the Second Character in the query and show his goals. The hard part was ignoring all of his backstory which, honestly, is like 2/5 of the novel.
I absolutely subscribe to Adam's method, here. I'm sure someone out there has done it, but I cannot personally recall reading a query told from more than one point of view (usually 3rd person) where I thought it worked. A query is not a synopsis, and it really only has one simple job: entice an agent to read some pages.
Oddly, Sam offers him a job. He needs someone non-threatening to consult a seer hiding among the monks (a couple world tidbits here), and he reckons Hagai is as non-threatening as they come. Hagai agrees (see how quickly I came back to Hagai?), Yep, we do, and it's a point well taken. The novel is almost always going to be so broad and complex that there is no way to fit it all in a query letter. Just cover the key elements. intending to turn Sam in at the first opportunity. But when the seer says Sam is the key to finding his mother (increased stakes), Hagai chooses his mother's life over the law (what Hagai does about it). This is called choice. When I give query advice, I tell people to focus on the three Cs: Character, Conflict, and Choice. Who is the story about, what do they have to overcome, and what will happen if they can't (or choose not to)? Adam's covered all of them succinctly, and in an entertaining way.
Though Sam has the Imperial Navy and the world's most ruthless pirate on his keel (more stakes) and voice, Hagai joins Sam's crew (more Hagai doing), headed toward some godforsaken island he's never heard of (also this whole sentence gives a couple more world tidbits). He doesn't trust Sam, and the stone haunts Hagai with visions of his own death (more stakes? Honestly at this point I think I was just slapping stuff on). This also sets up some rules of how your world works, assuming the stone is some kind of magical artifact. Nonetheless, he's determined to change the future and find his mother, if it's not already too late (parting emotional shot). This also summarizes the conflict, stakes, and choice in one decent sentence.
AIR PIRATES is an 84,000-word YA steampunk adventure (genre, but not a very clear one), I like genre-bending, I do it myself. set in an alternate world (a phrase I felt necessary to use only because "steampunk" usually implies "19th Century Earth;" I still don't know if it was necessary). I think the clarity is there. I think it would appeal to readers of Scott Westerfeld's LEVIATHAN trilogy (comparison; I usually don't do these at all because they're too much of a stretch, but after reading Leviathan, I felt like it was exactly the sort of thing I would write (if I was a genius). The wording is critical though: "I think it would appeal to readers of" rather than "my book is as awesome as"). At this point, with a query this good, I don't think the comparison was necessary, and I'm sure Adam's agent didn't use it in her decision whether or not to read pages, but this is a good example of how to handle it. My short story "Pawn's Gambit," set in the same world as AIR PIRATES, has appeared in BENEATH CEASELESS SKIES and THE BEST OF BENEATH CEASELESS SKIES, YEAR TWO anthology (professional credits; I'm lucky to have one, but for years I left this part blank, and that's okay too). Yep, it helps, but is not required. If you have no credits, just leave it blank.
So, just to try to summarize, if I can wrap my head around all this, I think the biggest strong point in Adam's query writing skills comes in his ability to combine ideas he needs to convey into single concepts. Like a sword with a soul-trap enchantment, it accomplishes two (or more) things at once. This is especially evident in his opening hook, but if you look closely, his query letter is full of examples of it.
He doesn't spend a lot of time going into detail about the conflict, and in fact we have very little idea about most of the plot, but it works just fine, because we know just what we need to know, and nothing more. Keep in mind that an agent will see the pages to get an idea of the writing, and will then go to the synopsis to find out what happens (plot).
What do you guys think? Can you make heads or tails of all this colored text? Does Adam's book sound as awesome to you as it does to me? Do you like Naruto? What about Avatar, the Last Airbender (no, not the film)?
NOTE: Adam is also going to be featured on Mother. Write. (Repeat.) today, chatting with his agent, Tricia, about how they hooked up (not like that). So you should definitely read that as well.
