Andrea Franco-Cook's Current Query Revised - Critiqued

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

The letter:

Dear Agent,

Soledad Mendoza is mankind's last hope. Okay, again, this is vague and a bit cliche. Who is she? I mean as a CHARACTER? At least that's what the winged Mayan god who shows up after her father's death tells her. But she is an unlikely hero. The young English professor doesn't understand why a god would choose a person whose weakness for scotch makes her a prime candidate for a twelve-step program. Growing up in the sleepy town of Charleston, West Virginia never prepared her for anything like this.

Hmm. Something about this is difficult to connect with. You've got all the necessary details, inciting incident, hook-ish premise, a character we can sympathize with, but ... for some reason it just feels off. 

I think the problem is that you're presenting this in the wrong order. Tell me about Soledad's teaching and scotch drinking and missing her father before you get to the god. Remember: almost all stories begin with an innocent world, in which a character may be suffering, but the major conflict of the actual plot of the story is not going on yet. Then an inciting incident occurs, and their world is flipped on its head. That kind of opening in a query, a kind of innocent world in which you can really deliver a sense of CHARACTER, will start you off right, get the reader to care about your CHARACTER, which will then make everything that comes after automatically that much better.

In the 1500s the Mayan God secretly entrusted her conquistador ancestor with the Ouroboros Amulet, a weapon containing the power of Heaven, which only one Mendoza descendant can wield. I'm not sure you need this. Don't get bogged down in too much detail. Just give us the good stuff. Too bad, her father took the amulet's location to his grave. Like this.

That's only the beginning of her troubles. She learns that her late father's friend, U.S. Senator Earl Edmondson, is aligned with a malevolent god who will assure ensure? the politician's ascendance to the presidency. Knowing that his only obstacle is the amulet that Soledad seeks, the senator turns his dark eye on her.

This is actually pretty good. A little wordy, but full of specificity.

As her enemies converge, the winged god offers a strategy to help, but his motives aren't exactly noble. Soledad discovers that she is merely a pawn in a supernatural game of treachery. If she is to stop Edmondson from ascending to the White House, she must find the amulet and the strength within herself to defeat him, or there will be Hell on Earth.

This is pretty great. Not exactly a sadistic choice, but you do end with a nice sense of either/or.

Pawn of The Gods PAWN OF THE GODS is a completed 95,000 word Urban Fantasy novel, and it is the first of a planned trilogy. This tale of an ordinary English professor caught in a battle between good and evil, flashes between the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries, blending Spanish history with Mayan lore and apocalyptic Christian beliefs.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Andrea Franco-Cook

Okay, in summary, this is definitely an improvement. In fact, I think you're pretty close.

I would focus on the first paragraph, and if you can get it into the kind of format/order I suggested, so we really get to know your character first, and then once we care about her, BAM! you hit us with this winged god showing up, and suddenly her comfortable world of sipping scotch and grading papers becomes exciting and scary as hell.

After that, maybe a few tweaks here and there, but the final two thirds of this query are pretty good as-is.

That's it!

What do you all think? Anyone want to take a crack at rewriting Andrea's opening paragraph?

Andrea Franco-Cook's Current Query Revised

Today we have a revision for Andrea Franco-Cook's query, which we had a look at in August.

The query:

Dear Agent,

Soledad Mendoza is mankind's last hope. At least that's what the winged Mayan god who shows up after her father's death tells her. But she is an unlikely hero. The young English professor doesn't understand why a god would choose a person whose weakness for scotch makes her a prime candidate for a twelve-step program. Growing up in the sleepy town of Charleston, West Virginia never prepared her for anything like this.

In the 1500s the Mayan God secretly entrusted her conquistador ancestor with the Ouroboros Amulet, a weapon containing the power of Heaven, which only one Mendoza descendant can wield. Too bad, her father took the amulet's location to his grave.

That's only the beginning of her troubles. She learns that her late father's friend, U.S. Senator Earl Edmondson, is aligned with a malevolent god who will assure the politician's ascendance to the presidency. Knowing that his only obstacle is the amulet that Soledad seeks, the senator turns his dark eye on her.

As her enemies converge, the winged god offers a strategy to help, but his motives aren't exactly noble. Soledad discovers that she is merely a pawn in a supernatural game of treachery. If she is to stop Edmondson from ascending to the White House, she must find the amulet and the strength within herself to defeat him, or there will be Hell on Earth.

Pawn of The Gods is a completed 95,000 word Urban Fantasy novel, and it is the first of a planned trilogy. This tale of an ordinary English professor caught in a battle between good and evil, flashes between the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries, blending Spanish history with Mayan lore and apocalyptic Christian beliefs.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Andrea Franco-Cook

That's it!

Please thank Andrea for sharing, and save your feedback for tomorrow.

Andrea Franco-Cook's Current Query Critiqued

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

The letter:

Dear Agent,

Brief personal opening here-catered to agent.

An ancient evil looms over Soledad Mendoza, although she just doesn't know it. Bonus points for naming your protagonists (I hope) in your opening line, but otherwise this is vague and a bit cliche. Honestly, vague language is the main problem I see with queries that just don't quite work. More on that in a minute. For thirty years the widowed English professor has lived in the sleepy city of Charleston, West Virginia. Good. See how this kind of very specific language works so much better? We still don't have great sense of CHARACTER, but we have some, and we certainly have a clear idea of her situation. Her boredom and loneliness are often drowned in nightly jiggers of scotch and lesson plans. This isn't exactly fair. You can't mention Scotch in a query and not have me love it. But all this changes when her father's sudden death plunges her into a supernatural war, and a secret family history that began in a Mayan jungle during the sixteenth-century. Whoa, okay.

So, as opening paragraphs go, this is really uneven. It starts out vague, and with little sense of CHARACTER, but then slowly starts to improve, revealing at least a specific situation, and a character of good taste, if boring evenings, and then it kind of goes nuts.

You are also lacking a consistent sense of voice and tone. Up until the final sentence of this paragraph, it sounds like this book will be a quiet literary character study of a lonely widowed English professor. You know, something almost Franzen-esque, but then suddenly at the end here, you reveal a much more exciting story, with loads of potential conflict brought on by an unique and fascinating inciting incident. You don't want to surprise readers like this. Try to see if you can work that kind of supernatural thriller type tone into your opening lines as well.

Enter U.S. Senator Earl Edmondson Ugh. Not a query level issue so much as a story level one, but alliteration in character names always makes me cringe a little—a friend of her late father and a key power player in this war. His pact with a malevolent god all but assures the senator's ascendance to the presidency. However, his unholy aspirations are threatened when he discovers Soledad is set to inherit the Ouroboros amulet—a mystical weapon of indescribable power.

Hmm. This is getting kind of cool, but I have to say the dichotomy between how this query starts out (contemporary, normal, realistic world) and where it is now still feels jarring. Obviously all stories, even paranormal ones, start out in a somewhat comfortable beginning before the STORY/CONFLICT/PLOT begins, but that doesn't mean you want the query to work that way.

Just as her enemies are converging, in walks a Mayan winged-god, Whoa. Um ... okay. First, it should be "winged Mayan god." Unless winged-god is some kind of specific god-type in the world of your story, those adjectives are out of order. But otherwise, this is pretty cool. I hope he's hot. who may be her salvation or her damnation. He claims to have been her family's protector for centuries, but Soledad soon realizes she is merely a pawn in the god's supernatural game of treachery. As she struggles with her new found responsibility, Soledad must accept her fate and use the amulet against Edmondson if she hopes to stop him from taking over the White House. There's just one problem, her father took the weapon's location to his grave.

Oh. She doesn't even have it yet? Damn. That sucks.

Okay, so ... this query has a lot of cool elements. You actually end with a pretty good sense of a sadistic CHOICE. It could be a little clearer, but it's not bad. I won't nitpick this paragraph, but will try to cover the big picture in my summary.

Pawn of The Gods PAWN OF THE GODS is a completed 95,000 word Adult Urban Fantasy novel, and it is the first of a planned series. This tale of an ordinary English professor who is caught in a battle between good and evil flashes back and forth between the Sixteenth and twenty-first centuries, blending Spanish history with Mayan lore and apocalyptic Christian beliefs.

This is actually pretty good housekeeping, brief and to the point.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Andrea Franco-Cook

Okay, so in summary, this query has a lot of the elements that make queries great: clear CONFLICT, a sense of a tough CHOICE to be made, specific scenarios and situations, but it isn't quite gelling for me as is.

The biggest problem is your opening. "Widowed," "English professor," "sleepy city," these are all things that happen to Soledad, or positions she holds, are settings she is in. Drinking Scotch while being bored and lonely grading papers at night is really the only sense of CHARACTER we get for your protagonist.

That is not enough!

The most important thing in any query letter (frankly, in any STORY) is CHARACTER. If we don't care about your character, and sympathize with her as a person, we're not going to care (or at least not as much) about what happens to her or whether she succeeds at whatever she's trying to accomplish.

CONFLICT and CHOICE are great, and they are important, and you even cover them pretty well here, but we've got almost no sense of who Soledad is before her story starts. Sure, we can infer some things from her situation, and by the fact that she reacts to it by drinking alone with her boredom, but we need more, and we need it right up front in this query.

That's it.

What do you all think? Any other suggestions?

Andrea Franco-Cook's Current Query

Today we have Andrea Franco-Cook's current query. If you don't know Andrea, you should visit her blog and give it a follow.

Now, the query:

Dear Agent,

Brief personal opening here-catered to agent.

An ancient evil looms over Soledad Mendoza, although she just doesn't know it. For thirty years the widowed English professor has lived in the sleepy city of Charleston, West Virginia. Her boredom and loneliness are often drowned in nightly jiggers of scotch and lesson plans. But all this changes when her father's sudden death plunges her into a supernatural war, and a secret family history that began in a Mayan jungle during the sixteenth-century.

Enter U.S. Senator Earl Edmondson—a friend of her late father and a key power player in this war. His pact with a malevolent god all but assures the senator's ascendance to the presidency. However, his unholy aspirations are threatened when he discovers Soledad is set to inherit the Ouroboros amulet—a mystical weapon of indescribable power.

Just as her enemies are converging, in walks a Mayan winged-god , who may be her salvation or her damnation. He claims to have been her family's protector for centuries, but Soledad soon realizes she is merely a pawn in the god's supernatural game of treachery. As she struggles with her new found responsibility, Soledad must accept her fate and use the amulet against Edmondson if she hopes to stop him from taking over the White House. There's just one problem, her father took the weapon's location to his grave.

Pawn of The Gods is a completed 95,000 word Adult Urban Fantasy novel, and it is the first of a planned series. This tale of an ordinary English professor who is caught in a battle between good and evil flashes back and forth between the Sixteenth and twenty-first centuries, blending Spanish history with Mayan lore and apocalyptic Christian beliefs.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Andrea Franco-Cook

That's it!

Please thank Andrea for sharing, and like me, save your feedback for tomorrow.