Hannah Kincade's Current Query Critiqued

Okay. Sorry I'm late this morning, I had to drop my daughter off for her AP Lit exam this morning. I'm a little nervous, but I'm sure she'll do fine.

Anyway, here we have Hannah's query again, this time with my feedback, in blue.

The letter:

Dear:

Being a fellow fan of anything horror, I think you’ll really enjoy my supernatural, YA horror.

I don't really critique the personalization part of query letters, because they're usually changed for each specific submission, but I do think you need one more word at the end here. Maybe "supernatural, YA horror manuscript?" Do you see why I say that? I hope it makes sense.

When seventeen-year-old Zachariah Malone faces an obstacle he can’t take out with his fists, he must find out if he’s battling an evil entity or if he belongs in a straight-jacket.

Hmm. At first glance, this isn't bad. We've got character, we've got what seems to be an inciting incident, and we've got maybe even a sadistic choice. But ... this is vague. An obstacle he can't take out with his fist is awesome for characterizing your protagonist, but it's not so great for describing your conflict. I completely understand that you're probably going to get to it in the next paragraph, but you have to be very careful, because lack of specificity is the bane of all good query letters.

After years of being bullied, Zach finally learns how to defend himself. How? Like he meets a mentor who teaches him to box? Or he studies Muay Thai? Be specific. When Zach is caught fighting on school grounds (again), he makes a deal with the school counselor: stop his confrontations and attend an advanced art class instead of risking suspension. Something about this wording feels off. Maybe it's the "risking." Seems to me he would definitely get suspended for fighting, so maybe it should be "attend an advanced art class instead of serving suspension." The problem is, he doesn’t do art. But he’ll try anything that puts him in close proximity to Jennifer Drake and, most importantly, distract him from the voice in his head. This is pretty good. It's more characterization, the potential for romance, and a rising of the stakes, since we're beginning to understand a little more about the main conflict. However, again I think you can be more specific. What does the voice in Zach's head say?

Because the voice in his head has a name: Alice. She feeds his isolating thoughts with others’ secrets, as if he needed one more thing to make him an outsider. Okay. See? This is good. This is really good. The only problem is that it kind of makes everything that comes before it wasted words. I would consider working this detail into your opening hook. I'll try to share an example below. And not even Zach’s growing relationship with Jen is enough to distract him from the idea that he’s saying goodbye to his sanity. So the voice is something new to him? I think you can clear a lot of this up with a new opening hook. When he learns there might be a connection between Alice and a series of disappearances, he starts to wonder if maybe Alice is more than just his mind steering him towards a padded cell.

When Zach wakes with blood on his hands, he races to discover the truth. What does this mean? He races where? If you don't mean literally, then consider being more specific about what Zach does to investigate the missing people. Soon the police begin to suspect him in the disappearances, and Zach must decide if he’ll fight to prove his innocence, or run from a crime Alice is beginning to convince him he committed. This last sentence is pretty effing boss though. Well done.

TO FACE BENEATH is a dark, psychological YA Horror complete at 60,000 words. It would appeal to fans of Christopher Pike and The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith. I don't like these simple, direct comparisons. I get why they're used, but I think people should try to be a little more subtle in their wording. Something like "I believe it would appeal to fans of the psychological questions posed in The Marbury Lens, by Andrew Smith, and (whatever is unique about) Monster, by Christopher Pike" (mention a specific book, if you can).

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Hannah Kincade
email.address@email.com
(***)***-****
www.thewritemood.blogspot.com
@HannahKincade

So, in summary: this query isn't bad. You've got all the elements there, you just need to re-arrange them, and bring as many specifics into the letter as you can.

Here is an example of how your opening hook could be re-written:

"Seventeen-year-old Zachariah Malone has an easy answer for most of his problems: his fists. But, when the evil entity who calls herself Alice starts feeding him other people's secrets by forcing her voice into his head, Zach must investigate a series of disappearances so that he can determine whether he’s truly battling a demonic spirit or if he simply belongs in a straight-jacket."

I know, it's way long, and I'm sure you can do better, but hopefully you see my point about how specificity can really pack more punch when it comes to your opening hook. 

Otherwise, I think the ending of this query, in particular, is quite good. You'd have to change some things in the middle, if you went with my hook, since the specifics of the voice would already be revealed, but really, that's fine. You don't want to keep secrets in a query, except for maybe withholding the very end of the book.

That's it.

What do you all think? Disagree with me on anything?

Hannah Kincade's Current Query

Hunkering right back down to business here at the QQQE, we'll have queries for the next couple weeks. Incidentally, if you're new here, because of A to Z, or otherwise, please be advised that I both Analyze Successful Queries, and Critique Queries that are close, but might need a little work. If you're interested in submitting a query for either of those series, please email me at mattmrush(at)gmail(dot)com.

Now, if you don't know Hannah Kincade, you're really missing out. You can find her horror writer blog at The Write Mood. Please make sure you drop by to follow her.

Back? Here's her query:

Dear :

Being a fellow fan of anything horror, I think you’ll really enjoy my supernatural, YA horror.

When seventeen-year-old Zachariah Malone faces an obstacle he can’t take out with his fists, he must find out if he’s battling an evil entity or if he belongs in a straight-jacket.

After years of being bullied, Zach finally learns how to defend himself. When Zach is caught fighting on school grounds (again), he makes a deal with the school counselor: stop his confrontations and attend an advanced art class instead of risking suspension. The problem is, he doesn’t do art. But he’ll try anything that puts him in close proximity to Jennifer Drake and, most importantly, distract him from the voice in his head.

Because the voice in his head has a name: Alice. She feeds his isolating thoughts with others’ secrets, as if he needed one more thing to make him an outsider. And not even Zach’s growing relationship with Jen is enough to distract him from the idea that he’s saying goodbye to his sanity. When he learns there might be a connection between Alice and a series of disappearances, he starts to wonder if maybe Alice is more than just his mind steering him towards a padded cell.

When Zach wakes with blood on his hands, he races to discover the truth. Soon the police begin to suspect him in the disappearances, and Zach must decide if he’ll fight to prove his innocence, or run from a crime Alice is beginning to convince him he committed.

TO FACE BENEATH is a dark, psychological YA Horror complete at 60,000 words. It would appeal to fans of Christopher Pike and The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Hannah Kincade
email.address@email.com
(***)***-****
www.thewritemood.blogspot.com
@HannahKincade

That's it!

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

The Follower Project

I have a silly goal.

I would like to try to reach 1000 followers before I start querying.

Hopefully this year.

That's an arbitrary number, and I know agents really don't care how popular your blog is, but it's just something fun to think about while I do my best at this networking with other writers thing.

Lately the growth of my follower count has been stagnant. Don't worry, I know why. It's because I haven't been discovering many new blogs lately.

I'm an extremely prolific blog reader, and a very loyal visitor to blogs I like (as many of you know), but one thing I don't do (which I probably should) is poach followers. If you don't know what that means, don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds. Poaching followers is basically just visiting the blogs of people you see commenting on blogs you read.

You visit their blog, follow it, comment about it, say hello, and hope they'll do the same for you. I'm not saying I've never done it, because I have, but I don't do it often, mostly because I'm just lazy.

So anyway, I had an idea. If I was smart, like Alex, I probably would have planned ahead and made this into a blog fest, but no one's ever accused me of being smart. So I'm just going to do it today, and see what happens. The thing about blogging is that there's so much out there. So much content, and so many bloggers, it's hard to know who to follow. It's not all about who will follow back, because that's just selfish, but that is part of it. Mostly (at least for me) it's about how do I find blogs to connect with that have interesting content, which is actually relevant to what I'm trying to accomplish?

Well. I'll tell you how. You ask your friends. The people who run the blogs you already know and love. Chances are they read some great blogs you've never heard of.

So what I'm going to do, right now, is point you all to five blogs I love, that I think might be flying under your radar. They'll all be people I've never blogged about before (or at least not for a long time). I'll list them here, then you will go follow them, and tell them I told you to. That will make them like me even more than they already do (which is a lot).

Before I get to what I want you to do, I'll list the blogs. Here:

Micahel Offut - Micheal runs slckismet, and he's an interesting guy. He talks about books, and publishing, and his honesty is refreshing.

Adam Heine - Adam has an awesome last name. Add a -ken and he'd be a great beer. He also runs Author's Echo. Adam blogs about writing too, but he also loves Anime and Manga, and knows more about board games than anyone I know.

Sarah Ahiers (Falen) - Sarah runs Falen Formulates Fiction. She's a writer too, and knows the second most about board games of anyone I know. Her dog, Yvie, also writes the funniest Friday Funny posts.

Hannah Kincade (Palindrome) - Runs Musings of a Palindrome, and like Sarah, she's one of my Minnesota peeps! She also blogs about writing and publishing, and always finds the most interesting inspirational pictures (not inspirational like that, I mean as in inspiring you to write, duh). She also just got back to blogging, and we missed her so!

And here's one I know most of you don't know about, because it's nearly brand new. YA Confidential is run by some of the dopest ladies out there. Yes, it's a group blog, and I don't know if they have a follow back account, but this one is worth it for the fun design alone.

So. There's five blogs you should be reading and following. You know the rules. Go visit those links, follow the blogs, and told them I sent you.

Now here comes the important part. I don't want to just poach your followers, the people commenting on all of your lovely blogs. I want you guys to tell me who to go follow. Not just because they'll follow back (although that would be cool), but because you think I'd enjoy their blog, and you have an inkling that I might not already be aware of it.

You don't have to give me five, but please give me at least one blog you read in the comments, that you think I would like, and might not know about. You don't have to go through all the work to code the html. Just give me the link, I can copy and paste it into my browser.

Oh, and if you follow me, and lurk, and I haven't visited your blog to follow back, shame on me. Please tell me so in the comments, and I'll remedy that right now.

I don't expect this to astronomically improve my followers in one day, but it may be a repetetive theme for me, and if I get to 900 this year, I'll hold an awesome contest to get to 1000, and give a bunch of cool shit away.

NOTE: Google Friend Connect and Blogger have really been effing up the widget lately. If you visit a blog, and can't find the follower widget, hit F5 on your keyboard, to refresh the page, and it should come up.

ANOTHER NOTE: For the love of all things holy, if you run a blog, and your follower widget isn't right at the top, like mine, what are you thinking? Are you trying to make it hard for people to follow you?