Tamara Walsh's Current Query Critiqued

Happy Friday, people. I'm getting started late today, because the UK has been blowing my phone up for two hours now. Anyway, here is Tamara's query, this time with my thoughts, in red.

The letter:

Dear Agent,

Luc’s childhood is destroyed the night his best friend, Auri, falls through a rip in the fabric of Trillua and disappears into a parallel world—ours world. Hmm. This is an unconventional opening, but I kind of like it. If you could just preface this sentence with Luc's age, and maybe one adjective that describes his personality, I think you'd be in great shape. Luc soon discovers he’s still connected to Auri through his dreams. This is a cool concept, but somehow it feels like there should be a cooler way to present this. Maybe skip this line and reword the next to include the concept? In them he watches her grow from a lost, lonely child into a beautiful sixteen year old girl who doesn’t trust anyone. When the leaders of Trillua discover a way to travel to Earth, Luc risks banishment from the home and family he loves to hijack a spot on their Mission and rescue Auri. But when he arrives, Auri doesn't remember Luc or Trillua. She’s built a new life for herself--one that includes a baby foster brother and sister she's determined to take care of. Okay. I know from talking to you that this is a dual POV story, and I get that that makes for a tough query. But I know you've decided to focus on Luc, even if it's a tough choice, because neither character is really dominant. So, that being said, I think you can skip this last sentence about Auri. I know it's important to the story, but it's kind of muddying up the query right now.

Luc has one month before the Portal back home closes again--one month to convince Auri she belongs with him. But as the clock ticks down, the leaders of Trillua realize that Luc's proximity to Auri has somehow made him faster, stronger and almost invulnerable to pain or injury. Luc's unheard of powers are too much like magic--something punishable by death in his world. The leaders demand he immediately Portal home to be examined as a potential danger to Trillua. Forcing Auri to travel before she accepts the truth of her forgotten past could destroy her mind, but the leaders have threatened to exile Luc's family into the treacherous Outerlands if he doesn't return. Now Luc must choose. Abandon the girl he was born to love, or save the family who’s depending on him for their survival?

I don't know. My readers may disagree, and maybe I'm tired, or confused, but I can't find much wrong with this second paragraph. It's maybe a little long, and the writing is maybe a little wordy in places, but as far as query related content goes, you've covered the bases most excellently here, I think. I mean you've got a clear sense of conflict, and this tough choice summarized so well at the end is one of the best I've ever seen. I guess some plots are just made for queries.

The World Next Door THE WORLD NEXT DOOR is a YA light sci-fi romance with series potential, complete at 95,000 words. I believe it would appeal to fans of Alyson Noel’s Immortal Immortal series. If you're going to use comparisons, I recommend trying to word them a little more subtly. I can't think of an example, but maybe if you mention something specific about the style of the Immortal series ... I think it sounds better when you do it that way. Read my successful query examples (link), and I'm sure you'll find one that does it that way.

I’ve written twenty-five articles for the local paper, the GA Harbor Sound (The GA Harbor Sound) and been published in Woman's World Magazine Woman’s World Magazine. Thanks for your time and consideration! I look forward to hearing back from you.

Just a quick note: in query letter's WORKING TITLES of unpublished manuscripts are written in ALL CAPS. Title of Published Works (articles, short stories, novels, and the names of the publications, magazines, or papers they were published in) should be Italicized.

Sincerely,

Tamara Walsh

Okay, a quick summary, because it's now 9 AM, and I need to get this posted: I think this query is already in great shape. If you can open with a stronger sense of character, clarify a couple things about the inciting incident, and then reword your housekeeping paragraph at the end ever so slightly, I think you'd be cruising along nicely.

That's it.

What do you all think? Anything I've said you disagree with? Please share your feedback in the comments.

Tamara Walsh's Current Query

Today we have Tamara's query for her manuscript THE WORLD NEXT DOOR.

Here's the letter:

Dear Agent,

Luc’s childhood is destroyed the night his best friend, Auri, falls through a rip in the fabric of Trillua and disappears into a parallel world—our world. Luc soon discovers he’s still connected to Auri through his dreams. In them he watches her grow from a lost, lonely child into a beautiful sixteen year old girl who doesn’t trust anyone. When the leaders of Trillua discover a way to travel to Earth, Luc risks banishment from the home and family he loves to hijack a spot on their Mission and rescue Auri. But Auri doesn't remember Luc or Trillua. She’s built a new life for herself--one that includes a baby foster brother and sister she's determined to take care of.

Luc has one month before the Portal back home closes again--one month to convince Auri she belongs with him. But as the clock ticks down, the leaders of Trillua realize that Luc's proximity to Auri has somehow made him faster, stronger and almost invulnerable to pain or injury. Luc's unheard of powers are too much like magic--something punishable by death in his world. The leaders demand he immediately Portal home to be examined as a potential danger to Trillua. Forcing Auri to travel before she accepts the truth of her forgotten past could destroy her mind, but the leaders have threatened to exile Luc's family into the treacherous Outerlands if he doesn't return. Now Luc must choose. Abandon the girl he was born to love, or save the family who’s depending on him for their survival?

The World Next Door is a YA light sci-fi romance with series potential, complete at 95,000 words. I believe it would appeal to fans of Alyson Noel’s Immortal series.

I’ve written twenty-five articles for the local paper (The GA Harbor Sound) and been published in Woman’s World Magazine. Thanks for your time and consideration! I look forward to hearing back from you.

Sincerely,

Tamara Walsh

That's it.

Please thank Tamara for sharing this with us, and save your feedback for tomorrow. Thanks!

Write On Con 2012

2012 Suckas

Okay. I've kind of been dreading doing this post for a while now. Some of you who know me well have heard my bitching. I know, I'm sorry, I've been really whiny lately, but I've been sick. That's no excuse? Fair enough.

So what have I been crying about? Well, I've been attending Write On Con for three years. Three. Years. I've had some great successes in the past. Winning a query contest, earning a full request based on my first 250. So you might wonder what's getting me down.

Well, I've been attending Write On Con for so long, and blogging about publishing and query letters, and writing, and all that for so long now, the Con kind of just serves as a reminder of everything I haven't accomplished. I have plenty of friends who got on to the writing/publishing corner of the internet a lot later than me, and already have books published. I'm not jealous, I swear, I love my friend's success, I'm just ... tired. I'm tired of working so hard for my dreams, and having so little to show for it.

But you know what? My friends, my dear, close writing confidants, are right. I've learned so much, and come so far, it isn't right to be so hard on myself. There are plenty of reasons to be excited. I've had more than five agents read my full manuscript, and not one of them called me a hack. I've had published authors read my work, and both compliment my writing and spend their own precious time giving me invaluable advice. I've made friendships--nay, partnerships--that will last a life's age (that's Tolkien for lifetime, deal with it). I've finished (nearly) two epic manuscripts, and started two others. I've met, IRL no less, some of my very favorite authors.

So I need to keep my chin up, keep my eyes on the path in front of me, and quit doubting myself. After working a query tomorrow and Friday, I'll be going back on hiatus, but I do really appreciate all of your support.

If you'd like to read more, you can find the first five pages of WARRIOR-MONKS (which I've never put online before): here (the formatting is shite, due to being in a forum, so please bear with me).

The first 250 words are here, but you will have already seen them if you read that first post.

I'm also taking part in a sort of query workshop with my query, here, even though the older version has actually garnered a pretty good deal of success in the past, just because I want to be an active part of the Con, because helping other writers really is a passion of mine.

I also wrote a brief tutorial if you need help coding your signature, here.

BTW, if you read these posts, please comment, and rate the posts, because that will help more people see them, which will help me get more feedback.

Other than that, you should really participate in Write On Con. Even if you don't need the help, others do. I know plenty of published authors who frequent the forums because they love to pay it forward as much as I do.

YOU SHOULD DO THE SAME.

I love and need you all like Oxygen (this is stolen from Bethany-with love and jade), dear friends and readers, and I promise to keep chasing my dreams if you will.

Solidarity, beaches.

A Guest Post for Unicorn Bell

So I'm technically still on hiatus (getting loads done, thank you very much), but I did write a guest post for Unicorn Bell for their series this week. Please go check it out, if you have time. Thanks!

Mark Rubinkowski's Current Query Critiqued

Sorry that post went up so late yesterday. I stayed home sick from work. Ugh. I'm still not feeling that well. So if you're waiting on email from me ... that's probably why. Anyway, let's get to work. My feedback will be in red.

Here's Mark's query:

Super heroes used to exist. They protected society from the threats of super villains and mad scientists. People used to look to them for safety. One day, seventeen years ago, everything changed. The heroes accused the rest of the world of being lazy and deemed it undeserving of their protection. This has some cool things going for it, but I would suggest that this is essentially synopsis territory, and you want to hook us with something better. Something we can feel. Usually, a character.

Sixteen-year-old Mark Novak lives in Springfield, Illinois, which is run by an demented man. Like this. I like how you open with Mark's age, which is important for a YA novel (Mark doesn't include his housekeeping in this query, but I know it's YA from WriteOnCon). However, you could still stand to tell us more about who Mark is - try to think, what kind of person was he before this story started? And also, I would suggest you don't give your protagonist the same first name as you. It hints at author insertion. He is an ordinary boy whose favorite class in school is History of the Superhero this is where you might sprinkle in some of the info from your first paragraph. After you introduce us to your character, then you can introduce us to your world. And a world where superheroes used to exist sounds like a pretty cool one. and has a huge crush on a new girl. The option for romance in a YA novel is always a good one, but you don't want to introduce things from left field like this. Try to make sure things progress logically from one to another. So after mentioning the class, you can mention why such a class exists, thus building your world. One walk into the woods with his friends changes his destiny forever.

Mark and his friends start to develop powers after a chance encounter with a hidden base in the forest. Even though they barely understand what is happening, they will be forced to face down threats from science gone horribly wrong and the consequences a few acts of standing up for ones self can cause. This isn't bad, but it gets muddied by over-wordiness, especially near the end. Try to me more concise. Along the way, they begin to uncover the answers behind the disappearance of the heroes and that they may not be the heroes everyone thought they would be. Mark and his friends are faced with a choice. Use their powers and save their failing city or standby and let things take their natural course. This isn't bad either, but you need to raise the stakes. Right now, it seems like an easy choice. You need to make it clearer why letting things take their natural choice might actually be a viable option.

Okay, to summarize - I get the feeling this is an early draft, and if so, that's good. Queries are hard to write, and this is in much better shape than probably the first hundred drafts I ever wrote.

That being said, you need to focus your writing. Try to be as concise as possible, and try to make sure that things progress logically from one to another. For example, mentioning the crush right after the class, and then never coming back to it, doesn't make much sense. If the crush doesn't become some kind of romance in the manuscript, it might not be worth mentioning in the query.

Other than that, always try to be as specific as possible. You've got some cool sounding things going on here, but they're also pretty vague.

That's it.

What you you all think? Spending any time in the WriteOnCon forums?