Querying

Let’s talk about query letters for a minute. Specifically, let’s talk about the plot summary portion of a query letter.

(Note: This post is going to have a bunch of spoilers for Mairelon the Magician, which I’m using as an example.)

Query letters are conventionally limited to one page, in which you have to provide the editor with critical information about your manuscript (genre, word count, completion status) and then boil your 100,000+ word manuscript down into the two or three paragraphs that will occupy all the room you have left on your one page.

There are two fundamental mistakes that I see in query letters. The first is a failure to identify the core of the story (which is really all you have room for in a query letter), and the second is attempting to write as if the query were a blurb.

Failure to identify the core of the story leaves the writer flailing around, trying to cram every possible bit of information  into two paragraphs. The result tends to be either a disjointed attempt to mention every character and subplot, or else a paragraph and a half of “vital” backstory followed by a couple of sentences about the actual manuscript. The attempt to mention everything that’s going on frequently looks something like this:

Mairelon returns to England. Jasper hires Kim to investigate. Andrew visits Renee, looking for Mairelon. Mairelon and Hunch perform at the Hungerford Market, where Kim tries to burgle their wagon and gets caught. Jasper hires Stuggs, not realizing he is a Bow Street Runner. Mairelon talks Kim into helping him. Kim escapes from Jasper and Stuggs, but has a close call with Dan Laverham. Meanwhile, Jonathan’s druids hold a meeting and decide to steal the bowl. On his way to meet Edward, Mairelon runs into Andrew outside Renee’s…

The “backstory first” version has the virtue of being somewhat more coherent, but gives a totally false impression of the story:

At the height of the Napoleonic Wars, Richard Merrill, an upperclass magician in London, is recruited by Edward Shoreham to help foil Napoleon’s spies in London. Shortly thereafter, a collection of valuable magical tools known as the Saltash Set is stolen, and the planted evidence implicates Richard. Mairelon escapes to the continent with the help of French socialite Renee D’Auber and spends the rest of the war engaging in active spying. In the process, he recovers one of the three parts of the Saltash Set, which has been broken up and sold. At the end of the war, still under suspicion, he returns to England at last, clears his name, and recovers the rest of the Saltash Set with the help of a street urchin named Kim.

Attempting to make the plot summary sound like a back blurb has similar problems. There are still a few who try the “wall of quotes” style of blurb, probably in an attempt at humor, but since this tells the editor/agent exactly nothing about the book, it never works:

“Mairelon the Magician has great characters and a fantastic plot—I couldn’t put it down!” – My Brother

“Kept me up all night!” – My Best Friend

I take that back; if your brother’s name is Stephen King or your best friend is Oprah Winfrey, you might attract the attention of an editor/agent … but it’s equally likely that they’ll think you’re joking and pass. If you have big-name recommendations, get them to write a separate letter and enclose a copy.

The more common query-as-blurb looks like the back blurb on a paperback book or the teaser description in an Amazon listing:

Kim is a guttersnipe in Regency London, making a precarious living doing whatever jobs—legal or illegal—she can find. But when her latest mark turns out to be a true magician, she finds herself caught up in a complicated plot that stretches from the criminal back streets to the highest Society country homes, with roots in the past that may change her future … provided she can avoid the threats that continue to stalk her.

The problem with this is that a back blurb is meant to persuade readers that they’re likely to enjoy the book, without giving away the plot or the ending. Editors and agents need to be persuaded that the book has a coherent plot, that it comes to a proper ending, and that it is something their line can sell to a lot of people.

Most of the time, the writer can only tell whether their story “fits the editor’s line” in the broadest sense—i.e., most writers know better than to submit a historical quest fantasy set in Han Dynasty China to an editor who runs a line of modern police-procedural detective novels. The writer does know the plot and the ending, though, and that’s what goes in the query letter plot summary.

The real trick (especially for the writer who is trying to cram all 100,000+ words of plot into 300 words of summary) is identifying exactly what the plot is. I find it works best for most writers (not all, but the vast majority) if they start with an elevator pitch—that is, one normal-length sentence that covers the key points.

Mairelon the Magician is the story of a street urchin who helps a falsely-accused magician clear his name and untangle a complicated and far-reaching plot in a magical Regency England.

I find it a lot easier to expand a sentence like that than to try to prune an entire manuscript, or even a five-page plot outline, down to a couple of paragraphs. Additionally, starting with the elevator pitch pretty much forces me to focus on the central story; I can’t get distracted by Mairelon’s cool backstory as a spy or the complicated tangle of subplots.

For the final query summary, I would want to include more specifics, and I’d want to provide more about the sub-plots than “they’re complicated and far-reaching,” but I don’t need to trace all of them in depth. Expanding the above would give me something like this:

When a London toff hires Kim to burgle the wagon of a stage magician, Kim expects an easy job. But Mairelon is a real magician, and Kim is caught in the act. Instead of turning her over to the Bow Street Runners, Mairelon persuades her to join him in recovering a collection of magical tools that he was falsely accused of stealing. Soon she finds herself dodging would-be druids and a criminal mastermind with high Society connections, in addition to the Runners and some of Mairelon’s upper-crust family, friends, and enemies. Recovering the missing pieces of the Saltash Set becomes more and more difficult—and dangerous—as they discover that one person after another has stolen, duplicated, or hidden the items they are looking for. When everyone finally converges on the location of the last piece, it takes all Mairelon’s magic, all Kim’s wits, and even the tiny bit of magic that Kim has managed to learn to successfully retrieve the Saltash Set, clear Mairelon’s name, and see the real criminal arrested.

That provides a reasonably coherent overview of the plot and ending, with enough detail of both for an editor to decide whether it looks promising or not.

On January 12, 2021   /   Writing  

Tags: query letters, the biz