So You're Writing a Novel Forum Query Letter group

Hi everyone,

While there are a nearly limitless number of groups here for critiquing books/stories, there seems to be a lack of places to get feedback on our query letters.  As many of you probably know, the query letter can either act as a window or a wall between agents/publishers and your actual book.  And yet, why is it that we spend countless hours preening our manuscripts, yet draft up a letter in ten minutes and send it off to a publisher? 

I certainly don't want to take any steam away from this group, but I thought I'd open up a place where we can all post query letters and get good, honest feedback on them.  (Query-Letter-reviews)

Maybe because a letter takes less time to write than a novel/story?

A query letter doesn't take less time... Writers tend to agonize over writing the query letter, trying to make it perfect in every possible way, except that what is perfect to one person is absolutely wrong to another, and there's no way to be sure which is which until after they reject you (but you'll never know WHAT you did wrong, or even IF you did something wrong, or if it's just that the person you sent the letter to has decided that authors of your species aren't trendy enough this year). And that's not even taking into account the even-more-dreaded thing that they sometimes want accompanying the query, the 3-page synopsis. (If we could tell our stories in 3 pages, why would we have bothered to write the other 400?)  I HATE writing query letters. I hate trying to guess which agents and publishers want a lot of hyperbole (which I also hate, under any circumstances - and I wonder how often writers these days are including in those queries that "I write like Stephen King" or whatever) and "the deeper meaning" of the story, and which want just the barest bones of the plot along with the protagonist's name.  

I'm not sure I would say that the extreme disparity of "what is perfect to one person is absolutely wrong to another" is true.  I've spoken to a number of different publishers, agents, and authorities on writing (editors at the Quill & Quire, etc) and there is definitely a sort of "standard gamut" of stuff they look for in your query letter. 

They want a quick plot synopsis (usually no more than a paragraph), but one with enough intrigue to make them want to read the actual synopsis or ask you for a sample of the manuscript.  You don't have to sum up your entire plot in 1 paragraph (or even 3 pages of a synopsis).  But almost moreso than that, they basically want a reason for "why your book should exist."  This can be any number of things, a theme you want to convey because it holds some special meaning to you, a life experience the book is based on, an original concept you want to explore.  Basically, a real-world relatable reason for them to publish you over joe-schmoe next door.  If this is what you mean by the "deeper meaning," then in my experience publishers ALWAYS want this.  Story ideas are a dime-a-dozen - for the most part, they aren't interested in your plot no matter how groundbreaking it might be.  What they are looking for is a well executed idea with a purpose-for-being.  That is much rarer.

In terms of hyperbole, IMO hyperbole is almost always a good thing.  It allows you to say 100 things in one word.  I think the key is more that they want the RIGHT hyperbole.  Study the agency/publisher, see what works they've put out in the past.  Compare your work to their works, or at least to works in the same vein as those they tend to put out.  This either means a lot of reading/visits to the library, or if you cheat like me... a lot of Wikipedia.  ; D

In general though, the letter should never be JUST the barest bones of the plot along with the protagonist's name (which is what a lot of these letters become). 

Again, I want to make sure that you know this isn't really me saying this (I'm still unpublished, so honestly I have no credibility), but this is stuff I've been told by multiple people in the industry via lectures by former publishers, correspondence with published authors, etc.  My opinion doesn't mean squat, but their opinion means everything.  If you're interested in more of this, I'm trying to compile all the notes I've gotten over the years here.