You think writing a novel is hard, do you? Try boiling it down to 250 words. I’m on at least the twenty-fifth version of mine and am only now approaching coherence.
For anyone trying to get their query letter up to snuff, I highly recommend Janet Reid’s QueryShark. Janet has likely put hundreds of hours into helping folks get their queries in shape for submission. To be clear, QueryShark isn’t a query-revision service. It is a repository of queries that are good, bad, perfect, etc. Many are revised a number of times until they’re ready. It’s a lovely service and I highly recommend it. I didn’t even begin drafting my query letter until I’d read a couple hundred of the submissions on QueryShark. So shoutout to Janet Reid for that. She also runs an informative blog here.
@davidrslayton on Twitter posted the following diagram, which is a great way to check the readiness of your query:
Up next-the one sentence summary. I get asked enough about that and I need to have it down.
“Girl volunteers to help save the galaxy but can’t seem to get out of her own way.” Hmmm.
