Queries may very well become the bane of my existence once I've conquered the whole editing problem.I sat down yesterday to do the Wednesday Workout, and it was hard!
Very hard.
This is why I'm starting my query letter now. By the time I'm finished writing the book, editing, and polishing I *might* have figured out how to write a decent query.
I'm posting the first attempts here. You may laugh, but only if you offer constructive commentary after!
First, I broke down the story seed for Mirror in the Grave:
Sam Rose is against cloning and clone rights. She’s a recovering Catholic from Canada (say that three times fast) working for the North American Territory Investigations Division as the Alabama’s Divisions chief gopher. She wants a crack at the real crimes, but her boss keeps tossing her the bad ones. When a Jane Doe shows up on the slab that matches Sam’s stats she realizes that she, or her estranged family, could wind up in jail for identity theft. And she’s really be out of a job.
Making an executive decision to save her life, Sam buries the evidence six feet under, paperwork and all. But a new case opens a new way of thinking for Sam. If time travel is possible, could the woman on the slab be a warning?
What I see is: Who - Original Goal - Original Complication - Action - Complication 2
Turning it around for Twisted Metal I have:
Roan (no last name), who wants to survive, who is working the ER in the middle of a military coup, who is taken off-planet by the new government to save the life of an alien prisoner, who then winds up living with aliens and hunted by her government...
Cleaning it up:
Doctor Ar Theta One (Roan in her own mind) just wants to survive the current regime change on her home planet of Pequena. Soldiers force her off-planet at gun point, and she's offered an ultimatum: keep their alien prisoner alive or burn to death as a traitor.
When her patient escapes Roan finds herself the alien living on a world she could never have imagined. Burying the pain of her past isn't enough to keep her past from hunting her down to make good on their promise to see her burn as a traitor.
Verdict: Meh... I have seven months to work on this, and I need it.
What's really hard here is that this doesn't really tell the story. It's killing me! This says nothing about Leo, or Ulric, or Roan's BFF Eschel, or the crazy lady with drug tattoos, or the strange cultures, or ANYTHING! This isn't my story in a sentence, it's barely a hint of what could be.
I've been told that a good query is a teaser, like the back of a book. But I still want to show someone more.
Fun twist: Even if this were my query letter (it's not) I wouldn't send this letter to everyone. This version would be good for an agent or publisher who wants just straight sci-fi. This sells the humanistic aspects of the story.
Because there is kissing in this book I could try to sell it as a SFR novel, the query for agents who represent romance would be different. If I knew the agent was really looking for a spunky sci-fi heroine starring a comedic sci-fi, I'd change the query again.
Adapt or die is the motto for queries. Make it work by selling the agent what they want!
(Go ahead - rip, shred, comment - I can take it)
I've got some ideas about query letters on my website if it helps in anyway. www.margaret-west.com
ReplyDeleteI'm just going to offer some thoughts for Mirror in the Grave right now...
ReplyDeleteAs a whole, your synopsis certainly intrigues me... and that's good because I'm not much of a sci-fi guy. So I think you have a good basis from which to work!
Personally, I'd ditch the "say that three times fast" part.
I think you have a tense issue with "And she's really be out of a job." Perhaps "she'd" would work better?
This is quite possibly a matter of personal preference, but I try to avoid using the same word twice in sentence (except prepositions and possibly pronouns). So I'd change the sentence that reads "But a new case opens a new way of thinking for Sam." Without being super familiar, I'm not sure which "new" I would modify, or what to modify it as... if that makes sense.
Anyhow, like I said, it definitely grabs my attention and makes me want to read it... which, I believe, is what you are going for here!! :)
Regardin my last point... It is driving me nuts that I used the word "good" -- such a generic one at that!! -- twice in consecutive sentences. Horrible writing and I should have caught it!
ReplyDeleteUgh.
Hey, hope this gives you some thoughts... feel free to ignore if not.
ReplyDeleteI liked the first paragraph. I found the second paragrah messy & somewhat generic.
"When her patient escapes Roan finds herself the alien living on a world she could never have imagined*. Burying the pain of her past isn't enough to keep her past from hunting her down to make good on their promise to see her burn as a traitor."
*I don't understand - did she escape with the patient or was she the alien living on another world already? Or does she run away after the patient escapes?
Second sentence is just blergh. 1. Burying the pain of your past has a limited link to your past tracking you down... not least because they're two different types of past - she's probably thinking about her childhood while government officials are aiming the sniper rifle. 2. I'm sure it's been said before. And better. 3. The way you've phrased it... it comes across as if she's going to burn. Which is offputting to putting emotional commitment into a book/character. 4. Also... at this stage I don't really know her, I don't care about her and "burying the pain of her past" (actually that's a cliche, isn't it?) suggests to my biased self that she'll be a whiney victim rather than motivated or having fun.
On the amount of information you give us your bad guys sound plain nasty with little logic. They track down this poor woman who tried her best with the aim of burning her alive. A sentence of context would probably help - if by letting the prisoner escape they lost some lucrative deal I'd have more understanding about their motivation.
Where do the friends you feel important come in? Do they offer to try and hide her or? Cos that's stuff you could maybe include.
Above is purely my opinion based on my reaction if I read this on the back of a bookcover :)
Margaret - I'll go look- thanks!
ReplyDeleteJ.M. - Mirror in the Grave is near-future, so it's not too scary. I like your suggestions. Thank you! :o)
Magic of Words - I love you! Those are the questions I needed. The antagonist wants Roan back because they think she knows how to keep the aliens in check. The Antag wants to enslave the alien race, but the formula Roan used in the lab (and on her patient) isn't on the records. The final choice for Roan is saving her life by giving the formula to the Antag, or saving her friends ... somehow. Someone's going to die in the end, and Roan really doesn't want to be the corpse.
"The final choice for Roan is saving her life by giving the formula to the Antag, or saving her friends ... somehow. Someone's going to die in the end, and Roan really doesn't want to be the corpse."
ReplyDeleteFifty million times better than the bland genericness of the second para of the official query :) That actually shows voice, to some degree :)
Don't be clinical. You have to let the voice shine through, and that's where the reader gets the hints of all those awesome things to come that you can't fit into the query.
Inky - I told you I needed to start early!
ReplyDeleteI'll be back in a few weeks with an improved query. Let me add another 20k to the actual manuscript though. :o)