Query Letters 101

By Kristi Belcamino 

I consider myself a bit of an expert on query letters.

If you think I’m being arrogant, yeah, maybe a little, but the reason I consider myself somewhat of an expert is that I’ve queried around 100 agents and fine-tuned my query letter as I went.

I want to share with you my query letter that nabbed me the most kick butt rock star agent around, Stacey Glick, of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. (If you somehow haven’t heard of them, let’s just say that along with repping me, they also represent the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.) No, I’m not biased. Ha!

So here is my query, after much massaging:

Dear KICK BUTT AGENT:

I am seeking representation for my crime fiction novel, BLESSED ARE THE DEAD. This novel was inspired by a story I covered as a crime reporter and my own efforts to get a serial killer to confess to taking and killing a little girl. When the man died in prison two years ago, I was called for a comment, so I guess I’m considered an “expert” on him now.

Gabriella Giovanni has never met a man more exciting than a murder.

Her big Italian-American family can’t understand why Gabriella chooses her adrenaline-pumping career as a San Francisco Bay Area newspaper reporter over being married with little bambinos running around. Instead, Gabriella spends her days flitting in and out of other people’s nightmares and then walking away unscathed, like a teenager exiting the haunted house at the fair. That’s partly because for twenty years Gabriella’s managed to avoid confronting her own dark childhood memories: her sister’s kidnapping and murder.

That changes when a little girl disappears on the way to the school bus stop.

Gabriella’s quest for justice and a front-page story leads her to a convicted kidnapper who reels her in with tales of his exploits as a longtime serial killer and his promises to reveal his secrets to her alone. Editors warn Gabriella she is in danger of losing her job when the biggest newspaper in town keeps scooping her on the story. Believing that the fate of her beloved job and solving the mystery of her sister’s disappearance both lie in the hands of a serial killer, Gabriella risks her life to meet him when he is sprung from jail on a technicality.

The novel is complete at 88,000 words and took first place in the mystery category of The 2011 Sandy Writing Contest. The final judge, an editor at Simon and Schuster, said this about it:

“I liked Gabriella and wanted to spend time with her. I also thought the author did a good job establishing character, plot, AND building suspense within a short period of time. This reminded me of Sue Grafton or Jan Burke.”

I am a member of Sisters in Crime, polished my manuscript in a master class on the novel at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, and am involved in three writing critique groups. I am a freelance writer and maintain two blogs.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration. I have included the first chapter so you can get a feel for my voice.

Sincerely,

Kristi Belcamino

Let’s break it down:

1^st paragraph

Introduces you. So, I know Janet Reid (Query Shark) hates that introductory paragraph, but I say unless you are querying JANET REID, keep it in. It’s polite.

The next three paragraphs:

The summary of your novel. This is what you want to appear on the back cover copy of your book. It’s fun to write and summarize in this way.

The  next paragraph or two: Facts about you and your novel/your credentials. (It’s 80,000 words. I’m a Sisters in Crime member. My manuscript won an award.)

Closing paragraph:

Thank you and HEY I’ve included the first five pages (or first chapter) so you can get a feel for my voice!

Okay. So a few things to point out. I always, always, always included that last line. I either included five pages or an entire chapter. My thought was if the query had interested them, but they were on the fence, they could read further to see if my writing was something they liked. I really recommend doing this unless someone specifically says “QUERY ONLY.”

In addition, only include it in the email. If you attach it, an agent will probably never look at it. Attachments are a big no-no in the query process unless they ask you to attach a word doc.

I knew my query was working because I had dozens of requests to read my full manuscript.  And, then I also came across this article by Literary Agent Jill Marr on how to query agents. And lo, and behold, as I read her article, I saw this in an article she wrote on queries:

There are also several ways to stand out in a good way. Here are a few examples of some first lines that have caught my eye recently:

 ....

Gabriella has never met a man more exciting than a murder. (Again, this one works because the author is showing me so much, but in a new and different way. This character is a loner and someone who deals with death and murders. I already like her!)

So, Jill liked it, too. The reason I even have the gumption to offer up my query in the hopes that it will help is because when I first sat down to write my query letter, I had a stack of query letters from other authors that I used as inspiration.

I hope by me sharing this and you reading it you can get some ideas or inspiration about writing query letters.

Writing with an iPod

By

Scott D. Parker

Well my five year old iPod touch finally died. It was strange death too because it's still basically works except for the bottom part of the screen near the dock. That area just stopped accepting any touches. I replaced it this week with a fifth-generation iPod touch. Boy I didn't know what I was missing. I'm always on the lookout for new ways to improve my writing efficiency and I think the new iPod touch might be that tool. This counts for the iPhone as well, but I'm not sure about the Android devices since I don't have any.

Took me about four days to finally realize the little microphone icon means I can dictate to the iPod. I am a big fan of the DragonDictate program on the Macintosh, I love speech to text technology. It doesn't always get everything right, like the previous sentence didn't put the dashes in between speech to text, but it gets a whole bunch of things right. The fact that there is not currently a full version of a dragon app that you can use on an iPod  means that this dictation to the iPod will stand in its place. I am correcting a few things along the way, but not very many at all.

Now that I have a device that runs iOS 7, I have a whole lot more apps available to me. One of the neatest ones I have found so far is called Index Cards for the iPhone. As a writer who still uses real index cards to plan and work out plot structures, having an app like this on the iPod is going to make my brainstorming sessions during the workday much more efficient. Nice feature of the dictating part of the iPod is that I can dictate and then type to fix an error and then dictate again, something the Dragon program on my Macintosh does not do well.

The app mimics you sitting at your desk with a stack of index cards, pens, and highlighters in front of you. After you start a project, you get this screen:

You enter your scene number on top. Notice the dictation software didn't put in the numerals. Maybe I have to say "number 1". The next space is where you can write what happens in the scene. At the bottom, where it reads “Long Text,” you can actually write more text than would fit on an index card. Lastly, you can assign colored labels to each card. You’ll end up with something like this:

You flip the iPod on it’s side, and you get a traditional index card look:

All of this is way cool. I’ve used it to work through my current book during my walking breaks at the day job. I can sync to Dropbox for a backup and, the thing that sold me on this app versus others, it syncs with Scrivener.

I know I’m just scratching the surface of what this app can do for me, but I’m super excited.

What mobile, on-the-go apps do y’all use for writing, brainstorming, or other writerly things?

Letting Go

By Alex Segura

It never ends.

That's one thing I’ve realized – even this early in my writing career. Nothing is ever done. Things stop or slow down, but they rarely reach a point of completion where I feel like I wouldn’t change a single comma or period. It just doesn’t happen. The medium doesn’t matter, either – be it a comic script, short story, novel or press release. I never feel like it’s perfect.

That took some getting used to. It’s hard to accept or deal with. But it’s a reality of the life we live as writers. I was tempted to say “the life we’ve chosen,” but that’s not accurate. I didn’t choose this. At certain times - before I was published and before I'd finished anything - I said I “wanted” to be a writer. Now, it’s more that I have to be one. Which is great when the ideas are flowing and I’m sitting down and writing. Not as great when I haven’t put pen to paper in a few days and I’m an absolute chore to be around. It’s not a choice – it’s something we have to do.

So, when writing is something you always think about and feel, it’s hard to let things go. It's hard to let people or scenes or stories go because they take up so much space in our brains and hearts that you want to perfectly translate what’s in your head to the printed page. But we have to let go – otherwise we run the risk of becoming that guy that references that novel he’s going to finish one day.

I’m thinking about all this as I recover from the week-long insanity that is San Diego Comic-Con. It’s an annual marathon I run for my day job and it’s brutal. You’re “on” for almost a week and by the time you get home your brain is jelly and you’ve forgotten most of what happened. But I couldn’t have a jelly brain because I had a giant item on my to-do list I could not ignore: Down the Darkest Street novel revisions.

Down the Darkest Street is the second Pete Fernandez novel, sequel to my debut, Silent City. I think it’s a better book. I hope people will see that, too. It’s definitely a – no pun intended – darker book, and hopefully not the sequel one would expect after reading Silent City. It was and is a harder book to write. Not in the “creative differences” or “challenging” PR spin way. It was harder to write because more stuff is going on, the characters are facing bigger mental, emotional and physical challenges and because second novels – like second albums – are inherently tougher. I think so, at least.

I’ve also had a blast writing it. I don’t want it to end.

I feel like I live in this world, with these characters I know and love and I get bummed out every time I get close to the end of an edit or rewrite because I know it’s not perfect. If I go back, I’ll find a better way to turn a phrase or resolve Plot Thread X or show this character’s true intentions…but at a certain point, you have to let go.

It was really tough sending the book off to my agent, even knowing that at some point – be it another round of notes from her or from the editor or whatever – I will get another chance to tinker. But letting go is part of the writing process and it’s a skill we learn as we do more of it. Knowing when to step back and let things percolate or, if you’re lucky, let things go and become a real, honest-to-God book.

On the bright side, once you’ve let go of one, you can start another. But that’s a story for another time.

How do you know when it’s time to let your WIP go on to the next stage?