Pitchwars 101: The Query

If you're anything like me, you stay on the fence about everything until the very last possible minute. This series of short, last minute posts will hopefully be helpful to anyone still unsure about the contest itself, the query, the first chapter, and the synopsis.

Check out my previous post in the Pitchwars 101 Series: An Overview

• The query at a glance:
• A simple introduction is fine and actually preferred. Address the person you're querying properly, and then jump right into the body of the query, unless you're personalizing.
• The body (the part where you talk about the story) of your query should be about 2-4 paragraphs. One giant paragraph is off-putting, and more than four, major paragraphs makes your query look like a synopsis
• A query and a synopsis are different! The query should read like a back-cover blurb on a book, whereas the synopsis reads more like cliffnotes/a wikipedia page. 
• After the body, there should be a mini paragraph where you share your word count, your genre + age category, and your comp titles (usually two). 
• Try to keep at least one of your comp titles as recent as possible
• Try to avoid using the cliched comp titles (e.g. Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, etc.)
• Word count should be rounded to the nearest thousandth. 
• After this mini paragraph comes your bio paragraph. If your bio doesn't have too much of a tie-in with your book (e.g. you're a curator at a museum, and your book is about museums), err on the side of keeping it short.
• All in all, you really want the body portion to shine, and then just make sure that you have your other components and that all the info is accurate (e.g. don't lie about your word count)
• The body of the query:
• Establish your world without being overwhelming or confusing. Drop some specific details that can immedaitely give the reader a flavor of your setting, but don't have too many of these details, or go overboard, and save the more complex elements for the actual book
• Establish the main arc of your plot, and enrich with a line or two about a subplot. The main arc of your plot should be very visible and be the main driver behind the tension and stakes.
• TENSION! STAKES! Lack of these two is my most often given crit. But don't kill it with vague, generic statements that are all too common. "She must save the world"/"She must do X, or die" is not enough on its own. Infuse these statements with the flavor of your characters and plot. They're so popular because they do work, but only when they're unique. 
• The tone of the body should match the tone of your book. Serious book? Try to keep the voice pretty serious. Funny, witty book? Drop hints of that in the query.

Of course, no "query" blogpost would be complete without an example query, so for all the curious ones, here you go, two in fact!

This is the one I sent as part of my pitchwars sub:

Having snored through all her imperial lessons, seventeen-year-old princess Hesperia wouldn’t really know why the Ostian people loathe the seers and the magicians. Neither does she care to learn, not when she’d rather spend time in the imperial gardens, her one and only sanctuary.

Until the day she stumbles upon the king’s body in a bed of nightflowers.

With her father entombed in jade, her mother ill from grief, and her brother called away to tend to an impending war, Hesperia sacrifices her freedom to fill the empty throne. As queen, she vows to uncover the truth behind the death as one last gift to her honest father. But when the healers insist on calling the king’s passing a verdict of the gods, Hesperia realizes that the power of a crown may not be enough. 

Consulting a seer would result in death by a thousand cuts, yet Hesperia risks paying the price to secure an investigation and trial. The court, however manipulates the trial, framing enemies of the Ost as the king’s killer—enemies such as the seers and magicians. Hesperia must stay one step ahead of the schemes or watch the trial spiral into a tangle of prejudice and propaganda. She must protect her own secrets, craft her lies carefully, or lose her life. That is, if the truth behind her father’s death doesn’t destroy her first. 

At 96k, HESPERIA is a YA fantasy inspired by the social issues raised in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and the palace intrigue in THE WINNER'S CRIME. It is set in a world that is a cross between ancient Rome and China.

My family is Chinese and I've grown up knowing the great epics and popular legends of the culture. This had helped me craft the China-influenced setting as accurately as possible. When I am not writing, I am studying Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Thank you for your time and consideration!

And then this is the one I sent in my queries to agents post-PW, after my mentor and I polished it up:

As Princess of the Ost, seventeen-year-old Hesperia should be attending the blood trials with her family, not hiding from her maids in the watersilk ponds. But when she discovers her father’s body in a bed of nightflowers, she’s faced with a trial of her own: uncover the truth behind his death, or watch it go down in the scrolls as the verdict of the gods.

With her mother ill and her brother leading the army, Hesperia risks her life when she consorts with a forbidden seer to secure an investigation as a final gift to her beloved father. The war-hungry court manipulates the trial, however, framing the seers and magicians who have begun to re-emerge centuries after they were purged. With the help of a legendary assassin and her adopted brother and sister, Hesperia struggles to stay one step ahead of the court officials as the trial spirals into a tangle of prejudice and propaganda.

Now, Hesperia faces betrayal at every turn: from a neighboring country that seeks to use the seers and magicians for its own selfish aims, and from the only family she has left. With whispers of revolution simmering in the shadows, she must eradicate the cycle of persecution—or become its next victim. 

At 88k, HESPERIA is a YA fantasy inspired by the social issues raised in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and the palace intrigue in THE WINNER'S CRIME. It is set in a world that is a cross between ancient Rome and China.

As a Chinese American, I've grown up with many of the great Chinese epics and popular legends, which helped inspire the setting for HESPERIA. In addition to writing, drawing, and baking, I am a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in Psychology. I am a 2015 Pitch Wars finalist mentored by Mara Rutherford. 

So there you have it! Hopefully this before and after is helpful in giving you a sense of the quality of query that sparked interest among mentors and got me several requests for more materials, but as you can tell, there was room for changes and improvement! So don't fret too much about every single word of your query - it needs to demonstrate strong writing and do your story justice, but it's likely to change once you have a mentor.

Stay tuned for the next post on the first chapter!

Retreat From the Query Trenches--Round 1

If you've been following this blog, then you probably remember me dropping the name of my second completed manuscript every now and then. INGENICIDE, a YA light scifi (and yes, you can find all the info under my NOVELS tab :) ) was my savior. Seriously. I procrastinated from highly stressful real life activities to write it. I thought about it every second of the day. I dreamed about it. I'm pretty sure I annoyed the crap out of my friends talking about it.

INGENICIDE was also my teacher. It taught me how to revise (MS#1 couldn't and is still gathering dust in the drawer). It urged me to find critique partners. It pushed me into the critique forums, to revise, revise, revise my query. And revise again.

Yes, it forced me to write the dreaded synopsis. Post on that later, because oh do I loathe the synopsis.

Just last week, I received a rejection on a full that I was feeling sort of good on. Which is okay, because that's happened before and I was prepared. I closed the email and marched right to QueryTracker to prepare another round of queries. Apparently, I cope with rejections by sending more queries.

I can't use QueryTracker without Carissa Taylor's handy dandy compilation of YA agents, so I pulled that up, too. As I was marking down agents and heading over to websites, I suddenly realized something:

I was no longer excited to query.

That may not sound weird, but it was to me. I wouldn't say that querying is fun, exactly, but it is exciting and exhilarating and nerve-wracking to do so. I liked querying. And now I didn't.

Why wasn't I excited? I tried to find the reason.

It turns out that I'd exhausted my list of agents that I'd love to work with and was beginning to just "settle." The search process was becoming increasingly like this: Agent reps YA? Onto the list. 

At first, I didn't see anything wrong with this. In fact, I was more scared of not querying every single agent that I possibly could, in case I missed some opportunity. But sitting there at my desk and staring at the agent compilation list, it dawned on me that I'm NOT just seeking representation for INGENICIDE. I'm seeking representation for myself as an author. I'm seeking representation for this work and many more to come.

I couldn't just "settle."

So now I announce my decision: I will be retreating with INGENICIDE from the querying trenches. Currently, I still have queries, partials, and fulls out, and I will wait to hear back on those. However, I will not be actively querying anymore for this manuscript. If you were curious, here are my stats:

79 queries

4 partials

5 fulls

And more rejections than I can count. 

While this may seem like a sad post, it really isn't. MS#1 was my training wheels. MS#2 was the bike that took me on many adventures and taught me so many lessons. Ultimately, it didn't deposit me at my destination, but what does that matter? If anything, I'm now armed with experiences that not even rejection can take away from me.

On another positive note, I wrote IF LIFE WERE FAIR while querying INGENICIDE so that my inbox wouldn't drive me insane. Turns out that insanity prevention methods are quite rewarding because now I can prepare to dive back into the trenches soon. If I had to choose ONE piece of advice from this whole learning process, it is this: Write. And keep writing. Write when you are querying, because it'll really make the time fly by faster and at the end, you'll have a brand new MS to flourish (before getting dirty in revisions, that is). You are a writer before you are an author. 

Have you ever had to "shelve" a novel and if so, what made you decide to? Thanks for reading guys! It's funny thinking back to when I first started this blog, when INGENICIDE was still fresh off my fingers. I say this again and again, but the writing community is seriously the best of the best of the creative folks. 

All These Feels

In the span of five minutes, I just finished Silver Linings Playbook for the first time and got a rejection on a full that I had some moderate hopes on. Now all these feels are twisting inside of me. SLP has got to be one of the most accurate portrayals of mental illness and letting go and finding love again that I've ever seen. And that rejection kind of made me down for a moment. Which reminded me of the reason why I usually don't place any expectations on queries or partials or fulls because it would be downright pointless to feel this way 40 times over.

The sting is fading now and I'm still basking in the awesomeness of the movie. It definitely deserved its Oscar. Now back to the query board for me :)

What movies have really touched you/changed your perspective on life? (Please answer! I'm trying to catch up on movies this summer :D)

Time to Start a New Novel

Due to exams and awful, brain-draining hazards of the like, I've had this post sitting around and it's long overdue because I've already decided on the new idea I want to work on while I wait on query replies for INGENICIDE. But since I have a breather from studying and this blog has been a bit barren for some time, I'll post it anyway. All mentioned ideas will be added to the WIP page...sooner or later :)

It's pretty unbelievable that INGENICIDE, MS #2, is finally at the stage when I can sit back, stare at the computer screen, and think hey, I think it's almost there***. I have to underscore the ALMOST because there's no question that it could go through the ring of fire again is someone pointed out a specific area to fix. But it is almost perfect as in it's time to stop fussing over it and shifting clauses and commas around. Even if there is a larger problem, my eyes have tired after the 3rd pass. I have to reconcile that it will never be perfect. At this stage, this is about as good as it will be. I've been dipping my toes into the query waters for the past two weeks now, but it is time to toss this MS into the ocean.

Hopefully, it'll swim.

***Just got edits back from my CPs. More suggestions on making it better have been gushed over and piled into a to-do list. 

Meanwhile, it's that time again when I go back to my list of SHINY IDEAS. The list has been growing, and now I'm worried that I might not be able to write all these books, these books and their sequels and their trilogies. So I'll have to pick favorites. So hard.

A great resource that I've found for picking between shiny ideas is this blog post: How Do You Decide Which Story to Write? I'm just going to bullet the main points (you can read the article in detail if you go to the link).

Stars if your idea is a story that:

• You want to write
• Fits the market
• Is ready to be written
• Appeals to others
• Challenges you

Remember that this list should probably be used at the last deciding factor. If you have two ideas that you are equally eager to write, then maybe think about market. Guessing the "next big trend" is no easy feat. However, picking out the dying trends can be just as helpful. I know it's a gross generalization but let me grossly generalize anyway just to give an example: the paranormal and dystopian markets for YA are pretty saturated. Meaning--at least for the time being--it's going to be more difficult to sell in those markets. My own MS is a light dystopian because I love writing in that genre and you should never let anything get in the way of the things that make you all jumpy and shivery as a writer. And OF COURSE there are always exceptions. Heck, there are exceptions with the tried and true formulas of great reads! Market is just something to keep conscious of in the back of your mind.

Here are the ideas I have been considering:

1. THE SERENDIPITY LABS
Genre: YA Speculative/Myth Retelling (inspired by the Fates and Pandora's Box)
Setting: Alternate Universe

In a single day, seventeen-year-old Natalie Laenus learns what it means to be blind.

As the prison keeper’s daughter, shy and obedient Natalie is no stranger to the eccentricities of the inmates. But when one tosses hydrochloric acid into her face, even her apathetic parents enter a state of shock. Just when Natalie has resigned to a life of darkness, a stranger appears in her hospital room, reassuring her that the accident was a technical glitch. He makes only one request: forget that it ever happened.

When the third degree burns vanish, no one seems to remember the tragedy—except for Natalie. Torn between the desire to meet her savior and to heed his warning, she decides to put the incident in the past.

But one person, a new convict called Jasper, can see what her parents cannot: the touch of interference from the Serendipity Labs, a perpendicular world that exercises prevention and damage control over luck and mischance. He asks Natalie to free him. In exchange, he will help her find the stranger.

Before long, Jasper sucks Natalie into his twisted little games. His motivations for aiding her are murky, his morals questionable, and Natalie is hesitant to trust him. But the faceless stranger haunts her dreams. The past will not go gently. And perhaps there is a dangerous thrill to Jasper’s reckless intensity. 

But the most dangerous force of all lies within her. The force of curiosity.

2. MUST THINK OF TITLE
Genre: YA Historical Fiction (a dearth in this genre, I say!)
Setting: 1900

Please excuse my absence. My plot has been sucked into a black hole and must be retrieved.

3. IF LIFE WERE FAIR ***
Genre: upper YA/NA Contemporary
Setting: Modern day

Bernadette: Binge eater taking a gap year. Has never held a job longer than a week.
Luke: Waiting tables to send money to his “white trash” family.

Her mother’s ultimatum for smart-mouthed eighteen year old Bernadette Lisle? Get a job or lose the credit card. Having surrendered to her eating disorder, Bernadette knows she has to hang onto the money. That doesn’t mean she has to love her new job at the fancy French bistro downtown, where everything’s a melodramatic nightmare. But slowly, Bernadette comes to love her fellow waiters and waitresses. And there’s Luke, that assistant chef who wants to write stories for a living. He’s kind of cute, but he’s got way too many chips on his shoulder. Bernadette used to care, too. Now, she can’t stand to be reminded of the life she ditched.

But when Luke suddenly comes down with a weird bug, Bernadette must confront what it actually means to live--for his sake. It’s not just about existing from day to day, shoving her face and then running off the calories. If life were fair, Bernadette knows that she should have been the perfect candidate for stomach cancer. Not Luke.


***This is the project that I'm currently tackling!



I'd love it if you shared which one you find most compelling :D

Querying: Magic Numbers

I love Query Tracker. It's like excel for querying.

As of this moment, I have 9 queries out. 4 agents were speedy with their form rejections. I really appreciate the speedy ones because if there's anything that makes me all fuzzy and itchy on the inside in a bad way, it's not knowing. I am an inherent pessimist at heart, so I can honestly say that I'm not upset by any of the rejections, even the ones from agents whom I really admire. I had already braced myself for rejection**

**Not promoting this as a great philosophy of life. Please don't be a pessimist :)

What I am worried about is the Magic Number. Call me stupid, but I'm convinced that such a thing exists. That number that tells you to step back. That number that makes you start doubting the quality of your query or your MS. That rejection after sending out a full (I have yet to send mine. I know, I should get on it) that makes you seriously consider whether or not you should revise...again.

There's a number floating around: 10%. Apparently, if you are getting a 10% request rate, you can relax and pat yourself on the back for being on the right track.

But if not, then what?

The average number of queries before getting a request is 65.

But if not, then what? What if I hit 100 queries? What do I do then?

I guess my point is that these numbers scare me. Maybe they actually mean something. After all, there are so many writers out there and so many bits of data about rejection rates and number of queries sent and whatnot that these number MUST hold some validity.

At the same time, I'm a writer, not a mathematician :D

Do you ever worry about the number of request you get in relation to the number of queries you have sent?