Thoughts on querying
Feb. 4th, 2022 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwatersparkSo...I've recently discovered the PubTips subreddit and got sucked into reading other people's queries.
It's actually pretty fascinating. I almost feel like I'm getting a peek into an agent's life, haha.
I thought I'd write a few things I noticed after reading the queries in that subreddit:
- There is a surprisingly high number of people who just...do not know how to write a query.
This surprised me, since I don't consider myself a query expert; my query letter for my first novel failed spectacularly, and while my second querying experience was much more successful, I didn't really consciously study how to write a query letter and always attributed that success to just a more marketable premise.
But I've always modeled my query letters after the three-paragraph bookflap/back-of-book summary that you always read when you pick up a book, and that was apparently sound advice. There are so many queries that are vague on what the actual plot is (um) or spend way too much time establishing worldbuilding and not enough time getting the reader to care about the protagonist(s).
- For better or worse, having a strong elevator pitch matters.
Marketability...whooo boy, I have so many thoughts on that subject and the problems it causes, especially for marginalized authors. (Maybe that'll be the subject of a future post.)
But I definitely noticed that after reading so many queries, my eyes started glazing over for the ones that didn't have a strong elevator pitch. Like, okay, yet another epic fantasy about a group of rebels overthrowing the government...so what distinguishes this book from all the other epic fantasies about overthrowing the government that have already been published?
(It also feels like sometimes SFF authors confuse "worldbuilding gimmick" for "elevator pitch.")
Which leads me to my next point...
- It kind of shows when authors aren't reading recent books written in their genre.
For fantasy novels, I sometimes get the sense that the author is a fan of Lord of the Rings, or The Wheel of Time, or Brandon Sanderson, but hasn't read any fantasy published in the last five years, and therefore the kind of epic fantasy they're trying to query feels rather dated.
And this does feel most relevant to fantasy; sci-fi and romance rest more on whether you can execute on a fresh concept instead of being tied to particular narrative conventions, and YA/MG authors seem fairly aware of recent books because MG as a genre is still relatively new, while YA is heavily tied to trends.
It's actually pretty fascinating. I almost feel like I'm getting a peek into an agent's life, haha.
I thought I'd write a few things I noticed after reading the queries in that subreddit:
- There is a surprisingly high number of people who just...do not know how to write a query.
This surprised me, since I don't consider myself a query expert; my query letter for my first novel failed spectacularly, and while my second querying experience was much more successful, I didn't really consciously study how to write a query letter and always attributed that success to just a more marketable premise.
But I've always modeled my query letters after the three-paragraph bookflap/back-of-book summary that you always read when you pick up a book, and that was apparently sound advice. There are so many queries that are vague on what the actual plot is (um) or spend way too much time establishing worldbuilding and not enough time getting the reader to care about the protagonist(s).
- For better or worse, having a strong elevator pitch matters.
Marketability...whooo boy, I have so many thoughts on that subject and the problems it causes, especially for marginalized authors. (Maybe that'll be the subject of a future post.)
But I definitely noticed that after reading so many queries, my eyes started glazing over for the ones that didn't have a strong elevator pitch. Like, okay, yet another epic fantasy about a group of rebels overthrowing the government...so what distinguishes this book from all the other epic fantasies about overthrowing the government that have already been published?
(It also feels like sometimes SFF authors confuse "worldbuilding gimmick" for "elevator pitch.")
Which leads me to my next point...
- It kind of shows when authors aren't reading recent books written in their genre.
For fantasy novels, I sometimes get the sense that the author is a fan of Lord of the Rings, or The Wheel of Time, or Brandon Sanderson, but hasn't read any fantasy published in the last five years, and therefore the kind of epic fantasy they're trying to query feels rather dated.
And this does feel most relevant to fantasy; sci-fi and romance rest more on whether you can execute on a fresh concept instead of being tied to particular narrative conventions, and YA/MG authors seem fairly aware of recent books because MG as a genre is still relatively new, while YA is heavily tied to trends.
