After ‘finishing’ a manuscript… Um… Nearly five months ago, Jesus, I decided to then let it percolate. Like a tiramisu, it needed time to soak in the juices before I could finish it for consumption. Though in this case the juices are my brain juices and maybe this metaphor is bad.

Anyway, I know how querying a book works. For the most part. I read a lot about the whole process while I was procrastinating, on great sites like Query Shark and Jane Friedman.

DO:

1. In the first paragraph, you need to establish the basics of your story. Who’s the main character? Where do they start? You should give enough background information to make the setting clear, but never get bogged down in details.
2. In the second paragraph, you need to establish the conflict. The inciting incident. The what happens? I think it’s probably okay if this is longer than the first paragraph? Gosh, I hope so. Whatever conflict is present should probably comprise most of your plot.
3. In the third paragraph, you need to establish the stakes. What does the main character need to do? What happens if they fail? Capture the tension, but don’t burst it by giving away the end.
4. In the fourth paragraph, or alternatively paragraph zero, tell the agent the book’s title, genre, and word count. The genre had better follow reasonably from the substance of the query. As in, if your story is a romance, you’d better mention the love interest. If it’s a thriller, there had better be clear stakes.

DON’T:

1. Introduce a bunch of characters by name. I’ve read that 2 or 3 is typical, tops. I’d imagine the Animorphs books probably pitched using the team name, maybe with Jake singled out.
2. Ramble about yourself. A couple of sentences related to your story or your career as a writer is fine. But this is a query, not your biography.
3. Try to capture your unique prose while summarizing the plot. Agents have to read a gazillion of these letters. Don’t bog them down while trying to be clever. Selling them on your voice is the book’s job, if they want to see it.

Now, here’s my white whale: Comp titles. They’ve got to be recent, as in not any older than 5 years (or 3, depending on who you ask). Plus, you don’t want to comp the very big bestsellers. That’s hubris. Personally, I have this problem where if I want to write a story, my interest in reading anything that sounds like it evaporates, because I know they’re not going to do it the way I would. I need to get over myself. My query letter draft says, “COMP 1” and “COMP 2” [insert later]. I have no idea what Tamsyn Muir did when pitching something as off-the-wall as Gideon the Ninth. I’d be fascinated to find out.

Not having comp titles is a GREAT excuse for me to put off querying my last manuscript, in my opinion. Even more pressing is the little issue I have with the word count. As in, I overwrote this thing. It’s 112k, which is bonkers for YA. So now, for the first time in memory, I have a project where I want to see the word count go down. A lot down. Ugh. Later!