Writing Your Query Letter

If getting your manuscript in the hands of an agent or editor is your goal for 2010, you will need a strong, titillating, one-paged query letter.  Many agents and editors ask either for a query only first or for the query, synopsis and possible sample chapters, so no matter how you slice it, you will inevitably have to create a query letter.

Agents and editors can receive hundreds of queries in a week, sometimes in a day, so the look of and content within your query letter are extremely important.  You don’t want to give him/her an unnecessary reason to reject you.

THE LOOK

You know the saying, Image is everything.  Well, it’s true.  The look of your query letter is important.  For one thing, the letter should be addressed to a specific agent or editor.  This means you need to do your homework.  Buy Writer’s Market or Guide to Literary Agents.

Research editors and agents who publish or represent the type of work you are trying to get published.  “Dear Editor/Agent” will not suffice and will show that you’re lazy and not up for the task of seriously seeking representation or publication.  Also, place your contact information on the letter, too.  Consider the business letter format in which your mailing/contact info is top and center, followed by the date, the agent/editor’s contact info, and Dear So and So are on the left hand side of the letter.

You want to also make sure you have good margins (1” all the around is typical) and good font size. Do not narrow your margins or decrease the size of your font just to give you more space. These things make you look amateurish.  Two additional “look” factors are spelling and grammar.  You want clear, concise, and vivid writing.  Consider your query one of many at a cattle call.  There are hundreds of query letters and any little thing can cause your letter to get booted during auditions.  This is the easier of the two important components (look and content) to do; don’t let it be the reason your audition ends abruptly.

THE CONTENT

Three important things should occur in the content of your query letter – intro/hook, book synopsis, and short bio, and each of these should be developed in a paragraph.

Intro~Hook

The first paragraph of your query letter is crucial and needs to do a few things. It needs to give the agent/editor critical information about your book and supply him or her with the hook.

Typical “critical” information we find at the onset of a query letter includes title, word count, and genre. Agents and editors want to quickly ground themselves in the letter they read, and this information is a good way of doing this. Why? Because, for example, knowing your genre helps them to determine if your work is something they might be interested in. Of course, you have done your homework, so you are submitting works to editors and agents who actively seek the genre you write. However, I know of many writers who blindly submit query letters to agents and editors and lose out because their genre does not mesh with those they submit to.

What can raise the eyebrow of an intrigued editor or agent is the hook. If you read my article on synopsis writing, then you know of the logline; the hook is very similar to it. A hook is a concise, one-sentence tagline for your book. Three questions that are typically asked within the hook include who is the main character, who/what is standing in the way of the main character, and what makes this story unique.

QueryTracker.net Blog talks about the high concept hook here.

Book Description ~ Mini-Synopsis

Once your hook snags an interested agent or editor, the second paragraph of your query letter should tell the agent/editor what the book is about.  This is not your full synopsis.  This is not the place to write how much your mother loves your book.  This is not the place to state that this is the best book you’ve ever written.  You have a paragraph, perhaps a bit more in which to entice the agent/editor with what your book is about.  Introduce main characters.  Introduce main conflict.  Consider reading back copy of books that are in the same genre your book falls in.  Oftentimes, the back copy is what sells a book to a reader who happens to spot the book in a store. 

This section takes a lot of work.  If you had a minute to tell someone about your book, one minute to make someone want to run out and buy your book, what would you say?  Write that, fine tune it, tweak it, make sure your main characters and your book’s conflict rings in the paragraph.

Bio

The third paragraph of the query letter is all about you – your writing experience and credentials, professional memberships, and any significant information relating to the book and your writing of it.  If you have published books, articles, and other works by reputable houses or in reputable magazines, you will want to showcase them.  If you’ve written a book that’s set in a cable newsroom, and you are a producer/writer for a cable newsroom, it is definitely relevant to tell an agent/editor this; it shows that you have first-hand experience with the setting to which you write about.  You do not want to write your autobiography here; you want to showcase any information about you that is relevant to the task at hand:  trying to get your book read, represented, and published!

You want to make sure you end the letter with a few sentences that thank the editor/agent for taking the time to read your material and offer to send additional material per request.

At the end, your query letter should be a shining example of your book and you as the author.  It’ll take some practice to get the letter where you want it because after all, your book is thousands of words long, and now you’re being asked to sum it up within a page; however, if you want representation and publication of your masterpiece, an exciting, tightly written query letter will be your key.

Agent Kristin Nelson has wonderful examples of query letters on her blog, complete with commentary. And it’s good to note that the writers of these letters received representation, too! Here’s the link.