Five More Things Not to Do in a Query Letter

Here are a few more basic tips for those of you in the query trenches.

DO NOT:

1. Use long, convoluted sentences. It does not make you sound clever, half the time; instead, it makes you sound like you are TRYING to be clever. If your query is clear enough and interesting enough to intrigue a sleep-deprived intern, you're good to go.

2. Demand a book deal within a set amount of time. The publishing industry moves, in most cases, very slowly. It takes at LEAST a year between book deal and publication date, usually longer. And the submissions process can also be lengthy. Patience, grasshopper.

3. Talk about what a great movie your book will make. Agents are in the books business, not the movie business, and what makes a great movie might not make a great novel. It might make the transition between page and screen really well, but that's not the point at the query stage.

4. Confuse "synopsis" with "query." A query letter is about 250 words and should include a hook (an eye-catching first sentence) as well as information on the characters and most of the plot, without giving away the ending. A synopsis is usually 2-4 pages, explaining most of the scenes in more detail, including the ending. Many agencies do not ask for synopses*, whereas I've never heard of one that does not want a query letter.

5. Open your query with rhetorical questions. Here is agent Sarah La Polla's explanation on why. Essentially, if we actually answered most rhetorical questions used in queries, it would be with much more eye-rolling than you want.


*This might be because synopses are evil.

How Not to Write a Query Letter

I work in a literary agency in Manhattan. And as an intern, a large part of my job is sifting through the slush pile. I actually love reading slush - I mean, I get to read ALL DAY as my JOB and it is kind of the best. There is also the great feeling of finding something really wonderful and hoping that your boss might like it and might offer representation.

But. Guys. So much of the slush pile is made up of people who simply have no idea how to write a query letter. My reaction to the horrible typos and weirdly structured emails and lengthy bios that leave out all semblance of plot is somewhere between mirth and pity.

I know I am probably preaching to the choir here, but even so, I intend to make a bit of a project out of "how to write query letters" (more on that later, when I can work out the logistics of said project). For now, however, I give you:

The Top Five Things Not to Do in a Query

1. Fail to include sample pages. (Seriously, guys. My agency requests the first three chapters and so many people don't send them. If the submission guidelines ask for sample pages, SEND SAMPLE PAGES. The pages, more than the query, will make me want to say yes.)

2.  Tell me more about you than about your book. (I need to know about your characters and your plot and why I should care. I don't, at this stage, need to know about your career or your background, unless you have been previously published. And even that should be short, sweet, and to the point.)

3. Spell things incorrectly and use improper grammar. (This is like walking into a job interview with ketchup on your shirt.)

4. Insult popular titles of the genre you are trying to be published in. (I have gotten more than one query explaining the failings of Harry Potter and saying that their manuscript had none of those failings. It just sounds incredibly arrogant. Also, there is a very high chance that someone who works in YA publishing will be incredibly fond of Harry Potter. Don't alienate a potential agent from the start!)

5. Call your manuscript a "fiction novel."

Thoughts from Places: Basically the Best Job Ever

Every Wednesday and Thursday since I've gotten back from London, my alarm has gone off at 7:30 am, and for a few minutes I have cowered in the warmth and comfort and dark of my bed, not really wanting to get up, because it's summertime and it's 7:30. But, nevertheless, I get up, grab some tea, get dressed, and head out to catch the 8:50 bus into New York City.

I live somewhere between half an hour and an hour and fifteen minutes away from the city, depending upon the level of traffic and the mode of transportation - the bus takes longer, because it has to pick people up. (Also, my parents dispute this, but I SWEAR we got into the city by car in half an hour.) The bus ride is usually about an hour. Sometimes I am a good person and I do some writing on the commute - because of this the handwriting in my notebook has gotten hilariously poor in the last few entries - but a lot of the time I muse over things to write or things to do instead, or simply stare out the window (or, in the case of yesterday, take a nap). I then get in to the Port Authority, a place I've decided that I have a love-hate relationship with. I love the fact that it is so easy for me to commute into the city, even though bus tickets are rather expensive. I love that it's rather centrally located and that I can walk to my internship. However, I hate the massive lines of commuters on my way home, and I hate that they put the Cinnabon right by the entrance and exit for my bus. (OH THE SMELL OF GOOEY CINNAMONY DELICIOUSNESS. HOW YOU TORTURE ME SO.)

In any case, I hurry past the Cinnabon and then start my ten-block walk down Seventh Avenue to my internship-of-awesome. I am greeted by the very friendly doorman (who finally told me his name yesterday and I am now horrified to discover that I have forgotten. Gosh, for a writer I am truly terrible at remembering people's names) and wait for the slow, cranky elevator in a lobby that is small, but must have a twelve-foot ceiling complete with painted and gilded rosettes (my own slice of London historic decoration in New York, perhaps?). But the elevator finally takes me to the twentieth floor, where I slide into an office that is much more modern looking than the lobby's ceiling might suggest.

There are three literary agencies sharing this office, which means that there are a lot of people who really love books all in one room. It also means that, unlike my internship in London, I am not the only intern! There is always one other intern working with me from my literary agency, and at least one other from one of the other agencies (sometimes I'm not really sure which one). Oftentimes there are four interns crowded around the "intern table," the table used for conferences (in which case we are relocated to abandoned offices) that sits between the door and the coffee maker. I try and sit in the chair on the short end of the table closest to the door, because that way, I can still mostly read my computer screen when the sun comes blaring into our window at about four in the afternoon. It is very nice to take a break from queries and look out over the tops of buildings to the little hint of the Hudson River I can see through the roofs, but it is rather difficult to read in such bright sunlight. (Some of the other interns bring their sunglasses for this purpose. It is kind of awesome and hilarious.)

After I arrive, I spend the next seven and a half hours reading. I read queries, I read submitted manuscripts. Reading the slush pile is actually kind of fun - there are of course a great many completely out-there queries, which make me somewhere between amused and sad, and lots that really don't have anything "wrong" with them, they're just not thrilling, which does make me feel badly (because boy have I been in that writer's shoes). There are also occasionally those shining gems of OMG WOW REQUEST THIS IMMEDIATELY, which are great. Those are the ones I get excited about, that I remember when I get home and my mom asks me what I did that day. There was one that had spot-on historical voice the other day, and I was practically flailing in my chair as I urged the agent I work for to request it.

Reading manuscripts is also basically the best thing ever. Let me remind you: I read ALL DAY LONG, and it is my JOB to do so. WINNING. I do read a lot of romance novels, since this agency represents a lot of romance writers; they might not be specifically my cup of tea, but they're by no means hateful, and I do get to tell people that I read romance novels for work, which is just fun. I really enjoy reading the manuscripts and making comments along the way. I like writing up little "edit letters" at the end of things I liked and things I'd fix (and sometimes how I'd fix them, which is really exciting). 

I also have fun with my fellow interns. They're a bunch of lovely ladies (everyone who works in this office, by the way, is female. Why am I getting the sense that the publishing industry and theatre are not all that different? :P ). Fellow-intern Ari and I frequently chuckle over malapropisms and queries that have appeared on Slush Pile Hell, discuss the weirdness of reading queries at the same time we're sending out our own, and geek out over Nerdfighteria.

But then it's six pm and it's time for me to hurry through the busy streets* and brave the long lines at Port Authority and possibly a standing-room-only bus so that I can head home for the day. And excitedly tell my family about that awesome query letter that I read.

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*You think I'd be used to crowds after living in a big city for almost five months. I think that London holds some ridiculously high percentage of England's population, but honestly, you wouldn't know it unless you were on Bond Street, in Piccadilly Circus, or on the Tube at rush hour. Whereas New York (especially at rush hour) is like being in Piccadilly Circus all the time. So many people!!

Thoughts from Places: How to Commute

So I woke up yesterday morning at 7:45 and grumbled about the dark and the early because I am a college student and that's what college students do. (Also, England is farther north than you would think it is, since it's so warm here, and so the sun rises around 8 and sets around 4:30.) I was the only one up in the flat, because I had to eat and get dressed and catch a bus to Fulham to start my first actually full day of work.

There is a thing about buses in London, other than the fact that sitting on the top of a double-decker bus is outrageously cool. If you look up the time that a journey will take you on the Transport for London website, they are lying to you. Granted, I like to err on the side of caution, but still. It does not take thirty minutes to get from my flat to my internship. It takes fifteen. Tops. Another thing about double-decker buses is that if you sit on the top in the front, there's a windshield in front of you, just like there would be in the front of a regular bus or car. And from a good six feet in the air, looking down onto the street feels a bit like you are going to crash into absolutely everything in front of you. There have been many occasions - and I've only ridden the bus six times now - when I have thought OH GOD WE ARE GOING TO HIT THAT CAR or OH GOODNESS THERE'S A PERSON RIDING A BIKE DOWN THERE THEY'RE GOING TO BE FLATTENED. This is especially true when the bus you are on is going way too fast, honking at pedestrians and cars trying to pass when the bus is trying to turn, and generally lurching about (ie my Wednesday morning commute).

So after a harrowing ten minutes that left me at my stop fully half an hour before I needed to be there, I decided to take a walk. There really isn't much of anything besides houses in this area of London - they're really lovely houses, it makes me feel like I'm walking through the set of Mary Poppins (and I did, in fact, sing a bit of Chim Chim Cher-ee to myself because I'm cool like that), with all the neat roofs and chimneys and the pretty little front gardens.

Speaking of front gardens:



Yes, that is in fact a blooming rose bush. In JANUARY.

Have I mentioned how much I love London?

I spent my extra half an hour wandering around, looking at the roses in the gardens and the neat little houses, and I ended my wander by walking across the street from my internship's building to the Thames walk.



It was one of those moments - and I still have them now and again, even though I'm getting used to the idea - when it hit me that I live here. For four months, at least, I live in London, a beautiful city that barely feels like a city, a place that's full of history and culture and people speaking so many different languages I can't even identify them all. A city where I can see mockingbirds in the trees and and ducks on the Thames, where I can see roses in front gardens when in Ithaca, it's snowing away. A city that isn't a miracle or a dream or perfection, but a very real place, and it's the place that I'm lucky enough to explore for now.

And, at the end of a long day of searching Shutterstock for the least ridiculous images so I can put them into books, it's the place where I get to get onto a double-decker bus and lurch through the traffic, nearly hitting pedestrians and bikers, until I get to walk the last few blocks in the dark, back to the place I am, for now, calling home.