Draft Zero to Writing Hero Chapter II: The First Query Package

[Image: My Hermes Baby typewriter with text "Draft Zero to Writing Hero"]

Hi fronds! Welcome to the grand tale about my writing journey! I wanted to write about this in all its roller-coaster ups and downs because I had a lot of trouble finding this information when I was getting started in 2016. This is definitely going to span several posts, but I hope my story will help someone else with their own path to publishing. If you'd like to know how this all began, please start with Chapter I.

Chapter II: The First Query Package

After making my massive spreadsheet of Agents To Query, it was time to actually come up with materials to send them. This apparently included a synopsis and something mysterious called a query letter.

A synopsis I could handle, but a query letter? I had no idea what that was. Naturally, I went straight back to Google. I perused blogs and author websites, trying to track down the elusive query letter secrets that would catch an agent's eye. Unfortunately, I'm not someone who can easily learn from written instructions, so even after doing research for days, I still didn't have a good idea of what a query letter should be like. Every example I found was so vastly different from the one before that it made looking at examples useless. Some letters were only a couple paragraphs, others were a full page. Some went into great deal about the plot, others kept things brief. Eventually, I gave up and decided to just give it my best shot.

I worked on my query letter for about two months, trying to condense a whole manuscript into less than a page. I wrote a long document with various sentences and phrases I liked, and ultimately ended up combining by favorite bits into the summary paragraph of my query letter. Even with all this work, though, by the time I sent my first query, my query letter was...still bad. Trust me, I had to re-read it to write this.

It. Was. BAD.

[GIF: Boy cringing]

Re-reading it to be able to write this post was cringe-inducing. It was only two paragraphs long and it read more like a bunch of Twitter pitches smooshed together than a query letter. I never actually mentioned what the manuscript was about, just listed four or five things that happened. One of my comp titles was from the seventies, and I didn't personalize the query at all. Ugh. I'm not going to post it here, since I do intend to come back to this manuscript at some point, but here's the gist of it rewritten as if it were about LORD OF THE RINGS:

LORD OF THE RINGS, a fantasy manuscript, is completed at a final word count of X. Told from far third person, it's an epic tale of brotherhood, courage, fate, good versus evil - and a little bit of magic - where one person stands between the world and its demise. The long-lost king of Gondor is poised to retake his kingdom, a spy has infiltrated the court of Rohan, and a fell army stands ready to destroy everything. However, it's not all doom and gloom - there are talking trees, witty hobbits, and a mystical man named Tom Bombadil who stands watch over travelers. 

YIKES.

Anyone who read this summary paragraph would still have no idea what the story is about. Who is/are the main character(s)? What's the conflict? Who does the king of Gondor need to retake his kingdom from? It makes no sense. I don't blame any agent for passing on this thing. (Sorry to do this to you, J.R.R Tolkien.)

Even my synopsis wasn't good. I had an easier time with writing it - I'm actually pretty good at summarizing things, my partner says I'm good at "chibi-ifying" - but it went into too much detail and mentioned far more characters than was strictly necessary. Sentences didn't flow from one to the next, and the big reveal at the end fell flat. By the end of it, even I was confused, and I wrote the damn thing. I mean, look at the second (!!!) paragraph (and keep in mind that I did not edit this other than to remove character names):

The next day, [Character A] becomes engaged to [Character B], a member of the court class whose parents are ambassadors. [Character A] feels no love for [Character B], but knows his duty to the royal line. [Character C] comes up with the idea to sneak into [Character D]’s study during the party and steal the paperwork. [Character E] arrives in the city and is introduced to [Character A and Character B], and [Character A] immediately seems taken with [Character E]. [Character A and Character B]'s cousin, [Character F], fawns over [Character F], but he ignores her because she is always vapid and overly dramatic. The following night, [Character A] sneaks away to meet [Character E] in private and the two kiss.  

[GIF: Krysten Ritter eye roll]

The things I do for y'all, re-reading this stuff.

But the icing on this dumpster fire was my pages. The opening scene was bland, it was full of asides and sidebars, and the main characters come across extremely unlikeable. Nothing in there would encourage a reader to go on. At the time, I didn't understand the importance of revisions; I typed "the end" and immediately set about preparing to query. Every typo, grammar mistake, and continuity error remained. Not to mention the fact that my first finished draft was about...*cringe*...170,000 words.

Yup. You read that right. In case you need a reference, the long end of YA fantasy is about 110,000 words - and that's really pushing it for a debut novel.

So where did I go wrong, sending out a 170K manuscript to agents? Well, I fell into that pitfall many writers encounter - you know, the one covered with giant inconspicuous "My word count is fine" leaves and lined with sharpened "NO IT'S NOT" spikes at the bottom - of thinking that my work was special.

[GIF: "But I am the best, I'm one of a kind"]

I was convinced that word count wouldn't matter when agents saw how quality my pages were. And be assured, they were not quality. All in all, the entire query package - along with the rest of the manuscript - was a raging mess.

I just didn't know that at the time.

Slowly, timidly, I sent off my first query package to my first-choice agent - a process which required no less than three hours of mental preparation and at least one trip to the bathroom to vomit. When that first query was sent, I marked the date in my spreadsheet and set about waiting.

But, like any good worrier, I needed something else to do while I waited.

Continued in Chapter III...