This is a new operation for me. I wrote a series of short stories, which I denominated "The Dead and Dying." The title comes from a Paul Simon song, "My Little Town":
In my little townI grew up believingGod keeps his eye on us allAnd he used to lean upon meAs I pledged allegiance to the wallLord, I recall my little townComing home after schoolFlying my bike past the gates of the factoriesMy mom doing the laundryHanging out shirts in the dirty breezeAnd after it rains there's a rainbowAnd all of the colors are blackIt's not that the colors aren't thereIt's just imagination they lackEverything's the same back in my little town
My little town, my little townNothing but the dead and dying back in my little townNothing but the dead and dying back in my little town
So far, I have been trying to peddle these stories as solos pieces. When I discovered they were interconnected (which happened after I wrote the third story), I got the idea the reader should be able to read them individually or as a set in chronological order. As I digitized them, I sent them out singly into the world, and they were as a whole returned to me. A few rejections mentioned they liked the writing well enough, but they just did not fit. KH suggested they were too interconnected to be solos. So, now I am trying to get the bunch of them out in the world.
Which means a query letter.
I started a draft a week ago and went back to working on my novel. Last night, I started on researching how to do a query letter. I started with the blog, Janet Reid, Literary Agent.
Today I am looking at Nathan Bransford's blog, he has a whole section dedicated to query letters. These are my notes.
How to write a killer one sentence pitch (or logline) for novels and memoirs:
There are four basic elements in a good one sentence pitch:
- The opening conflict (or the Inciting Incident)
- The obstacle
- The quest
- The stakes
The quest can be a physical or interior journey, but it’s what happens to the character(s) between the moment when the plot begins and ends. The opening conflict is the first step in that quest. It’s how the journey begins. The obstacle is what stands in the way of that journey.
The resulting very basic pitch is this:
When INCITING INCIDENT happens to CHARACTER(s), they have OVERCOME OBSTACLE to COMPLETE QUEST in order to/or else STAKES.
***
The important thing to remember is that a good pitch is a specific description of what actually happens in your novel.
It’s a one sentence description of the plot, not the theme.
Okay, get that all for a novel with a hero. What I have is a community trying to survive the post-industrial world, individuals rise who think they alone can save the town, only to fail as individuals. This bit of advice feels trickier:
Once you’ve gotten the essence of your one sentence pitch down, try to add a dash of flavor. Flesh out your pitch with key details that give a sense of the character of your novel (funny, scary, intense, tragic, etc.), which goes a long way to giving a sense of your story’s unique personality.
Several characters weave in and out of the story, albeit the career of one is a constant.
I get the point of Do not worry about spoilers in a query letter.
While not sending this letter to an agent - it is to the publisher itself - I think How (and why) to personalize a query letter applies.
The author who goes the extra mile in crafting a professional, personalized query is likely also the type of author who has taken the time to learn the business, polished their manuscript before submitting, and isn’t cutting corners.
Sure, agents should give sufficient attention to every submission, and they largely do, but I always found myself paying a bit closer attention to the ones who were personalized. There’s a correlation between personalization and quality.
When you are querying a literary agent you are essentially proposing to go into business with them. Just as it generally helps to personalize a cover letter when you’re applying for a job, it helps to personalize a query letter.
I can really understand that last paragraph, the letter has to put me across as someone they can work with, want to work with. His examples, I do not think apply to my case as given. They are food for thought, though.
I am closing out with Bransford's How to format a query letter. My target wants the query in a pdf, not an email. Still, reading this post reminded me I had not put the title into my query letter!
I have been going from Bransford's blog to this post to my query letter in LibreOffice. Now, it feels like time to work on the letter itself.
sch 7/8
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