My thoughts are added in red. Every comment is my own opinion. Readers, feel free to leave your own comments below and help a fellow writer out!
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Original Version (with comments):
Dear ____,
Tobin wanted to be
normal. He wanted to make his accountant parents proud. More than anything, he
wanted to have friends. But Tobin couldn’t focus on the world around him long
enough to do any of those things. It would melt away and a new world would erupt
from the depths of his mind. He’d be standing on an enormous white ship with
blood-red sails. Thunder would roar from the dark sky above him and bolts of
lightning would hammer the raging sea. In front of him, Captain Red Eye, his
left eye glowing red, would be smiling cruelly, ready to steal Tobin’s soul.
Just as he began to
find the willpower to control his tendency to daydream and ignore the call of
the captain to battle, Tobin found himself standing in an underground room
miles below his aunt’s house, staring at a window. He watched as green mist
rose lazily from a small opening in the red-paneled window and knew that if he
ventured through, his daydreams would soon become his reality. Tobin glanced up
the endless stairwell he’d descended and shuddered as he reflected on the
predictability of what awaited him if he turned back. Smiling, he reached out
toward the window and pushed it open.
I didn’t make an inline
comments in the first two paragraphs because I wanted to look at it as a whole.
I don’t want to be the one to say this (because query letters are SO
AGGRAVATING and PAINFUL to write), but what you have here isn’t a query letter. In fact, everything in the first two
paragraphs could be condensed into one-two sentences, introducing Tobin and his
daydreams. For example: Sixteen-year-old
Tobin prefers his daydreams to reality, so when given the chance to permanently
escape the real word through a window—he takes it.
After this, you would go
into what the window is, talk about the conflict Tobin faces in this new world
(i.e. Captain Red Eye) and the conflict (like trying to get home or having to
defeat the Captain and save everyone aboard his ship).
Click HERE for a great
breakdown of the query letter process. Make sure you check out Query Shark as
well!
The 72,000 words of my
young adult novel follow Tobin to a world beyond the window where he is the
only one who can vanquish Captain Red Eye and free the hundreds souls the
pirate has stolen. (You would’ve already explained this in the other paragraphs of the
query letter).
Here’s a reword of this
paragraph and the paragraph following: TOBIN’S
WINDOW (you put the title in all caps)
is a young adult (what’s the genre? Fantasy? Scifi?) novel, complete at 72,000 words with sequel potential.
I’d be glad to send you my complete manuscript for your review.
Regards,
You’ve got some good
groundwork for this query letter. Keep up the hard work. I know you can get
there! Other than my concerns mentioned inline, from the tone of your query,
TOBIN’S WINDOW sounds more like an MG (middle grade) novel than a YA. Make sure
you keep the voice age-appropriate in your query and also make sure that you’ve
had at least one person read your book before you query!
If you edit this query and
would like me to take another look, please send it my way! Best of luck!
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