Blog for Bristol Services Intl.

Question from a client/writer:
I have been toying around with my query. I feel like it sums things up pretty well, gets the essence of the main character’s challenge but if all a perspective agent is going to see is one paragraph is that really going to be enough to make them want to see more?

Answer:
How to write a query letter is always a tough call. But if you can’t make a snappy enough presentation in a short paragraph (the size of what is called the blurb on the back cover of a book), then agents/publishers figure that author can’t create a “fast-paced” book either. So a short paragraph that grabs the reader is a great idea.

I suggest picking up several paperbacks you have lying around and reading the back covers of the books. There is normally one to three very short paragraphs that sum up the entirety of the book. Count the words on a few of them. See how few words they use? How much tension/action/drama/promises of danger and excitement needs to be packed in those words? That is why I would personally go for the “shorter is better” angle when you write the paragraph in the query that sums up the book.

HOW TO WRITE A SNAPPY QUERY STORY SUMMARY:
Practice by mimicking a couple of what you think are the snappiest, most interesting of those book back blurbs. For instance, I’m looking at the back of James Patterson’s “Beach Road.” It starts, “Welcome to Beach Road–expensive, exclusive … and explosive. Tom Dunleavy has a one-man law firm in the wealthy resort town of …” Etc.

Okay, now write in that format for your fantasy book, weaving in the facts of YOUR story into that concept. “Welcome to Planet Sim-B–where engineered perfection masks a dark underbelly of corruption. Angela Jones has a one-woman personal transport service for the weathly and priveleged in the city of …”

Keep going until you have used the concept of that whole blurb. Then try a couple more other blurbs, again editing in your own story into the basic format. In the end, you’ll have the feel for how to create that snappy query paragraph you need. And by then you can create your OWN format (probably using a few sentences from each of the blurbs you write) that will feel perfect for your own story. Short, snappy, interesting.

Remember, the query paragraph is not an abbreviated outline of the whole book. Just (hopefully!?!) intriguing enough to make them want more.

Writers often ask me what I like to read.
For business purposes, I try to keep up with the latest “hot” books in the subjects I edit most: suspense, fantasy, memoirs and children’s books. But when I read them I have my editor’s cap on, looking at the techniques the authors used.

For pleasure I tend to read nonfiction, older classics, the philosophical-type SF (preferably from the ’60s) and young readers books–all of which I find refreshing for my brain for various reasons.

As for young reader’s books, I like a variety of them, seldom sticking to one author. The first Harry Potter, Frank Perretti’s Cooper kids adventures (Flying Blind most recently), The Voyage of Prudence Goodspeed (an award winner and I could see why); these are examples of my eclectic tastes. Just what appeals for me to pick up whenever I spy it.

For instance, I recently found a book “The Ugly Dachshund” first written in 1938 that is a little classic and I was hooked on it just glancing at the first couple pages. The Ugly Dachshund is kind of like Charlotte’s Web or Jonathon Livingstone Seagull. It is–on the surface–a kid’s anthropomorphic story of animals. But the language is more sophisticated than most kids’ books and the messages behind it are deep and wide. This one is great fun for me. The language is a bit “old-worldish” with overly long sentences, yet they flow and my mind flows right into them. Is this the kind of book publishers are clamoring to buy now? No. Yet that doesn’t mean they aren’t still great reading. And will be for generations to come, too!
In The Ugly Dachshund, Tono is a Great Dane puppy who grew up in a family of dachshunds and believes he is one too. He finds himself totally inept, clumsy and not treated fairly at all. “Why don’t the Legs pick me up too and cuddle me under their arms like the other dachshunds?” he laments. Ahh, aren’t we all like that? Wondering why our lives aren’t as neatly tucked into cozy patterns like (it seems) others’ lives are? Why are we unable to squeeze through the fence hole like everyone else? Or unable to pigeonhole our stories to fit the current needs of publishers? Or … well, you get the drift.

Such stories resonate on many levels. We learn from little classics and children’s tales, from fantiasies of other worlds and memoirs of other’s lives. That is what reading is all about: gaining perspective for our own lives through the actions–fiction or otherwise–of others.

What should writers read?
Certainly the newest and greatest being published in the genre they are writing–this is smart business sense. But don’t forget the value of reading in itself. Read anything that appeals, teaches, and encourages our own creative juices to flow.