Tag: hook

How I Chose My Pitch to Publication Writers

5 Comments

Pitch to Publication (#p2p16) opens up to submissions on March 5! There’s still time to enter, and I know some of you planning on entering might be worried about your pitches. Hopefully this will help you hook editors (or agents)! This year, MS Editors represent 20% of the participating editors in the contest. See the genres we will be accepting at the bottom of each of our interviews: Me, Elizabeth, and Kyra

I picked two writers last year. The narrowing-down process was brutal, one I tweeted about a couple times.

I started with 98 queries (two of the 100 were repeat submissions), and eliminated about 2/3rds on the first pass, leaving me with 33 maybes and probablys, which is very high compared to other editors’ stats. Then I narrowed those down to 10. Then I narrowed down my favorite choices by age category for my top three (MG, YA, and NA/Adult). Part of narrowing down included saying a sad “no” to two entries I didn’t think I’d be able to improve on. I encouraged these writers to query right then.

Anyway, let’s get back to my two final picks.

MG Pick

Some people were wondering about how to write the hook part of the P2P submission. This one caught my attention right away:

Oscar dreads a lot of things: oil-based shampoos, hungry giraffes, and going to school on Arbor Day. Life’s tough for a seventh grader with leaves sprouting from his head. It doesn’t help when, Matty, a boy no one seems to know shows up and declares Oscar is a wood troll. But then Matty also promises he can fix Oscar’s little hair condition – in return for a favor.

Hoping to never run from nest-building squirrels again, Oscar […]

Doesn’t that have a great voice? Look at those word choices and specific, characterizing details! Some people think it’s harder to get a solid voice in third-person, which is what all queries need to be written in. This is exactly how to do it.

Not only did this hook paragraph have solid voice, but it also introduced the character’s desire and the story’s inciting incident.

Now, I wasn’t sure if I wanted a portal fantasy, so I initially marked this as a maybe (see how subjective slush reading is?), but when I read the pages, I laughed and got literal goosebumps. If a book can create that much of a response in me in the first chapter, I’m going to want to read more. Turns out, an agent felt the same way.

YA Pick

This one had a solid query, and I liked the concept a lot: a YA romance with Middle Eastern Pirates? Color me intrigued!

But what really hooked me was her first page—which I tend to read first—and how she started right in the middle of things:

Make it stop. I cringed, my head throbbing from the off-key voice. It was a song that most people would sacrifice their first-born to never have to hear. Most that heard it never lived to hear it twice. Because of all the dangers of the sea…

…Nothing was worse than pirates.

As I read on, the sensory details and lush settings drew me in further, and the chemistry between the two leads dragged me right under.

Yes, you read that right. I look at the first five pages before I look at the query. The Pitch to Publication submission includes personal-ish questions so editors can get to know you better. Since I assume everyone submitting to me is totally awesome, I usually skip this part until I’ve made my choices, otherwise the sting of sending rejections is too great. But I do enjoy reading those, and what you say can determine if I end up passing (red flags=run!) or if I follow you on Twitter so we can be friends and so I can cheer you on (we have things in common).

Hooking the Reader

Part of Pitch to Publication is working together to make the best book possible. Their pitches and queries don’t look exactly the same today as they did then. But hopefully this gives you a good idea of what can hook me:

  • Specific details that set the scene or characterize
  • Word choice (this and the previous are what make your “voice“)
  • Active, not passive characters
  • A cool concept or a pitch that makes me HAVE to know what happens next.

Which of these elements does your query or first five pages have? Are there any elements you don’t have but could work in?

Query #12 October 2015

2 Comments

Below is the twelfth public query critique I’m offering up on the blog. To enter, see the rules here. If you want a guaranteed critique (plus line edit) of your query or synopsis, private ones cost $35 each.

My comments are in blue below. To read the original query first, simply read only the black text.

Dear [agent],

I am looking for representation for my science fiction thriller novel [TITLE]: THE BEGINNING set throughout the 1990s.  The novel focuses on the virtues of small town life contrasted with the short comings of organized religion and man’s need to fit in with society. Unless you have something more important than your character (like the fact that this agent requested you query him/her or if you met the agent at a conference), start with your character.

Continue reading →

Query #11 April 2015

4 Comments

Below is the eleventh public query critique I’m offering up on the blog. To enter, see the rules here. If you want a guaranteed critique (plus line edit) of your query or synopsis, private ones cost $35 each.

My comments are in blue below. To read the original query first, simply read only the black text.

Dear Agent,

If being shy around girls were a serious disease, sixteen-year-old Jason Martyr would be on the terminal list.  ha! It turns out girls are the least of his worries when a secret government agency abducts him, claiming he has a rare genetic ability to travel through time. I’m not a fan of the phrase “it turns out” because 1) I see it a lot in queries and 2) it’s a passive, abstract phrase. I’d suggest cutting it, but this premise has me excited, so I’m not that bugged by it.  The agency threatens Jason’s family and friends to ensure his cooperation. Let’s swap this to give it more immediacy. Always end on the strongest point: “To ensure his cooperation, the agency threatens Jason’s family and friends.” Later you mention the “perfect girl.” Does he have a particular crush? Is she threatened as well? If so, this would be a great place to put it, putting a name and personalizing the threat.

 

His Jason’s mission is to go back in time to and stop a ruthless group called the Masters of Infinity[comma] from altering history and taking control of the future. This was a long sentence. Break it up and rework the second half to give specifics about the Masters of Infinity. With the sentence as it was, we lose that awesome name in the middle. You could rewrite this as “…Masters of Infinity, a group of ___ wanting to take control of the future by altering history,” but that’s a bit blah, so I’ll leave the rewrite to you. Their next attack is a 1937 coup attempt aimed at deposing FDR and installing a fascist dictator in his place.  If the Masters succeed, the U.S. may never take part in World War II, setting off a catastrophic domino effect through the rest of the timeline. Ooooooh. Honestly, at this point, I’m assuming you’ve already snagged an agent since you sent this to me 3 weeks ago. Granted, I don’t read a lot of YA time travel, so an idea like this could have already sold, in which case the problem is timing. I hope the timing is on your side!

P.S. Find/Replace those double spaces after each period. That’s carried over from typewriters. I assume you won’t be sending agents a manuscript printed with a dot-matrix printer. Double spaces should only be used if typing in a monospace font, like Courier.

All Jason wants is to return to his normal life and the quest for the perfect girl. This is where the query starts to falter. Hopefully your premise will get you far enough that the agent will look at your pages. Otherwise these stakes aren’t personal or intense enough. The only thing keeping him from saving the world is laziness and hormones? Make it personal. Again, if there was one girl in particular, does he feel like he needs to prove himself to her? Is he up against crippling self-doubt? Before that can happen he This is a bit wordy. “First he” easily cuts three words. must survive martial arts training from the most dangerous fighter in the world, and then prevent the Masters’ henchmen from carrying out the coup. Since you stated that this was his mission already, this is redundant. His enemies know he is coming, and have some lethal surprises in store for him. I think you could cut everything in this paragraph except for this line, and you’d have a tighter query. But I would like to get a stronger, deeper reason for what he does what he does. Jason will go home when he completes the mission – if he survives.

[Fun title in ALL-CAPS], a work of speculative fiction for the YA market, is complete at 82,000 words.  It features action sequences similar to the television series Chuck, and light science fiction aspects similar to Roland Smith’s Cryptid Hunters series.  It is a stand-alone novel with series potential. While Chuck is one of my favorite television series of all time, it’s difficult to compare a written action sequence to a visual one. I’d cut the “action sequences” part and mention that it’s similar to the TV series Chuck and Roland Smith’s Cryptid Hunters series.

I can definitely see the Chuck similarity. Remember that when we meet Chuck, he’s a failed genius working a dead-end job and has been betrayed by both his best friend and his girlfriend. He’s pathetic, but we know he has potential. What Jason is lacking is Chuck’s motivation. Chuck wants to figure out what happened to him, he wants to feel successful, and he wants to feel like less of a loser. Incorporating the emotional stakes into your query will help sell it.

I have a bachelor’s degree in journalism and MBA with emphasis in marketing, both from the University of Missouri.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration.

PLEASE let me know when this book comes out.

Oh, and…er…if you want to send me a revised query, I’ll look at it.

querylara

Query #10 March 2015

Leave a comment

Below is the tenth public query critique I’m offering up on the blog. To enter, see the rules here. If you want a guaranteed critique (plus line edit) of your query or synopsis, private ones cost $35 each.

My comments are in blue below. To read the original query first, simply read only the black text.

Dear Agent:

Aristocrat Tanner Mills, in theory, knew not to trust anyone his parents haven’t you switch to present tense here, then switch back. extensively vetted. In theory, he should have been in school instead of the bar close to the docks How old is Tanner? Is he a schoolboy, a Yale man?You never give his age or the age category of this novel—please do…and then quickly finds himself I’m not a fanof “finds himself,” because it’s a passive cliche. If you want to use passive tense to show that he’s a victim, then you can cut the wordiness and say “is tied,” etc. tied, gagged, and bound if you want to use the bound and gagged trope, that’s fine. I love tropes! But “bound” and “tied” are redundant here. on an airship where the city of London is nothing more than a distance dot wrapped in cloud cover. I’ll be honest, the first time I skimmed this, I completely missed the “air” part and the “cloud cover” part. Since this is steampunk, and setting is muy importante in steampunk, I’d like that up front. Start with what makes your book unique, not with a trope.

I’d recommend starting with a personalization, then leading into your genre paragraph, then starting immediately with the hook (the shanghaiing of the aristocrat, not the disobedience of the aristocrat). It might look like this: Continue reading →