Query-Writing Craft: Part 2

Last week, I suggested that when you sit down to draft a query, you want to start by answering the following questions:

- Who is the protagonist?
- What is her situation?
- What kind of world is the novel set in?

The Inciting Incident:

- What is the story's inciting incident? I.e. What sudden change convinces the protagonist she must act?
------- What does the protagonist want?
------- What are the stakes if she fails?
------- What gets in the way of her getting what she wants?
------- What does she choose to do to obtain what she wants? What's her plan?

Escalation:

- What goes wrong with that plan?
- How does that increase the stakes?

- What is her next plan?

- What goes wrong with her next plan?
- How does that increase the stakes again?

- What (very hard thing) must the protagonist do to prevent (a very bad) disaster?

This week, I'll discuss how to craft your query from the answers to the above questions. But first, let me rant and rave and froth about brevity.

You only have about 250 words to spend in your query, so it's critical that you streamline the plot ruthlessly. Yes, your book is full of complex subtleties and lively minor characters, but you must leave all that sparkling awesomeness as a pleasant surprise for the agent/editor who requests pages. It must NOT go in the query.

Why? Because too much detail confuses the reader (badly) and it takes up too much space on the page, regardless.

Here are some tips for keeping your query simple:

- Only discuss the main plot of the novel. All subplots must be omitted.
------- Also, you may need to gloss over the subtleties of your plot, or even mildly misrepresent it, in order to make it sound logical in the query. This is painful, but it's more important for your query to be easy-to-understand than accurate.

- The only descriptions you should include are those the reader needs to know in order to understand the plot. Thus, don't mention that your protagonist is a sexy, thirty-year-old redhead, but if she's going to be forced at gunpoint to perform surgery on the villain, go ahead and describe her as a doctor.

- Keep proper nouns to a minimum. That means names and placenames.
------- Your protagonist should be referred to by name. The love interest and the villain can be named also. Everyone else should be referred to by their function within the story, not their name. For example, say "the priest" rather than "Father Ramchandra".
------- Likewise, omit placenames. However, in fantasy, science fiction, and historical novels, including a placename can help establish what type of novel you've written and what sort of world the protagonist lives in. It's a judgment call; do whatever you think makes the query easiest to understand.

Alright; now, let's get to the business of writing the query!

I've heard it suggested that the query letter should focus on the inciting incident only. This has merit, because the inciting incident is the hook that leads the reader into the story, so it may also be the hook that most efficiently grabs the agent/editor's interest.

That said, I prefer to include more detail about the book than just the inciting incident, and I do so by the method outlined below.

First Paragraph:

I start by isolating what the essential conflict in the book's inciting incident is. Then, I try to cram that conflict into the first paragraph. In a sense, I'm using the book's inciting incident as a logline to hook the reader's interest right away.

Remember that the promise of conflict is fiction's most effective lure. It's what keeps people compulsively turning the pages, and so it will also hook an agent/editor into a query.

Now, look back over your answers to these questions:

1) Who is the protagonist?
2) What is her situation?
3) What kind of world is the novel set in?
4) What is the story's inciting incident?
-------4(a) What does the protagonist want?
-------4(b) What are the stakes if she fails?
-------4(c) What gets in the way of her getting what she wants?
-------4(d) What does she choose to do to obtain what she wants? What's her plan?

Answering all of this is our target for the first paragraph, and we only have a few sentences to do it in. The first sentence should answer questions (1) and (4) immediately, and should hopefully establish the conflict between 4(a) and 4(c). If it doesn't, then the second sentence should. Yes, we have to move that fast.

The next sentence should then address 4(b).

So what about (2) and (3)? If possible, they should be implied as we go along, rather than stated outright.

For example, if your first sentence starts with, "When a wizard flattens Zenestral's pub and threatens to kill her unicorn foal...", that makes it obvious what kind of world the novel is set in and what kind of person Zenestral is. (2) and (3) are now answered (in addition to (1) and (4)) and we were able to focus on the yummy conflict, not the boring background details.

4(d) we can leave for the next paragraph. If you've covered (1)-4(c), you should have a solid and intriguing first paragraph.

After the First Paragraph:

In the next paragraphs--and you can have one or several, as you see fit--you're going to focus on the escalation of the story. Recall these questions:

4(d) What's her plan?

5) What goes wrong with/complicates the first plan?
6) How does that increase the stakes?

7) What is the protagonist's next plan?

8) What goes wrong with/complicates it?
9) How does that increase the stakes again?

10) What (very hard thing) must the protagonist do to prevent (a very bad) disaster?

At this stage you should be thinking about the big picture, not the incremental small steps that lead the protagonist onward from the inciting incident. You should get the antagonist (human or otherwise) introduced and explain how his plans are the obstacles/complications for the protagonist.

You also want to be focusing on escalation and the promise that a huge confrontation is coming. The reader should clearly see that life is getting riskier and more difficult for the protagonist.

I find it's a good tactic, in this part of the query letter, to state what the protagonist needs (goal), then immediately mention what gets in her way (obstacle/complication), and then mention the stakes.

So, for example:

"Zenestral knows it's time to flee to yet another new town,[PLAN] but this time she has a son,[COMPLICATION] and if they leave now, the local earth spirit will curse him and doom the boy to the same unlucky life Zenestral has suffered.[STAKES]"

I keep repeating this triplet of goal/obstacle/stakes to flesh out the rest of the plot's escalation, always making sure the stakes continue to rise. As soon as the reader understands the full danger and difficulty of the book's main conflict, then the query ends without giving them any resolution or release of tension. I wrap it up in a final paragraph with the genre and word count, any credentials, and I thank the agent/editor for their consideration.

In other word, the conflict of question (10) is your cliffhanger. You end with the reader wondering what happens next, forcing them to request pages to satisfy their curiosity.


Please note the Query Goblin is dealing with some real life hustle and bustle right now, and will be more absent than she wants to be from the comments section. Please feel free to have a spirited discussion without her, however! In a few weeks, she'll be back and she will jump in belatedly.

Query-Writing Craft: Part 1

Kay, of Query 7, suggested I write a post or two on how to structure a query, and since the stream of queries-to-be-massaged is occasionally slow, I'm taking Kay's good advice.

This week, I'll concentrate on how to begin writing a query--what information you need and what story elements you should focus on.

The first thing to understand is that your job in a query letter is not to summarize a 300-word novel in 250 words--your job is to make whoever reads that query desperate to get their hands on the book itself.

So how do you do that? The same way you compel someone who is reading the first chapter of your book to compulsively plough through to The End--with the promise of conflict.

People become desperately curious to learn what happens next when they can smell a major confrontation on the horizon. This is why an escalating argument is so hard to ignore--you feel you need to find out how bad the fight is going to get and who will win.

Thus, in your query letter, you want to make the reader believe that all hell is about to break loose--and then leave them dangling, with no idea of how it ends. This should effectively make them frantic to read the book itself.

(Note that when I say "all hell is about to break loose", that can also mean a quiet, internalized hell. Introspective novels also focus on escalating conflicts, but the conflict can take place inside the protagonist's head or heart.)

So how do you convince the reader of the query that your book has a juicy, riveting confrontation lurking at the end of it?

I'm actually going to save that discussion until the Feb. 27th, 2011, blog post, but today I will explain how to identify which the story elements you'll use as building blocks to assemble that enticing query with.

One thing to note is if you've written a good book, then you have all the raw material you need to write a good query letter too. You might not know how to yet, but the content you need already exists in the form of Building Blocks 1 and 2, listed below.


Building Block 1; The Inciting Incident

The story's inciting incident is the moment when the protagonist's world changes--usually unpleasantly--and forces them to take action to improve the situation.

The inciting incident usually sets up a dilemma for the protagonist, too. If they don't act, there will be a penalty (the "stakes"), and if they do act, there will be hardships to overcome (the obstacles).

Note the inciting incident does not have to turn out to be an important part of the story. For example, the inciting incident of the Harry Potter books is when Harry gets a letter inviting him to attend wizard school. However, Harry's destiny turns out to be destroying the evil wizard Voldemort, so in hindsight, that exciting letter he got wasn't such a big deal.


Building Block 2; The Escalation: Goal, Obstacle/Complication, Stakes

Once your protagonist has been forced to act, he has to choose a plan. As soon as he tries to implement that plan, things go awry in the form of obstacles and complications. The obstacles/complications force the protagonist to come up with a new plan, and they also increase the stakes (i.e. the penalties for failure.)

For example:

Inciting incident: Luke Skywalker discovers a hologram of Princess Leia in his droid. He is so entranced by her image that he cannot ignore her plea.

Stakes: A stranger will be hurt if he does nothing, and Luke's too good-hearted to allow that.

Goal: Visit Ben Kenobi and ask if he knows who this "Obi-wan Kenobi" Leia is trying to contact is.

Obstacle/Complication: The droid goes missing.

New Stakes: Not only can Luke not help the pretty lady, but his uncle is gonna kill him for losing the new droid.

New Goal: Go find that droid.

New Obstacle/Complication: Luke finds both Ben and the droid, but learns he's more personally connected to Leia's fight than he knew. Ben says Luke's father was killed by Darth Vader, the same person Leia is fighting, and Ben wants Luke to leave the planet to help fight Vader.

New Stakes: Luke is asked to sacrifice his entire way of life for Leia and Ben's fight.

New Goal: Say no and go home. This is too big.

New Obstacle/Complication: Storm Troopers, looking for the droid, have killed Luke's family.

New Stakes: Luke's life is in danger, and he now has a potent personal desire to fight Vader.

New Goal: Go with Ben Kenobi and stop Darth Vader.

Et cetera. The thing to note here is that every time Luke tries to do something to get to his immediate goal, the situation changes to both increase the stakes and force him to form a new plan to reach a new goal.

Now, how to turn this into a query letter? That discussion I'll defer to Feb. 27th, 2011, but here is a list of things you want to think about before you begin to assemble your query:

Questions to Answer Before Drafting Your Query:

- Who is the protagonist? What is her situation, and what kind of world is the novel set in?

The Inciting Incident:

- What is the story's inciting incident? I.e. What sudden change convinces the protagonist she must act?

- For the story's inciting incident, answer the following questions:

------- What does the protagonist want?

------- What are the stakes if she fails?

------- What gets in the way of her getting what she wants?

------- What does she choose to do to obtain what she wants? What's her plan?

Escalation:

- What goes wrong with that plan?
- How does that increase the stakes?

- What is her next plan?
------- At this point, you want to start thinking big. The inciting incident is small; the main plot of the book is big. Think BIG.

- What goes wrong with the next plan?
- How does that increase the stakes again?

- What (very hard thing) must the protagonist do to prevent (a very bad) disaster?
------- Note this should outline the book's major conflict, i.e. the event that constitutes your big climax.

On Feb. 27th, 2011, I'll explain how to begin crafting the answers to these questions into a query letter.


Please note the Query Goblin is dealing with some real life hustle and bustle right now, and will be more absent than she wants to be from the comments section. Please feel free to have a spirited discussion without her, however! In a few weeks, she'll be back and she will jump in belatedly.

Query #9: "Spirits of the Unknown" by Orlando

This query is from Orlando for the novel Spirits of the Unknown. Thank you Orlando for the honour of allowing me to work on and post this!

~~~~~~~
ORIGINAL QUERY

After an assassin kills his father and youngest brother, Tilvanau -- oldest son of his planet's ruling family -- faces a brutal civil war. Amid rumors that he killed his own kin to gain sole control of the government, and the rise of a powerful new dictator in the west, Tilvanau gets a grim reminder the assassin is still out there.

Tilvanau's second brother attempts to flee with his family, but the assassin hidden inside their ship kills everyone aboard, escaping planet-side. Meanwhile, the ship, haunted by the ghosts of the murdered family, jumps to its programmed destination: Earth.

The American government has possession of the ship, and is contacted by Tilvanau, and the new dictator. They must make an alliance to capitalize from the scientific knowledge the ship contains. Not knowing who to trust, they realize the wrong choice can begin an interplanetary war involving Earth. The ghosts of his family attempt to disclose the killer, to no avail. Now they want revenge.

With conspiracies around every corner as the government crumbles, there's only one person Tilvanau might be able to trust to help: the secretary of state, who also happens to be the woman he loves. But she's now next in line to take command. She has motive and opportunity to see him dead. She warned him of such an attack, frustrated she was excluded from secret meetings. She could well be his greatest enemy or his greatest ally.

Discovering the assassin's identity has become of paramount importance -- finding the killer may be the key to suppressing the civil war, uniting the planet. He follows his brother's ship to Earth where he'll either find the answers he needs -- or walk right into the assassin's trap.

SPIRITS OF THE UNKNOWN is complete at 95,250 words.

~~~~~~~
GOBLIN-EDIT

When his father and brother are assassinated, it leaves Tilvanau the contested ruler of the planet Suvino. Unfortunately, most of his population now considers Tilvanau a murderer, and the upstart dictator who really ordered the attacks is using their anger to destabilize Tilvanau's government.

When Tilvanau's remaining brother is also assassinated, it turns the conflict interplanetary. The brother's ship arrives at Earth with its occupants slaughtered, but Earth's authorities are more hungry to exploit the ship's technology than to find the killer. The problem is, they can't unlock that technology without the help of Suvino's government--and there are two governments. If Earth sides with the wrong one, it will provoke civil war on Suvino.

Discovering the assassin's identity is the only way Tilvanau can prevent the bloodshed and avenge his family. But as conspiracies ensnare his advisors, Tilvanau is forced to place most of his trust in the woman next in line to seize his power. When she suggests he follow his brother's ship to Earth, Tilvanau knows he will either find the answers he needs there--or walk right into an assassin's trap.

SPIRITS OF THE UNKNOWN is complete at 95,000 words. Thank you for your consideration; I look forward to hearing from you.


Have any thoughts about either the original or the re-written query? Please join the discussion in the comment thread!