Querying Fiction: A Simple Guide for Authors
Wondering how to write a query letter for your fiction manuscript? Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of key components and strategies that resonate with literary agents
I’m starting out my very first blog post addressing the question many literary agents, including myself, get asked frequently: How do I write a query letter that grabs an agent’s attention? I’ll likely be writing about this topic a lot on this blog, but to start, I thought we could begin with the basics of writing a query letter.
Embarking on the search for representation is a massive step in your career as a writer. Take a moment to congratulate yourself on getting to this point. You’re now getting ready to sell a book! At this point in your writing and authorship journey, you’re taking a huge leap. You’re now jumping into the business of books.
In essence, a query letter is a sales pitch. Your mission in writing and sending one is to sell your story to an agent. Congratulations, you’re now also a salesperson. If you look at a query letter as a sales document, then you can see how it’s different from what you say at a dinner party when one of your friends asks you what your book is about.
A good query letter does two things well:
1) It gives the agent information about yourself and your manuscript and
2) It compels them to request your manuscript.
There are three elements that agents look for in every query for a fiction manuscript (non-fiction is pitched differently. I will unpack the basics of nonfiction querying another time). In this blog post, I’m going to break down these elements based on the paragraphs in your email. I’ve heard a lot of agents over the years (smartly!) describe the talking points you should include in your query letter as the following: the book, the hook, and the cook.
The Book
In your opening paragraph, an agent is looking for quick-fire information: your book title (of course!), the genre, the word count, and two or three comparative titles.
All of these are important to an agent. You might be asking why the word count is so important to include right away and why an agent’s eye gravitates towards it. That’s because we need to know if the length of your novel is within the standards for its genre. It’s important that you’re not pitching a 25,000-word book as a complete novel (it’s not. It’s a novella) or that you’re pitching a 100,000-word book as a middle-grade novel— no editor will buy kidlit of that length, even if it’s a masterpiece. Sometimes word count alone can tell an agent a lot about whether you truly know the genre (and market) you’re publishing in, or even if you’ve done your research on the agent and read their submission guidelines and wishlist. As an example, I don’t represent novellas, so I would quickly disregard a query that pitches a novella-length project.
Comparative titles also serve a similar function. They not only show agents your market knowledge (“my book is like X and fans of Y would enjoy it, therefore there’s a market for it), but they also help an agent get to know your book better. If you’re querying a literary novel and your comparative titles include books like OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA by by Julia Armfield and THE PISCES by Melissa Broder, then we can assume that your novel deals with body horror and potentially has an aquatic theme. If the agent is a fan of those books, they would also be more intrigued to read your manuscript.
Some agents, more than others, request that you include comparative titles in your query letter. I personally think it’s a must. It’s a great sales tool, so why wouldn’t you include it and use it to your advantage? The placement of where to include these comp titles is a little more up in the air. I’ve seen queries where the comparative titles are included towards the end of the letter, and I think that’s perfectly acceptable. However, I find that including them at the end of your opening paragraph can sometimes be more compelling and can actually help immediately situate the agent within your book’s genre, which you’re identifying in this paragraph anyways.
The Hook
Now that we’ve moved on from the basics, we’re at the part where you seal the deal. Your second paragraph is where you hook an agent. It should focus on describing your book through sales-y copy that reads like the description on the back of a book (aka, the jacket copy). If you grab any book on your bookshelf right now and read its jacket copy, you’ll likely see that the text does not mention the book’s themes. Telling someone, whether an agent or a reader, a book’s themes generally doesn’t hook them. There are plenty of books out there with similar themes, so telling us the themes doesn’t necessarily convince us that we should read your specific novel over someone else’s novel.
Your hook paragraph is also not a synopsis. We don’t want to know every plot point or every character that will be introduced in the novel. What we do want to see in this paragraph is a description of your characters and plot, told in a compelling way. This is also the paragraph where you answer the following: Who is your protagonist? What do they want? Who do they want it from? What happens if they don’t get it? These questions can serve as guiding questions when you’re crafting your hook paragraph, but keep in mind that this information needs to be revealed in a way that compels the agent to read more. This is where your creative storytelling can shine most.
The Cook
Your final paragraph is where you reveal the literary chef behind the work. This is usually a short biography where you tell us a few things about yourself that can reveal your personality and/or credentials. You don’t have to specify that you’ve never published anything before, but if you have, this is where you tell us. If you’ve had previous representation, make sure to let the agent know as well. If you feel like you have nothing to say in your bio, you can always mention what you do for a living and where you live, especially if these factors influence your writing or storytelling. But keep it simple!
How Long should my query letter be?
Usually, I recommend keeping your query letter to around 3 paragraphs, one for each talking point, but you don’t have to box yourself in if you feel your query letter needs to be longer than three paragraphs. Sometimes a hook paragraph needs to be split in two. You’re a writer, you know the drill! However, your query letter should be no longer than a page. I recommend sticking within the 250 to 450-word range.
More resources
If you’re looking for examples of successful query letters, agent and author Eric Smith shares some of his client’s successful query letters on his blog.
This Writers Digest article also shares some successful query letters from different genres.
I hope you found this helpful! Feel free to drop your questions in the comments, through my contact inbox, or wherever else you can reach me. Good luck querying out there! You’ve got this.
