Surviving DFWCon's 2022 Query Gong Show

Image by Hans from Pixabay

 The DFW Writers Conference was back in person this weekend for the first time since 2019, with a brand-new Query Gong Show. For those new to this site, the Query Gong Show is a riff on the 1970's TV talent show in which contestants performed until judges stopped them by striking gongs. DFWCon's version is less brutal but still not for the fainthearted.

Here are the rules: writers submit their literary queries anonymously to a panel of literary experts who strike table-top gongs to signal the point at which they would stop reading if receiving these queries in their own emails. Writers can get gonged once, twice, without stopping the reading (by DFW's mellifluously voiced George Goldthwaite). But three strikes and they're out!

When DFWCon debuted its Gong Show years ago, no query survived gonging. But over the years, first one query, then more, passed the test.

This year four -- FOUR! -- of the ten entries made it to the finish with no more than one, two, even in a couple of instances, no gongs whatever from the panel comprised of Cate Hart (Harvey Klinger Agency), Terrie Wolf (AKA Literary Management), Sue Arroyo (ComCat Publishing), Amy Collins (Talcott Notch Literary Services), Kevin O'Connor (O'Connor Literary Agency), and Naomi Eisenbeiss (Inkwell Management).

Have writers learned from the results of previous Gong Shows? Or, as some viewers suggested, is it simply that there's more information online -- and at conferences such as DFW's -- about how to fashion their queries?

To help writers survive query ordeals, here's a rundown of panelists' suggestions:

• Don't be generic. As Wolf, Collins, and Arroyo mentioned at different point, don't use phrases that suggest recent Netflix shows. And Hart gonged for an entry with a stereotypical logline. Don't use cliches -- be specific.
• Exercise sensitivity. Collins gonged two queries for ethnic stereotypes and problematic racial language. Wolf gonged a children's book for its treatment of disability. (That book did escape a dreaded third gong).
• Don't do a gross-out. Although panelists sometimes admitted their lack of familiarity with the genre of a query, a reference to "rotting flesh" stopped O'Connor as it probably would have stopped even agents who were die-hard horror fans.
• Be upfront about your book's genre, theme, and wordcount. Panelists were instructed not to gong simply because they didn't represent a specific genre. But in real life, be sure those match the requirements listed on the website of the agent you're querying.
• Make sure those genres and wordcounts match literary norms. Both Eisenbeiss and Arroyo noted that the wordcount for one entry felt too light for the amount of worldbuilding its genre required.
• Write just enough, but don't forget the important stuff. Multiple agents confessed themselves lost in queries that were overly long and complicated, but in some cases didn't tell them what was actually at stake in the story. Will the world end in ice, fire, or the dreaded meh?
• Don't chase trends. More than one agent also reported receiving queries that involve viruses. (Wonder where that idea came from?)
• Finally, for those writing fiction, finish the book before querying. A query stating that only one chapter had been completed received the dreaded three gongs simultaneously.

That's all for now. But there will be more highlights about the DFWCon in future posts, including -- how to write a query!