Wordcraft -- Spawn of the QueryShark, part I

Several months ago, I found an article at the DFW Writers Conference site about a query contest. All it involved was writing a purported query to a literary agent or editor for a classic novel. The prize was nice--a free critique of a query letter about the contestant’s real novel by agent/author Donald Maass. And there were no fees. My kind of contest.

I sent in an entry, then forgot about it until May, when I learned from DFW blogger Tex Thompson that my entry was a finalist. In a moment of dazed joy, I promised to post the query and Maass’s comments online for the edification of other writers. I’d thought I’d done a pretty good job. Wrong! But in the interest of helping other writers, here’s the whole thing, with Maass’s comments and what I learned from them.

Originally, Thompson had posted that if contestants really wanted to learn how to craft a query letter, the place to go was the blog of literary agent Janet Reid, a.k.a. the Query Shark, who “ruthlessly (yet generously!) tears apart query letters to help beginning writers improve their craft. Do yourself a favor and read the whole archive.”

I recommend QueryShark.  As happens all too often with Blogger, I can't get a working link to Reid's blog, but you should be able to get it to come up by typing http://queryshark.blogspot.com or http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com into a search engine.  In the meantime, see what QueryShark has spawned.

　

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Dear Agent:

What recovering alcoholic Emma Farouk wants more than anything is to keep her disabled daughter, Suzy, safe. She figures she’s on track to do that. She’s been clean and sober for more than a year. She’s now married to a long-time friend. And her first husband, the one whose name is listed as “father” on Suzy’s birth certificate, is recently, conveniently dead.

DM: I like that opening “everything is good” paragraph and the subtle ways it signals that everything is not going to stay okay.

But Emma’s new husband, Dr. Jilani (Jim) Farouk, has problems. Ever since he finished medical school, he’s sent money to Pakistan to support his widowed mother. Now, federal agents have begun to question why he keeps sending payments years after his mother’s death. If Jim could bring himself to tell the truth about the long-ago rodeo accident that killed his best friend, the feds would back off. But it’s a truth that could ruin his career.

DM: Lost me here. The money mysteriously going to Pakistan is great but then…a secret surrounding a rodeo death? Huh? How are those things connected? (You might make the mystery of that connection the point of the paragraph.) Also, you have stopped telling Emma’s story here, you’re reporting a plot complication. Say (briefly) how this impacts Emma.

Then early parole frees Emma’s violent ex-boyfriend--and Suzy’s unacknowledged father--Sherman McMillan. He wants his daughter. He’s not going to let Emma’s new husband or even Suzy’s own fragile emotional state stop him from gaining custody. And that’s the one thing Emma won’t allow.

DM: Villain wants daughter back, big problem for Emma. Well, okay. The problem is sad, and hopefully scary, but also not particularly special. Is there a twist? Is the villain, say, violent in one particularly gruesome way? Also, paragraph 2 and 3 aren’t connected. I feel like this needs one more paragraph to circle back to Emma, her challenges and changes, to tie it all together.

WILD HORSES is an 80,000-word contemporary suspense novel set in Texas and Wyoming and told from multiple viewpoints.
　

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Maass started out with kind words about the opening paragraph. But as his next comments indicate, my following paragraphs squandered the limited space of a standard one-page query by straying into subplot territory. And of course, I gave the villain too little credit. In the next verstion, I'll to stay focused on the main character and conflict, as Maass suggests in his final “tie it all together“ comment.

I wasn’t the only contestant to receive a critique from Maass. Another finalist, Kim Moravec, also received a critique about her query. Next Monday, she shares her query on her YA thriller, Finnegan’s Awake, with Maass’s comments and her own insights.
　

Wordcraft -- Bringing sanity to your synopsis

The good news from my interviews with literary agents at last month’s DFW Writer’s Conference was that several wanted to see pages or chapters from my novel. And oh, was I prepared for that. I’d thrown my whole heart, not to mention computer, into polishing those opening chapters shiny enough to flash heliograph messages.

The bad news -- some agents also wanted a synopsis of the novel. Considering that I’d been to at least one agent panel and read any number of blogs in which agents all but swore on their grandmothers’ graves that synopses were a waste of time, I hadn’t written a synopsis worthy of the name. With hands I hoped didn’t tremble visibly, I wrote “synopsis” on the agents’ business cards and staggered from the room.

Maybe you’re thinking -- she wrote four hundred pages but she’s scared to write a one-page summary telling what the whole thing is about? Except if you’re thinking that, you’re not a writer who’s ever tried to cram four hundred pages into one.

Fortunately, Facebook friend and fellow writer Kathleen M. Rodgers had posted a link to “How to Write A One-Page Synopsis,” from Susan Dennard’s blog Pub(lishing) Crawl. I’m here to tell you that following this “three rules of thumb, eleven-point method” gave me a coherent one-page (single-spaced) summary within an hour or two. I haven’t had responses yet from the agents, so I can’t guarantee this will get you offers of representation. But it saved my sanity and it can save yours.

First -- the rules of thumb. Number one -- Dennard advises against naming more than three characters in a synopsis this short -- the protagonist, antagonist, and relationship character. I admit -- I broke this one for a couple of secondary characters. With words at a premium, it took less space on a page to use a one-word name than the two word description, “protagonist’s mother.”

Second rule -- Tell the ending. Right, spoilers and all.

Third rule -- Do not include sub-plots unless you have enough space. This one I bent. One agent had said she wanted to know if there were subplots. I sacrificed a single sentence to convey the biggest one briefly.

The eleven steps will be familiar to anyone who’s read Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey (although the nomenclature differs slightly) or any works dealing with three-act structure. They are: (1) opening image; (2) introduction to the protagonist, including his/her desire; (3) inciting incident; (4) plot point one; (5) conflicts and character encounters; (6) midpoint; (7) winning seems imminent, but. . . ; (8) black moment; (9) climax; (10) resolution; and (11) final image.

Weirdly enough, I got stuck figuring out what the midpoint was. In desperation, I thumbed halfway through my printed manuscript. And found what I needed.

If you’ve written any story at all, something major has happened halfway through the pages. If nothing leaps out at you from the exact numerical center, flip back or forward a few pages. Picking random examples from what’s on my nightstand -- it’s the place in Wuthering Heights where Catherine dies; where Tita of Like Water for Chocolate refuses the summons of her abusive mother; where the narrator of The Island of Dr. Moreau learns the extent of what the mad scientist has done. You will know the midpoint of her novel when you see it.

Susan Dennard applies this with examples from the movie Star Wars, which will also give you a much needed laugh. See her complete explanation at www.publishingcrawl.com/2012/04/17/how-to-write-a-1-page-synopsis/.

For more about my generously-sharing friend, Kathleen M. Rodgers, and her work, see her author page at www.facebook.com/.