"Anchor", nonstandard query (withdrawn, found rep)

I'm honestly not a fan of non-standard queries. The problem is, this doesn't tell me much about the plot of your book. Don't tell me that the book tells the story of two different women in different worlds - show me. Give me a full paragraph about Remy, who she is, what she's trying to do, and what stands in her way. Give me another full paragraph about Ro and what she needs and wants. Then, hit me with the slight dilemma that these two women are the same person and they can't both achieve their goals. Lay out the stakes for each of them.

The part of a query that talks about your book is supposed to be about 250 words. You've got 136 words about the book, and about 50 that talk about theme and word count. By the time you add the bio and the closing, the most important part of your query (the plot) is less than half the total length.

Many thanks for the replies, Laura and Michelle.

I've tried a lot of versions of the query over the past eight months and found that Remy can't carry the query because she has no stakes at the start, due to being suicidal. It would probably have to be a Ro query. I do have a few versions of those that I could try to dig out and tinker with.

I'm not sure how to answer the question of Ro's importance. Almost all of the MS is from her pov (Remy's sections are still narrated by Ro, in the third person); she's invested in her own world and her own existence.

Are we allowed to post revisions at some point in the future?

Many thanks again,
S

Okay - I'll give it a few weeks and see if I can come up with a better one.

The original query was Remy-oriented but her reasoning for suicide is the length of the MS (the driving question); in the end, I couldn't condense her reasoning into query format without sounding banal.

Ro's motivations are bound up in her girlfriend who is missing-presumed-dead, but trying to explain that storyline always seems to bog me down in worldbuilding.


Sorry, I'll stop trying to explain myself!

Thanks again, and have a good evening.

Many thanks for the comments, much appreciated.

I've got some different versions on a drive that I could possibly dig up and tinker with (have had a LOT of different versions over 8 months!). I used standard query letters for my other MSS, and very happily.

In answer to the question at the end, Ro knows that she is a dream. I think that's a big part of what Michelle is objecting to (the POV MC being someone who is potentially not real). There's a lot of discussion throughout the MS about what it means to live your life dictated by your waking self, and what it means to exist as a person and have purpose, even when you probably aren't real.  

But it's not the kind of thing that queries well, because it's thematic rather than plot-based, so I was trying to leave it out. However, any discussion of the worldbuilding seems to beg those kinds of questions and then I'm right back at square one >.>


I think it's probably better if I close the thread (with many, MANY sincere thanks for the input). It's a no go for QK with this version, I think ;-)

I like the setup for your query, but how I feel is somewhat similar to the others - stories that are dream-centric can be a hard sell, since dream sequences in fiction are generally considered contrived. I'm sure that's not the case with your story, and I bet you pull it off in a way that no one else does, but making the right first impression is too important to risk scaring someone off before they've read your book. So, like the others said, I would focus on Remy's battle and what she's trying to accomplish. She's one of your main characters, so she has to have a character arc. Something she's striving for, like Michelle said. If she's suicidal, then I'd imagine she might wish to get better. Does she strive to do so? If not, that's indicative of a problem with the story itself. You main character should always have agency and something they're working toward in the novel.

Or, in the situation where all of Remy's motivations and agency manifest in the form of Ro, then you need to find a way to present Ro as Remy unleashed, not present them as separate entities. That's one way you could do it and still keep Ro in the query.

There's always the third option too: Keep the format of your query, but find a way to describe Ro as someone other than a simple dream-version of Remy. Try to move away from the dream-centric story we're seeing. I think if you can do that so that element doesn't feel cliche, while also taking a risk with your non-traditional approach, it might work out. I personally like the direction you took.

Same for me! I laughed at "If Remy dies, Ro is fucked." Great voice! But yeah, make it Ro's query, like the others are saying. Ro's existence may be a dream, but for her, it's very real, it's her world, and she wants to survive. I would buy this book!