hello, I’m back with more weird advice! today’s weird advice is:
write a query letter early, and write one even if you’re not going trad pub.
why, you ask? why must I torture myself so? query letters are the worst! I would rather fling myself into the fires of plinko like that dumb horse or whatever! and I verily say to you, here’s why:
if you’re struggling with or feeling off about your plot, your query letter helps you get to the heart of your story quickly & in the simplest of terms
the meat of your query letter can double as your back-cover blurb (it’s short, it’s attention-grabbing, it hooks the reader into your story!)
I’m not saying you have to write all the “dear so and so” or title comp stuff. Just the hook of the query letter, the part that’s supposed to make your agent/potential reader sit up and go “oh, ok. that sounds like something I want to read.”
I just wrote one for The Spirit Well, which isn’t even at draft 0 yet, and let me tell you, it really forced me to think about my wip from different angles. For example, a couple things that went through my mind:
hm, how much do I mention Emry’s arc here? how about Cal or Aspen? wait, do they have arcs? (Cal has one) do they need arcs?
oh crap, I haven’t even mentioned spirits yet! that reflects how I have under-represented spirits in the outline, too. gotta fix that.
what are the biggest plot points? am I missing out on mentioning anything big? or, am I trying to cram too much in? if I cram too much in, is that an indication that my story itself is trying to tackle too much?
tl;dr- I’m a big fan of breaking down a wip to its essentials in the early stages, and a query letter/back-cover blurb hook is one way to do that for yourself.
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