The Saturday Slash

Don't be afraid to ask for help with the most critical first step of your writing journey - the query.

I’ve been blogging since 2011 and have critiqued over 200 queries here on the blog using my Hatchet of Death. This is how I edit myself, it is how I edit others. If you think you want to play with me and my hatchet, shoot me an email.

If the Saturday Slash has been helpful to you in the past, or if you’d like for me to take a look at your query please consider making a donation, if you are able.

If you’re ready to take the next step, I also offer editing services.

My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.

I’d like to share my first novel, PEPPERMINT LEAVES (88,000 words, contemporary fiction), with you. PEPPERMINT LEAVES would appeal to readers of Oisín McKenna’s EVENINGS AND WEEKENDS and Dolly Alderton’s GHOSTS for its compact portrayal of people who are just trying to work out their own story. This is a little bit vague in both the genre and the description. "Contemporary fiction" on its own is fine but "just trying to work out their own story" isn't compelling and doesn't really make me as a reader want to keep going.

MERIEM and CASI only captialize character names in synopsis, not in a query are similar in many ways: they’re in their mid-twenties, living in London, trying to fit into lives they haven’t chosen. Again, super vague. It's not distinct or interesting She is undocumented—well, mis-documented—and he is drowning in ambition. When Casi is unexpectedly made redundant from his high-flying corporate events role, one small lie to his alcoholic brother and an inkling of an ambition shared with his competitive ex-colleagues set him on a path to finding Meriem.I have no idea what any of this means. What lie? What ambition? How do any of these things come together to put them on paths that will intersect? Desperate to prove himself, he unwittingly begins to pick at Meriem’s tightly-woven world, ultimately forcing them both to face who they really are. This entire paragraph is about Casi. I know practically nothing about Meriem and I have no idea what their colliding with each other means. Are they going to fall in love? Ruin each other? Save each other? Eat each other's pets? What do you mean when you say her world is tightly-woven? I really have no idea what the plot is here. A query needs to answer these questions - what does the main character want? What stands in the way of them getting it? What are the obstacles they have to overcome to achieve their goal? What is at stake if they don't? Right now I don't know the answers to any of these questions based on this query.

I work in a youth charity where I am responsible for strategy and planning, and I parent a van-obsessed two-year-old. All of my writing happens in those little breathing spaces between full time work and parenting, sometimes at the kitchen table, sometimes on the floor outside the toddler’s bedroom, waiting for him to fall asleep. Not having any publishing credits is fine, but I would only include elements of your personal life in your bio that relate to the story, thus showing that you have life experience that makes you a credible author of this story. Right now none of this does that work.

I am now working on my second novel, which is also standalone, and follows Anna, a young woman whose neatly-packaged life unravels when her ‘friends’ discover she’s been passing off the stories of the elderly care home residents she looks after as her own. Definitely don't talk about the next thing you're writing. They need to be interested in what you've already written before they care at all about anything else. This is information for when you get to a phone call.

The Saturday Slash

Don't be afraid to ask for help with the most critical first step of your writing journey - the query.

I’ve been blogging since 2011 and have critiqued over 200 queries here on the blog using my Hatchet of Death. This is how I edit myself, it is how I edit others. If you think you want to play with me and my hatchet, shoot me an email.

If the Saturday Slash has been helpful to you in the past, or if you’d like for me to take a look at your query please consider making a donation, if you are able.

If you’re ready to take the next step, I also offer editing services.

My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.

IT SHOULD’VE BEEN YOU is an 88,000-word standalone women’s fiction novel that will appeal to fans of the star-crossed lovers trope in What You Wish For by Katherine Center and the trauma-driven, dual-timeline structure of The Forgotten Hours by Katrin Schumann. Good start, it sounds like you've got the formula for an opening paragraph down.

Twenty-five-year-old Aurora Ridgefield is perfectly content checking off the boxes of a well-planned life: a teaching career, an apartment, her devoted boyfriend, Sage. But she also knows she’s no longer the wild, open-hearted teen she used to be—not like she was with Gale, the boy who saw her in a way no one else ever had. When she unearths an old journal, she’s forced to confront a truth she’s long tried to forget: she never really got over him. Great beginning here!

At fifteen, their connection is immediate, electric. But before it can become something more, Gale’s parents ship him off to a remote boarding school. Unable to process the sudden loss, Aurora’s free spirit hardens into control. Little bit more here on why? Why is this the reaction? It almost seems like a wild person make spin out of control instead.

Over the years, fate keeps reuniting them—but each time, Gale returns more withdrawn. Finally, he confesses what he’s carried for years: the school didn’t just take him away—it broke him. Loving her only reminds him of everything he’s lost, of the trauma he endured—so she lets him go. The way this para is written it feels like the "over the years" statement spans the time all the way up to the present, and their adulthood, which the next paragraph seems to contradict

A decade later, Aurora has everything she thought she wanted: a marriage to Sage, a child after years of infertility, a comfortable life. But the journal leads her to a crossroads—continue the life she’s carefully built, or give her love with Gale the chance it never had.

When she agrees to meet Gale one last time, her decision becomes clear: she tells him she has always loved him, even when he couldn’t love himself; but their story is in the past ---and she is choosing her present. This is more like a synopsis at this point, you're giving away the end. The query needs to be more hook-y, and make the reader / agent want to know what happens. You need to cut this off at her making the choice, or being stuck at the crossroads, rather than come across with the whole ending.

By day, I’m a high school English teacher and New Jersey Romance Writers member, living in New Jersey. I hold degrees in journalism, English, and secondary education. This is my debut fiction novel. Great bio, you don't need to mention that it's your debut, with no pub credits it's an assumed.

The Saturday Slash

Don't be afraid to ask for help with the most critical first step of your writing journey - the query.

I’ve been blogging since 2011 and have critiqued over 200 queries here on the blog using my Hatchet of Death. This is how I edit myself, it is how I edit others. If you think you want to play with me and my hatchet, shoot me an email.

If the Saturday Slash has been helpful to you in the past, or if you’d like for me to take a look at your query please consider making a donation, if you are able.

If you’re ready to take the next step, I also offer editing services.

My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.

Imagine The Da Vinci Code but with rats. I have no idea what that would look like, but it's not a bad hook. You do have my interest. However, it's not immediately clear "but with rats" means. Are rats the main characters, like The Secret of NIMH? Or are rats part of decoding the mystery? I think most people are going to immediately assume the former, but I did do a double take on it, so possibly worth thinking about.

For young Rascal Blaze, destiny isn’t a gift, it’s a family curse. He prefers books and a comfy armchair to the dangers outside his room.What kind of dangers? Real ones? Or is he an agoraphobe? At least until he finds a locket belonging to his long-vanished father. But it doesn’t give Rascal power, it gives him problems. It’s a tracking beacon that alerts a fanatical cult of Guardians to his existence, forcing him add "to go?" on the run with his best friend, Peri, and a grizzled adventurer with his own hidden ties to Rascal’s past. Again this could all be about a human, the way it's written. If the MC is a rat, I feel like there should be more of an indication of that.

Rascal soon learns he’s the subject of an ancient prophecy, meant to unlock a legendary power known as the Sacred Flame. But this is a legacy of failure, not triumph. The last "Chosen One" to attempt the feat—his own father—wasn’t just defeated, he was consumed by the power he was meant to control. But what does this power do? Who is it being used against? Who is it supposed to help? Are his people in some sort of trouble? The dangers alluded to in the first paragraph? Pursued through an underground world with magical embers that force visions I don't know what that means. and giant moles protecting ancient tunnels, Rascal’s quest leads him to the one person who holds the truth: Grand Matriarch Lyx–leader of the Guardians. What are these visions? What are they about? What significance do they have to the plot? Why are tunnels being guarded and where are they going? What are they trying to do?

She isn't just a tyrant seeking power, she’s the one who sent his father to his doom, takes his best friend hostage, and holds the most devastating secret of all: she’s Rascal’s mother. The past tense that slides into present here is awkward. The mother reveal doesn't really mean much, either, since we didn't know he was motherless, or - if that's not the case - what his mother situation was in the first place

Caught between the legacy of his father and the tyranny of his mother, Rascal must decide whether to ignore the dangerous prophecy and his best friend, or risk becoming the next Blaze to be consumed by the flame. Ignore the danger to his best friend? Unsure what this is saying

THE ADVENTURES OF RASCAL BLAZE is a 36,000 word standalone Middle-Grade fantasy/adventure with series potential. It combines animal protagonists and the spirit of adventure from Jan Eldredge’s Nimbus with the high-stakes prophecy and family revelations of The Manifestor Prophecy by Angie Thomas.

Right now this just feels very generic. There's a chosen one, mommy issues, and risking yourself or someone else. I don't really know what the plot is - you say he's on the run, and that seems very literal. There doesn't seem to be a goal. What are they trying to do? Get somewhere? Find something? Just keep moving and not die? What is this power for? Is it going to protect someone? Who is it going to be used against? None of the plot points that could distinguish this are present in the query.