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.
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My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.
Since you are looking for more stories with a dark, twisty edge, and a bit of humor, I am thrilled to present LOVING LUCY LAKE, my own take at a YA mystery/gothic romance novel, complete at 72,000 words. The Scream franchise meets the complicated character dynamics in Mindy McGinnis’s The Female of the Species, with an added romance that I’ve longed to see in more horror media. Well, I'm intruged, and not just because you're using me as a comp. This is an interesting mashup!
It is her senior year of high school and Lucy Lake feels like her life is going nowhere. All her friends are college-bound and making plans to leave their dead-end town, her boyfriend is pressuring her for sex, and her grandfather’s once reassuring concern is starting to feel suffocating. Lucy knows deep down that she will never escape Rosedale, nor her grim connection to the town’s only serial killer: The Reaper. Good intro, but we need to know what her connection is. A relative was one of the victims? A relative was the killer? Or suspected of being the killer?
Tragedy strikes when one of Lucy’s classmates is found gruesomely killed at the Halloween carnival, kickstarting a series of murders that leaves Rosedale reeling—and remembering. And it’s not just the journalists drawing comparisons between the Reaper’s victims and the most recent murders; so is the town commissioner who closed the Reaper’s case more than a decade ago. And how does this affect Lucy? Is she suffering socially b/c of it? Was she already an outcast? What changes is this causing in her life?
Then, Dorian Evers steps back into Lucy’s life. After suffering a tragedy of his own over the summer, her once childhood friend has returned more mysterious, lonely, and dangerous than ever. He’s terribly handsome and asks questions that Lucy doesn’t have answers for (like why they stopped talking all those years ago). But why is Dorian approaching her now? Why does he hate her friends so much? And what does all this have anything to do with the copycat killings? As the would-be Reaper cuts a bloody swathe through town, Lucy realizes that the only way to save her loved ones is by digging deeper into a past that refuses, even now, to let her go. Basically, the questions you present within this paragraph are my own questions as well. What does Dorian have to do with anything? How does he tie into the larger story?
I am living in Montréal, Québec. I have a BA in Fine Arts, Film Production, and a minor in Creative Writing from Concordia University. Currently, I am writing my second novel, a YA romantasy interwoven with horror elements.
Overall, I think you have something interesting here, but you're missing some key elements. A query needs to establish - what the MC wants, what stands in their way, what do they need to do to overcome the obstacles, and what's at stake if they don't? Those elements aren't here right now, but if you can write them in, I think your elements are interesting.