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.
I am currently seeking representation for my novel, SPOONMAN, a speculative psychological horror, complete at 63,000 words.
All journalist Annie Caplan wants is to be done with The Weird Shit. I like this hook!
Ever since that whole deal with the old video game and the people who disappeared after playing it, she’s become a magnet for weird-ass stories that’ve turned her life into a never ending season of The X-Files. Even more intriguing and love the X files shoutout! Taking the staff job at a new culture site, I'm not entirely sure what this means. The first time I read I thought it meant like an archaelogical dig. Needs clarified she had hoped to leave all that behind, but her latest assignment looks like it’s bringing it right back to her door: someone calling themselves ‘Spoonman’ is paying developers to add strange symbols to their software.
Much as Annie would love this to be some dumb prank, her new boss, Gordon Locke, kicks open the door to Weird Shit Territory when he reveals one of those symbols just appeared on his chest the last time he saw his ex-business partner/friend Tom Lanzig – who used to use the screen name Spoonman in their Silicon Valley days. When Locke asks Annie to track him down and find out what the hell’s going on, she’s all set to say “no,” until he offers her a life changing bonus that she can’t turn down. See, Annie has a secret: she has “missing time” and that money could pay for the help she needs to treat the PTSD it’s left her with, so she can start to unravel what the fuck actually happened to her. This feels like it should be mentioned earlier, b/c it's an ongoing state for her, not something that crops up at this point in the narrative.
Somehow, though, Spoonman knows.
In fact, he knows more about Annie than he should, leaving her with no choice but to wade back into The Weird Shit to find out how, and maybe, finally, get those answers that’ve eluded her. But this may be a rabbit hole she can’t crawl back out of: somehow, Spoonman can change reality to suit his own whims, meaning she has no way to tell if what she uncovers about his past, the strangeness around his property portfolio or what part he played in the disappearance of his girlfriend is the truth or just an elaborate fiction he’s weaving to stop her from discovering the real, potentially world ending purpose behind the symbols... This paragraph is getting quite vague and suddenly throwing a lot of plot points in is only muddying the waters.
I’m a writer of horror and speculative fiction based in Northumberland (who's also taken the occasional foray into freelance copywriting and comics). My work - both comics and prose - has appeared in various small press anthologies down the years, and I'm the writer/co-creator of the critically acclaimed graphic novel Babble, the fan-favourite folk horror comic The 13th Stone and the Velicity Jones series, which currently appears in David Lloyd's digital anthology Aces Weekly.Great bio!
Right now this is reading really well, but the PTSD angle and missing time need to be mentioned sooner b/c that's her actual driving force - not just that this is her job, etc. A query needs to answer these questions - what does the main character want? What stands in the way of them getting it? What will they have to do to overcome the obstacles? And what's at risk if they fail? Right now there's a vague possibly world-ending scenario that just gets tacked onto the end. Everything needs to be drawn together a little more tightly, but the concept feels very interesting.