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.

Derrick Flynn should be dead, but he’s up and running instead. He’s just survived his second chance encounter with the infamous killer Splitlip, a man assumed dead for decades. I think your hook is actually the second sentence, and I would consider striking the first. Splitlip is a great name for a villian, and the fact that it's Derrick's second encounter is intriguing. Also, cutting the first line will eliminate the echo (word repetition) of "dead."

Several years ago, Splitlip killed Derrick’s dream of developing his magic abilities when he murdered his mentor. This is first mention of magic, or indication that this is anything other than a contemporary thriller. Get the presence of magic into your opening para. Also, why can't Derrick just get a new mentor? Derrick’s superiors chalked the death up to a botched spell--untested sorcerers become erratic and delusional when they can’t control their magic--and expelled him from their group. Okay, so it's not so much that the mentor died that Derrick can't develop his abilities, it's that he was blamed for the death and banned. Again, I think you're giving information in a backwards fashion. It was a bitter pill to swallow, made worse by the fact that even his elder brother Alek, a sorcerer himself, didn’t believe him either. Believe him about what?

Now, those woes and doubts dissolve in adrenaline and glorious affirmation as Derrick runs from his would-be grave. Splitlip’s reappearance means redemption--if he can catch or kill him. It’s a chance he won’t let pass; but it’s one he can’t take alone. Definitely confusing. Somehow Splitlip still being alive is evidence that Derrick was not at fault for his mentor's death... but I have no idea what the connection is.

Alek agrees immediately when Derrick requests help, even though he hasn’t taken a bounty in years. How does a bounty come into this? Eager for his acceptance, Derrick sees this quick consent as the first step to regaining Alek’s trust, and perhaps even earning his esteem.

Only when they’re miles away from home does Derrick learn Alek’s true reason for wanting to help--to resurrect his late fiancee Cecily--and it threatens more than his shot at redemption. So... Alex actually just wants to find Splitlip so he can help resurrect his dead g/f? How does that threaten Derrick's goals directly?

CECILY'S KNOT (fantasy, 130k words) Holy word count. That's high. Even for a fantasy realm. As a debut trying to break into a very competitive marekt, you'll need to get that lower. Ideally under 100k may appeal to readers who enjoy Tad Williams' rich worlds and Patrick Rothfuss' mellifluous style. This debut novel is written as the first of a four part series, but could be adapted into a standalone story. You definitely need to push this as a standalone with series potential, rather than the other way around.

Your story sounds quite cool, and I like the concept, but your query is suffering from too much assumed knowledge. You'll see above that most of my critique revolves around needing clarification, or not knowing enough in order to draw the right conclusions. Get more explanatory info in there; we don't know this story. You do. It's possible to answer my questions and keep this concise.

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.

Imagine if Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was thrown in a blender with New Orleans voodoo and queer characters. The result would be a magical mix of adventure, curiosity, loss, belief, and family. We all think we know the story of Alice and perhaps we do, but what we don’t yet know is the story of AMARYLLIS LIDDELL, a queer multiracial girl living with her single mother in Brooklyn, NY. A young adult version of the classic tale blending fantasy and realism, THE TRIALS OF AMARYLLIS LIDDELL is approx. 79,000 words.

What you have right here is more of an elevator pitch, or a mashup. You're taking a concept (Alice) and adding the spice of the other two elements. It's not a bad pitch, but I don't think it's a hook for a query. A mashup is by nature broad, but a hook is very specifically pointing to an event or element in your book that makes it different from other books. Definitely think about what the defining element of your book is, and try to work that into a hook, rather using the language of a mashup / elevator pitch for a query.

THE TRIALS OF AMARYLLIS LIDDELL introduces us to an Alice different from the one we already know. Right now the language that you're using to compare your book with Alice is making it sound more like a retelling than anything else, and with the elements I see in front of me within the query, I'm not sure that's accurate. Feel free to ignore, is that is the gist.

Amaryllis is curious, much like Alice, but she also wishes so strongly that she were brave. Why? What is she scared of? Overall, Amaryllis’ life isn’t so bad. She loves her books, her girlfriend, the city, and all the possibility it represents. She could, however, do without the fights with her mother and the nagging feeling that she wants more from life. She wants adventure and purpose – and most of all, she wants to belong and feel understood. Everything that you're saying so far is very typical of just about any / all YA literature. For a query you want to extrapolate on what makes it stand out, what makes it different. Nothing listed abobve fulfills that.

At the end of her junior year of high school, Amaryllis looks forward to spending her summer running around the city with her girlfriend SOFIA You only capitalize characters names within a synopsis, not a query and to spend her free time with her nose buried in a good book, specifically the many old texts on voodoo, herbal remedies, and charms that have been mysteriously showing up at the studio apartment she shares with her mother, HARRIET. Also, make sure you are a person that can write about voodoo respectuflly and with an understanding of all the cultural connections.

On a sweltering summer day, after a particularly nasty fight with her mother on the subway platform, tragedy strikes Amaryllis’ life. As Amaryllis storms away from her mother, angry about what’s been said, she hears screams and gasps from behind her. Harriet has fallen onto the tracks and died. This is reading way more like a synopsis than a query. It all seems like a freak accident, one that Amaryllis is sure she must be at least partially responsible for. Amaryllis’ whole life turns into a whirlwind of emotion and change as her long-lost aunt shows up to bring her back home – to New Orleans, that is. While in New Orleans, Amaryllis discovers her family’s connection to voodoo and that it was, in fact, her aunt who had been sending her the books all along. Amaryllis makes it her purpose to dive into the art of voodoo and find a way to work through the grief of her mother’s loss. And what better way to cure grief, she thinks, than to bring her mother back from the dead? Good news. I found your hook - it's all the way down here, at the bottom.

As an avid reader of the young adult genre, I set out to write the book I wish had existed when I was a teenager. I wanted Alice to be queer (#ownvoices), to be a person of color, to exist in a world that I recognized – this is how I created Amaryllis Liddell. She is everything I think a 2020 Alice should be and encompasses much of what I think queer young people want to see in their storytelling. Amaryllis suffers enormous loss in more ways than one, which gave me the opportunity to write about a topic that’s so close to my heart. I too, have suffered losses, and so have many other readers in the YA market. They need stories that speak to them, that aren’t afraid to show the pain that accompanies loss and what one young woman is willing to do to fix her pain. Everything before this, (with the excpetion of the #OwnVoices mention) isn't useful in a query. Cut to your accrediations, below. I hold an M.F.A. in screenwriting and currently teach creative writing as an Assistant Professor at Western Kentucky University. My tv pilot script, ‘Til Death (a queer drama), earned an honorable mention at the University Film and Video Association conference during the summer of 2019. I have published two poems and two short nonfiction pieces with small presses, and I was the screenwriter for the short film Five, which premiered during the African American Short Films Series from Badami Productions in 2016. Most of my work centers on queer women and trauma.

Great bio if you take out the more personal elements noted above. Also, you are clearly aware of #OwnVoices and are illustrating your fitness for this story in terms of queerness. If you have something simliar to put up front in connection to the multi-racial and voodoo elements, I would advise that, as well.

As I noted above, this is reading more like a synopsis than a query. Get the trauma of loss and the idea of resurrection in there way earlier. It feels like more of a hook than the Alice comparisons. Also, some indications about whether or not this is a good idea (or a bad one), would be great. You say your MC wishes whe were brave, but not why she thinks she isn't, or why she wishes she were.

Writer's Digest shares a series of successful query letters on their site, with feedback from agents who signed the author, and why the query works. Read through some of those to get a better idea of what a successful query should look like.

Mine can be found here.

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.

Scottsdale 2008—The Great Recession roars across the country like an avenging angel on crack. As long as this statement fits with the tone / voice of the book, it's fine. But this is coming off as humorous and I don't know if that's where you want to go or not. The housing market crashes, businesses fail, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac go belly-up. And Interior Designer Soleil O'Connor faces foreclosure. Technically not a complete sentence. I'd smash it together with the one before. After surviving a hardscrabble childhood and soul-crushing marriage, she’ll do anything to save her house.<span data-preserve-html-node="true" style="color:blue> I'd cut the previous line. When she’s offered a job in Mexico, she jumps at the chance—even though the client, Viktor, is an arrogant bully. (She can handle him—this isn’t her first rodeo.); even though she has to fly to Mexico in two days. (Travel is fun.); even though the first designer died on the job. (People die every day.) After some serious arm-twisting, her BFF, Molly agrees to join her. I'm seeing that the voice probably does fit with the first line. I do think you can do some condensing though, get her into Mexico - and to his line about the first designer dying - in there sooner. That's the crux of the plot, and it's at the bottom of you explaining that the recession caused a problem for an interior designer, which is kind of an assumed.

Once in Mexico, Soleil learns Viktor founded the town’s orphanage twenty years ago and is revered as the Patron Saint of San Miguel. Surprised and impressed, she decides to cut him some slack. Until she discovers a cache of AK-47s stashed in the orphanage’s garage. The designers rush back to their casita to pack. But who can they trust to drive them ninety miles to the airport? Viktor owns the town and everyone in it. They guess wrong and land in the Inquisition Jail. You definitely need to give us something else here. Is the goal simply to get back home? Or are they trying to save the day? Or maybe the orphans? What's the gist of the plot other than save their own asses?

Five Days in San Miguel, a suspense novel of 71,000 words, will appeal to fans of Mary Higgins Clark, Romancing the Stone, and HGTV. Again, Romancing the Stone has a very strong thru-line of humor, as does this query. Make sure that fits the voice of the book, if that's what you're leading with.

I was an Interior Designer for thirty years and wrote design articles for The Chicago-Sun Times (Diana Manley Catlin). My publications include short stories: “The Favorite”, runner-up in the WOW (Women On Writing) Contest, published online; and “Checkmate”, included in the Desert Sleuths Sisters in Crime Anthology, How Not to Survive a Vacation. The Chicago Tribune printed two of my letters in their Letters to the Editor section. Great bio!

Overall I think you need to rearrange your elements here so that the first designer dying is your lead. Secondly, you spend so much time getting the MC to Mexico, that I'm not sure what her goal is once she's there, other than just to survive. You'll need more than that. Lastly, what's the point of Molly? In this query, she's serving almost no purpose, which will make agents wonder if the same is true of the book.