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.

After ten years spent banished to Counterpane Island, Drizzle knows humans have poor judgment for three reasons:

1. They keep calling her an ogre. Just because Drizzle is six feet tall (average height for a twelve-year old Morathian btw), has bright red skin, a crown of horns and she’s fireproof, does not make her an ogre.

2. Humans think Counterpane, with its white sand beaches and turquoise seas, is a “vacation paradise.” Uh - no. Drizzle much prefers her home country of Morath, with its sulfurous breezes, abundant lava flows and toasty temperatures.

3. Only humans would allow a hybrid dragon-queen to rule their island. Czarina is always getting mad and popping into dragon form. One time she leveled a whole city block because there were peas in her salad. Any species that puts up with such stupidity has a fundamental weakness.

   Interesting way to begin. It goes against the grain, but it does capture voice and setting. What I think we're missing is how humans figure into this world. Also, if she's not an ogre, what is she?

Drizzle would give anything to return home. But her mother’s failed attempt at challenging their leader the leader at home? means Drizzle was banished and bound to Czarina with a binding spell. The curse can be broken only when Drizzle successfully beats the leader’s daughter at a dance fight. The leader's daughter... not Czarina? It's getting a little confusing and you might be better off naming the leader's daugther.

Which is a problem because Drizzle doesn’t know how to dance fight. The sacred art is only taught on Morath.

ThenWhen Czarina decides Drizzle needs leadership training. She sends Drizzle she is sent to summer camp on Corpulent Island. There for the first time, Drizzle finds friends (the fact they’re not human probably helps) and tackles camp challenges like one of the gang.

Oh, and also? She encounters another Morathian, who happens to be a retired dance fighting coach. Suddenly, Drizzle’s dreams seem to be in reach...until a historic enemy of Morath slithers in to mess everything up. More detail here. What does this mean? What is the enemy and how do they mess everything up and why would they do it in the first place? A query isn't the place to tease, so make sure you're dishing out the whole plate.

Drizzle battles enemies old and new while she tries to break the curse. But the more progress she makes, the more her own assumptions - of humans, of Morathian culture, of what it means to be her - are threatened in THE MONSTER CURSE, a 62,000-word middle grade humorous fantasy. It could be described as Shrek meets The Last Dragonslayer.

The voice is here and I think the non-traditional approach is worth a try. But make sure you get your plot on the page.

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.

Cassidy Quinn didn’t mean to find herself in the center of a missing persons investigation. She’s no detective like her mother, and she’s not trying to be anything other than a regular teenage witch. I think you might have your hook buried here at the end of the opening para. I'd switch these thoughts around - Cassidy never wanted to be a detective like her mother, she just wants to be a regular teenage witch. But when she finds herself...

When Cassidy heads off to another year at Orawick Academy, a place that’s already notorious in the Magical Realm for being the only school that allows different types of creatures to study together under the same roof, she isn’t expecting to get caught up in the infamous school’s biggest scandal yet. As students start mysteriously disappearing from Orawick’s campus, Cassidy’s mother is sent to investigate. But when she also vanishes, Cassidy becomes is determined to figure out who is behind the abductions and why before it’s too late to save the only family that she has left.

With the help of her unconventional group of friends, including her potions-obsessed roommate and her charming childhood crush, Cassidy must unravel the clues that will lead her to the truth before her worst fear is realized. After she discovers the heinous actions that are being done to the kidnapper’s victims, Awkward sentence, but also a query is not the place to tease. Tell us what the heinous things are Cassidy realizes that continuing down this dangerous path could lead to her putting her own life on the line. But earlier you said she was determined... it doesn't feel like determination if at the first sign of danger she seriously considers bailing Cassidy must then decide how far she is willing to go in order to save the people that she loves most, even if it could mean losing herself along the way.

Orawick is a YA Fantasy novel complete at 88K words and will be my debut novel. My background is in screenwriting and working as a director, producer, and actress in the film industry, and my life overall revolves around storytelling. This book could be a standalone novel but has been written as the first in a series where the self-discovering journey found in Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson meets the dark mysteries of the underworld like in Kingdom of the Wicked by Kerri Maniscalco.

Good bio and comp titles! The trick here is going to be showing what it is about your book that makes it stand out. Magical academies are old news. So is a mysterious bad force and saving someone you love, even though you could get hurt. This is all a plot that's been done a million times. What makes yours different? If it's the heinous thing being done to the kidnapping victims, tell us what that is.

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.

I saw on your Manuscript Wish List that you are seeking compelling, memorable stories that inspire a wealth of emotions, particularly from marginalized voices. I believe you may be interested in FORTUNES OF 42, a young adult fantasy novel imbued with the allure of fate, communitas, and ever-changing fortunes, complete at 92,000 words. This is a good, personalized intro. Usually I recommend jumping right in with your hook, but you've clearly done your homework and this is a strong start.

While sweating copiously under the blistering blaze of the sun and gazing up in childlike awe at the Demigod who commands the Terra, Ether, and Abyss,the first time I read this I thought Ether and Abyss were names of characters. You've got a lot of worldbuilding vocabulary jammed into this para, and that means the reader has to untangle it. With 200 other queries waiting in the inbox, they might not take the time. eighteen-year-old passive and withdrawn Prince Lucian of the Adarian Empire comes to a realization: He has doomed them all. You're also using two words where one will suffice, and a query needs to succint as possible. Choose between blistering / blaze and passive / withdrawn. Right now your first para is a bit of a muddle of a run-on. Don't be afraid to use periods to break this up a bit.

Lucian disregarded his father’s warning and ventured beyond the confines of his palace to attend a festival that was soon invaded by the enemy. Now, he and forty-one others are held captive in an ancient city with impenetrable mysteries, and guarded around-the-clock by elite Demigods who would ruthlessly enforce order with violence and constrain them to kneel to what? in penitence. Lucian must work with his motley crew of fellow captives to outmaneuver the Demigods and escape the city. If he fails, he will risk the wrath of the divine, lead his empire to calamity, and consign himself and his peers to their demise. But isn't that already happening, in a way? Hasn't he already risked their wrath, imperiled his empire, and pretty much led them to their deaths? Right now this doesn't show a plot - it shows a plot element. A guy made a bad decision and is now in a bad spot and wants to escape, but that's risky. That's not a plot, that's a thread. What's the bigger picture? What's at stake beyond a punishment that they are already enduring? What is the choice that has to be made? What do these two cultures have against each other in the first place?

FORTUNES OF 42 is a standalone with series potential, and is comparable to Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson and The Unwilling by Kelly Braffet. It contains an aro-ace protagonist, LGBTQ+/POC characters, and hints of enemies-to-lovers romance.

I am a Vietnamese-American nonbinary first-generation summa cum laude film graduate of California State University, Long Beach. I am also a member of the Gutsy Great Novelist Writers Studio. My film critiques are published on CMRubinWorld, and my portfolio can be viewed at: juliankimcao.wixsite.com/home.

Great bio and good comp titles. Right now you need to get the bigger picture on the paper. What's at stake beyond these 42 people? How does Lucian change and grow through out the story? What must he risk, with so much ALREADY risked - and failed? You describe him as withdrawn and and passive, but never hint to that changing, which doesn't bode well if he's going to be leading a group out of imprisonment.