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.

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

I’m hoping you will consider my 95,000-word YA historical adventure novel, THE VICTORIAN TRAVESTY, which I believe will appeal to fans of Meg Cabot’s PRINCESS DIARIES and Diana Gabaldon’s OUTLANDER. What you have here is great in terms of comp titles and description. However, I usually advise to put this information at the bottom of the query. They know you're querying hoping that they'll represent you. It's an assumed. I personally think it's better to jump in wtih a strong hook.

What if there was a secret kingdom in modern-day that lived as if it was the Victorian era? Rhetorical questions aren't a good start. What if it was ruled by an evil queen, bent on keeping her people in the dark about modernity? What if there was only one girl with the birthright to dethrone the queen, but she was raised in the outside world? You need to strike this entire first para and get these elements Victorian enclave in modern day world, evil ruler, lost royalty, into the query in a different way.

Alair has never had to answer any of these questions until a mysterious uncle arrives and invites her to reunite with her estranged father in Penvellyn Quarter. Hidden deep in the lush Bavarian Alps, Penvellyn Quarter is a small kingdom that chooses to live as if it is in the Victorian era—in fashion, in manners, and in everyday simplicity. Decent, but we know nothing about Alair. Is she nice, mean, cute, ugly, sporty, proper? What's her life like before this happens? Is she bored, or invested in what she already has?

As if that wasn’t mindboggling enough, Alair’s father just so happens to be the king.

Alair’s uncle ushers her through a bustling Victorian town to a magnificent castle to reunite with her father. She arrives just in time to witness the unimaginable: her father is murdered by his wife, Queen Fidelia. His dying words: Dethrone Queen Fidelia. Now the sole ruler, Queen Fidelia is free to implement her evil vision for the kingdom. Right now this is reading more like a synopsis than a query. You're walking us through the setup when what we really need is to know the meat of the story.

Now-Princess Alair is overwhelmed by the dated and often backward mores of Victorian culture. There's no way she can remember the difference between fifteen kinds of spoons or learn the language of flowers. Her royal cousins won’t speak to her, and soldiers study her every move, as if they know just how many secret passageways she’s already found. So she can't go back? Why not?

Reeling from culture shock and grief, Alair is ready to flee for home. It’s only after she makes some friends, realizes the beauty, whimsy, and fun of this strange place, and comes to care about the dire danger it faces under Queen Fidelia that Alair commits to fulfilling her father’s wish—she commits to dethroning Queen Fidelia. Don't use Fidelia's name so much, it's muddying up the query. You also have an echo with "commits."

To do that, she must out Queen Fidelia’s secret that she killed the king. Luckily, the popular and cunning Fidelia has one hamartia not going to lie, I had to Google this. Better to stick with words the agent will know: she’s hidden proof of her crime somewhere in the castle. But why would she do that? It doesn't make sense. Alair just has to find it—before one of Fidelia’s attempts on Alair’s life succeeds.

If she fails to defeat her father’s killer, Alair, her new friends, and all of Penvellyn Quarter will be Queen Fidelia’s next victims.

THE VICTORIAN TRAVESTY is my first novel. I graduated with a BA in English from the University of Georgia, and I currently work as a freelance copywriter and editor. You don't need to state that it's your first novel, but everything else in the bio looks good.

Overall - don't start with the questions, open with something stronger. The idea of a modern girl being uprooted and tossed into Victorian life is a good hook. Don't cripple it with the rhetorical questions. The Uncle seems to disappear after serving his purpose, so does he really need to be in the query?

You infer earlier on that the queen keeps the secret of modern life from her kingdom, and that is part of her evilness. But that is dropped later on when Alair only seems to want to reveal the murder - not usher everyone into the 21st Century. So what's the real goal here? Move the people into the modern life? Or dethrone the queen for murder?

Kristy Boyce on Using Travel For Inspiration

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.

Today’s guest for the WHAT is Kristy Boyce, author of Hot British Boyfriend, releasing Feb. 9, 2021. She lives in Columbus, OH and teaches psychology as a senior lecturer at The Ohio State University. When she’s not spending time with her husband and son, she’s usually writing, reading, putting together fairy gardens, or watching happy reality TV (The Great British Bake-Off and So You Think You Can Dance are perennial favorites).

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

I did! Actually, my earliest inspiration came from a multiple choice question I wrote for an exam. In my psychology class on “The Self,” I was teaching about how people are often pulled between showing their best self (self-enhancement) and their true self (self-verification). I wrote a question asking if a person studying abroad would use self-enhancement or self-verification when interacting with other students and then I sat back and thought, “That would be a fun YA to write!”

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

First, I knew I wanted to set it in England. I’ve always been a huge anglophile and I’ve been lucky enough to travel there multiple times. Additionally, my best friend taught at a study abroad program at Harlaxton Manor, which is a gorgeous manor north of London, and I was inspired to use that location for my school.  

Once I had the main premise and the location figured out, everything else started to come together. For Hot British Boyfriend, the setting plays a huge role in the plot. I was able to take virtual tours of the manor to help me and I also pulled from my own experiences in England and Europe. Compared to other books I’ve written, this plot came together (relatively) easily.  

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper? 

Oh, definitely. I will have this whole manuscript laid out in my mind, but when I start to write I’ll sometimes find that the stakes aren’t high enough or the character motivations aren’t solid.

I like to fast draft at the beginning so I try not to get too caught up in these issues. Often if I keep writing then I’ll figure out how to solve the problems. Also, I’ve found it’s better for me to get down a full rough draft and then step back and look at it as a whole before making decisions or changes.   

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

I’m not someone who gets story ideas very often. I’d say maybe every six months or so I’ll be inspired by a new idea, but I don’t have notebooks of ideas sitting around or anything like that. It’s always a relief when a new shiny idea comes to me because I know I haven’t lost it yet! 

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

Usually I have one manuscript I’m working on and one lurking in the back of my head that I know I’ll move to next. Choosing the next story has never been a hard decision for me. Plus, now I’m in the lucky position where I can talk to my agent and editor when making that choice.

I have 5 cats and a Dalmatian puppy (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

I have one elderly cat named Moogle (named from the Final Fantasy video game!) and she loves to be in my office because it’s sunny and she can sleep in peace. Honestly, she might be happier if I wasn’t there and she had the place to herself!

Why We Need Dark Humor in Our Stories

by Richard Roper

Tony and Chris are horsing around with their friend and colleague Ralph. Chris grabs Ralph’s hair and leaps back in surprise as what turns out to be a wig comes away in his hand. ‘What, you didn’t know?’ Tony says, a sly grin on his face. So far, so quirkily charming. But context is all, and in this case, what’s actually just happened is that Tony (Soprano) has just brutally murdered his old pal and capo and lied about it to his heroin-addicted nephew who he’s called over to help dismember Ralph’s corpse. This is typical of The Sopranos, a show laced with dark humor throughout. But why go there? Well, the moment serves two purposes. Firstly, for the characters – it is a chance for them to find a moment they can bond over. Chris knows full well that Tony has killed Ralph, Tony knows full well that Chris is high – so for them to find something to laugh about in the middle of all this horror allows them a brief second of respite, a second or two of common ground. The second function of the moment is to show us, the viewer, that what we are witnessing is real life. Not that we’re watching a documentary – what a twist that would have been! – but that these gangsters are not slick, unfeeling, glamorous machines; they are fallible, they are human – and so much of being human is about making each other laugh, even in the most dire situations.

This for me is why – when used well – dark humor is so important in the stories we tell, because it is one of the most powerful tools we have in our arsenal as human beings. Even someone living the most charmed life will be visited by tragedy and misfortune or downright bad luck at some point in their time on this planet. The moment where you can make a joke to your friends about it is always that tipping point where you can stick a middle finger up at what’s just happened and show that you aren’t going to be bullied into submission any longer. Perhaps the greatest example of this in art is comedian Tig Notaro’s legendary stand-up show ‘Live’, performed just a few days after receiving a diagnosis of stage-two breast cancer. Introducing herself with words, ‘Hello, I have cancer’, Notaro goes on to talk about her illness, her recent break-up, and everything else in between, all with jet-black deadpan humor. What’s particularly fascinating is how the audience responds. Usually when you are listening to a comedy album the laughter from the crowd is predictable, like a wave breaking on the shore each time a punchline is delivered. But as Notaro speaks, the laugher comes in scattergun bursts – some of it hearty, some stifled. It is the spontaneous sound of recognition and shock as they watch a high-wire act of someone coming to terms with their mortality in almost real-time. It is a profoundly life-changing thirty minutes, and a fantastic example of the power of dark humor to help us be fearless.

My personal love of the dark side comes stems from my life-long obsession with comedy – both stand-up and sitcoms. Broken down to its simplest, comedy is all about surprise. The set-up of a joke makes you think one thing and then the punchline pulls the rug from under your feet. ‘Formulaic’ is one of the most commonly used adjectives used to criticize comedy – we know what’s coming, so aren’t surprised, so we don’t laugh. If you’ve become as much of a nerd as I have, it makes it harder and harder to find new ways to be surprised – which is why, like an addict looking for my next high, I ended up turning to darker comedies to find something unpredictable, and from both sides of the pond. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Peep Show. The League of Gentlemen – these are all shows that feature a cavalcade of dark themes and plotlines, characters without a moral compass – but crucially all the jokes are justified, it is not being dark for the sake of being dark. These shows constantly surprise with how far they are willing to push the boundaries, and is for that reason why they have such cult followings. It feels like they are saying ‘yeah, the world can be the worst, but if we throw our heads back and laugh our asses off, then we’ve won already’.

With dark humor being at the core of the art I love, it’s probably no surprise that my debut novel Something to Live For was always intended to have that at its core. The book was inspired by a real article I read about local authority workers in England who are tasked with dealing with the situation when someone dies alone. These are people who spend their nine to fives in the most horrific, depressing circumstances – but without exception they all exhibit stoicism and respect while finding as much humor in the situation as they can in order to simply get through. When you see it employed in moments as hopeless as that, you see just what a superpower dark humor can be, and why we need it in stories more than ever.