How to weave more voice into a query letter (query critique)

If you’d like to nominate your own page or query for a public critique, kindly post them here in the discussion forums:

• Nominate Your First Page for a Critique on the Blog
• Nominate Your Query for a Critique on the Blog

Also, if you’d like to test your editing chops, keep your eye on this area or this area! I’ll post the pages and queries a few days before a critique so you can see how your redline compares to mine.

And, of course, if you need help more urgently or privately, I’m available for edits and consultations!

Now then. Time for the Query Critique. First I’ll present the query without comment, then I’ll offer my thoughts and a redline. If you choose to offer your own thoughts, please be polite. We aim to be positive and helpful.

Random numbers were generated, and thanks to Heidi Wainer, whose query is below.

Dear {amazing agent person},

Beyond the Rings of Imagination is a 76,000 word young adult space opera with romantic elements. The story mixes the seedy underbelly of space life seen in Firefly, with the drug culture of Breaking Bad, and the culture shock and romance in Save the Last Dance. It will appeal to the readers of Sharon Shinn and Maria V. Snyder.

Sixteen-year-old Shara Bransford dreams of studying exovirology to stop otherworld contaminates from endangering Earth, but after rejection from her dream university and her mother’s death, Shara must live on her father’s mining ship in the rings of Saturn. Spacers often discriminate against Earthers, who lack skin the mutations which protect against radiation, and Shara’s skin resembles her mother’s, more peachy than green.

A rust fungus has infested the ship’s arboretum. Eradicating the fungus without harming the plants will help her family grow the food they need while enhancing her next application to her dream university. Despite her Earther status, Shara finagles an interview with a professor to discuss her project and discovers the fungus is the main ingredient in the system’s most addictive drug. Her stepmother is growing the rust on purpose. Shara’s research proposal angers the Feldichi Drug Cartel. They retaliate with a bomb that breaches the ship’s hull, kills Shara’s grandfather and gravely injures her father. To save her father’s life and free her family from Feldichi control, Shara must abandon her educational aspirations. Only her imagination, gumption, and willingness to push science into the future can combat the cartel poisoning the entire solar system.

I would be happy to send you the complete manuscript upon your request.

Thank you for your time and consideration,
Heidi Wainer

This seems like an interesting project and I like the idea of a teenager having to battle a notorious interstellar drug cartel. The structure of this query feels mainly in place and I didn’t have a hard time wrapping my head around too many of the concepts.

My main concerns are twofold. First, I had a bit of a hard time getting into a flow reading the query letter because there were some convoluted sentences and odd phrasings that tripped me up. Make sure to read your query letter out loud to catch where you might be making things needlessly complicated.

But perhaps more importantly, I’m just not sure that I came away from this query letter with a sense of Shara’s personality. Apart from wanting to go to a particular university, what’s she like? What does she care about?

Believe me, I know how tricky it is to weave a protagonist’s personality into a brief plot description. It’s not easy when you have so few words to work with. But here’s a trick that can help.

Go line by line through the plot description and ask yourself: how would my protagonist describe what’s happening here?

Then draw upon that answer and weave it into the voice of the query letter. Swap out “just the facts,” generic, nuts and bolts sentences with ones that sound more like your protagonist. This doesn’t mean switching to first person, just make sure to draw upon your protagonist’s voice as you’re describing the events.

So, for instance, a lot of weighty things happen in this sentence, but the writing feels pretty flat and we’re not really getting any of Shara’s personality: “Sixteen-year-old Shara Bransford dreams of studying exovirology to stop otherworld contaminates from endangering Earth, but after rejection from her dream university and her mother’s death, Shara must live on her father’s mining ship in the rings of Saturn.”

How would Shara describe the events here? Sure, she “must live” on her father’s mining ship, but how does she actually feel about that?

These two turns of phrase get the same point across but one is much livelier than the other and hints at more of Shara’s personality:

“Shara must live on her father’s mining ship in the rings of Saturn.”

“Shara trudges onto an interstellar commuter to go live on her father’s crappy mining ship in the rings of Saturn.”

If you draw upon a protagonist’s voice as you describe the events themselves, your query will have a great deal more personality and it will feel more like reading your novel.

Here’s my redline:

Dear {amazing agent person},

[Insert personalized tidbit about the agent to show that you researched them individually]

Beyond the Rings of Imagination [Capitalize or italicize book titles] is a 76,000 word young adult space opera with romantic elements. The story mixes the seedy underbelly of space life seen in Firefly, with the drug culture of Breaking Bad, and the culture shock and romance in Save the Last Dance. It will appeal to the readers of Sharon Shinn and Maria V. Snyder. [Opinion vary here, but I tend to prefer the summary at the end of the query rather than the beginning]

Sixteen-year-old Shara Bransford dreams of studying exovirology to stop otherworld contaminates from endangering Earth, but after rejection from her dream university rejects her and her mother’s death her mother dies, Shara must live on her father’s mining ship in the rings of Saturn [Missed opportunity here to weave in Shara’s voice and personality. It’s “just the facts.” Can you hint more at Shara’s outlook on this?]. Spacers often discriminate against Earthers, who lack the skin the mutations which that protect against radiation, and Shara’s skin resembles her mother’s, more peachy than green.

When a rust fungus has infested infests the ship’s arboretum, if Shara can Eradicating eradicate the fungus without harming the plants it will help her family grow the food they need while enhancing her next university application to her dream university [Convoluted phrasing]. Despite her Earther status, Shara finagles an interview with a professor to discuss her project and discovers the fungus is the main ingredient in the system’s most addictive drug [I don’t understand “the system” in this context, do you mean the solar system?]. Her stepmother is growing the rust on purpose. Shara’s research proposal angers the Feldichi Drug Cartel. They, who retaliate with a bomb that breaches the ship’s hull, kills killing Shara’s grandfather and gravely injures injuring her father. To save her father’s life and free her family from Feldichi control [What does “Feldichi control” mean in practice?], Shara must abandon her educational aspirations. Only her imagination, gumption, and willingness to push science into the future [What does it mean in practice to “push science into the future?” Can you be more specific about what Shara actually has to do?] can combat the cartel poisoning the entire solar system.

[Brief bio]

I would be happy to send you the complete manuscript upon your request.

Thank you for your time and consideration,
Heidi Wainer

Thanks again to Heidi Wainer!

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Art: Voyager 2 on closest approach to Saturn by Donald Davis