If you’d like to nominate your own page or query for a public critique, kindly post them here in the discussion forums:
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 jtgarrison97, whose query is below.
Dear…:
I chose to submit to you because…
Twelve-year-old Frederick David Jones is dissatisfied with school and routine and dissatisfaction. He wants to really live, you know. His solution: wander into the woods. When he accidentally dozes off, he finds himself in a realm where the trees have grown about a hundred feet tall and aged about a million years. A spirit lady points to a strange fog hovering over his hometown and tells him that she and the world are fading and that their fate depends on him remembering this place. When he wakes up in his bedroom, though, he must confront normal routine life. As he pretends and gradually believes that it was only a dream, his experience of reality deteriorates. Fragments of time slide from future to past without stopping to be present, and a greyness seeps into the eyes of those around him, whose actions turn ever more algorithmic. When he returns to the woods and falls asleep with his imaginative-and-somewhat-unsocialized new friend, they find again the realm of gargantuan trees, but it has turned monochrome and misty, and the spirit lady has become a monster. Frederick must rediscover and remember the sacredness and magic of the world and of his place in it before the fog of forgetting leaks between worlds and blankets everything and everyone in mindless, colorless, everlasting nothing.
FREDERICK AND THE WOODLANDS is a 51,000-word lower YA novel somewhere between urban fantasy and magical realism. Its primary audience is 12-14, but it will appeal to a wide range of ages. Elements of the story and voice evoke Colin Meloy’s WILDWOOD and Katherine Paterson’s BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA but with a touch of Hayao Miyazaki-esque nature magic and Guillermo Del Toro-esque horror.
I am a young writer and graduate student living in Fort Collins, Colorado, where I study political economy and environment at Colorado State University. I have published short stories in Tulsa’s The Voice and The University of Tulsa’s Stylus, and I have a minor in creative writing. This project—hopefully—will be my first published novel.
I hope you will consider FREDERICK AND THE WOODLANDS for representation. Please find the first … pages below. Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.
This query gets off to a reasonably promising start before descending into a confusing morass. One of the most crucial elements in a strong query letter is missing: what does the protagonist have to do?
So many query writers get tripped up on this and get overly abstract describing the plot. Here, as the novel heads toward the climax, Frederick must “rediscover and remember the sacredness and magic of the world and of his place in it.” Not only is this really clunky writing (read it out loud), what does this actually mean in practice? I can’t wrap my mind around it.
If, however, Frederick must learn old magic to grow vines for arms in order to stop a mutant lumberjack and his giant axe from destroying a magical forest, that I would understand (I made this up, I don’t know what happens in the underlying novel).
Do you see the difference between “rediscovering the sacredness of magic” and “using vine arms to stop a mutant lumberjack?” One is way more specific than the other. Instead of trying to zoom out to summarize abstractly, just tell us what happens in a clear way.
Be precise about your protagonist needs to do and what’s at stake if they succeed or fail. Think in terms of the consequences to the character. “before the fog of forgetting blankets everything and everyone in mindless, colorless, everlasting nothing” sounds somewhat evocative but I don’t understand the tangible consequences for Frederick if this comes to pass.
Here’s my redline:
Dear…:
I chose to submit to you because…
Twelve-year-old Frederick David Jones
is dissatisfied with school and routine and dissatisfaction[This landed a bit flat for me. “School” and “routine” aren’t vivid and the repetition of dissatisfaction confused me. Weave in more individual details]. Hewants to really live, you know. His solution: wander into the woods.
When h¶He accidentally dozes off, heand finds himself in a realm where the trees have grownabouta hundred feet tall and aged about a million years. A spirit lady points to a strange fog hovering over his hometown and tells him that she and the world are fading.and that tTheir fate depends on him remembering this place. When he wakes up in his bedroom,though,he must confront normal routine life [Missed opportunity to be more specific/vivid]. As he pretends and gradually believes that it was only a dream, his experience of reality deteriorates. Fragments of time slide from future to past without stopping to be present [confusing], and a greyness seeps into the eyes of those around him [Be more specific about who], whose actions turn ever more algorithmic[I don’t understand what it means for actions to turn “algorithmic”]. When he returns to the woods and falls asleep with his imaginative-and-somewhat-unsocialized new friend NAME, they find again the realm of gargantuan trees, but it has turned monochrome and misty, and the spirit lady has become a monster [Be more specific. What kind of a monster]. Frederick must rediscover and remember the sacredness and magic of the world [I don’t understand what this means] and of his place in it before the fog of forgetting leaks between worlds and blankets everythingand everyonein mindless, colorless, everlasting nothing. [Confusing morass at the end. What does Frederick actually have to do?]FREDERICK AND THE WOODLANDS is a 51,000-word
lower YA novel somewhere betweendebut middle grade novel [This plot seems pretty squarely middle grade?] with elements of urban fantasy and magical realism.Its primary audience is 12-14[Upper middle grade age range], but it will appeal to a wide range of ages.Elements of tThe story and voice evoke Colin Meloy’s WILDWOOD and Katherine Paterson’s BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA [middle grade comps] but with a touch of Hayao Miyazaki-esque nature magic and Guillermo Del Toro-esque horror.I am a young writer and graduate student living in Fort Collins, Colorado, where I study political economy and environment at Colorado State University. I have published short stories in Tulsa’s The Voice and The University of Tulsa’s Stylus, and I have a minor in creative writing.
This project—hopefully—will be my first published novel.I hope you will consider FREDERICK AND THE WOODLANDS for representation. Please find the first … pages below. Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks again to jtgarrison97!
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Art: The Forest by Paul Cézanne
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