How to weave more voice into a query letter

Query letters, as you may have noticed, are tricky beasts.

They must accomplish several difficult feats at once. They need to summarize what’s in the book, but they also need to give a sense of the flavor of your writing. The agent needs to understand what happens, but they also need to get a hint at what it would like to read the book.

I’ve previously covered how best to summarize the book. This post will focus on voice.

How do you capture what makes your book–and your protagonist–unique? In order to demonstrate that, I’m going to critique a query submitted by a reader and illustrate how best to weave in more voice.

Query critique

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 in the comments section, 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

My thoughts on the query

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.

What would the protagonist say?

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” sentences–the nuts and bolts ones that convey what happens abstractly–with sentences that sound more like they were written by your protagonist. This doesn’t mean switching to first person, but you can draw upon your protagonist’s voice as you’re describing the events.

So, for instance, a lot of weighty things happen in this sentence… “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.”

…but the writing feels pretty flat and we’re not really getting any of Shara’s personality.

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? What’s her outlook, how does it tie in with her hopes and dreams?

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.

Look for opportunities to add spice

If you’re only focused on making the plot comprehensible when you’re writing a query, you risk summarizing abstractly and ending up with a letter that feels flat and lifeless. Push yourself past rote phrasing and cliches like “the last thing he/she wanted” and instead tap into your book’s voice in order to enliven the way you describe events.

Have fun with it. Make the query sound like your protagonist.

“until the bitter end” could be “until Frank’s the last glutton burping at the king’s table.”

“evil step-parents died” could be “thankfully run over by rhinoceroses.”

“coming of age” could be “burning bridges and mending fences along the path to sorta adulthood.”

Do you see where I’m going? Take phrases that may be well be accurate, and rephrase them in the way that better reflects the style of your project. Look at every sentence to see if you can make it more you and more like your book. Weave in outlook and flavor.

Yes, adding style can sometimes add a few more precious words, but not drastically more. You can be concise and punchy at the same time.

Query redline

Here’s my full redline of the query:

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. [Opinions 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 [Missed opportunity to weave in more specificity on the effects on 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 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 [Missed opportunity to weave in more voice and specificity]. 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. [Here’s some advice on nailing the last line of the plot description]

[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!

Need help with your book? I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and coaching!

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