This is a post I put up a few years back as a case study for querying writers interested in hearing about the publishing story of Fireborne. (For those who don’t know: querying is the stage in traditional publishing where the writer searches for a literary agent, who will in turn submit your work to publishers.)
I queried Fireborne for two years, revising both the manuscript and the query letter throughout. I accrued 70+ rejection letters over that period, which is to say that persistence paid off—but so did revising. What I want to do in this post is compare the first query I sent for Fireborne with the one that got me an agent two years later. In other words, to look at how a pitch evolved as I learned more.
I’ll point out now that that NEITHER of these queries describe the book that you’ve read, if you’ve read Fireborne. To hear more about the editing process Fireborne went through after finding an agent and editor, read my post on what editors do or my revision analysis.
Here’s one of the first query letters I wrote for Fireborne, from 2015.
Fast forward through many evolutions and rejection letters to the query for Fireborne that led to representation two years later, in 2017:
So let’s look at some things that changed, starting with the most obvious.
- Tagline changed. “Plato’s Republic with dragons” became “Targaryens in Ender’s Game.”
- Why? References should be as broadly appealing as possible. “Plato’s Republic with dragons” tickled my friends—but just because it tickles your friends doesn’t make it a good pitch. Maybe the literary agent you’re querying has read Plato’s Republic, but even if they have, that was probably in college years ago—how much will they remember, let alone be able to imagine with dragons? They’re as likely to be put off as intrigued. Whereas Ender’s Game and a GoT reference are both mainstream contemporary cultural milestones.
- Word count went from 105K to 93K.
- Why? Because I was revising, and in revising, I trimmed the fat. There turned out to be a lot of fat. Which goes to say: even when you think it’s as polished as possible—which I did, in 2015, when I began querying—it probably isn’t. (Curiously enough, the book is longer now—even longer than 105K—but the difference is, the pages that were added in revisions since the book deal were muscle, not fat. And we sold it at 95k.)
- Comp titles changed.
- Why? Comps are how you show you know the market. Ender’s Game and Red Rising are not a good combination of comps for a YA fantasy query. One of them is 30 years old, the other is adult, and both are SF not fantasy. Together, they made me look like I didn’t know my market at all. Red Queen showed fluency with what was a current, hit book of 2017 in the genre and age category I was querying.
- Title changed!
- This is just interesting to note because neither title ended up being used later on. Titles are hard.
Now let’s get into the meat of what was wrong with the content of the first query.
Part 1: Establishing premises
Here’s the first paragraph of the 2015 query again:
Pretty much all of these words are wasting space. I’m speaking in generalities that neither establish the premise or the stakes of the story in clear terms. Compare to the first paragraph of the later query:
Premise established—and with it, the background that will fuel the protagonist’s motivation.
Part 2: The Protagonist and Conflict
From the old query:
It’s too much at once, and too vague. Who is this guy? What does he care about? What does that have to do with the central conflict? None of these questions can be answered.
Fast forward to 2017:
Let’s ask the same questions again:
Who is this guy? An orphaned aristocrat rising in the regime that killed his family
What does he care about? Avenging his family–but also his friend Annie, whose history conflicts with that.
What are his choices and why does he care about them? He has to take sides in looming a war that will make him choose between family and friendship.
The second query took Lee’s conflict and made it personal–meaning instead of talking about his dilemma in terms of loyalties to ideas and institutions, talking instead about his relationship to Annie and his father, and the choice between them.
Looking back now
The 2017 query letter was far from perfect. But it did the job it needed to do, which is get the agent to read the sample pages, and they did what they needed to do, which was get the agent to request the full. I think it’s worth noting that these things take time. For me, querying one book took two whole years. You need time after you write a book to figure out what it’s about. And then you need time to figure out how to say what it’s about. I spent a lot of those two years beating myself up for what I realize, in retrospect, was really just time spent learning. I had to write the first query before I could write a better one. I had to write my way to it.
And then I had to write my way to something else. The book that we sold to Putnam had a single main character, Lee, who was taking care of a much younger friend/sibling figure, Annie. Julia only showed up at the end, there was no tournament plot structure, there was no Lyceum or Lycean Ball or morale visits, Power never practiced spillover training with Annie, and there was no (gasp!) romance. There was a visit to the ruins of a home that had been destroyed by dragonfire and a pretty devastating duel at the end–in other words, what I consider the heart of the story never changed. But everything else did. I say all this as a reassurance and a warning: if you want to publish, be prepared to edit. Everything. Repeatedly.
But also, be prepared to give yourself time.