Query letters are hard to write because...

<< Hope Roberson recently wrote a "Best of the Best" post which focused on the art of writing pitches and loglines. In that post she talked about how whenever somebody asks her what her story's about, she gets all incoherent and "um, blah" (I paraphrased). Her point was that, surely since she wrote the story, she should be the one who knows it best, and should be able to easily summarise what it's about. But she has troubles with doing so.

I think many of us can relate to that! For me, reading her post reminded me that I've always struggled with writing queries. Maybe her post wasn't really about queries, but still, for me it's a similar deal. I wrote a successful logline once, and it garnered some serious agent interest. But queries are a different matter altogether. Sometimes it's like you've got too much space in which to ramble on, and so you end up doing just that - rambling.

But one thing I realised back when I was attempting to write queries was that...I don't actually understand my own story as well as I thought I did. The example was DAPHNE, which is the first novel I ever started other than my epic fantasy of doom that shall not be named (except it's called RAGEWATER). As I was attempting to write queries for DAPHNE, and getting seriously in-depth critique at Absolute Write, I realised I don't even know the core of what my story's about! I'd really thought I did, but the more I tried to summarise the story, the more obvious it became that I didn't.

Suffice it to say, I've stopped attempting to write queries for the time being. My novels need to actually become what they're meant to be before I can try to write a summary of what they are.

Have you mastered the art of the pitch/logline/query?

One-sentence mission statements, and Chrysalis

With the Chrysalis Experiment, this week was my turn to post a story for the Friday feature (link here). Before the time came to post my story, I had already written most of it, except the last section. But I already had the ending planned, and as I was comparing notes with other participants, this is what I told them they could expect:

unrequited love, false sympathy, and a stalled execution leading to a suicide

Technically though, we don't actually see that ending happen. It's simply implied.

We also have a running joke about villains called Susan - a few of us have written stories with evil characters named Susan. So this week one of the participants asked me if my villain this time was called Susan too (I didn't name her in the story). My answer was that I don't know her name, but I know it's not Susan. ;)

Anyway...at AW this week I've been getting help with my SUNDOWN synopsis, and I was advised to come up with a one-sentence summary of my novel - a "mission statement" of sorts. I didn't think I could do it easily, and apparently the person who suggested it didn't think I could either. Haha. But here is my first attempt (which actually is the result of many other attempts made prior to posting):

A rocker chick determined never to love again meets her muso kindred spirit, and must choose between risking her heart in the future and staying safely hidden in the past.

So there you go. That about sums up SUNDOWN.

I'm sure I can make it more sparkly and pretty in future, but it's good to at least have a line I can return to when trying to hone my query/synopsis, and even the novel itself, to make sure I'm sticking to the point.

P.S. I want to mention the SECOND WRITERS' PLATFORM-BUILDING CRUSADE, which I am signing up for and which looks pretty cool! If you are interested in getting more active in the writers' blogging community, networking more and having fun, looks like you and I have something in common. And you should sign up too! Hurry though, the deadline is fast approaching! Oh, and Rachael Harrie is the one who came up with this. Cool idea, eh?!