I want to talk about a trend I’m seeing in my box lately with fantasy queries in particular—

Almost all of them are very generic. Very vague. Which makes it incredibly difficult on the agent’s end for several reasons.

#querytip

1) When the query is very vague, it’s EXTREMELY difficult to get excited about it. There’s nothing to grab onto that’s different and intriguing.

2) It ends up being applicable to many, many stories... which is not what you want. You want your query to ONLY apply to your story. Take out the names—is your query tailored and specific enough that if someone read it they would ONLY think of your book?

3) And arguably most importantly, it makes it almost impossible to see market potential in a vague query. Every book needs a good hook—but SFF in particular NEEDS to have something to make it stand apart from every other SFF book on the market.

DETAILS ARE YOUR FRIEND. Yes, there is a sweet spot—obviously packing TOO many details in will confuse agents—but you need to have SOME to make your query stand out.

Don’t give me a vague “their world is changed” or “conflict arises”. GIVE ME DETAILS. How are their lives changed? What plot stakes are there? Personal stakes? Tension?

Vagueness is (almost) never going to work in your favor. It’s difficult—trust me, I UNDERSTAND (I’ve written my own queries, and pitches for clients, I know it’s not fun)—but absolutely necessary to really dig into details to increase your odds of success in the query trenches.

Don’t shoot yourself in the foot right out the gate—take the time to flesh out your query, make it specific to YOUR story, and don’t shy away from details!! Show me how your story is different from all the others on the market!