Last week, we talked about query letters and I asked you to pop your draft letters up on Townhouse for feedback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s always an illuminating exercise, and on the whole, what I saw was pretty convincing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But one topic I did want to address was this: your query letter absolutely wants to deliver your core elevator pitch… but you probably don\u2019t want to state your elevator pitch in the letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now yes, that\u2019s sounds puzzling \u2013 and I\u2019ll explain \u2013 but I should also say that it\u2019s easy to overthink these things. For one thing, personal tastes differ. Some agents will relish what I or other agents would not advise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More important, though, a query letter itself isn\u2019t terribly important. You need to talk about your book in a way that interests the agent \u2013 but the default for an agent is to read the first page or two of your work. It\u2019s way better to have a drab query letter and some excellent opening chapters, than to have a dazzling query letter and drab text. The latter manuscript will never be picked up. The first one almost certainly will be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, please don\u2019t get stressed. If you want more help with the query letter, last week’s Lesson Three<\/a><\/strong> of How to Get a Literary Agent<\/a><\/strong> course will tell you EVERYTHING that you need to know. (If you’re a Premium Member, log in to access this course for free. Otherwise you can purchase the course for just \u00a399<\/a><\/strong>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n OK. So. Elevator pitch and query letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you know, I love a very tight elevator pitch:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA Cardiff-set crime novel, featuring a detective who used to think she was dead<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s 14 words and I wasn\u2019t even really trying to go as short as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t even mind elevator pitches that just collapse into a list of ingredients. For example, here are some that just list ingredients but still have a relish to them. (The first pitch describes my Fiona series, of course; the other two are just invented.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMurder mystery + detective who used to believe she was dead.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAntarctic research station + troubled oceanographer + ghosts\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYA story: Victorian circus + orphan boy + murder story\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n But an elevator pitch is, first and foremost, for you. It\u2019s so you can define and understand the purpose of your novel. It\u2019s so you can keep the text on the iron tracks that will deliver commercial (and actually artistic) quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From that point of view, the scantier your pitch, the more clearly you yourself understand what you\u2019re dealing with. But a query letter has to dress like a query letter. You can\u2019t just toss out a dozen words, like ham knuckles on a plate, and expect to whet an agent\u2019s appetite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So you need to introduce your book in a paragraph or two, and those paragraphs need to have nice tidy prose, and they need to ensure that they\u2019re delivering information on genre, and setting, and anything else that an agent might want to know before she tucks into the manuscript.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the elevator pitch needs to shimmer behind all that \u2013 the gold behind the veil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So to take that (invented) book about the Victorian circus, my query letter might say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOscar is an orphan. He never knew his father and his mother (a lady\u2019s maid) died when he was eight. For two years, he lived a harsh and semi-feral life on the streets of London, until a kindly trapeze artist at one of London\u2019s largest circuses took him in. His life at the circus is comparatively idyllic until one day, when tasked with clearing out the animal cages, he finds evidence that the lions have recently dined on a human \u2013 and, quite possibly, Lady Pamela Dulverton, whose recent disappearance is the talk of the town.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Drawn into the resultant investigation, Oscar is forced to grow up fast \u2013 and finally learns family secrets that will change his life forever<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, you can absolutely feel the elevator pitch there: Orphan. Victorian circus. Murder<\/em>. Boom! That\u2019s a book we want to read. The rest of it (the trapeze artist, the lion\u2019s cages, the status of the murder victim) are all just dressing on top of that basic skeleton. If the murder victim had been trampled by an elephant or tossed from a trapeze or skewered by a strongman, it wouldn\u2019t really affect the story. It would be equally unimportant who took Oscar in. The elevator pitch, however, you can\u2019t alter at all without fundamentally changing the story itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh yes: and the \u2018family secrets that change his life forever\u2019 \u2013 that\u2019s also not really part of the pitch. Of course, a YA story has to deliver some major form of life-changing outcome, but it doesn\u2019t have to be a family secret. If an orphan came into money or some form of real job security or decided to set up shop as a freelance investigator, any of those things would also complete the story in the necessary way. The pitch is iron and can\u2019t change (unless you decided to write a different story altogether.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, the elevator pitch is all present and correct. The agent will feel<\/em> its presence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, you can feel that the extra dressing just helps the pitch appear at its best. It\u2019s as though your query letter is saying, \u201cLook, our pitch is basically orphan + Victorian circus + murder mystery. You gotta love that, right? But if you want help understanding how those ingredients cohere into an actual story, then let me tell you about Oscar, who \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, yes, your elevator pitch needs to light up your query letter \u2013 it needs to be felt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But no, the pitch alone is insufficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So do what most of the Feedback Friday people did last wee. Write a fluent paragraph or two. Make sure the elevator pitch is there behind the curtain. And write a paragraph that engages the reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s that simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And don\u2019t stress. If you can write a book that\u2019s good enough to be published, you can definitely write a query letter. (And download the query letter and synopsis builder<\/strong><\/a>. It\u2019s good.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n FEEDBACK FRIDAY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Since we\u2019re doing agent-y things at the moment, we may as well do synopses too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you haven\u2019t already posted your query letter for feedback, then I suggest you do that this week here<\/a><\/strong>. If you posted your query letter last week, then let\u2019s take a look at your synopsis instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I will say that reading back-to-back synopses is a task about as interesting as eating a plateful of brick dust, so I won\u2019t get stuck in too deeply. What I will do, though, is take at least one synopsis from this week’s assignment of Lesson Four<\/a><\/strong> of How to Get a Literary Agent<\/a><\/strong> and give in-depth comments in the forum<\/a><\/strong> for that course (and I\u2019ll make my post sticky, so it\u2019s easy to find.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s it from me. Brick dust is yuk, because it lodges between the teeth. A bowlful of gravel though, with fresh milk, and a little grated dandelion? Yum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Til soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Harry<\/p>\n\n\n\n PS: <\/strong>Premium Members have been enjoying our How To Get a Literary Agent course \u2013 lessons are released weekly and we\u2019re now on week four, all about how to writing a winning synopsis. The course is free to Premium Members \u2013 or you can buy this course as a one-off for \u00a399<\/a><\/strong>. But don\u2019t be a silly billy. It makes no sense to buy a one-off course, when you can get an entire suite of courses (and everything else in membership) for just \u00a3150 a year (or, for cancel-any-time flex membership, just \u00a330\/month.) Membership info here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week, we talked about query letters and I asked you to pop your draft letters up on Townhouse for feedback. That\u2019s always an illuminating exercise, and on the whole, what I saw was pretty convincing. But one topic I did want to address was this: your query letter absolutely wants to deliver your core<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":98318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29292],"tags":[29213],"class_list":["post-160224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-harrys-friday-email","tag-harry-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n