(Continued from yesterday’s post… if you didn’t read it, click here (or scroll down if you’re already on the site) first, then come back to finish up.)
So here we are, at this point, facing the creation of two very separate and necessary tools – the query letter and the synopsis, the latter being one of three animals: a very concise story summary embedded in the letter itself… a one-page version included with the query letter… or a longer version sent to the agent upon request in response to the query letter.
You need to know how to write all three versions. And powerfully.
For the query letter, refer to the previous post (Part 10 – Pitch Perfect: The Art of Selling Your Story Verbally). Add traditional letter-writing skills to that art form and there you have it.
The structure of a query letter is identical to the live pitch – the short version – with one exception: you need to introduce yourself and your qualifications to write this story, as well. But not necessarily in that order.
Open your query letter with a compelling narrative hook, sort of like what you’d hear at a movie preview. A what if? question works, often the same one that inspired your story in the first place.
If Dan Brown were to query The DaVinci Code, the opening sentence(s) might read like this:
What if Christ didn’t die on the cross? What if the religion devoted to that one single moment is a lie, and the people who run the Church based on it have been killing to keep the truth quiet? What if a message from a dead priest, written in his own blood, set in motion a race for this truth that could change the very fiber of society as we know it? And what if some of the greatest minds in history, including Leonardo DaVinci, belonged to a secret sect devoted to keeping the truth alive?
From there you proceed into the pre-pitch set-up (just as you do in a live pitch situation), followed by either the embedded synopsis itself, or the declaration that one accompanies the letter as a separate document.
Then, in either case, you close with an introduction of yourself and a statement of what you believe to be the viability of your story in the commercial marketplace.
The Length of a Query Letter
If the letter includes a short synopsis of the story embedded within it, it should be no more than two single-spaced pages.
If the package includes a letter and a separate one-page synopsis (called a one-sheet), then the query letter should be no more than one page, resulting in a combined proposal of no more than two pages.
The Nature of the Synopsis
Once again, refer to the first installment of this post for a description of the three-phase structure of the synopsis. When presented live it’s called a pitch, and there is very little difference between them, other than your trembling voice.
With that as a model, the best I can offer within these space parameters, is to show you an example. Click HERE to see the one-sheet synopsis of Whisper of the Seventh Thunder, the novel I placed with a publisher last year, and which comes out in less than two months from now.
Yeah, I’m pretty excited, but that’s a different post.
This synopsis was written after the book itself had been completed, which is absolutely the best time to address the issue of a synopsis. You could pull it off if you have a solid outline that takes you all the way to the final moment – even though you won’t be using that outline in the selling process itself – but for many writers this doesn’t happen until three or four hundred pages of manuscript have been birthed.
You shouldn’t be trying to sell the thing until you’re done with it, anyway. You may actually succeed at convincing an agent to read your story, but if you haven’t written them yet, you’ve just created perhaps the most stressful situation a new writer can find themselves in. And it’ll probably take you long enough for the agent to forget you anyhow.
Don’t go there. Write your story, and then try to sell it. Trust me, you’ll be much more likely to get a green submission light when you do.
Two years ago, when I was in need of a new representation, I used this particular synopsis as my calling card. I sent it to 13 agents, all first-tier, New York based major players. (Unpublished writers should aim lower, since the established agents rarely take on a first novel; that said, it doesn’t mean that a less famous agent can’t place your book at the very highest levels of the publishing business, it happens all the time, in fact.)
Eleven agents consented to read the entire manuscript based on this synopsis. I had telephone conversations with four of them. One asked me to rush the sample pages to him because he was flying to London to meet with Ken Follett, his client, to polish the final draft of his latest novel, World Without End.
At the end of the day I landed a great new agent. Not through that particular guy, but I’m not complaining.
I’m just sayin’. This stuff works. And rarely the way you think it will.
Oh, that lengthy outline I mentioned earlier? The one that can go 50 to 60 pages, or more? A true outline is rarely used in the selling process. In fact, it’s risky to show it to anyone at all. An outline is a powerful tool, and it is primarily for you, the writer, to use as an evolving and growing blueprint for your story.
Once you have an outline nailed down, then your synopsis, whether it be one or three or ten pages long, is a condensation that cuts to the heart of what you’ve created… preceded by a contextual set-up… and summarized by a shameless sales pitch.
On one level the query process is very intuitive, not unlike applying for a job or selling a product to a client. But the heart and soul of it isn’t the letter itself, it’s the description of the story that it delivers.
Master that, and do it with all the care and precision you put into your novel, and you’ll find yourself thrust into the heart of the game that is getting published.
Want to get storyfix posts delivered by e-mail? Sign up here:
Prefer to use an RSS reader? Subscribe here.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for this Larry. I absolutely can’t wait to read the book. I know what will happen once I’ve bought it. First I’ll devour it for the story. Then I’ll re-read it to see how you did it, with the structure and other core competencies. Then I’ll look at the synopsis again. Would you mind saying exactly how long it took you to write it and how long the finished product is?
@Shirls — hey there, happy to address your question. The idea for this story hatched in 1978, and it’s haunted me since. At that time I had no notion about being capable enough or worthy enough to tackle a story of this magnitude, and over the years (decades?) it’s come and gone from my center of attention. As I said in the synopsis, I’ve consulted with lots of folks about this, on both a practical and spiritual level. I’ve been warned that this is potentially a risky story, as there are forces that could try to intervene, however one wishes to interpret that.
Can’t say for sure if that’s happened, or not, now that the book is done and ready for publication. But maybe. Or maybe it’s just real life intervening (isn’t that the way most spiritual things intervene, disguised as real life?). The mainstream New York publishing community had a strange reaction to it — for the most part I was told by major players (such as the William Morris Agency) that it was too controversial, too Davinci Code, and that “religious books” don’t sell. Well, it’s not a religious book, it’s a secular mainstream thriller, and I think that even if it was, the Left Behind Series and The Davinci Code sold quite well, thank you. I ended up placing this with a new and small publisher with great courage and vision, and we’ll have to bootstrap this thing and work toward having it go viral. Maybe get picked up by a major imprint later, who knows. For now, though, I’m happy and excited to have it out there. What happens from this point forward, I have no idea. Maybe those forces will intervene again.
The manuscript originally was 520 pages. My agent (at the time, I have a new one now) suggested a 20% cut, which I’ve since learned is always a good idea (should be mandatory) for a first draft. I cut it to 440 pages, and the book itself is just less than 400 printed pages. The actual writing, after tinkering with the outline for years, took about six months. That tinkering counts, by the way, as “writing time,” but there were so many bouts of frenzied outlining and then abandonment over the years that it’s hard to say what the total “in process” writing time was. Probably well over a year.
Thanks for the question, your interest and your continuing support, which is very much appreciated. L.
I was surprised that you suggest using rhetorical questions in a query letter. I read several blogs by agents and editors. They consistently warn against starting a query letter this way.
Examples:
http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2007/08/death-locusts-plagues-queries-beginning.html
http://queryshark.blogspot.com/2009/07/119.html
http://callmyagent.blogspot.com/2009/05/query-letter-7-louise-g.html
@Dharma — all of this is an inexact science, and that means all of it is opinion. For every opinion that a rhetorical question isn’t the way to open a query letter, there is one that contradicts it. Blogs are like newspaper articles… just because it’s in print doesn’t mean it’s valid. On an issue like this, there is no proof statement or quantiable evidence.
The evidence I use is personal experience. I think a positive response on 11 out of 13 queries that opened with a strong question (which isn’t “rhetorical” at all, it’s in context to the purpose of the query in the first place; it always is) is pretty strong empirical evidence. I don’t subscribe to conventional wisdom in these things — the percentage of success from conventional wisdom is pretty darn low — but rather, on the principles and practices of marketing, in which I have over 30 years of experience.
The best bottom line here is this: does the opening grab attention? When the question is provocative enough, when it demands an answer, then it’ll works. The fact that the agent may be a crusty old specimen who believes they’ve seen it all doesn’t negate a powerful strategy. Hell, most agents reject everything out of hand anyhow, and it sometimes goes on to become a bestseller (Harry Potter was rejected 12 times). As William Goldman said, “nobody knows anything,” and that’s just as true for agents. Trust me on that. They make their living on “opinion,” and nobody bats a thousand.
Hope this helps. You are free to construct what you believe will work in the realm of querying. Just remember, it is way less about the letter than the essence of the story itself, and on that count, the agent should be able to recognize something with potential. If they reject it because of how the query letter opens, you don’t want that agent anyhow.
When I did my first query letter and synopsis. I went to allot of websites trying to get an idea of how to do it. I wanted to be well researched. And I found four different versions of what a synopsis and query were suppose to look like, but was never given a sample of one that worked.
In essence I was scrambling around in the dark with a pin light.
For the first time I get it. Thanks for that.
Oh and when your book comes out I will be in line to buy it. That synopsis reeled me in…. hook line and sinker.
I can’t wait.
Larry, thanks so much for your reply. You have made me really happy about two things:
1. that you tinkered with the outline for years, and
2. that having got the outline the way you wanted it, it only took six months to write a 400 page novel.
I’m feeling a whole lot better about taking so long over my structure and outline.
Thank you, Larry. It helps so much to have things defined so well (types of synopsis, treatment, etc.) and to be given an example of a query letter that was a winner.
Thank you for wanting to help us succeed.
Sandra
I motion for a post on how to ‘outline’ a story.
{ 1 trackback }