Get a Literary Agent: The Complete Guide to Securing Representation for Your Work (10 page)

Some agents and writers advise starting the query with a “hook line”—a quick, intriguing sentence. This tactic can indeed work, but, in my opinion, most lines fall flat and therefore work against you. Writers sometimes take this advice to mean starting with a rhetorical question, such as:

But here’s the rub: Agents (like many readers) generally dislike rhetorical questions because they are all similar to one another, and they are, by definition, questions that are not supposed to be answered.

Meanwhile, starting off with a quick, two-sentence “safe” intro paragraph is a successful and simple means to get the ball rolling and connect with an agent. Even if an agent states online that she tends to enjoy something like a “hook line,” virtually no one will reject you outright if you take the safe route and start with a quick intro paragraph.

Once the intro’s come and gone, it’s time to get into the most important part of the query letter:
the pitch
—a brief basic description of your novel or memoir designed to pique the agent’s interest. For fiction writers, this will be the longest and most difficult section to compose. It’s tough to boil down an entire book into a few condensed paragraphs, but I’ve developed a six-step formula for how to lay out a pitch for any fictional story.

But first, let’s start with a broad approach. Since everyone is writing a different tale with different characters, no two pitches will be alike, but there are seven qualities that unite all pitches.

• PITCHES ARE THREE TO TEN SENTENCES.
  Conciseness is a very good thing. If you write more than ten sentences, your letter runs the risk of going over one page and also simply rambling.
  
• PITCHES DO NOT REVEAL THE ENDING.
  If, when describing my latest novel, I told you that the good guy wins in the end but his girl dies and the bomb sets it up for a sequel … would you still want to read the book? Probably not. If you’re like most people, you don’t
  want
  to know how the story ends, so retain the intrigue and suspense.
  
• PITCHES ARE COMPARABLE TO COPY ON DVD BOXES AND THE BACK COVERS OF NOVELS.
  If you’re having trouble putting together a pitch, visit your nearest Barnes & Noble or Target, or any other place that sells both books and movies. Pick up both films and books in your genre (e.g., children’s stories, Christian fiction, etc.), and start reading the boxes, back covers, and jackets. Those are all pitch examples for you to study and emulate. See what grabs your attention, and copy that strategy.
  
• BE SPECIFIC, AND AVOID GENERALITIES.
  Specific elements bring a pitch to life, and generalities drag it down. Don’t say, “The couple goes through many highs and lows”; explain what that means, exactly, even if you’re just touching on a bigger picture. “Avoid vagueness,” says Bridget Smith of Dunham Literary. “I get so many queries every day that don’t tell me enough about the novel. If there’s no reason for me to say yes, then it’s going to be no.” Being specific paints pictures in the reader’s mind. If I tell you that my main character “just quit his job,” does that create an image in your mind? Probably not. But how about if I told you, “After making his thousandth Big Mac, seventeen-year-old Rodney Morrison makes a spontaneous decision to quit his job in style—by launching a cupful of special sauce out the drive-through window at a rude customer before walking out the front door with his middle fingers in the air.” Now, does
  that
  paint a picture in your mind? Yes.
  
• AIM TO ELICIT EMOTION.
  The style and voice of the pitch itself should reflect the book’s contents. Don’t say, “My novel is a humorous romp with quirky characters.” The agent is giving you three to ten sentences to make her laugh. Can you do that? Don’t say, “My novel is full of suspenseful twists and turns.” Rather than talk about your novel from a distance, the agent is giving you three to ten sentences to put a chill down her spine. If you’re writing light, humorous women’s fiction, then you should include some laughs in the query letter. If you’re writing a dark horror novel, then you should include some spooky elements. Imagine you read the line: “But as Candace continues to explore the world of erotic asphyxiation, she becomes addicted to the feeling and even begins to choke herself on lunch breaks just to experience the sensation.” Such a line hits you and can make you feel repulsed, intrigued, or engaged. It triggers your emotions. If you can appeal to an agent’s emotions, she’s much more inclined to request more material—because you’ve
  shown
  her that your writing connects to readers rather than just
  told
  her.
  
• BEWARE OF SUBPLOTS AND UNNECESSARY DETAILS.
  Pitches often go too long because they’re bogged down with superfluous elements. A simple way to avoid this is to cut out the small stuff: Leave plot elements, setting description, and proper nouns on the cutting-room floor. For example, look at these two potential beginnings of a pitch.
  

  VERSION 1:
  Zalisa is a teenage elven princess who lives on a jungle planet. Despite her desire to live a common life welding swords, she is repeatedly told by her parents about her destiny to become queen and bring peace between warring tribes as their supreme leader. (Word count: 46, two sentences)
  

  VERSION 2:
  Zalisa, part of the chosen Y’Ri noble elves, lives with the Sha’NaRee tribe on the jungle planet of Usulurah. Adorned with long hair down to her waist and many tattoos she’s designed herself, all Zalisa wants is a life among the commoners doing what she loves best: sword making. She has quietly developed an amazing knack for intricate blade making and trained with the highest levels of metalworkers and smiths in her province of Va’Quenay. The only problem is that her parents, E’Leepha and Can-Yur, expect their daughter to refrain from frolicking among the commoners and instead fulfill the destiny of Tritonalt, a great prophecy widely known to all citizens of Usulurah. According to Tritonalt, Zalisa is the chosen royal descendent who will ascend to the throne as part of a divine prediction foretold by the ancient elven wise men at the 7 Cycles of Wisdom gathering eons ago when all the system’s planets were in line with the sun. Once she has ascended to the throne, it is foretold that Zalisa will quell the constant warfare that has hampered the planet and finally bring peace to the land. (Word count: 186, six sentences.)
  

  The second intro is chock-full of stuff we don’t need to know right now: the proper names of things (such as the planet name), her exact appearance outside of being an elf (e.g., the tattoos), and the backstory about how the prophecy came to be (the gathering). The second version has already used up most of the query page—six pitch sentences out of a maximum ten—and there’s no discussion of what happens throughout the meat of the plot, what challenges Zalisa faces, or what she sets off to do to overcome said challenges.
  

• PRACTICE, AND HAVE DIFFERENT VERSIONS IF NEED BE.
  Tell your pitch to others, or get your query formally critiqued by a professional or peers. If you can’t decide between two versions of a pitch, you can always try out both and keep tabs on which agents get which versions. If one is garnering better responses than the other, you have your answer concerning how best to move forward.
  

1. INTRODUCE THE MAIN CHARACTER(S).
   Remember that agents review a large number of pitches each week and that doing so can be overwhelming. Getting them attached to your character right away keeps them interested in your pitch. If you have two equal main characters (e.g., Bill and Ted, Laverne and Shirley), you should show them both at the beginning. One totally acceptable exception to
   not
   starting with your main character is if you need a single line defining something we absolutely need to know, such as “In the near future, class systems of humans emerge based on zodiac signs” or “1850s London: The entire population lives in fear of the plague.” If you do use an establishing sentence this way, make sure it’s absolutely necessary and cannot be incorporated after the introduction of the main character(s).
   
2. TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT THIS MAIN CHARACTER—AN INTERESTING TIDBIT (2A), WHAT HE WANTS (2B), OR BOTH.
   After you’ve done the quick task of telling the agents who your main character is, you must get them to have a vested interest in that character. So tell them a noteworthy attribute of the character, explain what he desires in life, or both.
   

   PITCH IN PROGRESS (PARTS 1, 2A, 2B)
   

   FINDING NEMO is a story about Marlin, a clownfish (1) who worries about practically everything. If he had his way, he’d never risk leaving the sea anemone he calls home (2a). The one thing he wants more than anything in life is to guide and protect his son (2b), Nemo—because Marlin knows what a dangerous place the ocean is and Nemo is the only family he has.
   

3. REVEAL THE INCITING INCIDENT.
   The inciting incident is the event that sets the story in motion. It is usually easy to spot in a story because it happens early in the book and without it, you wouldn’t have a novel. This can be a person dying, a crime being committed, or someone getting fired—the action in the plot that changes the main character’s life and forces him to act and grow.
   
4. LAY OUT THE MAIN CONFLICT OR PLOT OF THE STORY.
   After you’ve explained what goes wrong (the inciting incident), explain the character’s response—what he sets out to do. When you write this sentence, you should essentially be spelling out the main plot and arc of the story.
   

   PITCH IN PROGRESS (PARTS 3, 4)
   

   But overprotective Marlin can’t stay in the sea anemone for long. His worst fears come true when Nemo is captured by human scuba divers and taken away in a speedboat (3). Now Marlin must make the long, dangerous swim to the Australian coast so he can rescue his son (4)—and the only help he’ll have is from an overly friendly fish named Dory who (humorously) suffers from short-term memory loss.
   

5. LIST SOME COMPLICATIONS.
   Stories always get more complicated before conflicts resolve. So after you explain what the main character sets off to do (i.e., the main plot), tell the agent what goes wrong along the way. If you’re writing an international spy novel, this is where you mention that the journey takes the hero to Switzerland, then Russia, and then back to America. If you’re writing a humorous, lighthearted story, this is where you introduce some comic mishaps and supporting characters.
   
6. CONCLUDE WITH AN OPEN-ENDED WRAP-UP.
   Finish the query without explaining the climax or how it all wraps up at the end. Resist the urge, once again, to use a rhetorical question, such as “Will she find the bomb in time?”
   
7. INCLUDE THE STAKES.
   The agent needs to know what happens if the main character fails to complete his task: Does the world end? Does the love of his life move away forever? The thing that makes this part of the pitch unusual is that the stakes can show up anywhere in the pitch, whereas parts 1 through 6 typically go in that order (though that, too, is not completely mandatory).
   

   PITCH IN PROGRESS (PARTS 5, 6, 7)
   

   While little Nemo gets used to his new home (a small aquarium in a dentist’s office), his former worrywart of a father now faces all the dangers that the ocean has to offer (5): dangerous sharks, crazy creatures at the bottom of the ocean, an army of jellyfish—all the while inching closer to the Australian coast and his lost boy. But when little Nemo becomes the next fish in line to be adopted and taken from the aquarium forever (7), Marlin’s time to find his son is quickly running out (6).
   

Now that you’ve seen a pitch broken down piece by piece, let’s examine two more pitches and see how they differ and why those differences are important. Note how the good pitch examples have all aforementioned seven parts of the pitch nicely laid out, whereas the poor pitch examples do not.

1. Skilled in
   what
   ?
   
2. This is general and vague.
   
3. His world was never defined in the first place, so this beat has no value.
   
4. What kind of journey?
   
5. Unclear and vague
   
6. All of these are vague and undefined. They could mean anything.
   
7. More lackluster language and generalities
   
8. If at all possible, do not end (or begin) your pitch with a rhetorical question.