Christen’s Quick and Dirty Query Letter Tips
There’s no nice way to put it—querying sucks.
It can be exciting—you’re finally putting your book baby out there in the world! you’re investing in yourself as an author in a tangible, professional way!—and you’ll find some of the best writer pals imaginable alongside you, but that doesn’t take away from the truth that trying to find your perfect-fit literary agent in the query trenches is exhausting.
To make it as painless as possible, it helps to have a strong query letter. I’m going to break down the form that worked for me below.
Two caveats:
Milage, as always, may vary for you. You know your book best. Do what works to honor it.
I am neurodiverse, and querying had a LOT of unwritten but very strict rules that stressed me out. This format worked for my ND brain and provided the structure I needed while querying to take some of the anxiety out. If you’re neurotypical (or, honestly, even a different kind of neurodiverse), this may not work perfectly for you.
I’ll be using my query letter for THE NO-GIRLFRIEND RULE as an example. If it sounds like your kind of book, you can add it on Goodreads or Storygraph!
GREETING: DEAR [AGENT NAME],
There’s different wisdom on how to address agents here: including an honorific like Ms./Mr.Mx. or not, using first name or last name only, so on. For me, I simply used “Dear Firstname Lastname,” This way, you’re not starting off by misgendering anyone or sounding overly-casual or overly-formal.
PARAGRAPH ONE: THE HOOK & THE NORM
The first sentence should be strong: introduce your main character, and give us a hooky, super quick snapshot of what their story is going to be about. Also establish your character’s norm here—what their world is like before the story really kicks off.
Here’s mine:
Between her apathetic boyfriend’s No Girlfriends at the Table rule and a humiliating half session at her local game store, seventeen-year-old Hollis Beckwith just wants to play a good game of Secrets and Sorcery. But she fears there’s no place for a fat girl with anxiety in tabletop gaming—and that she’s destined to be a non-player character, not the hero, in her own life story.
We get a sense of who Hollis is—fat, anxious, 17, a little bit lost. We also get the hook of the book in a nutsell—she wants to play Secrets and Sorcery, that it might be the sort of place she can find herself.
PARAGRAPH TWO: THE CHANGE
In the second paragraph, set up the world of the story: what changes in your main character’s life to make their story important. We also want to hint at the change we see happening within the character because of what has changed in their worlds.
For Hollis, that was this:
Then a flyer advertising an all-girls S&S game catches her eye, and Hollis takes a chance on herself—and the five overwhelming, amazing girls at her table. She creates Honoria, a paladin roleplaying character as brave as Hollis isn’t. With Honoria as armor, Hollis starts to believe she can be something greater, even if it’s just play pretend.
Hollis makes the change to challenge her anxiety and start playing a game of S&S with a group of girls. She starts to change inside, too, thinking that she can be something bigger in real life because of the character she pretends to be in-game.
PARAGRAPH THREE: THE STAKES
To round off the pitch, you want to clearly state the stakes of your novel: that your character stands to lose, if they don’t overcome the challenge that has arisen in their path.
With Hollis:
But when an in-game crush between Honoria and the party’s bard—the cool, charismatic girl who sits beside Hollis every week—spills over into the real world, playing pretend isn’t good enough anymore. Hollis wants to follow her heart, but to do so she must confront her queer identity, or she’ll lose the confidence she gained on this epic adventure and the friends she made along the way.
What helped me here was to fill in the blanks on this sentence: “Character wants (what they most desire/need), but to do so they must (over come this specific obstacle) or they will (suffer this specific consequence).”
Is it basic? Yes.
Is it super clear? Also yes! And that’s what we want out of a query letter.
PARAGRAPH FOUR: THE METADATA
Neatly include the name of your book, your age category and genre, your word count, and your specific comps and why they matter.
THE NO-GIRLFRIEND RULE—a YA contemporary romance with unique internal fantasy storytelling complete at 99,000 words—is an ode to the magic of TTRPGs, the beauty of girl gangs, and the love we discover when we allow ourselves to follow our truth. It will appeal to readers who love Julie Murphy's fat positive characters, the in-world fandom of Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl, and the found family adventure of Critical Role.
A note on comps: they don’t have to match the plot of your story! In fact, I think it’s better if they don’t. Think of comps more as a vibe check—the bits and pieces of goodness you love from other books that come together to match the vibe of yours. Approaching theme this way makes it a lot less intimidating on the author end, and gives an agent reading your query a really complete look at story elements in your book that already work within the market.
A note on personalization: there’s different wisdom about if and how to personalize a query. For me, I didn’t always—unless there was something in that agents list I felt especially strongly about that I really wanted to call attention to—”as an agent seeking stories with big Rat Queen Energy” or “since you also main paladins at the table, I think Hollis’s story will Blah Blah.” If you personalization is just “as an agent looking for YA contemporaries,” I personally think it’s better to leave it off. I hope agents will assume you’ve done your work and chosen to query them for a reason!
Also, if you have done any pitch contests on Twitter, mentorship programs, or similar, include that here with something like “In #DVPit 2023, it received interest from editors at Publishing House Name” or “This manuscript was selected and revised for The Write Team Mentorship Program 2023.”
PARAGRAPH FIVE: THE BIOG
Wrap everything up neatly with a quick biography of yourself. I like to keep this relevant to the story in some way, with a cute tie in:
I studied English Literature at Middle Tennessee State University. When I am not writing authentic queer, fat, neurodiverse, and mental illness representation, you can find me working through my TBR with my cat, Spaghetti, or doing research at the table playing gnome druid Orla Twitchett.
SIGN OFF: SINCERELY, YOU!
Sign off! Some people like to thank the agent for their time. I simply signed off:
Sincerely,
Christen Randall
Go with something professional that feels right to you.
