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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Welcome everyone. Welcome to Premium Day Science Fiction writers Week. We are so glad to have you here as folks are coming in. If you can see and hear me drop your location in the chat

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: so we can see where you are joining us from, and I will drop some

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: links for you there as well.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Hi, Renee in El Paso.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Dennison, Connecticut, Steven, Santa Felicia in Ohio. Hello, everybody! I see a lot of repeat names.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Welcome back. We're so glad you were able to clear up so much time for us this week and join us for so many sessions.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: We have a really fun workshop in store for you

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: today, and we're going to jump right in. Let me just go over a few quick housekeeping items. I'm so glad to hear that, Alexis. It's been a great week. It's been a great week for us, too. We always love having these.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: So your your replays for premium day will be on the premium hub which you should have

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: gotten an email for but we also have it in the chat there. So make sure you head to the premium hub to see any replays, session resources, transcripts, all of that from today's sessions. Monday through Thursday's session replays and resources are all on the regular Science Fiction writers. Week Hub and the replays will also be posted to our community page by September 20, th so that you can view them there as well.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: If you would like to keep talking sci-fi writing with us, we would love to have you in our private online writing community. It is free to join you. Just log in with your prorating and account information, and then you can see the different spaces we have set up. The event. Recording space is where you can find recordings from all of our past writers, week events as well as where our new event recordings will be going next week.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: and the link to join the community is in the chat for you.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: If you would, wouldn't mind taking a minute to do our survey, we would greatly appreciate hearing your feedback. We'd love to hear what you loved about Science Fiction writers week, what you think we could improve what you'd love to see for next time. Any feedback you can provide only helps us as we're planning these events. And we really appreciate you completing that for us

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: reminders for this session. If you have a question for Carrie, please put it in the Q. And a box. The chat can move very quickly, and we don't want to lose anyone's questions. If you would like to chat with other viewers, please use the chat box for that, and then, if you want everyone to see your messages, you'll just want to select everyone in the drop down, menu, beside the word to otherwise by default they just come to us.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: So without further ado, I will now introduce you to our speaker today. So we are joined again by Carrie Savage, a voracious reader of all kinds of fiction and sometimes memoir and nonfiction. Carrie Savage. She, her is an author, accelerator, certified book coach, who works with novelists from the planning stages through revision, helping writers get their best book ready for the world.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: She is also a J. School grad and former project manager, as well as being hard at work on her 1st novel, a work of historical fiction based on the life of a real badass female pirate.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: She serves as a volunteer mentor for the women's fiction writers, association, and sisters in crime. She loves good wine, cheese, and any, and trying to keep her succulents alive. Welcome back, Carrie! We're so happy to have you here.

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Kerry Savage: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. It's been a great week, as you said. I had a really good time in my world building session on Wednesday. And I'm really happy to be back in a slightly more intimate setting today. So

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Kerry Savage: yeah, today, let's see, I am going to share my screen. I have a couple of slides to share with you, but this is not going to be a lecture. As Michelle said. This is going to be more of a workshopy kind of thing. Basically, there were some very brave volunteers for, and I hope most, if not all, of you, are here

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Kerry Savage: who submitted query letters for me to take a look at, and so I have been through everybody's query letter. We're going to take a look at them and do some live coaching, and you'll have an opportunity to ask questions. So I am going to focus on the folks who submitted.

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Kerry Savage: and whoever is here right now, if we don't get to you for time reasons, I'm hoping I can get to everybody. But for whatever reason we can't get to you for time reasons. I'm going to send everybody's letters to Michelle, which she'll pass along to you, so you will get my my notes, regardless of whether you get live, coached or not, and hopefully we'll have an opportunity to for people to ask questions. Both the people who are being workshopped right now, and also saving a little time for Q&A at the end.

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Kerry Savage: so we can skip over my introduction, because Shell did that very lovely introduction for me, and I will get right into it. So I just wanted to start off by reminding us all of a basic query letter structure.

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Kerry Savage: And most of the people who submitted more or less had this down. So that was great to see. I'll address some specifics as we get into looking at everybody's individual letters. But here is the basic sort of structure that is tried and true.

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Kerry Savage: Starting with your salutation. Obviously, you want to find, find and insert the name. So you know I got a lot of these. Say, dear Agent, which is perfect, for when you're putting together your query letter, just don't forget to swap out the person's name before you actually send it.

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Kerry Savage: If there is any personalization that would be applicable for you. And by personalization, I mean, do you know, this person. Have you met them? Do you know one of their authors? And that person has recommended you? Did you meet them at a conference? And they said, Oh, yeah, send me, you know. Send me your query in your 1st 10 pages, or whatever anything like that. That's what you want to lead off with for sure, right? Because that's gonna immediately grab their attention.

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Kerry Savage: It's going to trigger their memory. And there is that personal connection kind of drives you to the top of the pile automatically, which is a lovely thing to have.

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Kerry Savage: However, the vast majority of us don't have that, and that's fine. It's definitely not a deal breaker. The next thing that you want to include, which could be your 1st thing is your book basics, right? So your title, your genre your length, and by length I need word. Count not, page count. You can do your comps here, or you can do them after that's fine.

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Kerry Savage: but that's like where you generally want to lead off. And then the next thing that you're going to have in and where we're going to focus the bulk of our attention today as we go through things, is this 2 to 4 paragraph summary of the book, which is also can be called the Hook. I tend to think of the hook as being

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Kerry Savage: the short sort of one sentence thing. But I've also seen people describe this whole sort of summary section as the hook. So I will potentially refer to it interchangeably as the hook and the summary hook. Summary. All of those things. What I'm talking about is that 2 to 4 paragraphs that are the meat of your query letter that's really talking about. Here is what the book is. Here's what I'm pitching to you.

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Kerry Savage: and we'll get into a little more detail on that in just a second. But overall it's your narrative arc. It's the arc of the plot, and also the arc of the character, your main character, your protagonist.

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Kerry Savage: Next, if you haven't included your comps above in the book basic section, you want to put your comps. You want to list. Whatever your comps are, you want to give a little personal info. So your bio paragraph, and then your closing, which is just, you know. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your attention, whatever. So and so your name.

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Kerry Savage: I've seen some

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Kerry Savage: adjustments to this order in that. Sometimes your book basics can come below. Sometimes you just jump right into your your hook summary.

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Kerry Savage: and that's fine. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. I will say in all of the things that I've read about query letters. All of the panels that I have sat in on listening to agents do critiques of query letters. This structure is the one that always seems to be the one that like just works right? So this is sort of what they're expecting. If you nail this, you're in great shape, so

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Kerry Savage: I wouldn't get too concerned if you stray from it a little bit. If you're like reorganizing the order. Just a little bit like that's not a deal breaker, but it's easy to stick to this format. It's what's known. It's what's expected. So that's why, I give it 2 big thumbs up. There's hard enough things about your queries just this whole process when you can make it simple, keep it simple.

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Kerry Savage: So when I was going through all of the query letters that I got, I think, but far by far and large, the the biggest issues that I was seeing was in this whole hook summary section, which is not a big surprise. I think that is the easiest part to get

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Kerry Savage: to get lost in a little bit, because you are trying to take your entire book, whether it's 60,000 words or 150,000 words, and condense it down into like 2 or 3 paragraphs, probably right? And that's so hard, so hard to write a synopsis which is 250 to 500 words. This is even asking you to do less than that, and that can feel like a lot of pressure and what to include and what to not include. And

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Kerry Savage: and just. It's easy to get lost in that and really favor one or the other, or try to do something that feels a little bit unique. This is not the

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Kerry Savage: place to get super unique. You want your unique voice to shine in your actual pages, not in your query letter. You want your query letter to be buttoned up and professional, and as polished as you can possibly make it, because you want to intrigue the agent enough to go. I want to read this and go to your pages instead. You don't want them to be like. This person hasn't bothered to learn, you know the standard things, or they haven't included the right information.

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Kerry Savage: And then they're not even going to look at your pages right? So getting back to the hook, though.

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Kerry Savage: you want to identify right away? Who's your main character? So who's the protagonist? There are a couple of letters that we'll see to where I wasn't entirely sure who the protagonist was, and that's not great, and that doesn't mean that you can't include any other characters in your summary. I'm sure you will, but we want to be super clear that we know who we're following through the arc of the story right? Especially if there are other Pov characters, you can include them. But

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Kerry Savage: the protagonist should be clear, and the other things that we need to make sure we understand, or that we know is all around stakes. Right. So what are the internal stakes? What does your protagonist want? And what is keeping them from getting it?

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Kerry Savage: What is the thing that they really struggle with what is the ultimate thing that they're going to have to come up and face in the climactic moment of the book. And in

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Kerry Savage: your query letter. You're not going to give away the answer to that question. In fact, you want to probably allude or actually state that question, but you're not telling them. What the answer is you're not going to include, how it's actually going to play out. That's for the synopsis, if required. But you do definitely do want to have that information in your query. Letter agents want to understand what those stakes are.

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Kerry Savage: and then, similarly, we want to know what the external stakes are as well. What problems do they face from this thing that they want? There's going to be things internally that are keeping them from getting it. Their misbeliefs about who they are, and how they move through the world, and how the world sees them, and all those kinds of juicy psychological things. But there's also external things that are keeping them from getting what they want, too. Right?

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Kerry Savage: So what problems are those that they're facing? What choices are they forced to make in order to try to get what they want, as they're working through. What is the tension that's driving the story forward?

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Kerry Savage: And if you think that like this. All this stuff, putting this in is making your story sound too generic, and there'll be a couple of points where I will mention like this could apply to just about any book, and that is the nature of like part of what we're doing with writing. You know, we're getting at these big life questions. So sometimes things are gonna sound, a little generic. There are times when that's okay, because

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Kerry Savage: there are universal themes that we're tapping into. But the thing in a query letter that's going to hook an agent is for them to understand really what are the unique aspects

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Kerry Savage: of your book? If there are. You know that that old chestnut about there only being 10 stories, or whatever? Sure your story is going to fit into one of those categories right? But it's also a story only you could tell. And so there's going to be ways that you need to draw out. What's that unique piece of it? How have you put your own spin on it? How have you put your own twist on it?

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Kerry Savage: What questions were you interested in exploring? And how are they different from that other book that kind of deals with the same things. I guarantee you that it is different. I mean, no one could write the book that you wrote so it might feel really hard. But the answer is, there. You just got to figure out how to tease it out.

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Kerry Savage: So that said, I think this is just me, and how to find me. So let me stop sharing this, although please do connect with me. As Michelle mentioned.

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Kerry Savage: I have. If you want to hop on my email list, which is just straight up at my website, you can. You can. There's a form in the footer and a pop-up that you can join, and I'll have a special offer for people within the next couple of weeks.

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Kerry Savage: So please do that. But enough of that little sales pitch, and I'm going to stop sharing this screen.

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Kerry Savage: And let's see who's here. So the 1st person that I have on my list is Nancy C. Nancy C. Are you here?

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Kerry Savage: See, throw! Throw a note in the chat, Nancy, if you are

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Kerry Savage: how about Jeanette? Is Jeanette Dover here.

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Kerry Savage: And, Nancy, if you're just if you were on mute or something, don't worry. Just you

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Kerry Savage: put up your hand in some way we'll come back to you. But Jeanette's here fantastic, all right.

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Kerry Savage: So, Jeanette, I'm going to open up your letter, and we'll take a look. Thank you, Jeanette, for being for sending this in and for being a brave volunteer.

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Kerry Savage: Let's see. So I'll share my screen again.

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Kerry Savage: and

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Kerry Savage: all right. So Jeanette.

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Kerry Savage: and just dive right in. So.

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Kerry Savage: 1st paragraph. This is where your book basics are going. Right? So you're you had said after learning you're interested in books that challenge gender norms. I'm excited to present my Ya sci-fi. I am Anjou, 80,000 words.

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Kerry Savage: It combines a life-changing event that shatters the main character's world like matched by Ali Kondi with the relationship complicated by gender issues like, I wish you all the best by Mason deaver.

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Kerry Savage: Great 1st paragraph. This is pretty much exactly what I was talking about in terms of giving your book basics, and you have a little bit of personalization here, I mean, yes, it's not saying like, Oh, I know you from so and so. But it shows that you've done some research, and that you know that this person is interested in the kind of book that you're writing. And this is the specific aspect that they've indicated that they're interested in. That is great.

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Kerry Savage: The one thing that I noted here was this description about it combines a life changing event that shatters the main character's world. I would say like that is probably true of a lot of books. Maybe most of them, and that really should be like when you look at descriptions of inciting incidents like it should turn the main character's world on its head. So if you could get a little more specific there about what actually is is going on the life changing event that shatters the main character's world. I think

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Kerry Savage: that's a case where some specifics would really help. And the other thing that I wanted to note there was just

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Kerry Savage: the comps like Ali Kandhi is, I think it was 2,010. This was published, and Mason Deaver's book was 2,019. So there! That's maybe a little bit old, especially the Ali Kandhi. Usually you want your comps to be within like a year or 2, and I think that that was a critique that you will see over, or a note that you'll see over and over again. A lot of people had

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Kerry Savage: the same or similar issue.

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Kerry Savage: you don't need to have both of them. But if you can find one comp that is within like the last year or 2 that gives you a little more flexibility to go back a little bit. So like I would keep the Mason deaver Comp, because that really ties in nicely with this complicated by gender issues, and maybe find something to replace. Matched if you can.

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Kerry Savage: But otherwise like this was, this was a great 1st paragraph. This is exactly what I think you're looking for here?

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Kerry Savage: So then we get into the summary, and I think, as far as length goes, this is great. This is, you know, between the 2 and 4 paragraphs I feel like 3 is perfect. That's exactly what you'd expect, and it gives you enough room to sort of go through and

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Kerry Savage: outline everything that we're expecting to see

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Kerry Savage: in this query. In particular, I thought you did. You actually had sort of the opposite issue. Then I saw in a lot of these in that in most cases. And again, we'll get into a little more specifics with other people's. I wasn't clear on the internal stakes for the protagonist in your query. The internal stakes were like so clearly defined. You did a great job with that, and I thought, you know this is excellent. I know what she's up against.

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Kerry Savage: and I understand what it means to her, and why it's so important where I got a little bit lost was in, I think, the contextual sort of the whys and the setup of the premise right? So it was forbidden to have a gender prem

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Kerry Savage: preference intersex. Anjou knows she's female. The authoritarian council declares a balanced population is crucial for the survival of their island home. To ensure this, they mandate all youth must undergo a neurological test to determine their sex after taking the test, Anjou is devastated when assigned as male.

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Kerry Savage: So it wasn't completely sure, like, does everybody have to go through this test, or is there just is it, Anjou? And there's just a few other people like Anjou who have to go through this like there was just a little bit of context. I think that was missing, you know. I think you'll see. I asked. Why.

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Kerry Savage: like, who's so? I think it's the Council that is forbidding. But like, why is, what is? What is this rule, and who does it apply to? Is it applying to everybody does. Everybody have to go through this test. So I wanted us a little bit more grounding in that respect. I wanted to understand a little bit more about the world that you're dropping us into there.

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Kerry Savage: Facing the death penalty and alienation from family and friends. I was like, I don't know if you need this because the death penalty is the death penalty. Right? That's kind of the ultimate price that you could pay.

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Kerry Savage: Then this next piece, if she refuses to be male, the considerate rule follower. That's great that we know these traits about her. So really she's going against her own character. But

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Kerry Savage: this thing that she wants is so important to her that it's going to force her to go against who she feels like. She is. In these aspects the considerate rule. Follower type

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Kerry Savage: must turn into the girl requiring the right to choose her sex. And I just I didn't follow that

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Kerry Savage: I think there was a little bit of like. Well, if she's been told that she has to do this, and then you're talking about like there's black market hormones, and there's ways that she can. She can get around this. But is she really getting around it? You know, it's putting her in a lot of other jeopardy?

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Kerry Savage: So I just wanted again a little bit more clarity around that I think I didn't quite follow that sentence.

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Kerry Savage: And then finally, I think, just in a in a bigger picture, you know, talking about the bigger stakes of it you hint at a few times there's a growing attraction to the leader of the rebels. So we know that there's rebels.

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Kerry Savage: And then you talk about rising against the dictatorial system and becoming her true self. So there's clearly more that's going on in the world around her, and that's where I was talking about. Like what's happening with her is super clear, and that's great. What I wasn't so clear about was like, what's going on around her. What's the you know? What are the the real like external stakes? What is this bigger issue that's happening that she gets wrapped up in.

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Kerry Savage: I think it's important for us to understand that. So that's where I would look back and just making some like tweaks to this to kind of like, get a little bit more clarity, and then bring those some more of that external, because there's clearly a lot of external stakes going on here. It just wasn't super clear. So

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Kerry Savage: that's where I would look at just making some adjustments to the summary here. And I thought your Bio paragraph was great.

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Kerry Savage: especially like knowing. You know the your publication credits, and also I love that you included that it had been sensitivity edited and has serious potential. And those 2 things are certainly worth including and good for an agent to know. I think they'd be happy to see that.

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Kerry Savage: So

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Kerry Savage: Jeanette, do you have any questions for me?

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Jeanette, I just gave you the option to turn your mic on. If you would like to talk.

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Kerry Savage: If you don't. No pressure, no worries. That's fine.

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Jeanette Dover: I can. I can talk. Thank you so much for your

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Jeanette Dover: You're

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Jeanette Dover: comments on this query. I've struggled a lot with the query letter, and I think you just hit the high points, and I'm really thankful for it.

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Kerry Savage: Oh, great!

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Kerry Savage: Well, I'm happy to hear it. I mean this. I think you've done a great job in many, many aspects of this, and like I said, the hardest part, I think, for a lot of us is the interior interior stakes, and those are so crystal clear, so great. Great job there, I think there's just a little bit of clarity, but otherwise you're in. You're in really good shape. I think.

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Jeanette Dover: Thank you. I'll I'll tweak what needs to be tweaked.

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Kerry Savage: Okay, cool. Well, and I, said, Michelle will send the actual letter with the notes over to you after the session, so you'll have.

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Jeanette Dover: Too!

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Kerry Savage: Awesome! Alright! Oh.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: I was just saying, thanks, Jeanette. She we can go on to the next person.

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Kerry Savage: Okay. Great. Did Nancy ever turn up? No.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: I do see a Nancy in the participant list.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Nancy. If if the one, if you're the one who submitted, just let us know in the chat.

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Kerry Savage: Okay. And then the next person I had, too, is Joseph Hawkins.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: I do see a Joseph Hawkins here as well, Joseph, if you

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: would like to. Oh, he's here. He just messaged us.

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Kerry Savage: Okay, great.

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Kerry Savage: I also understand, too, that you might have volunteered to have me review this, but you may not be comfortable coming on screen and having it live critiqued. And that's totally fine, too. Do not worry.

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Kerry Savage: But, Joseph.

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Kerry Savage: I will share my screen.

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Kerry Savage: Okay.

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Kerry Savage: so

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Kerry Savage: I am writing to introduce you to my young adult sci-fi novel, Alfie in the Vertiverse it is complete. It's 72,000 worlds, words, worlds. It would sit on the shelf nicely with the space in between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson and the Loop, by Ben Oliver. The book takes Orwellian dystopia to a future where classism hides behind education.

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Kerry Savage: So again.

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Kerry Savage: Nice, solid start. You've given us the title you've given us your word, Count, which is right where it should be, and you've given us comps. I think I had the note that the comps were bordering on too old, and I know I looked them up. I think they were 2020, both of them if I'm wrong. I apologize. I looked at a lot of different books over the course of the last few days.

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Kerry Savage: And so I think this is one of those cases where, if one of these is like a really really great fit, by all means keep it if there is one that you can find that is, in within the last year or 2 that would serve you even better, and so keeping the one that's the best fit, and then subbing in the one that's that's a little bit newer would be great, but otherwise thumbs up here.

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Kerry Savage: So the next couple of paragraphs I, as a as a reader. Slash coach, too. I was like, Oh, this feels to me like you're just like bringing us into this world right like I felt like I was reading potentially your opening page or your opening paragraphs.

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Kerry Savage: and I was immediately sort of sucked into the world that you've you've done so in that I really loved, but as looking at it from the perspective of what an agent is going to be looking for in a query

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Kerry Savage: you don't want to do 1st person, even if the book is told from a 1st person. Pov from your protagonist in a query letter, they're expecting you to take that step back, and you are speaking to them as the author, not as your protagonist.

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Kerry Savage: So that was my biggest note here was that like as good as this stuff is I think it needs to be good on the page, and not hearing your query letter. What I would do was would would be to revise and also make sure like this gives me a good sense of like setting and voice. But again, that's not necessarily what belongs here in the query letter. So

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Kerry Savage: look back at those questions that we're asking ourselves about, like, what are the stakes internally and externally, there's some. There's some hints of that in here for sure, when you're talking about like being stripped at birth from your mother and placed in a controlled world, meant to train you. And there's AI, and hints about the way that people are living, the elites and the privileged.

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Kerry Savage: So there's definitely like some of the elements. But you really want to take that out and put that in that 3rd person perspective and make it really explicit.

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Kerry Savage: So that is my biggest note here is just that, take that out and then

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Kerry Savage: revise it so that it's sort of following that more expected format of summary. There are times again, like, I think, and there's examples of this in some of the other letters, that we might get a chance to look at where I think people feel the need to inject a little bit of personality, because, like, it's a query letter, they're reading hundreds of these right? So you want to stand out.

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Kerry Savage: I would say that the query letter where you, where you want to stand out is with the hook itself. You don't want to stand out, because, like it's not, you're not meeting certain expectations that they're having. And one of those would be this like, 1st person. 3rd person thing. So make that shine on the page in your book, and that's where you'll be able to hook them with the voice and the personality of the protagonist, and all that good stuff that you're doing.

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Kerry Savage: Revise this so that it's more meeting, like the the standard there of that 3rd person.

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Kerry Savage: And then this last paragraph here, like your bio, the stand alone novel. That's good. I love that your children are the source for the inspiration, and that your you know your motivation to create more challenging and thought provoking content. I think that's great. I'm not sure that you need it for an agent. That's something that could certainly come out in a conversation with them if and when they like to offer representation, there's other places where that can be more relevant in this. You don't need it.

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Kerry Savage: But you're the active member of Screwba file, pure feedback group. All the stuff that's around like your your writing, your involvement in the writing world like that stuff is is good to include, too. So definitely, keep that.

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Kerry Savage: yeah. So, Joseph, do you have any questions for me?

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Joseph Hawkins: No, thank you so much. As soon as I did it. I I think, like the week after I figured out the 3rd person point of view.

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Kerry Savage: Yeah.

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Joseph Hawkins: It's all good. Thank you so much.

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Kerry Savage: Cool. Yeah, very welcome.

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Kerry Savage: Right. Let's see Lois, Lois, butcher, butcher. Sorry if I'm

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Kerry Savage: massacring any names.

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Kerry Savage: See? Just looking at Joe's comps are my weakness. Amen. They're everybody's weakness. They're horrible. I think, when I'm in a bad mood, I think it was something that was designed to torture us all but I do. I do understand. While we're waiting for maybe Lois or Matthew Matthew Stern

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Kerry Savage: I will say that if it helps

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Kerry Savage: what an agent is looking for in your comps is something that the reason they're looking for recency is because it's going to help them understand where it fits in the marketplace. It shows them that you are aware of the marketplace. As a writer. You're paying attention. You're reading in your genre, and you know, sort of what's current in your genre. So it's giving that indication. It's also helping them to understand

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Kerry Savage: where you see your book in the marketplace, and also how they can then sell that book. So if you have like spot on Comps.

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Kerry Savage: they can think, oh, I know, like I know, that. Comp. And I know the editor who, who.

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Kerry Savage: you know, championed that book, and I know. So I know I can go and pitch this to them, because clearly this is something that they're interested in

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Kerry Savage: And so that's why they're important. You know. An agent doesn't just have to fall in love with your book. They do have to do that, but they also have to understand where they can sell it. There has to be, you know, they have to know where it can fit in the market, and that there is a place for it, and that's why they make us do this torturous exercise of comps.

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Kerry Savage: Okay, Matthew.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: We have Matthew here. Yes, and Nancy is not the Nancy who submitted.

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Kerry Savage: Okay.

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Kerry Savage: no problem. Thank you for being here, Nancy.

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Kerry Savage: Alright. Let's get Matthew's letter up.

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Kerry Savage: Wonderful. All right. So on a sunny Southern California afternoon. Julie Rubin realizes the world has ended water, electricity, food, money, and everything else that makes her middle class suburban life comfortable has suddenly stopped.

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Kerry Savage: I won't read the whole paragraph. This is one where I mean you hooked me in immediately. Right, Julie Rubin. I'm assuming she's our protagonist realizes the world has ended well, that is

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Kerry Savage: that talk about turning your life upside down right? That is definitely going to do it. And then water, like all of the basics, all of the things that we depend on, not even just in your middle class suburban life, although that's certainly our elements of that. But everything we depend on for society to function has come to a screeching halt. So you kind of don't get bigger inciting incident than that. So nice job, Matthew, on that one

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Kerry Savage: where I think you know you have room, obviously to play a little bit more. You've given one paragraph here, and you have. I would say I would never want to do just one. I'd always want to make sure there was at least 2. But take advantage of 3, I think 3 sort of mimics. Even if your book doesn't mimic a 3 act structure 3 sort of gives you that alignment with a 3 act structure that can be helpful in terms of organizing things, and also, like again the way our brains.

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Kerry Savage: I don't know why I said again. Pardon, but the way our brains respond to story and consume story and think about story sort of fits neatly into that structure, which is why it's so popular. So all of that, to say, I would take advantage of that here and break this out a little bit more.

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Kerry Savage: I also wasn't clear. I mean, the external stakes obviously are very dire. And you said that right up front that's great. I wasn't clear on why she had to strike out on a mission to find her husband when he disappeared.

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Kerry Savage: and on the one hand, I understand it's like, well, Duh Harrie, her husband disappeared. That's obvious. Like she needs to go find him but, on the other hand, it's a little bit like well, isn't it safer for her to just stay home and and like hope for the best that he turns up, and maybe do whatever she can, but she needs to be home so he can come home and find her again.

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Kerry Savage: So I'm assuming that there is more to it than that I'm assuming. There really is a good reason that she is going to leave her home and her safe, like whatever safe haven that affords her, and go off on this quest. That just wasn't clear here, and then you also made the note that she's part of the reason she's going out on this mission is to save their community. And I was like, Oh.

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Kerry Savage: well, that is, you know, again, you've you've got great stakes already that's escalating it even further. But I wasn't again. I wasn't clear on. Why, why is like, what is it about her that she's going out and saving the community. What is it that she's bringing to the table? Or she offers, whether willingly or unwillingly?

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Kerry Savage: Why is it up to her to save the community.

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Kerry Savage: I loved this, the the gang, the the crew, the the cast of characters. That's the words I'm looking for, the cast of characters that you put in here the disappointed zombie hunter. Dangerous family of cosplayers. I really that kind of made me chuckle, because, you know.

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Kerry Savage: cosplayers like they're lovely, but they're sort of benign, but not in this world. They're not so a vicious gang of children on skateboards, I mean, as a city dweller. I'm a little bit like. Well, I can kind of see that, but it is still unexpected. So that really was kind of delightful. A pop star with a thirst for power not terribly unusual, probably, but I'm sure, like a very interesting character in this world.

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Kerry Savage: It says she'll discover the truth about her missing husband, which is a little like I'm I was debating about whether you needed that element or not, and it sort of depends, of course, on on the story that you're telling and and teasing out some more details of breaking this out a little bit, I think, will help you.

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Kerry Savage: Figure out whether you need to include that or not, because, like does she? When she goes on this quest, she's just going on this quest to find him. I'm assuming it's not unraveling the mystery, so the fact that she there, is a mystery that she a truth that she has to discover can be a great twist. I'm not sure you need it here.

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Kerry Savage: so I would just go back. I would look at

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Kerry Savage: breaking this out a little bit and giving a little more context, answering those questions about the internal stakes what's driving her forward along the way

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Kerry Savage: and giving more detail where? Where you can sort of clarify. It doesn't mean that you're giving away all the good stuff of the book you're not. It might feel that way sometimes it does like, oh, well, I'm putting all the good stuff in. And so, even when like what? What's gonna make them want to read it? Trust me if you've done your work on the page, that's what's going to make them want to read it.

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Kerry Savage: Don't have to worry about like. Oh, I'm giving too much away in here. You don't want to give away the ending. You don't want to give away any surprises in a query letter. That's again what the synopsis is for. But you do want to give them enough to be intrigued here, and some of that is those special details that's like what separates the more generic from like the special bits about your particular book.

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Kerry Savage: The other note that I had here is that same one about you. You're going to want to find some modern comps. And you know

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Kerry Savage: I am a solid Gen. Xer. I know Wizard of Oz and Monty Python, but it did make me think of when I was consulting for the company I used to work for, and I happened to be in the office the day that David Bowie died, and I had a coworker. Say, who's David Bowie? I was like, Oh, my God! I can't believe someone just said that to me, but it just goes to show. I mean, among the other reasons, that I said, that we need modern

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Kerry Savage: like. There's a very good chance that you might send this to someone who is like, I maybe

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Kerry Savage: don't even know what Monty Python is Wizard of Oz. I would hope that they would know. But again I would have thought someone would know David Bowie as well, and I was wrong. So suitable for audiences over 13. You actually don't need like. I'm assuming this is a solid adult novel, I mean your your protagonist, Julie. Seems like you know she's a grown woman. So it's adult. I wouldn't say suitable for audiences over 13. That makes that puts the question in there about whether you're intending this for a Ya. Audience, and I don't think that you

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Kerry Savage: that you do intend for that to be a question. And then it's just a note to like make this more declarative, like the manuscript, is complete at 75,000 words. And

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Kerry Savage: has serious potential. I think

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Kerry Savage: I understand phrasing it this way, because as a writer, you might think, well, I'm not going to write any more of these, if no one's interested in buying the 1st one, but they don't need to see it or think about it that way. They just want to know that you're Gung ho! To write the next one. If somebody if they buy this one next one

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Kerry Savage: is on the way.

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Kerry Savage: So

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Kerry Savage: lot of good stuff in here, I would just play with the formatting a little bit, and, as I was saying, bring bring forward some of those external stakes in particular.

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Kerry Savage: So, Matthew, do you have any questions for me?

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Matthew Arnold Stern: No, I don't have any. This is all wonderful feedback, and thank you very much for taking a look at it.

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Matthew Arnold Stern: And yeah, I do like the idea of

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Matthew Arnold Stern: providing more of a story in the introduction, and certainly, if I'm going out to query this to somebody, it would be somebody I would meet or do some research.

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Matthew Arnold Stern: and indicate why this would be a good fit. So.

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Kerry Savage: Great. Yeah, yeah. I mean, even, you know, you don't have to. Personally. Obviously, we can't all go out and meet hundreds of agents, although I do. You know, I love writing conferences. I think they're just great for energy and and getting to meet

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Kerry Savage: other people in our communities, and all of those kinds of things. But just a slight indication that you know you've done your research. And you're not just like throwing this across the trance. I'm like, no, I'm sending this to you for a reason, because you rep stuff like this. Trust me. They see so many people who don't do the research that even just an indication that you have paid attention to their guidelines and the fact that they do rep the kinds of things that you're writing and that

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Kerry Savage: you're interested like that

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Kerry Savage: puts you above a startling percentage of the queries for relatively little effort on your part. You know. I mean, it's not no effort. I won't lie like researching agents can take some time, but it is, it is well worth it. So

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Kerry Savage: good stuff, all right. Thank you.

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Matthew Arnold Stern: Thank you.

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Kerry Savage: Sure! Natalie.

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Kerry Savage: Natalie goes! I hope I'm pronouncing that right

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Kerry Savage: and then also, then the next one would be nev nev

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Kerry Savage: again. I'm so sorry if I'm butchering your names. Natalie's here fantastic.

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Kerry Savage: All right.

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Kerry Savage: Share

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Kerry Savage: great, all right, Natalie. So given your interest in unconventional characters and tales that take you to another world. I believe you will enjoy my 86,000 word adult fantasy. The Green Lightning, with its elemental magic, and a portal to a magical world. It will appeal to the readers of when the moon hatched and the fragile threads of power.

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Kerry Savage: Excellent, as I said, great opening paragraph, great comps, and they're both nice and recent. I was super psyched to look them up and see that like one was last year, and one was this year fantastic. And they did also like, I'm I'm familiar with the authors, not these particular books, but they also did just feel like a really good match. So well done, you yay, great comps.

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Kerry Savage: Alright. So getting stranded in a magical world with a few colleagues is not what Noelle has signed up for paperwork she can handle, even in a tiny archaeological dig in the Arctic, with no Internet access, arrogant mages who dig around in her brain and unearth monsters from her past. Not so much so. I really liked this as a starting point. I think it gave me a nice sense of the voice that, like, you know she's a little bit like there. There's some humor in here which was really nice to see.

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Kerry Savage: But overall, I think you know, you're another one who has room to expand this a little bit because I didn't get a full, really great sense of what was going on over the whole course of the novel. So to that point that I keep making over and over again about interior stakes, like, what does Noel actually want? And why does she want it.

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Kerry Savage: I thought it was really interesting that

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Kerry Savage: almost killing her with the mages almost killing her were not like the worst thing that happens to her, because, you know, dying is pretty bad, and then you'd say like, but when the dragon, but when dragons find out she can open magical portals, I was like, oh, there's dragons! Oh, my gosh! Like I had no idea that they were dragons.

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Kerry Savage: so I think you also have room to expand and give us a little bit of a better sense of who Noel is, and why she

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Kerry Savage: wants what she wants. What journey is it that we're going on with her, but also give us a little bit more about what's happening externally in the story. You've got good good starts here. I think you know the Mages and their experiments, and the dragons, like

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Kerry Savage: all that is good, and opening up the well, the expedition in Greenland. They're opening up portals into the past. Right so or not. Maybe not the past to another world, I should say

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Kerry Savage: those are all good elements that we want to know about. But just tell me more. Give me some more details. Give me a better sense of the overall arc of the story without giving away the ending. Obviously. So, I'd think about ways to include more information that really get at those core questions that we looked at in that 1st slide, about internal stakes and external stakes.

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Kerry Savage: as far as your bio paragraph. That was great. I liked learning what I learned about you. You know your relationship to your protagonist.

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Kerry Savage: It's a bummer that you haven't found a portal to a magical world. Please let us know if you do find one. But truly, like knowing about like a little bit about your writing background, and that you've, you know, been long listed for these awards. Great, all good stuff. So I think like with your opener and your Bio paragraph. I think you did a fantastic job. I would just work on expanding this a little bit more to really make the hook clear and draw us in.

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Kerry Savage: So yeah, any questions, Natalie.

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Natalie: Oh, thank you for the fantastic feedback that was great. And yeah, I actually somebody else gave me a similar similar feedback about the the

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Natalie: the middle part, the the blurb of the novel, that it does need more like something

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Natalie: hints at stakes of the story, and the internal, and internally and externally. So that was

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Natalie: you just confirmed that. Thank you so much.

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Kerry Savage: I'm I'm always happy when we have like when you when as a and I've I've done this on the other side, too, as a writer. When you get consistent feedback, it makes it so much easier. It's when you get those like competing pieces.

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Natalie: Absolutely.

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Kerry Savage: I feel like, listen to so great. Yeah. And you have like, I said, you have the hints of all of it here, like the seeds are in there. I think you just need to tease them out and like and and add some more detail in there, and you'll be in great shape.

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Natalie: Thank you.

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Kerry Savage: Absolutely getting any feedback is a struggle. Amen. Dennis, Amen!

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Kerry Savage: Let's see. So nev nev.

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Kerry Savage: And then the next person I had on my list wasn't oh, great!

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Kerry Savage: I'm not going to try to say your name again, because I'm sure I'm butchering it. You can tell me when you come on how badly I messed it up. I apologize

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Kerry Savage: alright. Let's see. So

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Kerry Savage: I am seeking representation, for oh, my gosh! I'm not going to try to to say that name either, because I will mess it up. But my standalone fantasy, adult fantasy novel of 122,000 words with serious potential el rin. The protagonist combines the determination of Caius Veloso's Italian from the chronicles of the Wolf Queen, with the sharp political acumen of

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Kerry Savage: by Shinavi Patel's Kayaki and I probably I'm sorry. I probably butchered all of those. I feel really bad. But

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Kerry Savage: that's a great opening paragraph, perfect like combination. You've you've hit the the things that we need to know title, word length. And then I love you did a really really great job of with your comps and and describing why, they are your comps there.

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Kerry Savage: I said. Oh, they're on the they're on the edge age wise, but like, really, if they're a perfect fit, I mean you've done such a great job of describing like. Why, they are your comps that I think you know you're probably fine.

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Kerry Savage: So

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Kerry Savage: just something to be mindful of there

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Kerry Savage: or something to be aware of. I wouldn't say mindful mindful makes it feels like maybe you want to change it. I don't know you might be just totally fine here, so I won't go in and read. I think you had

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Kerry Savage: a really great like this

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Kerry Savage: length really served you. Well, I think you drew me into the story right away. We know who your protagonist is. It's right up front, Elren. We know what she's what is going on with her. I did wonder if fulfilling her father's dying wish like is that the inciting incident? And I think my my only concern sort of wrapped around. That was

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Kerry Savage: It seems like

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Kerry Savage: there's a lot of

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Kerry Savage: like she's going to fight.

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Kerry Savage: She almost gets kidnapped. Then she does get kidnapped, and she's trying to then.

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Kerry Savage: you know, save herself from this forced marriage that is going to be upon her. So I was hoping that we saw the father actually dying and him interacting with her. Because I think like that is a great thing that sets us off on the journey. If we don't see that, then I'm I'm worried that the journey feels like we're dropping us into the middle of the journey, and we're just going like there isn't any change, any like world altering that like sets her off, and maybe there is, and if I didn't nail it, if it's not, if it's not, the father's dying.

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Kerry Savage: if it's something else. Then I think that is what we'd want to know in this 1st paragraph. I'm guessing it's the inciting incident, because you included it here, and and sort of like. That's the order of expectation that I would go in. So that was the only note around that.

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Kerry Savage: I say here.

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Kerry Savage: oh, this is just a note like, was was this attempted kidnapping also by the enemy king? That does end up capturing her? That was just a question. I'm not sure that you absolutely have to answer it here, although if it is like there's a back and forth you might look at combining this paragraph and tightening it up a little bit.

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Kerry Savage: Then they all like. These are really story questions more than query questions. But I did they. They might come up in someone who's reading this and looking at the summary about like she has a she has a year to act once she's been kidnapped and like, oh, is she like free to actually do stuff? Or is she a prisoner? How much freedom does she actually have in order to do anything like what really is. What can she act upon there?

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Kerry Savage: overall, though this was really really solid.

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Kerry Savage: as I noted here, too, it's just like I might look at, sharpening it a little bit with potentially including just a couple more details, so that it doesn't seem like it's too much of the same like battle, battle, battle battle, kidnapping, battle battle like fighting fighting, you know, like I'm sure that there is more going on in your story. And it's not. That's not what it's all about. So that's where I think, like, maybe just honing in on a couple more of those like little special details, or a little like twist and

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Kerry Savage: plot. Kind of things, you know, at those key moments in the plot. So think about, you know, like

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Kerry Savage: the inciting incident. As we talked about a little bit that sort of launch into the journey which happens usually a little bit later than the inciting incident. I'm a big save the cat person. So I think a lot in save the cat structure, which I know does not work for everybody, and not everybody even likes it or ascribes to it, and that's totally fine. You do not need to. It's just something that makes sense to my brain. So when I'm talking about some of this stuff. That's where I'm coming from.

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Kerry Savage: So like the midpoint. Also, I'm assuming. And I could totally be wrong here. But I'm assuming that the midpoint here is somewhere around when she gets kidnapped. That would be, you know, and save the cat parlance

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Kerry Savage: the false defeat. So you know she thinks, oh, well, now I'm captured. And now I'm going to be forced into this marriage. So things along those lines up until I think you know where you want to end this, if you are thinking, save the cat, or if you guys are all at all familiar with that structure where you want to sort of leave us off here with the big story question about like, will she? Or won't she be able to do what she wants is

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Kerry Savage: right about that, like all is lost moment that dark night of the soul kind of thing where everything has come to a head.

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Kerry Savage: And it's horrible. And they're going to have to get out of this situation, and we all know that they will in some capacity, because that's part of storytelling and overall structure, no matter what structures you play with.

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Kerry Savage: so things will change, they will be forced to confront whatever it is that they're confronting with and come out the other side in some capacity, whether they win or lose. But that that's sort of where you want to leave us. Here is in that like, here's what she's facing. Big moment. Everything's going to change again, like, what does that story question look like at that moment?

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Kerry Savage: So yeah, I think overall, this is super super solid. I would just look at like I said, maybe playing out a few more of the details. To really like make it sing in terms of like, how how your

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Kerry Savage: unique perspective on this kind of story is going to come out, that's all.

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Kerry Savage: Bio paragraph was was great. So

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Kerry Savage: questions.

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Kerry Savage: Hi.

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Nev Lov: Sorry. I'm just trying to find the

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Kerry Savage: Pronounce your name before you go any further.

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Nev Lov: No.

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Kerry Savage: Nav. Okay, thank you.

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Kerry Savage: Some of the time.

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Nev Lov: No problem. Don't worry about it. So thank you very much for the feedback. You've given me a lot to think about.

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Nev Lov: Actually, my inciting incident is not the the dying wish of her father, but actually the second paragraph. It's like the

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Nev Lov: imminent invasion where she has to choose her approach to to the whole

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Nev Lov: problem. So I will think about maybe changing the 1st paragraph of the of the summary.

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Kerry Savage: Yeah, I think if that's already happened and it's off screen, you probably like it's it's good to know. So I wouldn't take it out entirely, but I don't. I don't think you need to dedicate quite as much real estate to it in that respect.

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Kerry Savage: What! I wouldn't lose it because I think it is a piece of her internal stakes, right? That she is really driven in large part, because, you know, this was her dying father's wish, and she wants to fulfill it. So that's really important to her. So we don't want to lose that entirely.

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Nev Lov: Hmm.

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Kerry Savage: It probably doesn't need its whole own pair like its own whole paragraph. There I would get right to the inciting incident.

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Nev Lov: Yup, Yup

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Nev Lov: and I've already gotten some feedback on this query where people said it reads too dry, and that it should be like a bit more voicey. So would you agree with that? But because it's really I found it really hard to include my voice.

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Kerry Savage: I think so. The way I would interpret that is, is, in the same vein of what I was saying in terms of like bringing out some more of those details. I think that's where I would like go if I don't. I wouldn't say dry. But what I would say is, it feels like there's

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Kerry Savage: a lot of like you're hitting all the notes that we would expect, which is not a bad thing, you know, like there, there are genre expectations, and we want to know that those genre expectations are being met, because otherwise, like readers get upset. We don't want to upset our readers if we can help it. However, I'm sure there's like a lot of really fun and unique stuff about your book. So it's less about bringing forward. I think the voice

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Kerry Savage: that's really going to become apparent in your pages, and that's where you want it to be. What I would look at is like, yeah, bringing forward those sort of unique moments

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Kerry Savage: or unique aspects of character that that you don't see elsewhere. We want to really want to get a sense of like how this story is different from all the other stories that it would sit next to on the shelf. So it's bringing its voice in that sense. If that makes that does make sense.

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Kerry Savage: a little bit more, it's not so. Don't feel like you have to like

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Kerry Savage: Zhuz up the language, and make it like sassy or funny, or all these things that like maybe don't fit with you, or with the book's voice and tone, but bring forward more of those like unique elements

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Kerry Savage: or unique plot happenings make us really understand who Elren is as a character.

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Kerry Savage: and there is some of that in there already, but I would just see how you can tease out even more of that, and make that richer.

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Nev Lov: Okay.

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Nev Lov: Thank you very much.

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Kerry Savage: Yeah, you're very welcome.

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Kerry Savage: I mean, I think you know, just to say, too, that you've got a really really solid start here. So I would not throw this out by any means. I think it's just a matter of tweaking details.

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Kerry Savage: All right.

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Kerry Savage: A Lawrence

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Kerry Savage: and Steve Saltman. Steven Saltman apologies.

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Kerry Savage: Steve is here all right. Fantastic.

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Kerry Savage: Let's see.

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Kerry Savage: Care

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Kerry Savage: all right.

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Kerry Savage: I am looking for representation for my Science Fiction fiction, novel adventures in radio astronomy. 140 K.

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Kerry Savage: So you've got a solid start here. I might just to make it feel a little bit less abrupt and a little bit more friendly. I might move up some of the Comp. Stuff. It just. It's fine that it's here. You didn't do anything wrong, but I think it just would make this a little bit of a softer entry if that makes sense.

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Kerry Savage: And the only other thing I wanted to note here was like 140 K is and I know we have more leeway in sci-fi, especially if they're epics, or, as you said, like, there is serious potential here. But as a debut in particular, like that's gonna be a hard sell, especially with the costs of everything going up.

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Kerry Savage: I looked again this morning, just to be sure, I was remembering correctly, and it really is. Your guidelines are going to. You want to be between like 90 and like 125 k. So that's why I just, I said. You know the word count might give pause. If you have already edited as ruthlessly as you can be, and this is where it is, then this is where it is. But just know that that is, that might be something that an agent's going to look at, and they're going to just stop right there and be like, Nope, I can't sell this at this length.

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Kerry Savage: so just wanted to make you aware.

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Kerry Savage: I am not going to try to pronounce Harry's name, so I'll just go. Harry, a gifted but disabled physics student, is turned down for an internship at the Meerkat radio telescope in South Africa. Is it her funny walk, her canes? But then an accident in which she is an unwilling participant makes her dreams come true. The internship is hers, but an errant USB. Drive some vacuum tubes, an explosion and a vision of a glowing man. Bring her internship to a rapid and furtive conclusion.

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Kerry Savage: I loved this opening paragraph. I immediately was just like, Yep, I will. I would totally read this book. I mean, I could say that about almost all of yours, you guys, I really like idea. Wise great stuff.

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Kerry Savage: But this

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Kerry Savage: had a little bit of that element of voice in it, too. You could kind of tell what the tone of the novel was going to be, and it's just a bunch of sort of unexpected things

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Kerry Savage: coming together in a way that is unexpected, that I was like, Okay, great. This is a wonderful way to kick us off into this. The second paragraph.

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Kerry Savage: I still enjoyed all of the elements, especially a

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Kerry Savage: a floating gun wielding man. It's like, Huh, okay,

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Kerry Savage: But I was a little bit like I felt like, maybe this is, you know.

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Kerry Savage: this is the next piece of the story. I wasn't sure that I needed all of these details in this query, and then I came to the 3rd paragraph, which is moving between the present and the future. Adventures in radio astronomy follows 4 online friends who had never met in real life until a binge worthy alien TV show brought them together and nearly killed them

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Kerry Savage: also, like great premise. But I had no clue that that's what was coming after having read this. So I think where I would refine. This is in looking at like you set us off on this journey here. Now, I need to understand, and what comes after this, that this is what your book is. And I just didn't didn't get the sense of that at all

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Kerry Savage: from this. So I think you are clearly doing a great job, including some of those fun details that will suck people in and make things feel really unique

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Kerry Savage: right off the bat. So don't lose that. But make sure that you're telling this story in a little bit more detail, with more specificity as well, because this was, I think, surprise, which was, which was fun, not bad, but like I did not get a sense of that, and I would I didn't know like they felt like 2 different projects, potentially.

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Kerry Savage: And I don't think that they are so. I would take a step back from the details starting in here, and then give us a better sense of like the overall scope of your story that's captured here.

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Kerry Savage: The only other thing here was I mean. I love the project. Hail, Mary, as a Comp. I was like, you're all. You're walking the line in terms of age. There. It's close, like I think it's 2021 might be a little bit on the older side, especially when the other comps you're giving us are the goonies and stand by me, although I love those I mean, like great sort of buddy comps very close to my Gen. X. Heart. So you might want to look at

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Kerry Savage: other options there, just something to be mindful of.

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Kerry Savage: and it could be more of like I might tweak the sense to be more like this is a marriage of these 2 kinds of things as opposed to like. If you like this or this, it's like you have done the work of combining those into like this amazing story that you've written.

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Kerry Savage: So I just moved that up this outline of sequel I just moved it up and then

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Kerry Savage: find. And good Bio paragraph.

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Kerry Savage: So.

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Kerry Savage: yeah, those are my notes around that, Steve Steven, do you have any questions for me?

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Kerry Savage: Yeah.

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steve: I'm not sure. Can you hear me?

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Kerry Savage: Okay. Great.

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steve: Yeah, no, my son actually agreed that the 3rd paragraph there that you highlighted should be the 1st paragraph, because that's what the book is about. So I'm gonna

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steve: I'm gonna make those changes. You're great suggestions. Thank you. I'm I've very my struggled with the query letter because I definitely get bogged down in the details. So this is extremely helpful, particularly the previous ones. I just heard you do. So. This is great.

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Kerry Savage: Oh, great, great! Yeah. Like, you have a gift for the details. I would say. So don't lose that. But yeah, definitely take for you. It's taking a step back and looking at sort of things a little bit more holistically.

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Kerry Savage: I would set this up potentially like, I don't know if this should be like play with this as your 1st sentence, because sometimes doing a summary of the overall ones. There was another one. I don't think that person was here. We didn't look at it had sort of the pitch line as an opener, and

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Kerry Savage: that can work both ways. It's great that you have a good one line pitch like they're so hard and they're really really helpful. They will be useful in lots of ways. I had one of my writers who is querying right now? Email me and be like everybody is asking me in query, Manager, for a 1 line pitch like, can we nail this down, so you clearly need it, but I'm not sure that it always serves to be in the query letter. So, but use this as your as your guiding star.

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Kerry Savage: at least revise with that in mind, and then see, you probably don't need it in your query letter. You could probably take it out once you've used it, but you've made it serve its purpose. And I said, you'll definitely need it in other places. So kudos on having it.

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steve: And and I and I will say I do understand the the length is a problem. The 1st version I wrote was 250,000 words. So it's been edited down a lot

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steve: and I I did actually get one agent already. Tell me it's just too long. But

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steve: I don't know. We'll see what happens. I'm

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steve: I'm I'm plugging away.

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Kerry Savage: I hear ya like I started. My 1st draft of my novel was 145,000 words, and ironically, at about 60 I was like. There's no way I'm getting to 90. I targeted 90. It was historical fiction. It's like, there's no way I'm getting to 90. And I looked up. And I'm like, Whoa! How do I need to cut more than a 3rd of my book right now? It's at 95. So I did manage to do it somehow, which is not to say like I mean, if you've cut 110,000 words, you've obviously done a lot of work towards that.

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steve: Oh, yeah, yeah. So the book used to start in World War 2. Now starts the present. So.

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Kerry Savage: A lot of backstory.

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steve: And another folder.

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Kerry Savage: And the other thing, you know, if you if like, you said, you have a series, an outline of a sequel and process, you might think. And I, you know, obviously don't know, because I I only know this about your book. But like, is there anything that could serve the story that you have in in this 1st book that could could work in the second.

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Kerry Savage: Right? No, I mean, that's that's a possible something to think about, anyway.

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steve: Right.

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steve: Thank you very much again.

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Kerry Savage: Thank you.

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Kerry Savage: I think that was everybody, Michelle, I mean. We called out everybody.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Awesome. We do have some Q&A.

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Kerry Savage: Alright! Let's do it!

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Use your son.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Okay? So 1st off, Mike asks, when you say comps, please define what that means to you. Thank you.

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Kerry Savage: Yeah, sure. So comps are comparable titles. Generally speaking, when what agents are looking for are

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Kerry Savage: recent titles, books that are solidly situated within your genre. And but when I say recent, I mean within the last year or 2 now, you will often see people who use TV shows who use movies who sometimes use older books as well. And it's not that those things can't be included. You know, like, I'm I'm okay. I think it's fine to have one of those, but

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Kerry Savage: you are writing a book, and so if your if your comps are, you know, just to

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Kerry Savage: just pull out, because I still have. Steve's in front of me and say, like, it's the goonies meat stand by me, which I know is not what you said, Steve, but I'm just. It's in front of me. So that's what I'm saying. That can be a little bit harder again, just because it's

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Kerry Savage: you're taking something from a totally different media medium, and applying that to your book.

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Kerry Savage: And the purpose of these of these comp titles are to like, align with the marketplace. So while it does give a good sense of how you see your book in terms of its concepts and its themes, and and all those kinds of good things. It doesn't give that marketplace sense. So that's what makes it a little bit harder. And that's what I'm talking about. So I'm talking about books mainly. And again it all goes back to the marketplace.

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Kerry Savage: So if there is something that is absolutely perfect

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Kerry Savage: and it's 10 years old.

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Kerry Savage: I wouldn't say don't include it. If it's the perfect Comp. But I would then challenge you

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Kerry Savage: to do your best to find something that's more recent. And you can play with this. I am actually working on. I am working on a new like lead magnet worksheet kind of thing that I should have in a few weeks, hopefully in October. Actually,

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Kerry Savage: because I've been thinking a lot about comp titles and how hard it is, and how evil it is that they make us do this. And I'd love to make it easier for all of us.

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Kerry Savage: But all that said, that's that's what I mean

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Kerry Savage: by that.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: To piggyback off of that gala, asks, what if there are no comps for our novel? I'm writing something totally different that hasn't been done before. At least I think so. My example is a dark fantasy novel of the origin of Santa Claus.

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Kerry Savage: I love that idea. It's so wonderful! In that case I will tell you the hard thing that that I have heard, because I was in the same boat like I'm I'm having a really hard time finding comments for my book to be honest.

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Kerry Savage: and what someone's going to tell you is like, that's not a good excuse. That's not a good reason. There. There are ways that you can come at the comp problem, that even if there doesn't feel like there has been anything like that out in the marketplace yet. There are ways that you can get around that. And some of those ways is part of what I've been trying to think about in terms of this thing that I want to create. But part of the way to think about. That is like yes, in terms of the origin of Santa Claus. Somebody said, American gods! Oh, I like that! That's a nice Comp. Steve

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Kerry Savage: And Matthew's throwing something in the chat, too. That's awesome.

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Kerry Savage: is the dark origin story right? So you you mentioned that like that is a great place to start for comps. So look at other books that are doing a dark origin story like that. It doesn't have to be Santa. Obviously probably not Santa Claus, because, like you said, I've never heard that before, but dark origin stories would be a wonderful place to start. There are other aspects of things depending on who. I don't know if your protagonist is Santa Claus, or if there's like the the whoever the protagonist is.

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Kerry Savage: that is a like just who they are, how they see the world, the internal stakes around, what they're trying to face, their issues or their external stakes. All of these ways of like slightly looking at like

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Kerry Savage: an angle of your story rather than your story. As a whole themes.

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Kerry Savage: Those kinds of things are always to come at comps that are not maybe the 1st things that we think of, but can absolutely work in terms of finding things like that.

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Kerry Savage: Oh, violent night! The dark origin story of Santa Claus. Oh, my goodness! Who knew.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Dennis asks, can you speak about the difference between querying an agent versus an Indie publisher that accepts direct author submissions.

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Kerry Savage: Oh, that's a great question. I don't know. I've been so focused, both in my coaching practice

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Kerry Savage: and in my own work with querying agents.

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Kerry Savage: I would imagine, although I did have an author who actually did end up with an Indie press.

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Kerry Savage: Her book is coming out next year. Yay, I don't think that she really changed her query all that much when she started going like querying indie presses. I think it was more along the lines of rather than querying the agent and saying, I understand you Rep. You know books like this, or you have authors who are, you know, write books that are in a similar vein to mine. It was more about. I've looked at what you've published before and see like this is how I think we would align.

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Kerry Savage: And that's just, you know, a matter of going to their website and and absolutely like seeing what their, what, what works they have published, and also what their submission guidelines are. You know, they're they're spelling out specifically what genres they're interested in. And and that kind of thing. And so that that's that's just the tweak that I would make, I think, other than that, unless their submission guidelines are significantly different, and I haven't ever heard that they are. I think you would just tweak your query letter that way, and then basically send the same letter.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: I think we have time for one more question. We will end with. Alicia asks, do you recommend always hiring a sensitivity, editor, before submitting to agents. I've had sensitivity betas. Can I include that? Instead, something like this manuscript has been reviewed by sensitivity. Beta readers regarding assault.

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Kerry Savage: Yes, you. I think you can include that.

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Kerry Savage: I don't know that you have to, whereas, like I would always include that you've like actually had someone do a like you've hired someone to do a sensitivity. Read? Honestly like that. I was just realizing that that actually relates back to mine. I've not had a sensitivity read done on mine, but I did have someone who is in a sort of a similar situation. Ish, although my book takes place in 1,700

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Kerry Savage: who happened to be a bad reader, and I wasn't thinking of including that necessarily. But if you feel like. That's a strong aspect to your book that people need to be aware of, and that you want them to know that it has been vetted in that way. I think it's fine to include it. I think any time that you have something that where you're treading on those kinds of sensitive areas. It never hurts to have a sensitivity read. I would never argue against one. I don't think

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Kerry Savage: I'm not saying you always have to have one either, but you know they're there for a reason and I think that they're a great resource for people.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: All right. Thank you so much, Carrie. This was a great workshop. Thank you to everybody who submitted query letters we will get the feedback back to you soon, and you can see the replay and everything up on the hub later today. So we have one more workshop coming up in just about 40 or 50 min, so we will see you there.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Bye, everybody.

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Kerry Savage: Hi! Y'all.