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Author Topic: Sleepwalkers Query
Lionhunter
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So i'm swamped in exams and projects and guess what? I really feel like writing
But seriously, I haven't contributed to these boards for some time, so I'm a lil' selfish when i ask for you to crit this query, but i promise i'm gonna be active on this board again... right after i finish with these exams

quote:

Dear Agent McAgent,

Michael is playing basketball back in the yard, waiting for his grandpa to finish the cabbage rolls. Ten years later, Michael is hopping courtroom to courtroom, playing with people's lives, making them guilty in front of other people, the jury. He is the player, the jury is the arbiter. The defense just can't wait to knock him down. He tried to forget, scratch that, he wanted to forget his friends, too lazy to do something with their lives, the neighborhood, drowned in cheap vodka, his family, too tied up with the past. Nothing illegal, nothing dangerous, just old and repeating thuds on the sidewalk of a ball jumping up and down. Until he met his old friends. Until money brought drugs and booze and hookers. Until Michael killed someone. A knife in his hand 10 seconds earlier was in someone's chest. Just some bookie that was high on the latest synthetic coke drug. Probably low level Russian Mafia. Now spread on his bloody kitchen floor. He killed him because he is possessed. That’s what Michael thinks, anyway. He only has his friend Victor to help him, not because he called him, but because he saw everything. Eli was too drunk to join them in picking up the money they've won off the soccer match.

The possession angle could be used as a defense case, but he really believes that. The black lady teleporting out of thin air makes him more nervous and paranoid every time he sees her. She tries to help him. That’s what she says, at least. Someone wants to kill him. Well, Death. And not really him, but the extra passenger in his head. He is overdue. Michael is just caught in the middle.

A drug fueled sleep feels like a toy bus ramming you in the head slowly. He doesn’t even remember that. Michael just wakes up on sidewalks, on his floor, or with a bloody knife in his hand. Not his fault if he can’t remember.

Michael is getting restless. Forensics will pick up a track, anything and he’ll be behind bars. Prosecution will love to make him an example. Inmates will eat him up. And worse than that, the robotic walk of a crippled detective is following him everywhere he goes. He can outrun him. But Maykovich still finds him. He knows everything. At least, that’s what he says. Michael is his special case.

Drugs will explain paranoia. Hallucinations will explain his motives. But nothing explains why Michael is getting better and better at running, fighting his way out, seeing millennia old memories of dead people and dead people dancing around him, helping him or trying to kill him. How are they dead? They’re just like him. Hosts carrying ghosts.

Sleepwalkers. A paranormal thriller novel, aprox 70,000 words.



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satate
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I find this really confusing. Just tell it to me straight. You need to say or strongly imply early on that this is either set in the future or sci/fi.
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Lionhunter
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I guess this is because i used the word "teleporting"?Or "synthetic coke drug"?
It's not SF or in the future, it's set in modern times.

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Meredith
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First off, this is way too long. This is a query, not a synopsis. Shoot for about 250 words. And definitely make it all fit on one page (without playing around with the font size).

The only three things you have to answer in a query pitch are:

  • Who is the main character?
  • What choice does he have to make?
  • What are the consequences?

Then you give the genre, title and wordcount and your contact information.

That's it.

For some good and bad examples, start reading QueryShark


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TrishaH24
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I am in agreement with what has already been said for the most part. I like your writing style: your voice is strong and that was the most compelling part about your query. But (for instance) the opening line led me to believe the story would be about a kid (or teen). Then BAM I'm thrust into the future ten years with no warning or connecting thread from opening line to second line. It felt REALLY disjointed.

So I was already a little woozy from the first lines, and you followed them up with some really "hard and fast" lines about murder and possession and a lady teleporting...I felt a little like I just got off a tild-a-whirl at the state fair.

The thing is, that "spinning" feeling I get WOULD help the query in a sense because this guy's life is unraveling. And I absolutely get that feeling when I read it. The problem is you have too much you're trying to cram in there. I'd shave it back a little and see what you can get by with WITHOUT sacrificing your style.

When you get this query polished (provided your book has the same strength of voice and style) you are going to sell this thing, nooo problem. Good luck, my fingers are crossed for you!

Trisha


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Owasm
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The query isn't tight enough. The examples I see of good ones are tight and move right along. An agent doesn't have time to read through preambles unless they directly relate to the story. Grandpa cooking cabbage rolls, will only make an agent roll her eyes and wonder if she wants to invest another ten minutes evaluating your query right off the bat.

He likes basketball, but is that what makes him competitive? Is that what drives him? Is there something that puts him in the room with the drug dealer? You need to make that all work in about a third of the space. Save some of the plot for the synopsis.

I laugh because I make the same mistakes. I've got a query here and I'm not sure it's pithy enough.


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