How to Write a Great Query Letter

     So you want to be a writer. A published one, specifically. How do you go about it?

     To get published, you have to be able to write a good query letter. This is a letter you'll send to a publisher telling them about your novel, and about yourself. It's basically a resume for writers. A lot of writers think this is the first step to becoming a published writer. They come up with a great novel idea, write up a query, and send it to some publishers hoping to sign a deal and get paid while they're writing. This, however, is pure fantasy for the average writer. If you're Stephen King, or James Patterson, of course a publisher will pay you to write another book, because they know they're going to make an amazing return on their investment. But how many companies do you think will pay Joe Schmoe who's never published a book in his life? Who's going to bet on a pony with no stats?

     That means your first step is to write your novel. You might be able to get away with a first or second draft, but more often than not you're going to want to have a near-finished product by the time you approach a company to publish. We writers are fickle creatures; how many movies or tv shows reveal the procrastinating nature of writers? Publishing companies can't stick their necks out on the line for unproven writers. So, prove yourself and your work to them by giving them a finished product by which to judge you.

     Alright, so, novel's done, now what? Now comes the query letter. The typical format for a query letter involves a brief paragraph about yourself, a few sentences saying who you are, where you're from, how long you've been writing, any schooling. Following that should be a concise, thrilling, exciting synopsis of your novel. Don't focus so much on back story or setting things up. You should be able to give the setting, time period, and basic back story in one or two sentences. The publisher will get the full back story when they read the book. Instead, dive right in to the juicy parts.

     The problem I've found while reading most query letters is that authors seem to treat them like teasers to the general public. You try not to give too much away in order to keep the big twists a surprise. Well, the publisher doesn't care about reading your spoilers. They WANT your spoilers. They want to know what they're getting in to, and they want to be impressed with your work. Does your book have a killer twist that could make it Thriller of the year? Don't hold back, tell them! Is your character revolutionary because of some trait or event that's meant to be a surprise within the book? This is your chance to prove to them that your book is something special. Don't squander that chance by being coy. Let it all out.

     The summary of your novel shouldn't last more than a few paragraphs, one page at the most. You're not writing them an outline of your novel, you're just throwing them the juicy bits, those parts of your story that you're madly in love. It may take some rewriting over and over, to boil down a 300 page novel to one page, but this is worth it. The editors reading these queries likely go through dozens each day, and if they don't like what they see within the first page, they're not going to keep reading your three or four page summary. Hook them right away, and keep their attention to the end, with another hook at the end to entice them to contact you for more. Think back to the best trailers for movies you ever saw, the first thing they showed you, and the last. What about them made you want to see the movie from that day on? Emulate that for your query letter.

     Lastly, finish up with a paragraph describing the stats of the novel. What genre is it, how many words, is it finished (tell them! It's important!), is it a stand alone or are there plans for sequels or a series? If there are plans for future installments, it's a good idea to tell them a little bit about what you have planned. If the novel you're sending them is a complete story with or without the sequels, that's a good thing to tell them, as well. Publishers don't like risks if they can help it.

     So, go ahead and give it a try. Even if you haven't finished your novel yet, it's a good idea to write up some mock query letters. There's a great blog - Query Shark - that helps writers make better query letters. They even have a list of letters they helped with that were picked up by publishers. Reading over some of their edits on other queries could certainly prove useful to making your own even better.

The Effects of txt spk on this Generation's Literacy

      I was around twelve when my family first got AOL and we had internet in the house for the first time. I was baffled by the chat language, and it took a few months of sheepishly asking 'what does that mean?' before I started to get a handle on it. In those days, though, it seemed like every other day a new bit of chat slang entered the lexicon. I was a hunt-and-peck typer back then, as are most people unless they took their typing class in high school seriously. Being that way made it difficult to keep up in a chatroom with people who were abbreviating every other word, so, I joined the masses in practicing poor-man's stenography.

      I was at the age when I even thought it was cool to be able to type that way. I distinctly remember admonishing my dad for being so punctual in his emails to me. I taught him some of the slang and told him he didn't have to capitalize the appropriate letters or be so formal with his punctuation. Funny how only a few years later, when my opinion of chat speak changed, I found his relaxed, unpunctuated emails to be grating and irritating.

      In those days, chat speak was mostly invented out of laziness. No one wanted to learn to type faster or wait around for those slow typers to finish their thoughts, so abbreviations and slang ran rampant. These days, with the dawn of Twitter and the popularity of texting over the phone, the limited number of characters one is allowed to send has made chat speak, or now text speak, imperative. The problem? Most people can't seem to understand there's a time not to abbreviate. It has affected the average person's ability to write or type intelligently, and has limited our vocabulary to a more condensed lexicon of everyday words.

      This, of course, isn't true across the board. There are still some of us out there who will spell out 'tomorrow' or 'see you later'. A few people know the difference between an email between friends and a resume for work. But more and more it's becoming apparent that the two areas of life are blending together in the minds of the young. Is it laziness? Or is it pure and simple illiteracy? If aspiring writers don't know the difference between 'to' and 'too', what chance does the layman have?