Query Question - How far to go into the novel?

maghranimal said:

Hi everyone,

Big fan of the forum, but haven't had much luck finding anything on how far into your novel it's generally recommended to go when crafting a query letter. The first major plot point? Mid-point twist? I'm struggling with how much to reveal, as I've been reading queries for books that have been published, and they differ quite a bit. This is for a MG novel, though I doubt that matters.


Thanks!

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Have you been in Query Letter Hell? There's an abundance of stickied threads with advice and plenty of queries in progress to read. Password is vista.

maghranimal said:

Yep! I've looked through a lot of the stickies, particularly as the "does, don'ts" and "watch your verbs." I haven't found much regarding plot points though. I also can't post in there yet, which is why I wrote it here.

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Ok. You'd be surprised how many people never notice QLH or glance at thread titles and then ask questions that are sussed from the threads.

The answer is that there is no answer.

Some people swear by the 1/3rd of the book thing, some people say the first big twist, some people are all about to the first 50 pages, yada yada sis boom bah. You can find as many opinions on that as there are anything else.

You need a character, problem, stakes. Some things need more explaining than others, some voicey things go right to the end twist and it works in <100 words, some things have the character, problem and stakes laid out in the first 20 pages. Anyone telling you there's some specific rule for this is not really someone I'd personally advise listening to.

Queries do generally follow a formular: Character, problem, stakes, or the Katiemac Three, or however you want to put it, and mostly it shakes out in the same type of format. However, even that can shift if you do it really, expertly well, and within the format every book is different.

Check out the thread for queries for famous or well-known works. It's got queries for everything from Harry Potter to Les Mis to the Bible, in many cases multiple versions. It's instructive in how good queries can differ in execution.

It's someplace in QLH, probably back several pages.

I've had success ending at the first plot point as well as ending at around the 75% mark, where there's a big twist. I think it really just depends on your story.

maghranimal said:

Hi everyone,

Big fan of the forum, but haven't had much luck finding anything on how far into your novel it's generally recommended to go when crafting a query letter. The first major plot point? Mid-point twist?

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There's no one right answer to that. You could do any of those. Maybe try writing queries that take different approaches and see which one seems to work the best. And definitely get some feedback on it before you go sending it out.

maghranimal said:

Yep! I've looked through a lot of the stickies, particularly as the "does, don'ts" and "watch your verbs." I haven't found much regarding plot points though. I also can't post in there yet, which is why I wrote it here.

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Just to clarify, you can post in QLH - you just can't start a crit thread of your own. You could crit other writers though, if you wanted to - great way to get seen and to build up interested readers.