Chloe Marcus

That’s nice. But if this is your first rodeo, you might want to push pause for a smidge and soak up a few resources that’ll save you a lot of form rejections. Although, I love me a good query rejection poem, here is one of my personal favorites:

There are so many free resources to help you with your query letter. First, I’d suggest taking a look at these resources to fine tune it:

Query Shark – The great educator of what NOT to do

Alyssa Matestic – Some great advice coming from former a lit agent

Reedsy Blog – free packet to aid you in your efforts

Writer’s Digest – quick 10 do’s and don’ts

After you’ve gathered your wits as much as you can, consider posting your query letter on QT Critique or Ready Chapter 1. There is nothing quite as helpful as getting insight from other writers who you have no personal connection with. That said, I always recommend sitting on advice and considering what makes your voice your story stronger, after all, that’s a question only you can answer. But after some careful consideration and a few hours questioning your worth as a writer, revise.

Now I can see some of you saying, that sounds like a lot of work and I’m not going to do it. So here is your bottom line for your query blurb, put in math equation form. Because if there’s nothing that us creatives LOVE it’s math, right?

Query Blurb = Your Main Character + The inciting incident + The stakes (what happens if they fail/succeed?)

Or in proper algebraic format: QB=MC+II+S

Yeah, that last part wasn’t helpful. Deal with it.