I'm going to break some hearts today. Your query letter is probably too long. How long SHOULD it be? Let's look into why shorter is better, and why. 🧵

1/?

#AmQuerying #AmWriting #AmEditing #WritingCommunity #RevPit

Before I give you a tangible word count goal for your query letter, a few words about diction: Writing MORE doesn't mean you're writing BETTER. We novelists are, by trade, wordy people, and sometimes trimming things down to their essence is the hard part.

2/?

Diction is the process of carefully choosing words, which means keeping only those words that BEST communicate your ideas and stories. I've seen a lot of queries written by folks who were told to keep it "under one page," but then filled up that page to the damn brim.

3/?

It's the writer's equivalent of trying to fit 15 pounds of potatoes into a 12-pound bag. More isn't better. In fact, when it comes to query letters, LESS is better.

Okay, enough suspense. What's the word count? The entire letter should be between 300 and 350 words.

4/?

Why? Because agents might have 200 queries lined up QueryManager right now. Simple math: 200 queries at 300 words apiece is 60,000 words. The same number of queries at, say, 500 words apiece is 100,000 words.

That's... a huge difference.

5/?

I saw a tweet last week (I forget where) that said you need to pretend like the agent you're submitting to has ADHD and like a seven-second attention span. If you can't do what you've gotta do FAST, you're going to lose them. And we don't want that, do we?

6/?

So how can you jettison words to hit this word count goal? Here are a few tips:

1. Shorten your bio paragraph.
2. Shorten the amount of personalization you have in your intro paragraph.
3. Tighten up your story summary section (more on that in a sec).

7/?

Your story summary needs only the following:

1. Unique main character with interesting flaw.
2. Something they want so bad they'd die for it.
3. Something standing in their way of getting it.
4. Something bad that happens if they don't get it.

That's it. Yes, really.

8/?

You can write this in 75-100 words, which should give you another 75-100 words to provide any further story context (setting, scifi/fantasy elements, etc.). I promise you, it can be done. It's painful! But it can be done.

9/10

Imagine there's a fire, and you can only save 350 words from your query. Which 350 would you save? Be picky, write for short attention spans, and remember that your purpose isn't to TELL your story, but rather to SELL your story!

~el fin~