SPEAKER_01 0:00

So if your story's not starting in the right place, it can be really, really hard to write the pitch because again, you're only supposed to pitch the first 10 to 25% of your story. If you have to get up to the midpoint before the reader even knows what the story goal is, you've probably started your story too soon. And that's why you're having such a hard time writing the pitch.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Welcome to the Write It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser, a formally repressed creative soul, turned fiction writer, story editor, and author accelerator certified fiction book coach. At Write It Scared, we tell the truth about why writing a novel is so hard by acknowledging that most writers grapple with two stories: the one they want to put on the page to the best of their ability, and the often subconscious internal story that prevents them from doing it. This show is designed to help you identify and rewrite the internal narrative holding you back while you discover and write the story you want to tell and learn all the tools to help you do that successfully. Join me each week for a new episode where we'll talk about writing to deepen our understanding of the craft and of ourselves as writers. Writing a novel is an inside job that we do not do alone. Welcome to Red It's Scared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Hey writer, welcome back to another episode of the Red It's Geared podcast. I'm your host, Stacey. I'm so excited for today's guest. We are going to talk about writing query letters with Julie Arts. And this is going to be like a masterclass in writing query letters. So please buckle up, take some notes, make sure you check into the show notes for Julie's resources. She has a free resource on writing query letters that is really helpful. So here is her bio, and then we'll jump into the show. Julie has spent the past decade helping writers like you slay their doubt demons and get their novels and memoirs reader-ready. She has worked with both award-winning and newer authors across the publishing spectrum, from big five to small university presses to indie and hybrid. She is an author accelerator certified founding book coach and a sought-after speaker and writing instructor. Julie refers to herself as a consummate social and environmental justice-minded story geek. She lives in an enchanted forest outside of Redmond, Washington, with her husband and two strong-willed teenagers when they're not off at university, and two naughty, furry familiars. She has built a thriving book coaching business based on her values, her editing chops, and her knowledge of story. It is my pleasure to call Julie both a colleague and a friend, and I cannot wait for her to share her wisdom with you. So let's jump into the interview. Oh, Julie, thank you so much for coming on the show. I am so happy to have you here. Thank you for having me. Yeah. So today we're going to dig in and talk about query letters, how to manage expectations, decide if it's something that you want to pursue, and then kind of talk about the mechanics. Because a big part of this podcast is helping writers find and learn the tools they need to craft and publish stories they are proud of. And you are somebody in the writing industry who is a bit of a query wizard. So I can't wait to dig into this with you. But before we do that, why don't you share a little bit about your journey? How you came to be a writer and a book coach, and how you came to be this person who's really good at picking apart queries and knowing what they need.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Well, I was that kid who literally, way past the age when it was cool, was climbing into people's wardrobes trying to get to Narnia because I was obsessed with meeting Mr. Tumness. And it never happened for me. And at a certain point, I was like, okay, this is probably not cool at all. So I need to find a different way to go on these magical adventures. And so I started writing poems and little snippets of story and stuff. I didn't really get serious about it until I got out of college. And I had an opportunity. My husband and I went to live in England for a couple of years, and I had a hard time finding a job in the post-9-11 world. I ended up working as a bookseller at the local bookstore. And it was such a great experience. I was managing the children's section, which was not something that I was expecting because at that time I was writing literary fiction. So I had started work on my first novel. And that is back in the day that when you queried, you had to actually put a self-address stamped envelope, put it out your query and your pages, stuff them in that envelope and ship them off. And I seriously finished that novel. Took me about a year to write it. I completely pantsed it. I did not do any planning. I didn't really even do any editing, maybe a quick proofread. Then I started querying. So lesson number one, don't do what Julie did. I even got some requests for pages, which is doubly surprising because that manuscript is in the trunk and it will never come out of the trunk. Anyhow, needless to say, that book did not get published. It was not ready to be queried. And uh I did a lot of short story writing and a bunch of blogging, had a couple kids, moved back to the US. And at a certain point, I started writing fiction again. And this time I was writing Kidlet because I had fallen in love with Kidlet when I was working in the bookstore. And so even though I was back working in high-tech, I was like, oh yeah, I can, I can totally, I can write Kidlet. This is great. And so I was working on middle grade fantasy. And this was kind of in that 2011, 12, 13, 14 time period. If you were in the writing community then, that was sort of the heyday of the pitch contest, right? There were all these places that you could pitch on Twitter. There were all these different contests where you could work on an elevator pitch or work on your query. And I went all in for those. I'm one of those people that really responds well to gamifying things. And so a pitch contest was perfect for me. I'm like, I can make this pitch even better. I can cut it from 50 words to 45 words. I can fit it in in X characters on Twitter. And um, I realized that one of the aspects that I really loved about that was the community aspect. And so I started helping other writers with their, with their pitches. And I was like, I think I have a knack for this, for this thing. So I ended up getting selected for Pitch Wars in 2015 with a middle grade fantasy. And from there, I got an agent, went on and became a pitch wars mentor myself. And in the meantime, I had started taking some freelance editing clients and eventually became an author accelerator book coach, just like you, Stacey. And I ended up realizing that I have a particular affinity for writing queries. And I probably because I read about a thousand of them during my time as a Bitcoin's mentor. And in the decade since, I've read even more because I've helped lots of clients write the queries, place their stories with agents and with editors. And so it's true. I'm getting a little bit of a reputation for being a query wizard. It's it's a really fun, exciting part of the writing process, pitching, but it can also be really anxiety-inducing. So I love to come and talk to people about how to make their pitches better to demystify the process a little bit and hopefully take some of the anxiety out of it for people.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

That is exactly what we are going to do today is demystify this a little bit and take some of that anxiety out of it. I personally know how nerve-wracking querying can be. And I think you can get even more snowblind than you do in editing your novel. It's just a lot of different pieces to think about. And it's really hard to hold perspective. So, when should a writer think about jumping into the query trenches? Like when is it, when is it time and how do they make that decision? Yeah, that's a really, really hard question.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

And I think pitching too early is one of the top mistakes that writers make, but also the most normal. It makes sense, right? We've written this book. We're so excited that we actually did it. And then we're like, we want to send it out into the world so that other people can see how brilliant it is. But yet, the thing that most people don't learn how to do until after they've pitched too early is deeply revise. And so that is another thing that I really work with a lot of writers on. Because as I said in my own first novel, I did a quick proofread. I was like, sounds good. This is an exciting story. I spent a whole year writing it. Of course, it's wonderful. But the truth is, everybody starts with a story spark that's this perfect vision of their story in their mind, and then they write it. And it's not quite matching to that perfect vision, right? The revision is in the process of bringing it closer to that vision, but it's hard for us to have perspective, which is why I always recommend that people get some eyes on their manuscript before they query. So that can be from critique partners, it can be from a book coach, a writing instructor, or it can be beta readers. But regardless, you really, really want to do a good couple of rounds of revision. The market is getting tighter and tighter as more and more people are writing books and putting them out into the world. So it's not easy to get an agent, to find a publisher for your work, to find readership if you're self-publishing. So you really, really, really want to make sure that your story is as good as you can make it and not just, oh, this is good enough. People are probably going to like it, but this is really the very best that I can do. It belongs on the shelf next to my comp titles and it's of equivalent or better quality, right? So that can be a lengthy process. I've heard writers talk about doing 19 revisions, 10 revisions. All of that is normal. But it's also definitely better to err on the side of one more round of revision than it's good enough and throw the query out into the world and then hear nothing, right? Or get only rejections. That can be so discouraging. And one way to avoid that is by really, really making sure that your reader ready before you send things out.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Yeah, and accepting that this is a process that's going to take a long time because you can't shotgun your revisions. It doesn't serve you to not rest in between passes. You have to be able to build in that perspective. So it's a long process, even to get to the place where you're ready to pitch, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Absolutely. When a writer is ready to pitch, what kind of expectations should they set themselves up with? I mean, so first they need to research who they want. So how would they set themselves up to go about doing that? And then how can they be realistic about what to expect out of the query process?

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Yeah, great question. Well, so we're really, really lucky because we have a lot more resources now than I had back in 2001, 2002 when I was pitching my first novel. And I think you had to buy this like digest. Yeah, it was Publishers Weekly or something like that. Yeah. And it was this great big thick book, or you had to go check it out from the library and read this little tiny type to find out which uh agents were looking for which genres and age categories. And it was really not an easy process. Of course, now we have a lot of things at our fingertips from the internet. And so here's the process that I recommend. I always recommend starting with query tracker because even though you promise yourself that you're going to keep exact track of who you've sent queries to, you will forget if you don't have a spreadsheet or some other method of tracking who you've sent queries to. I get clients all the time that are they're like, oh, I've sent 15 queries and I'm not getting the response that I wanted. And I say, okay, so go ahead and put together a list for me of the 15 agents that you queried just so that I don't duplicate when I'm helping you with agent research. And they come back and they're like, I was wrong. I send it to 55 agents. Okay, that's an extreme example. But when they go back through their notes and their sent mail and everything else, they find that they sent a lot more queries than they thought. And so having something like Query Tracker, which is a free database that will let you search agents that are looking for the genre and age category that you are writing and will let you track whether you've sent queries to them and what they've responded, it's invaluable. And it's especially helpful now as more and more agents are moving toward using Query Manager, which is that form version that some of you have seen where you can submit to an agent by filling out a form instead of sending an email. And you can tie those two together and it'll automatically record that you've sent a query to XYZ agent. So I start there first to make kind of my big list. So let's say we're querying YA fantasy. I've got all the agents that are open to queries that are accepting YA fantasy. Now, if you do that in Query Tracker, you're going to get hundreds of agents and you don't want to necessarily query hundreds of agents. So that's your list that you start with. So then to narrow it down, there are some other great resources like Manuscript Wishlist, which is a site where agents and editors can just say, like, this is what I really want. I want, I really want the next cool prints, right? I really want the next six of crows. Of course, everybody wants that, right? Because it's your amazing books and they've done really, really well in the market. But you can look for people that are looking for things that have similar tone or similar theme or similar style to what you're what you're writing. And you'll want to kind of bump those people up to the top of your list. And you'll also want to consider using what they've said in their manuscript wish list for personalization, which is that first line of the query that says, I'm reaching out because you represented Holly Black's cruel prints and I've got one of those, but it's, I don't know, gender flipped and set on Mars. I'm completely making this up right now. I love that writing that. I want to read it. Yeah. So, so you can use things like manuscript wish list, people, the agents' actual websites where they often provide additional things that they're interested in seeing in their inboxes. You can watch for them on what in some of the many online conferences that are happening right now. You can look on Twitter or on Threads or on Blue Sky or wherever the agents are active on social media and see what they're looking for and use that to start to narrow down this list, right? So if you are writing YA fantasy and you do not have a romantic thread in your story, which is totally fine, there are going to be some agents that are like, I only want romanticy. So don't send it to me if there's no romance arc. Or there are some get people that are going to say, I want dark. So if yours is sweet, you're not going to send to them. If, you know, you wanna, you want to narrow it down to give yourself the best opportunity, the best chance of that agent saying yes. Because if you're like, oh, they're gonna love this, even though they said specifically that they don't want dark romance. No, no, no. They're going to say no because they know what they want. They know what they can sell, and they know what they already have on their list. So trust them when they tell you what they want, right? And only send the things that they're actually looking for. Close enough is really not good enough in this tight market.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Those are great tips. I love it. So recap, make sure you have a way to track who you send it to, kind of do a broad gathering of data and then boil it down to the people who would be interested in what you specifically are bringing to the table. The other thing I would add is sometimes what I like to do. I mean, we're researching and reading comps, comp titles, right? As we're usually gearing up for that. And usually we're reading in the genre that we love because we wrote in it. So paying attention to the author's notes at the back and who they think is a really good place to look for who represented those people and and to get an idea of how they worked together. A lot of times you can kind of figure out how that author and the agent work together. And from there, because it's also a two-sided, two-sided relationship, right? It's not just, oh, please want me. It's like, will we work together in well in this relationship? So kind of doing some background research into what kind of an agent this is. Is this an editorial agent or not? And do you want that?

SPEAKER_01 16:56

I realize there's two additional places that I would have people look. And the first is Publishers Lunch, which is Publishers Marketplace's uh daily email that will just give you an idea of what deals have been announced. You can also get the publisher's marketplace subscription, but there's a fee with that. And so it's if you want the free option, get the publisher's lunch newsletter and it will sum up the deals that have come out that past week and can be really helpful to see who's selling what in the industry. But the other thing is to watch out for some of the red flags. Writers beware is a great resource to just check. You know, most agents and editors that are out there are in it because they love books as much as we do and they are great, hardworking people. And there's a few clinkers, and they have been identified on Writers Beware. So you can just choose, read what they have to say, and choose whether you want to take them off your list based on the information that's there.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

I'll put a link in the show notes to each of those resources. That's a really good point. Thank you for mentioning that. Okay, let's dive over into the mechanics of what a query letter actually is, what you want it to do, and what you don't want it to do.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Yeah. So believe it or not, as complicated as querying sounds, a query has one job, only one job, and that is to make people want to read your pages, right? So there's two things that have to happen. You have to write a good query that hooks them and makes them want to read more pages. And you have to make sure that your query accurately just defines and describes your actual book that you've written. So so often I get writers coming to me with this whiz-bang query. They've taken it through the Query Shark, which is another great place to look at sample sample queries. They've taken it through the Query Shark process, they've got a really, really great query, they've maybe workshopped it with an industry pro at a conference. And it doesn't even remotely reflect the tone, the genre, or the actual story that's reflected in the pages. So if the if the agent says, oh yes, I really want to read this based on how it's described, and then the pages don't deliver on that promise, they're gonna pass. You're not gonna trick them into signing you with a whiz-bang query. So you really, really, really need to make sure that those query and pages are working together as a package that makes an agent or editor want to say yes. So, what goes into the query itself? We talked a little bit a few minutes ago about personalization. That's any personal connection that you have to the agent. I'm querying you because you represented this book that I really loved, and I think my book's a comp for it. Or I met you at a conference and you said, let me know when your book is done. You said on manuscript wish list, you really want XYZ, and my book fits that. Don't don't make a make it a huge stretch here. Don't lie. Don't be like, I'm reaching out to you because you accept YA fantasy. So I think you'll be perfect for my book, right? Like lots of people are taking YAs yet to see right now. That's not specific enough. So if you don't have a specific personalization, you can just leave that piece right off. But then you're gonna introduce what I call the nuts and bolts of your story, which is your title, your genre, your age category, and your word count. Sometimes people will put that after the pitch, and sometimes people will put it right up front. I'm agnostic, I don't care which what which way you do it. If the agent expresses a preference somewhere, do what the agent says. I usually lead with it up front, especially because I put a little line in there that has the comp titles and an idea of theme. So, like I said, you know, Six of Crows meets murderbot diaries in my book, blah, blah, blah, a YA space opera complete at 78,000 words for fans of blah, blah, blah, blah, comp titles. That's your your nuts and bolts line. Then you get into a pitch, and the pitch really should be 200 words or less. And I can hear your existential screams of dread out there. But I promise you, if I am reading a query on my phone, which many, many agents and editors are these days, you want to be, you want to be able to hook them in about like 30 seconds, right? So you've got 200 words to do that. Then a quick bio that has any writing credits if you have them. But if it doesn't, just your personal connection, why you wrote that story, something fun and quirky about yourself. Again, don't force it. Definitely don't write 500 words. Definitely don't include the poetry award that you won in first grade. But do include if you've published something that if you've won a contest or if you've published something in a literary journal or in an easy or something like that, any publishing credits that you have, and then close with your name, your phone number, and your email address. You know, especially if you're submitting via a form, you want to make sure that they have a way to contact you if they do. Want to read your pages.

SPEAKER_00 22:02

Is that a good place in the closing to express any representation of your own lived experience?

SPEAKER_01 22:09

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that that's the best place to put it. So if I'm writing about a fat woman with generalized anxiety disorder, because that's my lived experience, that is my lived experience, then I'm gonna put that in that bio because it's gonna be an indication to gens or editors that you're pitching is coming from your lived experience. And they're really looking for that. Not to say that you can't write outside of your lived experience. Obviously, people are doing that. There's a lot of research involved, and I recommend getting cultural competency readers if you do that. But it's it's okay to do that. But if you do have that personal connection, definitely let people know. If you have a story, for example, that is about life in an inner city high school and you are a teacher or a counselor or a principal in an inner city high school, then I would share that information because it shows that you have a personal connection to the story. You know, if it's about a sport and you played that sport, that's a that's a good way to show I've done my research, I've lived this, I've lived this life, and they're gonna expect then that you've represented that accurately and interestingly on the page.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Love that. Great. Yeah, so so that's kind of like the mechanics, right, of what it's supposed to be, right? Kind of a three-paragraph document. And then so how do you craft that pitch? Because what you want is you want it to be something juicy that makes them want to read more, but it cannot be the synopsis.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

So this is how I like to think of it is like structure, right? Everything for me boils down to structure. So what am I starting with and where do I leave? In a query, I want to try to get to the point where we've introduced the main conflict, and our character has left their normal world. We've presented the conflict that they're gonna face, and we have a worry about what's gonna happen.

unknown 24:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

That's really hard to do. It is, it is. But so one thing that separates the synopsis from the query is the synopsis is your full story. You spoil the ending, the whole shebang from beginning to end, the whole thing is there on the page. The query is more focused on the opening, like you said, leading up to the inciting incident, the thing that launches the adventure portion of the story in motion, that that moment of no return that that usually happens in, depending on genre, between about 10% and 25% of the way into the story. So your query does not go beyond that. If you have a twist at the midpoint of your story, that does not go in the query. You can allude to the fact that there are twists and surprises, or she's gonna have to ri reckon with unbelievable secrets from her past that emerge, but you don't say what those secrets are because you're just teasing them and trying to get them to read. So you're just focused in on that first, say, 25% of your story. And then you want to introduce the main character. And if there's we can talk more about what happens for multiple points of view, but we'll say just one point of view for now. The main character, what their story goal is and what the obstacles are that are standing in their way, both internally and externally, to achieve that goal and the stakes, the stakes, the stakes, the stakes, right? What happens if they don't achieve it? If the answer to that is so what? Then that's not going to make people want to read the pages. But if they can really clearly see that there's a lot at stake, both for the character and in some cases for the entire world, if they don't overcome whatever this challenge is that's been set for them, then that's what will really, really hook people and make them want to read the pages.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Is there any wisdom you could impart on specificity versus vagueness? I, you know, I've I've submitted a few queries and have always gotten that feedback. This is a little vague. I don't really, you know, the mysterious secrets of the past is just too vague. So it's so, it's so true. It's so true.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I should have chosen a much more specific example there because that is really quite vague. So here's the thing everybody wants to write a universal story because that's the story that everybody can read and love and that's going to shoot to the bestseller list and get a movie franchise and all the wonderful things that every writer dreams of having. But the truth is to get to that universal story, you start with something that sounds a little bit like a cliche, like love conquers all, or boy gets the girl, or girl wins the challenge, like those sorts of things. And then you get super, super, super, super specific. And the way that you do that is through the character and their motivation. So that's where you find your specific way in. So it can be really tempting to try to paint things in bold strokes, high-level strokes, so that this applies to everyone. Everybody's gonna want to read this. But what where we're really gonna hook the reader is I see a character, I understand why she wants what she wants and why it's gonna be so hard for her to get it. And I want to find out how she gets it. And that is where you really bring them in. And those specific details are what brings that alive. So when you're choosing just a few, say, adjectives or a little tiny snippet of backstory to give us a hint of who this character is, think really beyond the general. You don't want, you don't want your main character to read like every man, every woman, right? You want the the really specific characteristics of that particular character. So I love to look at Hunger Games as an example. We learn a lot in those first few opening pages about Katniss, about her family situation, that her dad is gone, that she is the caretaker for her mom, who's not completely functional, and that she is, she really, really deeply cares about her little sister and feels very responsible for caring for her. We find out that there's scarcity, that they're having to sneak outside the fence to go hunt for food to support the family, um, and that there's this threat of from the capital, right? They fly overhead while Gail and Katniss are out, are out hunting and they hide. So we know that they're they're feeling this kind of oppressive force from the outside. So, in the context of that world, then it's that much easier to be hooked by Prem being chosen for the hunger games, for the reaping, and Katniss stepping up in and taking her place, which is of course the inciting incident. We're already hooked because we're like, oh my gosh, who's gonna take care of Prem while she's while she goes, while Katniss goes to the Capitol to fight to the death? And what happens if she dies? And what does it mean for the district if the top one of the top hunters is taken away and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, on and on. The stakes are already so high, and you're only a few pages into the story. So you can see why it was probably extremely um easy to for people to get hooked on those pages right from the beginning.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

I love that. Great, it's a great example. Great jacket copy to read, too. Clearly, this is not an easy thing to do. You're taking, you know, your 60, 70, 80, 90, maybe 100,000 word book. And but you made such a good point. We're not smooshing the whole book into 250 or 200 or 250 words. We're really in the pitch, we're looking at the setup. We're looking at that first, maybe 25%, right? And putting those stakes up front so that we can make whoever is reading care and be concerned, like what's going to happen. So, what are some common mental blocks that come up for writers when they're writing these queries? What do they struggle with?

SPEAKER_01 30:09

Well, you talked earlier about how hard it is to get objectivity about your story, to get that distance. So if you've been living in this story world for a year, two years, three years as you've been writing it, you can write a query that you think answers all the questions that readers are going to have. And then it goes to a colder reader. Right. It goes to a cold reader and they're like, I have no idea what you're talking about here. Like, what is the heebie? I don't understand the world building. What is going on? So here's the thing: your story world is completely crystal clear to you, right? From that initial spark of the idea in your mind all the way through writing it, you know your story world better than anyone else. And so then distilling it down to the 200 most essential words for that pitch can feel impossible. But the best way to make sure that you've actually answered the questions that readers are going to have is just to get a bunch of fresh eyes on your query. A big mistake that I see even writers who have active critique groups and really strong critique partners make is that they only let people who already know their story read their pitch. And so, like if your critique partners have read your whole book, or even if they've heard you, been hearing you talk about your book for the last two years, or if they've read the opening or whatever, they're not going to be great first readers for your story because for your pitch, because they already know the story world. They'll fill in the gaps. We do it automatically. Psych psychology tells us, right, that that we'll fill in the gaps that we don't see in the words if we have that information lingering in our in our minds. So we'll think that we've made it really, really clear what the stakes are, but we actually have not put them anywhere on the page in the query. So that's where getting some fresh eyes that have not read your story are really, really, really important. But the other thing I'll say is a very common mistake that people make is not starting their story in the right place. So if your story is not starting in the right place, it can be really, really hard to write the pitch because again, you're only supposed to pitch the first 10 to 25% of your story. If you have to get up to the midpoint before the reader even knows what the story goal is, you've probably started your story too soon. And that's why you're having such a hard time writing the pitch. And so that's why I think it can really often finding problems in the query can actually be identifying that you have problems in your story as well. And that's why the two of them working together is so, so, so important. So, my in an ideal world, I believe that you should write your pitch as early in the process as you can. I have my client, like if they come to me, they write their pitch in the very first deadline that they send to me. It's the first thing that I write when I'm working on a new story. Now, that's not to say it's set in stone. I'm not tattooing it on my body, right? Because it's gonna change. But I at least have an idea of what I think the story is and it can evolve as the story evolves. But if you can keep a really clear eye on what the opening of your story is supposed to be as you're going through the writing and revising process, hopefully you can avoid starting your story in the wrong place. And it'll just make that final process of writing the final pitch that much easier because you're already confident that you've started just in the right place for this particular story.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

I'm just sitting back here thinking this is like a total masterclass. This is awesome, Julie. You're phenomenal. Thank you so much for all these little just golden nuggets. Such a good tip. If you're struggling to write the query and having to get to the middle of the book to really pull in the action, make it interesting. Is your story starting in the right place? Maybe not. Right.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

And it's a good indication that you're in an early draft, too, because it makes sense as we're writing that we're gaining information about what the story is about. So a lot of times in that first draft, the actual story goal doesn't emerge until later because you got to get to know the characters. You got to get them talking to you on the page and really see what their dynamics are with the other characters that are in the story. So it makes sense. We might not figure out what the story is actually about until about midway through drafting it or even later. But then you've got to go back and revise and put that structure in place so that we're introducing that story goal at the right point, which is much earlier in the story than the midpoint.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

Yeah, which lends itself to how do you actually approach querying, doing a shotgun, you know, boom, to all the people on your list or kind of intentionally dripping it out and seeing what kind of feedback you get. Do you have any advice around that?

SPEAKER_01 34:49

I'm a big fan of querying in batches. So that's usually, I would say, I used to say to writers in the pre-COVID era, I used to say to send in batches of 10, just because it makes the math really easy. Like you can figure out your response rate. If two people respond and ask for pages, that's 20%, which is a good, a good response rate, right? But these days, more and more people are querying and agents are getting more and more inundated with work and editors are still catching up from COVID and response times are slower than ever. So I think that it is slower to hear back from agents now than it was even five years ago. And so it might benefit you to make your batches a little bit bigger, like 15, maybe even 20. And to try to do a mix, one of the great things about Query Tracker is it'll tell you what an agent's response rate is and what their average response time is right in the database. So if you send 10 agents that respond to 1% or less of their queries in a round, you're probably not going to hear back from any of them. And then you're going to be discouraged and you're not going to have any realistic, actionable information about whether there is a problem with your query or not. So mix up, pick a few high responders. There are agents that try to respond to every single query that comes into their inbox one way or the other. That's great. We greatly appreciate that. Even as we understand why some agents aren't able to do that, because if you're getting 300 queries a week, you're not going to necessarily be able to respond to that many. So if you do a mix of fast responders and slow responders in each batch, if you do a mix of the number one best-selling agent in your category and some newer agents that are at top agencies, but maybe are hungry because they're building their lists, then you have a mix of agents in each batch, and that can help you make sure that you get some feedback. The other thing I will say, because so many people query early, I would not recommend putting all your top dream agents in that first round of queries because you'll send it out and then you'll be like, there was a huge typo in the middle of that query, and I just sent it to all my dream agents, right? It happens. None of us are perfect. It's okay if it happens. And I'm not saying that you're going to get rejected if you left a comma out of your query, but I'm just saying if you feel worried about it, it's better to just do a batch and then you can connect correct it for next time. Or you figure out that your comp titles are not the right comp titles. You read something that's a much better comp. You can just replace it in your query for the next round. And so giving yourself batches allows you to cover up some little mistakes that you might make. It allows you to course correct a little bit. And of course, if you get some feedback from an agent, then you can stop and revise based on that feedback versus if you sent 200 queries out on the first day to all of the agents who accept the genre and age category that you're looking for, you're done. You're queried out. You can't really go back and re-query those folks. I really, really don't recommend re-querrying those folks with the same thing. But please don't. Like don't do it with the same book.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

And yet, don't do it with the same thing. Unless you've received a unless you've received a revise and resubmit. It's right.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Right. You only have one opportunity per story with each agent. And so you want to get it right. And so doing it in batches can help you just avoid some disappointment and regret later. And wondering like, did I not hear back from those 200 agents because my query was bad, or because I didn't do my research right? Or I don't really know. And now my book is shelved and I'm stuck in disappointment and doubt. That like we've all been there. Nobody wants to be there. So avoiding it by doing your research, going slow, and pacing things out with batches can really help. But the thing I'll say is I also know how hard that is. So have another project to work on. Work, start working on your next book while you're waiting because the waiting is awful. And the last thing you want to be doing is check your phone, check your phone, check your phone. Nothing's in my inbox. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. You can really, really spin up. And it's perfectly normal. And a new, shiny book idea is a great distraction from that.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

Yeah. That's a good point. So we'll kind of wrap it up a little bit here by just talking about realistic expectations and how to handle rejection. So can you give any wisdom there?

SPEAKER_01 39:28

This is where your self-care becomes really, really important. And in my philosophy as a coach and as an author, I have kind of self-care as kind of a wrapper around everything that we do with craft and drafting and planning and revising and everything. Self-care is wrapped around that like a big hug. So that can be taking a walk, making sure you're getting enough sleep, stepping away from your inbox, calling a writing buddy and commiserating about how sad and scary querying can be. Like, do all of the things that you would do to care for yourself as you're querying so that the waiting is not quite so bad. And again, just the distraction of a new book, of catching up on your cooking if you've been eating cereal for three months while you finish up your revision. I know it happens, right? Do all of the things that you've maybe been neglecting while you were doing a big push to finish your revision. And it'll make the waiting just a little bit easier. But also know that everyone receives rejections, even best-selling authors, even multi-published authors, everyone gets rejections. And it's part of the numbers game of getting a book picked up to just query broadly so that you hope that you get the book on the desk of the person that's really, really, really gonna love it. If you only send 10 queries, statistically, it's not that likely that you're gonna, that you're gonna find the right one in the first 10. Maybe it happens, you hear that, but that's the exception and not the rule. Most people are querying 50, 60, maybe even a hundred agents, depending on the genre and age category, if it's a broad one where there's lots of people that represent it. And that's okay. That's okay.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

Yeah. And most writers, most published authors have queried several projects to 50 or 60 agents. It's it's not it's not the first bang out of the box. Not very often, right? So this is this is a long game and you gotta be in it because you love it. And which most of us are, but setting up realistic expectations from the get-go, uh, I think will do nothing but but serve us and keep us in it. You know, keep us in it because we enjoy it, because we love it, not because we're focused on an outcome that we can't necessarily control. Yeah. So wow, you've just shared so much incredible information, so many amazing tips today. So I think the best way to wrap up is just, you know, by sending some encouragement and love to the writers out there who are querying because it is hard. It is really hard. And also, researching agents takes a long time. If you're doing your due diligence, it's certainly a huge bite out of your time and it can be exhausting. It can be more exhausting than the revision process. So, what wish would you like to impart to your fellow writers who are out there in the query process? Maybe they're starting to put together their query or they're in the midst of the trenches and they're feeling a little wounded. Well, wish would you like to send to them?

SPEAKER_01 42:40

Yeah, I mean, my wish for everyone is always that they're able to do what they're doing with confidence. And I always think that knowledge is the greatest enhancer of that confidence, right? So hopefully you've learned some tips today. You can go into your research with more confidence. You've maybe been able to check your opening pages against your query and make sure that they're really working together. And then you send it out into the world. And please know that there are good books all the time that don't get picked up, that don't get published. And just write the next book. You never know when it might be the next book that's the one for you. And then you can revisit that that backlist and and find the homes for those stories that maybe didn't get ready on the first uh first go round, didn't get picked up, but they might also just have one little thing that you'll learn through writing the next book. And then you'll know exactly what you need to know to go back and fix it and make it shine. So it's a process, it's a long process. Rely on your friends and your self-care and just know that you can do it.

SPEAKER_00 43:53

Yep. And no words are wasted. So, what are you currently working on in the writing world? And what offerings do you have for writers?

SPEAKER_01 44:01

Yeah, I just launched my first ever Evergreen standalone digital course in April. And not surprisingly, it's about pitching. It's called Weekend Pitch Perfection. And it is a deep dive into everything that we've just been talking about, about how to identify genre and age category, comp titles, how to create a title that's right for the genre and age category that you're pitching, how to put it all together into a query so that you can really, really pitch with confidence. And it's it's a brain dump of everything that I've learned over the last decade. And so far, I'm getting rave reviews from the students that have been through it. But I'm also, you can follow me on Instagram if you want to connect and find more about what I have going on in the writing world. And of course, I have a weekly newsletter called Weird Words Weekly. And there's a little free bonus that's going to be in the show notes, I think, to uh give you a little bit more of a guide to how to write those queries as well.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

Excellent. Thank you so much for your generosity and your enthusiasm. And I am so thankful that people like you are in the world for us.

SPEAKER_01 45:15

Oh, thanks so much for having me. It was a pleasure. I love talking queries. I love talking all things writing. So thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 45:23

I'll see you next time. Thank you for listening to the Write It Scared podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please make sure to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. And please leave a review. Reviews help other writers like you find the voices and messages they need to hear to continue to write their stories. Let's lift each other up. Remember, you can be scared and still be unstoppable. I'll see you next week.