Wednesday, March 11, 2009

The Long Road of Revision (Query)

I’ve said it before, but I’ve got to repeat:

You can’t know what you didn’t know until you know it.

You might have seen Query v1, v2, and v3 in earlier posts. The latest is v9. Be thankful I didn’t bore you with the interim versions. :) It’s been a long road and I have many thanks to give, but mainly to Glam for asking “why should I care about Paige?” and “why does her story need to be told?”

Her questions made me step back and throw the first six versions (all pretty similar) out the window and start fresh. In previous versions I worked on boiling the story down to the main conflicts, the main characters, and the main plot. But I never got to the Why Should You Care part. :) Seems important in hindsight. How could I miss it? Well, I couldn’t know what I didn’t know until I knew it.

So, to all of you who have struggled with your query letter like I have, high fives all around for stickin’ with it when you wanted to tear your hair out.

Without further ado, here is v9 (surely not to be the last, but likely the best so far):

[redacted. v9 was one of the best bad ones, so I considered leaving it up, but it still had to go]

Does it reel you in? Does it make you care about Paige or her story? Any and all suggestions are welcome.

3 comments:

Michelle D. Argyle said...

Anette, I think you've got a much better start, yes. I do care about Paige more. If you would like a detailed critique, send me an email with the query. You're getting closer!

Davin Malasarn said...

Whoa, this is a huge change and I think it's a lot stronger. Way to go! And way to go to Lady Glamis for giving you the help you needed! Yes, I do care a lot more about Paige here!

Anette J Kres said...

lol... well I'm glad you two care more about her here than previous versions, because when it went up in a crowd that never saw the old (wretched) versions, it got tore up like a cow leg in a shark pit.

Which is good, don't get me wrong. It led to v10, which will lead to 11 and so on.

Anyone want to take bets on what number we'll be on when a great query is produced?