Revisiting my first query attempt (circa 2019)

Querying a novel is a difficult thing to do. Indeed, I would argue it’s even more difficult to “get right” than actually, you know, writing the book. I’m sure there are a rare few out there who land representation from the very first query they jot down, but for the rest of us mere mortals, constructing a query letter can be like pulling teeth. An agonizing process, like putting together a 500 piece puzzle with no box and only a vague memory of what it looks like.

Why is this? What is it about the querying process that presents such a challenge to a person who’s already sat down and written an entire novel?

I’d argue it comes down to three distinct roadblocks: forced brevity, a misunderstanding of the query’s purpose, and the writer’s achilles heel — an inability to step back from one’s own work.

To dissect these assertions, let’s take my very first query letter that I wrote back in May 2019 for the first book I tried querying:

By the year 2050, it had become obvious that the world was never going to produce a natural superhero. Despite the thousands of movies, cartoons, books, comics, and tin lunch boxes dedicated to the caped crusaders, there still hadn’t been one in real-life. Just regular people leading regular lives.

But as the world continued to warm, resources got tighter. Space grew limited, drinkable water became scarce, and conflicts big and small grew more common. More than ever, heroes were needed.

So what did mankind do? They built their own heroes. Artificial intelligence was combined with cutting-edge robotics to create humanoid machines with abilities far beyond that of the average man. Robots who could fly. Robots with super speed. Robots with incredible intelligence.

In short order, these robotic heroes were brought together under a new security program -- the Deus Ex Machina Initiative, or DEM for short. Distress calls from across the world were quickly rerouted to DEM initiative offices in every major city, where appropriate heroes were waiting, ready to act. Before long, the DEM initiative became the crutch holding up a dying world.

Now, in the year 2084, Emma Robinson is a low-level bot in the DEM initiative. She was built with outrageously high levels of human empathy, making her ideal for solving petty household squabbles. And while Emma is excellent at her job, she is unsatisfied with her existence. She looks up to the higher-ranking heroes in the DEM initiative, who she feels are more important for humanity. Emma wants to do more, but has no way to stand out.

When one of the high-level DEM heroes is deactivated in the field, Emma is swept up in a mystery that tests the limits of her abilities and reveals the true depths of the DEM initiative. Along the way, Emma befriends several humans and learns just how powerful her ability to empathize can be.

Machina (76,000 words) is a science-fiction mystery/adventure novel that examines the importance of human empathy in a world dominated by technology. This book will appeal to fans of science fiction/fantasy in the style of (INSERT AUTHOR NAMES).

I was inspired to write Machina during the final year of my dissertation thesis. As I watched my computer run thousands of statistical models at once, I marveled at the computational advancements that humanity has made in the last few decades. This led me to wonder whether computers would ever be able to simulate human empathy, and what that might mean for the world at large.

Phew, that’s…a lot of words. And to be fair to past me, they’re not all bad ones! But this is not an elegant query letter by any stretch of the imagination. Let’s break down what I mean according to the categories above:

1. Forced brevity: This query is too long. It’s more like an outline of the book, spending far too much space on worldbuilding and not nearly enough on conflict, stakes, and character. We don’t get to Emma until paragraph FIVE, which is comical in hindsight, and though her motivations are touched upon, there are no clear consequences were she to fail in her investigation. As such, the conflict feels murky, and the entire query lacks urgency.
2. A misunderstanding of the query’s purpose. The query above fails in its primary purpose: to sell the book. Though I’d still argue that MACHINA has a fun premise, the provided description doesn’t do a good job of highlighting what’s unique and marketable about it. I should have highlighted the fact that it’s in fact a deconstruction of the superhero genre, and that Emma’s character arc shows the dangers of automating security in the modern world. I failed to demonstrate the timeliness of my tale here.
3. An inability to step back from one’s own work. There are many other small mistakes — half-baked hook, an unclear genre, too much time spent on inspiration (with no bio), etc. — and I would argue these boil down to me, an even-more-amateur-at-the-time writer not knowing what to cut. Or, better yet, not knowing what was important to include. I got trapped in the weeds of my own story, wanting to over-explain everything, and was unable to escape.

I did end up editing this query several times as the rejections piled up, even managing a partial request, but it never made it out of the querying trenches. This was sad at the time, yes, but it was also motivating. I sat down and learned what it meant to improve my query letter. I read successful queries from authors who’d gotten agents, pored through agent HOWTO articles, watched interviews, and practiced across three more books. Gradually, that 500-piece puzzle came together, and the image I have in my head is now far clearer than when I started.

That’s not to say writing a new query for my WIP would be easy. It would still be like pulling a tooth, but an incisor rather than a molar. Smaller roots, and less pain overall.

To those still in the querying trenches: don’t give up. Keep tweaking, keep practicing, and keep writing. A query will never truly capture your story, but it is an important accompaniment that shouldn’t be underestimated. Good luck!