How Not to Write Your Query

"Dear Hello:" My name is not hello. It is No. Dr. No to you. And I don't know why you say hello, I say goodbye.

"Picture this" Everyone's always asking me to picture this, picture that. Now imagine this other. Can't you just see this other thing here? Stop telling me to picture it. That's part of the reading process. Might be a more effective way to pitch if we were talking face to face, but we're not. Meanwhile, everybody is always saying that so you're making your query look all that much more generic. Besides, it's always like "picture you're a fourteen year old girl and inheritor of a mysterious (but almost entirely useless) power, which is why everyone wants to kill you." or "Picture that your mother, who tried to murder you, and who you thought was dead shows up on your doorstep with mind bending truths." Yeesh. Melodrama much? Couldn't you ask me to picture something I'd like? "Picture you're an eccentric billionaire who has retired at the age of 32 to your secret hermitage in (insert scenic remote location of your choice. Scotland, Mongolia, tiny mediteranean island, whatever)." See, now that I'd like to picture.

"You know me" Sometimes people will be like "We met at XYZ convention and you were interested in an earlier draft of this story, so now that I've cleaned it up a bit..." that's fine, even a good idea when you know who you're adressing. But I assure you that you have NOT met me at a convention because the few I get to go to I hide a sulk and stick to the shadows because in life, like on the internet, I'm a troll. Maybe you meant the boss? Except he wasn't there either.

"Fantastic and Innovative" One of the most annoying things that aspiring authors will frequently do is to hype up their own writing using words like the above as well as hypnotic, fresh, new, unique, extraordinary, sharp, keen, and you know what? Fuck this. Just go through the list of words you know that are complimentary. I've seen most of them used in this context even though they don't make sense. "Dear sirs, my writing smells nice. Please represent it."

"Bullshit McGee says" Fake or meaningless review quotes. If you're already published or you know real authors, or real literary critics etc. and you want to throw in one of two quotes they've given you just to prove you're serious, that's good. Here are some things which are not good- A) Making up your quotes B) Getting them from people no one would know or care about. Sorry, your mother does not count as a review quote, "dearie" C) Getting real quotes and sending page after page of them. Man, show that to the publisher. The Editor will circle their favorites, hand it to marketing, who will make their picks and tell production what to stick on the cover. Handing the agent all that stuff on an unsolicited query is just... it makes you look self important and pushy. On a related topic, a reader sent me this article, which I thought was pretty interesting. Consider it homework. I might discuss it more fully next week. Then again, maybe not. Half the purpose of homework is to seperate the workaholics (who do it all) from the neurotic (who do half of it because they know only half will be collected and then bite their nails and hope they did the right half).

"Crewd Inc." I know I've mentioned this one before, but probably not as often as many of the classic query blunders, so it's worth repeating here. Don't make up a company. Seriously. Just don't. It's the same as pages of review quotes, except even worse. Because at least the review quotes are real. Fake companies mean nothing.