Dear Agent,
Normal is:
Loathing the thought of sitting through another boring lecture.
Thinking about the cute girl across the study hall.
Knowing you may be an assassin’s next target.
Taking ballroom dance lessons because your mom insists on it.
Learning martial arts because your dad insists on it.
Obsessing about the day you awaken to your magic.
Seventeen year old Seth is trying desperately to be normal, and for the most part he’s pulling it off. He can take a punch as well as any of his friends despite secretly hating it. Nobody knows about the dreams he’s been having that come true after he has them, or that he’s being taught magic by people who are supposed to be dead.
Only his best friend Drake really knows him, and even Drake doesn’t know everything.
As his friends start awakening to their magic Seth begins to wonder if he will even survive long enough to awaken. Until he does, his secret lessons are meaningless.
Seth finally awakens to his magic with the help of a newborn dragon friend, but something doesn’t feel right. His magic is not working the way his teachers said it would. To top things off, the light of the sun has been blacked out. This is normal of course, it happens every year, but it has never lasted this long.
The season of darkness extends to being measured in weeks rather than its typical days. Then Seth feels a pull towards something far away in the darkness. Every day that pull gets stronger. He knows he is going to leave to find out what it is. The problem is, so does Drake. Does he allow Drake to tag along? Or does he leave his friend behind and go this one alone?
1ST AWAKENINGS is my debut fantasy novel, complete at 172,000 words.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
(redacted)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Hi there,
So I really like the opening format of this query. It really works to your advantage. You might try to balance this at the end. For instance, you have a small snippet of what the plot to come is for your 2nd paragraph. Then to close it, you use:
Normal is:
And a list of what now is Seth's "normal" because of this change happening. Query shark ranted one day about a format something similar to this that really sold her. Just something to consider.
Now, onto everything else. AGRH, word count. It's tough. It really, REALLY is. As unfortunate as this is, 172k words is going to be almost impossible to sell for a debut novel unless you have stellar writing and a query to boot. You need to think about getting that down to 110k at most. That's the honest side of things. Agents might not even look at a debut project that big.
Next is your title. I don't know if this a place holder right now, but anything with "Awakening" is a cliche title. Also, unfortunate. Obviously keep it now, but I'd play around with some ideas. You're also going to want to spell out "1st," just because it looks better.
Best of luck on revising this.
JWP
In My Write Mind
Post a Comment