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Text of the page (random words):
vious assistant a woman ted once wooed the last time a macdonald trusted the bloody campbells didn t work out that well but running away wouldn t protect her or her family and would give the campbells a pass she knows she has to investigate and resist the hot mr bruce who might be part of the campbells schemes if schemes there be the last bit will be harder a temporary convenience a 104 000 word mystery full of sarcasm scotch sexual obsession and a bit of shakespeare is able to stand alone but intended as part of a trilogy thank you for your time and consideration posted by rick daley at 10 45 am labels mystery 15 comments rick daley said i think you need to strip this back and focus on the main story the first paragraph is like a character soup beth her father her mother dorie and ted are all introduced reading through the other paragraphs i am even more confused as to the primary story line which you later describe as a mystery and a scheme is mentioned almost off handedly but here is no real intrigue built into the query to make me want to know the answer to the mystery try again but focus on the main story in your novel sure there are great side characters sub plots humorous situations et al but don t overload the query with them february 26 2012 at 10 55 am irene troy said i have to agree this query is far too confusing first there are too many characters and it is difficult to figure out which character is the primary protagonist always a bad sign i m sure there s a plot somewhere within these paragraphs but at the moment it is so hidden it is unlikely to be discovered you need to sit quietly for a bit and try to distill down in your own mind the true essence of your story you then take this essence make it simple and address your query to clearly and concisely show the story if beth is your main protagonist then we need to know about her not so much about the subordinate characters at least not in the query one other point i ve learned from going through the query process myself try to avoid expressions such as uber rich moribund and pedantic as well as any other five dollar words you might use i know these words make you sound educated and literate but they also mark you as showing off and trying a bit too hard the old expression of keep it simple kss holds true in writing as it does in most everything else good luck february 26 2012 at 1 09 pm anonymous author said yes you ve got way too many words cut out all the extra but first do the same to your novel here s what seems essential in your query beth macdonald can t get a decent job so she s doing temp work then an art dealer dorie campbell offers her well paid employment then ted her employers accountant starts pursuing her romantically one graf in and there s no indication yet that this is a mystery beth is confused by the files why and an irs accountant is telling her to quit why a mafioso is asking for a favor what and beth finds out ted may have an ulterior motive for his interest in her what and the last woman who had beth s job has gone missing is this the mystery running away from what won t protect beth or her family from what she knows she has to investigate what if this is a mystery tell us what the big question is my vote is for what happened to the last woman who held beth s job but that s barely touched in the query as a former academic i wondered why beth wasn t pursuing academic jobs and a phd in scottish history sounded funny to me so i googled it turns out you can get that degree in the uk rick these new captcha things on blogger are awful february 26 2012 at 4 36 pm anonymous said rick my comment got eaten again aa february 26 2012 at 4 54 pm anonymous said hey popping over from aw i agree with rick that there are too many characters in paragraph one when you mentioned dorie in the second paragraph i had to re read to remind myself who she was i think also and i hate to say it you might want to dumb down the vocab a little bit particularly in the first paragraph words like moribund and pedantic are fun but slow the reader down it makes me worry that i m going to need a dictionary at hand to get through the story i have to say i really liked the concluding para and the plot you laid out in the second and third paras seemed really interesting i think you just need to pare this down and bring it into focus and it will definitely work february 27 2012 at 4 40 am diane said thanks for your comments this is a query i ve been struggling with for some time obviously i need to wrestle with it some more the mystery is not of the traditional who done it variety the mystery is did they do something what the heck was it and should i do anything about it i guess the difficulty is that i m trying to show rather than tell what the character is like overeducated uses big words the stakes for her doesn t want to blow her first and maybe last chance at a good job and what prompts her to investigate a string of puzzling or suspicious occurences i m finding it particularly hard to show why beth is suspicious and decides to investigate any one thing isn t enough it is the steady drip drip drip of cryptic records bizarre comments lies etc that make her think her boss might be covering something up although she doesn t know what that something might be until far into the book so the readers confusion about my query what s going on is the same as my protag narrator s lol any ideas how to get all this across without telling instead of showing which details arouse curiosity and which do not in an earlier version of this query i paid attention to just the business records they ve been trashed by beth s predecessor they make no sense when put back together again cryptic duplicative inconsistent they get taken from beth and she s told never mind even though there s an irs audit going on etc but then readers told me that records are boring again thanks for the input and i stand ready for any ideas how to put this together february 27 2012 at 5 47 am rick daley said anon all comments should be published now thanks for the heads up i hate the captcha images too and have a heck of a time deciphering some of them but blogger did that on its own i didn t implement a change february 27 2012 at 9 06 am rick daley said diane leave the bread crumb trail of clues for the manuscript and maybe the synopsis for the query cut to the chase and explain what the mystery is you may not need to provide the answer to the mystery although you should consider it if it helps sell the story but you must lay the basic groundwork in a concise manner february 27 2012 at 9 31 am diane said good comments i ll play around with this some more and see what i can come up with would a new version be posted on this thread or the general submit a query place unfortunately explaining the answers to all the assorted questions would make the query very long i need to find a way to make the reader intrigued enough to want to know more without turning this into a four page query so i d have the room to explain maybe one thing uncertainty over why she was hired distrust of the hunky rich guy who s coming on very strong the strange records the irs guy the member of the reputed mob family who personally is honest the way the campbells are pulling beth s parents into their web her missing predecessor the occupation of the supposedly unoccupied guesthouse the absence of horses despite the fact the campbells supposedly have a horse business etc which of these factors of the puzzle seem most intriguing to you guys i figure i can t simply say a bunch of things happen that make her suspicious of her new boss and for a number of reasons she can t just quit or go to the authorities i was asked why she isn t pursuing academic jobs because her brilliant dissertation explored the lack of present day importance for her field beth has this proclivity to pursue unwelcome truths and it always comes back and bites her in the ass there also isn t necessarily a job market in an esoteric academic field my daughter s getting a ph d in egyptology as we speak i actually took a course in scottish history in the us first and maybe the last time it was ever offered the last day we discussed why should anyone study this no one including the professor could come up with an answer as far as the missing predecessor is concerned beth doesn t investigate this directly but discovers her fate when looking into what turn out to be ongoing schemes of money laundering and consumer fraud but she doesn t even figure out that money laundering and consumer fraud are occurring until well into the book all she can see is that it looks like her boss is covering something up february 27 2012 at 10 25 am anonymous author said rick thanks for restoring my comments evil editor mentioned s he had turned off the new captchas somehow so i thought maybe there was an option or something i don t know can never figure anything out on the internets diane i agree with rick in fact just tell don t show and if the character is prone to sesquipedalian vocabulary confine that strictly to her utterances february 27 2012 at 10 26 am anonymous author said diane reduce the whole manuscript to a single sentence under 20 words long and write the query about that anything that doesn t go in that sentence is an extraneous detail i would say that includes beth s education february 27 2012 at 10 29 am rick daley said for a revision please post it to the submissions thread like you did this query and i ll put it up in a new post anon s tip about the single sentence is spot on when you take that approach you start with the basic element and build on it when you do the opposite i e write a detailed synopsis and then try to whittle it down you are guaranteed to leave open threads i ll look into the verification options and see if there are alternates to the captcha february 27 2012 at 10 36 am diane said once again thanks everyone this site is wonderful i ve send in a new version which i hope is less confusing to you all february 27 2012 at 12 15 pm anonymous author said diane i peeked at your query in the queue you re likely to get fewer comments with each iteration so you may want to make sure you ve taken the time to go through and consider all of the advice you ve gotten so far and let the advice stew for a few days february 27 2012 at 1 47 pm anonymous said inline fuel pump nearby bang xxl nearby best bang disposable online best place to buy procharger race valves online best bang disposable online august 3 2025 at 8 57 pm post a comment newer post older post home subscribe to post comments atom submit queries here submit queries here query and writing resources agentquery com genre descriptions agentquery com how to write a query colleen lindsay word counts and novel length critiquing critiques editorial anonymous tips on your bio janet reid effective query class janet reid how to make sure your query is instantly rejected janet reid 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