Let me be perfectly clear: in a query, you have ONE PAGE to hook my attention. One page to tell me enough about your book that I want to scan down to the end of your letter to read the three pages from your novel that I’ve requested you attach. […]
hooks
5 posts
We talk a lot about query letters here, and (I hope) provide a useful service for people to improve their letters. But as I looked at various queries in my email inbox today, I thought about how important a one-sentence pitch truly is. Call them “hooks” or “tag lines” or […]
What do you do when you… Did you ever wonder if… What if… Eek! When rhetorical questions attack! Intern Jenny and I are spending the day going through your queries, and for some reason, it seems as if this batch is chock full of rhetorical questions. Is it the worst […]
Fellow literary agent (and fellow geek) Colleen Lindsay of FinePrint Literary Management had a fascinating post up the other day on What Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse can teach novelists about hooking readers.I’m just going to paraphrase here, so do check out the whole thing, and then come back. Back? Ok, so […]
Camouflage shoes (by Manolo Blahnik!) for Mitzi, who writes, "My novel deals in a fairly unknown phenomenon. I know the correct form of a query letter, but due to the subject matter I worry that the agent won't understand my hook line. Should I describe the phenomenon first?"