How to Write a Query Letter

Everything You Need to Know about Writing a Successful Query

Learning Objective: By the end of this post, you will know how to write and revise a query letter.

Nearly 80% of the agents I queried requested my full manuscript. Today, we’re breaking down my method for writing successful query letters. I will also share three drafts of my query letter. The first draft is how I initially wrote the query after studying online resources. The second draft is my revision after getting agent feedback at the Tin House Summer Workshop. This draft is also the one I queried with. Lastly, I’ll share a new third draft which covers how I would revise the query letter today with four years of hindsight and industry experience.

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How to Write a Query Letter

While there’s an industry standard for query letters, everyone’s advice will be a little bit different. Since I’m a fiction writer, this post will focus on best practices for querying a novel, but much of this content transfers well to other genres. As always, take what’s useful and leave what’s not.

In general, a query letter has four main components:

1. Tagline

2. One-paragraph Summary

3. Comparative Titles (Comps)

4. Bio

These components are most effective when they’re written in this order. Three examples of my query letters are available for your reference at the end of this post.

In addition to the query letter, many agents ask for an opening excerpt from the novel. Each agent requests a different amount of pages for this excerpt. It’s quite common to see agents ask for the first 50 pages. Some agents may ask for the first three chapters. Others may want an excerpt that’s a specific word count. Whenever you query, always check the submission guidelines on each agency’s website and follow those guidelines exactly. Along with the query and writing sample, some agents may also ask for a short synopsis of the story.

Today, we’re focusing on the query letter itself. Leave a comment if you’d like to see a post about the writing sample or story synopsis:

1. Tagline

In my last post about the querying process, I mentioned how screenwriting pitch techniques helped me write a strong query letter. I first discovered taglines in my college screenwriting class, and I borrowed this technique for querying my novel. A tagline is a pithy statement that summarizes the hook of the book. In general, the hook is the unique concept that your book explores. This hook works best if it generates a question that compels the reader to read the rest of the query letter or even the book itself. When it comes to films, you typically see this tagline printed on the movie poster.

Here are some examples of taglines from films and the questions they raise:

• Alien: In space, no one can hear you scream.

  • Question: Why would someone be screaming in space?

• Bonnie and Clyde: They're young, they're in love, and they kill people.

  • Question: Why is this couple killing people?

• Nightmare on Elm Street: If Nancy doesn't wake up screaming, she won't wake up at all.

  • Questions: Why won’t Nancy wake up? What is making her scream?

• Catch Me If You Can: The true story of a real fake.

  • Questions: What does it mean to be a real fake? How can a story about a person like that be true?

For my novel, Lit by Burning, I used these sentences as my tagline:

Jo Tope’s birth mother left her in a high chair in the neighbor’s house and never came back. This is how the Topes, an African-American family of four, adopted a white baby.

Here are some guiding questions to help you create your tagline:

1. In the first ten pages of your book, what is the most unique thing the reader learns about your protagonist?

2. In those first ten pages, what is the most unique thing the reader learns about the story world?

3. What is a common expectation for your story’s genre or theme?

4. How does your story subvert that expectation in the first ten pages?

5. What is the promise of your book’s premise? How do you deliver on that promise in the first ten pages?

It’s important to write a tagline that’s hook is demonstrated at the very beginning of your book. If your hook happens too late in your writing sample, the agent may stop reading because the pitch might come off as misleading.

In the writing sample I queried with, the promise of the book (Jo’s unusual adoption) is set up on the second page, and the rest of the example delivers on the promise as Jo grapples with her identity.

2. One-paragraph Summary

After the tagline, the next component is the one-paragraph summary of the story. This paragraph summarizes the protagonist, their goals and the main force of antagonism. This paragraph begins with a sentence that details the novel’s title, genre, word count, and brief info about the story.

LIT BY BURNING is a 115,000-word coming-of-age novel set during the 2015 Baltimore protests against police brutality.

The rest of the paragraph should introduce the protagonist, their goals, and the main force of antagonism. When I’m writing my very first draft, I use this structure as a starting point:

[Novel title here] is about a [describe the protagonist here] who desperately wants [put the protagonist's goal here], but [put the main force of antagonism here].

Here are some examples:

“Anything Could Disappear” by Danielle Evans

“Anything Could Disappear” is about Vera, a broke, 21-year-old from Missouri, who desperately wants to deliver an illegal substance to earn money, but she gets stuck with an abandoned baby.

Avengers Infinity War

Avengers Infinity War is about a group of superheroes who desperately want to stop the universe from being destroyed, but Thanos is collecting infinity stones that will give him the power to kill 50% of the universe’s population.

Full examples of the one-paragraph summary are available at the end of this post.

3. Comparative Titles (Comps)

After the one-paragraph summary, start a new paragraph. This paragraph should do two things: (1) summarize the theme of your novel and (2) compare your exploration of those themes to novels published in the last five years.

I recommend using three titles. There is some wiggle room for how recent the comps were published. If you have two very recent comps but your third comp is an older book, that’s totally okay. If all three of your comps are quite old, your query could potentially give the impression that you’re not well-read in your genre or you’re not up to speed with the current literary market. That said, always provide comps that are true to your work and books that you genuinely love.

I recommend avoiding comps from other storytelling media (films, television, video games, etc.). Other media tend to have very different genre conventions and non-book comps do not help the agent see that there’s a proven market for your book. 

At the end of the day, comps serve two important purposes. The first is to demonstrate that a market exists for your book given its genre and themes. The second is to help the agent position your book within the context of the last five years of the market. Yes, we all write for the art of writing, but if you’re querying agents, your book is on the path to becoming a product. Comps help you demonstrate that your book, your product, will make money. It’s icky to think about writing in that way, but that’s just the way the publishing industry works.

Here are the comps that I used for my MFA thesis, Field of Mosquitoes:

Using monsters from Korean folklore as a lens to explore grief, depression, and what it means to be a queer woman of color, Field of Mosquitoes has the intricate relationships of Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, the coming-of-age story of Julie Buntin’s Marlena, and the magical realism of Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing.

4. Bio

The last part of the query letter is your writer's bio. In 2-3 sentences, summarize your relevant writing experience, past publications, and any writing conferences you may have attended. Remember to keep it brief. Avoid talking about experiences that are not related to your writing or your book.

If you have outside experience that’s relevant to your novel’s subject matter, feel free to include that in your bio. For example, if your novel is about a physicist, and you have a degree in particle physics, that is definitely worth mentioning in your bio. 

If your degree(s) or day job aren’t directly relevant to your writing or your book, you can omit those details from your bio. It’s perfectly okay if your bio is very brief. For example, if you’ve ever taken a creative writing class your bio can simply say: “I have studied creative writing at GrubStreet (or wherever you took your class).” If you don’t have any formal writing experience, that’s totally okay, too! Your bio can simply say, “I am a writer based in [your town here].”

At the end of the day, the quality of your writing sample is what matters most. If the bio is stressing you out, please don’t fret over it. It’s the least important part of the query in my opinion.

Sample Query Letters

As promised, I’ve included the following drafts of my query letter below:

1. My first draft

2. My query draft (with the 80% success rate)

3. My present-day revision

 These drafts will help you see the structure and how the four components work together. I’ll also explain the revisions I made for each draft and why.

1. First Draft

I wrote this draft in preparation for my agent meeting at the 2019 Tin House Summer Workshop.

The Letter

Dear [Agent Name]:

Jo Tope’s birth mother left her in a high chair in the neighbor’s house and never came back. This is how the Topes, an African-American family of four, adopted a white baby.

Lit by Burning is a 110,000-word coming-of-age novel that opens with the CVS fire during the Baltimore protests.