naughtybrent:
Over the next few days on this blog I’m showing you some successful query letters—books that were pitched to me that I requested and signed and sold. I’ll talk through some of the best elements of the query letters and how I reacted to them. While no query or pitch letter is perfect, hopefully this gives querying writers a slight sense of what works.
The query below is from my amazing client Whitney Gardner. Whitney’s an author-illustrator whose debut illustrated YA novel YOU’RE WELCOME, UNIVERSE is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers in Spring 2017. Be sure to follow Whitney on Twitter and add YOU’RE WELCOME, UNIVERSE on Goodreads!
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Dear Brent,
Thank you for the book recommendations on Twitter! I checked out your bio on Publisher’s Marketplace and I immediately thought of sending you my contemporary, illustrated YA novel, HERE.
Perfect personalization. Whitney had tweeted that she was going on a tropical honeymoon, and I told her to read GIRL ON THE TRAIN and THE VIGILANTE POETS OF SELWYN ACADEMY! I of course remembered Whitney immediately.
When your favorite after-school activity is tagging walls, friends are a liability. Julia learned this the hard way, when she covered up the slur about her best friend with a beautiful (albeit illegal) mural. Sprayed right across the back of the Kingston School for the Deaf.
What’s “tagging”? Is that graffiti lingo? I was definitely intrigued. I’m a sucker for friendship stories, so I was immediately questioning what could have driven Julia to cover up a slur—and what that slur might be. I don’t get very many submissions featuring Deaf protagonists, so that was also something that immediately set this apart.
Her best friend snitches, her principal expels her, and her mothers set Julia up with a one way ticket to a mainstream school in the suburbs. Utterly deserted, the only thing she has left is her art. Not even Banksy himself could get her to give that up.
A friendship betrayal! This is where the query started to get good. I love characters with very clear passions and goals, and at this point I could tell how much art meant to Julia—she’s tagging walls, she’s making illegal murals, and amidst all this drama, art is her constant.
Out in the ‘burbs, she paints anywhere she can, ready to claim some turf and make a new name for herself. A tag on a sign, a piece on an overpass. An artist can’t help but create, but Julia soon learns that she might not be the only vandal in town.
Not the only vandal in town—how mysterious!
Someone has been adding to her tags, making them better, and showing off. She expected her art might get painted over by cops, but she never imagined getting involved in a graffiti war. Now, Julia must show up her rival or face being painted into obscurity. But when her opponent takes it a step too far, Julia has to decide between anonymity or getting caught.
At this point I cannot fucking wait to read this book. Although I get the sense this is literary-leaning with somewhat quiet undertones, the stakes are wonderfully set up.
HERE is an honest look into the life of a girl who is trying to make her mark on the world, and ends up making her first life long friend. It’s THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN meets EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP. It has been read by interpreters and Deaf beta readers to ensure a full and accurate picture of Julia’s experience as a Deaf girl. I’ve drawn sample images from the book which can be viewed here: [link redacted]. It is complete at 58,000 words. You will find the first ten pages below.
“an honest look into the life of a girl who is trying to make her mark on the world” is a spectacular way to touch on the novel’s theme without getting too book report-ish. I also loved hearing that Whitney had tried her best to capture the Deaf experience with as much authenticity as possible by getting reads from interpreters and Deaf beta readers.
Thank you for your time,
Whitney Gardner
All in all, this was such a great query letter. I’m a big character person, and the best queries to me are always the ones that make me immediately connect to the protagonist. In only a few short paragraphs, Whitney managed to make me want to get to know Julia immediately. There’s such a clear beginning, middle, and end to this query, and it ends on a suspenseful note.
After Whitney and I revised this book a little and retitled it, I used a lot of Whitney’s original query letter for my pitch letter. The book got immediate interest from a handful of enthusiastic editors, and we had our first offer two weeks after submission!