Some vague thoughts about queries
Friday, October 19th, 2012 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizvogelWriters Digest today has an example of how not to write a pitch (a.k.a. query); indeed, Chuck Sambuchino's opinion is that this is about as bad as it can get. The pitch in question:
The great sin this pitch commits is vagueness; per Sambuchino, it's all generalities. And he's right, it is. You don't know who this guy is or what any of these quests or journeys or turns or questions really refer to.
Unless, of course, you know that this is the official plot summary for Iron Man 3.
Then, suddenly, this isn't vague and generalized at all, at least not if you're familiar with the franchise and have even a sliver of fannish imagination. Given that, you can make some pretty fair guesses as to what gets destroyed and what all that questing and journeying is referring to. It's fairly clear from this pitch what the thematic point of the story is (Stark without the suit, anyone?). It's even got a couple of clever puns, once you have the context.
The problem from a querying standpoint, of course, is that your prospective agent/publisher doesn't have that context.
And this runs head-first into that wall I've discussed before, where the pro says, "Don't be coy, just tell me what happens" and the aspiring querier wails, "I thought I did." And often as not, in a fit of frustration because she can't explain what those generalities actually mean without going way over a query's word limit, then resorts to a blow-by-blow listing of major plot actions, which is also wrong.
Because when you get right down to it, any 250-word summary of a full novel is going to be vague and general; there's just no way around it. If you can explain the main gist of your story in 250 words without eliding over a whole lot of what makes it what it is, you don't have enough story to make a novel in the first place.
I have a working theory, which seems to have tentatively been borne out by my latest query effort (more on that later), that you actually can be vague in a query; you just have to pick the right things to be vague about.
Story Title pits brash-but-brilliant industrialist Main Character against an enemy whose reach knows no bounds. When Main Character finds his personal world destroyed at his enemy’s hands, he embarks on a harrowing quest to find those responsible. This journey, at every turn, will test his mettle. With his back against the wall, Main Character is left to survive by his own devices, relying on his ingenuity and instincts to protect those closest to him. As he fights his way back, Main Character discovers the answer to the question that has secretly haunted him: does the man make the suit or does the suit make the man?
The great sin this pitch commits is vagueness; per Sambuchino, it's all generalities. And he's right, it is. You don't know who this guy is or what any of these quests or journeys or turns or questions really refer to.
Unless, of course, you know that this is the official plot summary for Iron Man 3.
Then, suddenly, this isn't vague and generalized at all, at least not if you're familiar with the franchise and have even a sliver of fannish imagination. Given that, you can make some pretty fair guesses as to what gets destroyed and what all that questing and journeying is referring to. It's fairly clear from this pitch what the thematic point of the story is (Stark without the suit, anyone?). It's even got a couple of clever puns, once you have the context.
The problem from a querying standpoint, of course, is that your prospective agent/publisher doesn't have that context.
And this runs head-first into that wall I've discussed before, where the pro says, "Don't be coy, just tell me what happens" and the aspiring querier wails, "I thought I did." And often as not, in a fit of frustration because she can't explain what those generalities actually mean without going way over a query's word limit, then resorts to a blow-by-blow listing of major plot actions, which is also wrong.
Because when you get right down to it, any 250-word summary of a full novel is going to be vague and general; there's just no way around it. If you can explain the main gist of your story in 250 words without eliding over a whole lot of what makes it what it is, you don't have enough story to make a novel in the first place.
I have a working theory, which seems to have tentatively been borne out by my latest query effort (more on that later), that you actually can be vague in a query; you just have to pick the right things to be vague about.
- You can be vague about process, but not about result/goal.
- You can be vague if the reader can reasonably fill in the gaps.
- Which brings me to the final point: Put in the cool bits.
"They concoct a clever plan to trap the murderer" = OK. What's the goal? To trap the murderer. Why someone would want to trap a murderer is reasonably self-evident. How they go about it is presumably what reading the novel's for. So this isn't vague, even though it really is.
"They get a chance to gather intel" begs the question, what intel? What are they going to use that intel for? Why should the reader care? This is the kind of vague that gets you into trouble, even though technically it's no less generality-filled than the first one.
Note that the filling-in doesn't have to be right; it just has to work for the purpose and keep the reader from being distracted with questions. As long as it doesn't set your target agent/editor up for a nasty bait-and-switch feeling when they see the actual manuscript, let them assume whatever works for them.
Everybody who's read 3+ books has seen a clever plan. We can all make assumptions about what kind of clever plan goes into catching a murderer, and we can all see the potential pitfalls. (Murderers are generally not safe people to be around, especially if you're making them feel trapped.) You don't have to go into detail about the clever plan, unless it's cool.
A query doesn't have much room for detail -- it doesn't have much room, period, which is a large part of the frustration involved -- but if you've got a particular twist, or character quirk, or thematic point that really makes you sit up and go "oooh!", it's worth using up a precious fraction of that space to share it. But here's the catch: You have to make sure that your cool bit stands on its own. If your bit needs a lot of backstory to explain why it's cool, or if it raises a bunch of non-self-evident questions (Why would they call in a ninja to help with the plan? How do they even have a ninja's phone number, anyway?), you're better off leaving that bit out of your query, no matter how cool it is. Otherwise you're back in vagueness territory, about how the bit connects to the story if not the bit itself.
