meditations on querying
...and querying me
Hello! I’m Stuti. I’m a literary agent and I’m building my list of primarily YA and adult genre fiction. You’re probably here because I tweeted my MSWL yesterday. Welcome and hopefully you will find my thoughts on craft & publishing useful!
Let me start by saying one of my favorite parts of my job is sifting through queries. I am certainly not alone here—we all do this job because we love the feeling of striking gold. But something that I’ve been feeling the more I look through queries is that they don’t actually have to be gold; they don’t have to be perfect to intrigue me.
Indeed, I don’t think there is such a thing as the right way to query; there are just righter ways. That is to say, there are always better and more effective ways to pitch a specific project, to a specific person. There’s just no one single way to do it.
There are definitely wrong ways to query, though. And there are definitely wrong ways to query me. But instead of talking (or thinking) about The One Way to Fix Your Query So It Is the Best and Will Get You All the Full Requests, let’s talk a couple of simple things to consider while you write and revise your query. A good deal of this is punctuated with my opinion, but whether or not you’re querying me, I think these are important points to keep in mind!
—Personalizing.
Now, I don’t mean rewrite a letter entirely for each agent you’re submitting to. Nor do I mean remembering to swap out the name at the start of your email and calling it a day (though, please remember to swap out the name). There’s a happy medium that I think is really valuable for the small amount of effort that it takes.
To me, this means specificity—if you can put into words why you’re querying someone, do it. Like I said in my Twitter thread, if you’re sending me your Eleanor of Aquitaine book with magic because you’ve seen me say “Gee, I’d love an Eleanor of Aquitaine book with magic,” tell me; it signals to me that you’ve done your research, and that I should definitely take a long look at your work sooner rather than later, because it’s something I’m asking/looking for. (By the way, I’d love an Eleanor of Aquitaine book with magic.)
Obviously, rare is the instance in which you’re writing something that’s exactly what an agent is seeking, so this is more likely to be a broad similarity. But that’s okay. I am vocal about how I like fantasy novels with sports in them, and I get a lot of queries that contain similar ideas.
Let me underscore again that specificity matters. Telling me you’re querying me because I’m looking for YA fantasy isn’t terribly helpful to me, nor (I think) would it be helpful to most agents looking for YA fantasy. We know we are. Why your YA fantasy specifically? So perhaps “I’m querying you because you said in your MSWL that you’re looking for sprawling worlds and court intrigue.” If you can only say something vague, you don’t have to.
—Getting to the point.
There was a time in my life when I perused the long-running Query Shark blog on for fun. (Not taking questions about that behavior at this time.) So I’m of the mind that the story comes first, and everything else comes later. If it seems impolite to have a query that looks like this:
Dear Stuti,
The Seven Cities are on the brink of war.
…it’s not. In fact, if you can’t personalize your query—“I’m sending you this because you liked my tweet in a pitch event” or “you specifically asked for more non-Western settings” or “so-and-so referred me to you”—I’d prefer you just told me a story straight away. I enjoy it! I’m like, no way, the Seven Cities are on the brink of war?!
Similarly, save your bio for after. I like getting a sense of who you are, but only once I have a sense of your story.
—Having a point.
A query should be concise and precise—you want to give pertinent information only, and you also want to impart a sense of character and setting. Most importantly a query needs to tell the agent what is happening in your book. Do not forget the story! Do not gloss over the story!
We need to know the hook—the entry point for the reader and the initial ooh factor—as well as the stakes—what will happen if the main character fails? What’s at risk? (In fantasy it tends to be total societal collapse and/or the world ending, nbd.) In short, also tell me why we care about this character going through this story.
For various reasons including but not limited to Tiktok, book marketing—and even the way we talk about books casually—has become fairly trope-focused. But I can’t effectively evaluate a query based only on the knowledge that the story contains enemies to lovers/reluctant allies in space. I mean, that’s nice to know. It’s just not enough. It’s what the book features, not what it’s about.
—Explaining vs. over-explaining.
I think this is one of the hardest things to handle in a genre query: how much do you dig into the lore of your world or story? There is no right answer. Or, I think the right answer is “not too much, but also not too little.” There’s no good answer.
Two questions I’d recommend keeping in mind are 1. is this necessary and 2. is this confusing. You don’t want a query where you’re detailing worldbuilding or magic system lore that’s not immediately relevant—but you also don’t want a query that is so bare-bones that it is difficult to parse what’s going on in the story. Or worse, uninteresting!
—Knowing not to self-deprecate.
Most people querying me (and, indeed, most people querying all the agents I’ve supported) are first-time authors. They mostly don’t have MFAs or other academic qualifications in creative writing. This is fine. Your novel is the draw, and don’t undercut your query—and the accomplishment in and of itself that is writing, revising, and querying your work—by apologizing for it.
—Comping.
I like comp titles. I know there is never-ending discourse on if they’re useful, why they’re bad, why they’re good actually, how to comp, how not to comp. I guess I’m going there.
Let me start by saying there are some books that have perfect X meets Y comps, and there are books that don’t. If your book is one of the former, congratulations on your good fortune! If your book is one of the latter, it’s okay to have a stretch-comp—like, “readers who enjoy the complex family dynamics of Joan He’s Descendant of the Crane” works for any YA fantasy with an emphasis on sibling dynamics. Your book doesn’t have to also be an East Asian-inspired fantasy, or have a murder mystery plot, or center a young queen grieving her father.
—Not comping poorly.
So: what if you want to comp to something that’s old?
For context, comp titles are ideally recently published (though I personally don’t have a strict rule on how recent “recently” is), and you will hear that advice bandied around a lot. I think this is true-ish.
To elaborate, I think there are older comps that are actually still useful, and ones that are not. Once a book is a certain degree of popular, it becomes less useful in a query—it is not helpful to me if you comp your magic school book to That One Series, because a lot of magic school books have come out since, and this makes me worry you haven’t read any newer magic school books, and what if your magic school book isn’t a fresh take on the concept? It is not helpful to me if you comp your Regency romance to Pride & Prejudice, even though I love Pride & Prejudice.
It’s not specific enough. Comps need to tell me something about your book, so don’t waste that space on a title that doesn’t do that.
The exceptions are when your comp title hasn’t become a mainstream by-word for the subgenre or trope you’re trying to highlight; and when your comp title is actually a good X meets Y (and the other comp title is something newer). So, if your book is a sci-fi novel about a marriage and scandal in a futuristic society of necromancers, totally cool to pitch it as The Age of Innocence meets The Locked Tomb. But if your book’s only similarity to The Hunger Games is that it’s a YA dystopian novel, perhaps resist the urge.
What happens if you have a concept genuinely unlike any recently-published books? This is possible and makes things trickier. But try and pick out elements of it that can parallel something you’ve read. Point to writing styles of other authors that you think are similar to your own. Just be wary of naming a comp that is too much of a reach—be honest with yourself and only mention something you can actually say bears some resemblance to your project.
There you have it. This is far from a comprehensive query-writing how-to, but I hope it prompts some (productive!) thinking.
A useful review tip for queries especially is sharing with someone who has read your novel, ideally a critique partner or beta reader, and sharing with someone who hasn’t. The former can point out if you’re missing any super-important details; the latter can tell you what’s confusing to someone unfamiliar with your book.
Query-writing is not easy—if you’ve come this far, pat yourself on the back! And if you’re interested in a longer post breaking down elements of queries and how to write one, let me know in the comments.
Until next time, happy Friday & happy writing!
💌 Stuti