General Do's and Don'ts in Query letter writing plus a Q+A opp for my April 17th students
If you attended my April 17th class on Query Writing 2.0 and you have a burning question, this is where you can ask it. Plus, some bonus do's and don'ts for those of you in query land.
Hello and Happy Friday.
This month, I’ve posted a bunch on query letters and query letter writing. On April 5th, I did an open AMA for questions on Query Writing, and on April 17th I ran a three-hour class on query writing. It was an intense night— intense in a good way. We were lucky enough to have real letters to look at in many different genres—rom com, psychological thriller, literary fiction, high fantasy and memoir—and we learned a ton about what to do, what not to do, and what to do more of out there in query land.
Thank you so much to everyone who attended, especially Jacqueline, Kat, Marleigh, Kate and Allison, who let me workshop their letters.
I hope to see some of you in the next Turning Points masterclass “Hook them from Page One: Why your opening pages are important and how to get them right” on May 8th. You can enroll (and read more about the content of that class) through this link.
Want support while you workshop your queries?
After the query writing class this Wednesday, writer and subscriber
—who bravely joined us from Italy at 1am on Wednesday—shared the following idea with me that I’m thrilled to share with you:“I was wondering if there was a way to start a discussion with others from the workshop who may want to give/get feedback on each other's letters. We'll obviously all be re-writing ours several times over the next few weeks. We don't have expertise but we do have other assets that would be really helpful: everyone has the material you gave us, fresh eyes, we're writers and we're free. I'd be so down with that, and grateful for it.”
I absolutely love this initiative and am so grateful to Daniela for suggesting it. She has generously agreed to share her email here for students who would like to share and support each other during query letter revising. You can get in touch with her via Daniela (at) gutensite (dot) com
And check this out: A lot of you have written to ask if I know a talented illustrator who can do custom images for newsletters—Daniela is your gal! She only just started her Substack so give her a subscribe if you can and check out her artwork. She’s at
;)Query letter writing: DO’S
During the Query class, I went into detail on best practices for querying in a competitive market. Below is a brief takeaway of bonus elements that solid query letters do or have, based on the questions sent in during the querying AMA back on April 5. Thank you to everyone who sent questions in!
Query letter writing: DON’Ts
The below no-nos are also based off the questions you sent in and frequent mistakes I see in query letter writing from people who are relatively new to this whole publishing thing. (We’ve all been there, don’t worry! I have been there, too!)
Now it’s time for lingering questions from enrolled students!
While most of my Turning Points classes have Q&A time baked in, this query class did not because I wanted to allocate lots of time to workshopping the query letters of writer-subscribers. (
Kate Finlinson and , you all are champions! Thank you for your trust in me, and in our community as well.)That being said, if enrolled students are left with burning questions that I didn’t address in class or in the slides above, you can post those questions in the comment section to this post.
Some guidelines and FAQs about this Q&A:
This particular Q&A section is only open to students enrolled in my Query Writing class. No exceptions, thank you.
Do not post your query letter here.
One question per person, please.
I’m about to have a big-ass surgery for this whole situation so my response time is going to be unpredictable at best. Please be patient as I work through your questions, post-op ;)
If you’re bummed you missed the Query 2.0 course, you can still purchase the video! There will not be discount on the video of the Query Class, but you can enroll via my website and I’ll get the video out to you.
Enrolled students can leave their questions in the comment section of this post. Please do not email or DM me with your questions— it’s super useful for everyone to see your Q’s and my responses here in the comments.
And that’ll do it!
Thank you dearly to all of you who attended class, with extra special thanks to the people brave enough to share their query letters with us. I hope you got a lot out of the course and I thank you, as always, for being here and for all of your support!
Courtney
Real quick before you leave me: There are about ten days left to apply to my destination writing workshop, Turning Points, in central New Mexico next October. Applications close on May 1st. Thanks!
Hi Courtney, thanks for such a useful class. Quick question: Any thoughts/tips for subject lines, for those queries that are emailed directly to an agent? (Besides nothing whacky.) For example, is it best to state your genre here, or drop an xyz comp reference?
I loved how you workshopped Allison’s memoir! I wasn’t planning to write a hybrid memoir myself but an editor told me I’d have a better chance of getting an agent than I would with a straight-up memoir. I have a manuscript but haven’t yet weaved reporting into it. Should I state that in the query and include the name of an expert who has committed to being interviewed or just say it’s going to be a hybrid memoir? Thank you and best of luck on your big-ass surgery!