Getting Ready for an Agent

Salutations,

My experiences writing query letters has been hair pulling to say the least. A query letter is three simple things that entices a literary agent or editor to read and sign your book. It's a mini synopsis (like what you read on the cover), an author bio, and the more technical details. One day I'll write a post that further dissects the stages of a query letter. This post is more about my experiences writing mine.

Starting off with the mini synopsis. It's hard to take something you know every detail about and put it into only one paragraph. Then make it interesting so that other people want to read your work. I think I wrote at least five then I picked out my favorite parts of each. I found that I liked certain transition sentences better than others. So I combined my favorite parts to create another query. It's the bomb.

I'm quite pleased. Unfortunately for the authors bio its almost blank. I have no experience in professional writing. Nor do I have any personal experiences that helps elevate my book. I did my best now it is time to work on my synopsis.

A synopsis is basically the main points and plot twists that happen throughout the series. When I first started researching how to write a synopsis I was freaking out. Full on complaining, worrying, freaking out. I had to take my seventy thousand word manuscript and get it under eight hundred words. After I had one five minute complaining session to my dad he remembered it months later. Turns out it wasn't actually as hard as I made myself think it was. I just went chapter by chapter looking for important scenes and wrote it down in one or two sentences.

The most important in the process of getting an agent, is finding the right agent. I can't query an agent that works solely non-fiction or represents romance. I had to find agencies and go through all of the agents bio's to find an agent (one agent per agency) that represents young adult and has an interest in fantasy. I wrote down in a notebook the agents I liked and how they like to be queried.

Here are some links I found extremely helpful.
Query Letters.
How to Write a Query Letter: 10 Dos and Don'ts
How to Write the Perfect Query Letter - Query Letter Example
Anatomy Of A Query Letter: A Step-By-Step Guide
What To Include In Your Query Letter To Literary Agents
Synopsis.
Jane Friedman Novel Synopsis
Marissa Meyer 6-steps-for-writing-a-book-synopsis
writers relief query-letter-synopsis-blurb-summary

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