“Anything Could Disappear” by Danielle Evans When I’m writing my very first draft, I use this structure as a starting point: The rest of the paragraph should introduce the protagonist, their goals, and the main force of antagonism. LIT BY BURNING is a 115,000-word coming-of-age novel set during the 2015 Baltimore protests against police brutality. This paragraph begins with a sentence that details the novel’s title, genre, word count, and brief info about the story. This paragraph summarizes the protagonist, their goals and the main force of antagonism. One-paragraph SummaryĪfter the tagline, the next component is the one-paragraph summary of the story. In the writing sample I queried with, the promise of the book (Jo’s unusual adoption) is set up on the second page, and the rest of the example delivers on the promise as Jo grapples with her identity. If your hook happens too late in your writing sample, the agent may stop reading because the pitch might come off as misleading. It’s important to write a tagline that’s hook is demonstrated at the very beginning of your book.
What is the promise of your book’s premise? How do you deliver on that promise in the first ten pages? How does your story subvert that expectation in the first ten pages? What is a common expectation for your story’s genre or theme?
In those first ten pages, what is the most unique thing the reader learns about the story world? In the first ten pages of your book, what is the most unique thing the reader learns about your protagonist? Here are some guiding questions to help you create your tagline: This is how the Topes, an African-American family of four, adopted a white baby. Jo Tope’s birth mother left her in a high chair in the neighbor’s house and never came back. Questions: What does it mean to be a real fake? How can a story about a person like that be true?įor my novel, Lit by Burning, I used these sentences as my tagline: Questions: Why won’t Nancy wake up? What is making her scream?Ĭatch Me If You Can : The true story of a real fake. Nightmare on Elm Street : If Nancy doesn't wake up screaming, she won't wake up at all. Question: Why is this couple killing people? Question: Why would someone be screaming in space?īonnie and Clyde : They're young, they're in love, and they kill people. Here are some examples of taglines from films and the questions they raise:Īlien : In space, no one can hear you scream.
HINDSIGHT IN A SENTENCE MOVIE
When it comes to films, you typically see this tagline printed on the movie poster. This hook works best if it generates a question that compels the reader to read the rest of the query letter or even the book itself. In general, the hook is the unique concept that your book explores. A tagline is a pithy statement that summarizes the hook of the book. I first discovered taglines in my college screenwriting class, and I borrowed this technique for querying my novel. In my last post about the querying process, I mentioned how screenwriting pitch techniques helped me write a strong query letter. Leave a comment if you’d like to see a post about the writing sample or story synopsis: Today, we’re focusing on the query letter itself. Along with the query and writing sample, some agents may also ask for a short synopsis of the story. Whenever you query, always check the submission guidelines on each agency’s website and follow those guidelines exactly. Others may want an excerpt that’s a specific word count. Some agents may ask for the first three chapters. It’s quite common to see agents ask for the first 50 pages. Each agent requests a different amount of pages for this excerpt. In addition to the query letter, many agents ask for an opening excerpt from the novel. Three examples of my query letters are available for your reference at the end of this post. These components are most effective when they’re written in this order. In general, a query letter has four main components: As always, take what’s useful and leave what’s not. Since I’m a fiction writer, this post will focus on best practices for querying a novel, but much of this content transfers well to other genres. While there’s an industry standard for query letters, everyone’s advice will be a little bit different.
0 kommentar(er)
