Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Do you know my father? Sorry...couldn't help myself. I would NEVER direct a query letter in that manner. It. Was. A. Joke. Just as the parenthesis states...

For me, characters drive the story--whether I'm reading or writing. If I don't find the voice of the very first person I meet interesting, I have a hard time getting through the book. This issue with this (for me) is that I'm hooked on reading and writing YA. I have found that in a lot of younger YA...

Thank you for your opinion. Interesting, the different perspectives we all come from. I am (fairly) confident in my mss. After I got her feedback, I did trim it back a bit, but mostly it was to force the ms to fit the regulations for the Delacorte YA contest. (which I'm still awaiting rejection....h...

Query letters are exhausting aren't they!? I love to rewrite my chapters, but make me edit a query and I want to throw it in the fireplace. It's so frustrating. It's the one time I'd rather talk about my books. And that's unheard of. :-)

Thanks guys! Oh-and yes on the giant paragraph--it was just a copy/paste jobber--I wasn't thinking about format. And I am definitely going to think up better descriptions for the horrible humans. Destructive and deceptive ARE overused. The history is that Humans and Cruinaislians once lived all toge...

With many of my stories, the character comes first. I tend to develop this little voice and he/she turns into someone interesting and I begin an character analysis--little blurbs of info--that eventually I fit in somewhere. The stories that work, however, also have an element of "what if" ...

I love puppies and rainbows! ;-)

I think you can just take out "wrongly" without any need for a substitute, actually. The sentence reads fine without the adverb. :-)

Dreamtraveler is your little brothers screen name? Funny!

All right, all right! Jeesh, you people are relentless! Let me take my naivety elsewhere! LoL. Seriously--I totally agree with all of what you said. But can I truly trust family/friends even when they are editors? Sometimes I feel like I want a third party who doesn't already care about me. I don't ...

Interesting! I love the title and the story-within-the-story idea. Upon first read, however, I didn't catch on immediately that it was a story-within-the-story. However, that very well could be my dense, not-enough-coffee-yet brain. Also, while none of the Christian/God discussion bothers or offends...

Okay, here's some specifics. I took liberties with writing a long paragraph because I will not have anything else to include in a query as I don't have any "credits" to my name. (other than a few goofy contests) So, I know this is long, but here goes: This is for the book COVENANT: Liora, ...

It's pretty friggen awesome as suspected. I'd use that thing more than my laptop. But I am one of the millions of people who sure as heck doesn't have an extra $500 to spend on it. :-(

Here's an early paragraph from one of my very first queries. This actually got me a request for a full ms, but I also had met the agent in person, which I believe gave me a huge advantage. See what you think: (BTW--I no longer use rhetorical questions, but I let it be since this was how I originally...

Thanks for all the great tips! I find queries to be the most annoying task on the planet. I can never balance how much or how little to say. And the advice out there--in internet-land--is quite conflicting. I'm going to post one more for a different book in the series, because originally there was o...