Nathan Bransford - The Forums

MZ......Its all good and I appreciate your input...As far as I'm concerned the query, and first pages are 50% luck and 50% talent. Have read many queries that go against all the rules and yet make the grade and others that follow the rules and get rejected. So it is always abt talent and that is ob...

MZ....Thanks so much for the helpful feedback. Interesting what you said abt the beginning, but was happy you got a feel for it as it went on. Just interested....Since you said you don't read my genre, what do you usually read? I'm usually a Science Fiction/Fantasy kind of guy. Although I do branch...

The first few sentences were so minimalist and fast-paced that it took me a second to catch up and get a feel for what was going on. But once she was out of the car, and talking to the bouncer, I enjoyed it. Just sort of feels like it could use a few tiny details added here and there at the start. O...

The premise, setting, and pov are all things that I feel are not as explored as they could be... so good work on creativity. I agree with Ginger and bforlenza that the tenses could use some help, and that there's a lot of polishing that needs to be done here. If you're worried about your POV charact...

Wow, thanks for the continuing replies! You guys are immensely helpful and knowledgeable. It's kind of ironic that I'm having trouble being short and sweet, since my prose in the actual manuscript is very, very minimalist. A smarter man would tailor his query to reflect that ;) Query Shark has been ...

Hey there, Query Shark has a ton of examples of good and bad queries. Check it out if you haven't already. Formatting note: You had a line break at the end of each line, which will end up looking weird in most people's email clients. So be careful to get those removed (and don't use Notepad to writ...

Hi guys, I'm new here, but I'm already trying to be a productive and helpful member on these forums. I'm decent at writing, and helping out on writing when it comes to stories, but when it comes to queries, I'm an incredible newbie. Any obvious "duh" spots that y'all could point out would ...

I sincerely hope the folks here haven't been ignoring this just because it's slightly larger a word count than most in this forum. Because this is good. I agree with Departuregirl that you really need to linger on Miss Tia Page just a little bit, though. Not too long, just maybe a couple of sentence...

You had me at "Superhero" :D But seriously. I wish I could offer more substantial thought on this, but you haven't given us quite enough to know the hook. Sure, it's implied that Miriam is either a superhero or will be a superhero as the story progresses, but since it's still too early, ca...

I enjoyed this as well. I agree that the tenses could stand to be cleaned up a bit to make it more distinguishable as to where the dialogue is and who is speaking between Arthur and his dad, in particular, but that only takes a few minutes to address. No harm, no foul. The use of the present tense d...