Query critique 11/12/20

Offer up your page (or query) for Nathan's critique on the blog.
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Nathan Bransford
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Joined: December 4th, 2009, 11:17 pm
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Query critique 11/12/20

Post by Nathan Bransford » November 12th, 2020, 10:01 am

Want to see how your editing approach compares to mine?

Below is the query up for critique on the blog today. Feel free to chime in with comments, create your own redline (please note the "font colour" button above the posting box, which looks like a drop of ink), and otherwise offer feedback. When offering your feedback, please please remember to be polite and constructive. In order to leave a comment you will need to register an account in the Forums, which should be self-explanatory.

I'll be back with my own post on the blog and we'll literally be able to compare notes.

If you'd like to enter a query for a future Query Critique, please do so here.


Dear Agent’s Name:

Ardent is women’s fiction complete at 80,000 words. It is a story of wild versus urban, woven with magic like the writing of Gail Anderson-Dargatz and Juliet Marillier.

Cassidy isn’t afraid of nights alone in the wilderness when she’s roamed away from their little farm. She’s afraid that each time she wanders, she goes a little farther, and that someday she won’t turn back.

Her mother always told her it’s okay to be afraid, but not to let fear stop her: wisdom passed along with the traditions of their ancestry.

But leaving her mother’s hearth and failing to follow in her footsteps to be a renowned healer? The last thing Cassidy wants is the tears that come with saying goodbye. Still, she goes.

Town life offers music and dancing, people to lead her traipsing about. They speak of unfamiliar things and confuse her with their half-truths.

Then she’s forced back to the wilderness when an accident takes her mother’s life. Their cottage goes cold even in the glow of the funeral pyre. With no mother’s love to tether her, Cassidy must find a way to embrace her talents and avoid a life of mediocrity.

I have a bachelor’s degree in English and theater. I prepared for writing this novel by being a farmer, Master Herbalist, mother, and tree planter, living in the wild with the bears and the porcupines.

Ardent is book one in a proposed three-book series.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Name

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