Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Posted: **January 25th, 2011, 10:21 am**

Mary-Catharine, thanks for looking at my query. I've been wrestling with it for days, so I know how tough they are to write.

The biggest issues I see with your query:

(1) Length: aim for one or at most two paragraphs, approximately 100 words or so total. I went to the drugstore this week and bought a paperback to study the back cover. It had six sentences. The first four sentences were about the first chapter. The last two sentences gave the main conflict. I tried to use that format and came up with my best query to date. Seriously, give it a try.

There are many different opinions on lenght. Noah Lukeman says a single paragraph of three sentences, no more. Other agents, however, typically say around 250 words is best. Nathan, in a previous post (probably about a year ago?) analyzed the queries he had asked for partials/fulls and found that he liked queries of 250-350 words, if I remember correctly.

Best course is find out a particular agent's preference, if such information is available.

Posted: **January 25th, 2011, 4:40 pm**

Interesting on the two chapter main conflict thing, but I think it depends on the book. Since my WIP has a group of protagonists, with the first chapter giving short segments on all of them, it would probably come out very cluttered. But I can definitely see how it would work in some cases.

Posted: **January 25th, 2011, 5:18 pm**

Falls Apart wrote:Interesting on the two chapter main conflict thing, but I think it depends on the book. Since my WIP has a group of protagonists, with the first chapter giving short segments on all of them, it would probably come out very cluttered. But I can definitely see how it would work in some cases.

Hello, folks. I think I said the first chapter and then two sentences about the main conflict, not anything about the second chapter.

Good luck to everybody. Queries are murder, however you try to write them.

Nathan Bransford - The Forums

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Re: NIGHTFRAME: IN THE RED OF THE KNIGHT Query II