Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Any help on this?
Thanks!

Wilma Dern runs mining outpost Chezneck 4 on the Ribaldune Road. It is a combination hotel and refitting post on the planet Jangeroo. She is a strong blonde beauty by all standards, human or alien. Long tired of what that has brought her: three bad marriages and one child killed when their home was wrongly searched by the Fernandy Stomp Squads, an outpost police organization that runs on bribes and theft.

Wilma's life has been peaceful and comfortably lonely until a miner, Courtney Butter shows up and disrupts her world. They form an uneasy partnership and soon hit a vein of barnium worth a fortune. He leaves without a goodbye and the next day, suspiciously, the renegade barnium hungry Mings land and the war begins.

Forced to flee alone into the desert, Wilma's survival pivots on her fighting skills, the direction she takes, and whether or not her neruo-challenged pet sabertooth, Baby, will not turn on her, again.

WILMA'S WAR is a work of science fiction at 82,000 words.

First of all, congratulations on writing a novel! That in itself is quite an accomplishment. Now comes the hard part of writing a decent query. So, here's something to keep in mind as you try to write yours. What would happen if Wilma doesn't win her war? Why should the reader care? What are the stakes for her?

Right now, most of your query is backstory, and doesn't give us a good idea of why this is so important to Wilma. And right now, there's not a lot there to help us care about her. This is a daunting task, I know. Trying to shrink your novel into 250 very close to impossible, or so it seems. But keep trying. You will get it.

One thing that may be helpful (it certainly was for me) is to visit the Query Shark (Janet Reid). She's fabulous! Read through her rules for writing a good query, write one of your own, and submit it. She picks queries randomly to post on her blog for critique. But before you submit a query to her, make sure you read ALL her rulse. If you miss one, she will simply delete your query.

Hope this helps. Best of luck!

-sounds good tho' could benefit from some clarification
-what do you mean by "strong"
-the sentence beginning "long tired" needs work. unclear and possibly too long
-you say her life is peaceful though it doesn't seem so from what went before
-I don't understand "renegade" to end of sentence