Sharpen Your Hook

Rookie novelists are often told to start their query letter with a hook, and it has to be a good one. Want proof that literary agents are only reading the first few lines?

Three e-mail queries that I sent were answered, one a request for a manuscript and two rejections. All three were addressed to the name on my e-mail address, which is not my legal name and not the name that I used to sign the letters. Obviously, the agents never got all the way to the bottom of a three paragraph letter. One was snagged by the hook, and two were not. A sharp hook is needed to land an agent.

Do you wonder if agents remember the names of those who sent queries before? If they only read the opening sentences of a query, then probably not. However, I have sent Marcy Posner (now at Sterling Lord Literistic) three queries in the past couple of years, with requests for partials on the previous two.

At first, I was surprised that she remembered my name, given that she rejected both partials. She thinks I've been busy writing, to send her so many queries. Well, yes, I have been busy writing, but I have been writing for the past five years. There are four completed manuscripts to be shopped, finished when I never gave a thought to being published because it seems so impossible. After three years of querying, I know for a fact that it is impossible.

The routine goes on - query, revise, query again. Another pig-headed, stubborn Irishman, unwilling to give up, practicing the art of the grand gesture in the face of certain defeat.

Today has been rejection-o-rama, a heavy Monday. Douglas Stewart did not fall in love with either the writing or the story - so I am now wondering if the revisions I made have weakened the novel. Then again, he was not interested in the story, and since he was rejecting a query with sample chapters, I can't really tell. Kirsten Manges finally got back to me with the form rejection I was expecting, and a few more form rejections turned up from query letters sent months ago and quite recently. Time to focus on the fifth novel, still being drafted, and maybe the partials and fulls out on the first three will draw a nibble.

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