Tips for Writing an Ineffective Query Letter

1. Remember in Legally Blonde when Elle Wood printed her application out on pink paper and spritzed it with her personal scent? You should totally do this. It gives your query letter that extra razzle-dazzle to make it stand out from the endless collection of queries agents comb through every day. Of course, in this digital age, many agents only accept email submissions. In this case, you can achieve the same effect by using html formatting in your email to make it really exciting. Animations help. If you can turn your story title into a dancing .gif, you're almost guaranteed a request.

2. It's no good sending a query letter only to have it sit in an agent's inbox for months at a time. You have to make sure that an agent actually opens your email. The way to do this is with creative subject titling. Many sites offering querying advice will tell you to keep it simple, just use the name of your story and the word QUERY, or some other such nonsense. They're wrong. You need something that will really catch the agent's attention. Sometimes this might involve a bit of creative research. For example, if you can find out the name of the agent's beloved cat, then you can send a query with the subject title Your Cat Fluffy Ate All My Rat Poison (Greedy Bastard). A title like this guarantees an agent will open your email the moment it arrives.

3. Of course, all this work does you no good if your actual query letter isn't well-written and interesting.

• It should use vibrant and exciting language (like ZAP, POW and WHAMMY).
• It should explain why you want this particular agent to represent your work (another place where research can be an asset. The more personal, the better).
• It should make your book sound like something that has the potential to sell truckloads (try using the term "more popular than Harry Potter").
• It should sum up your story in enough breadth to make sure the agent understands all the important themes (if you can't accomplish this in a few paragraphs, just attach your whole story for them to read. Agents love attachments).
• It shouldn't take the focus away from the most important element of any good query letter: the author. You need a killer bio that explains your motivations for becoming a writer (money), your education (natural talent) and research (this blog). You also want to personalize your bio. Fun details from your medical history and past romantic relationships can give it extra zing.

4. After sending your query letter, you should hear back with an immediate request. Make sure you clear up any questions you have about future payment before sending your work in. Be careful! You don't want the agent stealing your work. They all secretly wanted to be writers like you, but couldn't come up with good ideas and thus turned to agenting. Putting watermarks on your pages is a good way to protect them.
Now all you have to do is sit back and wait for publication and the inevitable movie deal!

Serial Murderesses

I'm trying out a new series called Random Stuff I Find Interesting, or RSIFI. Mostly it'll contain research unrelated to any of my current projects in the hope that you'll find it interesting, too.

This one is Random Stuff I Find Interesting: Serial Murderesses Edition (Amelia Dyer)

One thing I've always found interesting is female serial killers. You don't get many of them and usually their reasons for murder are much more practical than those of male serial killers. Men often kill out of compulsion or obsession. Women tend to murder for money. There are other differences, such as women's tendency to use nonviolent methods. If a woman murders you, she's probably going to poison you, not stick a gun in your face. So, if you're having marital problems, you might want to take charge of the cooking.

One exception is Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess in Hungary who may have tortured and killed as many as 600 girls. She pretty much did it because she wanted to. There's motivation for you. The story is so sensational (in the bad way) that it's become infamous. (The part I find most interesting is that Bathory was never formally sentenced of any crime, but the four servants who assisted her were all found guilty, two of them suffering gruesome executions. It's good to be a noble!) (Unless it's the French Revolution.) If you want to know more, here's the wiki entry.

But the woman I've been reading about has less notoriety:

That's her. Creepy, isn't she? Looking at that face, would you believe that roughly 400 women handed their children over to her? Baby farming was a big thing in Victorian England, due to the stigma attached to bearing a child out of wedlock. Amelia Dyer preyed on single mothers by offering to adopt and care for their unwanted children. Of course, they'd have to pay for her services. Once Amelia had the money and the kid, she'd keep what she really wanted (the money) and get rid of what she didn't (the kid). She started by killing them through neglect - letting children starve to death was a common baby farming practice. But, eventually she found it more effective to just murder the kids she received.

When things got heated, she checked herself into mental institutions to escape scrutiny. Victorian mental institutions. Not the friendliest places ever. I think checking yourself into a Victorian mental institution must be one of the signs of insanity. However, most experts affirm that Amelia Dyer was not mentally ill, just shrewd and heartless.

She was finally caught when a bargeman found the body of a baby girl floating in the Thames. The baby was identified as being under Amelia's care and led to her arrest. Six more bodies were found in the Thames, as well as ample evidence at Amelia's residence of her activities. The jury found her guilty within 4 1/2 minutes and she was hanged for her crimes.

Wiki

True Crime Library

Timeline

Do you have a favorite serial murderess, from film, fiction, or life?

What's Your Revising Process?

I think I'm a bit of an anomaly, in that I love revising. First drafts are painful to slog through, but, the minute I finish my first draft, my heart gets all bouncy and I get annoyingly excited, because I know this is the good part. This is when I'll really get to know my characters, when small things will get shuffled around until they make sense, themes will emerge, and all the little subtleties will start to come through. It's just so... addictive and rewarding! Sure, by the time I've done my 4th revision, I'm not as excited about it, but, for now, it's yaysville.

Here's my process:

1. Buy a binder
2. Print out my draft
3. Buy a hole punch (because I accidentally left mine behind when we moved).
4. Punch holes in the papers
5. Put the papers in the binder
6. Create a reference sheet for every aspect of the story. Each character gets a sheet, where I list their qualities and quirks. I have a sheet for dialect. A sheet mapping out each location. Etc.
7. I skim through my work and write a sheet of general notes that I need to address (Inconsistencies, stuff that needs to be more present throughout the story, etc.)
8. I start revising, one page at a time. When stuff needs to be rewritten, I insert hand-written revisions into the binder. (There are a ton of them for my current project). Something about handwriting them forces me to really pay attention to what I'm writing and connect with it on a physical level. Every time an issue comes up, I add it to the general notes sheet.
9. I use sticky notes to create reminders for myself within the story. Oh, I love sticky notes. Sticky notes make my life amazing.
10. I end up with a very messy, very wonderful binder and a story with logical transitions and character motivations (in theory). My last step is to type it all up, from scratch, paying special attention to grammar and prose. It's at this point that I'm finally ready to send it out to readers for feedback. Then... more revisions! Yay!

I always end up with more words after revision than before. Rough drafts are like complex outlines to me. Most of the description doesn't happen until revision. Same with character intricacies. I'm not one of those people who has to cut away with every revision. If I did that, there'd barely be any story at all!

What about you? Do later drafts end up longer than earlier ones? Do you like revising, or is the bulk of your enthusiasm for the first draft? Have you developed a complicated process that works for you?

Why You Might Want to Come Up With Your Character Names Right Away. If You Like.

I have a habit of learning things the hard way. Even if someone tells me that something's a bad idea, I still have to try it out for myself. I guess I don't always believe advice applies to me until I fail on my own. So, you can take this advice, or you can, like me, find out for yourself.

Never give your characters placeholder names. I was having a horrible time coming up with names for my characters in Mysterious Other Novel and it was getting in the way of my writing progress, so I finally just gave them silly placeholder names. Now that I'm revising, I have three inappropriately named characters whose whole personalities have been built up around the silly names that they're not allowed to keep. This is giving me many headaches. I know, whatever names I settle on will never feel like their real names. I'll always think of them and see them by their stupid, stupid placeholder names. Darn me.

So, just don't do it. Turns out it's harder to change a character's name down the road than it is to come up with a good one in the first place. Learn from my mistakes. Or don't. If you dare.

Has this ever been a problem for you? How do you know when a character's name is the right one? Are there any you've been especially proud of?