A revised query hook & a Flogometer prize

This business of writing novels has a never-ending learning curve, doesn't it? Even after you've learned enough about craft and storytelling to create a passable novel, then you've got to learn how to write a query letter. And the "hook."

"Hook" is what blogging agent  Miss Snark calls the collection of words that she wants to see in a query letter that compels her to ask for a sample of the novel. In her recent Happy Hooker Crapometer go-round, almost 700 writers submitted 250-word hooks to be judged. Or, in her case, snarked.

I was one of them. Here's the hook I submitted:

What if what we think of as "magic" is real? Not the anything-is-possible sorcery of Harry Potter, but the control of a natural energy to cure illness . . . to "fly" . . . or to kill?

What does having that ability do to people? What happens if we discover them living in secret among us?

In FINDING MAGIC, Ailia, a healer, has that ability. So do the clans made up of her kin that hide from normal society, fearing persecution. And so does Gabriel River, a man who "sees" when people lie and has been isolated by his otherness since childhood.

Ailia is a woman who loves too much. Crushed by grief when her beloved husband is killed, she aims to end her life -- but a pit bull of a Homeland Security agent discovers her "difference" and charges into pursuit.

Fleeing to protect her kin, Ailia draws Gabe into her escape. He learns that he and his five-year-old son share the lineage that gives Ailia her abilities, a gift that's driving Gabe's son into autism. Ailia's heart goes out to the child, and her desire for life returns.

But then a clan leader, seeking revenge for the murder of his son by ordinary people, creates a way to infect non-clan humankind with mad cow disease. With Homeland Security closing fast, only Ailia, with Gabe's help, can stop the plague. She's forced to choose between living while others die and sacrificing her newfound life to save humanity from a gruesome death.

Here's Miss Snark's reaction:

Too many people roaming around to make this easy to follow. Give us the main person. If she's got magical abilities why does she fear persecution? Surely she can just blister any enemies with a sneer? -- oh wait..thats Miss Snark! I meant to say blister her enemies with a wave of her hand.

And you've got a lot of bad guys: homeland security, rival clan leader, a plague.

I'm not sure what "real magic" is exactly and this doesn't help me figure it out. ( I know poodles can fly; I've seen it. And if you think people can't fly you haven't seen Miss Snark on the rope line for the red carpet at: Oceans 11, Oceans 12, syriana, the good german,the perfect storm, good night and good luck..well, you get the idea.)

You said "what does having that ability do to people" but we don't see anything about what it's like.

Okay, so for her it didn't work. However, a query letter based on this hook has so far generated requests for a partial and a full from agents, so there must have been elements that worked for them.

I could just tell myself that, well, this business is subjective and that maybe I don't need to rework my hook. Miss Snark's opinion is just the take of one person. And she doesn't even handle fantasy. And two agents did go for it, right?

Wrong. The learning curve is still there. While my query worked with two agents, it failed with, well, a multiple of that. Maybe a better "hook" would have made the difference. Maybe I can answer some of the questions/objections noted by her Snarkness.

So I rewrote the hook for my novel, using some of the insights garnered from Miss Snark's comments on hundreds of them. I have no idea whether or not this version would pass her muster. For one thing, it's more than 100 words longer. And I don't know if it has enough single-character focus to engage her.

But maybe it's better, although I'm feeling it's too long -- more of a mini-synopsis. Tell me what you think. Here's the version du jour.

The premise: While the anything-is-possible sorcery of Harry Potter is fantasy, I got to wondering: what if there's a real, limited-but-powerful natural energy that some people can control to manipulate objects . . . to cure illness . . . or to kill? What would having that ability do to people?

The story: Like most of her kindred, Ailia can control the free-flowing energy they call lledri. As her clan's healer, she uses it to cure sickness and heal wounds, but it can't help her overcome grief from her husband's murder. She's about to end her life when a pit bull of a Homeland Security agent detects Ailia's use of lledri. The agent attacks, believing that she's found a new kind of terrorist.

Because Ailia and the clans of her people live apart, fearing a return of the persecution of times past when they were tortured for being witches, she can't let the clans be discovered. She runs.

Ailia draws Gabe River into her escape, a man who "sees" when people lie and has felt isolated by his otherness since childhood. He learns that he and his five-year-old son share the lineage that gives Ailia her abilities, a gift that's causing what seems to be autism in Gabe's son. Ailia's heart goes out to the child, and her desire for life returns when she decides to help him.

But Ailia and Gabe are captured and then tortured by the Homeland Security agent. A clan leader offers to free Ailia if she will help him take revenge on humanity for the death of his only son. She refuses, so he breaks Gabe free instead, for the same purpose. Then Ailia escapes to warn her people that their secret has been exposed.

The clansman dupes Gabe into using his exceptional lledri "touch" to do recombinant genetic manipulation that creates a highly infectious, mutant strain of mad cow disease. It will wipe out non-clan humanity.

With Homeland Security closing fast, only Ailia, with Gabe's help, can prevent a pandemic. She's forced to choose between living while others die and sacrificing her newfound life to save Gabe, his son, and millions more from a horrific death.

As you can see, I persist in thinking that the idea of the story has some interest. I've sent out more queries using this hook. We'll see. I suspect that sooner or later I'll redo this one as well. If you have any constructive criticism regarding the above, I'd be glad to hear from you. Every little push up that learning curve helps.

---

Coming soon: the Flogometer Critique.

I thought Miss Snark did a marvelous service for writers with her examination of many, many hook samples. I want to offer a similar service to you: a critique of the FIRST 200 words of your novel. That's the equivalent of the 15 double-spaced lines that appear on a manuscript's first page when the chapter starts about 1/3 of the way down (as it should), with 1-inch margins.

Your writerly objective: to create an opening page that compels me to want more. This should make you really concentrate on making every word count, and make sure you raise at least one story question in those first few paragraphs.

The Flogometer is NOT YET OPEN for submissions. I figured you might want to take a little time to really focus on those first 15 lines and do a little editing and polishing. They had better gleam like the steel hooks they should be. It wouldn't hurt to browse through the FtQ writing category   for coaching that may help.

What will happen is that I'll post with brief notes, i.e.

• Read more, with reasons why, plus notes if I see places for improvement.
• Pass, with reasons why.
  

There's a prize, too -- a mostly free edit of someone's first 3 chapters.

I'm working out just how to structure this, and will lay it all out in a coming post, but I'm thinking that I can offer a "prize" to the most compelling novel opening: an edit of the first three chapters if I have permission to post excerpts from the edits on FtQ.

I'll email the writer with the best opening (IMO, though I will urge people to comment) and offer the edit. As you see in the archives, many writers have done this with shorter samples, and they haven't regretted it. If the winner doesn't want their work to be posted, I'll move on to the second-ranked opening. There are no free lunches, and the price for this edit is my use of it in the blog.

It would be helpful if you were to let me know if you're interested in submitting something to the first ever FtQ Flogometer Critique (email: ray @ editorrr dot com). But please don't send any submissions yet.

For what it's worth,

Ray

Free edit. Email a sample for an edit that I can post here.

ARCHIVES .

© 2007 Ray Rhamey

Comments

[Pati Nagle]

Hi, Ray -

Your revised hook is much clearer. I'd drop the premise and just go with the hook itself. Good luck and I hope you get many requests from this one.

[Scott Ripley]

The new hook is much better paced. Some comments:

>She's forced to choose between living ... and >sacrificing ...death.

How about OR ? It more clearly separates the first choice from the second one. I had to read that sentence a couple times to make sense of the division.

I'd also make her choice to live more problematic. In the reader's eyes, it's a mean, selfish choice to decide to live while letting millions of others die, even though the reader might 'choose life' themselves if it were their own life. But if she had to live to keep her own people alive, then it's a bigger choice than just, "I want to see who's the next American Idol, so nuts to humanity!"

I also (and this is being picky here) find the DHS agent a little hokey, mostly because no government agent works alone. So either DHS has declared all these folks terrorists, in which case many agents are after them, or this DHS guy is "off the reservation," and it's more personal for him. In that case, it could be that he's one too, and he wants to kill off all the others and rule the world or something.

My $.02, but all I have is a nickel, so keep the change.

[Fred]

Isn't it odd how good a hook can sound to us, the author, while the agent is looking for something completely different. I got Snarked as well, brought up multiple protags and multiple antags and got a "Who's the main guy? Pick one? Who's the antagonist"

Well, while I do have a "main" protag, and a "main" antag, my novel is far from mano-a-mano, I have three significant protags and four "sub" protags, and two significant antags and two "sub" antags, so I doubt Miss Snark's formula will work effectively for mine, and I'm not about to change the story to suit an agent's formula. Though, her comments on other hooks were imensly helpful in definig what a hook actually is.

What strikes me is the different mind set I have to be in in order to write a hook versus writing my novel.

Good luck with yours.

Fred

[Bill Peschel]

FWIW, here's what went through my mind reading your hook. Generally, the writing is fine, but I ran into phrases and sentences that raised questions about the story.

I certainly believe that you've answered these questions in your story, and that space limitations prevent you from going deeper into these issues. But I'll present these anyway and see what you think.

* The premise doesn't match the synopsis. The phrase "What would having that ability do to people?" implies that a story about a person who discovers he's capable of magic and the effect it has on him. The synopsis is a suspense story about Homeland Security discovering that power and attempting to seize control of it. See the mismatch?

* "She's about to end her life when a pit bull of a Homeland Security agent detects Ailia's use of lledri. The agent attacks ..."

If she's about to end her life — and the sentence implies that she's got her finger on the trigger / pills / window ledge — why would she care what this agent does?

* "Ailia draws Gabe River into her escape, a man who "sees" when people lie ..."

I get the impression that this is his particular talent, since it is mentioned (and doesn't surface in the rest of the synopsis). I assume that it's not, since he's being asked to create a killer strain of mad cow.

Two other comments

1. At the risk of sounding silly (or maybe just geeky), it seems improbable that the system of magic implied here includes the ability to perform recombanent DNA manipulation. I can see healing being performed by "seeing" the source of the infection and moving it or destroying it. I can even see someone create a malignant disease through this same "seeing". But as written, it appears that Gabe is more of a lab machine than a magician. It's like watching Gandalf create a 50MW laser instead of a lightning bolt.

2. How can Gabe be duped if he can detect lies?

[Fuzzy]

Like one of the commenters above, I like this hook much more than the original, but would drop the "premise," which I don't think adds anything and is still confusing (the fact that you distinguish your mystical force as "real" and "natural" for purposes of your novel doesn't make it any less like normal old fashioned "magic" to the reader).

Also, I would shorten/revise the last three paragraphs; it goes into a lot of detail. Actually, I still like Celia's edit (in a comment to a previous post) best of all.

But I'm not a writer, or an agent, or an editor, or at all connected with the book world. Success is the best measure of a hook's worth, and if you've had success in grabbing agents' attention, then I freely admit it is presumptuous (and probably not terribly helpful) of me to advise you on how to conduct your business.

[FG]

Lose the first paragraph. While there may be a recent crop of Harry Potter wannabes featuring anything-goes magic, that is far from standard fantasy fare (outside of humor). It's quite unnecessary to say so and makes you sound like you haven't read much fantasy. Writing in a genre you don't read is a bad idea. Advertising that fact is even worse.

If you haven't already (and I don't think you have), read Wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm, The Godmother by Elizabeth Scarborough, and Ill Wind by Rachel Caine.

Your subgenre is Urban Fantasy. Identify it as such. That implies the contemporary setting, rendering comments objecting to the juxtapositon of kindred and clan with Homeland Security into evidence of cluelessness.

On the other hand, if you can get over thinking you have invented something new and recognize that your story fits squarely within a well-established genre and subgenre, your story sounds quite interesting. It's one I would read.

[EGP]

Well, here are my thoughts. I am being blunt and I apologize in advance if that is not want you want. It goes without saying that I could posisbly be full of crap.

The hook is just the first few lines - most of the rest of it is not really the hook. And I liked the one that got snarked better than your revision. That is:

What if what we think of as "magic" is real? Not the anything-is-possible sorcery of Harry Potter, but the control of a natural energy to cure illness . . . to "fly" . . . or to kill?

What does having that ability do to people? What happens if we discover them living in secret among us?

I like this, I knew exactly what you were talking about, and I wanted to find out more. The rewritten draft did not create as much urgency.

Then, quite frankly, in both drafts, I got bored. If I was an agent, I imagine I'd worry that your writing was even more boring, since the hook/query is supposed to grab even more than the book. Too many specifics and plot summary for a hook. I felt that the first version was also better when it came to this. There's a fine line between describing tension and creating tension, and most of the rest of the your query is describing tension.

In the first part, I'd only make minor tightening up changes (no "..." in writing that is intended to grab people), something like this:

What if what we think of as "magic" is real? Not the anything-is-possible sorcery of Harry Potter, but the limited control of a natural energy to cure illness, to "fly", or even to kill?

What does having that ability do to a person? What happens if we discover them living among us?

For the rest of it, my best suggestion is to stay as far as possible away from a synopsis as you can. I'd largely keep the paragraph from the original that begins "In Finding Magic. . ."

After that, I would look closely at how you can create tension instead of describe it. For instance, you might say something like this:(just a quick draft), "Ailia is suffering from an all-too human emotion, grief at the lost of a loved one. Her grief is interrupted, however, by the threatened exposure of their abilities to the world.

Ailia runs, hoping for safety in the anonymity that has always protected her. Soon she is drawn into a battle, not only with external enemies, but with radical elements of her clan who seek to use their power in a pre-emptive attack. With the lives of millions of people and the future of her clan at stake, Ailia must decide just how much she is willing to sacrifice."

Ok, now the last clause of the last sentence I wrote is trite, but you get the idea. I would also consider perhaps substituting a mention of Gabe's son's instead of Gabe in the paragraph where you introduced Gabe. Then you could possibly insert another reference to the son towards the end. The main point is to never drift into an outline in a hook/query.

[Anne C.]

I liked the revised version better. When I was reading the first one, I felt like it was a story I had encountered before, especially the "plague," which sounded like one of the X-men movies. When I read the second one, your individual voice was much clearer and I was more intrigued.
I agree with FG about the "urban fantasy" genre. Just use the label, because otherwise sounds like you are embarrassed to say it's a fantasy. The fantasy genre already includes everything from god-like magic to simple herb-mistresses. It's not a bad thing to belong to such a varied genre.
Good job on the rewrite and good luck!

[katiesandwich]

I am alone, apparently. I liked the first hook better. Still don't know why, though, but I'll think on it and try to get back to you. Sorry if I can't be more helpful!

[Crystal Charee]

I remember the original from the crapometer, and your revised hook is MUCH better. I'd actually read this one. But leave the premise out. It doesn't add anything to the story, and readers can find out your HP theory as they go along.

Be sure to consider the source, though. I didn't include enough detail in my hook for some of the snarklings.

[MizTreeze]

Revised version is MUCH better (I understand it, at least), but still too long IMHO.

[Mai]

By allowing yourself so many words, you set yourself up for dilution of impact and focus.

There are issues of distraction and unevenness of intensity and flow: In the premise, the personal nature of "I got to wondering" distracts from the communication you're trying to initiate. Leading a paragraph with a conjunction such as "while" or "but" puts the brakes on for the reader -- is this what you want to do at any point? To draw someone into an escape is a contradiction in speed, unless escape is a game they're playing on a lazy afternoon.

The focus on your main character still isn't strong enough. Why not say she can't heal herself? It's more direct than saying lledri can't help her, and thus stronger.

I think if you cut it to half the word count, you'll have something quite good.