Query Letter Feedback
For anyone who would like to give/get responses to agent query letters as they evolve
If you attended Courtney Maum’s recent workshop on how to write an effective query letter (and even if you didn’t), you’re welcome to jump in here. Keep in mind that it takes a lot of courage to post writing of any kind, let alone ask for feedback, so responses should be constructive, specific and encouraging. “It feels a little long,” is helpful. “It’s boring,” is much less helpful. I know y’all know what I’m saying.
Thank you so much to those of you who wrote me. So excited to get started.
New (and final we hope) rewrite. Cut almost 200 words and it’s still over 450, but I think that this story needs a paragraph of context so I’m not sure I can cut more. Open to suggestions!
Dear Agent,
[Agent-specific sentence here]. I’d like to find representation for my 92,000 word literary fiction novel. THE GULLIBLE NATURE OF THE FEMININE KIND is about a bright young woman’s exit from a modern fundamentalist church. The perspectives of three women, entangled with the church, are pillared by seven standalone stories—disturbing, macabre, heroic—of women in the Bible.
Abigail Murdy works as a personal assistant to the fiery pastor of a church in Natagwa, Colorado, where men are invested with absolute authority and women don’t even pray aloud—because (as Eve’s apple episode proves) women are easy to deceive. Her intelligence may be a gift, but it won’t put a jewel in her eternal crown or help with her divine calling to marriage and motherhood. Abby is acutely aware that her inability to conceive isn’t helping with motherhood either.
Abby’s sympathetic husband allows her to enroll in classes at a nearby university and she finds herself suddenly living in dual worlds. At school she’s rapacious, wonderstruck, and comically naive. At home, her tiny rebellions begin to threaten both her marriage and job. Abby discovers that her pastor’s shady investments are behind the church’s financial crisis, and when she’s ultimately forced to choose between her community and her degree, it will be an unexpected alliance (of the feminine kind) that carries her through the open door.
THE GULLIBLE NATURE OF THE FEMININE KIND is a book about church secrets, curiosity, and female friendships, both ancient and modern. Friendships that can outlast marriages. Friendships that can take down kings.
The story is based on a real brand of American fundamentalism with millions of followers, which was featured in the hit Discovery Channel show 19 Kids and Counting, as well as a recent Amazon Prime documentary called Shiny, Happy, People. Interest in those programs and the publication of related memoirs seem to indicate a market for stories of people, who like me, broke away and are “deconstructing.” I once believed women had only two possible callings, marriage and children. I believed in absolute male authority, spiritual warfare, nationalism, and the celebration of ignorance. I witnessed healings, exorcisms (including my own), spoke in tongues, and expected the rapture at any moment. [Comps here.]
Today I am a graphic designer, co-founder of a tech company, and live in Bologna, Italy. One of my short stories was recently published in an anthology by Indignor Playhouse and two others were recently longlisted in short fiction competitions.
Thanks to Allison and Erin for the great feedback. Very helpful to know what wasn’t clear. Also just good to rewrite it and rewrite it. I think this version is much improved. It will probably answer your questions better but is probably too long. I think it’s supposed to be in the neighborhood of 450 and this is closer to 600. Of course, the question is always whether the extra length is worth it in some cases.
I cut the bit about the donuts and think that was a good call, but the thing is that the book has a lot of low-key humor and I’m worried it just sounds heavy. So I guess I just say that out loud. But I don’t think the tone of the book comes through in the letter. Maybe that’s okay.
Literary fiction actually is the genre, which is to say it doesn’t fit neatly in any sub genre, except maybe upmarket and/or women’s and it’s probably my own baggage but I have so dislike the idea of “women’s” fiction. It feels infantilizing. But then again, with this rewrite of the query, it’s sounding a lot like it should be on a shelf for women’s lit. I just freakin’ hate that there’s no men’s lit shelf. Is there? Did I miss that shelf?
I really love the idea of putting the autobiographical part up front (thanks for the creativity Sarah!), I get why that’s interesting. But I feel like feel like reader’s aren’t going to get that up front so maybe the agent shouldn’t either. The story summary has to be compelling or I need to rewrite the letter until it is. That’s why I need you all.
So here we go, version two:
Dear Agent,
I’m seeking representation for my 92,000 word literary fiction novel GULLIBLE. [Agent-specific sentence here].
GULLIBLE follows three women whose lives are entangled with a modern fundamentalist church in a depressed Colorado town.
Abby is a young secretary who works for Grace Tabernacle Church, but feels like an outsider because she can’t have children, and because her only real gift is a voracious appetite for learning—an ability with no eternal or practical value, since women are called by God to marriage and motherhood.
After years of secretly dreaming about a nearby university, Abby is permitted to take classes by her husband, mostly out of compassion because God has closed her womb. He does so in spite of disapproval from Abby’s boss, Big Dave, the founder and pastor of Grace Tabernacle, who does not think young women should be wandering around liberal campuses, “cesspools of secular humanism,” spiritually unprotected.
For four years, Abby finds herself in a sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying no woman’s land between two worlds. To her classmates, she seems like a girl just emerging from a lifetime in a bomb shelter. To her husband and Big Dave, she seems hellbent on risking her faith. And in fact, Abby is lying to them both about taking secular religion courses, which her husband expressly forbid.
Months before graduation, Abby stumbles across financial irregularities that implicate Big Dave and catalyze her personal evolution. Every small awakening threatens her marriage, her standing, and her job. When Big Dave finally gives her an ultimatum, she is forced to choose between the only community she’s ever known and the classes that give her soul oxygen.
Abby’s journey overlaps with that of Nolie, a defiant teen who is grieving the loss of her grandmother and who is forced to attend church by an iron-fisted mother. Nolie finds a desperately needed maternal figure in Tikvah, the older owner of an all-things-mystical store, considered an evil spiritual influence on the town. Tikvah, who has been isolated for years as a black non-Christian woman in a white fundamentalist town, needs Nolie just as much.
An unexpected connection between Nolie, Tikvah and Abby will give each the courage to do what they need to do. The points of view of these three women are layered with heartbreaking and heroic stories of biblical women—stories ignored or misused by fundamentalist churches like Abby’s.
GULLIBLE is a book about church secrets, curiosity, and female friendships both ancient and modern. Friendships that can outlast marriages. Friendships that can take down kings.
There appears to be a market for stories about modern American fundamentalism, given multiple recent memoirs [list here]. Interest in this brand of fundamentalism, with followers in the millions, drove the Discovery Channel show 19 Kids and Counting, as well as a recent Amazon Prime documentary called Shiny, Happy, People. The church in GULLIBLE is based on the movement featured in Shiny Happy People, which I was raised in. Themes like the absolute authority of men over communities and homes, spiritual warfare, nationalism, and the celebration of ignorance, are important to thousands of people who, like me, are “deconstructing.”
Abby’s story is similar to my own. I was in my mid twenties when I finally made my way out of the church. I once believed women had only two possible callings, marriage and children. I witnessed healings, exorcisms (including my own), spoke in tongues, and expected the rapture at any moment.
Eventually, I became a graphic designer, co-founder of a tech company, and moved to Bologna, Italy. One of my short stories was recently published in an anthology by Indignor Playhouse and two others were recently longlisted in short fiction competitions.
Comp books will go here. Still researching.