18. Behind the Scenes: What Will Make Your Query Jump Out of an Agent’s Slush Pile

In this episode, Suzy goes beyond the basics to discover how to get your query letter noticed. 

Topics include, the competitive nature of querying, statistics on the number of queries agents receive, and the small percentage that result in representation. She highlights the importance of grabbing an agent's attention quickly. Suzy emphasizes that simply following the rules isn’t enough to stand out.

Suzy discusses how the “Show Don’t Tell” technique can be applied to query letters. She provides examples of how to describe key plot points and character dilemmas in an engaging way that showcases the writer's voice.

The episode concludes with encouragement for writers who have faced rejection. Suzy shares insights on when to move on from a project and how to keep a positive outlook.

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Transcript

0:49

Welcome to Show Don't Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vadori, where I teach you the tried and true secrets to writing fiction, nonfiction, that are going to wow your readers broken down step by step. We're going to explore writing techniques. I'm going to show you a glimpse behind the scenes of successful writers careers that you wouldn't have access to otherwise. And I'm also going to coach writers live on their pages so that you can learn and transform your own storytelling. Whether you're just starting out, you're drafting your first book, you're editing, or you're currently rewriting that book, or maybe even your 10th book, this show is going to help you unlock the writing skills that you didn't even know you needed. But you definitely do. I'm so excited. I'm so looking forward to helping you get your amazing ideas from your mind onto your pages in an exciting way for both you and your readers, so that you can achieve your wildest writing dreams. And you're going to also have some fun doing it. Let's dive in. I was inspired to create this podcast episode because a client of mine got fantastic news this week. We've been working really hard on her query letter and her book happens to be nonfiction. So we've also been working on her nonfiction proposal. But in this episode, I'm going to talk about making sure your query gets the attention in the context of both fiction and nonfiction. I work with clients to get results with both. Listen on if you're in the process of crafting the perfect query because you've got your heart set on publishing your book traditionally and you're trying to find an agent to represent you and help make it happen. Just a heads up, if you're looking for a query template, I won't go into it in the podcast, but I do have a template that has all the sections you need that you can grab. In the show notes, so go get it there. There are lots of resources out there that will tell you how to look professional when you query and what's expected. Definitely follow these suggestions, but today I'm here to tell you that looking professional or just acceptable isn't going to get you past the slush pile. That's the stack of queries, synopses, and first pages that an agent used to have on their desk. That they might wade through themselves or have help to skim. And yes, I mean skim, at least at first, and I'll explain for that. They're looking for that diamond in the rough. Nowadays, that slush pile is a queue of unread emails piling up that the agent must address to get back to inbox zero. This podcast is going to share tips to get your query noticed. Beyond just being acceptable. To make it truly sparkling. And, I'll tell you why querying with anything else is Wasting your time and theirs. Okay, back to the writer who had that great news this week. After three drafts and numerous brainstorming sessions together, we both agreed that her query letter was ready. It was really different from where she started out, and I'll talk about why that happened a little bit later in this podcast. As it happened, she had a warm introduction, and she sent it directly to exactly one agent. And a few hours later, she got a personal response of interest, and a request for the full proposal, which is the equivalent in fiction of getting a request for a partial manuscript. So, That's her batting a hundred percent so far, and of course that could change. She's not gonna get every single one if she goes and queries a hundred agents. She's not gonna get a hundred. Well, maybe she will, but still getting a response is a bigger deal than you might think even though that's what we always want. And I absolutely love hearing from my clients, and they don't talk about this enough. Because I do hear from clients all the time that have success and I forget to share it. You guys need to hear the success stories too, not just about the rejections, right? But I love hearing from clients, especially those who appreciate it so much when they start getting actual answers and feedback from agents versus rejections. Or even worse, you could get no response at all. Many times when you query, no response means no. And that can leave you wondering if they got your query at all. Right? Because this kind of immediate response, regardless of whether she gets represented or ends up selling this book for my writing client, is evidence that the query letter worked. It grabbed the agent's attention and made her ready to review the proposal and the sample chapters that we had prepared. And that's the job of the query letter, right? This writer was actually super thrilled because she'd written two fiction novels previously and had been through this process before, never finding representation for those books. But getting this kind of response from an agent isn't as rare as you might think. In fact, with writers I work with, it's, it's common. So common that when I shared the news with my hubby who was there when I got the excited email on my phone He was like, well, yeah, doesn't, isn't that what you do with people? He was kind of nonchalant about it because I try to share this news as often as possible in my home and my family's like Yeah, your clients get represented all the time or get, get responses, right? But it's hard to explain to those outside the industry. But if you're in the query trenches, you probably know what I'm talking about and how exciting that must be, right? Because I see writers consoling each other all the time over rejections on social media and quoting, Well, you know, you have a 1 percent chance. Keep going. You've got this. All it takes, or they'll say, all it takes is one agent to love it. You've got this, right? Gotta say, this isn't helpful advice, and it's not ever what I see happening, not in the least. I see writers getting consistent feedback, or none at all. Sure, when you average it out, and one writer gets like 20 percent of agents asking for something, like a response, and four others get none. And they all have the same number of queries. You could report that every writer should expect a 4 percent response. But that's not true at all. In fact, it's super misleading. The writer getting responses? We'll keep getting them. And the ones who aren't are probably wasting time and energy continuing to query. So let me show you what I mean, because it's, it's not an insurmountable problem. As an agented author, editor, and book coach myself, I have many agents in my sphere. I go to conferences, I meet them, I know many agents personally, and some stats that a top New York agent shared with me at a conference a few years ago stuck with me and really impacted how I coach writers. through the query process. So I'm going to share that with you today. He shared that he gets 8, 000 queries a year. Out of those, he asks for about 50 partial manuscripts. Those can, partial manuscript requests, they might ask for anywhere from a few chapters to half the book and it depends, right? That's out of 8, 050 partial manuscripts. That's it. He ends up requesting 5 to 10 full manuscripts a year and he signs one or two new clients. I want you to just Take that. Let that sink in for a minute. That's it. Of course, this is an established agent who represents a full roster of Super successful writers already. A newer, less established agent may take on more writers per year and probably will receive less, or in some cases more depending on how popular they are, queries. But think about it for a minute. 80, 000 queries. Even if that agent worked 365 days per year, that means they'd be reviewing roughly 22 queries per day. That's insane. If they took weekends off and immediately two weeks off per year, that number would jump to over 30 queries every single day that they have to assess. And do something with. Now, remember, these agents already have a full time job representing the clients that they have. And this is just one of the things on their plate. So you can see, when you're frustrated and you're like, Okay, agents are closing to query. There's a lot of agents who don't accept queries year round for this reason. They don't want to do that, or they don't have the bandwidth to do that, and they don't want you to wait indefinitely. It's not fair, right? But, I want to say, if your assumption going into the querying process is that someone on the end of your query, and that's receiving it, is carefully reading your letter, and musing it over the way that you did, think again. That is not to say that they treat it flippantly, or That it means that, you know, agents aren't reading queries. Absolutely they do, but it means that the first pass needs to really grab them. They all have their methods, right? If it doesn't grab them, they have to move on quickly. And if it does grab them, they might spend more time musing and mulling it over, right? That's what we're hoping for. So, the first job of your query is to grab them. The agent that I mentioned before shared also that he skimmed the queries and then read the first sentence of the submitted pages before deciding. He then made a decision whether or not to spend more time. Isn't that nuts? The first sentence. Whether to give it another look. That's, that, that was the criteria. Other agents have shared with me that they look at the writing first to see whether they want to read the query. Right? They may look at the writing first and not the query. Each agent has a process of getting through their slush pile in a manageable way, but the bottom line is this. Being okay, having an okay letter or being professional or correct that you followed all the rules in your query is absolute table stakes. It is expected, but isn't enough to get past, right? It has to go above and beyond to stand out. So if you come from, you know, a technical writing background, a business writing background, somewhere where. If you think that writing pitches and queries is easy, you might actually be in a disadvantage because you might actually make it so professional that you're missing your secret sauce. Okay? So I'll show you in this, I'll show you a few things that you can do in order to make sure that you're adding that back. I don't share this to scare you because What's going to catch an agent's eye isn't rocket science, and it isn't luck, it isn't a 1 in 100 chance, it isn't a 1 in 1, 000 chance. Your odds are much better than that if you follow some simple things. Here are some things that I coach writers on to make sure that their queries leap out of the slush pile. And sometimes when, when they end up getting agented and they meet them for the first time, the agent will actually ask them, how did you write that? What the heck did you do? Or who did you work with? Because they're a little bit different and they do stand out. When I work with writers on query letters, I take off my editor's hat, which When I'm wearing that editor's hat, the writer is the god of their own story, and I make suggestions, but I let them lead, and they can choose which ones to follow and which ones not to follow. But when I work on queries, I push them hard to make their queries over the top interesting. Now, mind you, while staying true to the story they've written, of course, there's no sense in lying, because once you get past the query, If the book doesn't match, the answer's going to be no anyway. But I pushed them. Once, a writer and I went back and forth on one word a few times, and eventually she agreed to use my more salacious suggestion to describe her spicy romance. What happened? More than half of her queries got a full manuscript request using the spicier version, and she ended up agented with a trad book deal. It's a hundred percent worth it to spend that time. I will say, of course, that there are exceptions to every rule before I give you these lists of things that you can do that are going to make it over the top. There are exceptions to every rule. Yeah. But every piece of advice I share is to make your chances greater that the agent will spend the time to truly consider your book. Okay. The first piece of advice. Do your research. Be clear on what you've written. Know your genre and the sub genre. Know, and your word count shouldn't be wildly outside the normal range, because that actually signals to the agent that you haven't done your research. It's an easy reason for them to not look at it further. Remember those 8, 000 queries? Yours is gone. They don't need to look at it. You didn't do your research, right? Your chances of a yes increase exponentially. If 70 out of 100 agents you query take a few extra minutes with your query rather than slipping by and saying, you know, only being considered by the five. who are okay with you breaking a rule in your genre, like word count. There are some, but you're really narrowing your chances, so don't make it hard on yourself. Don't compare your book to that breakout novel in your genre, because that's wildly outside of that range, because established writers have a lot more leeway once they've established that readership, because it reduces risk for publishers. They know it's going to sell. Second piece of advice. This one's hard. It's, it's mindset stuff, guys. Give yourself permission to describe your books in the biggest terms you possibly can, reflecting your grandest vision. This is not the time to be humble or to downplay the events in the book, hoping that the agent will be wowed by your pages. If you skip this and you play it small, they will not get to your pages. Okay. I want to caveat this, make a note. When I say, describe your book's events in the biggest terms and don't be humble. That doesn't mean to tell the agent what they should think. Do not try to tell the agent that they will be wowed. You'll be wowed by what you're going to read. They don't need your assumptions, right? And this is actually a pet peeve of many agents that's going to earn you an instant rejection. Don't tell them what to think of your book. You have to show them why they're going to love your book by describing it and sharing it. Show them, which leads me to the next point. I can't wait to share with you. Number three, show, don't, okay. So you're listening to the show, don't tell podcast with me, Susie Vidori. But it might come as a surprise to you that this technique can be used in your query letter. I personally, I love show, don't tell so much. I think it can be used everywhere. And if I could. I'd grind up a little shototel and sprinkle it in my morning coffee. It's just that good of a concept. But what do I mean by this? Okay, by the time a writer gets to me and wants my help with a query letter, they've often gotten many rejections. They don't understand why because they've researched the query process and maybe you have too and they followed all the rules and they read their query and to me it's pretty obvious because I read a lot of them. It's boring. Not that the events in their book are boring or that it's not professional. It usually is. But if you follow the formulas out there blindly, And describe the protagonist's problem, what's at stake, the difficult choices they have to make, without showing us what's unique about them, or the cool world that you've created, it's flat and sounds like everything else the agent has read that day. Okay? What ends up happening is we try to put so many events in there, right? We try to share so many things within the word count that you're trying to do, keeping it all to one page. That you end up boiling it down and taking out anything interesting. So, I would rather see you strip it right back. Okay? Strip it right back. Do the formula and lay out your pitch in its barest form to start. Don't have the side plots. Don't introduce extraneous characters. Stay with your main character. Go, you know All the stuff that's out there, get it in your barest form. But then, layer back your cool showing details. So, instead of telling the agent that Sally's husband dies, leaving her alone, show us that the book is actually set in 1998. By saying, Sally answers her flip phone and nearly collapses outside the record shop as the cop's voice on the other end of the phone makes her a widow, right? So much more interesting. Look at what we did there by adding just a few extra words. Instead of telling us Marvin has to make a choice, stay and fight, or leave his planet. That sounds like a great dilemma to put in there. Show it! Marvin's hand trembled over the button that would send the ship into orbit. If he presses it, he may never return. If he doesn't, the ship will be infested with drooling aliens sporting swords in minutes. Right? You get to slip in that there's drooling aliens in your book. I don't know what's in your book. Whatever's in your book, make sure that your pitch is special. Do not dumb it down to the point where you, it could be you, you know, you've got all the kind of events, but you don't know what kind of book it is. What is it? If they read this book, what are they in for? If your pitch doesn't do that, it will not grab them. Okay, show, don't tell. I want to say something else because those two examples, you know, we had one that's like historical in 1998 and one that's, you know, maybe sci fi or on a spaceship. So you're like, okay, Susie, my book doesn't have those things. So that doesn't apply to me. It absolutely does. Do not skip this. Show, don't tell doesn't only apply to specialized worlds. It can also apply in a contemporary book, because even in a contemporary book or a world that you don't think of as science fiction or historical fiction as world building, you still have something special, and if you don't, you have a problem and you are not ready to query. Okay, so what would an example like that sound like? You could tell us that Paige has to decide if she wants to be alone forever or if she's brave enough to put herself out there. I mean, meh, but what if you added some showing details? The thought of watching Netflix and drinking wine alone every night for eternity was depressing, but the thought of posting an online dating profile tied Paige's stomach in knots. Right? Immediately, we get a sense of what the book is about that isn't in that more generic telling form. So, make sure when you're doing your pitch, I would rather have you keep it simple and add these details than make it more complex and miss this completely. Adding in the details of your world and your character's situation into your query is going to drag agents into your story. Yes, it absolutely is, but it also does other things. This is the cool part, right? It's also going to demonstrate to them what your voice is, what your, you know, that you have some writing skills, and it's going to show them what's unique about your book. By the time you're querying, hopefully you've honed these writing skills and you can use them in here. Use them to make agents. Sit up and take notice. Here's the thing. They may not have any idea why they love it, but they will, right? So have fun with it and don't be afraid to wear your heart on your sleeve. Take your biggest ideas and make sure they're there. You only get one shot with each agent. That doesn't mean to say if you get a rejection, there aren't lots of other agents out there. There are. But you only get one shot each time, so don't waste it with a mediocre, you know, quote unquote professionally acceptable query letter that won't get you the time of day. It isn't going to be exciting for them. It isn't going to get past their, it isn't going to get their attention. I want to leave you with one last truth about querying. Unfortunately, it's totally true, you could do everything right and still not get a response. So take it with a grain of salt, right? Because it could have to do nothing to do with whether or not you wrote an excellent query letter. It could have to do with market conditions in your genre, or the fact that your topic isn't popular, or it's oversold, or, you know, you might be behind the times. And it was so last year, or you're ahead of the times and people aren't ready for it yet. You can't control all of that. I'll tell you, before quitting my job to do all things writing full time, I was an executive. And one of the toughest jobs I ever held was as an associate partner of a private investment fund, where we routinely took pitches from fledgling tech companies looking for investors. What does this have to do with querying? I can tell you that from sitting on the other side of the table, even if the, you know, entrepreneur was awesome, the investment appeared sound and that hopeful entrepreneur nailed their presentation, there were other factors. In the decision making process of my company, was it a good fit for our mandate? Did we have the resources to help them? Did we see growth potential? Did we think the team had what it took to go the distance? A rejection from our fund didn't mean it wasn't a good investment. So, the same is true with querying. A rejection doesn't mean that you haven't written a good book. It doesn't. It just means that you and the agent that you're querying were not a good fit and they can't see it. So, yes, do the best you can to widen your chances, but if you're still not getting the responses, If you're sure that your query letter is the best it can be, you've had it reviewed and you're still not hearing back, my best advice, set a timeline for yourself and stick to it. So I'm going to query this for six months and if not, I'm moving on, right? It's not the end of the world because in today's industry, there are many valid and rewarding ways to publish your book. But if you still have your heart set on landing an agent, start writing. Because the show is your next book. I hope these tips, let me know in the comments if these tips, if you apply them and what response you get from agents. I'm really excited to hear. Don't be afraid. Put yourself out there and push yourself to make it better than just professional. That is not going to get past the gate. You've got to make it snappy. You've got to make it interesting and make sure that once they read that query, they know exactly what makes your book special and why they should give it more attention. Thanks for tuning in to Show Don't Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vidori. I'll be continuing to bring you the straight goods for that book you're writing or planning to write. Please consider subscribing to this podcast and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you're listening. Thanks. Also visit suzybedore. com forward slash newsletter to hop on my weekly inspired writing newsletter list Where you'll stay inspired and be the first to know about upcoming training events and writing courses that happen in my community If you're feeling brave check the show notes and send us a page of your writing That isn't quite where you want it to be yet for our show to tell page for you Remember, that book and your writing is going to open doors that you haven't even thought of yet. And I can't wait to help you make it the absolute best. If you're feeling called to write that book, keep going and I'm going to be right here cheering you on. See you again next week.