The Saturday Slash

Don't be afraid to ask for help with the most critical first step of your writing journey - the query.

I’ve been blogging since 2011 and have critiqued over 200 queries here on the blog using my Hatchet of Death. This is how I edit myself, it is how I edit others. If you think you want to play with me and my hatchet, shoot me an email.

If the Saturday Slash has been helpful to you in the past, or if you’d like for me to take a look at your query please consider making a donation, if you are able.

If you’re ready to take the next step, I also offer editing services.

My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.

I am seeking representation for my thriller ALL THE MEMORIES COME TO KILL (89,000 words) in which a man is blackmailed into tracking down a serial killer by a mysterious woman with his same nightmares. Since this is a little convoluted I suggest jumping right in with your hook, and put title, genre, and word count at the bottom.

Jack Foster is a Hong Kong accountant busting the books of the Hong Kong Triads. After he uncovers a triad money-laundering scheme, the gang’s enforcer derails his investigation by brutally murdering Jack's his wife, Mara. Jack’s grief turns to anger after the police run out of clues.

Then a similar murder in Los Angeles makes the news. Jack quits his job to travel there and track the killer down. While waiting to depart, he’s sent a video depicting Mara's final moments. The trauma wipes all memory of her death and with it, any plans to investigate.. That seems incredibly unlikely. He lands in LA, convinced he’s arrived for a new job and Mara will soon be joining him. .But that's not a memory wipe, that's either hallucination or severe mental illness.

Only Jack’s subconscious isn’t about to give up. His vivid imagination creates a female alter ego. an alter ego for who? Himself? who blackmails him to continue investigating under the ruse her sister was the victim.. So he's blackmailing... himself? And for what? What did he do that is worth blackmailing him for? Together,they skirt the line between reality and fantasy while torturing suspects to very real deaths. Now a psychopathic enforcer must face his ultimate nightmare—a victim. But Jack isn't a victim, technically. His wife was. crazier than he is. Only Jack’s strength depends on believing Mara is still alive, and to complete his revenge, he must first accept her death.. Does he though? If he and this female alter ego are murdering people, aren't they on the path of the killer anyway?

For the most part, this is just confusing. I don't think you want to frame this as him having his memory wiped. It's more like a psychotic break, but to my understanding, those don't tend to last for a long time, the way you need it to for this plot to work. I don't understand what the alter ego is blackmailing him for, or really what's at stake since the end game will be the same - the death of the killer - whether Jack gets his memory back or not.

The Saturday Slash

Don't be afraid to ask for help with the most critical first step of your writing journey - the query.

I’ve been blogging since 2011 and have critiqued over 200 queries here on the blog using my Hatchet of Death. This is how I edit myself, it is how I edit others. If you think you want to play with me and my hatchet, shoot me an email.

If the Saturday Slash has been helpful to you in the past, or if you’d like for me to take a look at your query please consider making a donation, if you are able.

If you’re ready to take the next step, I also offer editing services.

My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.

HER MOTHER’S KILLER is a 71,000-word dual-POV, dual-timeline, adult psychological suspense with speculative elements. My novel is a twist on “Fatal Attraction" that combines dark secrets, trauma, and twisted relationships similar to “Look What You Made Me Do” by Elaine Murphy with the unreliable narrator and morally grey characters in "The Housemaid's Secret" by Freida McFadden. Good comp titles, they need to be in call caps, like your own title, while the name of a film should be in italics.

When Norma was eight, she testified to seeing her father murder her mother. Perhaps use "witness" instead of "seeing." He was sentenced to death.Combine these two sentences: "...her father murder her mother, sentencing him to death. She went through years of therapy, broken and alone.

Twenty years later, she's not the girl who put daddy behind bars. She's the woman looking for hook-ups with different men, deceiving herself that she isn't still broken, and keeping her distance from everyone-except the little girl no one else can see. A little more here. What is her relationship with this girl? Is she scared of it? Why does she not keep her distance from the little girl?

Tonight, the new man is Norma’s reserved boss, Paul. But when she beckons for him to come hither, he doesn't.

Paul knows he shouldn't touch Norma — he's the one who really killed her mother. But Norma is as seductive as her mother; the married woman he slept with when he was eighteen. Norma is Paul’s second chance at the only woman he's ever loved. But why would he / did he kill her mom? And also - ew - he thinks of Norma as his second chance at... her mother? How is the reader supposed to feel about Paul? Becuase this sentence makes me think he's a total creep, but the para below makes it sound like he's charming and an actual love interest. It's confusing.

Norma entices Paul into her typical hook-up. But I thought he rejected her? Does she try again, and succeeds? But she's captivated by Paul’s reserved boyish charm and falls desperately,obsessively in love. What about him? How does he feel? He appears to have rejected her, then went ahead and went through with it anyway? Then the little girl, the manifestation of herself as a child, helps Norma remember what she really saw when she was eight: Paul, not her father, killed her mother, destroyed her family, and broke her. But... why? Why would Paul kill her mom? And why would she not remember it that way? Getting an 18 year old boy confused with her father seems like a long shot, even for an 8 year old.

Now Norma's not thinking about hooking up. She's thinking about killing. But what's at stake? A query has to do a few things -- establish what the main character wants, what stands in their way of getting it, what they'll do to overcome the obstacles, and what's at stake if they fail. So... what's at stake? I don't have an indication of how the reader is supposed to feel about this relationship. Are we rooting for them? Not rooting for them? Is Paul a creep, or what? What is Norma's relationship with this little girl, and does she have any concerns at all about her own sanity, since she only has a relationship with a hallucination of her child self? This all needs to be much more fleshed out in order to be compelling.

The Saturday Slash

Don't be afraid to ask for help with the most critical first step of your writing journey - the query.

I’ve been blogging since 2011 and have critiqued over 200 queries here on the blog using my Hatchet of Death. This is how I edit myself, it is how I edit others. If you think you want to play with me and my hatchet, shoot me an email.

If the Saturday Slash has been helpful to you in the past, or if you’d like for me to take a look at your query please consider making a donation, if you are able.

If you’re ready to take the next step, I also offer editing services.

My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.

Benny Yonathan, a daredevil Mossad operative and his teammates must do the impossible before something terrible what is something terrible? happens to their country, the impossible which means destroying the Chavibdeh nuclear facility and the largest nuclear warhead on earth code -named, THE SECOND HOLOCAUST. Is the warhead called that, or this mission? Confused You wrote in your manuscript wish list that you're looking for plot-driven novels with strong voices. It might interest you to know that my project is a plot-driven novel with strong voices, and I strongly believe you're the right agent for my project. Stating that you've liked at your mswl is smart. You don't need to claim that you've got exactly that. It's implied that you think it's a fit.

As the Iranian government sets into motion the plot to remove the state of Israel from the map, the life of the Israeli nation,is now in the hands of Benny. "An Iran with a nuclear arsenal is the death of our country," the Mossad boss, Levi Moshe says grimly to Benny and his teammates before the they travel to Iran via Iraq as illegals for OPERATION SMILING CROCODILE. You definitely don't want to use dialogue in a query. This isn't a place to use snippets from the book.
Benny and his teammates embark on a search for Iranian citizens that can be suitable for operation smiling Crocodile. What does this mean? What do they need them for? What will they be doing? The search isn't an easy task, and it stretches for over four weeks. Their effort is rewarded when they find two Iranian brothers -Ali Khalid and Asad who hate their country with a passion but have not made it known to anyone. To say that the two brothers are excited about joining Benny's team would be a deadly understatement. They pledge their loyalty to the state of Israel and accept their roles willingly. Right now this is reading like a synopsis, not a query. You're walking us through the steps of the plot, rather than giving an overview for the plot, and a feel for the characters and tone / voice.
Sticking to the plan for Benny's cloak-and-dagger operation,What's the plan? Prime Minister Hinn's who is this? uncomplimentary speech about Iran goes viral and triggers a peaceful demonstration in Amadan, Iran. The peaceful demonstration that goes viral really repetitive language here is stage -managed and led by Ali Khalid and his younger brother, Asad. Following Benny's directive, Ali Khalid hurls curses and insults at Prime Minister Hinn and the state of Israel in a viral video. More repetition, and we're going even deeper into details in terms of this sounding more like a synopsis than a query Some hours later, an Israeli missile ballistic submarine in the Nigerian territorial waters launches a hypersonic ICBM to Amadan, Iran that destroys Ali Khalid's house. Ali Khalid and Asad later hurl curses and accusations at Prime Minister Hinn and the state of Israel for rendering them homeless in a viral video. The Iranian government officials hail Ali Khalid as their hero, little did they know that Benny is turning him gradually into an irresistible bait of ultimate destruction. Benny and his teammates wait patiently for a long time for operation smiling Crocodile to come to fruition. When the time is right, they pull off the cloak-and-dagger operation and face their last danger: the revolutionary guards. We went from intensely into the details to being incredibly vague and not giving us any clue what is going on.

A query needs to establish these things 1) What does the main character want? 2) What stands in their way of getting it? 3) What will they do to overcome the obstacles? 4) What's at stake if they fail? Some of these things are here, but certainly not all. And I have no feel whatsoever for who Benny is as a character. There's no voice or life here. Read examples of successful queries at Writer's Digest https://www.writersdigest.com/successful-queries and model yours after those. You're also pretty far over on word count by about 200 words or so. Get out of the details, answer the questions above, aim for more of an overview, and get some of who Benny is as a person into the query.