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.
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My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.
Separate Seating (100,000 words) is women’s fiction. It can be compared to the work of Naomi Ragen, Ruchama Feuerman, Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox), and Tova Mirvis (The Ladies Auxiliary); and to the Netflix series Shtisel. I tell everyone to start with a hook, not their data. Everyone who is querying has a title, word, count, genre, and comp titles. Start strong with what only your have - the hook for your book!
Three friends travel together to Rome to uncover a forbidden love story in Cinecitta, the city of cinema and a former D.P. camp. However they can't escape the painful choices awaiting them back home in Jerusalem. Whose love story is it? Why is it connected to all three of them? Why are they expressly traveling there to look into it? Why is it forbidden? Also, this is my ignorance showing, but I don't know what a D.P. camp is. What are the painful choices, and how are they related to the love story? Right now this is very vague, which isn't going to gain points.
Following her grandmother's death, betrayal sends Shulamit spiralling away from the ties of family and community, as she investigates her secret Roma heritage. What was the betrayal, and why would it drive her to look into her heritage?
Batsheva is single minded in her quest to be a perfect mother, until a medical diagnosis forces her to face an impossible decision: should she abort her baby? Again, why would this drive her to go on this trip? And what is the connection between these three? Are they friends / family?
Noa is smart, ambitious and determined to be the dedicated wife of a Yeshiva student. A workplace romance makes her question her heart's deepest desires. But what does that have to do with this trip? How are these women's stories connected, and how do the stories connect to the trip?
Set in the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community of Jerusalem, Separate Seating explores the conflict young women face in Israel's Ultra-Orthodox community, when age-old laws meet the modern world. But again, what do those laws have to do with these three stories, and the trip?
I am a Ultra-Orthodox writer, software architect, and mother of four. I hold a master's degree in Computer Science. My work has appeared in: Tablet Magazine, Mishpacha Magazine, The Times of Israel, and other publications.
Great bio! Right now everything here is too disparate to feel like it connects together to create a cohesive novel. You'll need to tie the women together in the present, their stories to the trip, and the entire concept to how their faith is conflicting with modern womanhood.