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.
Eleven-year-old Frederick David Jones is bored of school and routine and boredom. In general, having a main character who is bored can be a hard sell. Reading about someone else's boredom is... boring. You've also got an echo here (repeated use of the word). Instead, find a synonym - unfullfilled, dissatsified.. etc His solution: wander into the woods. When he accidentally drifts off, What does this mean? Floats away? Falls asleep? he wakes up Aha! Fell asleep - but you need to say as much to find the trees have grown about a hundred feet tall and look about a million years old. But did they, actually? Is he in a different place or in a Rip Van Winkle situation? A spirit lady warns that the world is fading and he must strive to “remember.” What does this mean? What world is fading? What does he need to remember? How does he feel about this? Back home, after months of trying to reconcile the two worlds, a failed attempt to run away, from what / who? and a whole lot of magically skipping through time, this is potentially confusing - is he skipping through time in our world? Their world? What is the connection to the plot? What is he trying to remember? Which world is fading and what is at stake? he meets Sage Namid Luna, a weird, home-schooled kid who just moved from the countryside and who has no qualms about holding hands. They venture into the woods and pass into the other realm, but everything has turned monochrome and misty, and the spirit has become a monster. They flee, but when Frederick emerges from the fog, Sage is gone. I don't really understand how all of these things form together to create the plot.
Frederick must resist an ever-strengthening time-skipping curse, gather his friends, escape the authoritarian adults, and charge into the woods (now crawling with cops) to find Sage and stop the insatiable spirit-turned-monster even as the greyness seeps into the eyes of the people around him and the fog leaks between worlds, throwing into question the separation of the two places and threatening to blanket everything and everyone in mindless, colorless, everlasting nothing.
Why is time skipping a curse? He was bored to begin with, now time skipping is a curse, not fun? Was it fun in the first place? What is he trying to remember and why will that stop the grayness? You say he has friends, but they're not mentioned. He sounds like a loner. Why are the adults authoritarian? Why did he try to run away? If the spirit is now the monster, was her warning bad... or good? Should the places be separate? Is that bad or good? you can see that right now I have a lot of questions about how these disparate elemeents tie together to create the actual plot, and the query will need to do more work to illustrate that.
FREDERICK AND THE WOODLANDS is a 51,000-word YA If he's 11, it's definitely more MG novel somewhere between urban fantasy and magical realism. Its primary audience is 12-18, but it will appeal to a wide range of ages. That may be true, but they want to market it to a certain age group, and kids tend to want to read UP - by that I mean, about kids older than them. They don't want to read about younger kids. With your protag being 11, this is definitely in the MG realm The novel uses magic as a means to explore such relevant themes as coming of age, conformity, expectations, belonging, consumerism, ontology, and the human-environment relationship in today’s dynamic world. It very well could, but I don't see those reflected in the description above.
Elements of the story and voice evoke books like Colin Meloy’s WILDWOOD, Katherine Paterson’s BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA and Brandon Mull’s FABLEHAVEN; movies like Wes Anderson’s MOONRISE KINGDOM, Hayao Miyazaki’s MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO, and Guillermo Del Toro's PAN’S LABYRINTH; and shows like Patrick McHale’s OVER THE GARDEN WALL and the Duffer brothers’ STRANGER THINGS. Good comps, but too many - pick two!
I am a young writer living in Fort Collins, Colorado, where I study political economy and environment in graduate school. I have been published in a local magazine and a college literary journal, and I have a minor in creative writing. This project—hopefully—will be my first published novel. Name your college journal and don't bother mentioning that you don't have any novel credits yet - it's assumed.
I hope you will consider FREDERICK AND THE WOODLANDS for representation. Please find the first [] pages below. Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.