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.
The Asfours is a hopeful and moving upmarket 77,000-word family saga in the vein of The Vanishing Half, Little Women, and This Is Us. I always tell people to open with their hook. Everyone has a title and a word count. Start with what you have no one else does. Also I think describing your own work as "moving" an be off-putting. Of course you find it moving, someone else might not.
In Arabic, an asfour is a bird. What is more gentle, kind, sure, and brave than birds, who disperse seeds throughout the land and nurture nature among them? Not a great start. You need a hook, and I have no idea what a bird has to do with your book or characters, and you're also starting with a rhetorical question, which isn't advisable. And also, I love birds, but someone that loves honeybees can say the same thing about their favorite thing in nature, so it's just not a decisive statement.
Mira never believed she embodied what it meant to be an Asfour. The Asfours were more than hotel heirs and heiresses. They set out to better the world despite all the suffering they endured. I don't know what this means. How are they bettering the world and what have they suffered? Her family rose above misfortune in the only way they knew: not talking about it. But after the suicide of her mother, her life fell apart as she succumbed to addiction and struggled with bipolar disorder. After years of turmoil and a massive falling out with her family, she isolates for a year until she receives news of the passing of her father. Now orphaned at twenty-five, Mira is faced with a decision on her father’s final wish. What is his final wish? What is this decision that she has to make?
The Asfours chronicles how a family falls apart and comes together in the face of mental illness, abuse, and generational curses. Mira is the red string that ties them all together; as she navigates her challenges, the broader family tapestry unfolds, revealing their interconnected paths to redemption. There's not nearly enough plot here to make this a succesful query. I don't really know what's going on. I've got this - a family has big problems... and that's about it. That could be any number of stories, featuring any character of any type. You've got to get into specifics to explain why your story takes a new or untold angle on the family saga. Right now it's just - this is a family saga.
Redacted is a queer Palestinian-American that grew up in the Southwest Suburbs of Chicago. Her short stories will be featured in The Piker Press (July Edition) and The Wise Owl (August Edition). She received her BA from Columbia College Chicago. She works in literary representation with diverse and queer writers working in television. She lives in Los Angeles with her beloved cat, Sabrina (the teenage witch).
Good bio, but the bio should be in first person, not third.