Mindy McGinnis

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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.

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

THE HUNT FOR DEATH is a completed 90K supernatural horror that explores the consequences of past decisions, akin to Sundial by Catriona Ward, and lost love, as seen in Ghost Eaters by Clay McLeod Chapman. (+BIO and if personalized- goes here). I always tell people to open with your hook, not your title, genre, word count, comp titles - everyone has those. Open with the one thing you have no one else does - your hook and concept.

Mara’s life philosophy has always been to squash anything standing in her way. And it works.Or worked? Maybe a tense adjustment there, since it sounds like she's made adjustments and changes. Squashing is what got her here, but is she still maintaining that approach? She's living her ultimate happily ever after with a loving husband, a feisty kid, and a past that is... well, in the past. So, when her childhood friend grins at her from the TV screen as the latest guest on the Morning Show, it must be a joke. But then he opens his mouth, and the joke morphs into a nightmare. He reveals their past of summoning ghosts and demons to the world and promises to evoke not sure if evoke is the right word to use here the Grim Reaper — a mistake they swore never to revisit. These sentences can be pared down and combined, and I don't know that I'd use the terms joke or nightmare, but rather a phrase like it comes as a shock

A decade ago, their botched spell summoned... something. Reaper or not, it mattered little, because it caused an accident where two people almost lost their lives. Now Mara’s friend threatens to tell the truth not only about that fateful night. He wants to reveal The Death Gods Club members and their secrets to the world. Mara isn't afraid of the beheaded chickens and blood runes hiding in her closet. But of the unknown consequences of summoning the Grim Reaper again? Yeah! This is a bit confusing - what is at stake here? It sounds like the Reaper was already summoned a decade ago, so what's the threat in the present? How do the two people who got hurt in the past figure into the present? If she's not scared of being revealed, and the Reaper has already been summoned, what's the threat here?

For the first time in her life, the weight on Mara’s shoulders threatens to topple her. Despite her efforts to deter her friends, they form a new summoning group. Why? What's the point? The John Wick in her can’t leave them alone in this lunacy, so she joins. Definitely need more motivation than that. There are unknown consequences above that she is scared of, but she decides to go ahead and do it anyway? And they succeed. But calling upon such a force comes at a price. Right, so why do it in the first place? What is the benefit? The Reaper goes on a killing spree, not caring who stands in front of him. Mara struggles to find a balance between saving her friends, protecting her family, and preventing Death itself. If she doesn’t hurry, her choice might be taken away from her, along with her most sacred things. We definitely need to understand motivation here. They summoned death before, it went badly, she's been living a non-witchy life since then, her friend outs her and says he's going to summon death (again), which she doesn't really want to do, but then does anyway, and then bad things happen and she has to... what? It looks like she's not really driven by one thing - a desire to summon, or banish - she's just kind of doing whatever, and I'm not really seeing motivations or reasons why, from the query.