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.
Fate cannot be avoided. This principle at the base of Greek tragedy is the leit-motiv Are you going to be using phrases like leti-motiv within the book itself? If not, don't use it here. The voice, flow, and feel of the query should be similar to the book itself luring Not sure of this word use... do you mean lurking? at the background of “THE WEAVING SEA”, a 98,000 new adult, that's a pretty high word count for a debut new adult. 85k is considered high end for that age category. I would try to get that down before querying mythology retelling I like to call “The Iliad meets the Little Mermaid”. Quick note, punctuation like periods or commas go inside of the quotation marks, but also - you don't need the quotation marks.
At “almost-seven-years-old” Not sure why this is in quotes, but also, if this is new adult, why does the story start with him at 7? Opening the query this way makes it seem as if we're going to be spending quite a bit of time with a 7 year old version of the character Achilles is a mischievous and curious child who’s always lived in the sea with his godly mother, Thetis, determined to shelter her son from the mortal world and gives him his rightful place among the gods.
But Achilles longs for the adventure, wishes to become a hero and above all wants to meet his estranged father.
And the more Thetis tries to keep him in a gilded cage, the more he tries to escape.
In the end, some things are simply bound to happen, like Achilles’ meeting with Patroclus and the his? love for him, no matter the troubles and misunderstandings along the way.
Right now, this is just reading as a summary of the story of Achilles, and a pretty bare bones one at that. You need a lot more detail, and more importantly, you need to exhibit how your version does something different than the original - or any other retelling since then. This is currently way too vague : there was a guy who had a helicopter mom, he got away from her and fell in love, and faced trials along the way, but that's fate. There's nothing specific to your manuscript here, and only speaking in generalizations isn't doing you any favors. I also don't understand how The Little Mermaid would come into this.
Classicist at heart, I had a classical formation in a specialised high school and then proceeded to graduate in Economics for Arts, Culture and Entertainment.
Born and living in Northern Italy, I have been honing my writing craft for the past 10+ years, writing fictions both original and in the fandom ambience. Not sure about the word choice here In 2011 I won a prize in a literary contest. That's cool, but you definitely need to state which one.