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.

If the Saturday Slash has been helpful to you in the past, or if you’d like for me to take a look at your query please consider making a donation, if you are able.

If you’re ready to take the next step, I also offer editing services.

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

What happens when a flying city, humanity’s one refuge from a desolate storm-covered world, starts to run out of fuel? Don't make your hook a rhetorical question, it's just generally not a good idea. EXILE OF STORMS (93,000 words) is an adult science fantasy novel that follows Tashi, a young Diver whose job is to harvest eshu from the earth’s surface to sustain the city. But as the storm grows wilder and supply of this critical energy dries up, the threat of extinction and eshu’s unforeseen effects upend her life.

This story combines the mystery and environmental focus of The Forever Sea by Joshua Phillip Johnson with the social strife, intrigue, and airborne urban setting of Bioshock Infinite. Cool, but I would put comp titles at the bottom. You need to get the agent's attention by talking about your work, not the work of others.

Tashi wants nothing more than to become a Diver like her late mother. There’s just one problem: as an exile of humanity’s only city, she isn’t even permitted to exist. But her fortunes change one day when her arrest leads to an unexpected offer to join the Divers. This feels a little convenient and just raises questions. If she's an exile, why does she suddenly get what she wants? Feels plot convenient, which isn't a good look. Plus this also just sounds like backstory that you're wasting space on.

The joy of finally realizing her dream doesn’t last, however. As her addiction to using eshu for physical enhancement worsens, it awakens frightening new powers that place her at the heart of the mystery surrounding the storm’s unprecedented changes. Meanwhile, reckless orders and secrets on the surface give her fresh reasons to distrust those in charge. Definitely need to know more - physical enhancement how? Making herslf stronger? Hotter? What are these powers? What is this mystery? How is the storm changing? What does that mean for the city? What are these orders and secrets?

When the government cracks down What does this mean? amid city-wide eshu shortages, rebellion breaks out and the Divers are called to suppress it. Fearing the possibility of expulsion, Tashi swallows her reservations and obeys. But in the ensuing bloodshed, she is guilt-ridden to discover her old exile companions are leading the rebels. She learns the city’s oppressive rule is more insidious than she imagined, and that the reasons for insurrection are not so easy to oppose. What is the city doing that is so bad? What are the reasons for the insurrection?

With humanity’s annihilation drawing near, Tashi must decide where she stands and what she can do to prevent the coming disaster.

I am a college admissions consultant and editor living in Kanagawa, Japan. When I’m not helping students discover and develop their stories, I’m writing my own. My background as a cultural anthropologist and international professional informs my approach to worldbuilding and characterization.

While this would be my debut novel, my short fiction has been published in Electric Spec, White Cat Publications, Crimson Quill Quarterly, and All Worlds Wayfarer. Thank you very much for your time and consideration. May I send you the full manuscript? Great bio! I'd cut the ask to send the full at the end. They'll ask on their own if they want it.

Right now this is sounding fairly generic - futuristing setting where those in power are keeping secrets and have bad motives, while the underprivileged are rising up and the main character has to decide which side she's on. That's what you're focusing on establishing in this query, when really that's a trope. The elements that actually make your story unique are the answers to the questions that I ask, which means they need to be what the query is focused on, not the trope-y elements. Everything also feels fairly disparate - her powers / addiction, the storm changing behavior, the government behaving badly - I have no idea how these things tie together to create a plot.

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.

If the Saturday Slash has been helpful to you in the past, or if you’d like for me to take a look at your query please consider making a donation, if you are able.

If you’re ready to take the next step, I also offer editing services.

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

THE MAINTENANCE MAN (75k words), is a near future adult scifi satire that combines the themes of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model and the dramedy of Only Murders in the Building. Good job concisely starting out with genre, word count, and comps. Sometimes I tell people that it's best to put this info at the bottom b/c everyone has these elements, and to start with your hook, as it's unique only to you. That's a personal opinion though!

All Cody Moore ever wants "ever wanted" or just "wants" is better phrasing is a chance to work with Albert, a superintelligent AI that propelled the U.S. into its post-scarcity era and who is now a key government figure. But first, he’ll have to pass the biannual technical Assessment and this year is his fifth attempt. Cloudy here. Does he have to take this test in order to get this job? Or is it a test he has to pass anyway? What does he do right now? Work in tech? The government?

So maybe that’s why Gramps willed to Cody his private investigation business. Maybe it’s time he finds a new life goal. But then in walks in walks where? Into his life? His PI business? His kitchen? Dorothea, with her fiery hair and clever tongue that catches him off guard. Dorothea, with her kitchen lightbulb that doesn’t just flicker at odd hours but also spells out in Morse code: S.O.S. Is this why she came to him, as a PI? All signs point to a cyber attack. But that’s impossible because it’s 2240 and there are no security vulnerabilities left to exploit thanks to Albert. But what if Albert missed something, and this hacker found it? Then perhaps they can teach Cody enough to finally pass the Assessment. So happily Cody takes the case. Convoluted. So Cody thinks a hacker made this woman's lightbulb blink (Why? What's the point of that?) and that whoever did it outsmarted Albert, so therefore they can likely help him pass this test, correct? I had to unspool everything to get there, so rephrasing is in order.

And though Cody expects their investigation to shed light on Dorothea’s past, never does he imagine it will uncover truths that might undo Albert himself. All amidst a historic presidential election wherein Albert, a write-in candidate, is taking the lead in multiple states. Right now we need to know a lot more in order to understand how these things come together to constitute a plot. What does Dorothea's past have to do with anything? Or Albert's shot at winning an election? What about the hacker? What's the significance of the lightbulb? Right now this is just reading like a bunch of disparate elements. Although it sounds interesting, it needs to be drawn together cohesively in order to illustrate the plot.

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.

If the Saturday Slash has been helpful to you in the past, or if you’d like for me to take a look at your query please consider making a donation, if you are able.

If you’re ready to take the next step, I also offer editing services.

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

Thank you for your consideration of my manuscript, THE WOMEN WHO RESCUED THEMSELVES, a work of fiction complete at about 120,000 words. That word count is very high, especially if you are submitting to a small press, which is the feeling I am getting here. I chose your press because you are willing to accept unagented, unsolicted submissions, and per your description, you are open to the kind of book I've written. What kind of book have you written? There's no genre here, you just say that it's fiction.

There are three women. The stakes are high for each one of them. You definitely need a better hook. Saying there are three women is not interesting, it's just a cast list. Don't say the stakes are high - anyone can type that. Illustrate that the stakes are high. A disabled, suicidal lesbian stands to lose her life. The woman in love with her stands to lose her love. A battered woman stands to live a life imprisoned by violence and denigration. Their separate paths cross on Bluerock Farm, a place of refuge where each one breaks out of their own self-imposed prison, where they become more powerful than they could possibly have imagined. This is well written, but it's not telling us anything about the plot. Why do each of them stand to lose these things? How do these plots intersect? The query needs to establish these things -- What does the main character(s) want? What stands in the way of them getting it? What will they need to do to overcome the obstacles, and what is at stake if they don't? Your query needs to convey the plot, this does not. Also, this sounds like it's a "quieter" novel, character driven as opposed to plot driven, and if that's the case a 120k is quite likely an inflated word count.

I am a 73 year old disabled, retired nurse practitioner. I broke my back after a fall from a horse. Though lucky enough to avoid paralysis, I was confined to a wheelchair, and then a walker. Now I walk with sticks, and sometimes I don’t need those. I’m married for 43 years to the same woman, have grown children and two cats. I can infer that your bio relates to the content of the novel in certain ways, but this is still a lot of extraneous info taking up space that would be better spent on conveying your plot.

This is my first novel. Other publications include: Author, “What Barbara Taught Me.” 1989. short story in California Nursing Review (out of print, clips available). Author, poetry. 1996. Women’s Voices, Sonoma County Women’s Resource Network. Author, poetry, Assisi:An Online Journal of Arts and Letters, St. Francis College, Brooklyn, NY Fall 2011-Spring 2012."Come Through" and "I heard morning opening". Same here, taking up too much space. I would instead use a generic line such as, "I've had multiple articles and poems published in journals such as... The mystery of fiction is that the story tells itself. I didn’t set out to write stories of representation, but my characters said otherwise. Perhaps lesbians with disabilities will become more visible in the literature. And if even one woman understands that she is worth more than what society says she is, this novel will have been worth all the trouble. This isn't useful to the query. You need to collapse your bio and publishing history into each other and shorten both considerably, and leave much, much more room for your plot in order to convey the answers to the questions I laid out above.