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.

I am seeking representation for THE GRIM UP NORTH, a supernatural detective novel. I advise everyone to open with their hook, and skip anything else. The fact that you're writing to them seeking representation is an assumed.

The dead speak to David Teasdale – in fact, they never shut up.This is a great hook, so you need to put this front and center Ever since his father slit his own throat after stabbing David and killing his brother, David’s heard ghosts. The inciting incident (and obvious trauma included, I'm sure) is a good thing to have here, but this second sentence at the end tells us the same thing that the opening six words do. Also, the slightly jokey voice of they never shut up feels at odds with the very heavy suicide and child murder that follows that up. You'll need to decide what's a better representation of the voice of the book - humor nods, or heavy dark shit - and pare down on the one that doesn't fit best.

Spooks, spectres, phantoms, phantasms, whatever you want to call them, he calls them annoying. For twenty-five years since that night, David has been trying to drown out the spooks’ whining, incessant voices with whatever comes in a bottle and costs less than a fiver – Special Brew, mouthwash, nail polish remover, he’s undiscerning. I think you need to combine these opening two paras, and slim down on the description of the child murder to buy you some more space, and get the setup in the first para, then move us into the actual plot, below

David’s daily routine from his flat to the alley behind the Cash and Carry is disturbed when a spectre claiming to be his brother floats through his door with a warning. Is he an actual detective? Like a PI? Does his ability to hear the dead benefit that? Clarify In five days, a bloodthirsty spirit of vengeance will rip through the streets of Newcastle in search of those that killed him.

To stop an impending massacre and rid himself of his curse Why would stopping the massacre rid him of the curse?, David agrees agrees with who? to hunt and kill the perpetrators What perpetrators? before delivering their souls to hell. But in the course of justice, David will be shot at, stabbed (again), possessed and have his testicles dangled over a meatgrinder in a journey that will take him to hell and back.

It’s at times like these that David remembers what his dad said to him and his brother before he went bonkers: “It’s grim up north, lad.” IDK if you need this last little para. I know it's there to explain the title, but if an agent is interested they will request, title nonwithstanding, and the last line of the previous para is a better ending point

The novel is complete at 88,000 words and combines our love of pavement-hitting gumshoes and all things spooky. THE GRIM UP NORTH contains the nerve-shredding mystery of Stacy Willingham’s ALL THE DANGEROUS THINGS with a twist of the gothic richness of Johnny Compton’s THE SPITE HOUSE.

This is a stand-alone work with the potential to continue David’s journeys into the world beyond.

The idea here is solid and most of it is pretty good, you just need to pare down the first two paras into one and clarify on the points I have questions about.

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.

I am writing to you in the hopes of receiving representation for my middle grade and older historical fantasy novel, "The Fairies in the Window." (How I learned about them/good fit/maybe some comparisons?) "Fairies in the Window," is an 80,681 word novel that tells the story of two generations of girls and women as they each confront difficult trials in their own times and discover the true strength that lies within themselves. I always say you need to open with the hook, not the statement that you are writing in the hopes of representation - they know that, it's an assumed. A title, word count, and genre / age cateogry are something that everyone has. You need to start with what only you have - the hook for your book. Also, categorizing your readership as MG and older doesn't do you any favors. You need to know whether this is MG or YA. Upper MG is also a totally fine thing to say, however your word count is high for MG, which tops out around 70k

This is my third and most personal novel to date. This isn't a hook. You need to open with a line that tells the agent something imperative and plot-centric to the story, not yourself The story is divided into two time periods. A portion of the narrative is told through the eyes of my maternal grandmother and tells her story of survival during the Holocaust as a nine-year-old girl from Romania. I weave several stories from her personal account with those of other Romanian Jews who were forced on a death march in winter to a concentration in Ukraine. The fictional element is found in the friendship my grandmother finds in a lost Fairy Queen. A friendship so strong that enables them both to survive. In the present, two young girls, fictionalized versions of my own daughters, become enthralled by their father's tales of Fairies who live behind their house's attic window. A story, unbeknownst to their father is actually true. Through a series of misadventures, the girls discover the daughter of the same Fairy Queen that had befriended my grandmother has arrived in our world on a dangerous mission of mercy. This Fairy Princess, Calla, and her four friends, need to find the token her mother had entrusted to my grandmother’s care during the Holocaust, for with that long lost token, Calla can discover the location of her lost mother. And only her mother knows the spell that rescue her people from the invading hordes of the Fomor.

This whole paragraph is from your persepctive and is focused mostly on you, and how you are personally tied to the story. Quite frankly, the agent or editor doesn't really care. They want to know the plot of the book, not how it's relevant to you, or how it's based on elements of your life and family history. That is of interest, but can be easily summarized with a single line at the bottom such as this story is deeply personal, as it utilizes elements of my grandmother's experiences..., etc Other than that, all the personal elements here, including the fact that the other protaganists are your daughters, isn't really relevant to portraying what the story is actually about. If you look at this, you don't even mention what any of the characters are named, they are simply identified by their relationship to you.

My previous two novels, one of which has been self-published on Amazon, were mythological fantasy novels geared towards a YA audience.Unless they have very fantastic sales and thousands of reviews, mentioning self-published novels won't benefit you I was motivated to write for a younger audience when I learned during the pandemic that a large number of American children had never even heard of the holocaust. As Jewish American, I felt obligated to do my part to make sure this dark period of human history is never forgotten so it can never be repeated. I had also always wanted to write my grandmother's story. She was only nine years old when she was forcibly marched through snow in Romania to a concentration camp in the Ukraine. An important story I felt compelled to write. This is definitely a stand alone story but has great potential for a series. I would love to write a trilogy of novels with each focused on addressing a social justice issue in a way that kids can fully grasp and appreciate. I believe some of the best and most enduring stories teach as much as they entertain. Again, this is a lot of information about you - what you've written in the past, what motivated you to write this, what you'd like to write in the future. A query needs to be about the story that you are querying, with (at the most) a three line bio at the bottom, which would include any references to personal ties to the story. You need to go back to the drawing board with this and rewrite a query that focuses on the plot, the characters, and the question of what is at stake in the story.

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.

As far as Seventeen-year-old Jayniss knows, she grew up in the last remaining human settlement on Earth in a pocket of wilderness that used to be urban Pennsylvania. I don't think you need to clarify that this information is as far she knows. If she's going to learn otherwise as part of the plot, I think it's adding to word count unnecessarily One hundred million years ago, an asteroid struck Earth, decimating nearly all life except an emergency bunker of US government officials and a hearty Amazon Rainforest lizard species. Afterward, while the humans attempted to reclaim Earth, the lizard which evolved into the terrosaur, a species similar to dinosaurs, though much larger, fiercer, and more intelligent. This might need some clarification - larger, fiercer, and more intelligent than ALL dinosaurs? It might be better to pick a specific type of dinosuar The terrosaurs spread throughout the Americas, greatly inhibiting humans’ growth. Jayniss’s settlement exists only because a species of incredibly tall, thick trees congests its borders, making it rare for a terrosaur to penetrate them.

But one day, Jayniss accidentally strikes and kills a baby terrosaur with her father’s pickup truck. Just a quick world building note here - gasoline loses viability eventually, so unless this bunker has it's own method of creating gasoline, or this truck is not powered by fossil fuel, this doesn't work Upon inspection, the lizard appears to have a barcode imprinted on its thigh, meaning a lifeform advanced enough to brand the lethal beasts exists somewhere out in the wild. Jayniss figures if her settlement can somehow make contact with this lifeform, it might abolish the terrosaur threat so humans can evolve again. But why would she think that this other settlement has interest in abolishing terrosaurs in the first place? The barcode indicates nothing other than the existence of an intelligent species - not their intentions.

But before she can inform the mayor about her discovery, a tribe of terrosaurs attacks the village in retaliation, forcing everyone to flee. What happened to the protective trees? Nobody can ever return either, as the terrosaurs will remember where they lived. That seems terribly plot convenient Now Jayniss must try to contact the advanced lifeform in the wild in the hopes it will help her and her settlement’s survivors restore their society and maybe even evolve again What does this mean? How have humans evolved?—before they all become terrosaur grub, or worse.

It's an interesting plot, but it feels unexplored within the query. Is contacting the other civilization really the only goal within the story? Do they make contact and find out that the other people aren't what they were hoping for? We also need to know more about Jayniss in general - what's her character like? I don't have any feel for who she is as a person. Scrappy? Scared? Willful? Quiet? I have no idea based on what's here.