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.
Thirteen-year-old Billy and his younger sister Megan were raised by their AI mother Darla two hundred feet underground in a two-room den. They’ve never seen the light of day and hardly know anything about their biological parents or the outside world, but Darla provides them food, education, and entertainment every day. That is, until the power suddenly cuts out, forcing Billy and Megan to evacuate the den armed with laser guns, protective clothing, a compass, and instructions to hike to the north end of the island, turn the power station back on, and call for help. Great start. Good hook, good first para
They emerge from the den in a fancy house and head north along a road congested with heavy, black mist and bordered with frail, withering forest. After barely evading death by a couple steel, black machines firing lasers, they meet up with more kids who recently evacuated underground dens. One of them discovered a diary in a nearby apartment building explaining all their parents were employees of a top-secret government corporation that opened a portal to another dimension eight years ago. So they would have been five when that happened, so they would know their parents, would have been outside, and would know about the outside world The black mist—which has diminished over time—and slew of lethal robots are emergency mechanisms designed to destroy all life on the island should anything potentially dangerous enter Earth’s dimension. But it would also kill the humans, right? Which... is the problem the kids are dealing with right now, so this isn't a great plan on their part The dens were installed to save the kids from such a potential fate. This is all reading like a synopsis, which isn't what you want. A query needs to establish what do the MC's want, what stands in the way of their getting it, and how will they overcome those obstacles? That's not what this is doing; this is walking through the plot step by step. First paragraph is great, second one needs to be more broad and less detailed. We know what they want (turn on electric) we know what stands in their way (laser robots), but we need to know how they're going to overcome the obstacles (not just they have laser guns, too) Now Billy, Megan, and the rest of the kids must find a way to get all the way to the power station, turn it back on, and call for help but who are they calling? If they have no experience of the outside world, how would they know to call out for help, or that anyone is there to answer them?—without getting liquidized, or worse. There's got to be another goal other than get the power on. Are they going to learn more about their parents, or the Earth in general? We need more emotion - what are Billy and Megan like? I have no idea of their character traits, just their names. Is there tension between the other kids? How do they feel when wandering out into the world? Are they shocked at the appearance of other humans? More emotion in general is needed, less plot detail
The Corporation is a 38,000-word middle-grade science fiction that will appeal to fans of Heidi Lang’s and Kati Bartkowski’s Whispering Pines series, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and the TV show Stranger Things. My debut young adult dystopian novel, The Fourth Generation, was released by Clean Reads/Astraea Press in August 2015. Clean Reads published my middle-grade science fiction novel called Picket Town in April 2018. I have a degree in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University and won the individual award for Outstanding Achievement in Creative Writing. I also obtained an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. I interned at Kensington Publishing Corp. in New York City in the Publicity and Marketing departments. Great bio! Just get the emotions into the query, and clean up some of the questions I have. The premise sounds good, it just needs to be drawn together with emotion, and a little less detail