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.

Since you are looking for more stories with a dark, twisty edge, and a bit of humor, I am thrilled to present LOVING LUCY LAKE, my own take at a YA mystery/gothic romance novel, complete at 72,000 words. The Scream franchise meets the complicated character dynamics in Mindy McGinnis’s The Female of the Species, with an added romance that I’ve longed to see in more horror media. Well, I'm intruged, and not just because you're using me as a comp. This is an interesting mashup!

It is her senior year of high school and Lucy Lake feels like her life is going nowhere. All her friends are college-bound and making plans to leave their dead-end town, her boyfriend is pressuring her for sex, and her grandfather’s once reassuring concern is starting to feel suffocating. Lucy knows deep down that she will never escape Rosedale, nor her grim connection to the town’s only serial killer: The Reaper. Good intro, but we need to know what her connection is. A relative was one of the victims? A relative was the killer? Or suspected of being the killer?

Tragedy strikes when one of Lucy’s classmates is found gruesomely killed at the Halloween carnival, kickstarting a series of murders that leaves Rosedale reeling—and remembering. And it’s not just the journalists drawing comparisons between the Reaper’s victims and the most recent murders; so is the town commissioner who closed the Reaper’s case more than a decade ago. And how does this affect Lucy? Is she suffering socially b/c of it? Was she already an outcast? What changes is this causing in her life?

Then, Dorian Evers steps back into Lucy’s life. After suffering a tragedy of his own over the summer, her once childhood friend has returned more mysterious, lonely, and dangerous than ever. He’s terribly handsome and asks questions that Lucy doesn’t have answers for (like why they stopped talking all those years ago). But why is Dorian approaching her now? Why does he hate her friends so much? And what does all this have anything to do with the copycat killings? As the would-be Reaper cuts a bloody swathe through town, Lucy realizes that the only way to save her loved ones is by digging deeper into a past that refuses, even now, to let her go. Basically, the questions you present within this paragraph are my own questions as well. What does Dorian have to do with anything? How does he tie into the larger story?

I am living in Montréal, Québec. I have a BA in Fine Arts, Film Production, and a minor in Creative Writing from Concordia University. Currently, I am writing my second novel, a YA romantasy interwoven with horror elements.

Overall, I think you have something interesting here, but you're missing some key elements. A query needs to establish - what the MC wants, what stands in their way, what do they need to do to overcome the obstacles, and what's at stake if they don't? Those elements aren't here right now, but if you can write them in, I think your elements are interesting.

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.

Three feet-panic, four feet- quiet, five feet- darkness. I like this opening!

After surviving a near-drowning accident as a young child, sixteen-year-old Jess Wexler (ironically) now views the swimming pool as her refuge—a place to escape life’s chaos. What kind of chaos? What's going on that she's trying to escape, and is her relationship with the water healthy or unhealthy? When her mother, Aliza, a recovering alcoholic, tragically dies in a car accident, Jess is forced to leave her entire life behind, including her best friend, Kate, you don't need to name her b/c she's not mentioned again in the query and move to West Virginia with her grandmother, whom she barely knows. Struggling to adjust to her new life, Jess discovers her mother’s old diary. The more Jess learns, the more she questions what she thought she knew about her mom. Like what? How does the diary and a changing understanding of her mother tie into the plot?

As Jess settles into her new life, she meets Tyler, a senior who gives her the attention she craves. However, when Tyler’s affection turns abusive, Jess has to rely on her former rival, Chloe, and her grandmother, who is facing her own challenges. Why would she have to rely on Chloe? What are her grandmother's challenges?

Being a secondary English teacher for more than a decade has provided me with invaluable insight into the daily lives of teenagers and how they navigate the turbulent waters of high school. I would love an opportunity to work with you to bring Deep Dive to a broader audience. Good bio.

Deep Dive, a 68,000 word manuscript, is told in alternating perspectives between Jess and Aliza and blends prose with poetry, creating a unique reading experience. Themes including the ripple effects of addiction, the weight of grief, and the power of resilience But those themes aren't in the query itself. You're telling the agent that, but not showing them make this book perfect for fans of The Glass Girl by Kathleen Glasgow and The Words We Keep by Erin Stewart. Will Jess sink or swim when her race becomes too much to finish? I wouldn't end with a question.

Right now this is reading more like a summary than a query. The query needs to convey 1) what does the MC want? 2) what stands in the way of them getting it? 3) What will they have to do to overcome the obstacles? 4) What's at stake if they fail? The plot feels like it actually starts with her relocation and problematic relationship, and everything else is backstory. There are a lot of disparate elements here -- trauma, drowning, addiction, abuse -- but I don't know how they tie together, or how these characters come 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.

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.