Winners have been announced for Authoress’s query contest. I really appreciated the feedback from Jodi Meadows, as well as other blog commenters. For the purpose of the contest, we submitted a query and first 250 words of the manuscript. Mine was number #38.
I got nine comments on my query. Four were hooked (though one normally didn’t read the genre). One liked it “with reserve”, and thought it could be tightened. Four were not hooked (including Jodi).
Overall, the concept didn’t seem to be the problem. Advice leans toward tightening/more focus, and dry/lack of voice. Hopefully in fixing the first issue, I can bring out my voice more. And fixing the query is easier than fixing the central concept and conflict.
It was also pretty universal to drop the three sentences about Jex and romance which felt tagged on; which is fair, as they were… It was my second version query, that I tried to spin to more romance oriented agents.
Jodi also commented that (judging from the opening page) the manuscript starts too soon. I disagree, but that’s harder for me to judge (being the author and all). But if enough agents aren’t hooked by my query and sample pages, then I may have to reconsider. For now, I’m going to revise my query and send it out again.
The query is still open for comments if you want to leave any, here or on the contest entry post. All feedback is welcome. :-)
kudos for being brave enough to enter your query and first scene! I need to write the query for my WIP soon, maybe I should look out for these kinds of feedback contests ...
ReplyDeletegood luck on the revised query!