The Summary Continued
I addressed the plot summary of a query letter in brief yesterday, but as this is such a critical part of the query, I thought I’d dive in a little deeper today. The summary serves two purposes. One, it tells the agent what sort of story you’ve written. Fiction has become a compartmentalized business, for good or evil, and many agents and editors think in terms of what section of Barnes & Noble a book will be stocked. (As a side note, if you have an idea of your target audience, you might want to mention that somewhere in the opening or closing paragraph. If nothing else, it reinforces that you are serious about both the creative and business sides of the book trade – something most agents and editors appreciate)
Secondly, the summary gives you an opportunity to reveal a bit about yourself as a writer. Give it some personality. This goes for non-fiction writers as well as fiction writers. It’s pretty hard to bring much oomph to a greeting or a list of your credits, but a summary of a plot or even a non-fiction project is about grabbing the reader’s attention. It is impossible to emphasize too much how important your ability to grab and hold a reader’s attention is, whether in a letter or a novel.
So as you reread your summary, ask yourself this: Does this sound like the book I’ve written? It was when I asked myself this question, and answered, No, that I knew I’d been going about the query all wrong. And it was when I loosened up, took a few chances, and allowed myself to write the query just as I’d write anything else that I started getting more positive responses.
Think of it this way. Would you want to read 20 query letters a day? I don’t think I would. But agents often do, God bless them. So entertain the agent a little. When I was in college I had a few professors confess that they’d given me good grades on my papers despite poor spelling and skimpy research simply because I amused them. Trust that you are an entertaining writer. In this way the query letter becomes a great opportunity to practice trusting yourself, your voice, and the value of what you’d like share with the world.