I am currently going through the querying process for my first novel, First Knight of the Light. In my first round, I sent 144 queries: 48 were explicit rejections (33.3%), and 22 were ‘closed’ without a response (15.3%). I withdrew myself from consideration from the rest while I gave my manuscript a scrubbing.
One of the things I’ve learned during this process; being a writer is more than just writing a story. There is actual craft involved. I dove in and started taking a look at what other writers were doing. I sent my manuscript to people who could give me a general “this is good” or “this sucks”, and to people that could give me an actual technical review.
I learned about ‘bloat’, ‘dialogue tags’, adverb usage, and “info-dumping”. If you look above, I bolded and underlined a few of the issues. My novel is an epic fantasy, at approximately 104,000 words. It takes time to go through that much verbiage, find issues, and fix them.
When I started the process, my novel was at around 89,000 words. There were whole sections of my book where I just “dumped” a lot of information into the story, Turning that information into an enjoyable part of the story required more writing, even as I was eliminating words from dialogue tags, and needless bloat, or trap words. So, I went from 89,000 to 104,000 words in the editing process.
I have now started Round Two. After editing the manuscript to make it better, I had to revise my stock query letter, my synopsis, my one-page synopsis, my one-line pitch, my one-paragraph pitch, my bio, and my back cover blurb. Then I had to edit and revise those.
The writing industry has writing standards with regards to font, margins, indentation, so I had to edit my manuscript again. This time around, I plan on adding Christian agents to the querying process, so I had to create a clean manuscript, removing profanities, unwholesome scenes, and make sure the spiritual aspects of the story come through.
Then, you guessed it, the query letters and all supporting documents needed to be revised.
I’ve sent 52 queries so far in Round 2. As of the time of this post I’ve received 10 straight-up rejections (19.2%).
If you’ve read any of my book posts, please share to someone you think might enjoy it. I think they read fairly quickly, the point of removing all things I mentioned earlier.
The story has, I think, some great themes:
- Your mistakes don’t define you, your repsonse after the mistake defines you.
- Redemption is a powerful thing, a true sign of God’s presence
- Living your life for the Light is good. Living your life for Shadow is not.
- No problem is too big for a wizard to solve with some bacon.
Back Cover Blurb
Ten thousand years ago, humans and Fae allied against the Shadow. The alliance shattered, the worlds split apart, and the Fae realm of Byd Hud has waited ever since for its prophesied Ard Rí – the High King.
Artemis Rell knows none of this. He’s a broken Delta Force veteran with a bottle in one hand and a pistol in the other. He’s been dreaming of a beautiful woman from another world – one he knows he can never have – and this morning, he’s ready to end it. Then a man named Myrddin Emerys shows up at his campsite cooking bacon and calls him the High King of a world that doesn’t exist.
Except it does. And in it, a woman who has been dreaming of him too.
To claim the sword meant for him, Rell must survive three deadly trials, earn the trust of Centaurs, Dwarves, and Elves who’ve never known a human, let alone had reason to trust one, and face down Queen Mab and her necromancer lieutenant who have haunted his nightmares for years.
But the hardest battle isn’t against them – it’s the one against the parts of himself he left in the desert, and the woman who loves him enough to risk everything to save him from it.
Kings are sometimes made by swords and prophecies. This one will be decided by whether a broken man can love and be loved.
The Shadow is rising. Summer is coming.
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