Now We Can Stop Talking About Query Letters

A definitive guide to the query letter (for novelists)

Nov 12, 2025

When I started this substack, my thinking was: I used to be a literary agent! I have a lot of thoughts on the publishing industry! People need advice on how to navigate it!

Then I started following a few publishing substacks and realized that advice on how to navigate the publishing industry is everywhere. One search on substack will yield twenty different accounts posting about how they’ve figured out the absolute common-denominator one true secret to getting published, and now they’re glad to share it with you (behind a paywall).

So I decided to focus my substack on aspects of the publishing industry that I don’t see anyone else talking about. As such, I’ve written about how to find good readers for your work, how to edit in order of priority, why I think it’s dumb to share an incomplete draft of a novel, why I think publishers are dumb for fist-fighting over the rights to a self-published bestseller, and birds.

One thing I have not written about is query letters. Because everyone has written a guide on how to write the perfect query letter.

However, this morning I was helping a friend edit their query letter, and found myself copy-and-pasting from an email I’d written to another friend about their query letter, and I thought… it would be nice if I could just link to this advice without having to rewrite it every time.

So here we go: my definitive, exhaustive, emphatically unpaywalled guide on how to write the perfect query letter for a novel.1

When I was an agent, I received dozens of queries per day, all containing the following:

query letter
author bio
sample pages

Did I closely read the query letter, then the author bio, then the sample pages? God no. My evaluation of each query went something like this:

skim the query letter at top speed to determine: is author sane? is project coherent?
scroll to sample pages & read until I was either appalled or pleasantly surprised
scroll back up and read query letter more closely to determine: is this going anywhere good?
scroll down to author bio to determine: does author have credentials? is this going to be hard to sell?
if all good so far, read the rest of the sample pages
request full manuscript or reject

The reason I spell this out is that a lot of writers, tasked with packaging the entirety of their years-long passion project into a few short paragraphs, lose sight of the basic questions an agent is asking as they read a query letter:

Is the author sane?
Is the project coherent?
Is this going anywhere good?

That’s it. The agent doesn’t need to know the names of all the characters, the details of all the point-of-view and timeline shifts, the arcs of all the sideplots—frankly they don’t even need to know the arc of the main plot. They just need to see a confident evocation of how the story kicks off and where it’s headed, and what they might get out of reading it.

To that end, let’s walk through the standard components of a query letter, addressing what you need to do at each stage and what temptations you need to resist.

The Opening

Here’s what you need to communicate in the opening:

title of your book
word count
genre
reason for querying

Here’s how that might look:

Dear X,
Based on your work with Author and Other Author, I thought you might be a great fit for my Genre novel TITLE, complete at ## words.

Or:

Dear X,
I’m writing to submit my debut novel, TITLE (## words), for consideration. I saw on your manuscript wishlist that you were looking for XXX, and my novel is a work of Genre addressing themes of XXX.

The idea is to keep this opening paragraph short and functional. If you’re friendly with one of this agent’s clients, or if you have powerful writer friends you’re planning to name-drop, this is the place to do it. Otherwise, get the opening done in 1-2 sentences and move on.

Temptations to resist in the opening of a query letter: all of them. Don’t try to be cute. Don’t try to be original. Don’t talk about how you’ve wanted to be a writer ever since you were a little kid reading under the covers after lights-out. Agents are skimming these query letters, not reading them, so if you make the essential information (title, word count, genre) hard to find, you are provoking the agent’s frustration and increasing the likelihood that they’ll reject and move onto the next query.

The Pitch

The pitch is the most important part of your query letter—it’s the part that tells the agent what the book is about, what makes it original, what makes it exciting, and what makes it worth reading. It’s also the hardest part of the query letter to write, and the part that otherwise intelligent, sensible authors can get wildly wrong.

We’re going to break the pitch down into three sections, which often (but don’t always) map onto three distinct paragraphs.

Section I: the lead-in

The first section of your pitch needs to get your reader oriented to the world of your novel—and quickly. Get us situated in your main character’s status quo, and then tell us the inciting incident, the event that makes that status quo suddenly precarious.

X expects it to be an ordinary day at X. But when she tries to X, X happens.

If you have more than one main character—if you have a braided narrative of 6 protagonists and 8 timelines—then pick someone to start with. It is completely overwhelming to introduce the reader to a bunch of new characters at once. Imagine if Harry Potter were pitched like this:

Harry Potter, raised by the cruel and non-magical Dursleys, learns that he’s been admitted to the wizarding school Hogwarts, where he quickly befriends Ron, the youngest son of a poor wizarding family, and makes enemies with Draco, a snobbish pureblood wizard who relentlessly mocks Hermione, the class know-it-all with non-magical (“Muggle”) origins.

I’m exaggerating, but you would not believe how many query letters read this way. It’s natural: you, the author, are so attached to your novel that every single aspect of it feels like a crucial selling point, and you’re afraid to leave anything out. The agent, on the other hand, just wants to be able to skim through the pitch without their head starting to spin.

So my rule of thumb is to name no more than two characters in a query letter. The fewer names you throw around, the more focused your query letter will become, and the more emotional investment the agent will devote to your named characters. (Imagine that each agent has a finite quantity of emotional investment to give to your pitch. If you’re asking them to split that quantity between 6 characters, they’ll care very little about each of them.)

Okay, so your lead-in to the pitch needs to introduce one or two characters max, quickly establish their status quo, and then proceed straight to the breakdown of that quo: what happens to get the novel moving?

Z thinks she’s never going to find a man who XX. Y thinks he’s finally figured out how to XX. But when their paths cross at X, Z and Y are both forced to XX, sending them on a XX that will XXX.

This question of “what happens to get the novel moving” is otherwise known as your hook. What’s the twist? What’s the fun part? If you’ve got a high-concept premise, this is your chance to shine.

In a world where XX, X has accepted that he’ll never amount to more than XX. But when an opportunity arises to undertake an experimental treatment that XX, X decides to XX—at the expense of XXX.

The lead-in sets up the central drama, mystery, or dilemma of the book. No spoilers here, no resolution, just a quick setup of character and stakes.

Your lead-in should end on a cliffhanger note. You’ve set up an untenable situation—something’s got to give—what’s it going to be?

You’re not going to answer that right now. You’re going to zoom way out.

Section II: the scope

The second section of your pitch should give a sense of the scope of the novel. You’ve told us the inciting incident—now we need to understand just how far the ripples of that inciting incident will travel. You’ll often see lists and from/to constructions in this section:

X’s journey takes her from the X of the X to the X of the X, from back-alley X to the C-suite of X, as she struggles to X under the constant threat of X.

It is not remotely important to connect all the dots here. This is the part where you abandon plot entirely in favor of giving a sense of what kinds of things are going to happen. Is the scope of your novel one week? Five generations? A single apartment building? Three continents? How far is your main character going to go? Are their decisions at risk of ruining just their life, or their family’s lives, or the fabric of the universe? Are things going to get violent? Are things going to get creepy?

Over the course of two months, X goes from a vaunted celebrity to a determined fugitive, seeking refuge in X, X, and X, until finally he lands at a XX in XX. Along the way, he loses not only his X but his Y, until only one question is left: how far will he go to preserve his Z? Culminating in an explosive finish, TITLE reveals the X at the depths of human X.

The lead-in to your pitch showed the stakes for one character. In the scope section, you get to broaden it out: what are the stakes for the world of this story? What are the universal themes your protagonist is grappling with?

If you have some co-protagonists you didn’t get around to including in the lead-in, the scope section is a good place to mention them.

While X is on the run, his sister is back home, trying desperately to X. And their mother begins receiving cryptic messages about X. Separated by XX, all three characters must fight to piece together X—before X happens.

You can fit in a bit more plot here, but again, you really don’t need the story to take definitive shape. The agent reading just wants to know what kind of experience they’re in for.

Speaking of which:

Section III: the vibe

Thus far in your pitch, the agent has learned what kicks off the story, and in what direction things are going to trend. Now you want to give them a sense of how the reading experience is going to feel.

This is where you have to talk about your own prose. First of all, you should figure out whether you’re writing literary fiction, upmarket fiction, or commercial fiction. But beyond those larger categories are the somewhat squishier categories of vibe.

For example, your prose might be:

harsh, spare, brutal, relentless
lush, lyrical, expansive, sweeping
tense, brittle, tight, unforgiving
clear, razor-sharp, incisive, carefully honed
warm, inviting, colloquial, grounded

Or any other cluster of overused adjectives that one often sees grouped together on book jackets.

The idea is: your voice on the page will feel a certain way to the reader. Figure out what you’re going for—do you want the reader to feel disoriented, swept away, unnerved, etc.—and then figure out how to articulate it.

Written with a quirky, off-kilter narrative voice, TITLE…

In heartbreakingly spare and simple prose, TITLE…

Once you’ve got a few adjectives in hand that target the vibe of your prose, the rest of this section will go toward communicating the vibe of your story. What I’m talking about here is basically theme. What will your story make the reader think about? What will your reader take away from the story? You may have already done some of this in section 2 (“scope”), but here’s where you really double down.

Taut, hypnotic, and relentlessly X, TITLE probes the limits of X, subverting our ideas of what X can ever X in the face of X.

Keep in mind that you’re still trying to give objective information here. Yes, you’re writing a flamboyantly juiced-up pitch to get the agent excited about your story, but that doesn’t mean you have to call your own prose “shimmering and incandescent,” or claim that your story “answers some of the deepest human questions.” You are employing this saucy, ridiculous, adjective-and-adverb-heavy language to communicate something real: what does your book feel like to read? What will it give the reader?

This section is a really good place to include some comp titles. Comp titles deserve their own separate post—in fact, many publishing substacks have already written such posts—so here I’ll just say that the point of comp titles is to do some of the heavy lifting re: communicating vibe. Find a comp that has roughly the same vibe as your prose, and another that has roughly the same vibe as your themes, and you’ll be all set.

In a narrative voice reminiscent of OTHER BOOK, but confronting the questions of fate and predestination that animate OTHER BOOK, TITLE is a sweeping meditation on X, X, and X.

By this point in the pitch, you’ve moved off plot entirely and are exclusively concerned with theme. Through a combination of ridiculous adjectives, philosophical buzz words, and comp titles, you are helping the agent understand where your book will end up in Barnes & Noble, and what reviewers will probably say about it.

Before we move on from the pitch, let’s look back over it to make sure we accomplished everything we needed to.

The pitch starts with a lead-in that establishes status quo, fractures it immediately with an inciting incident, and sets up the stakes and central dilemma/mystery/quest of the main character. Just when we’re starting to get invested in what’s going to happen to this main character, boom, the story blows open and we’re seeing the far ends of where this story is going to go. All very exciting—but how will it read? So the pitch ends by giving a sense of both the prose and the central themes of the story, and tells us what we’re going to get out of reading the book.

Earlier, I said the query letter needed to answer some basic questions about whether the writer is sane, the project coherent, etc. Let’s forget about those. The pitch part of your query letter really only needs to answer two questions:

What is the story about?
What is the story ABOUT?

The Bio

Phew! The easy part. Collect whatever you have of the following and format it into a nice, clear, readable, impersonal bio:

publications
awards & prizes
residencies & conferences
platform & media contacts (if significant)
degrees
occupation
location

If you don’t have much, don’t worry about it. I’ve said this before, but: a lackluster bio won’t ruin the chances of a really great book. And a phenomenal bio can’t help the chances of a really bad book. (Unless you are a celebrity or politician, in which case it is your god-given right to publish really bad books.)

I’m actually not sure whether agents prefer first-person or third-person bios these days. I can’t even remember what I preferred back in the day. Follow all instructions, and if the agent doesn’t indicate which they prefer, it probably means they don’t care that much.

The Synopsis

Not all agents require a synopsis along with your query letter, but enough do that you should probably prepare a synopsis just in case.

The synopsis is a 100% neutral one-page summary of the main events of your book.

Sounds simple? It is simple! In my experience, when a synopsis is bad, it’s almost never due to the writing of the synopsis. It’s usually because the writer is summarizing a bad story.

So if you’re really struggling with your synopsis, it’s probably a sign that something is wrong with the plot of your book. If you’ve written a well-plotted, logically coherent story, the synopsis should flow out pretty easily.

The reason some agents request a synopsis is that it allows them to find out immediately whether the story is heading anywhere promising. Sometimes the synopsis reveals that the story contains some major dealbreaker for the agent: everybody dies at the end, it was all a dream, the mystery remains unsolved, the novel ends in horrific violence, etc. These dealbreakers are subjective, and you can’t circumvent them with a vague synopsis—nor should you want to. You need an agent who is on board with the direction you want your story to go.

The Closing

Keep it really simple and unassuming.

I appreciate your consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely, Your Name

As with the opening, don’t try to be cute or familiar here. Don’t offer to grab coffee. Agents receive hundreds of queries per week. Can you imagine what their lives would be like if they took everyone up on their offers of coffee?

The Whole Thing

Dear X,
I’m writing to submit my debut novel TITLE, a Genre novel of ## words. I noticed on your manuscript wishlist that you’re looking for XX, and since my novel contains not only X but X, I thought it might be a great fit for you.
X is an ordinary X with an ordinary X—or so he thinks. When XX, XXX, and he realizes that he only has X days left before XX. If he doesn’t, XX—and XXX.
As he frantically tries to X, X encounters X and X, X and X, and ends up going farther out of X than he ever imagined. If X is going to have any chance at X, he’ll have to X—not just for his own sake, but for the sake of X.
Fast-paced and darkly humorous, TITLE offers X insight into the world of X, through the lens of an indelible character whose X might be his greatest X. Akin to OTHER TITLE, but with the thriller-like X of OTHER TITLE, TITLE is X, X, and undeniably X.
I am an OCCUPATION based in LOCATION. This will be my debut novel.
Thank you for your consideration. I’d be happy to send along the full manuscript on request.
Sincerely, X

Frequently Asked Questions I Anticipate You Asking

My novel is far too complicated, literary, and inventive to pitch according to such a formula as you propose. Can I ignore everything you said?

In my little breakdown above, I divided the pitch of the query letter into three parts: lead-in, scope, and vibe. Depending on how experimental and out-there your novel is, you may need to shift the proportions of these three sections quite a bit. A novel that is almost entirely voice, with no plot, will need a pitch that is heavily balanced toward the vibe section, with just a tiny smidge of lead-in and scope. A novel with an incredibly complicated premise might need a pitch that is mostly lead-in, with scope and vibe crammed into one short paragraph at the end.

But I maintain that the majority of novels can probably fit, roughly, into this framework. And I likewise maintain (going out on a limb!) that drafting a pitch according to this framework will probably result in a pretty good pitch, most of the time.

Should I mention that I’ve worked with a freelance editor? That this is the fourth draft? That other agents have requested full manuscripts? That I have another fully drafted novel ready to send?

No to all of the above. You don’t want to include any information that indicates how long you’ve been in the query trenches. Agents, like all humans, are less keen on things that nobody else wants. You also really don’t need any information other than what I’ve sketched out above. Keep this businesslike; stick to the essentials. If the agent likes your manuscript enough to schedule a call with you, that will be your opportunity to get some of this information off your chest.

Everybody is sending query letters like this one. Shouldn’t I try to be daring and different?

No. First of all, “daring and different” is a lot more common than you think.2 Second of all, the goal of your query letter is to get the agent reading your sample pages as soon as possible. If your query letter is so outré that they can’t even parse the letter, or figure out where to find basic information like the title of your book, they are not very likely to continue reading to your sample pages. Show that you respect and understand the form of the query letter by obeying the form of the query letter.

What you’ve said here contradicts something I read somewhere else.

Ask me about it in the comments!

Devon Halliday

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