Writing & Querying My First Manuscript
Part Two of How I Got Here
I started drafting my first novel in January of 2023. I wrote all day, every day, not only because I was determined to finish it, but because writing quickly became an escape from the endless rejections and ghostings of job applications. Living at my parents’ house and not being able to find a job, yet again, was…uh, disappointing.
Soul-crushing.
It sucked.
But writing a fantasy novel? Living in a fictional world where I had all the control I lacked in my real life? Incredible (I needed therapy).
In February, my boyfriend and I decided to follow a dream of ours and move from Texas to Oregon. So, we started apartment-hunting. That August, we loaded up all of our belongings and drove halfway across the country.
It took me six months of writing every second that I wasn’t reading, job-hunting, or apartment-hunting to finish draft one. And boy, did I underestimate how long editing would take. In July, I thought for sure I’d be sending my book out by the end of the month, and that it might even be published by the end of the year (ha). But, that’s how it goes, right? At least, when you don’t have anyone to tell you that’s not how the publishing industry works.
It took me the rest of the year to edit my novel, with the help of friends and family. Special shoutout to my dad, my Aunt Kathy, Nathan, and Martha. And to anyone and everyone who supported me emotionally and/or financially.
My biggest struggle with my first book was the prose, which wasn’t surprising, given that I had almost no experience with creative writing. This meant that I had to spend a lot (A. Lot.) of time line-editing. I finally wrapped up edits in January of 2024, one year after I started writing.
I had no idea what was supposed to happen next, but I was fairly certain that authors had agents and that meant, at some point, I’d need to send my book to one. So, I started researching agents and seeing mentions of a “query letter.”
What is a query letter?
“In essence: it is a brief letter describing your book that will hopefully make an agent want to represent you.”
Luckily, there are some great resources online about how to write a query letter. Nathan Bransford also has a page dedicated to writing a pitch and a synopsis. Like with editing, this part of the process took much longer than I anticipated because writing a book and knowing how to sell a book are two different skills.
I revised my query and synopsis I-don’t-even-know-how-many times, but I was still mostly doing all of this alone. I mean, I had my friends and family, but I didn’t know any other writers going through the same thing I was. Everyone that I asked to look at my query read it and said, “Sounds good to me. Sounds like the book.” And it did sound like the book. But did it sell the book?
This is the query I sent out to agents:
Dear (Agent),
I am currently seeking representation for my adult fantasy novel, FAMILIAR GROUND, which is complete at 130,000 words, multiple point-of-view, and the first novel in the BORROWED TIME series.
On a continent long-ago divided by a devastating war, familiars have thrived for thousands of years in territories called Houses, the origins of their magic now all but forgotten…
Viona is the heir to the House of Soul, an inheritance tainted by grief, as it passes to her only in her older sister’s absence. After a child is kidnapped in the House of Soul, Viona’s father informs her that she will be traveling to the bustling city of Alea to meet the House of Luck’s new king in his stead, while he remains home to investigate the crime. Once Viona leaves for Alea, she begins to have mysterious dreams that reveal her sister’s tragic fate. Determined to save her sister, Viona allows herself to be led down a dangerous path, putting not only her life, but the lives of those she loves, in danger.
Silias was born to a rare familiarity, allowing him to detect, and therefore track, enchanted metal. He’s living and working in Alea, the overcrowded capital of the House of Luck, when an anonymous client offers him a life-changing sum of money to find a famous Witch’s lost, enchanted wedding ring. Once Silias begins to investigate the House of Soul’s royal family, he quickly finds himself working with, and maybe even falling for, the last person he would ever expect.
Rae enjoys a quiet life living downtown, in the House of Balance, with her partner, Omari. One night, in a moment of desperation, Rae discovers that she possesses a seemingly impossible magic. Intent on discovering the origins of this strange new magic, Rae starts to question everything she thought she knew about herself and her lineage. Once she and Omari begin to search for answers, they soon find themselves far from home and in more trouble than they ever could have imagined.
My name is Kira Bruner. I graduated from the University of North Texas with a Bachelor’s degree in communication design and a minor in art history. Since graduating, I’ve worked as a designer and art director, where I’ve helped establish narratives for brands in an agency setting. Whether I’m drawing, painting, or writing, storytelling is always at the core of what I do, and it has been for most of my life.
The full or partial manuscript is available upon request. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Kira Bruner
This isn’t a bad query for my first time ever doing this, and if you’ve never read a query in your life, you might be thinking, What’s wrong with it? So, I’m going to break down where I think I went wrong here, and how I’d fix it today.
For starters, this book is 130,000 words long, which is not uncommon in fantasy. But, agents tend to look for debut authors with books under or around 100,000 words (I’ve heard arguments against this, but this seems to be the majority opinion. There are, obviously, always exceptions), because the more words, the more a book will cost to print. Books in the same genre and age range usually sell for the same amount no matter how long they are. Sometimes novellas cost a little less and sometimes the massive hardcovers cost a little more, but generally, adult fantasy books cost about the same amount. This means that an 80,000 word novel and a 130,000 word novel will probably sell for the same price in stores, but they won’t cost the publisher the same amount to print. So, the less words your book has, the more attractive it is to agents and publishers.
This doesn’t mean that if you query a 100k+ word novel that it won’t get you an agent, just that your chances are a little slimmer. It’s always a good idea to look up what the expected or average word count is for your genre and age range before querying (or writing) your book. Also, take into consideration if the books you’re looking at for inspiration were debuts or not. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab is roughly 160,000 words (according to an internet search), but it wasn’t Schwab’s debut.
The same goes for querying a standalone versus a series. If you are a debut author, you might have a better chance of getting an agent with a standalone novel, or a standalone with series potential, than with a series. My first book was obviously part of a series. I mean, it ends on a cliffhanger. There was NO way I could query it as a standalone with series potential and I couldn’t wrap up the story without adding tens, potentially hundreds, of thousands of words.
I would also cut the second paragraph of this query:
“On a continent long-ago divided by a devastating war, familiars have thrived for thousands of years in territories called Houses, the origins of their magic now all but forgotten…”
Agents don’t need to know about the world history in the query. What they really need to know is:
1. Who is the main character?
2. What is the main character’s problem?
3. What are they going to do about it?
And almost nothing else.
Even though this book is multiple-POV, I also would not split this query into three sections. Instead, I would focus on the most prominent POV, which is Viona’s, and tell her story.
So,
Who is Viona?
“Viona is the heir to the House of Soul, an inheritance tainted by grief, as it passes to her only in her older sister’s absence.”
What is her problem?
“Once Viona leaves for Alea, she begins to have mysterious dreams that reveal her sister’s tragic fate.”
What does she plan to do about it?
“Determined to save her sister, Viona allows herself to be led down a dangerous path, putting not only her life, but the lives of those she loves, in danger.”
To be honest, I’m proud that I even checked those three boxes. But, with this query, I’m left with more questions than answers. Where is Viona’s sister? Why is she absent? What do these mysterious dreams consist of? What is this tragic fate? What dangerous paths? How exactly is she putting her life and those she loves in danger?
It’s important to leave an agent wanting to know more, but if they can’t describe the book clearly to someone else after reading your query then you didn’t do your job.
And, my one-sentence pitch didn’t tie into my query at all:
“The heir to an ancient House and a charming thief-for-hire find themselves working together, risking their lives, and falling in love, as they try to unravel the secrets of a mysterious witch’s past—a witch with the power to manipulate memories.”
To not mention that Viona and Silias cross paths or that they are trying to solve a mystery related to a witch with the power to manipulate memories in the query but mention it in the pitch feels inconsistent. I was correct that these details are interesting and important for the pitch, but they should have been in the query. The pitch also makes it seem like Viona and Silias’ romance is a bigger part of the story than it actually is.
I queried 56 agents with this project, which is a low amount compared to most. It’s not uncommon to query over a hundred (not that I knew that at the time). But, of those 56, I got 33 rejections, and 23 were a closed/no response (a CNR), which means, essentially, that they ghosted me. That, too, is not uncommon in querying.
I realized pretty early on that I was unlikely to get an agent with FAMILIAR GROUND. With my new knowledge about querying and what agents were looking for, I decided to write another book: a standalone, under 100,000 words, with a catchier pitch, that might look a little more appealing to agents.
I do want to say that just because I was trying to write something that might get more attention from agents, that doesn’t mean I was only writing a story I thought would get more attention from agents. I wasn’t going to invest that much time in a project I didn’t love. Writing a book with the sole goal of being published, and not because you enjoy the process of writing, is a recipe for disaster. But, that also doesn’t mean that you can’t be smart about which projects you invest time in and when. Part of being a writer as a career and not just as a hobby is knowing that you might have to set aside a couple aspirational projects to work on more practical ones. At least, for now.
I started writing my second manuscript, SMALL THINGS, in February of 2024. Since I’d already written one book and knew what to expect, my process was much more streamlined. I wrote a rough draft of a query and a pitch, had a loose plan for the story, and then told myself I was going to write 1,000 words every day (with exceptions). My goal: to have a finished book (draft one, not the final draft) in three months. And I did. I finished writing Small Things in May, hired a developmental editor in June, and made my final edits (to draft five) in July. I’ll get into the specifics about this project in the next post.
With a 58.9% rejection rate and a 41.1% CNR rate on FAMILIAR GROUND by July, and no requests for a full or partial manuscript, I decided to move on. For anyone who doesn’t know, six months is a pretty short amount of time to query a book. For reference, this year, a few agents have said they have about a five month query response time, meaning you probably won’t hear back from them before then. While twelve weeks is considered the amount of time you should wait before nudging (following up) with agents, or considering a query a CNR, I’ve noticed this isn’t always the case, and querying is taking even longer now than it did a year ago. This process is slow and writers sometimes query a project for a year, or years. But, after six months of querying FAMILIAR GROUND, with all that I’d learned while working on a new project, I felt ready to move on.
One agent did give me feedback on my first pages for FAMILIAR GROUND. In part of their rejection, which was incredibly kind and encouraging, they said:
“Even though I found many qualities in your work and loved the idea behind this story, I felt that the narrative relied heavily on “telling” and exposition at times. For that reason, I wasn’t able to fully connect emotionally the way I had hoped in order to champion this project.”
They also linked this article for me, to help explain what this meant.
This was SO helpful. Until receiving this feedback, I could only guess why I might be getting rejections. Most responses were something along the lines of: “Thank you for your query. Unfortunately, it’s not quite what I’m looking for at this time, so I will have to pass.” Or, “Thank you so for the opportunity to consider your work, but I am sorry to say that I do not think this material would be right for me, and therefore I would not make your most effective advocate.”
While this one agent’s reason for rejecting FAMILIAR GROUND was certainly not every agent’s reason for rejecting it, it was the only feedback I had. So, while writing SMALL THINGS, I really focused on showing instead of telling, refining my prose, and trying to nail down my voice.
Forever proud of you and your drive!!! You are my hero!!!!!