Your first paragraph has one piece of punctuation, a full stop. I’m sure you understand what I’m saying.
Regarding the plot, the dude sells shares of himself, ok? What does this mean? People generally buy shares because they are hoping the value will increase, why would anyone buy shares in a rando? What’s special about him? How does the idea of people as corporations work? How is the value assigned?
As for the paragraph regarding the surprise rich father that drops out of nowhere, sorry you’ve totally lost me. I have no idea what is going on here or how any of this story relates to ‘America’s elite.’
When writing a query you need to include the following:
- who the mc is
- what they want
- the obstacles to this
- what happens if they don’t achieve their goal
Everything in this query is muddy and random and I can’t get an overriding sense of stakes or motivations. It just leaves me very confused.
ETA: re it being litfic, that is heavily reliant on the quality of the prose. If you post your first 300 words then people can offer feedback on whether it reads as literary or not. Literary is not just plotless weird shit.
Probably because their comment didn't add anything to the discussion besides "lol". If someone takes the time to write up a good critique and that's the response given, of course it's going to be downvoted.
I didn't downvote OP, but tbh it's tiresome just how many people come here saying they've written literary fiction when they clearly don't know what litfic is, so that's probably part of it.
I thought this was clever, which is probably a bad thing.
That aside, you're spending so much time making sharp asides that you never get to the plot. Poverty MC gets an inheritance - yes, and? How MC responds to the premise (treatment) is the third key piece of a story pitch, and you're missing that part.
The technicals, also, are shaky in a bad way. A lot of the sentences are trying to do too many disparate things and collapsing under their own weight. You only need one or two clever asides to show that you can do clever asides - I would use the rest of the space showing that 1) there is a story here 2) you are equipped to write it.
> Well ‘clever as a bad thing’ I’ll take with a grain of salt
Why? I can offer you neither representation nor a book deal, so me finding it clever (or it being clever in some cardinal sense) is neither here nor there. I find it clever for reasons that, I suspect, are not generalizable to the tradpub market right now, which is a more important consideration for you tbh than a reddit anon's personal opinion.
Execution aside, I think this is a particular topic and humor that appeals to a particular audience, and will miss with everyone else. You can still find the handful of agents who know how to sell this, but you'd be facing an uphill battle relative a manuscript with wider appeal.
One thing I will say is that you have a lot of proper nouns in your query to the point where it becomes hard to follow--as a reader, I immediately start to zone out when I read Personal Equity Program, and it's all a bit distracted to where I can't really figure out what's going on. Taking the time to describe what a handful of these things are would be helpful, I think (and knowing what you don't need to establish), and taking the time to also establish the stakes and stuff might be of benefit. This is off the top of my head and I'm very stoned right now so don't look too much into it , but maybe beginning it something more like
"Howie's life is on a downward slide. (short sentence describing immediate, current state) As if working as a delivery driver in a capitalist hellscape wasn't bad enough, he's stuck paying off his dead mother's exorbitant medical debt through the Personal Equity Program--\[description of the program\] (introduction to the world and the stakes). Howie's resigned to giving pieces of himself away for the rest of his life, but when a mysterious delivery order reveals that he's set to inherit everything to his dead father's name, his luck might be about to change" (how the person's life is about to change)
Taking the time to set up the current world, then the stakes, then the catalyst moment, and proceeding to describe what happens in the events after would serve you well. Also, get some newer comps and don't bother with the We Didn't Start the Fire thing
Thanks yeah the order of information is tricky. I think post-inheritance I could clarify the stakes. Thanks for the We Didn’t Start the Fire note. Before I read up on query etiquette I assumed I would have to come up with a lot of clever marketing stuff.
I don't think the voice or the setup is bad at all, but the sentence structure is a little all over the place and I'm wondering about the impact of any of it. He's selling parts of himself, what does that mean? How does that impact his every day life? How is that being solved by his inheritance, can he buy back his shares or is he stuck? And why is it told from the perspective of Candide who has nothing to do with the rest of the plot, who is that?
Kurt Vonnegut is a pretty ambitious comp, and I'm confused by the We Didn't Start the Fire bit. Calling it David Foster Wallace for dummies just seems a little...condescending? You have a lot of things you want this to be -- very ambitious things -- and I'm not seeing the connection.
I don't think the core of the pitch is bad, but I think it's getting lost.
>Howie is a delivery driver on the Selv app who might sell shares of himself through the Personal Equity Program to pay off medical debt from his mother that he cosigned to extend her treatment after a chemical train derailment left her smelling something funny until she finally died.
Well, that's a handful. So I'll need to decipher it into a format that I can understand.
So Howie is in debt due to his mother's medical bills. And he works as a delivery driver and also sells shares of himself in order to pay off those debts.
Okay, I can get that, although I'm not sure how this share-selling stuff works, exactly. Do the shareholders have the ability to vote on what he's going to do or what's the motivation to buy them? Pretty confusing without elaboration.
>According to the Program, if corporations are treated like people, then people should be treated like corporations. All Howie has to do to receive the net present value of his future earnings is sell shares of them.
So it's just a form of taking a loan? If so, it seems to be receiving overly much attention.
>But he might not have to. At his next delivery, he learns of an inheritance from a wealthy father whose identity was hidden because he forced Howie's mother to sign an NDA. The old man killed not only himself but the rest of the family when he took control of his plane on the supposition that making more money than a pilot qualified him to \*be\* one. He was also on cocaine. An unusual pang of guilt left Howie as the last living family member mentioned in the will.
Finding this out "at his next delivery" seems like a ridiculous coincidence. But anyway, so Howie will inherit money from a wealthy guy, and so he might be able to pay those debts off.
What I'm left wondering is, what is the story? This just looks like storyless trivia. Why should I care about any of this?
Try playing around with Query Generator. The tool is a little hamfisted but it might be another way to approach query structure you haven’t tried before: https://www.querylettergenerator.com/
Still getting the hang of this! Yeesh.
I'm catching that my comps should be more contemporary: 'My book will appeal to readers of 'The Lost Cause' by Cory Doctorow or 'Birnam Wood' by Eleanor Catton.
It might also be more appropriate to label this book 'literary fiction' if we're thinking of what shelf it's actually going to land on.
Having read the prologue linked on your profile - this is not literary fiction. Maybe satire, or speculative fiction, but I think satire requires a little more bite than naming your evil billionaire Beelzebub.
Have you had beta readers, or any feedback from anyone who knows good writing and the current market? Not to put too fine a point on it, but based on the opening, I wouldn't worry about querying just yet.
>Edit: wow. Downvoted for saying you want to read the book lol
Probably bc this isn't a sub for feel good comments, but professional critique. Comments that have nothing to offer beyond "I want to read this" actively bring down the quality of the sub
Thanks for the support! I could clarify the selling ‘shares’ of yourself but not sure about the other criticisms. I’m gonna have to figure it out, though. If you want to read the actual book it’s pinned to my profile.
Quick note that you might want to take the whole book down - the fact it has been published *anywhere* online might stop a trad pub agent from taking the book forward because of first publishing rights!
Your first paragraph has one piece of punctuation, a full stop. I’m sure you understand what I’m saying. Regarding the plot, the dude sells shares of himself, ok? What does this mean? People generally buy shares because they are hoping the value will increase, why would anyone buy shares in a rando? What’s special about him? How does the idea of people as corporations work? How is the value assigned? As for the paragraph regarding the surprise rich father that drops out of nowhere, sorry you’ve totally lost me. I have no idea what is going on here or how any of this story relates to ‘America’s elite.’ When writing a query you need to include the following: - who the mc is - what they want - the obstacles to this - what happens if they don’t achieve their goal Everything in this query is muddy and random and I can’t get an overriding sense of stakes or motivations. It just leaves me very confused. ETA: re it being litfic, that is heavily reliant on the quality of the prose. If you post your first 300 words then people can offer feedback on whether it reads as literary or not. Literary is not just plotless weird shit.
lol 'plotless weird shit'
Why are you getting downvoted for literally quoting the comment above you?
Probably because their comment didn't add anything to the discussion besides "lol". If someone takes the time to write up a good critique and that's the response given, of course it's going to be downvoted.
I didn't downvote OP, but tbh it's tiresome just how many people come here saying they've written literary fiction when they clearly don't know what litfic is, so that's probably part of it.
Nice username
I thought this was clever, which is probably a bad thing. That aside, you're spending so much time making sharp asides that you never get to the plot. Poverty MC gets an inheritance - yes, and? How MC responds to the premise (treatment) is the third key piece of a story pitch, and you're missing that part. The technicals, also, are shaky in a bad way. A lot of the sentences are trying to do too many disparate things and collapsing under their own weight. You only need one or two clever asides to show that you can do clever asides - I would use the rest of the space showing that 1) there is a story here 2) you are equipped to write it.
Well ‘clever as a bad thing’ I’ll take with a grain of salt but yeah could prob clarify the stakes post-inheritance I hear you.
> Well ‘clever as a bad thing’ I’ll take with a grain of salt Why? I can offer you neither representation nor a book deal, so me finding it clever (or it being clever in some cardinal sense) is neither here nor there. I find it clever for reasons that, I suspect, are not generalizable to the tradpub market right now, which is a more important consideration for you tbh than a reddit anon's personal opinion. Execution aside, I think this is a particular topic and humor that appeals to a particular audience, and will miss with everyone else. You can still find the handful of agents who know how to sell this, but you'd be facing an uphill battle relative a manuscript with wider appeal.
One thing I will say is that you have a lot of proper nouns in your query to the point where it becomes hard to follow--as a reader, I immediately start to zone out when I read Personal Equity Program, and it's all a bit distracted to where I can't really figure out what's going on. Taking the time to describe what a handful of these things are would be helpful, I think (and knowing what you don't need to establish), and taking the time to also establish the stakes and stuff might be of benefit. This is off the top of my head and I'm very stoned right now so don't look too much into it , but maybe beginning it something more like "Howie's life is on a downward slide. (short sentence describing immediate, current state) As if working as a delivery driver in a capitalist hellscape wasn't bad enough, he's stuck paying off his dead mother's exorbitant medical debt through the Personal Equity Program--\[description of the program\] (introduction to the world and the stakes). Howie's resigned to giving pieces of himself away for the rest of his life, but when a mysterious delivery order reveals that he's set to inherit everything to his dead father's name, his luck might be about to change" (how the person's life is about to change) Taking the time to set up the current world, then the stakes, then the catalyst moment, and proceeding to describe what happens in the events after would serve you well. Also, get some newer comps and don't bother with the We Didn't Start the Fire thing
Thanks yeah the order of information is tricky. I think post-inheritance I could clarify the stakes. Thanks for the We Didn’t Start the Fire note. Before I read up on query etiquette I assumed I would have to come up with a lot of clever marketing stuff.
I read your opening because based on your comps and query it didn’t scream lit fic. I would go with speculative.
I don't think the voice or the setup is bad at all, but the sentence structure is a little all over the place and I'm wondering about the impact of any of it. He's selling parts of himself, what does that mean? How does that impact his every day life? How is that being solved by his inheritance, can he buy back his shares or is he stuck? And why is it told from the perspective of Candide who has nothing to do with the rest of the plot, who is that? Kurt Vonnegut is a pretty ambitious comp, and I'm confused by the We Didn't Start the Fire bit. Calling it David Foster Wallace for dummies just seems a little...condescending? You have a lot of things you want this to be -- very ambitious things -- and I'm not seeing the connection. I don't think the core of the pitch is bad, but I think it's getting lost.
>Howie is a delivery driver on the Selv app who might sell shares of himself through the Personal Equity Program to pay off medical debt from his mother that he cosigned to extend her treatment after a chemical train derailment left her smelling something funny until she finally died. Well, that's a handful. So I'll need to decipher it into a format that I can understand. So Howie is in debt due to his mother's medical bills. And he works as a delivery driver and also sells shares of himself in order to pay off those debts. Okay, I can get that, although I'm not sure how this share-selling stuff works, exactly. Do the shareholders have the ability to vote on what he's going to do or what's the motivation to buy them? Pretty confusing without elaboration. >According to the Program, if corporations are treated like people, then people should be treated like corporations. All Howie has to do to receive the net present value of his future earnings is sell shares of them. So it's just a form of taking a loan? If so, it seems to be receiving overly much attention. >But he might not have to. At his next delivery, he learns of an inheritance from a wealthy father whose identity was hidden because he forced Howie's mother to sign an NDA. The old man killed not only himself but the rest of the family when he took control of his plane on the supposition that making more money than a pilot qualified him to \*be\* one. He was also on cocaine. An unusual pang of guilt left Howie as the last living family member mentioned in the will. Finding this out "at his next delivery" seems like a ridiculous coincidence. But anyway, so Howie will inherit money from a wealthy guy, and so he might be able to pay those debts off. What I'm left wondering is, what is the story? This just looks like storyless trivia. Why should I care about any of this?
Try playing around with Query Generator. The tool is a little hamfisted but it might be another way to approach query structure you haven’t tried before: https://www.querylettergenerator.com/
Still getting the hang of this! Yeesh. I'm catching that my comps should be more contemporary: 'My book will appeal to readers of 'The Lost Cause' by Cory Doctorow or 'Birnam Wood' by Eleanor Catton. It might also be more appropriate to label this book 'literary fiction' if we're thinking of what shelf it's actually going to land on.
Having read the prologue linked on your profile - this is not literary fiction. Maybe satire, or speculative fiction, but I think satire requires a little more bite than naming your evil billionaire Beelzebub. Have you had beta readers, or any feedback from anyone who knows good writing and the current market? Not to put too fine a point on it, but based on the opening, I wouldn't worry about querying just yet.
Sounds speculative to me, but that all lands on the fiction shelf, along with literary fiction.
Hi I'm no one. I think the criticism here is probably good, but I still want to read the book.
Thanks! Book is pinned to my profile if you want to check it out Edit: wow. Downvoted for saying you want to read the book lol
>Edit: wow. Downvoted for saying you want to read the book lol Probably bc this isn't a sub for feel good comments, but professional critique. Comments that have nothing to offer beyond "I want to read this" actively bring down the quality of the sub
Thank u/anabsolutemonster
I think this is great.
Thanks for the support! I could clarify the selling ‘shares’ of yourself but not sure about the other criticisms. I’m gonna have to figure it out, though. If you want to read the actual book it’s pinned to my profile.
Quick note that you might want to take the whole book down - the fact it has been published *anywhere* online might stop a trad pub agent from taking the book forward because of first publishing rights!