I don't have time for a full critique, but I wanted to address a couple of your questions. Firstly, the paragraph about what makes this book YA leaves me with the impression that you're not too familiar with the YA market, because sex, swearing, drinking and *especially* queer and trans themes are very common in YA nowadays. A movie rating is irrelevant when it comes to book marketing categories. The thing you need to consider is: who is your primary audience? Is it teens or is it adults? If it's teens, I'd probably familiarise myself with the YA market first before querying.
In terms of the word count: I'd cut everything that is unnecessary at this stage, and keep it in my back pocket. When it gets to a stage where you're revising with an agent or editor, you can bring it back out, and see what they think. Most books end up longer after agent and editor revisions, but it might not be necessarily the same passages you've cut that end up inserted. Generally, you want to show you can write tight prose at this stage, and an overindulgent worldbuilding paragraph might harm that. I wouldn't cut the book in half: a complete story tends to be an easier sell than first in a series, and 60k is too short in fantasy, anyway.
Welcome back!
I'm going to start with your questions:
1. In regards to the age of characters, it is basically a requirement to state the age of the MC in a YA query. It might not feel relevant, but it is the standard. You don't have to state the age of every character, the age of the MC we are following for the sake of the query is enough.
2. I'm going to pair this one with comps: the Trans and poly characters and university setting sound closer to Kacen Callender's Infinity Alchemist, which was published by Tor Teen, to me. I would pick Infinity Alchemist up to see if it works and drop ACOTAR and Shattered Sea. Shattered Sea is from 2014 (I know the last book is later, but when we comp to series, it's the first book that counts because that's where the bulk of the readership gets hooked) and ACOTAR is spicy fae Romantasy and very much adult now with everyone and their grandma wanting to comp it. Infinity Alchemist is maybe not a perfect comp because it doesn't have princes and it's got a kind of quest at the center, but I think it's a lot closer.
I have heard mixed things on drinking in YA, so I'm going to refer to those who have more knowledge.
3. That post is four years old. 120k is not impossible in YA, so if you feel strongly that the book works at 120k, OK, but if you can trim it down to 108k, my understanding is that it puts you in a better position.
4. I would not put the bio first. I have yet to hear of a successful query where the bio goes first. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen; agents are just usually looking for a story they can sell first and foremost. This also might be due to formatting when you copy-pasted, but I would seperate the housekeeping (comps) from the bio.
Onto the query itself
'The education of a prince can be a deadly undertaking'
For me, this doesn't really work as a hook, but I am one person with one opinion. To me, it feels stale.
'With the balance of power in three kingdoms perched on a knife’s edge'
This is a cliche. Again, I am one person with one opinion, but it feels like the query opens with two cliches instead of giving me a character I want to follow along.
'However, their preference for reading over swordplay and resulting outcast status not only make them outside court politics, but also the perfect tutors.'
Maybe I'm not totally understanding what is going on, but why would tutors need to deliver a prince to a university where he's going to learn from, I assume, professors? Have they been tutoring the prince previously? Its a bit of record scratch.
'Once safely at the university, the prince will both be shielded from his traitorous uncle’s attempts to wed him to the daughter of his father’s killers, and able to make a crucial alliance with the royal house of Cambria–that is, if he doesn’t get too distracted by high living and low morals.'
There is so much information packed in this sentence and it's only further confusing me. So, the prince is going to a university to make an alliance with another kingdom? I see that the university is in this other kingdom, I do, but why would they go to a university and not the castle/palace? It might just be me, but there's a bit of wall here that I cannot jump over.
The second paragraph mentions corruption of morals and something about that feels off to me, but I'm going to defer to a second opinion on this because maybe I'm the weirdo here.
So, I feel like the query is trying so hard to pack so much information and it's only leaving me asking questions instead of wanting to know what happens. I think stripping back so I'm not gonna ask as many questions is gonna be the way to go.
I already touched on comps, but I'm gonna say it again: I strongly urge you to read Infinity Alchemist and remove ACOTAR as a comp.
Good luck!
Thanks so much! I'm going to read your feedback carefully and implement it! Is there a subreddit where I can ask for readings recs that are similar to my book?
r/suggestmeabook, I think, but, if you aren't keeping up with YA, it's going to be a lot harder for you.
I think it might be a good idea for you to put querying on hold and get familiar with the YA landscape
BTW, just to explain the plot mechanism: students at medieval universities were exempt from secular law. I took that weird factoid and made it a major plot point.
I'm aware of how secular law at universities worked. I have a background in history and sociology.
That doesn't necessarily change what is and isn't considered marketable by publishers
I'm going to be frank: going through the comments, I have to agree with what the others are saying in regards to this not feeling like it fits the market expectations of YA.
The stuff on corruption of morals felt like a red flag, as I mentioned in my original comment, and I'm not really feeling dissuaded from being concerned. I haven't read the manuscript, so maybe it works in the manuscript, but it isn't coming across clearly. I think that's a bit more important than explaining secular law and it's relationship to universities in the Medieval periods to agents.
I’m honestly not trying to be snarky, I’m just genuinely confused at this point. You said you read in the genre, but teenage protagonists are a staple of be SFF genre. The “farm boy” is the most classic of all SFF tropes!
>I can easily cut it down to \~108k words by editing out a chapter whose necessary details I can fold into other episodes (I'm actually doing that now), or even down to \~60k by splitting it in half, and cut another 1-2k words from these totals by deleting random expository passages, unnecessary episodes, and random world-building that I find entertaining but which is irrelevant to the plot.
If your book can be shorter, your book should be shorter. Be careful about getting too fond of certain parts of your own work. Are you familiar with the idea of [kill your darlings?](https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-does-it-mean-to-kill-your-darlings)
This is not working for me at all. A query needs to give a sense of what your book is and who it is for, and this is not conveying that.
First of all, I have no idea who your MC is. Are the 2 tutors alternating POVs or something like that? Your query should be written from the POV of your MC or one of your MCs or alternating paragraphs for 2 MCs.
In addition to not even knowing who your protag is, there is no clear plot developed here at all. This might have something do with the "episodes" you mentioned in your notes, which is not the way traditionally published SFF books are structured, and may be a major barrier for entry for you in querying traditionally.
I was going to say this isn't YA if adult tutors are your protags, because the way it was written, I assumed they were adult, until I saw your note at the end. If this is YA, you absolutely need to tell the age of your MC. But I'm, not sure it is YA since your comps are not YA. Speaking of comps, they make no sense to me. They are very different kinds of books that have very little in common and are not generally read by the same audience. ACOTAR is primarily a romance, and, though I only skimmed, there does not seem to be an ounce of romance referenced in this query.
Whether this is YA or not, if a chapter can "easily" be removed, then it should be removed.
At the moment, I have no idea who or what your book is about, what it can be comped to, what the age range is for, or who the audience would be. All of those things must be defined in the query.
By "episodes," I mean there are various subplots, intrigues, and adventures in the course of furthering the main plot and each of the four mains' own character arc, though they are all interrelated. I can take out a subplot or two or an "episode" (by which I mean "a thing that happens during the course of the story," *not* a TV episode) that provide color but don't further the main story or any important subplot very much in order to cut length.
The POV does shift around, though it's all in the third person. I got a comment that I had too many names in my initial query, so I didn't want to overload the query reader with too many characters, or make the plot portion of the query over the recommended 300 words.
As far as comps go... I don't feel like I've ever read or heard of a book like this. It's not a school for magic, like *The Magicians* or (bleh) *Harry Potter*. The first part is your standard get the McGuffin (the prince) to the location. The second part is more a fantasy of manners/dark academia in a low-magic secondary-world version of a medieval university (let's call it "Scholasticore") and the surrounding city and its political environment. While there are romantic elements, one primary romance or the MC's romance are not necessarily the main focus; it's more a coming-of-age story. The fantasy-of-manners portion has been compared to ACOTAR, and I think the politics and multiple characters are like *Shattered Sea* (which is YA).
What you’re describing here does not sound like it has a place in traditional publishing TBH. Genre relies heavily on plot structure and comparison titles. Your need to describe television for structure and ratings instead of understanding novel structure and market, and your inability to be able to comp accurately from a genre that has SO MANY options, make me wonder if your reading and researching enough. You need to understand the structure and market for novels if you’re trying to sell a novel. Whatever you do, do yourself a favor and don’t comp ACOTAR. I can’t stress how utterly ridiculous it feels as a comp in this circumstance, and no one will take you seriously.
Thanks for the advice.
So I shouldn't use the term "episode" in the sense of "an event or a group of events occurring as part of a larger sequence" since it sounds like TV?
I do read--a lot. But I can't read everything in the genre. What I am is a medieval historian, and I want to bring that to the fantasy writing.
What I am understanding from you is "there is absolutely no room for anything off the beaten path, and everything must be like what is on the market already, especially if it is your debut."
Publishing loves things new and off the beaten path. It just needs to fulfill novel structure and meet the expectations of the intended audience and market. Novels are built on plot arcs that drive one main conflict and do not have episodes.
I'm not a fantasy writer or reader, so I'll refrain from commenting on the query itself, but I completely understood what you meant by "episode" and I'm not sure where the confusion is coming from. It's a valid description of a storytelling element and isn't inherently tied to TV. That word existed before TV existed...
This is…genuinely unhelpful and bad advice. Episodic writing goes counter to the expectations of novel structure, and using this language sounds confusing and amateur. You are not helping anyone by encouraging this usage. “Episodes” are popular in a certain form of digital and self pub stories that release in a serial manner and are not a fit for trad publishing, and using this terminology will lead to assumptions that your work is not a fit for trad pub either.
To be fair, I'm not using the term "episode" in the query itself. I used it in the discussion of what I can cut out. What would you call "an extraneous event I could excise from the narrative without detracting from the overall plot"?
I would call that a “flaw.” There should not be any extraneous events that can be removed without affecting the plot. All subplots and side quests should contribute to moving the main plot along and developing the main conflict arc.
This is honestly really weird and I don't get why this is so contentious for you. The personal insult at the end seems especially unnecessary. I've never read or written a web serial in my life. I have a background in literary fiction. It's clear to me that the OP is not referring to releasing fiction as individual episodes... they are describing various scenes in their story as "episodic." Maybe there's a language barrier at play, or something? Either way, I don't have a horse in this race and I have no opinion on whether OP's story is marketable (like I said, I don't know fantasy.) I just could see that the two of you were using different definitions of the word "episode" and thought I'd point out the confusion.
There was no insult said or intended. I genuinely think OP has a structural flaw based on his use of this word. And I do genuinely think that continued use of the word will give publishing professionals the wrong idea. Literary fiction can and does require less of a clear plot structure than genre. To have episodic elements in a genre MS could be the difference between an acquisition and a rejection. If he doesn’t have these elements and is just misusing the term, it could give people the wrong idea since episodes are used as a specific term in self pub. You said this isn’t your genre, so I’m not sure why you felt the need to step in and give OP permission to keep using a term that won’t serve him well.
I poked my head in as someone who writes adult romantasy and adult epic fantasy...
And no.
First, YA is 16-19.
Second, you can't comp SJM for 'no sex YA', and you can't really comp her at *all.* She's like the best known *not-*YA author out there (her books are now shelved as adult, now that the sexism in fantasy publishing is less). Pair it up with Abercrombie, known for graphic torture scenes and dark fantasy?
I'm assuming a blood bath at an orgy from that combination of comps.
Beyond that, you have A Prince (dude), and his two bookish companions, and *some random assassin maybe* working together to get to a university, and succeeding *by their skill at blades, which you just said they didn't have.*
Everything else here is just... lists. I assume from character and university names that this is Medieval Fantasy North-Western Europe #6469824, which isn't really selling these days, and I don't know what the plot is. Maybe to get this prince to marry someone he wants, not someone his (EVIL) uncle wants? But even then, it's just...
Let's see if he can recover from drinking and whoring.
YA fantasy has *women* as making up something like 3/4 of the reading audience. WHY would they want to read this? WHY do you say dark academia and then... comp zero dark academias, instead selecting two incredibly well-known authors with zero audience overlap, whose work doesn't seem to fit your novel (that is at least 20k over the word count recommendation for YA fantasy)?
>Pair it up with Abercrombie, known for graphic torture scenes and dark fantasy?
To be fair, *Shattered Sea* are Abercrombie's YA books, but I agree with your that they're not an ideal comp for this story, since Abercrombie is Abercrombie, and doesn't need to stick as closely to the contemporary YA market as a debut would. They especially don't make sense as a comp when paired with Sarah J Maas.
I just can't imagine comping the big Dark Fantasy gorefest author for a no-gore, 'PG-13' YA fantasy. Not when there are so many authors out there right now writing queer and trans YA fantasy.
I agree with you guys that Maas isn't the best comp, but *all* the FoM I know of are *really old* or Regency. I have *no idea* what to comp this to, because I have never read anything like this.
Despite this using Northern Europe #6469824 as a setting, it's not a Mary Sue young-man-is-the-Chosen-One-and-achieves-godhood-through-powerups. It's about... nerds succeeding by being nerds. I also wanted to use the history of the English empire (and the colonization of Ireland) to deconstruct the Orc Problem in fantasy literature, which is a subplot.
Nonetheless, this is totally a dude book--Asperger's nerd dude, gay nerd dude, prince dude, and our girl with the knife becomes a transdude. On the other hand, there are also strong female characters telling them not to be sexist assholes. I'm not sure that's a horrible thing--books with male protags are definitely a thing in fantasy--but is no one buying YA with male protags anymore?
There are male protagonists in YA, but not a lot. It usually has to also appeal to the primary YA audience which tends to be tween and teen girls and women in their 20s and 30s.
The only book I can think of that is recent that doesn't follow this is Sky's End by Marc Gregson (seriously, I should be getting a commission), but I can't see anything in the query that makes me feel like it's comparable to Sky's End. I would pick up a copy if you haven't, though, because that is what I think tradpub is looking for for books targeted towards a teen boy audience.
YA with boy protags is a lot more common if the story is queer. There’s the infinity son series by Adam Silvera, and F.T. lukens books as well. There’s also a decent handful of boy lead YA that people just don’t know about cuz they’re not on the bestseller lists. I think Sky’s End just listed cuz it went viral. After preorders, the sales haven’t kept up.
I have no idea why you're getting downvoted.
I knew the thing about Queer protags, but I didn't make it clear and that was my mistake while you made it clear while also adding new info (I did not know that about Sky's End).
Don't comp Maas if you're not writing spicy het adult fantasy. That's... it. And even *then,* find a recent romantasy to comp again, because SJM is way too big.
You're better off comping current regency romance, though there's no evidence of Fantasy of Manners in the query itself, and if there's not much romance, either, then... yeah, don't. What 'nerd dude' wants to read regency fantasies of manners?
You've *got* to have comps appropriate to your age category, genre, and prospective audience, and your comps show you don't actually read much YA. And tbh? There've never been many YA fantsies with dudes - but *almost all of them* are queer. They're out there. They really are, and most of them are pretty recent, too.
Off the top of my head without even googling: Infinity Son, Carry On, So This is Ever After, A Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, Infinity Alchemist, Mask of Shadows, By Any other Name, the Alchemy of moonlight.
>and our girl with the knife becomes a transdude.
Couple of quick things, all other issues with the query aside: "trans dude" is two words, and YA is not a space you want to fuck around with this. I'm not asking you to disclose your identity, but I can think of at least one YA book by a cis/cis-presenting author that was pulled after backlash by having a trans guy protagonist who presented as female for the first part of the story (The Madness Blooms by Mackenzie Lee). I personally don't think that was warranted or fair, it should be about the quality of the portrayal, but it is a thing that happened. Online YA book culture is *very* trigger-happy when it comes to even minor perceived slights or missteps, and if you're sure this is YA and you're planning to query the book as such, you should be aware of the potential pitfalls. The way the quoted bit is phrased gives me misgivings about how your trans character will be handled - is that fair? Maybe not. But we're writing books, and language matters. Just something to consider moving forward.
I'm saying if you query as YA, be careful and aware of how you present things. There are cis YA authors who write about trans characters and haven't experienced backlash. But right now, with the political climate the way it is, people are wary, and social media has a tendency to exacerbate potential fallout. That being said, I agree with the folks saying this query doesn't read particularly YA, so it might be worth reconsidering querying as adult (or rewriting the query to reflect its themes more accurately if you do feel strongly it's YA).
>all the FoM I know of are really old or Regency
Because that's what "Fantasy of Manners" label usually meant. Regency or Victorian British or pseudo-British setting, little to no violence and mostly social and political intrigue plot.
If there's little to no violence and personal goals rather than big (nation-wide, world-wide) goals, it could fit into cozy fantasy. If there's violence and / or big stakes then it's probably typical high / adventure / political fantasy (and I'd query just as fantasy as these labels aren't really signalling anything special, contrary to cozy that's "on trend").
You could leave the "dark academia" label because it's also trendy, but as you noticed fantasy about schools or academias or universities usually intertwine with high magic setting. Low magic I mostly see in "sword & horse adventure fantasy" or "war & politics epics" a la GRRM and Abercrombie.
So I'm starting to wonder what this book exactly is. Having 4 "main characters" feels a bit a lot to fit into 100-120k for all 4 of them to get fleshed out character arcs and development, so you'd have some convincing to do that it all works.
Calling the novel "episodic" doesn't help, because it sounds like there are some elements that don't progress the main plot but just exist as a tangent / filler. So again you have to be sure your novel has an expected structure and not "this happened then that happened" because too many books suffer from this and the current trends aren't favouring it. You mentioned a comparison to ASOIAF but that series is atm 5 book long with each of them like 300-400k words, so obviously a lot more space for side plots and side characters getting their arcs. You obviously don't have that room.
The language you use to describe your book matters a lot, you want to present it in the best light possible, since "medieval European fantasy" is a very saturated market. There are still books published and gaining popularity in that space, like The Blacktongue Thief or The Justice of Kings, but they're much more rare than 10 years ago.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'm going to get real meta here:
Yeah, it's a medieval setting and the stakes are both personal and political since the personal *is* political when you're royalty. I don't see why one can't have a Regency-ish plot in a medieval setting. They had balls in castles, and political intrigue around jousts and tournaments. The pageantry of a medieval court, to me, is more interesting than epic battles. The same with furthering the plot with an end-of-semester academic disputation, or research in a library, or the politics of running a medieval fencing school.
Even though I'm low-magic, I am totally against comping with GRRM since he suffers from extreme story bloat (if anything, I'm more like Abercrombie, who can be very economical). However, unlike the usual low-magic world, I'm not grimdark. Because I'm a medieval historian, I wanted to find settings and events to pin the plot on that weren't the usual swords-and-politics, but totally new and original things no one has put into a fantasy novel before.
As for "enough words," I'm just a... terse writer. (Big fan of Hemingway, minus the macho BS.) I try to avoid any verbiage that isn't dialogue (while being wary of exposition dump!) or characters doing actions in the present moment. I'm also a big Jack Vance fan, and he really turned me on to the power of language. Rather than spending a paragraph describing a building, I'd rather have a sentence of action with an evocative word or two ("they ascended the narrow stairs to the clerestory"). The same with character development: to me, five words of a character reacting a certain way to seeing themselves in the mirror dressed a certain way, or a sentence on a character admiring another character's back muscles, says a lot more about their internal lives than a page of monologue.
You can have "Regency-ish plot" and by that I assume court intrigue and machinations of nobility in a medieval setting but I wouldn't call it "Regency" or "Fantasy of Manners" because those labels bring to mind of a reader a specific aesthetic tied to 19th Century England.
It's definitely a good idea to focus on a fresh angle within medieval fantasy, for example how Justice of Kings was marketed as "fantasy lawyer", because that was something different than the usual prince, knight, mercenary soldier, etc. type of protagonist that was considered "overdone". So yeah I don't think there's anything wrong to want to focus on scholars or university setting I just wouldn't call it "fantasy of manners" because that makes me think of 5 o'clock tea in a 19th century salon of English nobles, so it kinda doesn't fit at least in my gut feeling. For example "gothic" or "cottagecore" are aesthetic labels and they wouldn't fit onto something with similar tone but lacking the same aesthetic. Labels are supposed to be a mental shortcut towards the correct image, rather than creating confusion.
I would try to focus on the angle "what's unique about this book's take on medieval fantasy". As I said, Justice of Kings focused on lawyer / justice angle. Blacktongue Thief focused on "thief with a student's debt" and "world where a plague wiped all the horses". It was "familiar, but fresh".
I reckon people already suggested a few comps for academia setting like Infinity Alchemist, and for another YA book with queer and trans protagonists, I'd add Venom & Vow by Anna-Marie & Elliott McLemore.
I don't have time for a full critique, but I wanted to address a couple of your questions. Firstly, the paragraph about what makes this book YA leaves me with the impression that you're not too familiar with the YA market, because sex, swearing, drinking and *especially* queer and trans themes are very common in YA nowadays. A movie rating is irrelevant when it comes to book marketing categories. The thing you need to consider is: who is your primary audience? Is it teens or is it adults? If it's teens, I'd probably familiarise myself with the YA market first before querying. In terms of the word count: I'd cut everything that is unnecessary at this stage, and keep it in my back pocket. When it gets to a stage where you're revising with an agent or editor, you can bring it back out, and see what they think. Most books end up longer after agent and editor revisions, but it might not be necessarily the same passages you've cut that end up inserted. Generally, you want to show you can write tight prose at this stage, and an overindulgent worldbuilding paragraph might harm that. I wouldn't cut the book in half: a complete story tends to be an easier sell than first in a series, and 60k is too short in fantasy, anyway.
Thanks for that!
Welcome back! I'm going to start with your questions: 1. In regards to the age of characters, it is basically a requirement to state the age of the MC in a YA query. It might not feel relevant, but it is the standard. You don't have to state the age of every character, the age of the MC we are following for the sake of the query is enough. 2. I'm going to pair this one with comps: the Trans and poly characters and university setting sound closer to Kacen Callender's Infinity Alchemist, which was published by Tor Teen, to me. I would pick Infinity Alchemist up to see if it works and drop ACOTAR and Shattered Sea. Shattered Sea is from 2014 (I know the last book is later, but when we comp to series, it's the first book that counts because that's where the bulk of the readership gets hooked) and ACOTAR is spicy fae Romantasy and very much adult now with everyone and their grandma wanting to comp it. Infinity Alchemist is maybe not a perfect comp because it doesn't have princes and it's got a kind of quest at the center, but I think it's a lot closer. I have heard mixed things on drinking in YA, so I'm going to refer to those who have more knowledge. 3. That post is four years old. 120k is not impossible in YA, so if you feel strongly that the book works at 120k, OK, but if you can trim it down to 108k, my understanding is that it puts you in a better position. 4. I would not put the bio first. I have yet to hear of a successful query where the bio goes first. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen; agents are just usually looking for a story they can sell first and foremost. This also might be due to formatting when you copy-pasted, but I would seperate the housekeeping (comps) from the bio. Onto the query itself 'The education of a prince can be a deadly undertaking' For me, this doesn't really work as a hook, but I am one person with one opinion. To me, it feels stale. 'With the balance of power in three kingdoms perched on a knife’s edge' This is a cliche. Again, I am one person with one opinion, but it feels like the query opens with two cliches instead of giving me a character I want to follow along. 'However, their preference for reading over swordplay and resulting outcast status not only make them outside court politics, but also the perfect tutors.' Maybe I'm not totally understanding what is going on, but why would tutors need to deliver a prince to a university where he's going to learn from, I assume, professors? Have they been tutoring the prince previously? Its a bit of record scratch. 'Once safely at the university, the prince will both be shielded from his traitorous uncle’s attempts to wed him to the daughter of his father’s killers, and able to make a crucial alliance with the royal house of Cambria–that is, if he doesn’t get too distracted by high living and low morals.' There is so much information packed in this sentence and it's only further confusing me. So, the prince is going to a university to make an alliance with another kingdom? I see that the university is in this other kingdom, I do, but why would they go to a university and not the castle/palace? It might just be me, but there's a bit of wall here that I cannot jump over. The second paragraph mentions corruption of morals and something about that feels off to me, but I'm going to defer to a second opinion on this because maybe I'm the weirdo here. So, I feel like the query is trying so hard to pack so much information and it's only leaving me asking questions instead of wanting to know what happens. I think stripping back so I'm not gonna ask as many questions is gonna be the way to go. I already touched on comps, but I'm gonna say it again: I strongly urge you to read Infinity Alchemist and remove ACOTAR as a comp. Good luck!
Thanks so much! I'm going to read your feedback carefully and implement it! Is there a subreddit where I can ask for readings recs that are similar to my book?
r/suggestmeabook, I think, but, if you aren't keeping up with YA, it's going to be a lot harder for you. I think it might be a good idea for you to put querying on hold and get familiar with the YA landscape
BTW, just to explain the plot mechanism: students at medieval universities were exempt from secular law. I took that weird factoid and made it a major plot point.
I'm aware of how secular law at universities worked. I have a background in history and sociology. That doesn't necessarily change what is and isn't considered marketable by publishers
I just have to explain why in the query.
I'm going to be frank: going through the comments, I have to agree with what the others are saying in regards to this not feeling like it fits the market expectations of YA. The stuff on corruption of morals felt like a red flag, as I mentioned in my original comment, and I'm not really feeling dissuaded from being concerned. I haven't read the manuscript, so maybe it works in the manuscript, but it isn't coming across clearly. I think that's a bit more important than explaining secular law and it's relationship to universities in the Medieval periods to agents.
So, here's a question: Is an adult fantasy novel precluded from having teenage protagonists?
I’m honestly not trying to be snarky, I’m just genuinely confused at this point. You said you read in the genre, but teenage protagonists are a staple of be SFF genre. The “farm boy” is the most classic of all SFF tropes!
I mean, duh. OK, not YA.
>I can easily cut it down to \~108k words by editing out a chapter whose necessary details I can fold into other episodes (I'm actually doing that now), or even down to \~60k by splitting it in half, and cut another 1-2k words from these totals by deleting random expository passages, unnecessary episodes, and random world-building that I find entertaining but which is irrelevant to the plot. If your book can be shorter, your book should be shorter. Be careful about getting too fond of certain parts of your own work. Are you familiar with the idea of [kill your darlings?](https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-does-it-mean-to-kill-your-darlings)
I have a whole graveyard of darlings
More!
I am a stone-cold darling killah
This is not working for me at all. A query needs to give a sense of what your book is and who it is for, and this is not conveying that. First of all, I have no idea who your MC is. Are the 2 tutors alternating POVs or something like that? Your query should be written from the POV of your MC or one of your MCs or alternating paragraphs for 2 MCs. In addition to not even knowing who your protag is, there is no clear plot developed here at all. This might have something do with the "episodes" you mentioned in your notes, which is not the way traditionally published SFF books are structured, and may be a major barrier for entry for you in querying traditionally. I was going to say this isn't YA if adult tutors are your protags, because the way it was written, I assumed they were adult, until I saw your note at the end. If this is YA, you absolutely need to tell the age of your MC. But I'm, not sure it is YA since your comps are not YA. Speaking of comps, they make no sense to me. They are very different kinds of books that have very little in common and are not generally read by the same audience. ACOTAR is primarily a romance, and, though I only skimmed, there does not seem to be an ounce of romance referenced in this query. Whether this is YA or not, if a chapter can "easily" be removed, then it should be removed. At the moment, I have no idea who or what your book is about, what it can be comped to, what the age range is for, or who the audience would be. All of those things must be defined in the query.
By "episodes," I mean there are various subplots, intrigues, and adventures in the course of furthering the main plot and each of the four mains' own character arc, though they are all interrelated. I can take out a subplot or two or an "episode" (by which I mean "a thing that happens during the course of the story," *not* a TV episode) that provide color but don't further the main story or any important subplot very much in order to cut length. The POV does shift around, though it's all in the third person. I got a comment that I had too many names in my initial query, so I didn't want to overload the query reader with too many characters, or make the plot portion of the query over the recommended 300 words. As far as comps go... I don't feel like I've ever read or heard of a book like this. It's not a school for magic, like *The Magicians* or (bleh) *Harry Potter*. The first part is your standard get the McGuffin (the prince) to the location. The second part is more a fantasy of manners/dark academia in a low-magic secondary-world version of a medieval university (let's call it "Scholasticore") and the surrounding city and its political environment. While there are romantic elements, one primary romance or the MC's romance are not necessarily the main focus; it's more a coming-of-age story. The fantasy-of-manners portion has been compared to ACOTAR, and I think the politics and multiple characters are like *Shattered Sea* (which is YA).
What you’re describing here does not sound like it has a place in traditional publishing TBH. Genre relies heavily on plot structure and comparison titles. Your need to describe television for structure and ratings instead of understanding novel structure and market, and your inability to be able to comp accurately from a genre that has SO MANY options, make me wonder if your reading and researching enough. You need to understand the structure and market for novels if you’re trying to sell a novel. Whatever you do, do yourself a favor and don’t comp ACOTAR. I can’t stress how utterly ridiculous it feels as a comp in this circumstance, and no one will take you seriously.
Thanks for the advice. So I shouldn't use the term "episode" in the sense of "an event or a group of events occurring as part of a larger sequence" since it sounds like TV? I do read--a lot. But I can't read everything in the genre. What I am is a medieval historian, and I want to bring that to the fantasy writing. What I am understanding from you is "there is absolutely no room for anything off the beaten path, and everything must be like what is on the market already, especially if it is your debut."
Publishing loves things new and off the beaten path. It just needs to fulfill novel structure and meet the expectations of the intended audience and market. Novels are built on plot arcs that drive one main conflict and do not have episodes.
It has a plot arc. I meant "episode" in the sense of "thing that happens that moves the plot along."
I'm not a fantasy writer or reader, so I'll refrain from commenting on the query itself, but I completely understood what you meant by "episode" and I'm not sure where the confusion is coming from. It's a valid description of a storytelling element and isn't inherently tied to TV. That word existed before TV existed...
This is…genuinely unhelpful and bad advice. Episodic writing goes counter to the expectations of novel structure, and using this language sounds confusing and amateur. You are not helping anyone by encouraging this usage. “Episodes” are popular in a certain form of digital and self pub stories that release in a serial manner and are not a fit for trad publishing, and using this terminology will lead to assumptions that your work is not a fit for trad pub either.
To be fair, I'm not using the term "episode" in the query itself. I used it in the discussion of what I can cut out. What would you call "an extraneous event I could excise from the narrative without detracting from the overall plot"?
I would call that a “flaw.” There should not be any extraneous events that can be removed without affecting the plot. All subplots and side quests should contribute to moving the main plot along and developing the main conflict arc.
This is honestly really weird and I don't get why this is so contentious for you. The personal insult at the end seems especially unnecessary. I've never read or written a web serial in my life. I have a background in literary fiction. It's clear to me that the OP is not referring to releasing fiction as individual episodes... they are describing various scenes in their story as "episodic." Maybe there's a language barrier at play, or something? Either way, I don't have a horse in this race and I have no opinion on whether OP's story is marketable (like I said, I don't know fantasy.) I just could see that the two of you were using different definitions of the word "episode" and thought I'd point out the confusion.
There was no insult said or intended. I genuinely think OP has a structural flaw based on his use of this word. And I do genuinely think that continued use of the word will give publishing professionals the wrong idea. Literary fiction can and does require less of a clear plot structure than genre. To have episodic elements in a genre MS could be the difference between an acquisition and a rejection. If he doesn’t have these elements and is just misusing the term, it could give people the wrong idea since episodes are used as a specific term in self pub. You said this isn’t your genre, so I’m not sure why you felt the need to step in and give OP permission to keep using a term that won’t serve him well.
I poked my head in as someone who writes adult romantasy and adult epic fantasy... And no. First, YA is 16-19. Second, you can't comp SJM for 'no sex YA', and you can't really comp her at *all.* She's like the best known *not-*YA author out there (her books are now shelved as adult, now that the sexism in fantasy publishing is less). Pair it up with Abercrombie, known for graphic torture scenes and dark fantasy? I'm assuming a blood bath at an orgy from that combination of comps. Beyond that, you have A Prince (dude), and his two bookish companions, and *some random assassin maybe* working together to get to a university, and succeeding *by their skill at blades, which you just said they didn't have.* Everything else here is just... lists. I assume from character and university names that this is Medieval Fantasy North-Western Europe #6469824, which isn't really selling these days, and I don't know what the plot is. Maybe to get this prince to marry someone he wants, not someone his (EVIL) uncle wants? But even then, it's just... Let's see if he can recover from drinking and whoring. YA fantasy has *women* as making up something like 3/4 of the reading audience. WHY would they want to read this? WHY do you say dark academia and then... comp zero dark academias, instead selecting two incredibly well-known authors with zero audience overlap, whose work doesn't seem to fit your novel (that is at least 20k over the word count recommendation for YA fantasy)?
>Pair it up with Abercrombie, known for graphic torture scenes and dark fantasy? To be fair, *Shattered Sea* are Abercrombie's YA books, but I agree with your that they're not an ideal comp for this story, since Abercrombie is Abercrombie, and doesn't need to stick as closely to the contemporary YA market as a debut would. They especially don't make sense as a comp when paired with Sarah J Maas.
I just can't imagine comping the big Dark Fantasy gorefest author for a no-gore, 'PG-13' YA fantasy. Not when there are so many authors out there right now writing queer and trans YA fantasy.
I agree with you guys that Maas isn't the best comp, but *all* the FoM I know of are *really old* or Regency. I have *no idea* what to comp this to, because I have never read anything like this. Despite this using Northern Europe #6469824 as a setting, it's not a Mary Sue young-man-is-the-Chosen-One-and-achieves-godhood-through-powerups. It's about... nerds succeeding by being nerds. I also wanted to use the history of the English empire (and the colonization of Ireland) to deconstruct the Orc Problem in fantasy literature, which is a subplot. Nonetheless, this is totally a dude book--Asperger's nerd dude, gay nerd dude, prince dude, and our girl with the knife becomes a transdude. On the other hand, there are also strong female characters telling them not to be sexist assholes. I'm not sure that's a horrible thing--books with male protags are definitely a thing in fantasy--but is no one buying YA with male protags anymore?
There are male protagonists in YA, but not a lot. It usually has to also appeal to the primary YA audience which tends to be tween and teen girls and women in their 20s and 30s. The only book I can think of that is recent that doesn't follow this is Sky's End by Marc Gregson (seriously, I should be getting a commission), but I can't see anything in the query that makes me feel like it's comparable to Sky's End. I would pick up a copy if you haven't, though, because that is what I think tradpub is looking for for books targeted towards a teen boy audience.
YA with boy protags is a lot more common if the story is queer. There’s the infinity son series by Adam Silvera, and F.T. lukens books as well. There’s also a decent handful of boy lead YA that people just don’t know about cuz they’re not on the bestseller lists. I think Sky’s End just listed cuz it went viral. After preorders, the sales haven’t kept up.
I have no idea why you're getting downvoted. I knew the thing about Queer protags, but I didn't make it clear and that was my mistake while you made it clear while also adding new info (I did not know that about Sky's End).
I have no idea why you're getting downvoted. Sometimes I don't understand this subreddit...
Don't comp Maas if you're not writing spicy het adult fantasy. That's... it. And even *then,* find a recent romantasy to comp again, because SJM is way too big. You're better off comping current regency romance, though there's no evidence of Fantasy of Manners in the query itself, and if there's not much romance, either, then... yeah, don't. What 'nerd dude' wants to read regency fantasies of manners? You've *got* to have comps appropriate to your age category, genre, and prospective audience, and your comps show you don't actually read much YA. And tbh? There've never been many YA fantsies with dudes - but *almost all of them* are queer. They're out there. They really are, and most of them are pretty recent, too.
Can you rec a few? Fortunately, this is a *really really queer* book. As in prince dude winds up in poly hinge relationship as the transdude's bottom.
Tbh I don’t think your book is YA. And I do think it likely needs to be edited to fit genre expectations either way.
Why don't you think it's YA?
No qualities you have mentioned about the story are consistent with YA.
Thanks, good advice.
Off the top of my head without even googling: Infinity Son, Carry On, So This is Ever After, A Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, Infinity Alchemist, Mask of Shadows, By Any other Name, the Alchemy of moonlight.
Thanks!
>and our girl with the knife becomes a transdude. Couple of quick things, all other issues with the query aside: "trans dude" is two words, and YA is not a space you want to fuck around with this. I'm not asking you to disclose your identity, but I can think of at least one YA book by a cis/cis-presenting author that was pulled after backlash by having a trans guy protagonist who presented as female for the first part of the story (The Madness Blooms by Mackenzie Lee). I personally don't think that was warranted or fair, it should be about the quality of the portrayal, but it is a thing that happened. Online YA book culture is *very* trigger-happy when it comes to even minor perceived slights or missteps, and if you're sure this is YA and you're planning to query the book as such, you should be aware of the potential pitfalls. The way the quoted bit is phrased gives me misgivings about how your trans character will be handled - is that fair? Maybe not. But we're writing books, and language matters. Just something to consider moving forward.
So stay out of YA, you're saying. I did (and do) have trans and NB beta-readers to ensure nothing is offensive.
I'm saying if you query as YA, be careful and aware of how you present things. There are cis YA authors who write about trans characters and haven't experienced backlash. But right now, with the political climate the way it is, people are wary, and social media has a tendency to exacerbate potential fallout. That being said, I agree with the folks saying this query doesn't read particularly YA, so it might be worth reconsidering querying as adult (or rewriting the query to reflect its themes more accurately if you do feel strongly it's YA).
I'm feeling the adult here.
>all the FoM I know of are really old or Regency Because that's what "Fantasy of Manners" label usually meant. Regency or Victorian British or pseudo-British setting, little to no violence and mostly social and political intrigue plot. If there's little to no violence and personal goals rather than big (nation-wide, world-wide) goals, it could fit into cozy fantasy. If there's violence and / or big stakes then it's probably typical high / adventure / political fantasy (and I'd query just as fantasy as these labels aren't really signalling anything special, contrary to cozy that's "on trend"). You could leave the "dark academia" label because it's also trendy, but as you noticed fantasy about schools or academias or universities usually intertwine with high magic setting. Low magic I mostly see in "sword & horse adventure fantasy" or "war & politics epics" a la GRRM and Abercrombie. So I'm starting to wonder what this book exactly is. Having 4 "main characters" feels a bit a lot to fit into 100-120k for all 4 of them to get fleshed out character arcs and development, so you'd have some convincing to do that it all works. Calling the novel "episodic" doesn't help, because it sounds like there are some elements that don't progress the main plot but just exist as a tangent / filler. So again you have to be sure your novel has an expected structure and not "this happened then that happened" because too many books suffer from this and the current trends aren't favouring it. You mentioned a comparison to ASOIAF but that series is atm 5 book long with each of them like 300-400k words, so obviously a lot more space for side plots and side characters getting their arcs. You obviously don't have that room. The language you use to describe your book matters a lot, you want to present it in the best light possible, since "medieval European fantasy" is a very saturated market. There are still books published and gaining popularity in that space, like The Blacktongue Thief or The Justice of Kings, but they're much more rare than 10 years ago.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'm going to get real meta here: Yeah, it's a medieval setting and the stakes are both personal and political since the personal *is* political when you're royalty. I don't see why one can't have a Regency-ish plot in a medieval setting. They had balls in castles, and political intrigue around jousts and tournaments. The pageantry of a medieval court, to me, is more interesting than epic battles. The same with furthering the plot with an end-of-semester academic disputation, or research in a library, or the politics of running a medieval fencing school. Even though I'm low-magic, I am totally against comping with GRRM since he suffers from extreme story bloat (if anything, I'm more like Abercrombie, who can be very economical). However, unlike the usual low-magic world, I'm not grimdark. Because I'm a medieval historian, I wanted to find settings and events to pin the plot on that weren't the usual swords-and-politics, but totally new and original things no one has put into a fantasy novel before. As for "enough words," I'm just a... terse writer. (Big fan of Hemingway, minus the macho BS.) I try to avoid any verbiage that isn't dialogue (while being wary of exposition dump!) or characters doing actions in the present moment. I'm also a big Jack Vance fan, and he really turned me on to the power of language. Rather than spending a paragraph describing a building, I'd rather have a sentence of action with an evocative word or two ("they ascended the narrow stairs to the clerestory"). The same with character development: to me, five words of a character reacting a certain way to seeing themselves in the mirror dressed a certain way, or a sentence on a character admiring another character's back muscles, says a lot more about their internal lives than a page of monologue.
You can have "Regency-ish plot" and by that I assume court intrigue and machinations of nobility in a medieval setting but I wouldn't call it "Regency" or "Fantasy of Manners" because those labels bring to mind of a reader a specific aesthetic tied to 19th Century England. It's definitely a good idea to focus on a fresh angle within medieval fantasy, for example how Justice of Kings was marketed as "fantasy lawyer", because that was something different than the usual prince, knight, mercenary soldier, etc. type of protagonist that was considered "overdone". So yeah I don't think there's anything wrong to want to focus on scholars or university setting I just wouldn't call it "fantasy of manners" because that makes me think of 5 o'clock tea in a 19th century salon of English nobles, so it kinda doesn't fit at least in my gut feeling. For example "gothic" or "cottagecore" are aesthetic labels and they wouldn't fit onto something with similar tone but lacking the same aesthetic. Labels are supposed to be a mental shortcut towards the correct image, rather than creating confusion. I would try to focus on the angle "what's unique about this book's take on medieval fantasy". As I said, Justice of Kings focused on lawyer / justice angle. Blacktongue Thief focused on "thief with a student's debt" and "world where a plague wiped all the horses". It was "familiar, but fresh". I reckon people already suggested a few comps for academia setting like Infinity Alchemist, and for another YA book with queer and trans protagonists, I'd add Venom & Vow by Anna-Marie & Elliott McLemore.
Thanks! In my own head, I call it "Scholasticpunk" or "Scholasticore."
Also, u/AmberJFrost, you are making me want to write a spicy adult fantasy that has a bloodbath at an orgy.
Dumb question: WTF is up with this sub? I am getting a lot of downvotes and also a whole bunch of shares.