Elements of a successful query letter
+ analyzing a blurb line by line
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My debut novel Greenwich will be out in July! Adrienne Brodeur called it “A stunning debut…Fast-paced, beautifully written, vividly peopled… impossible to put down.” Greenwich is one of Publisher’s Weekly’s “buzz books” for summer 2025, and on Zibby Owens’s list of most anticipated new releases this year. Hit that preorder button!
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Dear Kate,
What are the elements of a successful query letter? Can you share some examples?
- Alex
Dear Alex,
Check out this post from the archive to get started:
*The Query Letter*
Can you talk about what goes into a query letter? I know you only get one shot with an agent so I want to make sure I’m doing it right. I’ve looked through your past posts and didn’t think I saw this question answered, but apologies if it’s already been addressed (and maybe could you email me the link if it has?). THANK YOU!
I went back through and reread this post, and I think it holds up. The elements of a query letter haven’t really changed. You want:
Salutation
Metadata: title, genre, word count, comparison titles
short, hooky blurb that gets the agent interesting in reading more (see below for more info + an example)
personalization (if you have something relevant about why you’re querying this agent in particular)
short bio
whatever pages the agent has asked to see, pasted below your letter
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE
All of these details are explained more in the link above. You can also read more about comparison titles here and then I answered some more follow-up questions about that post here.
You may also find this post about the nuts and bolts of querying + how to find agents useful.
I’m addressing fiction, which is what most subscribers are writing, but it’s similar-with-some-difference for nonfiction. For a novel: the blurb is by far the hardest (and the most important) part. It should introduce your main character(s), the inciting incident, and build the central conflict. It will often lead the reader through to about the midpoint, and then end in a way that gestures toward a broader conflict and resolution without giving the whole thing away. A synopsis states the ending; the query does not. The #1 issue I see in blurbs is both too much and too little information. Too much detail about stuff that doesn’t really matter for the HEART of the story, and too few of the components that really lay out the conflict and stakes. If you can’t get this down in the query, the odds are very, very, very high that there is an issue with the conflict and stakes in the manuscript itself.
Here’s the blurb for my forthcoming novel, GREENWICH. I was already agented when I wrote it so I didn’t technically use it in a query, but this is what I would have used as my pitch if I’d been trying to get an agent’s attention:
Summer, 1999. Rachel Fiske is almost eighteen when she arrives at her aunt and uncle’s mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. Her glamorous aunt is struggling to heal from an injury, and Rachel wants to help—and escape her own troubles back home. But her aunt is oddly spacey and her uncle is consumed with business, and Rachel feels lonely and adrift, excluded from the world of adults and their secrets. The only bright spot is Claudia, a recent college graduate, aspiring artist, and the live-in babysitter for Rachel’s cousin. As summer deepens, Rachel eagerly hopes their friendship might grow into more.
But when a tragic accident occurs, the family turns on Claudia in a desperate bid to salvage their reputation. Caught between her upbringing and her feelings for Claudia, her desire to do the right thing and to protect her future, Rachel must make a pivotal choice. She’s the only one who knows what really happened—and her decision has consequences far beyond what she could have predicted.
The first paragraph leads us basically through the first half of the book. We get the main character, Rachel, and the inciting incident that sets the story in motion: she goes to her aunt and uncle’s in CT. There are reasons for this trip that are detailed in the novel, but we don’t need them here — we just need to get Rachel to Greenwich and out of her usual life.
Then comes the rising action, as the story starts to build: we’re introduced to the other characters in the house and get a sense that things aren’t as they seem. There’s going to be family secrets and increasing tension as truths about these characters come to light. Again, I don’t need to show everything that happens scene by scene. The goal is to distill those pages into a few lines that give a sense of the overarching story.
Next, a pivotal moment comes in introducing Claudia, who immediately stands out as the only other named character in the blurb. She’s clearly important. The novel is about what happens that one summer in Greenwich, but it’s more deeply about Rachel and Claudia. I know there’s not a lot of plot happening in these lines, but we can feel that something is building in the book—
And in the second paragraph, we get what it’s building to: an accident that changes everything. This accident is THE key narrative turn that the book revolves around, although giving it away in the blurb isn’t a spoiler — the reader knows from p. 1 that something happens. The book, and the blurb, can be divided between before and after this event. First, we go from inciting incident to rising action and build to this major plot point. After, it’s all about the consequences.
I don’t say exactly what happens in this accident in the blurb, or the details of its aftermath. It doesn’t feel too vague, though. We know the family turns on Claudia and that Rachel has to make a choice. The stakes are clear, as well as the tone of the story. It leaves (I hope!) the reader wanting to pick up the book to find out what happens to these people, and what Rachel eventually does.
The book is tense, so the query should feel tense. If your book is funny, the blurb should be funny, etc. It’s the first introduction to your writing, so it should feel like it sets up a promise that your manuscript delivers on. I should add that it took A VERY LONG TIME to write this blurb, with a lot of drafts and input. This is something that takes time and revision to get right, and every single word matters. Don’t rush your work!
Think about how you’d describe your book to a friend who asks “what’s it about?” You don’t go through and give a play by play of every scene that happens, leading all the way through to the ending. You’d say who it’s about (main character), what starts off the story (inciting incident), and what important, key event(s) illustrate what’s important and what matters to both the characters and the reader. You’d leave them with a sense of why this character and their choices are significant, with a hint of what’s to come. Think of what will make your friend say wow I have to read this!!!
It’s hard to find examples of successful queries, but you can read hundreds of examples of blurbs by looking at books that have been published. It’s a little bit different, of course. You want to leave out the editorializing that publishers add in (“a riveting debut” is not something to say about your own work — you’ll let the agent decide it’s riveting when they can’t put it down) but you can look at the central blurb and start to get a feel for how much is revealed, and just as importantly, what isn’t said because you don’t need to include it. Avoid telling the agent what you think they’ll experience. “This book will make you laugh out loud!” is far less effective than just… writing a line that makes someone laugh. Likewise, it’s much more important to focus on story rather than themes. No matter your genre, an agent wants to know there’s going to be some kind of internal engine that keeps the pages turning. Your task is to capture this in 150 words, so that someone who reads the blurb will want to open the book and read the first line. And once they read the first line… you want them to keep going!
I hope this helps. And if reading the blurb for GREENWICH has you itching to pick up the book and find out what happens, you can pre-order it now!
Good luck querying! No matter what, keep writing, call your reps, stand against book bans, hydrate, hug someone you love, and don’t quit.
Kate