I'd been struggling to write a query letter for a few weeks. I'd been beating my head against a wall, trying to get my head around the art-form. As an experiment, I decided to write a query letter for one of my other books. I think it turned out better than my previous attempts.

Dear [Agent],

I am seeking representation for an 98,000-word YA fantasy novel, AETHERSTORM.

When a workplace injury lands his father in a wheelchair, Jesse is forced to provide for his family as a mechanic. Overwhelmed and impoverished, Jesse awaits his seventeenth birthday when he can enlist as a pilot in the royal navy and leave his home and his crushing responsibilities behind.

Life plods along until Jesse receives a tribunal summons for a crime he didn’t commit. Unless he proves his innocence, he’ll be barred from enlisting. That same day, an explosion kills sixteen marketgoers. Turns out, Jesse’s little sister, Ari, is an illegal pyromancer struggling to restrain her budding powers. Now, it’s only a matter of time before the authorities hunt her down and put a bullet through her skull.

Proving his own innocence requires Jesse to unmask his sister. Instead of turning her in, they flee. Jesse and Ari stow away on a sandcrawler, but their escape doesn’t go as planned. A renegade airship opens fire, disabling the sandcrawler. Jesse loathes entwining his sister with criminals, but at least they won’t execute her on sight.

Jesse and Ari have just begun to settle into their new life on the airship, when he discovers the captain training his sister in pyromancy. Now, Jesse must prevent Ari from becoming a pawn in the captain’s mysterious plot long enough to secretly repair a damaged vanglider and fly his sister away to safety.

AETHERSTORM will appeal to readers of Axie Oh’s The Floating World (2025) and June CL Tan’s Darker by Four (2024).

Since completing my Peace Corps service, I have been teaching English literature at a private international school in the post-Soviet republic of Georgia. When not reading or writing, I enjoy kendo, cooking, and watching Korean historical dramas with my wife.

Thank you for your consideration.

[Signature]

  • Love fantasy airships. Quick notes as I’m being ADHD from my Christmas Eve reading:

    • A straight male protagonist in YA is going to make your path much more difficult. It shouldn’t be that way, but, well, misogyny ultimately impacts everyone. It’s not impossible, mind you, as your first comp proves, but it’s a harder sell. Just so you know. 
    • Your protagonist needs to be active. Right now, Jesse is “waiting,” and then “life plods along,” and then he randomly happens to find out something about his sister, etc. He does not really drive the plot, as presented, until the last sentence. 
    • Along those lines, who is Jesse? What is his personality like? What does he want most in life, and is whatever that thing is what he actually needs? What’s a strength and a flaw? 
    • Finally, what are the stakes? If Jesse fails, what happens to him, his sister, and the greater world/society? Whatever happened to his dad? 
    parent

    Thanks for the feedback. Very useful.

    1. I am aware a male YA protagonist is a harder sell. I've already written the book, so I'm willing to take that risk. I do think the story has cross-gender appeal, as all but one major supporting characters are strong females.

    2. Jesse needs to be more active. Got it. That can be fixed.

    3. I can bring out Jesse's goals more. Great.

    4. I think I'll cut the dad. I need to get a little too far in the weeds to do his role in the story justice. The role in the world stuff becomes more relevant in the third act. I don't think I can incorporate it in the query letter.

    parent root

  • first paragraph: jesse is forced. jesse waits. what does he want? we can guess not this, but we find out only specifically only in the last line. at least it's a short paragraph.

    second paragraph: life plods along is language that's hard to make dramatic, so i'd toss. jesse receives, and then everything else is stuff happening and jesse doing nothing.

    third paragraph: jesse flees with her. what happened to his responsibilities? his job? his father? his poverty? suddenly there's a sandcrawler, which is what? then things happen to jesse again.

    fourth paragraph: more things happen to jesse. now there's a secret plot, which is yet more things happening to him.

    he wants to not have crushing responsibilities. what does he do about that? nothing that i can see aside from part of the unmasking quest. otherwise, it's a motivation-free romp through things happening, which can be exciting but isn't necessarily emotionally compelling.

    most of your plot threads die. at least two others come out of nowhere. none of that is organic, which means that instead of building emotional and narrative arc with your character, you go suddenly a thing. that gets unfulfilling quickly. so assuming jesse is the story, start with him, not a character who disappears seven words in, then stick to what he wants and what he does for it. introduce the sister earlier and give them something approaching rapport -- even bad rapport -- instead of them going places unemotionally.

    good luck <3

    parent

    Thanks for the feedback.

    1. I cut the first paragraph to one sentence.

    2. "His life plods along" is now "His life turns upside down." I don't like cliché, though. I'll have to do something about that.

    3. Yeah. I think I need to cut Jesse's family responsibilities. I don't have space to deal with that arc. I'm instead going to go with the more general angle that be puts others first as his own expense. Much of his arc is about realizing he can, in fact, live for himself.

    4. Ari is now introduced as an "insecure, overly sensitive, immature crybaby who won’t survive five hours on her own." I think that clarifies their relationship. Only later does she transform into a stronger character, which is also when she starts getting PoV chapters.

    parent root

  • Welcome back!

    I am one person with one opinion 

    The query takes a while to get anywhere. The entire paragraph involving why the MC is responsible for the family's finances can be severely cut down or just chopped altogether because it's not really adding  forward momentum to the actual plot aspects. 

    One of the biggest mistakes a lot of people learning how to write a query make is to front load everything as much as possible instead of figuring out when or if a detail needs to be included

    My biggest struggle with the query is that I'm not sure why the MMC is the lead and not his sister. The entire plot seems to revolve around the sister. In YA, that's a pretty strong neon flashing light that she's supposed to be the star of the show. The little sister can be motivation, as seen in Marc J Gregon's Sky's End and I think that's a much better fit than The Floating World, which has been marketed largely as a romantasy, but I'm genuinely not seeing what the MMC actually does. He seems passive and reactive.

    Good luck!

    parent

    Thanks for the feedback.

    1. I cut the first paragraph down to a sentence. Thanks.

    2. Yeah. Which details to include is a common theme in my struggles--but I'm just going to keep trying till I get it right.

    3. Good point about the sister. I need to show why she isn't the star of the show--mostly because she's an incompetent wreck. She starts getting her own PoV chapters around the 1/3 mark, but this is really Jesse's story, though I do like Ari's transformation arc of immature crybaby to unwilling weapon.

    4. I'll check out Sky's End. Thanks for the lead. However, I do think The Floating World is the perfect comp, including the romance element. Jesse's love interests got cut from my first draft of the query due to space. I'll consider adding them back in.

    parent root

    To your point number three... a character can be a wreck and still have the more interesting POV.

    I think what the other commenter is trying to say is that Jesse sounds very passive. What choices does he actively make? Where can you make him sound more interesting in your query? Bc I'm assuming he is interesting in the manuscript.

    parent root

    I agree, it's a very fair criticism and an area that needs to be improved. Thanks for the help.

    parent root

    This is a genuine question: is the book a romantasy or is the romance just a subplot? The Floating World was marketed as a romantasy. When you invoke romantasy in comps, it can accidentally make it seem like the romance is a lot bigger than it actually is in the book.

    That is what I'm getting at. The Floating World would be a different book without the romance. It doesn't sound like that's the case for your book. But if this is actually romantasy, you're gonna struggle with a male-led one. Floating World opens with the male lead, but I wouldn't say he's the star of the show. I'd say the FMC is. Her actions impact the general thrust of everything that happens 

    parent root

    OK. I get you're point. I'll take it off the comp list. Thanks for helping me avoid that pitfall.

    parent root

  • A few thoughts!

    Because I missed the YA fantasy, my brain went into contemporary fic default and was wondering why a mechanic would make less income than a student pilot in the navy... until I realised it was fantasy!

    You've probably already drafted a new first paragraph, but if you could throw something in early that flags this as being an airship/steampunk vibe fantasy rather than having to cognitively load up with questions about modern economics!

    parent

    Great point. I see fantasy, and I think swords. In both cases, we'd be wrong.

    parent root

    I had the same bump, too! You could just add “airship” earlier on into the query in the first sentence:

    Jesse is forced to provide for his family as an airship mechanic

    parent root

    We'll he's not an airship mechanic, yet. I think I'm going to try the phrase "industrial fantasy" next time and see what the crowd thinks.

    parent root