In Writing for Emotional Impact, author Karl Iglesias writes, "Curiosity is the emotional state of wanting to learn more about something, the intellectual need to answer questions and make sense of things. We love stories because we long to know what happens next."
Before people can read a thrilling story, the author has to sell it. A query letter is a marketing tool that helps the author sell her story.
The best way to understand a query letter is to read it in action. One of Blake Snyder's favorite writers, Kathy Hepinstall, put together the following query to market her novel:
"I have written a literary novel, about 80,000 words, set in Louisiana in 1941, about a very peculiar bordello, run by men..."
Kathy got a 10 percent response with this approach. She wasn't satisfied and realized that for a query letter to really pull, the first sentence must grab and arrest the agent's attention. With this new perspective and writing skills in hand she rewrote the query. After sending out the letter she received triple the response rate and sold her novel in three days.
Want to see the power of a first sentence and the new curiosity-grabbing query? Go to Blake's post.
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