Thursday, March 17, 2011

In Which I Write Backwords

I started The Monster of Dewsberry Drink last weekend. Given my work and family life, I'm really more a weekend novelist, so I expect to get some more words down this weekend.

This is the first book that I ever started by writing a query letter first. In it's own way, it's a hook and outline to help me remember what I'm writing about and not get distracted by every shiny idea that passes my way. So, here is the query letter for The Monster of Dewsberry Drink. (No, I will not be using this as my query letter when I send it to agents :)

"Sape" is starting 7th grade with a normal set of problems. His best friend is drifting from him, getting heavily involved in sports. His parents are almost ready to flip the house they've been working on for the past year, which means moving again. His brother's girlfriend thinks she's a Witch (eye roll), and his brother is… his brother. Oh, and it looks like he's going to lose this year's Science Fair to Katherine. Again.

All of that pales when he finds a real live, actual-for-true monster living in the local reservoir. Sure, it won't solve all his problems, but he's bound to win the Science Fair at least. Unfortunately for Sape, a local developer doesn't want anyone to know about the monster. When a mysterious man tries to drown Sape in the reservoir and the monster saves his life, things go back to super complicated.

Now he's got to enlist the help of his (former?) best friend, his arch-nemesis, and even (gulp) his big brother to save the Monster of Dewsberry Drink.

4 comments:

  1. My latest work in progress I did this same thing--I wrote the query first. I was amazed at how it was almost easier to write than the usual way of writing it after the MS is done. A friend of mine who struggles to write a query letter, did this as well and her query letter is amazing (a few tweaks and it's ready to go).

    I do think writing the query first keeps us from getting bogged down in all the ideas we tend to think is important (but aren't).

    Thanks for sharing your query. Sounds like an interesting MS for sure :) Good luck.

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  2. Aw, thank you! I agree with your idea that doing the query first keeps us from getting bogged down in all the stuff we come up with during the writing process. I may write the query first from now on! :)

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  3. Oh I really like this, it sounds like loads of fun! Can I just ask what 'flip the house' means? I didn't get that bit.

    I like writing the query first too - it's like I'm querying myself, seeing if the story sounds interesting enough to be worth writing a whole book about. It makes me more excited if I can make it sound good.

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  4. Hi Girl Friday,

    Thank you for the kind words :) House flipping is is when people find a fixer upper, fix it up as quickly as possible, and sell it for lots of money (hopefully).

    The problem was that (many) professional house flippers were over extended, but as long as they sold houses, they could cover their bills. When the market started going soft, they (often? sometimes?) couldn't sell it for a profit and it went into foreclosure. Causing the housing market to go down even further.

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Thank you for posting a comment! I know that sounds a little needy, and maybe it is. I mean, I don't need comment validation to know that I exist, right? But I like to know that someone else (maybe you?) has read what I wrote and felt moved enough to reply. So, thank you.