I've been looking at examples of successful query letters, and they seem prissy. That's not me. I came upon an agent (who's not accepting any unsolicited queries, so I can't contact her anyway) and she posted an example of a "great" query at her site (which I don't want to link to because I don't want to slam anyone by name).
I read it over, and thought that it was wordy and prissy and silly and self-consciously "cute". But according to the agent, it's a winner, and the book ended up not only getting published, but sold as part of a series. Actually, I read the book, and the writing style was a lot tighter and more straightforward than the query. So based on that example and others I've seen, do we have to write prissy queries in order to get our straightforward books accepted?
And then there's the inevitable editing that happens: the prissy query I read didn't have the same plot as the finished book. Which means that the agent had the author rewrite it before submission to publishers. Which goes back to my usual complaint: why do we have to kill ourselves to write a "perfect" manuscript if it's going to get rewritten anyway?
I just want to write a straightforward query, not some fussy, girly words that are supposed to make the agent giggle in glee.
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