What Your Book is NOT About

I read a lot blogs by (sometimes anonymous) industry people. Often, these folks, out of the goodness of their hearts (no matter how snarky their critiques get), volunteer to read query letters. And every single time, without fail, there are a bunch of writers who completely misunderstand the purpose of a query letter. In a query letter, you’re supposed to describe what your book is about. And by that, I mean, you’re supposed to say what happens in your book. Theme, or allegory, or motif, or meme, or anything else? Not so much. Sure, stick it in if you think it helps, but that part should be the part that comes across in the actual reading. If you have to tell people the theme of your book, well, you’re not really getting it done, now are you?

Now, for those of you who have grasped the wrong end of the stick when it comes to this “description” nonsense, allow me to clue you in. Your book is not about any of the following things:

Darkness
Good vs. Evil
A Search for Answers
Destiny
Finding One’s True Self
Escaping Ones Demons (unless they are literal)
The Power of Hate, Love, Fate, whatever…
Revenge
True Love Conquers All
The Persistence of Memory (unless this is some sort of Dali Da Vinci Code kinda thing)
Longing
Truth
Justice
The American Way, Dream, Ideal, or the Futility of Any of the Above

This is what your book is about:
A type of character (or characters) shaped by this or that force or forces, gets into this or that situation, which may or may not include this or that character (or characters) shaped by this or that force, and therefore must do such and such or become this or that in order to achieve this or that goal that they may or may not have realized they wanted and overcome whatever conflict the situation or other character brought about. In the end, they do or they don’t because of a, b, c, and (or maybe “but”) they learn this, that, and the other.

Vary as needed. Your book can deal with any of the deep, dark, whatever themes in the list above, and that’s fabulous! More power to you! People can write lots of essays about it when your book comes out. But it doesn’t belong in your query letter. It belongs in the subtext of your book, so that it can bowl over the agent or editor who actually reads the thing. It is not, not, not what your book is about. Your book is about a person(s), a situation, and what happens to that person(s) in that situation.

Capisce?

For instance, my book, Secret Society Girl, is about an Ivy League co-ed who joins one of the most notorious and powerful secret societies in the world and learns to balance classes, friendships, and vast conspiracies bent on wrecking her life.

It’s also (and this is the part that doesn’t make it onto the query letter) about growing up, the nature of love, secrets, self-reliance, feminism, revolution, independence, self-assurance, blah blah blah blah blah. Boring, right? If I said I wrote a book about feminism and secrets, you would have no clue if I wrote Secret Society Girl or The Bell Jar.

Hence, not really what my book is about. Carry on, and happy querying…

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Oh, while I’m in a ranty mood, can I once again beg people to Stop The Misuse of “Beg the Question?”

Pretty pretty pretty please? It makes my teeth hurt. It makes poor Aristotle, who invented the term for this logical fallacy back in the 4th century BC, turn over in his grave. It kills baby pandas. For the love of Butterstick, please stop!

Begs the question means to base a conclusion on a premise that needs proving as well. It comes from the greek: “o en archei aiteisthai,” which means “at the beginning to assume.” “Aiteisthai” also means “to beg.”

When it is used incorrectly, what the person really means is “raises the question.”