You get many, many, many hugs.
I thought maybe we could suffer together, as friends
Everyone will give slightly different advice or tell you to cut different lines or focus on different things.
Back away.
Read through their advice and thank them for their time. But back away. It's a lot to take in and when it's conflicting advice all it does is turn your mind to soup. And not good soup. Like, charred black bean and skittles soup.
Give yourself a day or two, then go back and figure out which things make sense. Read successful queries and get a feel for what works - how much back story, how much character, how much worldbuilding, how much conflict - and then rebuild.
Sometimes it's easier to take a few key phrases and build around them rather than write the thing start to finish.
Just remember, for the query it doesn't matter what happened before the story started. It matters what the character has to do and how she'll change during the story. Nothing else - not the other characters, the universe you spent 5 years concocting, or all those clever lines you spent hours crafting - is as important as that small journey.
You'll get there.
ETA: Successful Queries thread http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51967
. I will see you guys tomorrow!
Thank you. Not only do you give me magic pills, but also wonderful advice. I really appreciate it
good night.
Well, time to curl up in bed with Warhorse.
...No, see, it's a book--
...
Ew! 10! It's a book! A friggen book you pervy girl! Geeze!
...
No, don't run away! I stillyou. You can't leave meee.
~Fin~
the benefit of my years 'is, as 10s would say, dooooo eeeeeeeet! My experience is that 'coming back to do it later' rarely happens after you go out and get a full time job. One always MEANS to, but stuff happens and it gets postponed, etc. I'd do it now while you're in 'school' mode still.
On the bright side, they don't actually need their magic powers if they do something... uh... exciting. They'd be too busy for magic
It was more a scathing satire of the type of magic system where women lose their powers when they get their period. Mixed with some very juvenile humour.That's too bad. I always figured magicians could get very... creative with their magic when they're excited.
I missed you!
If it's free, do it now. You should take the opportunity to do it for free, even if it means an extra year. As others have said going back into education later can be really difficult - life takes over and you might find yourself busy/married/working/pregnant/etc and it's suddenly much harder to take that year to do the course. Especially if it would require taking a year off work and getting paid a LOT less during that time (or even not getting paid at all).
Don't worry, QLH is like that. I'm doing my own query right now (it's on a back burner until the weekend, but it's 'going') and what I found most helpful was to look at other people's queries and critique them. You learn to spot common mistakes and what doesn't work. I did that for a few weeks before I even started writing my own query, and it really helped me focus on what a query should contain and what it shouldn't.
Erm, as High Guardian of the E-Z-Freeze, I'm going to need you to fill out these forms and sign this waiver if you want to keep someone in there.
*fangirl squeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!*
It was more a scathing satire of the type of magic system where women lose their powers when they get their period. Mixed with some very juvenile humour.
But then you'd know the ones that were still around are strong enough to handle the Unicorn Apocalypse.
