Are query letter norms shifting again

Roxxsmom · Mar 24, 2015

Mr Flibble said:
IIRC my elevator pitch for forthcoming series was "fantasy three musketeers"

The elevator pitch for Fade to Black was "Bladerunner only with mages instead of replicants"

If you can think of things that are similar in tone then you can say "like this, only with X" if you need to keep it super short.

Using an elevator pitch in a query (as your OP seems to indicate) seems a bit weird to me, but hey, agents work how they work!

Maybe it's a defect in my imagination, but I just can't think of a single classic movie or work of fiction to which I can make that kind of comparison. It doesn't mean that such don't exist, of course, but maybe I'm just too close to my own work to see it.

I don't think most agents want three sentence pitches in their query letters, but I've run across interviews, blogs, or tweets by a couple who say they do (after they rejected my query shark style 175 word, lots of white space query, of course).

And I just ran across an agency recently that seems to have a good rep, but what they're asking for doesn't resemble a query letter at all.

Argus · Mar 24, 2015

I'm pretty much of the opinion that the three sentence query letter has gone the way of the dodo. Even if you can do it, and I'm bold enough to tell you I can, agents don't care. They want a lot more meat these days. Heck, I wish they did want just three sentences. It make my attempts at getting an agent that much easier.

But tastes vary.

Still, my three sentencer did get the most responses back in the day. So who knows.

Are query letter norms shifting again

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido

Argus