How Queries Are Formatted
At their most basic, query letters are, well, letters. They are letters that ask the question: Would you like to buy my story idea?
When you are writing a query letter, you are acting as a salesman. Your product is your story idea, and you want the editor to buy it instead of all the other story ideas stuffed into query letters on her desk. Even more important, you want the editor to see the value in buying your story idea
One of the easiest ways to turn an editor off is by going against the standard, one-page format that writers have for years used in query letters. At its core, the format goes like this:
Spectacularly written and compelling lead
One or two paragraphs that support the lead and explain how the story would progress
Your qualifications to write the story
Your contact information, including telephone and e-mail
It all sounds very simple, but it's not. In fact, if a query letter were to be compared with anything else in sales, it would have to be the “elevator pitch” that so many businesspeople practice endlessly. It's the two-minute mini-speech that they can make about their product during the course of an elevator ride with a potential client. Your query letter is just like that, except you don't have the benefit of having your editor held captive in an elevator. You have to make your quick pitch in the face of myriad distractions and other sales pitches just sitting there, waiting to be read — and you have to get your pitch absolutely right, from the first word to the last.
