So you've hooked and setup your query letter. Now to the part that everyone wants to read—the conflict. Every novel needs it. In fact, the more conflict, the better. In the query letter, you want to highlight the main conflict, not every single one in every single chapter. You can't even do that in the synopsis, so don't try.
Main conflict [meyn kon-flikt]: The central thing that prevents the character from getting what they want.
If you didn't setup what the character wants in the setup, you can do it during the conflict.
In the examples section, I’ve included the hook and the setup so you don’t have to go back and find them.
Examples:
1. Hook: In a world where Thinkers brainwash the population and Rules are not meant to be broken, fifteen-year-old Violet Schoenfeld does a hell of a job shattering them to pieces.
Setup: After committing her eighth lame crime (walking in the park after dark with a boy, gasp!), Vi is taken to the Green, a group of Thinkers who control the Goodgrounds. She’s found unrehabilitatable (yeah, she doesn’t think it’s a word either) and exiled to the Badlands. Good thing sexy Bad boy Jag Barque will be going too.
Conflict: Dodging Greenies and hovercopters, dealing with absent-father issues, and coming to terms with feelings for an ex-boyfriend—and Jag as a possible new one—leave Vi little time for much else. (she’s got problems. Lots of them.) Which is too damn bad, because she’s more important than she realizes. (Whoa. She’s important? How so?)
Vi’s main conflict is that she doesn’t know who and/or what she is. How important she is. But everyone else does. And it’s not something she’s going to like…. This is all established in a mere 42 words.
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From the Query to The Call
Non-FictionFROM THE QUERY TO THE CALL outlines what a query letter -- or cover copy -- is, why every author needs to master the art of describing their book in just a few words, and how to successfully navigate the querying process. Authors looking to query pu...
