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Thousands of authors compete daily for the attentions of agents and publishers. Your book could be the next “War and Peace” and it won’t get close to a Barnes and Noble if you can’t get a publisher’s attention. So, every writer who thinks he is the next Rick Atkinson or David McCullough throws his manuscript at publisher after publisher. After decades of being deluged with reading material, publishers have devised a system to protect themselves.
They only deal with agents. This way, the literary agents end up with the cluttered mail boxes and desks. As the first literary filter, agents have erected their own barriers to deflect the massive reams of manuscripts thrown at them. When it comes to non-fiction works, all they want to see is a one-page query. If that single page of text grabs them, they will ask for a proposal. If you can’t grab an agent by the short hairs in a single page, your book will never make it to print.
Even with these massive information filters, agents – that is good agents – sort through query after query in search of the “golden apple.” Query mining becomes a tedious task. That is why a good author must be able to capture the heart and soul of his project in the first sentence of his query.
To get published, you need a killer “hook.”
Richard S. Lowry is the author of The Gulf War Chronicles and Marines in the Garden of Eden.
The hook becomes the lead in your query and, if you are lucky, your proposal too. The hook for “Marines in the Garden of Eden” was:
Marines in the Garden of Eden is the story of America’s sons and daughters who fought, bled, and died in a little-known city on the banks of the Euphrates River. Richard Lowry places you among the participants, on an ancient battlefield, at the edge of civilization.
The hook makes a promise to the agent, editor, publisher and reader. Once established, it becomes the foundation for the entire work. To be successful, the author must make good on his promise. The entire query is built around the hook. The author must briefly explain how he will keep his promise and why the public will buy the story. The hook is also the heart of the synopsis.
A synopsis will tell about the story in a single page. We will work on the synopsis later. Today we need to come up with the most important sentence in this project. I have been working on this book’s hook for a couple weeks now. I am still not completely happy with the results.
[Book Title - the fight for Fallujah] is the story of the battle that changed the war. It is also the story of the kid down the block who went off to fight and came home changed for life. This is a story of courage, sacrifice and valor.
When I tell a story, I want to accurately portray the military events – operational and tactical. I will write about the battle that changed the war. I have found over the years that military history books are usually one of the best cures for insomnia. Most readers are not interested in struggling through orders of battle and tactical descriptions laced with military acronyms. So, I try to write an interesting story, one that people want to read. To do this, I write about human beings – the kid down the block. I tell personal stories of courage, sacrifice and heroism.
I have made my promise to the editors and readers, but haven’t grabbed the really short hairs yet. Maybe I have. Please tell me what you think.
This is a continuing series, Catch up on previous posts here.
Richard S. Lowry is the author of The Gulf War Chronicles and Marines in the Garden of Eden.
In my humble opinion the ‘kid down the street’ portion of the hook is good because your average American is interested in the war from that perspective – relatives, friends, neighbors who went to Iraq to fight but they may not know the details of what those people experienced in Iraq. I would question though whether Fallujah truly changed the war? It was a great battle from a tactical standpoint and we demonstrated to AQI and AQ that going toe to toe with American military forces was a bad idea, even after they had months to prepare and dig in. But it changed their tactics to hitting civilians and later inciting civil war, or trying to. This shift in tactics almost beat us. I suppose I would ask for some clarification or your thoughts on why you propose that Fallujah changed the war. BTW, I read your blog updates religiously, they are truly fascinating and insightful. Did you happen to interview Blair Sokol? He was my primary instructor during Mojave Viper before my unit deployed to Iraq and I looked upon him with god-like reverence. Keep up the great work!
Personally, I’m drawn to the ‘commitment to accuracy’ approach. Few things worse than having one’s favorite work fail to hold up when confronted by time and scruntiny. Follow the link back to such as case.
“[Book Title - the fight for Fallujah] is the story of the battle that changed the war. It is also the story of the kid down the block who went off to fight and came home changed for life. This is a story of courage, sacrifice and valor.”
I’m really sorry to say this, but I am badly torn by this ‘hook’. On the one hand, it seems like a concise summary of what you are offering, which is good, and which I would like to read. On the other hand, it reads like the sort of mindless fluff that is composed by a bought-and-paid-for movie reviewer for inclusion on the poster advertising the latest Hollywood blockbuster, which is … not so good. I recognize that the hook and the fluff exist for quite similar purposes, ie grabbing eyes, but I still wouldn’t feel all that happy about seeing either one on my desktop. Of course, I can’t think of any way to improve on your effort, so feel free to ignore my mutterings if you wish. :-) And thanks for letting me watch and kibitz!