My Secret Trick to Writing a Killer Query Letter to Hook Agents
Tantalize literary agents with these simple-yet-not-obvious tricks for your book pitch. Plus, a line-by-line case study of the query letter for The Crown's Game.
Hello, protagonists! In this post, you’ll find:
🤓 What I’m Reading This Week
✍🏼 How to Write a Killer Query Letter
🌟 Bonus Trick - Before You Write Your Book
🤓 What I’m Reading This Week
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon - (historical fantasy, novel) - I’m casually re-reading the first book in this series, partly because I love it but mostly because I’m working on a rough draft of a new book right now (for 2026), and I need to be protective of its voice while it’s still developing. For some reason, Gabaldon’s prose doesn’t ever mix with mine, so I can luxuriate in her writing while working on my own.
“The Oldest Living Thing in the World” - (article, The Treeographer) - Tom told me that aspen aren’t individual trees but rather one huge, connected organism. I found this fascinating and wanted to learn more!
“9,000-year-old ‘Non-stick’ Focaccia Pans Discovered” - (article, ZME Science) - Okay, I guess I’m really into reading about old stuff this week, haha. Anyway, archaeologists discovered neolithic baking trays with evidence that large communal loaves of focaccia-like bread were baked in them. My mind is officially blown!
✍🏼 How to Write a Killer Query Letter
This is a re-post of a piece I previously wrote (with light revisions/updates). It seemed timely to bring it up again since many of my writer friends are currently looking for agents.
If you need help with your query, I’ll host a Query Feedback Forum here in our community in a couple weeks, so keep your eyes out for that!
Without further ado:
This week’s newsletter is all about crafting a tantalizing query letter to find yourself a great literary agent.
I’ll tell you my secret trick for writing a killer query, and then we’ll use my own query letter for The Crown’s Game as a case study and dissect it line-by-line.
1. The Reality of Agents’ Time
It’s lovely to imagine that agents have entire afternoons free to cozy up with a cup of tea and read through query letters at a leisurely pace. But the truth is that most agents are swamped with reading manuscripts from their existing clients, hopping on editorial calls or trying to sell future client work to publishers, listening in on marketing and publicity calls, and trying to keep up with the daily deluge of emails (because each of their clients copies them on every single email with their editors, publicists, and marketing teams).
So that means when agents finally have a moment to read query letters, it’s often after work hours, in the evenings or weekends. Sometimes, they only have an hour or two of spare time to get through the 100+ queries that have flooded their inboxes since the week before. Sometimes, they are so buried with other work, they even have assistants read and filter through the queries first. (gasp! I know, I know… not what you wanted to hear. But it’s important to understand the reality of the situation so that you can best position yourself, right?)
And this is why you must hook their attention immediately. Yes, include the basic requisite info like your name, the genre of the book, and how many words it is. (“My name is Evelyn Skye, and The Crown’s Game is a YA fantasy complete at 92,000 words”). But honestly, a lot of agents I’ve talked to admit to just skipping that stuff and getting right into the heart of the query.
What they really want to know is
What is this book about? and
Can I sell it to a publisher?
Okay, so let’s make it easy for them to say Yes! and make you an offer of representation…
2. My Super Easy Secret to Nailing Your Query Letter
I’m skipping over the boilerplate stuff that you can find elsewhere on the web and diving right into the most important part of the query: the book pitch.
What the book pitch is:
3 - 6 short paragraphs about the story
Focused on only the main character (or two characters, max)
Primary plot line only (leave out the subplots)
Introduces the conflict
Follows the beginning arc of the plot
Reveals what is at stake
Do you know what this sounds like? The jacket copy of a published book.
That, my brilliant, wonderful writers, is the secret. Write the pitch portion of your query letter as if you’re writing the inside jacket flap of your future published book.
Here is my original query letter, when I was looking for a literary agent, after I’d written The Crown’s Game (previously titled The Tsar’s Game when I was querying):
Dear _______:
After an amicable split with my previous agent, I am seeking new representation. THE TSAR’S GAME is a YA historical fantasy set in Imperial Russia in 1825. With its combination of magic and an alternate version of Alexander I’s final year on the throne, THE TSAR’S GAME can be described as THE NIGHT CIRCUS meets SHADOW AND BONE.
Sixteen-year-old Vika Andreyeva can summon the snow and turn ash into gold. Eighteen-year-old Nikolai Karimov can see through walls and conjure bridges out of thin air. They are enchanters, the only two in Russia, and with the Ottoman Empire and the Kazakhs threatening Russia, the Tsar wants an enchanter by his side.
In the past, however, two enchanters have posed a problem. Too much ego, too much power, too much potential for betrayal of the Tsar. So the Tsar’s Game was invented, a duel of magical skill. The victor becomes the Royal Enchanter and the Tsar’s most respected advisor. The defeated is sentenced to death.
The Tsar’s Game is not one to lose.
Of course, they both want to win. Until now, Vika’s magic has been confined to her tiny island home, and she’s eager to showcase her skill in the capital city of St. Petersburg. It also doesn’t hurt that the competition allows her to express her mischievous streak. Nikolai, on the other hand, is a study in seriousness. As an orphan with not a drop of noble blood in his veins, becoming the Royal Enchanter is an opportunity he could, until now, only dream of. But when Vika and Nikolai begin to fall for each other, the stakes change.
And then, the stakes change again, as secrets from both their pasts threaten to upset the balance of the Tsar’s—and the Russian Empire’s—power.
The Game is so much more complicated than it looks.
I’ll break it down line-by-line below.
But first, I want to show you what my publisher ended up using as the actual description on the book jacket when The Crown’s Game was published:
Vika Andreyeva can summon the snow and turn ash into gold. Nikolai Karimov can see through walls and conjure bridges out of thin air. They are enchanters—the only two in Russia—and with the Ottoman Empire and the Kazakhs threatening, the tsar needs a powerful enchanter by his side.
And so he initiates the Crown’s Game, an ancient duel of magical skill—the greatest test an enchanter will ever know. The victor becomes the Imperial Enchanter and the tsar’s most respected adviser. The defeated is sentenced to death.
Raised on tiny Ovchinin Island her whole life, Vika is eager for the chance to show off her talent in the grand capital of Saint Petersburg. But can she kill another enchanter—even when his magic calls to her like nothing else ever has?
For Nikolai, an orphan, the Crown’s Game is the chance of a lifetime. But his deadly opponent is a force to be reckoned with—beautiful, whip smart, imaginative—and he can’t stop thinking about her.
And when Pasha, Nikolai’s best friend and heir to the throne, also starts to fall for the mysterious enchantress, Nikolai must defeat the girl they both love . . . or be killed himself.
As long-buried secrets emerge, threatening the future of the empire, it becomes dangerously clear . . . the Crown’s Game is not one to lose.
Notice the similarities?
The pitch portion of my query letter not only landed me an agent, but my agent then used it in her submissions to editors, and then my editor made a few changes and used it for the final, published book!
So you see that it answers the questions from above:
What is this book about? and
Can I sell it to a publisher?
By making it easy to answer those questions, you make it easy for the agent to say “Yes” to you.
3. Line-by-Line Query Analysis
Now let’s analyze my original query letter for The Crown’s Game piece-by-piece, and I’ll explain why it hooked a high-profile agent at one of the top literary agencies in the country:
Dear _______:
After an amicable split with my previous agent, I am seeking new representation.
I had another literary agent before, and we worked together on several manuscripts. He was really great but unfortunately, we weren’t able to make publishing magic happen together. I wanted to branch out into fantasy (I had been writing contemporary stories with him), so we decided to part ways.
THE TSAR’S GAME is a YA historical fantasy set in Imperial Russia in 1825. With its combination of magic and an alternate version of Alexander I’s final year on the throne, THE TSAR’S GAME can be described as THE NIGHT CIRCUS meets SHADOW AND BONE.
The first sentence here is standard description—title, genre, plus a little bit of context about the time period, since it’s a historical novel.
The second sentence is important—it’s where I mention some big, successful titles as “comps” (comparable titles). This helps paint a picture in the agent’s mind about what part of the bookstore your novel would be placed in, as well as how well it might sell. I like to get this info out right in front so that it sets the tone for the agent as they dive into reading the pitch. (Like I said above, though, some agents just let their eyes skip over this intro paragraph and they dive straight into your book pitch).
I’ve also heard the recommendation that your comps should be books published within the last 2 years, since that gives a more accurate picture of the current market. (My comps here are pretty old, but that’s because this query letter is from 2014!)
Sixteen-year-old Vika Andreyeva can summon the snow and turn ash into gold. Eighteen-year-old Nikolai Karimov can see through walls and conjure bridges out of thin air. They are enchanters, the only two in Russia, and with the Ottoman Empire and the Kazakhs threatening Russia, the Tsar wants an enchanter by his side.
Here, I introduce the main characters. The Crown’s Game is told from both their perspectives, which is why I describe them both and not only one. Then I explain their significance to the story—they are enchanters, and the kingdom is in dire need of their powers. So now, the agent knows the set-up for this story.
Next is the point of the query pitch where you have to introduce the conflict:
In the past, however, two enchanters have posed a problem. Too much ego, too much power, too much potential for betrayal of the Tsar. So the Tsar’s Game was invented, a duel of magical skill. The victor becomes the Royal Enchanter and the Tsar’s most respected advisor. The defeated is sentenced to death.
The Tsar’s Game is not one to lose.
So you see, I explain why it’s not okay to have two powerful sorcerers, and how the winner will be chosen. And then there are the life-or-death consequences for the main characters. Hopefully the agent’s pulse is starting to pound now.
If you’d like to show off a little more of the character’s personalities, your next paragraph is a good place to put it:
Of course, they both want to win. Until now, Vika’s magic has been confined to her tiny island home, and she’s eager to showcase her skill in the capital city of St. Petersburg. It also doesn’t hurt that the competition allows her to express her mischievous streak. Nikolai, on the other hand, is a study in seriousness. As an orphan with not a drop of noble blood in his veins, becoming the Royal Enchanter is an opportunity he could, until now, only dream of. But when Vika and Nikolai begin to fall for each other, the stakes change.
You’ve established the setting, introduced the characters, and laid out the main conflict. So it’s okay to slow the pace of your query for a couple beats in order to give the agent a better sense of who this story is about (and to demonstrate that you know how to write interesting characters).
In this example, it’s particularly useful, because the agent already knows that Vika and Nikolai will be in a duel. With these extra bits of description, the agent is shown that Vika and Nikolai are also opposites. It’s a hint at how the duel—and each enchanter’s magic—will be different and keep things interesting.
And then I bring that paragraph home by raising the conflict even more. Because the two who are trying to kill each other fall in love…
And then, the stakes change again, as secrets from both their pasts threaten to upset the balance of the Tsar’s—and the Russian Empire’s—power.
The Game is so much more complicated than it looks.
This last part brings it all home, not with a quiet conclusion, but by showing how the stakes are even bigger than just two lovers… Their fate will determine the course of an entire empire.
The impossible, bittersweet love story hooks the agent.
But it’s the larger, world-defining stakes that convince the agent that this book could be something big.
(note: Not all books need to be about the potential destruction of an empire. This just happened to be in the fantasy genre, where that kind of thing makes publishers really excited because it screams “epic.”)
Keep in mind that there are many ways to write a great query letter, but this method has worked for me every time and landed me multiple offers from literary agents.
I’ll talk about going through multiple agents another time (I’m on agent #3). I have spoken about this a little in the past (in a book club meeting, I believe), but I firmly believe that you can have different “right” agents for you at different times in your career as you find your voice, grow in your writing, and change course about who you want to be as an author.
🌟 Bonus Trick - Before You Write Your Book
Even though I have an agent now, I still write query letter-style pitches.
Why?
I actually like writing them before I’ve finished the manuscript. I will soon have ten published novels, and for every single one (plus the manuscripts I wrote that were never published), I have paused after I’ve written about 25% of the book and made myself write a query letter pitch / jacket copy.
It helps me really focus the story and understand its core. And it also makes things easier down the line for your publishers’ sales, marketing and publicity teams.
I usually don’t share that query pitch with them. It’s just a tool for myself. But if I know what the book is about, then it will also be clear to sales, marketing and publicity, and they’ll have a better time pitching it to booksellers and librarians and readers everywhere.
I hope that was helpful to you!
Evelyn, this is all so generous of you! And so incredibly helpful for those of us pondering querying :) Appreciate you!!
This is so brilliantly helpful, Evelyn. Thank you.
Once again, I must implore Substack to add a save feature!