Use This Query Template That Led to 4 Agent Offers
Let's apply it to Emily Henry's Funny Story
Here’s what this post includes:
The template Mike Chen used to write a query letter that got him an agent
A breakdown of Mike’s query letter for Here and Now and Then
A workshopped query letter for Emily Henry’s Funny Story
A downloadable pdf query template (paid subscribers)
Today I’m sharing a query template created by my friend Mike Chen, author of A Quantum Love Story, which released earlier this year from HarperCollins/Mira.
Mike’s query letter for his debut novel, Here And Now And Then had an amazingly high request rate—of the 90 queries he sent to agents, 18 requested his manuscript, and 4 agents offered to represent him. It’s rare to get a 20% request rate from a query letter, and Mike’s premise and writing style probably helped a lot, but the structure of Mike’s query letter made his pitch especially engaging.
With Mike’s permission, I’m sharing with you his template for writing a query letter. I’ve slightly modified it to include more detailed explanations.
Mike Chen’s Query Template
1. Intro Sentence With Ironic Twist
The opening line states the main conflict with a hint of irony.
2. Back Story and Emotional Conflict
Briefly describe your main character. My own advice is that you might include
a long-standing burden
something the character has been longing for since before the story started
For a novel with two POV’s, you’ll need to do this twice, once for each POV character.
3. Act 1 Catalyst
Introduce the opportunity presented in your opening chapters, the catalyst that will draw your main character into the plot. It might look something like this: “But when ___ happens, [character] must…”
4. Hint at the B-Story
Include a short mention of the secondary plot.
5. Raise the Stakes
Describe how everything goes wrong for your main character without giving away the end of the story. Provide evidence of a “ticking clock.”
6. Final Line: Address the Irony of the Opening Sentence
Revisit the opening line and hint at the end of the story without giving it away.
Query Letter Breakdown: Here and Now and Then
Let’s put all of these steps together, with Mike’s actual query letter for his debut novel. Mike’s analysis is included beneath each section of his query letter text.
1. Intro Sentence With Ironic Twist
Kin Stewart thought parenting a teen couldn’t get any harder, but then he got separated from his daughter—by a century.
Your core conflict here is the relationship between father and daughter. This drives the whole book—how far will a parent go to do right by his child? The twist here, then, is that the separation isn’t what we perceive in our real world of distance (like a job or a divorce takes you away) but by time.
2. Back Story and Emotional Conflict
Before that, he was a normal family man, working and parenting teenage Miranda—a far cry from his old job as a time-traveling secret agent from 2142. Stranded in suburbia since the 1990s because of a botched mission, he’d spent the last 17 years thinking about soccer practices and family vacations instead of temporal fugitives.
Now we have the setup that puts the opening hook into context. In this case, it’s a fish-out-of-water story with a time-travel twist.
3. Act 1 Catalyst
But when his rescue team suddenly arrives, Kin is forced to abandon his family and return to 2142…
The Act 1 catalyst is the arrival of the rescue team—this is the key accelerant in the story; it’s hinted at in Chapter 1 and ramps up in Chapter 2, then drives the story in Chapter 3.
4. Hint at the B-Story
...where everyone—including his fiancée, who’s unaware of time travel—thinks he’s only been gone weeks, not years. Ordered to cut all contact with the past, Kin defies his superiors and attempts to raise his daughter from the future.
The hint of the B-story, which is how Kin tries to balance returning to his family in 2142, provides greater depth while showcasing another side of the conflict.
5. Raise the Stakes
Until one day he discovers that Miranda’s being erased from history...and it might be his fault.
With time running out, Miranda’s very existence depends upon Kin taking a final trip across time, no matter the cost. Break time-travel rules, tell his fiancée about Miranda and his secret family, even put his own life on the line…
Every line here raises the stakes on the previous one: conflict with old family and timeline reconciliation, more conflict with cutting off the past, and more conflict by defying that. Then the All Is Lost moment (Miranda is erased) and the ticking clock that breaks into Act 3.
6. Final Line: Address the Irony of the Opening Sentence
…those are risks Kin will take because there’s only one thing more important than the past and the future: doing right by his daughter.
I always try to have the final line tie into the opening line. Rhythm is a big part of queries, so doing something like this acts as a strong final punchline while giving that whole-circle feel. Thus, we open with Kin struggling to connect with his daughter emotionally and we close with Kin struggling to connect with his daughter physically. It sets a nice balance to the whole piece.
You can find Mike’s original breakdown of his query letter at his website. His new novel, A Quantum Love Story, is about a woman who must find a way to break out of a time loop or lose the man she loves.
Workshopping The Query Letter: Funny Story
Let’s revise the jacket copy from Emily Henry’s Funny Story to create a query letter for the novel, using Mike’s query template. (Mild spoilers ahead.)
1. Intro Sentence With Ironic Twist
A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.
“Opposites who have the wrong thing in common” is a bit of intriguing irony. The premise of the novel is that a woman falls in love her ex’s new fiancée’s ex. This logline is a very simplified look at that irony and creates a little suspense.
You wouldn’t have to include this kind of logline at the top of your query pitch, but you could, omitting the final clause (“from…Henry.”). We’ll make our next section start with an ironic sentence as well, so that we have the option of cutting this line to shorten our query.
2. Back Story and Emotional Conflict
Daphne always loved the way her fiancé Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it…right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.
This is actually how the novel starts—with the couple’s perfect story and then the gut-punch of betrayal. Emily is really good at presenting a heroine’s backstory as an intriguing tale of its own with an ironic twist that instantly invokes sympathy; my favorite version of this is in Book Lovers, when we learn that Nora is not going to be the typical rom-com heroine and instead will fill the role of the jilted “city girl.”
And while this is really lovely jacket copy, it might be a bit long for our query letter. Here’s how we might revise it while still highlighting some irony:
Daphne’s love life is kind of a funny story: after falling in love with Peter and moving to his lakeside hometown to plan their wedding, Peter declared he was very much in love… with his childhood best friend Petra.
This bit of backstory leads into the emotional conflict, which we might shorten again:
Which is how Daphne begins her new story:[Now Daphne is] stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.
What’s great about this section is that it introduces us to the burdens Daphne carries even from before the start of the story. We know that over the course of the story, she will need to solve these problems: (1) she’s isolated from friends and family, (2) her job doesn’t pay well, and (3) she’s living with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex.
At the same time, we don’t need a lot of details here (for example, we don’t need to know yet about her strained relationship with her father, or her reluctance to put down roots in Waning Bay). And even including all of these problems might make our query a bit too long, so we could consider cutting a bit:
Now Daphne is stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and the only roommate who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.
I mentioned above that if you’re writing a dual POV romance, you need to repeat this step for the love interest. Even though Funny Story isn’t dual POV, the jacket copy tells us a lot about Miles. Since romance is the main focus of the story, this part seems important to our query letter as well, but we’ll shorten it bit to keep our query tight:
Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned up Daphne
, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another,
Love stories need an obstacle for the love interests to overcome, and our first understanding of the obstacle between Miles and Daphne is that they have very different personalities. It makes sense, then, why they aren’t already forming a relationship, and why they need a catalyst to push them beyond their current state (roommates with broken hearts).
3. Act 1 Catalyst
…until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?
The jacket copy is very coy about what brings Daphne and Miles together. While this works fine for getting a reader to buy the book, a query letter would need to state this inciting incident more explicitly. We need to know exactly what happens in the opening chapters that pushes Daphne and Miles to confront the obstacle between them. What will make them overcome their differences and start to view each other romantically?
Here’s a revised version (mild spoilers ahead):
…until one day, Daphne receives an invitation to Peter and Petra’s wedding. When Peter calls Daphne on the phone and excuses her from attending, Daphne’s pride gets the better of her and she impulsively claims that she not only plans to attend but that she will bring a plus one: Miles.
This catalyst sounds really juicy but the tricky thing about hitting this plot point so explicitly is that it implies the story will be about Daphne attending the wedding with Miles—and that’s not actually what the story is about. Instead, it’s about Daphne and Miles spending time together in the days leading up to the wedding in order to make their exes uncomfortable, a bit of punishment for Peter and Petra’s condescending pity. And a chance for the two of them to get to know each other, in spite of their differences.
Here’s another revision:
…until one day, they receive invitations to Peter and Petra’s wedding. Determined to throw off their exes’ pity for them, Daphne and Miles concoct a plan to post photos of themselves enjoying summer adventures around town—together.
Now we have a sense of the story: Daphne and Miles will spend time together in the charming town that Daphne has yet to embrace, and they’ll start to break down the minor obstacle that stands between them (their differing personalities).
4. Hint at the B-Story
The jacket copy doesn’t continue past the catalyst, so we’ll have to add or own details here. We need to show that the story isn’t only about Daphne and Miles exploring a possible romance; it’s also about Daphne solving her other problems. She needs to cure her isolation (dating Miles isn’t enough), as well as to make a more permanent decision about her career and living situation.
Here’s what we might write:
As Miles shows Daphne all that Waning Bay has to offer—its restaurants, waterfront, and wineries—Daphne forms friendships with locals she meets and she starts to feel more at home in the city she always thought of as only Peter’s.
If we want a shorter version, we can cut this section: [forms friendships with the locals she meets and she].
5. Raise the Stakes
The obstacle needs to come back into play in order to make the reader really root for Daphne and Miles to get together. It’s not enough that they have vaguely different personalities—we need to know both why they might fall in love and why they might end things forever. (If you’re reading the book and want to avoid mild spoilers for yourself, skip to step 6.)
We could mention a few issues here:
Miles is a bit unpredictable, and Daphne doesn’t know if she can rely on him.
The romance between them heats up, and they aren’t sure if they’re moving too fast.
Various family members come into town and complicate the relationship.
Daphne must decide whether to apply for a job outside of the state.
Here’s one option for the next section of our query letter:
But when things heat up between the two of them, Miles’ tendency to disappear for days at a time worries Daphne. And when Daphne’s father, capricious and unreliable himself, comes into town with the new wife he failed to tell Daphne about, Daphne realizes more than ever that she needs someone reliable if she’s ever going to win the stable life she craves. Now she must consider whether to apply for the perfect new job opening at the perfect library far out of state…
6. Final Line: Address the Irony of the Opening Sentence
Here’s the final line of the jacket copy, which references the ironic situation Daphne has found herself in:
But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex…right?
If we tweak this to match the end of our previous section, it might look like this:
Because there’s no way Daphne could ever start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex…right?
That’s the end of our pitch! We could tweak it quite a few ways, but it gives an idea of our characters, the obstacles they face, and the stakes of their relationship. Also, I’m working from my memory of an early draft of this novel—it’s possible some of the plot changed in the final version! Either way, you can see how this story description is engaging enough to make an agent want to read the manuscript.
Here’s a look at the query letter altogether, in its shortest version:
Daphne’s love life is kind of a funny story: after falling in love with Peter and moving to his lakeside hometown to plan their wedding, Peter declared he was very much in love… with his childhood best friend Petra. Now Daphne is stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and the only roommate who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.
Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned up Daphne. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, they receive invitations to Peter and Petra’s wedding. Determined to throw off their exes’ pity for them, Daphne and Miles concoct a plan to post photos of themselves enjoying summer adventures around town—together.
As Miles shows Daphne all that Waning Bay has to offer—its restaurants, waterfront, and wineries—Daphne starts to feel more at home in the city she always thought of as only Peter’s. But when things heat up between her and Miles, Miles’ tendency to disappear for days at a time worries Daphne. And when Daphne’s father, capricious and unreliable himself, comes into town with the new wife he failed to tell Daphne about, Daphne realizes more than ever that she needs someone reliable if she’s ever going to win the stable life she craves. Now she must consider whether to apply for the perfect new job opening at the perfect library far out of state…
Because there’s no way Daphne could start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex…right?
You can read Emily Henry’s lovely new novel, Funny Story, now. I critiqued an early version of the manuscript for Emily, as I’ve done for most of her novels, and I’d be happy to do the same for you. If you’re looking for a critique of your query letter or manuscript, you can find my services here.
