Proposition Ten

Ten Things About Novel Proposals, Queries and Synopses

Freeware caution: always scan free downloads of anything for bugs and other threats before dumping the programs into your hard drive.

1. CVitae freeware is mainly for resume writing and submission, but it has a cover letter section that might be helpful when you're putting together simultaneous submissions, or prefer to use/store the same query letter for your proposal. For a freeware program just for letter writing, check out The Form Letter Machine.

2. Shery Ma Belle Arrieta over at AbsoluteWrite.com offers Don't Fall Into The Query Letter Quandary!, an interview with John Wood, author of How to Write Attention-Grabbing Query & Cover Letters.

3. Absolute Write.com's Kelly James-Enger's article, Make the Perfect Pitch: The Novel Query.

4. Joe Nassise's post on Storytellers Unplugged, Novel Proposals.

5. Phrase Express is a clipboard utility freeware that allows you to organize, store and cut-n-paste frequently used text (like headers, openers, paragraphs and sig blocks from your query letter) into any application.

6. Beth Amos' article Query and Synopsis.

7. Fiction Connections' article on the do's and don'ts of Query Letters.

8. Terry Irene Blain's online free course, Basics of Writing the Romance Novel, includes lessons on the synopsis, query and proposal.

9. Jessica Page Morrell's article Tips on Writing a Synopsis.

10. Priscilla Y. Huff's article, What Publishers Want to See Most in a Book Proposal.

Also, Preditor and Editors has a sample novel query letter here that is nice and short (my favorite kind of query) and includes comments from Kerry Hanslits on why it's an effective letter.