When I was querying, I scoured the internet for “the magic answer”. I just wanted someone to tell me the one thing I could do to guarantee a thousand full requests and a hundred offers. That’s all. That wasn’t too much to ask. Was it?

I’m gonna be upfront, a magic answer doesn’t exist. It takes a lot of work, refining, luck, and crying into bowls of ice cream. That being said, there are definitely a few things you can do to improve your odds, besides just writing a really good book.

See, the thing is, you can write the best book you know how, take every bit of feedback, and polish it until it glows like radioactive goo, but if you don’t know how to present your book in an intriguing, irresistible way, you’re gonna get a lot more rejections than you deserve.

There’s a lot of things we can’t control during the query process, and it sucks. We can’t control how many other books with similar premises are in an agent’s inbox. We can’t control an agent’s personal preferences. We especially can’t control whether they decide to represent us. But here are 4 achievable things you can do right now to improve your chances of success. Because we all need to feel like we’re in control of something.

So this is me, presenting you with the gift of control, or at least the illusion of it.

1. Nail your comp titles.

This is easier said than done. There are a lot of unwritten rules about comp titles (the books you compare your novel to in your query letter). They should share a specific similarity with your novel, such as the setting or the writing style. They should have been published within the last five years. And they should be popular, but not too popular. In other words, you shouldn’t be comparing yourself to Stephen King. But beyond all this, there is a key attribute to good comp titles that most people miss.

They should contrast each other.

Allow me to demonstrate. If I said “My manuscript has the haunting, southern setting of WAKE THE BONES by Elizabeth Kilcoyne, and the supernatural magic of DARK AND SHALLOW LIES by Ginny Myers Sain”, that would be all fine and good, but these books are very similar to each other. If I’m an agent who reads this, I’m not learning anything specific or particularly intriguing about this manuscript’s premise, besides it being set in the South and having supernatural elements. This is cool and all, but it doesn’t set the manuscript apart from the thousands of others they see a week.

However, if I said, “My manuscript has the ultra-feminine main character of BARBIE and the shocking gore of WE ATE THE DARK by Mallory Pearson”, then I’m painting a uniquely contrasting picture of a gory, spooky book with a main character who wears pink and chews bubble gum while investigating mutilated bodies.

I’m not saying every book will have such drastically contrasting elements, but I am suggesting you utilize the contrasting elements you do have to define your book in a unique and intriguing way.

2. Create a one sentence hook and put it right at the beginning.

If you only had one sentence to convince someone to read your book, what would you say? This is how you should treat the beginning of your query letter. You have one sentence to convince an agent to keep reading, so it better be good. Many people include a personalized note to the agent first, but directly after that, the agent needs to be so pleasantly surprised by the first sentence, they can’t help but see what else you have to say.

For IF THESE HALLS COULD TALK, my query had this for the first sentence (after personalization):

“Welcome to Heartbreak Hotel, where ghosts know your secrets and liars pay for their sins.”

Now I know this isn’t perfect. It could’ve had something more odd and eye-catching to set it apart, but it showed the setting of my book and the main theme while also conveying the vibes in a way agents probably hadn’t seen before.

For BLONDIE VS THE NUCLEAR FAMILY, my first line was something like:

“Blondie didn’t murder a billionaire with a PEZ dispenser, but an incriminating amount of evidence says otherwise.”

I was really proud of that one. It was quirky enough to show the humorous voice throughout the book, and unique enough to catch an agent’s attention.

So craft your first line! Practice on friends and family. Include an element of your story that makes it distinctly yours and run with it.

3. Cut out the boring crap in your query letter.

Sorry if that was too harsh. But it’s true. Every single word in a query letter should have a purpose, and that purpose should be to make your book seem irresistibly delicious. This is hard. I know. Writing blurbs is a rare form of torture, and it’s easy to get lost in the weeds of vague sentences and insignificant details. So I have a little activity for you.

Sit down and make a list of the most interesting scenes in your book. I mean the ones that would flash on screen for 2 seconds during a trailer and make the audience say, “oh my gosh, what was that?”

Now those are the scenes you reference in your query letter, because those should be the scenes where key moments of your plot happen. Describe what happens with specific verbs, and leave out vague implications. This doesn’t require you to ramble on and on about who likes who, and what football team won that year, and why the main male character is so emotionally damaged. That’s the opposite of what you should do.

Instead, if your main character is keeping a secret, tell us what that secret is and how her life would explode if people found out. You don’t have to spoil things, and you don’t need to include the scenes that occur in the last act, but if your book has people lying to each other, having affairs, running away from abusive house holds, and making shady blood oaths, please please please don’t leave that gold out in favor of telling an agent your MC’s favorite breakfast cereal.

4. The first few paragraphs of your book should be your superstars.

These paragraphs should be the golden children. The ones you show pictures of to your friends until they get sick of you. The ones you brag about at dinner parties. These need to carry the weight of the rest of the introductory chapters until the excitement of the inciting incident.

This is probably the hardest tip for me to follow. My natural instinct is to slowly, painfully build up to the interesting stuff in my story, and that usually leaves my first paragraphs wanting. So don’t be me!

Use these first few paragraphs to show your readers just how interesting and “not like other girls” your main character really is. No, these first paragraphs don’t need to happen in the middle of combat or at the height of a deadly scenario. In fact, I don’t recommend it. The reader needs to care about your character before they care wether they live or die. But these first paragraphs should have some kind of tension.

If I could recommend two main things to set apart the beginning of your book, I’d say 1) show off what makes your protagonist different, and 2) put them in a pressure cooker of tension.

For example, at the beginning of Wake the Bones by Elizabeth Kilcoyne, the main character is collecting animal bones from empty fields to create jewelry for her Etsy store. HOW FREAKING UNIQUE IS THAT? Who do you know that makes bone jewelry? No one. It’s brilliant.

But what makes these first pages so great is Laurel’s inner turmoil. She feels like a failure because she dropped out of university, and she’s terrified by the mysterious well where her mother killed herself. Her turmoil combined with her crazy, spooky hobby makes for a killer start to a horror book.

So there you have it. My main tips for catching an agent’s eye and getting them to read the incredible book you’ve created. You don’t have to take my advice. I’m certainly no expert. But if you do, please tell me how it goes.

Thank you for reading and, as always, stay spooky.