If You Give an Agent a Query

If you give an agent a query, he’s going to ask for a synopsis.

When you give him the synopsis, he’ll probably read it for eight months. Maybe even nine!

When he’s read it, he might ask you for a partial manuscript. “Looking forward to reading!” he will say. You will buy yourself a prohibitively expensive bottle of Irish whiskey to celebrate.

Six weeks after he has received your 50-page partial, he’ll say, “Oh, didn’t I mention our formatting requirements?” You will reply in the negative. Three weeks after that, he will encourage you to send it along again. Only, do not use the tab key to indent your paragraphs this time. That is a crazy thing to do! Instead, you will go through your entire manuscript and use the margin tool to manually indent each and every paragraph of your 119,000-word coming-of-age literary thriller with elements of speculative fiction and spaghetti Westerns, a bewildering and complicated process in Microsoft Word that you will need to extensively Google and watch countless grainy YouTube tutorials to figure out, you worthless unwashed Luddite.

When he’s read it, the agent will probably ask you for the full manuscript. So exciting! You will go into a small amount of debt buying another bottle of the Irish whiskey, this time springing for the 18-year. You are not that great with money! Which is why you are counting so much on the six-figure advance this agent will no doubt score you.

When you give him the manuscript, he’ll gently mention his agency’s completely different set of formatting requirements for fulls versus partials. That’s just the industry! You will spend an intense week reformatting on your lunch breaks and late at night when your family is asleep, paying special attention to the agent’s insistence that you use only an obscure variation on the Baskerville font with 1.86 line spacing and 19.33334-millimeter margins.

Fifty-six weeks will go by.

When he’s finished reading your manuscript, he’ll ask for extensive revisions. Not, like, as an offer of representation, oh no, but just because he has some concerns! Some serious concerns, but he might just be persuaded to take another look at your manuscript later if you address his concerns with a substantial rewrite. It really would work better in the first-person plural present tense, not the third-person omniscient past tense that you foolishly used. Don’t you think? So you’ll work and work and work for eight more months, your little hands racing furiously, rewriting the entire manuscript according to his specifications, and then you’ll send it back. “Thank you!” he’ll say four weeks later. “Who are you again?” Then you will remind him politely, pointing out the by now expansive email thread attached to the message. “Thank you!” he’ll say again in another five weeks. He is very very busy!

Then he’ll go on vacation for six weeks in the Dardanelles.

When he gets back from his vacation, he might notice how behind in his reading he’s fallen! So after you’ve politely nudged him once every four months for the next two years, he’ll probably ask for an extension.

When he’s finished with his extension, he’ll want another extension to finish reading your book. He’ll start reading the revised version now, for the first time. He might get carried away and read it for six more months (because it is so good). He may even end up reading it for ten more months!

When he’s done, he’ll probably want to take a nap. You’ll have to fix up a little box of time for him, with a blanket and pillow. (Figuratively speaking.) He’ll crawl in, make himself comfortable and fluff the pillow a few times. He’ll probably ask you to send him a story, your story, which he lost the file of after switching agencies back in September—he’s now with McCreagan, Jort, and Birtwistle, didn’t you hear? Also he has a completely different email address now. So you’ll send him your story, and he’ll ask for a little extension to read it again.

When he reads the story, he’ll get so excited that he’ll want you to change a few things. He’ll ask for a new point-of-view character and a different opening chapter and fewer dream sequences and three new sex scenes and an epilogue from the perspective of the rumpled leather coat that your heroine wore throughout the story. And you will absolutely give it to him. You will not be the first to blink or back out. Your name, though not yet known to the literary world at large, is synonymous with stick-to-itiveness, with never-giving-upitiveness, with motherfucking gritergy, which is a term you just coined yourself, and which honestly just shows how good a writer you are.

When the revisions are complete, the agent will ask for the merest tiddle of time, just a tiny squinch, not more than two or three ha’-years at the most, to look it over.

One hundred and twelve weeks later, he will at last respond with an email whose subject line reads simply “Hmm…” He will thank you for all your work but ultimately explain that the story didn’t quite come together for him, saying your book is somehow both too commercial and too literary for the market right now. Your prose is both overstuffed and underwhelming. A fair critique! You are, after all, a first-time novelist. He will apologize but his current clients take up so much of his time, and he is very selective about taking on new clients, and he really needs to fall in love—nay, in lust with a manuscript to represent it effectively; it needs to make him literally roar aloud in ecstasy, shattering the quiet of his tastefully decorated New York office, before he can even begin to consider representing it.

However! However. Reading your manuscript will remind him that he has this great co-agent at his agency who might just be interested in other work from you! (Not your current manuscript though. Oh no. It’s just not right for the co-agent’s list at this time.) He’ll forward you the co-agent’s information. So… you will email her, and she will ask for a synopsis.

And chances are if she asks for a synopsis, she’s going to want a query to go with it.