Wow, that’s a whole lot of stuff going on. I wouldn’t read it simply because it sounds way too much like a Lifetime movie or a soap opera (neither of which I enjoy).

Why not cut a bunch of these plotlines out – the biracial rape baby (I agree that this is a timebomb just waiting to happen), the icky icky ICKY student/teacher affair and subsequent missing status and the boss harrassment stuffs?

On the other hand – good bits –

Thank you for not having the gay partner die of AIDS. Thank you! It’s so nice to have a storyline with a gay man dying of something else.

I think, if you focus on the mother and Travis’s plotlines – you’d have a fantastic story that would show mother and son bonding, something I haven’t read or seen a lot. Most books have mother/daughter bonding over loss so it’d be nice to see mother/son bonding instead. With both the previous loss and the future loss being from cancer, I really think you could play this bonding up.

I wish you luck and applaud you for putting yourself forth like this!

Kathleen, I find your comments interesting, you have a problem with a biracial baby as a product of rape? What do you mean “the baby’s not just a product of rape, but it’s NOT WHITE EITHER!” HUH – you have done one thing right, you have an emotion from reading the story, but don’t blame the Author for your own pre-judgments. Why assume the family is black or white? And kudos for the Author giving the woman strength on keeping the baby and raising it as a single woman. Let’s stay focused on the writing issues, not judging the Author for his/her story line that we may or may not like.

Kudos to the Author for opening this up to everyone’s opinions, and good to know people are reading!

For the Most Part is a fictional story of the White Family Christmas. Lorraine White, recently widowed, is looking forward to spending a traditional holiday with her five children. Yet, each of her kids is wrestling with skeletons in their closet. Martin, the eldest and a school teacher, has had a short affair with a student who is now missing.

That’s where I stopped reading. Ick on the teacher/student affair thing and the hint of maybe, possibly, foul play or whatever with the “missing student” thing. NOT interested. Like everybody else said: too long.

Any one of these issues is more than enough for one book, let alone one family. The student Martin had an affair with is missing? He’s a school teacher, for crying out loud, which means the student is NOT college age, and what, a SHORT affair is less reprehensible somehow? I didn’t realize this was a crime novel.

I don’t know how you would pull this off, but I do know I wouldn’t read it. This is suffering on a biblical scale.

Every professional source of information I've ever seen on writing queries state the need for describing how the story ends. As I clearly haven't read everything ever written on the subject, I can't say there is no website or reference book put together by professional writers or editors that says it's ok not to say how the book ends, but given the great number of sources that stress the importance of including the ending, it seems like shooting yourself in the foot not to include it.

Would you mind listing some of those, if it’s not too much trouble? I’m really stunned that anyone would be giving that advice. I have never seen an agent say they want to know how the book ends from a query. I’ve never put the ending in any of my (successful) queries. I’ve never known anyone who put the book’s ending in their queries. I’ve never seen a sample query on an agent or writer’s website that gives away the ending. Kristin Nelson even specifically says on her blog that a query should NOT include the ending:
http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2007/10/pitching-and-all-that-jazz.html

While there are differences between back-cover blurbs and queries, the principle s the same. A query is designed to hook an agent/editor and attract their interest, just as a blurb does for a reader. Would you buy a book in the store if the back cover tells you how it ends?

You’re right . . . if it’s a synopsis. But in the letter, what you want is to get the agent/editor interested in reading the manuscript and the synopsis. So here, it’s the hook that counts.

Di

Every professional source of information I've ever seen on writing queries state the need for describing how the story ends. As I clearly haven't read everything ever written on the subject, I can't say there is no website or reference book put together by professional writers or editors that says it's ok not to say how the book ends, but given the great number of sources that stress the importance of including the ending, it seems like shooting yourself in the foot not to include it.

Then you could go back to saying something about your book but more briefly than what you have. Parts of this read like a synopsis or a plot outline, which is not what I think of as a query.

The plot as a whole doesn’t grab me. It really sounds like a soap opera, & there are too many wounded people in it. I think in skilled hands, some of your plot points could be workable, and I also am not totally against the different POV/chapter but it does take the work out mainstream fiction & into literary fiction, which is a much harder sell. You mention success in short stories & I have to wonder if this book isn’t really a bunch of short stories pastiched together. And I simply cannot imagine wrapping all these storylines up successfully in 83K words.

I hope that some of the comments here will help you. Kudos for being so brave to put your work out here for our input, & good luck!

As a whole, this novel sounds a bit too sudsy for my taste, so I can’t say the hook works for me.

This sounds very Maeve Binchy-like to me. You should check and see how some of her books are blurbed.

And yes, get rid of the question opening and the word “fictional”.

So I would remove at least one of these plot points–and develop it into a much longer story.

Jessica

Mainly, this query lacks a solid hook. How is this project different than any other family saga? You need to make the agent want more, and the summary provided, despite its dense detail, did not accomplish that for me. If you can’t sum up the book in three sentences, then something is wrong.

Finally, I think people forget that a query should be written in a manner that reflects authorial voice. This letter needs zing.