How to write a query letter for a fantasy or romantasy novel. The structure agents expect, the hook, the stakes, the worldbuilding trap, and what gets you auto-rejected.

Do you have to finish your novel before querying agents? Yes. Here’s what finished means, what to prep while you write, and what happens if you query early.

Fantasy novel word count by subgenre, with querying ranges for romantasy, epic, urban fantasy and YA, plus what to do when a debut is far over.

You can first find agents through current agency websites, recent books, acknowledgements, deal and client history, QueryTracker, and Manuscript Wish

A great rule of thumb is to query six to eight agents in the first batch if you’re new to

Literary agents can take a few days, several months, or long enough that you begin to suspect your query has

The answer to this is complicated and nuanced, but if it’s been revised, gone through at least a beta, has

A raw rejection count tells you very little by itself. Authors have signed with agents after a handful of queries

An agent read the query, liked the sample, and asked for the whole book, but then the rejection arrived weeks

Querying a fantasy novel is really daunting. Most writers are quite content to hide behind their desk, peering over their

Writers spend an astonishing amount of time polishing the first sentence of a fantasy novel, as though one sufficiently beautiful

Literary agent rejection letters are written in a strange little language where everyone is being very kind and absolutely nobody

If you’re anything like me, you have a folder called QUERIES and a tracking spreadsheet with a column you stopped

Most debut romantasy writers are not struggling because they cannot write but because a lot of craft books are written

I’m sure you’ve experienced this in fantasy many times, where some pages are easier to read even when they are

A book can be well written and still hard to stay inside; you have probably felt it as a reader:

There is a special kind of sinking feeling when you hear “I just didn’t connect with the main character.” It

If your scene feels slow, the answer is probably not a fight, a fire, a kiss, or a murder. That

Somewhere along the way writers were told that every chapter has to end on dramatics. Think… a gasp, a door

Your first chapter makes promises whether you mean it to or not. The reader cannot see your outline, your series

Writers lose entire weekends to the first sentence. You rewrite it eleven times, read it aloud, test it on a

You added the fight scene, the argument, the long ride through the mountains where it rains at the crux of

Most fantasy writers do not have a magic system problem. They have a timing problem. You know your system cold.

A fantasy first chapter has one hell of a job. It has to introduce a character, open a world, suggest

Writers who swear by Save the Cat and writers who swear it’s the death of all original fiction want the

You finish the manuscript. You type the last line. You sit back, feel briefly magnificent, and then open a new

The inciting incident in a fantasy novel should happen somewhere between the first chapter and the first 10–15% of the