Free Fantasy Query Letter Builder (No AI)
Writing 100,000 words of fantasy is apparently fine for most of us. But writing 300 words about those 100,000 words? Horrific. This free fantasy query letter builder helps you turn the important parts of your novel into a proper query letter without asking AI to write it for you. You bring the story, the wording, and the wonderful little thing that makes your book yours. And then the builder gives you the structure.
This is a great tool for you to use to work through your hook, pitch, stakes, book details, comps, and author bio, then you can take the finished draft and make it sound like you! Awesome. And the best part? No gen-AI, or giving away your baby-WIP, it’s all you.
Build Your Fantasy Query Letter
Your finished query should normally land somewhere around 250–350 words. If you find you keep writing more you might be too focussed on the worldbuilding.
Need help figuring out what belongs in each section? Read the full How to Write a Query Letter for a Fantasy Novel guide alongside the builder.
What does the query letter builder help you write?
The builder breaks the query into the parts an agent needs to find quickly:
- Personalisation: why you are querying this particular agent.
- Hook: the character, situation, and reason we should care.
- Pitch: what your protagonist wants, what stands in the way, and what failure will cost them.
- Housekeeping: title, word count, genre, and subgenre.
- Comparable titles: recent books that help position yours for the right readership.
- Author bio: the small amount an agent actually needs to know about you.
Why is this a no-AI query letter builder?
An agent is about to decide whether she wants to read pages written by you, in your voice. Having a generator manufacture the first piece of your writing she sees rather defeats the point, and honestly, might get you thrown immediately into the slush pile. This tool helps you stay honest, and say what you actually want to say about your story, without arguing with a LLM for over an hour.
What’s more a good query often exposes problems worth seeing before you submit. For example, if you cannot explain what your protagonist wants the issue may not be the letter. And if the only stakes you can find are the kingdom will fall, your manuscript may need stronger personal stakes.
What makes a fantasy query letter different?
Mostly, fantasy gives you far more opportunities to put unnecessary things into a letter when you query. You have all the things, from kingdoms, to Gods, to knights in shining armor and the agent does not need most of them yet.
Keep your focus on:
- Who is the protagonist?
- What do they want?
- What is stopping them?
- What will they personally lose if they fail?
Then use the smallest amount of worldbuilding needed to make those answers make sense.
What should you do after building your query?
Read it once as if you don’t know what the book is about.
Can you immediately tell:
- who the story follows?
- what that person wants?
- what the main conflict is?
- why this problem matters to them personally?
- what kind of fantasy novel this is?
- approximately where it belongs in the market?
Another pro tip is to give it to someone who has not read your manuscript and ask them the same questions.
Want the full query letter guide?
The builder helps with structure but there is a full guide which explains what should actually go into that structure, and even more checklist and tools, including:
- how to write the hook
- how to keep the pitch from becoming a synopsis
- how much worldbuilding belongs in a fantasy query
- personal stakes vs enormous world-ending stakes
- fantasy word counts
- comp titles
- author bios
- common query mistakes
- real successful fantasy query examples
Read How to Write a Query Letter for a Fantasy Novel before you start sending the thing into the wild.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. The Fantasy Query Letter Builder does not use generative AI to write your query for you. You supply the story information and wording; the tool helps you organise it into a query-letter structure.
Yes. The basic structure of a fiction query letter is similar across genres. The guidance here is especially designed around fantasy and romantasy because those queries have their own recurring problems, particularly worldbuilding, terminology, subgenre positioning, and word count.
Aim for roughly 250–350 words for the full query. Once you are moving beyond 400 words, check whether your pitch contains unnecessary plot summary, backstory, world building, or explanation.
No. The query should usually end on the central conflict, choice, or stakes rather than explaining the resolution. Your synopsis is the document that reveals how the story ends.
Only enough to understand the protagonist and conflict. Every invented term creates extra work for someone encountering your world for the first time, so keep proper nouns and lore under control.
No. It helps you build the letter. You still need to research individual literary agents, check their current submission guidelines, personalise the query, and submit using the method each agency requests.
The central pitch can stay largely the same, but personalise the opening for each agent where appropriate and always follow that agent’s submission requirements. One agent may want five pages pasted below the query; another may want ten, a synopsis, or something completely different because apparently querying needed side quests.