Polish, Perfect, Pitch: How I Edit My Book for Querying Literary Agents

If you've been following my journey on social media, you may know that I finished the first draft of the manuscript at the end of January, with which I plan to query literary agents this spring. After letting it sit for a month (I didn't look at it or even think about it in that time frame), I'm gearing up to start editing it for agents.

This is an exciting time, and I thought I would walk you through my editing process to show you how I prepare my books to pitch to literary agents.

As I already mentioned, the most crucial step in all of this is stepping away from the manuscript. When you're too close to your work, it's hard to evaluate it objectively. In my case, if I read through it too many times at once, I start hating it and want to start over from scratch. And there is no world where that has ever been a logical response to my writing LOL.

So, it's been a little over a month since I've touched it. Now what?

First, I'll do one read-through for big-picture edits. This is where I focus on structure, pacing, and character arcs (often called developmental editing). I'm looking for any plot holes that need to be filled or scenes that feel repetitive or slow the story down too much. This is also the phase where I ensure the character arc is smooth. I don't want any big leaps from who the character was from one moment to the next. The change they make should be gradual, but by the end I want the reader to feel the depth of the emotional journey they went on.

For example, when I was writing The Patron Saint of Holy Sinners on my first pass of the first draft, I realized my male main character, Tanner, was coming across as a little too perfect. I was using him to heal the female character rather than allowing them both to heal through each other. So, I tightened up his character arc by initially making him a bit messier and slowly pulling the thread of his emotional journey until the end.

When sending a manuscript to agents, this is the bare minimum of editing you should do! You don't want to send out a book until the bones of the draft are good. Because while editors will work with you to get it into publishing shape, they don't want to have to make a big overhaul of the book. Agents should get a sense that you understand storytelling, and that happens in the big picture.

However, I go even deeper in my editing process. The next step is voice and style (otherwise known as line editing), where I examine my prose and sentence structure in depth. Authors often have words they love or rely on, but the reader will start picking up on them if they are overused. When I'm line editing, I ensure the syntax (word choice) is varied and flows well in each sentence. This may sound like it takes a while (and it does!), but as I've written more books, I've become a cleaner drafter in this department. This means I pay close attention to this as I'm writing the first draft, so when I reach this pass, there's not as much that needs tidying up as there used to be.

The final pass-through of my manuscript is where I'm looking for spelling mistakes, grammar, and punctuation (this is called copy editing). As you edit, tiny errors may fall through the cracks. That's why I need to take a long, slow look at the book to make sure nothing got left out or added in by accident. In this phase, I will read my manuscript aloud to ensure it also sounds good and nothing is wonky about how characters speak. After this step is done, the book is considered complete and ready to go!

But wait, there's more!

Did you know when querying, the manuscript is only one part of a pitch package that makes its way to agents? You also have to write what's called a query letter. Each agent will have a different set of standards for what they expect in a query letter, but let's assume the agent you're querying wants you to send them an email.

In the body of the email, you will include your query letter, which gives a brief synopsis of your book (spoilers included!), tells the agent what genre you're querying, and the final word count of your book, along with what we call comp titles. Comp titles (comparative tiles) are the names of two to three other books published in your genre in the last five years, giving the agent a sense of where your book will sit on shelves.

For example, because my upcoming book was inspired by Happy Place by Emily Henry, I plan to use that as one of my comp titles, comparing the emotional depth of my characters to the ones in Happy Place. Comp titles tell an agent that you understand your own genre (and that you're well-read within it) and can get a sense of what readers are interested in.

Writing query letters has often been a struggle for me. I'm not the best at writing a synopsis and will overthink it every step of the way. But what I've learned over the years, by studying other authors' query letters that have successfully landed them agents, is that you want to outline for the agent the journey your main character goes on throughout the story.

In contemporary romance (what I write), this is often more of an emotional journey than a physical one. So, I talk about what my characters want and what's stopping them from getting it. I try not to labor too long on the word choice of my query letter. Instead, I'll send out a few in a batch, wait for the responses, and tweak the letter as necessary.

I think this is the hardest part of querying because often, we will receive form rejections that say, "I'm sorry, but I'm passing. " (Which I get; agents receive lots of queries a month, and it would be impossible to respond to everyone individually), but it can be challenging to decipher if the query is the problem or your opening pages.

Each agent will ask for a specific number of opening pages, but in my experience, it's always been between 5 and 10 pages or the first 1 to 3 chapters. I do want to caution writing and rewriting your opening pages without going through the entire manuscript to make sure the writing aligns. Querying can be exhausting, and the itch to keep tweaking your package can be overwhelming, but if you rewrite your opening pages just to receive a request for a full manuscript from an agent but the rest of your manuscript doesn't align with what they originally said yes to you will receive a rejection anyway.

While querying can be daunting, I think patience wins out in the end. Don't put unnecessary stress on yourself by rushing to the finish line; take it one day at a time. I have found that what helps me is working on another project while I'm in querying mode. This allows me space from the silence and rejections while giving me something to occupy my time and mind.

Ultimately, I am excited to get back into the world of querying. It's been well over a year, and I feel like a more seasoned and confident writer. I've also learned through self-publishing that no one person's opinion dictates my worth as a writer. My books won't be for everyone, and while there is an obvious power imbalance between author and agent, this extends to them, too. I've been writing and publishing long enough to know that, eventually, my work will find the right audience, and when it does, everything will click!

With that, let me go into my editing cave for the next month or so. I'll see you on the other side.

Xoxo Kristin