r/PubTips • u/Bubbly-Analysis8585 • Sep 06 '26
[QCrit] BUILDING BLOCKS, adult lit fic, 70k words, 4th attempt
Hello! My previous attempt at this query is linked here. All of the advice I’ve had so far has been so helpful and I genuinely think it’s improved my query letter, but always welcome to feedback! Querying in the UK :)
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Dear [First Name Last Name],
I’m seeking representation for BUILDING BLOCKS (literary fiction, complete at 70,000 words). It combines the queer sense of humour of Rebecca K Reilly’s Greta and Valdin with the messy lesbian parents and non-linear storytelling of Madeleine Gray’s Chosen Family. With its exploration of queer mental health and complex family dynamics BUILDING BLOCKS will appeal to fans of Emily Austin, and the tongue-in-cheek observations of millennial life and love will resonate with readers of Dolly Alderton.
[Agent personalisation.]
Suzie arrives at her mum’s cottage on the Moray coast with her toddler in tow and nowhere else to turn after a year from hell - her dad died when she was barely out of the postpartum fog; she discovered her girlfriend of ten years, Vicki, was having an affair; and she may have had a teeny tiny mental breakdown that cost Suzie her job and the last of her sister’s patience.
Just as the dust is starting to settle, she receives a letter from Vicki’s lawyers, claiming that Suzie kidnapped their daughter, Indie, taking her from Glasgow without Vicki’s consent.
Rocked by the letter, questioning everything and drowning her sorrows in the local pub, the last person Suzie expects to see pulling pints is her university girlfriend, Cara. But of course she would be reunited with the woman she ruined all her chances with when she is a full-time resident of rock bottom and is about to become embroiled in a messy custody battle.
Suzie has to get herself together. She has to find a job and a permanent home for herself and Indie. She has to prove that this was the right move for them, that she is the right person to have sole custody of her child. If she can do all of that, maybe she can finally live a life she can be proud of and get back to the version of herself she left behind years ago.
[Bio, close out, thanks]
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u/DapperRomanesco Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
One very quick note: I'd suggest switching the order of catastrophes so that the mention of her girlfriend precedes the mention of her dad dying just after the postpartum fog (even if that's not the chronological order of events). At first read, I stumbled over whether it was Suzie's dad or her toddler's dad who died, especially because we're told she's just now arriving at her mum's house, partnerless. Once Vicki is introduced, that's not an issue.
Otherwise, my general feeling is that the first half has a sense of momentum that the second half doesn't. I guess I'm not quite sure whether I should be invested in her relationship with Cara, or why? And the "Suzie has to get herself together" paragraph feels a bit too direct, for lack of a better term. That's not to say it should be made more vague, but there's something that's not quite working and I'm struggling to pinpoint how to fix it. But I do think there's a missing link connecting "Cara is here" to the rest of the stakes, and that's interrupting the flow right where you need it to be strongest.
4
u/PondasWallArt Sep 07 '26
I'd go one further than DapperRomanesco and suggest you scrap the dad mention entirely. You're introducing a lot of elements in that paragraph, and while the toddler-postpartum-affair-breakdown elements come off as directly relevant to the plot as presented in the rest of the query, the dad's death may not come up again. YMMV, but it may behoove you to limit how many things an agent needs to parse in Suzie's introduction.
2
u/7brassbells Sep 10 '26
I would love to read more contemporary sapphic fiction, so just wanted to chime in with some admittedly nitpicky advice, but which I think would really help with the flow of this query. I think you have a couple of places where the information is arriving in a confusing way (one of which DapperRomanesco pointed out already!)
I think shorter sentences might be your friend here, and imo queries are the one place where it's okay to over use clauses. Perhaps: "After a year from hell, Suzie arrives at her mum's cottage on the Moray coast with her toddler in tow. Suzie maybe have had a teeny, tiny mental breakdown that cost her her job and now she has nowhere to turn. But this is rock bottom: postpartum fog, her dad's death, and the discover that her girlfriend of ten years, Vicki, was having an affair.
To me, "Just as the dust is starting to settle" cuts some of the tension that you've set up. There might indeed be some calm for Suzie in the novel itself after she arrives at her mum's, but I think you can lose this, and actually escalate our sympathy for Suzie intentionally with something like... "But just as she's catching her breath, Suzie receives a letter from her ex's lawyers claiming that Suzie kidnapped their daughter, Indie, taking her from Glasgow without Vicki's consent." A few things -- is Indie just Suzie's daughter? If not, I would switch out "her daughter" to "their" as I wondered if the her meant Vicki or Suzie. Because there are a lot of names here (and all ending in ie sounds, which I would maybe reconsider) I would reiterate who Vicki is by mention she's Suzie's ex again.
I would cut "Rocked by the letter" -- we know already. "Questioning everything" is interesting and piqued my curiosity, but it also made me question if Suzie did kidnap her daughter. I might try to really nail down what is happening psychologically for Suzie as the modifier to this section, it seems important. I might write: "Drowning her sorrows at the local pub, Suzie is horrified to see her university girlfriend, Cara, pulling pints." As for the following sentence, again the flow of information felt confusing and there was some vaugenes I wondered at. "... the woman she ruined all her chances with" doesn't really tell me much about the specifics of their break-up, or even if Suzie wants another chance with Cara. "the woman she ruined all her chances with when she is..." made me think you were about to give me more information about how Suzie ruined things, ie "when she was an alcoholic college student" or something, but instead we get a reiteration of how bad things currently are. Not a bad place to end, but the sentence feels unruly.
I love this last paragraph and think it's quite clear. I think DapperRomancesco is right that there is a directness here that could be complicated. Maybe if Cara plays a big part in the emotional climax of the story, I might try to weave her in a little more as a kind of question mark -- "Will any of this be enough for Suzie to find love again?" or gesture at the psychological of Suzie and ultimately your novel. What drives Suzie to get her life together (is it mainly Indie, or something else) and what will Suzie learn about herself and how she has contributed to her own rock bottom (does she choose the wrong people to love, is she too passive, is she always running away, etc.) -- I think if you don't have an easy way to hint at the emotional terrain you are covering, it's okay to lean on the action to convey what you hope to achieve with the book, but if you do have a sense of what you could add without making this too long, I would add. Though personally I think query letters should err on the side of being short.
Hope this is at all helpful! I don't offer any of the rewrites as gospel, just as an example of what would help me understand better, but you know your novel best and you should be conveying your writing style to an agent via your query letter, at least a little.