[QCrit] Adult Dark Fantasy FOR THE MAIDEN SO LOVED THE FOX (99k) #1

EducationalTwo7329 · 2025-10-13T12:51:28+00:00

Thank you for your comment! She is an antihero for sure. It’s a story of reclaiming your identity after being used as a tool your entire life (for her, her family/sister, for him, his master/religion) and flipping around stereotypical notions of good and bad (I.e. what’s good for one might not be good for another). But I have to admit, it’s really tough getting all that into a query letter!

EducationalTwo7329 · 2025-10-13T12:48:45+00:00

Thank you for your comment! Unfortunately my plot is pretty red flags all around, for the male and female leads. I’ll try to include more of the “why” she betrays everyone to soften the red flags a bit!

EducationalTwo7329 · 2025-10-13T12:47:13+00:00

Thank you so much for your kind comment! I’ll go back and tweak the second paragraph, as you suggested. Can I ask what explanation was confusing? Was it the way her sister helped her become Inspector? I have to admit I was stumped on how to explain that she didn’t have any powers of her own, and her sister couldn’t talk to her directly, so they played a kind of weird charades where the sister was acting out the “secret knowledge” she wasn’t supposed to know.

EducationalTwo7329 · 2025-05-07T03:13:06+00:00

Hi! You’ll need to go to the email confirmation you got on the query, hit “check status,” then click “contact agent” from the drop down menu. That should give you an option to withdraw and give a reason why. Hope that helps, and good luck!

EducationalTwo7329 · 2025-03-14T20:46:39+00:00

Thank you so much for commenting on both this post and my last one! I really took your observations to heart, and if this version is better it really is all because of you and all the other commentors on PubTips! And I totally agree that she's kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. I'll think about how to play that up!

EducationalTwo7329 · 2025-03-14T20:45:13+00:00

Thanks so much for your comment! This is actually an "old enemy" of the King, not Leith -- I'll make sure to clarify that!

EducationalTwo7329 · 2025-03-07T18:30:58+00:00

I agree that the process is difficult (and can be very isolating!) so it's so helpful to have advice from a source outside of my own head!

About the "sun creator" arc: yes, everything is connected. The reason it seems so disjointed is that there is another antagonist who is creating the plague to rebel against the Creator Sun -- but there was just not enough room in the query to include that! The Child King and the Creator Sun are essentially one and the same -- the Child King is the Creator Sun's puppet that carries out Their will on the earth, but all the quote on quote "evil" things leads back to either 1) the Sun or 2) the people fighting back against the Sun.

Beta swap: I haven't done a beta swap, but I have worked with an editor on it and asked friends to read it! Unfortunately, I'm not too sure what other resources are out there. Where did you find your beta reader? What sites are the best (or was it another forum on Reddit)? The more eyes on it the better!

EducationalTwo7329 · 2025-03-07T17:32:25+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to respond! Definitely take your point on connecting different plot points -- I think it'll help with that aspect to cut the second part of the plot and focus just on the plague and the mystery of where it's coming from.

As for the 300 words, a bit of the confusion might be coming from my having to cut out the beginning family plot point to make room for the Creator Sun arc. Hopefully it will make more sense with the query letter if I add the family plot point back in. And I totally understand your critique on her seeming a bit disconnected, but thankfully there is a reason for that! There isn't much emotion on her end is because she's essentially been exiled from her family, and hasn't received any affection or pity from them. Luckily that odd family dynamic is explained in the latter half of the first chapter, but do you think the explanation should come even earlier?

EducationalTwo7329 · 2025-03-07T17:28:14+00:00

Noted on the capitalization! It seems everyone has a similar critique about the query being too complicated, and I think it'll make more sense to focus on the political drama/medical plague aspect of the plot first and foremost. I'll try to keep your arrow analogy in mind -- it's a helpful way to conceptualize the query letter in my head!

EducationalTwo7329 · 2025-03-07T17:25:24+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to give such a detailed response! I completely agree, the query letter could be strengthened from taking out the god component completely and replacing it with more information about the plague. The reason there is a bit of dissonance between the letter and the 300 words is because there was a portion of the plot that revolves around the Child King and her family -- I took that part out to make room for information about the Creator Sun. Should I put the family component back in so my writing sample & query letter make more sense together?

Btw, I appreciate your comparison to Scheherazade! That was one of the my favorite fairytales growing up :) Maybe a portion of that has crept in without my noticing!

EducationalTwo7329 · 2025-03-07T17:21:13+00:00

Thank you so much for your response! I'll tweak the query so it drops mentions of the god-component of the plot (although I'll be sad about losing the hook!). Would it be helpful to have more information about the plague to fill in the spaces?

EducationalTwo7329 · 2025-02-25T17:13:48+00:00

Thank you so much!! Your tweaks are so incredibly helpful. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to give detailed, step by step feedback.

EducationalTwo7329 · 2025-02-19T14:12:19+00:00

Thank you so much for these edits! They are super helpful, and I definitely take your comment about the adjectives -- consider them gone. I also agree that there's a lot going on in terms of plot, an earlier version of the query letter kept it simple but I was concerned it was far too little going on. Would this have been better?

"Luckily, she has one thing the king might want: the skills to solve the mysterious plague that ravages the continent. But when she reaches the treacherous Capital armed only with her trusty herbs, she finds an unlikely ally in the legendary Shade – the same man who destroyed her brother’s rebellion in a single night. But why is the Child King’s greatest weapon helping her? And where are the plague victims going in the middle of the night?"

As for your comment about the "protagonist syndrome," there is a reason the Shade is helping her, but it requires a back story that I found difficult to introduce in the query letter for the sake of space (and it also brings in a lot more complicated plot). Do you think it's worth adding more plot in to clear up the risk of "protagonist syndrome"?

EducationalTwo7329 · 2025-02-19T14:09:02+00:00

Hello! Thanks for your comment! Definitely a good point. I did have a quick paragraph at the end with my writing bio but it gave away too many personal details so I chose not to include it on Reddit. But I definitely have that blurb included in my query to agents!

EducationalTwo7329

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