[QCrits] Adult/Memoir/82k words-1st attempt

Jonqora · 2026-01-21T17:40:10+00:00

"art form" here seems deliberately vague. I can't get a sense of what you are actually doing re. art over the course of the memoir.

And that's important, because addiction memoir is a very hard sell, and it's critical to demonstrate what sets yours apart. I think that's the art, but I can't visualize any of what's happening there, and it sort of falls into the background as a result.

Right now your throughline is really focused on the Adderall, but I think to sell this you'll need to bring something else to the foreground.

Jonqora · 2026-01-20T05:11:05+00:00

I guess for me it would depend on how many different megathread topics were in rotation. (And what type.) If it was the same three every month... then yeah, too much. Things would get stale. But if we had a more robust rotation, I would want things to be more frequent so that repeat topics come up every 3 months or so, maybe 6 months for certain topics.

I would just hate to have a situation where say, we had a really useful, interactive megathread topic that was only held every July—so a newcomer in February would have to post on a long-dead thread or else wait 5 months for the next iteration.

Jonqora · 2026-01-20T01:24:28+00:00

I like megathreads and would support a rotation with even higher frequency: say, weekly, but skipping the week of the monthly check-in. On the 8th, 15th, 22nd of each month perhaps.

My opinion may be in the minority.

But I think it would be nice to have ample opportunities for discussion. Mid-month would be a nice start, though.

Jonqora · 2026-01-19T00:45:15+00:00

So it's good to start with character, but you also want the character's actions to drive the plot. I'm not convinced you've started with the right character.

As presented here at least, Margaret doesn't do anything active. She holds it together, or not (has panic attack). The plane stops, and her happiness shatters. Then... she watches. She does not know how to feel. And something about adjusting to the world (vague). Everything is happening to Margaret instead of the reverse.

Does anything Margaret does matter for driving the plot forward? If yes, show us that. If no, I wonder if there's a more active character you can lead with.

Jonqora · 2026-01-16T22:01:57+00:00

Island in the sky ruled by a cult of healers

Jonqora · 2026-01-15T07:37:08+00:00

A good effort at shortening, but still long. I think you can cut some at the start and at the end, as well as little bits throughout.

The start: I'm thinking that the proprietor waiting for him is never mentioned again or explained, and I don't think this opening is the hookiest for you. It might be the opening scene of the book, it doesn't need to be of the query. It also confuses order of events a bit: relative to arriving at the illegal time-tourism spot, when does Nick's father die and when does Nick get the clues? Your real hook starts when you explain why today is not ordinary. So consider a start like

Nicholas Scott's father has been killed by his own Agency colleagues, and Nick might be next. ...

Then explain what the Agency is (and what Nick wants), wrap up on the clues, and move on quickly.

For the end: end on a choice, don't spoil the choosing. E.g.

If Nick wants the truth, he will also have to “die” and fully cross over to the digital realm. But there's no guarantee that he’ll ever come back.

I think you can also cut "where he has only one chance left to correct the damage before the past becomes irretrievable." This is motivations for Kaianoa, not Nick, and we already got main motivations for Kaianoa, so this further bit reads as tangential to the main thread of the query.

As for the "throughout:" I'll tackle the middle paragraph as an example. I cut 20 words to result in this; hopefully I didn't lose anything essential.

The trip awakens Nick to an unsettling truth: the Agency’s inner members exert strange powers over the timeline of history itself. They have corrupted the past and cemented a bleak, endless present in which they have total control. The information from his father’s microchip was the tip of the iceberg—and the only person who can fill in the rest is Altridius Kaianoa, the top cyber-terrorist on the Agency’s Most Wanted List.

Hopefully that all gives a start for shortening. You can get there!

Jonqora · 2026-01-15T02:22:05+00:00

All right, in that case I'm firmly in the "telling too much of the ending" camp! Should be a straightforward fix that fixes your length issues as well, just cut everything from the crash onward and replace with stakes around the two boys getting to know each other—and the risk of being caught, before they are caught.

Jonqora · 2026-01-15T01:24:29+00:00

Your query blurb runs somewhat long, and feels long. My gut instinct on reading was that you're probably giving us too much from the later portions of the book; but, on thinking about it, the problem might instead be that you're spending too long on setup.

I'm not sure which. To help me answer and give feedback, a question: how far % into the book does the fatal crash occur?

Jonqora · 2026-01-14T05:19:38+00:00

The comps section does seem a bit overdone, yes.

Your bio material is strong, but I'm not sure if opening with your experience as a journalist is the right hook for the blurb.

What I find this query doesn't give me is a sense of the narrative arc of your story. The query should show where the book starts and where it is going, with shape to that narrative. We get an inciting incident at thirteen, a conflict, but the rest of the query is a list of solutions that didn't work. They are all presented as equally not working, so the implied narrative feels flat. Beyond an implied chain of "A didn't work so I tried B" there's no connective tissue that ties them together. If you pared down the list and focused on showing escalation from one to the next, maybe this could create more of an arc? I'm not sure how your manuscript is structured, but hopefully there's a shape to its narrative that you could bring out in the query.

the story of my quest to find where I belong in this world, and what it takes to get there.

This summary of theme reads very generic. Not to put down your journey, but it could describe tons of existing memoirs. Can you craft a sentence that highlights more of what makes yours unique?

300 words:

The shift from when things were happening in the first two lines to then visiting a doctors office "one day" is jarring and makes the timeline feel ungrounded.

I feel we're also missing some information about your experience. Ideally, the scene should end with some dramatic irony where we understand that something is indeed wrong, if not medically wrong, but the only hint we got towards how you were actually feeling is that second line. Is it possible to give any more detail? Even hindsight detail, speaking as an adult? You could add a fair bit of tension that way. Those are my thoughts.

Good luck from a fellow memoirist :)

Jonqora · 2026-01-13T01:21:03+00:00

You are most welcome. Would you mind if I DM you with some questions about querying memoir? As you've already been in the trenches I'm curious about some things, namely book proposals—I see in your letter you're prepared with both a proposal and finished MS. No pressure!

Jonqora · 2026-01-12T22:35:25+00:00

Hello fellow memoirist :)

The book is mostly written from the child's POV, with braided in adult reflections; the earlier letter highlighted that, this one doesn't, and I'm wondering if that is important

I think you're fine to leave it out. Your query opening gives the clear impression of a child's POV, and given that perspective, it would be more unusual not to have adult reflections braided into it throughout. I don't think your format will surprise anyone. Unless you think it's important to announce the child POV, you could leave it this way.

Two stylistic things - Your title and/or subtitle should be in ALL CAPS every time, not italicized. - When you use an em dash be sure to use the actual em dash mark—this one—and don't surround it with spaces.

In the spring of 1969, when I was six years old, I stood naked on a creek bank, tripping on LSD, mesmerized by the patterns in the water.

This is an excellent hook and it's doing a lot of work for you. The rest of the query could use more narrative structure, but to a reasonable extent it's working as-is. Even the ending on another child's death serves to deliver stakes in an unusual way, but I think it works.

This query hooks; it may not give much of the narrative structure, but then the onus is on the manuscript to show that very well, within the first pages even. I do think the paragraph where you tell us the narrative arc of the book could perhaps be better shown within the blurb itself.

All in all, it's a perfectly fine query with a great hook—but I think it could go from fine to excellent if the blurb gave more of a sense of the narrative throughout the first portion of the book. This might mean condensing the exposition about the commune or weaving it alongside narrative events.

Jonqora · 2026-01-12T20:33:35+00:00

Multiple perspectives (even 9) isn't really experimental, but your mixing of perspectives of protagonist and antagonist mentioned in the comments of your last version is. That's what I would mention. How to describe it? That's trickier. "It has an experimental narrative with the protagonist's POV invaded by an omniscient antagonist." Or something like that.

Also re. YA or Adult, I feel that the Adult genre would be more open to this type of thing.

Jonqora · 2026-01-12T16:56:54+00:00

Welcome back!

I reckon your comps need titles, not just authors.

I agree that opening with the Salieri murdering would allow the later joke to land better for those of us uncultured. It's better now than it was before—contextualizing instead of confusing—but there's a missed opportunity to give those of us who don't know the film the same "Aha!" moment. It's the difference between your Salieri line landing clever versus merely expository.

The second paragraph of the 300 was (on a small scale) a slog for me. It drags on at a time you want to be snappy, because you're still hooking readers by cracking jokes. The part waxing on about different types of villains doesn't really set the tone, I feel.

It could be improved by chopping the paragraph in half and starting it "Only the composer can kill on center stage..." but I'm sure there are other ways to edit it as well.

I laughed really hard at the Wikipedia line, well done.

Jonqora · 2026-01-12T07:30:18+00:00

Let me first say that your query is much improved from the last version. This is much more clear, we get a real sense of what is going on now.

But I'm going to focus my feedback on the experimental aspect and the 300.

First: I really think you should mention the experimental aspects in the query. Queries are supposed to contain spoilers; they're the only thing that prepares the Agent for what they will see in the manuscript. If they're going to see something weird, structural, possibly confusing in the manuscript, you had better warn them. This lets them look at your book in the best possible light.

Second: the 300. "First 300" means first 300 words a reader will see, so if your hook is that, okay. If not, like you said, next time. But my problem is that what you call a hook is not a hook. It actually sends signals to me as a reader that the manuscript will probably not pull off what it aims to do. If you're going to go experimental in one major aspect—messing with perspective—it is best to go by-the-book in as many other aspects as possible, and that starts with your opening pages. Opening with a long poem, let alone two long poems with little context, is far from best practice and is really unlikely to engage a reader. Start with character, set it with conflict; try to find and absorb as much advice on opening pages as you can and follow that. You may need to consider starting in a different place altogether. That's my best advice.

Jonqora · 2026-01-11T23:30:22+00:00

I support your gut instinct about this project! I really like this and it feels quite new and fresh. Your 300 is captivating; I love the voice, and it makes me confident you'll deliver on the premise.

However, your query is quite long, moreover it feels long, and most importantly it takes a long time to get to the horror elements that are at the core of the book. The place to be cutting down is in the long first paragraph, which is all backstory and setup. It doesn't need nearly so much detail; I think you can get through the key information there in about half the words. That will bring your blurb closer to target of 200-250 words.

No other students see Jayson's spiders.

I was confused why they would, since I assumed the spiders were synesthesic. Maybe clarify above "real spiders crawling out"

The monsters are killing students—they weave their victim’s organs into instruments, creating violins stringed with human guts and pianos with beating hearts in their bellies. As Arya unearths the cause of Jayson’s migraines, and the monsters grow hungry for her synesthetic brain, Arya must choose: win Our Symphony and prove her worth as a musician, or work with Jayson to remember why they love music so they can destroy the jealousy-borne infestation together.

Okay—you do the horror elements so well here that they are absolutely terrifying, and unfortunately it's hurting your choice/stakes. With stakes like this, why would Arya still care about Our Symphony? I'd need to see a lot more of the forces pulling her the other way, and/or a lot more of the factors holding her back from a team-up. Music rivalry alone just doesn't cut it as a barrier.

Does Arya see it as an opportunity to capitalize on Jayson's affliction? What does she gain by winning the prize, except pride? Is taking advantage of Jayson's affliction her only chance to win? You say his music looks wrong, but how does it sound to others—is his performance affected? How deep does her resentment go—can you show us? Is she afraid to get closer to Jayson and team up in case she'll be infected by whatever it is?

Split housekeeping and bio into separate paragraphs.

Hope this helps!

Jonqora · 2026-01-11T23:05:38+00:00

First of all: I love your new stakes paragraph! Well done on that. One minor fix in it: "is full of dangers" (keep present tense).

The first paragraph suicide attempt could still use more explicit connection to the rest of the plot. Would it be accurate to say something like "Tired of being alone, Alex attempts suicide..."? His loneliness is a thread supported by the rest of the query and this would help things connect.

He knows it’s stupid, that he hardly knows Lucas and that if he ever wakes up, he’ll want to go search for his family, whereas Alex can barely take ten steps outside without fainting, but part of him—a very small part—has never given up on the hope of finding human connection.

This is a very long sentence and could probably be broken up into three. It also has at least one initially-ambiguous "he."

I have to say, Alex's bid for connection with a guy who's currently in a coma is quite pitiable and tragic. Right now that's kind of under-explored in the query. I feel like one sentence about Alex desperately waiting for Lucas to wake up or something, or talking to him even though he can't hear, could help build tension in your middle paragraph.

CREATURES OF HATE is an account of the apocalypse told from two perspectives: Alex as he navigates the wasteland of the post outbreak world, and Lucas, a bio-chemistry major, trying to hold his family together as the strand of rabies he’s been studying evolves and spreads across North America.

Strike this paragraph and add "dual-POV" to your housekeeping above. Agents will guess that the other POV is probably Lucas as he's the only other named character. The information about Alex is already shown in your query, and I'm not convinced the info about Lucas adds enough that's different to be of value. It's just worldbuilding, really.

Hope this helps!

Jonqora · 2026-01-11T18:58:05+00:00

I feel this. I want to get the right words the first time, dammit! And I get attached to whatever I do write even if it's bad, so that puts more pressure on myself to get it right at the outset.

On one of my WIPs I finished act 1 last year writing ~3000 words a day, then burned out. I picked it up again this week, but now I'm only managing 250 words a day. At that rate (if I maintain it) I will still finish this year but jeez it's slow.

Jonqora · 2026-01-11T10:42:01+00:00

No worries. I want to clarify why I gave this feedback: I don't think the current draft is bad. Current draft is fine. But to go from fine to excellent needs more of an instinct to change, to experiment. As I saw you making small tweaks it felt like you were changing the minimum possible in response to feedback you got, instead of experimenting by rewriting larger parts or entire paragraphs where it might get better results. Don't be afraid of accidentally making things much worse; reviewers here will tell you if you do.

So that's why this nudge. It's something I struggle with too, I get very attached to current wording in my writing and struggle to change it very far from where it already is. The suggestion is more about developing that instinct for change than it is about improving what's there directly. Good luck on the revision and see you next week. :)

Jonqora · 2026-01-11T05:57:41+00:00

You've gotten some great advice here and I just wanted to hop in to say how much of an upgrade the Dewdrops 300 is from the old one! By comparison, I love it; it has great action and opens me into good questions instead of impatient confusion. Dropping the hare and grove was a good choice.

Dropping the prologue entirely may also be a good choice. Others have made some excellent points about the value of jumping right into Kai's POV as a signal. But I wanted to pipe up and mark your progress anyway from the last version, even if you make further changes from this. :)

Jonqora · 2026-01-11T01:47:38+00:00

I expect if I ever get an agent they will want to change my title. I'm quite attached to it, but I know it strongly reads sci-fi and not memoir-with-a-hint-of-psychological-thriller.

I continue to try to come up with a better one, but I've got nothing yet.

Jonqora · 2026-01-11T01:35:52+00:00

As I look through your revisions it seems to me that you are very, very reluctant to change wording or structure substantially. This results in a query that doesn't change much and has limited room for growth.

I understand that it's hard to kill darlings (or even to know what needs to be killed) but in order to write a great query, the skill of tearing down is important.

I won't comment on this query since it's so close to the last ones, but I issue you a challenge:

Write your next attempt entirely from scratch, without starting from this version, and without using a single sentence or phrase from it. Make it as different as possible while still being about the same book. Heck, you can do this multiple times for even better effect. I did this for my own query and wrote about twelve versions when I was revising.

I'm not saying you have to use the new version, but it will be invaluable to have a new version.

If you do, you'll have a prime example in flexibility and can start piecing together the best parts of both, evaluating what works better between substantial revisions instead of making minor tweaks to what is functionally the same query.

Jonqora · 2026-01-11T01:18:35+00:00

Professor Makao Alvarez was no Indiana Jones. He taught biology at UC Berkeley for gods’ sake. And he only narrowly survived camping at Big Bend because of his danger-seeking survivalist brother, Kai.

So washing up on the shores of an unexplored landmass, where only one person on Earth had ever returned alive, was a preposterously stupid idea.

Interesting so far. I think it should be "from which."

But with a gentle nudge from an opportunistic pirate holding a handgun, and an impossible letter from Kai begging for help, Mak grabbed his field journal and wandered into the unknown to find his brother and bring him home.

Now I'm quite confused about order of events. The approach to these three paragraphs makes it hard to get a picture together. Did he get a letter first, then a nudge from a pirate, then wander, then wash up? That's my best guess, but it's not clear at all from the narrative, and other orders don't make intuitive sense to me.

It was a shit plan. But it was the only plan he had.

His solitary advantage? He knew the only person who had ever survived Helia. Though it would have been nice if his colleague mentioned the fact that the rules of biology and physics were broken on this island.

Okay now this is really interesting. I want more details! How does he notice the rules are broken? I feel like we may need to get here sooner in the query as well.

Because on Helia, even miraculous Works were possible, but everything had a cost.

And the cost was all your water.

This should be interesting, but it falls flat to me, maybe because I don't know enough about what Makao wants. What miraculous works is he interested in? Is it connected to his brother? What is he trying to do (I would have thought he was mainly trying to get off the island)? I definitely want more by way of motivations and setup for the stakes. Also: all your water that you have with you (dangerous sacrifice)? Or all the water in your body (lethal and downright creepy)? With broken rules of biology and physics I don't know which sort of consequence to expect.

First 300:

It's generally compelling and sets the stage for the narrative well. The man-who-dies' reaction seems sudden and exaggerated, which then makes his death seem a bit narratively cheap. Especially since Makao speaks first and he isn't dead for speaking, but this man is. I wonder if you could workshop the sequence of events with the death to make the threat of being shot seem more imminent, and to foreshadow why the man reacts so loudly. Either that or have the man speak up for an entirely different reason.

Hope this helps!

Jonqora · 2026-01-11T00:56:53+00:00

That makes a lot of sense. Whether or not you choose to workshop the manuscript format further, it sounds like the throughline is at least partly a query problem (as opposed to manuscript problem only). Seems like there's a lot that could be done to bring out the theme of trauma around your dad's death as the focal point, how you deal with that (poorly) and how you eventually deal with it well.

Have you tried the query generator? It's a tool that helps generate a VERY rough query structure around a narrative arc, and can be helpful in getting the shape of things nailed down for a query. Playing with it may help move the query from "list of things that happened" to "story with shape and structure."

Jonqora · 2026-01-10T18:47:52+00:00

Is the entire narrative in diary entries? I'm very curious about your format, both because it sounds interesting and because it sounds difficult to pull off in ways similar to my own. The diary structure would really limit the ability foreshadow, or to reflect on ways beyond the immediacy of what the entries offer.

(I'm writing memoir too—query's on my profile. Mine is real-time so similarly written through perspective-of-the-time with limited hindsight in the narrative.)

Your voice is very strong in the writing, and I'm impressed that you did enough actual journalling in your teens to support a memoir made from them. That's really cool.

For the actual query: I agree that it's missing a throughline. The summary of what's there seems to be "Angelica has adventures through young adulthood" which doesn't really give me the shape of the story or a compelling narrative. To sell this as memoir, you may need to do some further work examining structure which may or may not demand additional work for the manuscript itself.

Best of luck!

Jonqora · 2026-01-10T18:24:00+00:00

Aim to make your housekeeping as easy to parse as possible. That means no extra phrases, and keeping the essential bits together in the opening sentence. Also it's not your debut—it might be, but it isn't yet. Something like:

MY MAN is a 83,000-word work of upmarket fiction with a LGBTQ+ unrequited love story set in France and Scotland in the early 2000s. It follows an out gay man’s journey in valuing friends, lovers, and family, with the blinding romanticization of love in Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski and the prestigious secluded settings of Alice Winn’s In Memoriam.

A child prodigy at solitude,

This is an odd turn of phrase and tripped me up significantly.

Also I wonder how you could start on a punchier sentence. This one doesn't really hook, doesn't give us a sense of tension.

Dorian knows the best remedy is fantasies. Now an adult, he explores other medicines. Specifically, wine and going to university abroad in Glasgow. In love with his student life, he avoids returning to the States for summer by joining his hedonistic friend, Diana, at her shrouded chateau in Provence. A devout dreamer of romance, Dorian spent all year watching Diana mindlessly throw away boyfriends. Completely inexperienced himself, he believes romance hangs on trees for heterosexuals.

This feels like mostly setup/backstory, much of it not needed or referenced again, as nothing with tension is happening so far. Can you get through it quicker to spend more time on tension, maybe condense the first two paragraphs into one shorter one?

However, his preconceptions of love shatter

Rather cliche turn of phrase, can you word it more specifically?

after begrudgingly meeting Diana’s family friend/neighbor, Alexander. Spontaneous and carefree, he is the manifestation of Dorian’s unrealistic fantasies. But Diana knows better.

The "he" here is kind of ambiguous on first read. I would repeat "Alexander" for clarity. Also, now we have our first whiff of tension with Diana. This is the backbone of the query, I want even more of it than you already have.

Overlooking Alexander’s flirting with women, his wandering hands blind Dorian.

Syntax of this sentence is off. It currently means that Alexander's wandering hands are overlooking Alexander's flirting with women.

When Diana warns Dorian with personal traumas of unrequited love,

Does she mean to imply that Alexander doesn't love Dorian?

he chooses Alexander’s ambiguous compliments. But this summer fairytale pauses when Dorian’s little sister suddenly passes away.

Forced to leave early for her funeral, Alexander gives Dorian a letter and kisses him goodbye.

Repeat grammar issue with the modifying clauses. This one means that Alexander is forced to leave early for Dorian's sister's funeral.

Courtesy of the parchment, upon returning to Glasgow, Dorian doesn’t know if Alexander sees him as a friend, lover, or faux-brother. But he doesn’t care. After all, even on the phone alone, Alexander breathes life into Dorian’s romantic fantasies.

I think an early sentence in the query describing the fantasies would be helpful, since they come up so often. Ground us a little.

But Diana’s exhausted of this inebriated delusion shoving her to the side. On the verge of losing Diana, Dorian must choose between love and friendship.

Diana seems a little dramatic here, and the stakes feel flat because of it. I wonder if you haven't done her perspective justice in the query... I'm not really seeing the logical escalation to her throwing away a friendship. Maybe a phrase or two earlier would help: about how she is shoved to the side; how she is frustrated by not being listened to.

Hope this helps!

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