The Evolution of a Query

So. I’ve started revising another manuscript (NO REST), figuring, hey, if I’m on the revision roll I might as well go with it, right? Anyway, I was working on the query for it and I thought I’d share how it starts off, NOT looking like a query but rather the disjointed ideas for one. This is what my query looks like in the beginning. As I revise, make it better, I’ll share those drafts with you as well. Maybe this will be interesting. Or not…

Query – NO REST

Character/setting – Camille Zinn who wants to follow her mother’s footsteps into space and secretly hopes to find her – it’s the future and it looks like this [name three things: super luminal tunnels are coming soon along with the latest chemical enhancement. Want to be smarter? Try the Einstein enhancement. Poor Eyesight? Ask for Eagle Eye. This is the world Camille Zinn grows up in and while she’s never been off her homeworld she’s about to leave for the first time, courtesy of the Corporation who owns her world, CGE, the same company Cam’s mother worked for before being declared MIA.

Conflict – But After a hazing gone wrong, Cam gets a chemical enhancement she didn’t want whose effects are permanent: Cam can’t sleep. More amazing? She finds a way to deal with not sleeping without going crazy. Bad news: the company she’s signed on with to follow her dream wants to use her to replicate the enhancement to make super workers

Choice: …what she finds isn’t what she expected and the choices she’ll have to make will have deep repercussions [really?]

In the future, Corporations own everything and are constantly scouting blah blag blah. Most people are okay with that, including Camille Zinn, who grows up on the backwater world of Cedar, the latest addition to CGE’s  holdings.

In the future, Corporations own everything, including the planet Camille Zinn grows up on. But that’s okay with Cam, because the company that owns her homeworld (Carina Genetics Engineering) is going to give her the opportunity to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a scout, looking for new worlds – and new profits. But after a hazing gone wrong, Cam gets a chemical enhancement she didn’t want whose effects are permanent: Cam can’t sleep. More amazing? She finds a way to deal with not sleeping without going crazy. Bad news: the company she’s signed on with to follow her dream wants to use her to replicate the enhancement to make super workers….volunteers, among them, her boyfriend, Jin. If she doesn’t help, the volunteers won’t make it, but if she does, CGE will make more super-workers who can’t sleep, even though some of them are dying to. Literally. 

[yes, start with grandfather and his distrust of CGE, Cam’s not to worry attitude, and her plan to follow in her mother’s footsteps] Grandfather says they’re lucky. Cedar was one of the last free planets and it’s retained more local rights than most under the CGE banner.

***

So, what do your queries look like in the beginning?