your query letter isn't the problem

plot structure tips from Marty Supreme

Welcome new subscribers! If you discovered me because of my Wuthering Heights review, I’m a bestselling novelist and content creator. My first name rhymes with bee. 🐝

When I first started my business as a book coach and freelance editor in the fall of 2017, aspiring literary novelists could hire me for my advice on their query letters and opening pages. There is a ton of advice out there on how to write a strong query letter (I like Carly Watters’s “hook > book > cook” formula), and how to get better at pitching yourself and your work, but what I often discovered in my one-hour meetings with these aspiring novelists is that the reason the pitch for their novel was weak was not because they were bad at pitching—but because there was something broken in their novel.

The query letter was like an X-ray that revealed multiple bone fractures.

Even if these novelists understood, from hours of research, that they needed a “hook” and “conflict” and “stakes,” they led with their themes and their protagonist’s psychological struggle. They couldn’t answer my question, “What am I turning the pages to find out?” Their protagonist lacked a desire line. They had no choice but to pitch themes instead of plot—their novels didn’t have one.

I don’t write often in this newsletter about query letters, for a couple reasons. First, this isn’t a newsletter for beginning or amateur writers. My advice is aimed at professional writers who are trying to figure out how to continue selling books, at a time when the publishing industry’s response to the ascendant creator economy is just to acquire more books by writers who are already good at creating content.

Second, there is already a cottage industry of books and webinars and newsletters and consulting services dedicated to helping writers with their query letters. A query follows a formula, so it’s easy, practical advice for agents and novelists to dish out to aspiring writers—without ever having to read a single page of anyone’s book! It’s like “here’s how to write a villanelle.” Mad Libs. Plug and play.

It’s much harder to teach plot structure, or to give general advice about how to fix flawed novels. Plot structure is rarely taught in creative writing MFA programs because the professors in those programs also went through MFA programs where they never learned plot structure.

Compounding this problem is the fact that many literary novelists are afraid of plotting. They’re scared to be derivative or cliché. They see an inverse relationship between prestige and page-turners. They think it’s a depressing sign of declining literacy that books are promoted on TikTok through genre tropes.

I decided to learn plot structure after my third book, a memoir, underperformed in 2016. Julia Phillips recommended John Truby’s book Anatomy of Story to me. I used Truby’s 7-step plot structure method, and his breakdown of a satire, to write Self Care, which sold in three weeks in 2019.

Julia and I co-taught a plot structure class, using Truby’s book, in January 2020, right before the world shut down, and our student Erin Van Der Meer wrote a novel that comes out in April (Erin and I will be doing an event together in Chicago—more details TBA!).

I used Truby’s more advanced 22-step plot structure when I wrote If You’re Seeing This, It’s Meant for You.

If you are drafting, revising, or querying a novel right now, here’s a mini plot structure lesson, on the difference between want and need, using my man Marty Supreme.

Want vs. Need

Truby uses “want” to describe your protagonist’s external desire. Your reader is turning the pages to find out if your main character achieves something or not: what is it?

Marty Supreme wants to win. Will he?

Want is binary. It’s yes or no. At the end of a romance, has the main character found love? Yes. At the end of a mystery, has the crime been solved? Yes.

In If You’re Seeing This, It’s Meant for You, Dayna and Olivia each have their own desire line.

If you’re not sure if your main character’s desire is external or not, ask yourself, Could a director film my character pursuing this?

Truby writes:

Part of the success of your story is based on the level of the desire you give the hero. A desire that remains low throughout the story reduces your hero and makes any complexity of plot virtually impossible. For example, the lowest desire line is simple survival. The hero is under attack and wants to escape. This reduces the hero to the level of an animal. The plot in escape stories simply repeats the same beat of running away.

Here are the levels of some classic desire lines, from lowest to highest:

1. Survive (escape)¹

2. Take revenge

3. Win the battle

4. Achieve something

5. Explore a world

6. Catch a criminal

7. Find the truth

8. Gain love

9. Bring justice and freedom

10. Save the Republic

11. Save the world

Your personal Marty Supreme is also deeply flawed: “From the very beginning of the story, your hero has one or more great weaknesses that are holding him back. Something is missing within him that is so profound, it is ruining his life.”

Your hero has a psychological need (something she must overcome inside herself) and a moral need (something she must learn about how she is hurting others).

It is only by going after his or her external goal, and struggling against an opponent, that your main character experiences an internal transformation.

In their query letters, literary novelists tend to emphasize the psychological journey of their hero over the external desire line that is driving the reader’s experience of the story. If this is because their protagonist lacks an external desire line, that’s a problem with the novel—not the query letter.

In the final scene of the movie, Marty Supreme undergoes a transformation. The movie is not about this transformation. It’s not two-and-a-half hours about a young man who learned there’s more to life than ping pong. It’s about a young brash athlete who will lie, beg, and con his way to becoming the greatest table tennis player in the world.

You can study plot structure with me on Sunday afternoons in March in my Plot Curious class. This class is for anyone who feels like crying when someone asks, “what’s your book about?” We’ll be talking a lot more about the difference between desire and need. The syllabus includes the Truby book, Fleabag, Vladimir by Julia May Jonas, and Anatomy of a Fall. There are 10 spots left and I’m also offering one scholarship to a content creator.

Other popular posts I’ve written on plot structure:

• The form is the twist

• Pleasure studies

• The two journeys in every story

Upcoming Events

• Tomorrow at 1pm EST, I’m doing a Substack Live with essayist Chelsea Hodson, publisher of Rose Books, and founder of Morning Writing Club. Chelsea will be bringing a writing PROMPT to our live, so bring something to write with. This is free and open to everyone!

• Friday, February 27th at 1pm EST will be my next Chat Room with David Brown, director of publicity and marketing at Atria. I’ll interview David for 30 minutes and then open it up to your questions! This conversation will be available exclusively to my diamond medallion subscribers.

• Friday March 13th at 1pm EST, I’ll be hosting Megan Tripp, social media director at Penguin Random House, in Chat Room.

1. Room by Emma Donoghue is a great example of this desire level.