: Re: Querying for a setting-heavy speculative fiction novel I'm an attentive follower of Janet Reid's Query Shark, and I've learned a lot. But Reid doesn't represent speculative fiction, which seems

@Frith254

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I don't think they are open for infodumps, because they do not have the time to read them. And after the tenth infodump you get easily bored.

I do not know the books you have mentioned, so I cannot help you there. But normally the agent (or publisher) just wants to get an idea what your book is about. To do that you do not need to explain a complex plot/world in every excruciating detail.

I made a post here on Writers.SE, where I summarised LotR in two sentences. I only mention a dwarf-like man carrying the ring, that it must be destroyed and that the antagonist devastate the world otherwise.

With this information you can show the main plot. You do not need to mention Aragorn, Helm's Deep, the towers, elves, orcs, Gollum or big birds carrying wizards. You can skip a lot of the complexity. Well, in a query I would mention some of the above. E.g. elves and orcs, they are important for the setting; Gollum, the Deep and the towers are not.

Now you can say that LotR isn't such complex, but well ...

Maybe you can post a (lengthy) query letter of Hyperion and we try to find out if it is possible to leave out information to make it shorter. (No, I do not know if Writers.SE is the right format to do that, but luckily I do not care anyway.)

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