I Wrote the Query Letter First | Tarek Writes a Novel — Week 1

I’m writing my second novel, and I’m aiming for a 90,000-word first draft by May 2027. To get there, I need to average about 2,500 words a week.

Hi, I’m Tarek, this is Tarek Writes a Novel, and here’s how my first week went, starting September 7.

My daily goals add up to 2,700 words a week: 500 each weekday, plus 200 total over the weekend. Weekends are family time, and while I do still try to at least write something, I want to keep the goal realistic, because my kids don’t care if I’m in the writing zone; they care about me getting them pizza. 

Back to the goal: it was a strong first week! I stayed ahead of my daily targets almost the whole time. There was one dip when I cut a bunch of words, but I caught up over the weekend, and finished with almost 3,600 words, about 900 ahead of my weekly target.

Before I wrote those pages, though, I did a lot of planning.

First, I drafted a query letter. That’s the letter writers send to literary agents when they’re seeking representation, usually after the book is finished. One part of it is a short description of the story, a little like the copy on a book jacket. Writing this is a lot harder than it sounds.

Writing that description before writing the book might sound backwards, but it forced me to answer a few basic questions: Who’s my protagonist? What does he want? What’s stopping him? What does he stand to lose? And how do his choices move the story forward?

Those answers gave me the spine of the story. From there, I built a full outline using Save the Cat, a story structure that maps out major turning points. It’s useful for building tension and raising the stakes, which matters to me because this is an upmarket satirical thriller. I want people to keep turning the pages.

As you can probably tell, I’m a plotter. Some writers are “pantsers”—they write by the seat of their pants and discover the story as they go. I’ve tried that, but I kept finding plot holes and having to stop to repair them. I’m much happier when I have an idea of where I’m headed.

That doesn’t mean everything is decided in advance though. One of my favorite parts of writing is getting into a scene and discovering details I couldn’t have planned. I like knowing the larger shape of the story while leaving room for those surprises.

The other thing I focused on this week was giving the book a clear inciting incident. That’s the event early in a story that changes the protagonist’s situation and pushes them to act. For example, in The Hunger Games, it’s when Prim’s name is drawn at the reaping and Katniss volunteers to take her place.

In past stories, I’ve written inciting incidents that were a little fuzzy. When I couldn’t clearly say what set the story in motion, the pages that followed tended to wander. So I wanted this one to be easy to understand and early enough to pull the reader in.

And, I’m happy to report it happens on page two.

So that was week one: a query letter, an outline, a clear starting point, and almost 3,600 words. We’ll see how all that planning holds up in week two.

Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.

Tarek Writes a Novel is a writing vlog following the behind-the-scenes reality of writing a full length manuscript. I’ll be posting updates roughly once a week, talking about what I wrote, what worked, what didn’t, and the craft problems I’m trying to solve.