The query.

She’s sexy and alluring and you wish you could get to know her a little better.

And unlike the synopsis, you don’t have to show your whole hand. Whether you want to think of it as a movie trailer or batting your literary eyelashes, what you need is a few killer lines that are going to leave them wanting more.

Or maybe it’s more like writing a personal ad. In it, you show the best possible version of you. Someone that sounds like a person you’d want to meet. But remember, if you are successful, there’s going to be a first date. And there’s no way you can make yourself (or your book) 5′6, with raven hair and silver eyes, if you’re not that already.

So, how do you do this? How do you balance information with allure? How do you sound exciting, but true to your book? As other writers and I puzzled this out, here are a few essentials that came up again and again.

-Play to your strengths.

If your book is funny, make us laugh. If your writing is lyrical, sweep the reader up in your language. If its got fighting lemurs and ninjas and pirates, make us want to pull out our throwing stars. I know this seems obvious, but when you sit down to the daunting task of boiling your novel down into a couple paragraphs or a 30 second pitch, it’s so easy to forget. Plus it’s hard.

-Use active, specific language. Shorter sentences and present tense can also give your words immediacy.

As we try to sum up our beloved books, we often unintentionally distance ourselves. We write “Little Red Riding Hood walked to Grandmother’s house.”

Instead of…”Little Red Riding Hood strides into the dark woods, unaware that each step takes her closer to peril.”

For a few extra (and, I concede, cheesy) words, I’ve bought emotional impact and characterization.

-Just like in the opening lines of a book, in queries it’s important to immediately show what your main character wants.

“Everyday, Rapunzel gazes out over the sea of trees, wishing she could walk beneath their emerald branches.”

-Lure your readers in and keep them wanting more.

Remember, you’re painting a picture, and you want it to convey a character in a specific pose, a mood, a setting. Keep your sentences relatively simple, free of complex punctuation. For the sake of clarity and emphasis, avoid names of secondary characters if you can help it. Likewise, avoid terms that are specific to your book and require explanation. You only have a few precious lines to draw the audience into your world, and you don’t want anything to break the spell.

As important as it is to give your readers enough to tempt them, it’s just as important to know when to stop. You can choose the climatic moment that plunges your character into the conflict of the story. Or you can go a little farther, alluding to the way the character might get out of their conundrum. But unlike a synopsis, in a query you don’t want to give away too many answers.

“After years of living far from the Castle, Sleeping Beauty is overwhelmed by boisterous crowds and the thunder of fireworks. She flees her birthday festivities, only to find something more disturbing waiting for her behind a closed door.”

If you can make your reader or listener really feel the plight of your character and make them wonder what’s behind that door, then you’ve done it. And a request for your manuscript will not be far behind.

So, let’s dust off last week’s metaphor, mostly cause it’s almost lunchtime and I’m getting hungry. If a synopsis is a recipe for a chocolate souffle, then a query is a free sample at the chocolate shop. Tiny, delicious, and there to convince you to buy the whole box. Omnomnom!

I’d written synopses for that story before and most of them sounded as if they should be narrated by this guy.

Which is dramatic and all, but maybe not exactly what I was going for. I mean my synopses certainly got your attention, they didn’t necessarily describe my book very well.

It took me a while to realize what the problem was. Turns out, in the early drafts, I didn’t really know what my book was about. Sometimes our stories are so big in our minds, that we wander through the world, entertaining ourselves and our readers, but forgetting where we are going. And it’s not until you try to write the synopsis that you realize you’ve lost your way.

Because a synopsis forces you to cut through all the action and mystery and distill it down to exactly what your book is about. Not what happens, but what it’s about.

For example, what happens in Winnie the Pooh is that a bear and his friends survive a flood, throw a birthday party, and search for things (heffalumps, tails, friends, homes.) But what the book is about is learning how to be brave. How to be a friend. How to grow up.

Turns out that a synopsis is just another tool in the writer’s toolbox. It can not only show us if our story has stayed on point, it can direct us if we lose our way. By forcing us to distill our story down, we can look at exactly what our characters are struggling with and if we’ve stayed true to that struggle. We can see if all the pieces of the book are exploring the same questions and leading us towards the same conclusions. Most importantly, we can remember why we wrote the story in the first place.

A synopsis is like a recipe for a delicate, rich, chocolate souffle. Everything in it should be essential and with it you should be able to build something greater and more delicious that the sum of its parts. It should give enough details that you can already taste the cocoa, imagine the texture, and almost smell it baking in the oven. In other words, a good synopsis should make your mouth water.

Bon Appetit!